"
I had all the goddamn lawyers I can stand."
Seagraves shrugged. "You're the one that
decides. I offered you my best advice, which is to drop the appeals.
You can take it or not."
"It was you gave money to Buster Devonne,"
he said. The words stopped Seagraves, and Trout began to nod. "That
don't settle so well now, does it?" he said.
"
Do what you want," Seagraves said.
Trout continued to nod. "You're thinking I can't
find another lawyer would bring that into court."
Seagraves held himself still, feeling cleaner now,
somehow removed from the threat.
"
What you have forgot," Trout said, "is
that I know the law myself."
"What I overlooked with you," Seagraves
said, "is what you did."
Trout put his hand back in the pocket with the gun,
Seagraves did not move. "I want everything that's mine,"
Trout said. "The case, all the evidence, the court records . .
."
"I don't keep the evidence," he said. "Ward
Townes got that."
"
Give me what you got."
Seagraves called Emma Grandy and told her to bring
the Trout file. She put it on his desk a minute later, keeping her
eyes low in the room. The corners of the photographs still protruded
beyond the file itself. Seagraves pushed it across the desk.
"
I want the copies ...."
"
That's it, everything in the world that
connects us," he said.
Trout brought what looked like several thousand
dollars in hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket. The money was
folded once and opened with his hand. He turned it over. There were
fifties on the bottom, and he took one of them off and dropped it on
the desk next to the file.
"
There's two visits," he said, "yesterday
and today."
He picked up his folder
and the letter from the Internal Revenue Service. Then he turned,
without another word, opened the door and walked out.
* * *
FROM THE DESK SEAGRAVES saw Carl Bonner standing in
the outer office. Orange hair and white, smooth skin. Seagraves
noticed the young lawyer bore a physical resemblance to Red Barron,
the great football player from Georgia Tech. Trout pushed past him on
the way out. Carl Bonner stood still, watching him until he was gone.
When he turned back into the room, Seagraves saw that he was furious.
He stood up behind his desk. "Carl Bonner,"
he said, "come on in here, son."
The look on Bonner's face changed in the instant he
heard Seagraves's voice. The men shook hands, and Seagraves sat back
down. "I can't stay a minute," Bonner said. "I wanted
to thank you in person for sending me Mrs. Trout."
Seagraves nodded toward the outer office. "That
right there was your adversary."
Bonner looked back in the direction the older man had
pointed his chin. "That's Paris Trout? He got old."
Seagraves nodded. "Old and dangerous."
"
He's rude, I'll say that." Bonner
shrugged, looking again in the direction Trout had gone. "He
aged thirty years since I saw him."
"He's had a lot on his mind."
The young attorney nodded. "He's about to have
something more."
It was quiet a moment. Seagraves considered what he
was about to say. "If` I might presume to offer you a word of
caution . . ."
Bonner nodded, waiting.
"
Go easy in your dealings with Mr. Trout. I
don"t mean you oughtn't to represent your client, but at the
same time keep in mind the man has lost his mind."
Carl Bonner started to smile again and then saw that
Seagraves was earnest. "He isn't crazy enough to give up his
money," he said.
"
There's all kinds of crazy," Seagraves
said. "Paris doesn't talk to himself out loud on the street or
drag him a dead dog around on a leash. The way he's crazy isn't that
far off center, so most of the time he seems like anybody else."
"
I expect everybody's got their secrets."
Seagraves looked Carl Bonner sincerely in the eyes.
"He's proved how far he'll take it," he said. "Ordinary
people might consider things in the abstract, but bad intentions
aren't what being crazy is about. Even if we're all on the same road,
Paris Trout doesn't have any brakes."
Seagraves could not tell if the young attorney
understood him or not.
"
I'll keep that in mind, Mr. Seagraves," he
said.
No, he hadn't understood
him at all.
* * *
NEW YEAR'S EVE LESLIE Bonner put on a new black dress
that she'd bought for herself in Macon, drank several glasses of
Coca-Cola spiked with liquor that her husband had purchased for the
holidays at the Ether Hotel, and accompanied him to a party at the
home of the businessman and politician Richard Dickey.
He had been two weeks talking her into it.
The dress was cut low all the way around, passing
front to back beneath her armpits, and appeared to be held up by two
thin black straps running over her shoulders. There was an excitement
in the straps.
A maid answered the door and led them into a room as
big as the Bonners' backyard. Oil paintings on the walls, a string
quartet in the corner. There was a punch bowl, and next to it a table
with bottles of liquor carrying the seal of the State of New York.
The maid took Leslie Bonner's coat, and she went
right to the liquor table and ordered a rum and Coke. Carl Bonner
followed her through the smoke and noise, shaking hands with people
he had not seen since before the Korean War. Some of the women kissed
him, and by the time Leslie turned away from the table, holding the
glass against her lips, his cheeks were smudged in several shades of
lipstick.
She took a slow, single swallow of the drink. "Have
you been raped?" she said.
He took her soft arm in his hand and leaned into her
ear. He smelled her perfume and felt the heat of her skin. "We
don't have to stay long," he said. "Put in an appearance,
then we can do anything you want."
She pushed into him, just a moment, and then pulled
back. Her lip was wet halfway to her nose, and a light flush had
taken over her cheeks. Smoke was everywhere.
"
No," she said, "this is nice."
You never knew.
A moment later Carl Bonner felt a hand on his arm and
was introduced to a bug-eyed state legislator from Waycross, who had
once seen him play football in high school. The man was smoking a
cigar, he wore a class ring with a stone the size of another bug eye.
He shook hands with Bonner and then wrapped both his
hands around Leslie's, blowing cigar smoke into her hair, and told
her anytime she came to Waycross, Waycross would be grateful for the
change in scenery. "For some damn reason," he said, "we
got the ugliest women in the state. I think it's in the water."
Leslie allowed the legislator to hold on to that hand
and drank from her glass with the other one. "We got women,"
he said, "that could not fit one leg in that dress."
And then just such a woman emerged from one of the
small gatherings nearby and pulled the legislator away. He was
replaced by others. Lawyers and businessmen from Cotton Point and
Atlanta and Macon. Leslie stayed close to the liquor table, even when
her husband was pulled away, and took the compliments on her
appearance with no sign of embarrassment. As he watched her, it
occurred to Carl Bonner that for the first time since they arrived,
she was herself.
It occurred to him that she might find some friends.
At ten o'clock in the evening a Negro dressed in a
tuxedo walked through the guests, announcing dinner. He went from the
north end of the room to the south and opened two doors there which
led to another room, as big as this one, where two long tables had
been set with plates and wineglasses and candles. A chandelier as
heavy as a Pontiac hung from the ceiling. There were silver ice
buckets every five feet, a bottle of champagne in each one. The
places were marked with name cards, and the Bonners found themselves
sitting across the cable from Harry and Lucy Seagraves.
Estes Singletary, editor and owner of the
Ether
County Plain Talk
, and his wife were on one
side, and Mayor Bob Horn and his wife were on the other. Leslie
settled into her seat and reached for the champagne. Bob Horn leaned
forward to smile at her. "I enjoy a woman that knows what she
wants," he said.
She said, "Thank you very much," and killed
everything she had poured into her glass. She refilled it and then
poured one for the mayor. They toasted each other and sipped at their
drinks.
"
I'm afraid Carl's kept you hidden from us,"
the mayor said.
She stopped her glass, an inch from her lips, and
looked at him. "You do this every night?" she said.
Bob Horn laughed until he began to choke. Hearing
him, the rest of the table laughed too. At the other table people
were straining to see what they had missed.
There were more toasts over the soup and then over
the salad. It seemed to Leslie Bonner that Harry Seagraves's were the
most humorous. She saw a kindness in him that was missing in the
others.
The bottles at the second table — where Mr. and
Mrs. Richard Dickey were seated — remained untouched, and a curious
silence seemed to settle over the guests there.
Carl Bonner sat and watched his wife lead the table
into a state of drunkenness he had never before seen in mixed company
in Ether County, Georgia. He began to feel uncomfortable.
The maids brought in the plates. Roast beef, creamed
potatoes, creamed beans. Carl Bonner watched his wife survey the
food, then refill her glass. He had an unexplainable premonition that
she was about to begin a food fight.
At the other table Richard Dickey stood up to offer a
blessing. Carl Bonner closed his eyes and bowed his head and felt her
hand on his leg at the moment Richard Dickey said, "Dear Lord .
. ."
It was a light touch at first, just the weight of her
fingers. He tried to listen to the words. ". . . not only for
this wonderful meal but also for the life you have seen fit to give
us . . ."
Her hand moved slowly up his leg, stopping in his
lap. Against his will, he began to stiffen. ". . [our friends,
our children, our good neighbors . . ."
She found the mouth of his penis through the
material. He squirmed slightly in his chair, trying to move himself
from under her hand, but she held on. Then he felt her hand change
locations. Richard Dickey's voice covered the sound of the zipper.
". . . and keep us ever in thy thoughts, O Lord,
and watch us through the coming year . . ." Richard Dickey said,
"In Jesus' name, a — men," and she had it out. He looked
down and watched the muscles move under her skin, just at the place
her forearm disappeared under the tablecloth.
Across the table Lucy Seagraves sipped at her glass
and then spoke to Leslie. "What do you do with yourself dear? Do
you play cards?"
"I keep busy," Leslie said. "It seems
like there aren't enough hours in the day."
She was holding the head in her fingers now, pulling
down to separate the lips, then squeezing them together. He felt
himself begin to throb, and then one of his legs was shaking. She
pinched him at the head, stopping it. He tried to remember the last
time he had been with her, and couldn't. His breathing was
suddenly harder, and a line of sweat broke across his forehead. Estes
Singletary was looking at him in a curious way.
Leslie reached across his
plate with her free hand and picked the champagne bottle out of the
bucket, filling his glass and then hers. She put the glass in his
hand and said, "To the new year."
* * *
LUCY SEAGRAVES SMILED AT the young couple across the
table as they toasted the new year. They sipped champagne, and then
she kissed him on the cheek, lingering there only a second, perhaps
long enough to whisper a few words.
Lucy Seagraves saw how much they loved each other and
regretted the gossip she had repeated about Mrs. Bonner. She was
attracted to romance, it reminded her of the way she and Harry had
been. She did not know if they had ever been in love like Carl and
Leslie Bonner — she could not remember ever seeing Harry shaking so
badly just at the touch of her lips against his cheek — but it
seemed to her things might have been like that once.
TROUT
PART SIX
Three years to the week after Rosie Sayers died in
Thomas ` Comell Clinic, the United States Supreme Court, voting six
to three, refused to hear Paris Trout's appeal for a new trial. The
appeal was researched and prepared by Trout himself; as was his prior
appeal to the State Supreme Court. It represented thirty trips to the
law library at Mercer College, six months in his office at the back
of the store, matching the language in his written brief to the
briefs he copied at the library and brought home.
He began work every morning at twenty minutes after
nine and would not quit while there was light in the sky. He ate one
meal a day — canned food and ginger ale, once in a while a piece of
cheese. A peg-legged woman named Charlotte Hock ran the store.
Charlotte Hock did the stock work and operated the cash register. She
interrupted Trout only when Negroes came by to borrow money or make
payments. She hated to see them come in. It terrified her to disturb
Mr. Trout while he was composing.