The Blackstone Commentaries (22 page)

All these thoughts and memories notwithstanding, he'd begun to feel quieter somehow, more competent, less pulled by all the strands of time and change, the North he'd left behind, Blackstone County. He had work to do, clients, a dog, and from time to time he sensed his own beginning.

Only here was Rachel, reality on his front doorstep. “I wish I didn't cry,” she said through the screen. “It's been that way ever since David died. That's when it's worst for me. It's when I know he'll never come back.”

“You usually try to kill men, too?” It slipped out.

“No. You were special.” She couldn't repress a smile, if not the heart-wrenching smile of the courthouse lawn. But he sensed truth in what she said. The morning sun lay golden and rich on his small front yard with its brown grass and bare patches, and on some children playing baseball in an empty lot across the street. It was a neighborhood of small homes and bungalows in varying degrees of disrepair, and lots of trees. The rent was cheap, and he could walk to work.

But the sun on Rachel was not rich. She was wearing jeans and a tank top, and her skin looked washed out, uglier than pale against her chopped hair, that hair as dull as her eyes, which seemed charred by whatever fire was consuming her. “You didn't call me,” she said after a long, uncomfortable silence.

“I had no idea I was supposed to,” he replied tersely, and saw her flinch. He began to wonder not only what the hell he'd gotten himself into, but whether he'd ever get out. Outlaws, fear of dying, bad liquor and married women seemed tame. Then he found he just couldn't look at her anymore. He reached down and scratched Phineas between the ears. “I've got to be somewhere in a few minutes,” he lied, but she didn't move. Once again, he was seized by dread of the craziness of that strange, dark night on the mountain, her reaching out and pulling him under for good.

“You think I'm crazy, don't you?” she said. He blinked. “There. Now
I've said it for you.” As she spoke, he saw the charred, dull eyes come alive, the fire in them rekindle with all that mountain Cady pride and anger. Just like the night at Mrs. Trotter's party. “Well, I'm not crazy, Elmore!” she said, the familiarity in the sudden use of his name startling to him, and not unpleasant—like they were friends, and had been a long time. Then she could say no more, not that she didn't want to or didn't have plenty more to say, he guessed.

It was then he realized that it wasn't only pride or raw self-respect he saw in her, but courage. It was as though until that moment he'd never understood what real courage was.
My God
, he thought,
how much effort it must have taken just to walk up to this house!
“I believe you,” he said. “You'll forgive me if I'm slow sometimes.” As he spoke, a cauldron of emotions about his father and mother and his whole damn half-assed life boiled over. For once, he just let them come—he didn't want to argue with those emotions anymore. Slowly he pushed open the screen door, and Phineas squeezed out to press his nose between her knees.

“Don't you dare pity me,” she said to Elmore, looking up from petting the dog and cocking her shoulder in such a way as to possibly land him an uppercut.

“Mrs. McPherson, that would be the last damn thing on earth I could do,” he said with a force of truth and a desire to convince he'd never felt in his life. It was a good feeling; he'd have to remember it. “Maybe you'd like to go for a walk. You know, neutral territory?”

“That might do,” she said.

So now here he was, unable to concentrate on the two cases he had to plead the first of the week. But his income, or lack thereof—he was bringing in barely enough to keep himself above water, despite attracting more clients—suddenly seemed immaterial. A few weeks earlier, he'd debated calling Claire, his mother, and asking for a loan. She'd have sent it, but at what price? Anyhow, he wouldn't dream of it now. Beyond the three huge windows of his office, the evening sun had caught the courthouse cupola on fire. Sounds of traffic, women's heels snapping along the sidewalk, voices without the harsh accents of the North drifted up the four stories into his room, muted, peacefully alive sounds. Phineas stirred on the sofa,
sighed and relapsed into sleep. And he hadn't wanted the dog—imagine!

His mind roamed back to earlier that afternoon. He'd been lying on the floor of his living room and laughing—just laughing. Rachel, straddling his chest, her legs pressed in on either side, bent over and gently pushed his hair off his brow, her eyes slowly moving close to his, as though she were looking into his soul. Her smile, suddenly serious, devoured him. He had let his finger slide along her finely sculpted, slightly protruding upper lip as he had once only dreamed. Then, reaching up with both hands, he closed his eyes and ran his fingers down the sides of her face. “I've wanted to do this so badly.”

“Shh!” She placed a finger on his mouth.

“No,” he said, feeling a surge of emotion such as he'd never imagined. “David's part of you and that smile, and I want you to know that's just fine with me.” Against his will, his eyes filled with tears. Embarrassed, he tried to look away and felt her lips brush his forehead.

He slipped his hands under her dress to clasp her hips, a gesture accompanied by a strange, oddly new sense of freedom. It was as though clothing, what people presented themselves in, had ceased to be anything more than a convention to satisfy the mores of some distant world, for he'd discovered that even without clothes, he couldn't see enough of her. He needed to see through her skin into the workings of that smile. Even then, it would never be enough. “My God,” he had exclaimed, startled when he found nothing at all underneath but skin, “do you dress this way for school, teacher?”

Well, he couldn't see her anymore that day, and the fire on the cupola was dying. Still, he wanted to remember and savor and dream. His desk chair creaked as he shifted his shoes on the blotter.

The door smashed open. Martin Pemberton thundered in, tie yanked down, shirt unbuttoned three buttons, hair askew. Elmore's feet hit the floor. “They're trying to fuck me for fair, Willis,” he snarled. The doctor flung himself on the unoccupied portion of the old leather sofa. “And don't look so damn offended!” he snarled at Phineas.

The dog slid off the sofa and went to sit beside Elmore, where he eyed the doctor warily. Pemberton was even more distressed than usual. How many times in the past had Pemberton barged in, Elmore wondered, just to drag him out to some card game or to introduce him to still another
unhappy woman trying to party her misery away? “I'll bite. Who's trying to fuck you for fair?” he said with a last, regretful glance out the window where the sun had dropped behind his building, leaving the cupola and the oak trees in blue shadow.

“Nice of you to let me in!” Pemberton let that sit a moment. “And you know damn good and well, Willis. It's all over the papers and radio!”

Oh, Elmore certainly did, and even felt a certain guilty satisfaction. He couldn't escape a sense of calculation in all Pemberton's dealings, and it didn't breed sympathy.

“You've got to patch old Doc up,” Pemberton went on in an easier manner. “I took a serious hit yesterday. Damn near sunk me. I know where there's a card game—place called Rance's Bottom.”

“I'm sure Dugan would like a little more ammunition.”

“I don't know what the hell's gotten into
that
sonuvabitch! I
made
him.”

“Pemberton, you think you might give it a rest? How about dinner instead?”

“Don't you crap out on me, too, boy! I need some two-hundred-proof testosterone to assuage my soul.” He grinned a savage grin.

“Speak for yourself. I have two cases to prepare.”

“And the lord high sheriff's niece to comfort.” Pemberton's focus became catlike as he watched Elmore's sudden dismay. “Come now, Elmore, you
know
there's no privacy in this town.” He gave a little dismissive wave. “Anyhow, your papa loved work, but he loved whiskey and cards, too, and managed to do it all, and his patients loved him always.”

“He used to go honky-tonking? That right?”

“He got around,” Pemberton said vaguely. “Everybody knew it.”

Elmore thought of Dugan, of Harlan Monroe, then even of Frank Cady, Rachel's father, people he was certain had been his father's friends. Putting his hands behind his head, he studied the man in the shadows with something approaching detachment:
You're a damn liar
.

“Well, you just going to sit there and think about it all night?” Irritably, Pemberton rose to his feet.

Elmore turned off the desk lamp.

XXII

Drusilla

Fixing supper, Drusilla heard on the radio that Pemberton had been bound over to superior court and for a moment felt such a sudden, deep relief she was startled. Could it really be such good news? Until then, she hadn't known how much of her worries she'd kept hidden from herself. But she began to wonder how Charlie felt, because nothing about the Carver case was proving simple. Then she became apprehensive. When he came through the door, she knew why: he looked embattled and weary, like he knew he would never know rest again.

“How was
your
day?” he asked before she could speak a word, by his look all but begging her not to ask him in turn, to cheer him instead. Charlie, never a fool about events, saw them and usually himself in them with amazing clearness. Some said it was his saving grace, that and a sense of humor, though many never saw the humor. If he didn't act jubilant or even pleased that night, she knew he had his reasons.

Charlie was a man who put himself in front of loaded guns, she reminded herself, but not even that stress compared to what she was seeing now. This was new; this Carver trouble had gone to his soul. His going to Pinetown and talking to that black who ran the gambling place had cinched it somehow. It had always bothered him trying to talk to those people, the coloreds, but up to then he'd still had his doubts about the case. It was like a cancer, this Carver thing. It was ugly, and if you touched it, you began to feel ugly, too, and do ugly things. Or stupid things.

For the first time in their years together, brooding and bad-tempered talk had started coming out of him, drenched with self-contempt for even wanting to risk something he might not be able to succeed at, like it was an illusion, like everything was an illusion. But he didn't say that, because she saw he still wanted to believe. Such talk as occurred between them about the Carver case, and there seemed to be less and less, would go on and on, round and round fruitlessly, sometimes until the small hours of the morning, when the demon at last grew quiet and Charlie could finally sleep. “I might have made a bad bargain,” he had said a couple of mornings before, and she hadn't know whether he meant the Carver business or becoming sheriff. It appeared that he could see no way clear to anything anymore, no solutions. That demon wouldn't be vanquished. Each time he wrestled it, it left both him and Dru a little more exhausted.

And what could she say to him? That it was his battle, and she loved him for it. But what else? He had to believe in himself like he did when she first met him, had to believe in his vision of the law and fairness. She might remind him, but she couldn't give it to him. It was always his to lose.

During this time, she felt a terrible question brewing, long before he asked it. When it finally came, he asked it only once. He was smart enough to know not to go where he believed there might be even a remote possibility of the wrong answer, the one he dreaded. “Why do you stay with me?”

She heard the real question behind it:
How can you love me?

He asked it about the time that Skinner, the one who buried the boy at the fair, began to get under his skin. She'd known Skinners all her life, and they all were miserable and enjoyed making others feel that way. Usually that didn't bother Charlie. It was what he expected of some people, even if
it disappointed him and ran counter to what he wanted to believe. So that question was an indication.

But he still hadn't reached bottom—
they
hadn't reached bottom. Yet with that question, he'd ventured into a place they'd never gone before, never had cause to wonder at, and even if he could see it had no bottom and didn't want to venture there again, that it was something of his own he was wrestling, it showed her how deep it had already gone. She realized then that he was in battle not just with everything he believed, but with everything he'd ever known.

So that night after Pemberton was bound over, despite her curiosity about the preliminary hearing and her instinct to talk the whole mess out, she backed away. Then all at once, she found herself reaching for his face, wanting him to know she was there, that she cared for him beyond all words. But in the next instant, she knew she was reaching for herself, that like someone blind, she was trying to determine if the man she thought she'd married was there. She always had faith that she could get beyond that practiced calm of his, that soft-spokenness that was his ordinary way with people, his defense as well as his control. Until then, she had never felt lost in her marriage, that piercing loneliness that suddenly comes from realizing all you can never know about the other person in your life, and wondering what's next because of the not knowing. She yanked her hand back like she'd burned it. Suddenly in tears, she remained mute. Eyes on his food, he took no notice.