Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [17]
Luce sat with her feet dangling over the porch edge, looking at the blue lake and the green mountains, keeping time and enforcing the exchanges. Trying to hide how delighted she was to find that the children understood and actually complied with her totally arbitrary rules, an important skill for living in the world with other people. Unless you retreated to your own private wilderness. Except there was no wilderness.
Arbitrarily, Luce decided that one more exchange would finish making the point, and afterward, she gave the children the choice of what to do with the hat. They carried it to the cook stove and used a piece of kindling to stuff it down an eye onto the bed of coals. The straw flamed up yellow through the open hole for a few seconds and then was gone for good.
CHAPTER 4
BUD’S LAWYER WAS A SMART and ruthless old white-haired bastard. Drove a new black Coupe de Ville, and had gotten drunk with every governor back into the late twenties, regardless of political party. He’d taken Bud’s case only because he figured one way or the other, he’d end up with Lily’s house to sell. Said to Bud, right at the outset, Not a great deal of money in a little two-bedroom bungalow, but sadly the modern world has become largely a matter of volume.
The State’s man was so fresh out of law school that he still went back to campus for parties thrown by friends who had not yet graduated. He seemed stunned to find himself in court. During the course of a morning, Bud’s lawyer convinced the jury of men that Lily had been little better than a whore. All in all, they inferred, she probably deserved killing, at least within the shadow of a doubt the old lawyer had laid out as a confusing yet binding covenant between God and man regarding the administration of justice on earth. Case in point, Lily had conceived not one but two children by another man. Also, hypothetical boyfriends were alluded to vividly and with only a hesitant objection from the boy lawyer, who seemed crushed when the judge ruled against him. When it came to the murder weapon, the old lawyer asked a simple, compelling question: If you live in a house, aren’t your fingerprints on everything, including the knives? Crazy dope-addict killers wearing gloves could never be ruled out. And, further, the only possible eyewitnesses, when questioned by police detectives, had not testified to his client’s guilt in any way.
The old lawyer failed to mention that the witnesses were children who either could not or would not utter a single word or even acknowledge they had been asked a question. When the State’s man went into those inconvenient facts, the old lawyer pulled out a doctor’s report labeling the children as feebleminded. After that, the State’s man sat quiet, like he knew he was taking a beating and just wanted it to be over.
Three days later, Bud walked out the courthouse doors. Hardly two o’clock, humid and hot and the sky dull white, still wearing his grey trial suit the lawyer had bought for him, and carrying a paper poke with his clothes and effects from when he was arrested. Outside, an elder woman sat on a bench feeding peanuts to pigeons, and when a group of them took to the air their wing beats were like muffled applause.
Many high feelings rushed through Bud. Mainly he felt giddy disbelief over his impossible good fortune at the hands of the justice system. What a grand idea democracy is, where every fool who can’t get out of jury duty gets to have his opinion counted. Especially the two fools who held out and voted not guilty. And the judge didn’t even ask for a bond while the prosecution decided when and if to retry. He just said, Don’t leave the state, son. Also the splendid matter of the little retard bastards keeping their jaws shut. Though, of course, the lawyer had to piss on Bud’s parade by reminding him that even if they don’t retry soon, there’s no limitation on murder charges. Ninety years old, they can