The Just And The Unjust Page 29

  Bunting laid his paper on the table and said to the bench, 'The Commonwealth rests:'

  Judge Vredenburgh looked at the clock and said, 'We have almost half an hour before noon. I do not want to waste time, so I think I will ask the defence to open. If necessary, we can delay recessing. Is the defence ready?'

  George Stacey leaned across in front of Basso and spoke to Harry. 'Yes, sir,' Harry said. 'Mr. Stacey will try not to prolong our fast beyond twelve-thirty.'

  George got to his feet, gathering up his notes. He lifted his hand to adjust his necktie; but since it had been straight before, the tug he gave it moved the knot well over to one side. He moistened his hps and marched tensely up to face the jury.

  Abner knew how George felt because he remembered feeling the same way himself. There was no reason to feel that way, for speaking to people who were ready to listen was the easiest thing in the world — you just went ahead and spoke. To tell George this truth was as useless as telling a person who did not know how to swim that all he had to do was jump in and go ahead. George was trying to remember to keep his voice up, to speak slowly, to look directly at the twelve staring faces of his principal hearers; not to depend too much on his notes, not to talk too long, not to forget that one especially good point that came to him just as he spoke to Harry —

  George said earnestly, 'Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard Mr. Bunting and his colleague present a case for the Commonwealth. I venture to assert —'

  Abner whispered to Bunting, 'Marty, I have a phone call I want to make if we're going to be late recessing. Mind if I duck out a few minutes?'

  'No. There's nothing to this. Go ahead. Oh, Ab. That Willis fellow from Warwick. F and B case Pete Van Zant has. You know about it?'

  'Yes. Arlene said they came around to my office yesterday. She told them to see you.'

  'See the plaintiff?'

  'Yes. She's a little slut.'

  'They think they can prove he isn't the father. I asked Miss Wheeler to see her and find out what she could. She called me this morning and said it was pretty bad. What do you think?'

  'I suppose we'd better drop it.'

  'Yes. I just wanted to see whether you had any other angle.'

  'Nope; except John Costigan told me Willis had been tom-catting around there for years, and it was time somebody hooked him.'

  'Well, we can't enforce morals; we have trouble enough enforcing law. I think Van Zant may be outside. He said he was coming up today. If you see him, tell him we aren't going on with it. The county'll have to support her brat.'

  Abner left the table and went down along the rail under the bench toward the far door so that he wouldn't add to George's troubles. At the last desk, Hermann Mapes, the clerk of the Orphans Courts, winked at him. Half lifting a hand in response, Abner remembered that he had said last night that he was going to get an application form for a marriage licence from Hermann to-day. He went around through the high deserted back hall and entered the Attorneys' Room. This was deserted, too. Abner dropped a nickel in the telephone. At the high school office an unfamiliar voice answered; and he said, 'Is Miss Drummond there?'

  'Yes, she is. Bonnie! It's for you.' Bonnie said, 'Hello.'

  Leaning back against the wall, Abner said, 'I am going to get an application from Hermann.'

  'Oh,' she said. 'No. Don't.'

  'I think I will. Look, why don't you come out and have lunch? 1'll stop by for you.'

  'I can't. They're having a board meeting. Why didn't you tell me last night?'

  'I didn't know until I saw Marty. I'll come over.'

  'I can't leave.'

  'You won't have to.' Abner hung up and went to the courtroom door. Opening it a crack, he heard George saying, '— what we are going to show you, ladies and gentlemen, will change this entire picture; and I have the utmost confidence that when you have heard—' Abner let the door close. The other door opened and Pete Van Zant walked in.

  Van Zant was a man of middle age with an odd, duck-legged fussy walk. He carried his gross friendly red face cocked back, his prominent light grey eyes bulging with, or as though with, a mingling of sensuality, surprise, and sardonicism. His cropped blond hair had a ripple in it 'Well, well,' he said. He snapped on the electric light switch, which someone had economically turned off when the room emptied. He was much shorter than Abner, but by putting his head far back he managed to look down his nose at him. 'How's tricks, Ab?' he said. He came up and punched Abner in the arm. 'Getting much?'

  'Anyhow,' Abner said, 'I hear this client of yours, Willis, gets plenty. Marty wanted me to tell you we'll drop it.'

  'Now, wait a minute!' Van Zant slid his big rump onto the table edge and half-sat, swinging his foot. He produced two cigars. 'Don't want one, do you?' he said. Abner shook his head, and Van Zant put the first back and stuck the second, unlighted, in his mouth. 'What do you mean, drop it,' he said, working the dry cigar up and down. 'You mean, nolle pros?'

  'Isn't that what you want?'

  'No, sir!' Van Zant said, rolling up his eyes. 'That is not what I want. Now, Ab, why don't you fellows be decent? Now, here's the situation. Hank's no criminal, for God's sake! He's a substantial and respected citizen of Warwick. That girl hasn't any idea of who the father of that child is. Hank gave her a lay, sure; but that was more than a year before the child was born. We can prove it. She names him because he's a generous guy and a good sport. But, hell, everyone in Warwick had been there — if you want to know, I have myself. She worked at a house, and if you weren't in Marty's office I'd tell you where. Now, you nolle pros, and what is it? Why, it's nothing but a damned kind of stay! No, sir! I want him vindicated!'

  'Well, it's not up to me,' Abner said. 'I think you're out of luck, Pete. How about that motion to quash I heard you were planning? You wouldn't be any better off.'

  'Now, Ab; what do you'want to be technical for? Sure, if the Commonwealth was going to bring it to trial, I might move to quash; and I could make the motion lie, too. But Marty admits there's no case. As good as admits it. Now, why can't we have it tried before a judge without a jury, and give him an acquittal? On the weight of the evidence you know he'd get it; and I think he ought to have it. Why, I'll tell you how bum your evidence is! I'm even ready to plead nolo contendere; because when the judge has heard it, he'll direct the verdict, direct an acquittal.'

  'That may be what you think. But if you put that up to Marty, I can tell you what he's going to think. If you want to know.'

  'What?'

  'What anyone with any sense would think. He'd think there must be something in this. Why would you care, unless you knew the real story was liable to come out sometime; and if it did come out, the only way your man could beat it would be pleading autrefois acquit? I don't say that's how it is. I just say that's how it looks.'

  'Why, that's the most unreasonable, unjustified, — why, I'm going to see Marty!'

  'Suit yourself. He ought to be through pretty soon.'

  They looked at each other while Van Zant produced a match slowly, struck it on the stretched seat of his pants, and held the little liquid burst of flame suspended. He began to grin then. 'You don't do so bad for a young fellow,' he said. He applied the flame to his cigar end. 'You're all right, Ab. Don't know it's to my best interest, but I hate to see a sap in the D.A.'s office. Hank's my client, and I do what I can; but between you and me, he's a son of a bitch. If he can't keep his nose clean, I'm not going to wipe if tor him.' He blew a long plume of smoke across the table. 'You going to run in the fall?'

  Disconcerted, Abner said, 'I don't know who's running. You'd have to ask Jesse.'

  'O.K., if it's a secret. I don't want to know Jesse's secrets. He's another son of a bitch. That's why, if Marty's quitting and I hear he is, I'd like to see you in there. Government of checks and balances. When you get ready to come out with it, anything I can do for your campaign, let me know. I mean that. We don't want Art Wenn.' There was a muffled, rising murmur behind the closed courtroom door, and Van Zant w
ent and opened it a crack. 'Recess to one-thirty,' he said. 'Say, those defendants are mean looking bastards! Going to burn them?'

  'If we possibly can,' Abner said. He took his hat and raincoat. 'So long, Pete. I've got to run.'

  6

  Empty and gleaming in the rain, a line of automobiles stretched along the curve of the greystone gravel drive up to the main door of the high school building. Abner, who had not bothered to get his own car, walked past them. In the Board Room, to the right of the principal's office, the lights were bright against the white ceiling. Abner went up the steps and came under the arch of the wide doorway. Affixed below the label was a stone shield bearing a seal on which was represented a lampadedromy.

  Nine people out of ten wouldn't know the meaning of that word; but anyone who went to Childerstown High School could tell you at once that it meant a race with a torch held in ancient Greece. On the seal were the runners running, and the torch being handed over (for it appeared to be a kind of relay race); and a line of Scripture: 'So run that ye may obtain the prize.' Abner could remember thinking resentfully that that was just what a teacher would say. The prize could be obtained only by one person, so the others were, when you got right down to it, bound to be running for nothing; and so were being what was then called gypped by their designing elders. It had always seemed to Abner a lot like (another phrase of those days) scrambling a nickel; for five cents, the thrower of the coin got more action than he had right to expect. In Abner's hand the big worn, slightly loose knob turned and he came into the hall.

  A telephone was ringing in the office; and, stepping in, Abner was in time to meet Bonnie who rushed out the opposite door, which led to the principal's room. She gave Abner a distracted glance, lifted the telephone from the desk and stood resting one knee on the seat of the chair while she answered. Abner closed the hall door behind him and dropped his wet hat on the bench along the wall under a big framed print that displayed the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was a bench he could remember occupying once or twice in considerable anxiety, waiting to see the principal, a Mr. Metzger, now many years gone.' The desk beside which Bonnie stood with the telephone belonged in those days to a Miss O'Brien. She was probably little older than Bonnie; but Abner used to think of her scornfully as an old maid. When he looked back on it, most details about school seemed to Abner depressing or distasteful — like that characteristic smell, neither very strong nor very unpleasant, but definite; whose source was the simple circumstance that most of the children could not or did not take as many baths as they needed.

  Frowning, Bonnie said to the lifted telephone, 'No, I can't. No. Never mind about me.' She wore a plain white blouse and a short flaring black shirt. She looked pale and tense; and Abner, feeling an inarticulate concern for her, came across the room and sat on the edge of the desk. He took her free hand between his.

  Turning her mouth from the telephone, Bonnie murmured, 'Don't sit there. You're all wet.' She tried to draw her hand away, and then let him hold it. She moved her head wearily and closed her eyes. 'Oh, Mother, no!' she said. 'I can't tell you now. I don't know. I have to go back. I'll call you when I can.' She hung up.

  Through the door, left open a little, Abner could look across Mr. Rawle's office and through a second half-open door into the lighted Board Room. Leaning forward, he could see Mrs. Ballinger, her stout bosom hung with a fussy cascade of black ruffles, sitting as chairman at the head of the oval table. Her face was sunk in lines of vexation and discouragement. She slumped dejectedly, opening and closing on the table her hand, whose fingers bore a number of old-fashioned diamond rings. From the general movement in there, it seemed plain that the meeting was over; and it could not have ended to Mrs. Ballinger's satisfaction. The view of her was cut off by Alfred Hobbs whose grey hair was disordered above his stern face. He went, balanced like a stork on one leg, and Abner could see that he was angrily pulling on one of a pair of rubbers.

  Still holding Bonnie's hand, Abner said, 'It's over, isn't it? What happened?'

  'Yes,' said Bonnie. She took the hand away. 'I can't leave, though. I'll have to help Mr. Rawle with a statement he's preparing. I don't really know what's going to happen. Mr. Hobbs tried to force a resolution censuring him.'

  'Don't worry about it,' Abner said.

  'How can I help worrying about it?' she said impatiently, 'I'll lose my job. I haven't any tenure.' She bit her lip. 'I'm just as bad as the rest of them. All I worry about is what's going to happen to me.'

  'We fixed up what was going to happen to you last night,' Abner said. 'I'm sorry about Mr. Rawle; but if you want to know, I hope you will lose your job. That would be fine. We won't have to argue any more. Now, I'm going to get an application when I get back to the courthouse. You can just tell your mother you're getting married.'

  'And I can just tell you I'm not!' Bonnie said. She jerked her chin up bitterly. 'Ab, haven't you any sense? I told you not to come over here now. You just have a genius for picking a time when —'

  'You don't have to do anything now,' Abner said. 'I'll bring the application form over to-night; and all you have to do is fill in your part of it. By the new law, you also have to go down to Doc Mosher for a serologic test for syphilis, because we have to file the reports with the application. If I don't get it started, we'll still be fooling around —'

  'Ab,' she said, 'I won't have you treating me this way! You seem to think I haven't anything to say about it —'

  'You do nothing but say,' Abner said. He had meant to speak placatingly; but what she said, sinking in, began to sting; and in an eruption of anger he could not help pointing out to himself that, as a matter of fact, it was she who seemed to think that he hadn't anything to say about it. She seemed to think she was the only one with any worries. She seemed to think he had no right to open his mouth until, at her good pleasure, she told him he might.

  Abner opened his mouth; but Bonnie had already turned to walk away with a movement for which the hostile word was flouncing. She could not have been looking where she was going, for at the door she nearly collided with Jesse Gearhart who had been coming out through Mr. Rawle's office. 'Oh, beg pardon, Bonnie,' he said.

  She said with difficulty, 'I'm sorry.' She stepped aside and went by him; and Jesse came slowly and heavily into the room. 'Here's your stuff, Ab,' he said, holding the folder out. 'Much obliged.'

  'That's all right,' Abner said, swallowing.

  It was not the moment Abner would have chosen for a talk with Jesse; but because he did not know what if anything Jesse had heard, he felt like a fool; and in order not to appear like one, it seemed necessary to say something more. He said, 'I didn't mean to make a fuss about it this morning, Jesse. It wasn't an ordinary case; and it seemed better to try to keep it as quiet as we could —' Abner found himself remembering what his father said last night about people having rows; and he had just had a row with Bonnie; but you couldn't say that he brought it on by being a little remote, or apathetic, or — he searched for the last word, the one he liked least — phlegmatic! He didn't like it any better now. It was a word that seemed to him somewhat fancy, not a word he would be apt to use himself; but if he had to use it, he would probably apply it to someone like Jesse — the flat lifeless hair, the grey lumpish face, the pale fishy eyes.

  Jesse, standing still, by a motion of the head acknowledged the apology, or at least, the excuse, taking his due; but at the same time and by the same motion, he thanked Abner for offering it; and then, still in the same motion, he disembarrassed them both of the whole matter, implying that they need think no more about it. Since none of this could be expressed in words, Abner was astonished both by the feat, whatever it was, of unmistakably conveying it; and by the delicacy of perception that told Jesse when to hold his tongue.

  Abner saw with confusion that he knew nothing at all about Jesse. He knew the face that he had just thought of as phlegmatic; and he knew a half a dozen stories or parts of stories — or even, mere epithets: Van Zant sayin
g in passing, but positively, 'He's another son of a bitch.' They were all more or less defamatory, the relations of Jesse's enemies: but out of them Abner manufactured his idea. He had not even troubled to see whether the idea squared with the evidence of his senses, whether his picture of Jesse corresponded with what he could see. The picture was that of the politician of popular legend, tough, cynical, and corrupt; yet if Abner asked himself when he had noted those qualities in Jesse, he could not answer. He had certainly never seen Jesse in that well-known room, little and smoke-filled, trafficking in offices, dividing booty, making deals with similar scoundrels at the cost of the just and the upright. Indeed, when you considered this familiar figure, a difficulty presented itself. How did such a man, who must by definition be disliked on sight and distrusted by everyone, win himself a position of power? Jesse said, 'Ab, what do you think about this?'

  'I think it's too bad it happened,' Abner said. Granted that the wicked man in the little smoke-filled room — like Lucius' 'gangsters'; perhaps, like a good many other every-day fantasies to which nothing had yet happened to attract Abner's critical attention — was at variance with plain facts, Abner still found it difficult to be easy with Jesse. At Jesse's question he was filled with uncontrollable suspicions; something baulked in him again at the note of consultation, which must be meant for flattery, and must mean that Jesse wanted something. Abner realized that his tone bristled. To cover it up, he said, 'What's the board think?'

  'I don't know that we're really thinking as a board yet,' Jesse said. 'We're thinking as individuals; so, of course, we don't agree. Going home to lunch?'