Authors: Brian Evenson
Father of Lies (13 page)
A day later I am in Feshtig's office again. Usually there are more preliminaries, but today he sits across from me with his pencil poised. “Where would you like to begin?”
The two mothers are on my mind. I have been trying all night and all day to construct a method for dealing with them, for making certain they will not take the matter of their sons' abuse to the press. It would be foolish to say too much about the mothers to him, in case they do go to the press. I do the next best thing, the better thing: I manufacture a dream based on the truth.
I try to look nervous, reluctant. “With a dream,” I say. “A disturbing one.”
“Go ahead.”
I begin to tell him about what I did to the boys in my office several months ago, pretending it was a dream. I change a few details, tinker with the boys' ages a little, but I keep the essential details the same.
As I tell it I find myself enjoying it again. Talking about it revivifies it. I have to keep reminding myself to watch my reactions, to try to keep my expressions and tone of voice those of shock and horror. It isn't easy.
Feshtig watches me carefully, without jotting anything on his pad for once. He is careful with his reactions as well, reserved even when I am recounting the best parts. But twice the corners of his eyes give him away. He can feel the power of what I have done, even though he will not believe I have done it. For him, it is still only a dream. This makes me feel even better.
I leave his office whistling under my breath, my burden lightened, my pleasure bursting. I am becoming a believer in the usefulness of therapy, but not in the way Feshtig would like. If I could, God knows, I would tell it all over again.
I sit in the back of the courtroom, my wife beside me, where I am less likely to be noticed.
“You are fidgety today,” she says.
I am nervous, I admit.
The judge comes in. We rise, are told to be seated.
“There's the family,” whispers my wife. “Right behind the defense.”
“Where else would they be?”
“I was just saying.”
“You didn't need to.”
“Don't snap,” she says. “Don't act like a child. What's the matter with you?”
“I shouldn't testify against the boy. It doesn't feel right.”
“Pray about it,” she says. “Just say a little prayer to beg God to help you.”
Instead I look up at the judge, who is speaking. I look at the defense bench. The girl's brother is there, sullen, wearing a jacket and tie. The same ones he wears to church: he is the sort of boy who probably owns only one tie. His parents are behind, just across the other side of the gate.
“They are going to hate me,” I say. “The family, I mean.”
“You can't worry about what they'll think,” she says. “You've got an obligation to the truth.”
The judge is speaking and keeps speaking, I'm not sure how long. He pauses for a moment, starts off again. The prosecution stands up, delivers a speech, which I don't manage to follow, and then he sits down. The defense stands, argues to postpone the arraignment until bodily fluids tests arrive the following day.
“We'll hear the testimony,” says the judge. “We will consider the test results when they arrive.”
I see from the front of the court someone standing, waving.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“What?” my wife asks.
“That fellow waving.”
She straightens herself in her chair, tugs down the hem of her skirt. She lifts herself slightly from the chair, peers past the heads in front of us.
“Nobody's waving,” she says. “What's wrong with you?”
I keep watch but the gesture is not repeated, the man seeming to have sat down. The prosecution stands and says something about the brutality of a man who would rape and kill his own sister. The judge stares down, benevolent but hard, like God. It makes my breath go just watching him.
I stand and stumble out into the hall. I lean against the wall, outside the courtroom, taking deep breaths.
“What's the matter?” someone is asking. “Can I help you?”
My wife is beside me, touching my back. “Honey?” she asks. “What's wrong?”
She will not stand back, stays staring into my face.
“Some fresh air,” I say. “Some air is all.”
There is a sort of murmuring and my wife backs away, her face replaced by a man's legs.
“I'm a doctor,” the legs say. “Can I help?”
“Just let me catch my breath.”
The doctor tries to lift my head, but I will not let him lift it. He tries to draw me over to a bench, but I will not move.
“All the rest of you should go back in,” he says. “You too, Mrs. Fochs. He needs some time alone to calm down.”
I hear them leaving, my wife saying something comforting to me in parting.
“Take a deep breath,” the doctor says.
“Leave me alone,” I say.
“I can't do that,” the doctor says.
He puts his hand on my face and jams two fingers up my nose, drags them up. It hurts. My head comes up with them.
“Jesus,” I say.
“Is that any way to address a doctor?” he asks.
I try to get his fingers free and he hits me in the throat so I can't breathe. He sweeps his other arm around and over my neck, pulls me by the neck against his body, in a headlock, the fingers of his other hand still crammed up my nose.
“I want you to come with me,” he says. “I don't want to have to break your neck.”
He pulls me along and I go, shuffling my feet to keep up with him.
“Don't drag your feet,” he says. “Pretend you can take human steps.”
I try to step as he suggests and slip. He ends up dragging me by the neck into another room. Beyond his arm I can see tile on the floor and on some walls too.
He pulls me into a stall, forces me down so I'm looking into the toilet. Slowly he takes the fingers from my nose. They are streaked with blood and mucous. He flicks them, spattering the seat.
“I will release your neck in a moment so as to latch the stall door,” he says. “Don't move.”
I watch the blood drip from my nose, splash the water, diffuse.
“Okay,” I say.
He lets go. I run my forearm under my nose, leaving a streak of blood near the wrist. I hear him latch the door.
“Sit down,” he says.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
I squat on the toilet. He takes some toilet paper off the roll, wads it, hands it to me.
“Your nose is bleeding,” he says. “It's your own fault, of course. You should have come when I asked.”
I hold the tissue up against my nose. He leans back against the door. “Well,” he says. “Feeling better?”
“No.”
“You are going to go through with this?”
“Through with what?”
“You know what,” he says.
I look at the toilet paper in my hand, the blood on it, and press it back against my nostrils.
“I am doing the right thing.”
He shakes his head. “You and I know the boy isn't guilty,” he says.
“I don't know anything like that,” I say.
“You killed the girl,” he says. “There is no way around that fact. Are you going to let that boy be blamed for what you did? Who do you think you are, some kind of reverse Jesus, flitting about dispensing sin?”
“Who are you, talking like this?” I ask.
“I am a doctor.”
“You're no doctor,” I say.
“God or the Devil? You've got about three seconds. Choose.”
I hear the door to the bathroom squeak open. “Fochs?” a voice asks. “You in there?”
The doctor moves into the front corner of the stall, puts his finger to his lips.
“Fochs?” the voice asks.
“Yes,” I say. “I'm here.”
The doctor grimaces, rolls his eyes.
A knocking comes on the stall, black leather boots show under the door. “Fochs?” the voice asks.
“Just a minute,” I say. “I'm coming out.”
I see fingers fold over the top of the stall door, above the doctor's head. The whole stall shakes and creaks, the boots lift off the ground. A bald, bloody head rises above the stall door, eyes just barely cresting over. The doctor shrivels into his corner.
“What are you doing?” Bloody-Head says to me. “Your pants aren't even off.”
“I'm coming,” I say.
I stand up, reach for the door handle tentatively, my eyes on the doctor. He watches me but does not move. I open the door against him, as far as it will go, until it is forcing him into the wall, then squeeze my way out.
“You're all right?” asks Bloody-Head.
“I'm glad to see you,” I say.
“Of course you are,” he says. “No second thoughts?”
“None.”
He pats my shoulder twice. “Good boy,” he says.
He goes back into the court, me following. He opens the door and the whole court peers up at us, at me. Pushing me in next to my wife, he keeps walking down the aisle.
“Sir,” the judge says, looking to me, “we are conducting a hearing here.”
I nod my head, smile, sit down. A few people stay for a time looking back over their shoulders at me, then slowly turn to face front.
“You should enter with more dignity,” my wife says.
“What did I do?”
She just shakes her head.
The bloody-headed man has kept walking and now stands before the witness box. Nobody is looking at him. He takes the fat, bald witness currently in the box by the lapels, drags him out of the chair and over the edge of the box, dropping him onto the floor of
the court. The fat man says nothing, attempts to look at the judge who is speaking to him, then at the prosecution lawyer.
The bloody-headed man heaves the fat man onto his shoulder, staggering under his weight.
“Could you see who the boy was in your yard?” asks the prosecution.
The fat man opens his mouth like a fish, closes it. Bloody-Head staggers with him to the side of the room, grunting. The fat man begins to lift his head and his arm. He points at the boy, the veins standing out over all his face. The bloody-headed man throws him out the open window, closes the window tightly behind him.
He dusts his hands off, takes his place in the witness box.
“Was that bastard,” Bloody-Head says, assuming a contrived rural accent. “That one over right there.”
“Which one?” asks the prosecution.
“The one with the shit-colored hair.”
People in the court laugh. The bloody-headed man smiles, the judge smiles as well.
“Could you point the boy out again?”
I wait for the defense to object, but they do not.
The bloody-headed man lifts his finger, points to the girl's brother.
“What was he doing?” the prosecution asks.
“He was lewd, like I never seen it before.”
“Could you tell the court how he was lewd?”
The bloody-headed man looks around. “Got some ladies present,” he says.
“It doesn't matter,” says the prosecution. “Tell us.”
Bloody-Head rises up in the box. He pantomimes for the court what he says the boy did to himself. The court laughs.
“Why are they laughing?” I whisper.
“Oh, he's a harmless old lout,” my wife says.
“He was just whipping it around,” Bloody-Head says. “And on my property too. Private property. By God, I wanted to sell the land after what he spilled there.”
There is a noise behind me. I turn and see the doctor there, holding the door open slightly, his head back between his shoulders as if he is afraid of being struck.
“You're a sick man,” he says, stretching his hand toward me. “Come with me.”
“Don't go with him!” shouts Bloody-Head. “He's the Devil!”
“Don't listen to him,” says the doctor. “I'm not the Devil. He's the Devil.”
“Judge, I'm done with my testimony,” says the bloody-headed man in his usual voice. “Can I step down?”
“Can't you see what you are doing here is wrong?” asks the doctor.
“God wants me to do it,” I say.
“Defense?” queries the judge.
“You tell him, Fochs!” yells Bloody-Head.
The defense lawyer nods. “You may step down,” says the judge.
“You have sold your soul, Fochs,” says the doctor.
Bloody-Head rushes down the aisle and slams into the door, pushing the doctor out. He returns brushing his hands. Climbing onto the judge's desk, he leans down to fish a key from the judge's pocket, then returns to the door.
“Want me to lock him out?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, turning the key. “Leave it to me.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“I am the one who loves you,” he says.
“And God,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “Why not? Go ahead and testify.”
I realize the judge is staring at me. I stand slowly, make my way to the front of the court, climb into the witness box.
“It's you,” the judge says. “The disturbance.”
“Yes,” I say. “I'm sorry.”
“I don't believe you took the oath,” he says.
“The oath?”
“You need to take the oath before you step into the box,” says the judge.
“Oh,” I say. “Of course.”
I stand up and step down, move to one side.
“Raise your hand,” says Bloody-Head, from behind the Bible. I raise it.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Bloody-Head winks at me. “Say yes,” he says. “Don't try to explain.”
“I do,” I say.
“You're not getting married, Fochs,” says Bloody-Head. “Yes will do.”
“Take your place,” says the judge.
Bloody-Head goes to the prosecution lawyer, whispers into his ear. The man listens, nods. He stands, crawls underneath the table. Bloody-Head steps forward.
“I have just a few questions,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
“You were acquainted with the girl who was killed?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“How did you know her?”
“I was her spiritual leader.”
“In what sense?”
“I was the minister of the congregation she attended. The Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb. She consulted me about moral difficulties she was having.”
“What sorts of moral difficulties?”
“She had serious moral challenges facing her.”
Bloody-Head walks around a little.
“Do you know the defendant?”
I say that I do.
“How do you know him?”
“He is in the congregation as well. The deceased's sister.”
“Brother, you mean.”
“Brother. Of course.”
“Did the brother ever say anything to you about the sister?”
“I never met with the sister.”
“The brother, you mean.”
“Yes, of course. I never met with the brother.”
Bloody-Head comes close to the box, leans toward me.
“Slow down. Think about what you are saying,” he says. “God knows you want to do the right thing. Now do it.”
I nod. I take a deep breath. He steps back.
Through the side window I see the doctor waving his hands back and forth.
“Did you ever meet with the sister, Mr. Fochs?”
“The brother, you mean,” I say.
“No, godammit,” he says. “I mean what I say.”
“The sister,” I say. “Yes, I have met with the sister,” I say.
“How many times?” he asks.