Crooked (29 page)

49

THE LAST CHAPTER

The self-inflicted paint ball wound was a mild abrasion, according to Clara's doctor, and the episode as a whole had resulted in mild shock and dehydration.

“Which means?” Clara asked.

The doctor was an older woman. She smiled and peered down at Clara over her glasses. “It means that you're fine, but we're going to keep you overnight for observation.” She nodded at the clear hanging bottle that dripped into a tube that led to her wrist. “We've got you on fluids. So all you have to do is sit back and rest.” The doctor leaned forward. “Sleep is good,” she said, smiling, and touched Clara's eyelids closed.

Clara left them closed. It felt nice, lying in this warm bed, being taken care of by this nice doctor and the nice nurses. It felt so nice she wondered if they'd put something in the fluids to make her feel this way.

“Hi, Polkadot.”

Clara slowly opened her eyes. It was her father, turning through the door in a button-down shirt with cuff links and loosened tie, breathing heavily, as if he'd been running. He actually looked kind of dashing, Clara thought, if you applied a standard from, say, 1955. “Hi, Dad,” she said in a slow voice.

He was holding her hands now and kissing her forehead. When he drew back, his eyes looked wet, and all of a sudden Clara was crying, a full, complete, down-to-the-last-drop cry.

“You okay?” he said after a while.

“Yeah,” Clara said, then realized with a start that she was almost asleep again. “I think they gave me a sedative or something,” she said.

Her father nodded, and her eyes drooped closed again. She forced them back open. “How'd you get here so fast?”

Her father grinned. “Begged and pleaded with the airline.”

Clara smiled and nodded. In a slow, slurred voice, she said, “Pretty good.”

They sat for a minute, and then her father said, “I talked to Detective O'Hearn. He had me read your statement.” Her father let his eyes meet Clara's, as if to let this sink in. “I read it all twice, and then I said that what you'd been through tonight was more than any little girl ever ought to go through. I know I shouldn't have said
little girl,
but it's what I think of you as. Then Detective O'Hearn said, ‘That daughter of yours is one tough little monkey.'” Her father smiled and clasped Clara's hand. “I think it was about the highest compliment he knows how to pay.”

Clara smiled weakly. She let her eyes fall closed, then with difficulty opened them again. She'd just remembered something important. “How's Ham?” she said.

Ham made the six o'clock news. Besides the crime element, it had novelty appeal. A Minicam wound through all the hospital entrances and doors, and there, amidst all the human beings, was St. Stephen's first-ever canine patient. They'd given him a muscle relaxant, the doctor in attendance said, then pumped his stomach and put him on IV fluids. “The patient,” he said, “is doing beautifully.” And here, on television screens all over the city and state, passed the image of Ham, his foreleg bandaged from the intravenous intrusion, but otherwise looking dazed and happy.

The Tripp brothers weren't together when they were arrested. Charles was apprehended around three A.M. in a 7-Eleven within a few blocks of the Tripp brothers' apartment. He was at the register, counting out money for the purchase of pork rinds and chocolate milk while a girl named Brandy Anderson waited for him in the front seat of the seduck. The Jemison police found Eddie at his mother's house. His mother wasn't at home, and Eddie didn't have a key, so he'd broken a window and climbed through. When the police arrived, they could see him through the living room window, asleep on an old sofa.

Back at the police substation, both Charles and Eddie pretended confusion about the questions Detective O'Hearn put to them and their attorney. Charles finally threw up his hands. “I find these questions baffling,” he said in his calm, sweet voice. “I find our being here in this room baffling.”

The Tripp brothers' attorney nodded in agreement. “It
is
a little baffling, isn't it, Mr. O'Hearn?”

“Look,” the detective said amiably, “I've got so many charges here I can hardly hang on to them all. Animal poisoning. Breaking and entering.” He leaned back in his swivel chair and folded his hands on his ample stomach. “This is not to mention criminal assault.”

The Tripps' attorney had a bushy mustache, which he now combed with his fingers. “It's possible that the young woman was victimized. It's also possible that the perpetrators were not my clients.”

O'Hearn didn't rise to the bait. “Look, kids,” he said in a friendly voice, “Charles here made a rookie mistake. The victim saw his face. At close range.”

“In the dark,” the attorney said evenly, “while in a state of anxiety bordering on hysteria.”

“She won't look too hysterical in court, Counselor. She's a sturdy number.”

Charles Tripp leaned forward in his chair. In his low, sweet voice, he said, “If she tags us, it would be a terrible thing. She'd be tagging the wrong guys. It would be the kind of miscarriage of justice that can turn decent people bitter.”

The name of the assigned county prosecutor was Thea Johnson-Hurlbut. “You really have to love a guy to marry into a name like Hurlbut,” she said when she was introduced to Clara and her father, just to break the ice. Thea Johnson-Hurlbut said she had the authority to bring the case but frankly wondered about its merits. “This is no slam dunk,” she said. “I'd say we go off at no better than even money.” Clara's father said he'd leave it up to Clara. At that moment, Clara was looking at the prosecutor's briefcase. It was made of mahogany-colored leather, worn smooth. Clara loved the way it looked and what it represented, and in that moment, she knew that whatever profession she chose, it was going to have to involve a briefcase.

“Clara?” Her father's voice.

Clara nodded. Yes, she said. She wanted to go ahead with it.

The trial date was set for September. Meantime, the spring and summer passed in slow, sunlit perfection, though without horses. With her horse camp money, Clara opened a bank account for college or, as her father warily suggested, a trip to Spain. Amos had a morning job at Dusty's Oldtowne Market, which was fine because Clara was going to summer school every morning to make up for her bad grades in the second term. But this meant Amos and Clara could spend afternoons and evenings together. Sometimes Amos would help Clara with her paper route, and sometimes they'd just put the leash on Ham and start walking and wouldn't come home for hours. Sometimes they went to Monument Park to swim. Sometimes Clara would cut sweet peas or hydrangeas or whatever was blooming in her yard, and they would walk to the cemetery and put them in the sunken water vase above Mr. MacKenzie's grave. If they went to Bing's, Mrs. MacKenzie would give them free fries, and if they went to the Xavier Cinema, where Liz had taken a summer job, she would give them the employee discount.

One afternoon when they were in a listening booth at Bazooka Music, Amos and Clara caught sight of Bruce walking in with a girl. Amos and Clara exchanged looks and broke out laughing. Amos pushed open the door to their booth. “Hey, Crook, over here!”

Bruce and the girl approached. She wore a sleeveless top and a wraparound skirt that showed off her tanned, athletic legs. She was, Clara thought, achingly beautiful—it was no wonder she'd had half the guys at Melville drooling over her. She was Anne Barrineau. And she seemed happy to be in Bruce's company.

While Clara talked to her about what school was like at Eliot, Amos pulled Bruce aside. “What's the story, Crook?”

Bruce grinned and shrugged. “I hardly know. A couple days ago the phone rings and it's her and she's saying that she kind of missed our talking all the time, so we talked about four hours that night, and then yesterday we went ice skating and had a good time, so I don't know.” He grinned. But there was something different about the grin. It was more adult, more self-composed. It was as if, for the first time since Amos could remember, his friend was truly happy to be himself, Bruce Crookshank.

One day in August, when Clara and Amos walked up to Sleeping Indian Rock, where water spilled into a series of deep pools, they lay on one of the flat rocks in the shade and ate Ritz crackers and little cubes of Laughing Cow cheese. Amos would lob every third or fourth cube of cheese to Ham, who sat attentively nearby.

“Question,” Clara said.

“I'm listening,” Amos said without looking up.

“What do you think of my nose?”

Amos seemed surprised by the question. He turned quickly. “I like your nose,” he said. He tried to break the serious tone. “I like your nose and I like your toes.”

A moment passed. The sound of riffling water rose pleasantly. A low
hoo-hoo
ing of mourning doves carried from the trees. “No,” Clara said, “I'm serious. What do you think of my nose?”

“Okay,” Amos said. “The truth is, at first I kind of thought it was different, not bad-different, but different. Then one day I realized it had just become a part of the larger you, and I knew I approved totally of the larger you. Except I just felt all this. I wasn't putting it into words or anything.” He grinned. “Which is why it's sounding kind of weird to actually put it into words now.”

“No,” Clara said, “I think it's an okay way to put it.” She thought about it. “I'm glad that's the way you think of it.”

A few more moments passed. Then Amos said, “I don't know if you remember, but a long time ago, when my dad and I pulled alongside you after you'd come out of Banner Variety, my dad was talking about our old van, and he said that its value, like all things important to him, went way beyond surface beauty.”

Clara didn't remember that. “I was so nervous I could hardly talk, let alone remember,” she said.

Amos nodded. “Yeah, I don't know why I remembered it. At the time, it kind of embarrassed me. It was like he was trying to tell us how to think or something.” He tossed Ham a cube of cheese. “But now I have a better feel for what he meant.”

Clara made a low murmur. She wondered, painfully, if Amos was trying to say she wasn't beautiful but he liked her anyway.

“I mean, you're very pretty—you have surface beauty,” he said, “but that's not why you're important.”

Clara lay back in the shade and felt as light as the feathery white clouds that floated slowly east. The clouds were perfect. The sound of the water was perfect. Her face maybe wasn't perfect, but she decided to believe that Amos thought she was pretty. “Know what?” she said.

“What?”

“Always before,” Clara said, “I wanted summer to end, to get back to school, but now I just want August to go on and on.”

“August thirty-second,” Amos said, laughing.

“August fifty-second,” said Clara, who, it was true, did like getting the last word, whenever it was available.

50

EPILOGUE

In September, Clara missed just two days of school for the trial. On the witness stand, when Thea Johnson-Hurlbut asked her if she recognized her attackers, Clara said, “Yes.”

“Are they in this room?”

Clara looked toward the Tripp brothers. “Yes.”

“Will you point them out to us?”

Clara said, “That one, Charles Tripp, was the one with the knife and the one doing all the talking. He came very close to me, so I saw him clearly. The other one, Edward Tripp, refused to go along with Charles's cutting my clothes, and Charles threatened him with a knife.” Clara had wanted to say more on Eddie's behalf but had been coached not to say anything more than was necessary.

The Tripp brothers' attorney asked a lot of questions meant to show that because it was so dark in the attic, and because Clara was in such a state of confusion, she couldn't identify anyone with certainty. “I can identify him,” Clara said firmly, again looking at Charles Tripp.

Charles looked straight back at her. He had a complacent look in his eyes, and his lips were creased with a small, impenetrable smile. He'd let his hair grow into a brush cut, which camouflaged his veiny scalp.

Without telling Clara, Amos skipped school the day of the sentencing.
State v. Charles Clifford Tripp and Edward Abel Tripp
was listed on the court calendar along with seven or eight other cases. It was nearly eleven before the Tripp brothers were brought in. Amos knew that Thea Johnson-Hurlbut had asked for a sentence of four to five years and had told Clara that she was hopeful of getting it.

The judge was so slight a man that from Amos's angle, only his head showed above his enormous desk. Before the sentencing itself, the judge made a speech that Amos had a hard time following. “Given Edward's hitherto spotless record” was one thing the judge said. “And in regard to Charles, tempering justice with mercy” was another. Finally, when the judge was done with his talk, he sentenced Charles to six months in the state Youth Authority compound. Eddie would spend fourteen days in juvenile hall.

Amos was stunned. Six months? Fourteen days? Clara's attorney threw a protective arm around Clara and quickly escorted her out the far door of the courtroom. The Tripp brothers' attorney was grinning at his clients and shaking their hands. Charles Tripp seemed to be smirking. Before getting up from his chair, he took a second and jotted something on a piece of paper, but then, when he was done writing, he crumpled it into his fist. They were standing now, the bailiff leading Charles and Eddie off. Amos sat slumped watching, unobserved.

That, anyhow, was what Amos believed.

But as the prisoners were led across the front of the courtroom toward a side door, passing several rows in front of Amos, Charles Tripp flicked Amos a glance and then dropped the piece of crumpled paper into a gray metal wastebasket standing just behind the rail that divided the spectators from the courtroom participants. Amos waited until the Tripps were gone. He waited until everyone having to do with the trial was gone. Then he walked to the front, pushed open the gate in the dividing rail, and picked the ball of paper out of the otherwise clean wastebasket. He walked outside the courtroom and sat down on one of the concrete benches that lined the wide, cavernous corridor. He smoothed out the paper and stared at it.
It's not over till it's over,
Hero,
it said.
Our paths will cross again.

Six weeks later, Clara hosted a Thanksgiving dinner. It should have been the beginning of the good holidays—Thanksgiving, then Christmas, when her mother was going to fly home from Spain for a visit, and then her birthday—but it had a changed feel to it. Clara couldn't find any of her mother's recipes and instead made things she found in magazines. Amos helped, as much as he could. Clara's father was there, with Lydia, whom Clara, to her surprise, couldn't help liking. Clara had invited Amos's mother and sister, as well as Sylvia Harper, now Sylvia Harper
Onken,
who arrived with her new husband, three mincemeat pies, and a cranberry salad.

Everyone said they had a good time, but Clara thought it was a failed Thanksgiving. Clara liked everyone there and had Amos sitting right beside her, but it felt more like a stiff, polite party than Thanksgiving. It was like everyone was trying too hard to act happy. There was only one moment when it felt to Clara the way Thanksgiving ought to feel. It was just before they started passing the food. Amos's mother had broken into the various conversations by raising her voice just slightly. “I'd like to say a short prayer and...”

Amos grimaced exaggeratedly.

“...and I know my son would prefer I didn't, but if you'll allow me.” She closed her eyes, and everyone else did, too, except Clara. She stared at the faces; they seemed to look intense and peaceful at the same time. “I want to thank God for this day he has provided us, and this food he has provided us, and these cooks he has provided us.”

Clara watched the faces relax into murmuring laughter.

“I would also like to remember those who are absent from this table...” She paused, and Clara could tell that Mrs. MacKenzie was shaken and was trying to recompose herself, and then she went on with some words that sounded like a Psalm, but Clara was no longer listening. Clara was thinking of her mother alone in Spain, and of Mr. MacKenzie smiling at her from his old rusty Econoline in front of Banner Variety only a few months before. She even thought for a moment of Eddie Tripp, who had moved with his mother to someplace called Tarzana, California, and had written her two funny letters that both began,
Dear Dollface
. Clara put her hand under the table and closed her eyes. Before long, Amos's hand was there, too, and they were wound together, hers within his, or maybe it was his within hers—they felt so much like one that she could hardly tell the difference.