Dovey Coe (10 page)

“Can't do it, no, I'm afraid not,” he said. “Not until we have us a little talk.” He come out
from behind the counter and stood next to me, the smell of liquor coming off his skin about to make me dizzy. “Dovey, Dovey,” he said, turning to face me and shaking his head like he was real sad. “I've said it before and I'll say it again. It sure is a shame you didn't get your sister's good looks.” He reached and touched a strand of my hair that had gotten loose from my braid. I backed away from him and said, “This ain't making me like you any better, Parnell.”

“Oh, Dovey,” he said, his voice as sweet as a mama talking to her baby. “I don't expect it matters what you like or dislike, not to anyone but you.”

“What in damnation are you talking about?” I asked, moving farther away from him, a little trickle of fear starting to work its way through me.

Parnell got a real disappointed look on his face. “Now you know I don't like hearing that kind of talk out of you, Dovey. I reckon I'm going to have to punish you for that.”

My insides turned cold listening to him, like a bitter wind blown through my skin. “Just give Tom over to me and let me go. That's all I'm asking.” My voice shook a bit as the words come out.

“You ain't talking so smart now, are you?” Parnell smiled, then turned toward the back
room. “C'mon, then, let's go see where Tom's at.”

I followed him into a small, dark room lined with shelves. Metal soda canisters were stacked against the wall by the door, and a dozen or so twenty-pound bags of flour were piled next to them. It took a second for my eyes to get adjusted to the darkness, but when they did, I seen Tom in the corner of the room tied by a short length of rope to a pipe that run down the wall. He whimpered a bit when he seen me, his tail wagging, like he was ready to go home.

“I don't know why you got this dog tied up, Parnell,” I said, turning around. “He wouldn't ever hurt anybody, not even someone as low-down as you.”

Parnell bent to the floor and picked something up. Then he walked to the door. He was holding a brick in his hand. “Oh, this dog, it's a menace to society. Who knows what it might do to a little child.”

“Why are you doing this, Parnell?” I asked, the words barely making it past my lips. My hand reached for the knife in my pocket. I pulled it out without Parnell noticing. My fingers was trembling, but I managed to flick the blade open with my thumb.

“I done told you, Miss Dovey Coe. I aim to
teach you a lesson. You're always butting into other people's business, ain't you? And you're a regular mother hen to that brother of yours, watching over him like he was the younger and you were the older. But you can't protect Amos against everything, no sir. You can't have everything your way.”

In a flash, Parnell drew back his arm and aimed that brick at Tom. That's when I stuck my knife out and made a wild stab at him. But it was too late. The brick left Parnell's hand and flew through the air. My blade tore through the sleeve of his shirt, a line of blood rising in a stain across the fabric.

Parnell bellowed and swirled around at me, his fist drawn back. As that fist come toward me, I slashed at him again. That's the last thing I remember.

When I come to, Huck was licking my face, and my head felt like it were split in half. I scooted myself so I was sitting up and rubbed my forehead, trying to stop the pain that was pounding against me like a hammer. It took me a minute to remember where I was. Tom lay in the corner, so stiff that I could tell he was dead. The tears filled my eyes, and I let them fall.

“How'd you get in here?” I asked Huck,
who'd gone over and laid next to Tom, little whimpers coming out of his mouth. I looked about the room, wondering how long I'd been knocked out.

That's when I seen Parnell.

He was lying on the floor as stiff as Tom, one of them metal canisters a few feet from his head. I crawled over to him and passed my hand over his mouth. There weren't a breath left in him.

“Oh, Lord,” I said out loud. “Oh, my Lord.”

The bells tinkled on the front door, and a voice called out, “Parnell? Are you in here? I've been keeping supper on the stove for you for almost an hour.”

It was Mrs. Lucy Caraway. She come to the door of the back room and reached in to flip on the light. That's when she saw us. “What in heaven's name?” she yelled, running over to Parnell. She put her ear to his mouth, and then felt his neck with her hand. “He's dead! Oh, my God! He's dead!” Then she turned to me. “You killed Parnell! You killed my son!”

T
hey let me stay at home while I was waiting for my trial to come up. Usually when a person's been accused of a serious crime they make him stay in the jail lessen his kinfolks can come up with a right good sum of money. Bail, they call it. But the sheriff didn't figure I was likely to leave town before trial day, so he let Mama and Daddy sign a paper saying they'd be responsible for me showing up to court. The only thing was that I weren't allowed to cross the county line until after I was tried, and then only if I weren't found guilty.

They say it's at times like these when you find out who your real friends are, and by my reckoning the only real friend I had outside my family
was Wilson Brown. Folks who'd always been right neighborly toward me, including them who were at Caroline's party, avoided my eyes when they seen me coming down the street. Not that I headed into town too much. I mostly stayed to home, helping Mama around the house and tracking through the woods with Amos.

Amos weren't himself after they brought Tom's body to him. It was like someone had cut off a piece of him and he weren't sure he could make do without it. It might sound funny to say it, but after Tom died, Amos got real quiet. Just at the time he said his first word, he stopped making any noise at all. Usually he played the rascal around the house, jumping out from behind doors to give Mama a fright or drawing funny pictures and slipping them into my books for me to find unexpected. But now mostly all he did was hike up into the mountain with Huck and come back empty-handed, like there weren't no use hunting things if Tom weren't around to hunt them, too. At home he'd sit on his bed rubbing Huck's head and staring out the window. I think he was hoping Tom might come running over the hill, him being dead just a bad dream.

Wilson come to visit me now and again, and he always made the effort to be right nice to
Amos, patting him on the back and one time bringing him a real fine piece of quartz crystal from his collection. Wilson would ask Amos to join me and him on the porch, but Amos never felt much like it. So me and Wilson would sit by ourselves, eating the cookies MeMaw kept bringing up to the house to make everybody feel better and looking through comic books. We'd occasionally pass a few words between ourselves, but mostly we were quiet.

The only one who seemed his same old self was Daddy. After coming back from signing them papers at the sheriff's office, he sat me down at the kitchen table and looked me straight in the eye. “I hate to even ask, but I want to hear it directly from you so as not to ever have a single doubt. You ain't gone and killed Parnell, have you, Sister?”

“No, Daddy,” I told him. “I didn't do it.”

He nodded his head. “I didn't believe you had it in you. I hope you'll forgive me for asking.”

He got up to go to work in the barn, but before he left he turned to me and asked, “You got any idea of who done it?”

“I ain't got the first idea, Daddy,” I said. “When I come to, Parnell was laying there dead. I didn't see who done it.”

“Could've been anyone, I reckon,” Daddy replied before walking out the door.

That conversation seemed to settle things for Daddy. He was of the belief that if I didn't kill Parnell, then there weren't no way I'd be found guilty. He said he believed in the justice system and everything would turn out as it should. I weren't quite so sure.

We didn't have much money for a lawyer, so the judge assigned us one from all the way over in Wilkes County. Daddy insisted on putting down a little bit of money every week for his services, even though the judge said we didn't have to pay anything. Daddy wouldn't stand for that, though. As I've said, he weren't much for accepting charity.

The lawyer come up to see us a week before the trial to discuss what kind of case we had. Mr. Thomas G. Harding was a right handsome man about twenty-five or so. When he come up to the front porch after parking his car, Daddy greeted him at the door, saying, “You the lawyer's helper or something?”

“No, Mr. Coe,” Mr. Thomas G. Harding replied, patting down the lapel of his gray suit. “I am, in fact, the lawyer himself.”

“You don't look old enough to be no lawyer,” Daddy said to him.

“I assure you, Mr. Coe, I am indeed a lawyer. I have a law degree from the University of North Carolina, the Chapel Hill campus.”

Daddy ushered Mr. Harding into the house right quick. “Don't be saying that so loud. Folks around here don't trust city lawyers. The judge is likely to rule against Dovey on that fact alone.”

Mr. Harding laughed, setting his briefcase on the kitchen table. “It will be our secret, Mr. Coe. Now where is Miss Dovey? Ah, this must be her.” He walked over to where I was standing in the kitchen doorway and offered his hand to me. “It's a pleasure to meet you. Why don't we have a seat and talk about your case.”

I sat at the table across from him, looking at the fine cut of his suit and his fancy haircut. “How come you're doing this?” I asked him.

“Doing what, Miss Dovey?”

“Taking on my case. From the looks of things, you don't appear to be the type to do much charity work.”

Mr. Harding laughed again. He seemed a right jolly sort. “First of all, Miss Dovey, it's not charity work when it's paid for. And as for why I've taken your case, well, I feel it is part of my job to defend those who can't afford an expensive private attorney.
In fact, that is one of the reasons I went into the law.”

“To take care of poor folks?”

“Yes,” Mr. Harding replied. “In a manner of speaking. I represent those who cannot afford representation. Liberty and justice for all, as I like to remind those with a tendency to forget that the laws of our country aren't only for the rich.”

“You're a right learned fellow, ain't you?” I said. “They must pay you a sight of money for you to afford a suit like that.”

“No, Miss Dovey,” he said, opening his briefcase. “They don't pay me much at all. This suit comes courtesy of my father, who can afford closets full of such things. You certainly speak your mind, don't you?”

“She'll speak her mind till she's blue in the face,” Daddy said from where he stood over by the sink.

Mr. Harding smiled. “Good, I like a person who's honest. Most people are too frightened to come right out and say what they're thinking.”

“That's my belief, too,” I told him. “Most folks are cowards when it comes to expressing their honest take on things. But that ain't how I am.”

“Then we have something in common, Miss
Dovey. I wouldn't be surprised to find we have many things in common.”

We smiled at each other. I decided then and there that I liked Mr. Thomas G. Harding just fine.

We spent about an hour discussing the facts of what happened the night Parnell was murdered. I give him a little background on the situation, how me and Parnell never got along, and how Parnell had spent all year being in love with Caroline, but she rejected him all the same. Mr. Harding took a whole mess of notes on a yellow writing tablet he brung with him. After I told him everything I known that could possibly affect my case, he leaned back in his chair and asked, “What do you think the other lawyer, the prosecutor, will claim motivated you to kill Parnell?”

“I didn't kill Parnell, I done told you that already,” I said.

“Yes, Miss Dovey, you have told me that, and I believe you. However, the other attorney will say that you did, and he will create a story to show the reason you did. What do you think his story will be?”

I thought on that for a minute. “I reckon he might say that after Parnell killed Tom, I got so mad that I hit him over the head with that soda canister.”

Mr. Harding nodded. “I imagine you're right, Miss Dovey. But let us continue to consider that matter as to leave no stone unturned. We want to be prepared for anything.”

Mr. Harding stood up and began putting his papers back into his briefcase.

“She got a case there, Mr. Harding?” Daddy asked.

“I hope so, Mr. Coe. I certainly hope so.”

Them weren't the most comforting words I ever heard, and I could tell Daddy weren't satisfied by them, neither. He walked Mr. Harding out to the porch and give him directions to the sheriff's office. Mr. Harding wanted to check on a few things with Sheriff Douglas before heading back to Wilkes County. When Daddy come back into the house, he patted me on the shoulder and said, “I suspect everything will work out, Sister. Don't you worry none.” But there were plenty of worry in his words all the same.

T
he day of the trial we got up good and early to get dressed in a respectable fashion. Mr. Harding said it was important that I looked like I were on my way to Sunday school, so the judge and jury would think highly of me. I
put on the yellow dress I worn to Caroline's party, and Mama combed my hair out real pretty so my bangs curled around my face. I looked like a right upstanding citizen by the time she was through with me.

“Dovey,” she said to me when she was done with my hair, giving me a serious look. I was expecting her to lecture on me on how I was to behave in a ladylike fashion during my trial. Instead, she said, “I want you to remember that God takes care of his children. There's been a lot of praying done on your behalf, and I want you to take them prayers with you when you walk into that courthouse. Keep them in your mind if you start to worry that things ain't going your way.”