Only the Truth (3 page)

Then he ran his hand through his hair and walked back to the desk where I
could still see the paper I had signed lying there on the corner. He picked it
up, shook his head, and then crumbled the paper in his right hand. He threw it
in the wastebasket by the desk. He cussed under his breath but I couldn't hear
the swear word. Then he looked over at me and pulled the cell keys out of his
pocket.

He unlocked the cell door and motioned for me to come out. "I'm taking
you home, Billy Ray," he said wearily, not looking me in the eye.

"To see Charlene?"
I asked.

"Yeah, you can see Charlene."

"Am I
comin
' back?"

The Sheriff didn't look at me. "No, Billy Ray. You won't be coming
back. You're free." I wondered why he didn't think I killed the old man
now.

********************

I was nearly bursting when we topped the hill to the house. I was going to
see my Charlene. When we pulled in front of the house, I was out of the police
car nearly before it stopped, thanking them for the ride home. I rushed up to
the front door and into the house and found Charlene standing at the window. I
pulled her into my arms and hugged her tight and whispered that I hoped she
hadn't worried about me. I kissed her and she smiled at me.

I heard a noise behind us and turned to find the Sheriff and the officer who
drove me up here standing between us and the front door.

"Thanks, again, Sheriff," I told him. I wanted him to get on his
way and leave me with my Charlene. But the Sheriff didn't move.

"
Gotta
talk to Charlene,
Billy Ray."

I pulled away from Charlene and looked from her to him.
"What
for?
I thought you said I was free."

The Sheriff moved closer and said, "You are, Billy Ray. I need to talk
to Charlene a minute."

"Okay." He was confusing me again.

The Sheriff looked down at Charlene. He was a big man and she was no more
than coming up to his shoulder.

"Charlene? Did you kill that old man?"

My stomach turned over. I felt myself breaking out into a cold sweat. Now he
was going after Charlene. I didn't understand. I looked at Charlene's face, but
she didn't look upset at the question.

"Charlene? Did you kill the old man?" The Sheriff asked the
question over again.

Charlene didn't answer the question, but I saw her head move up and down.

The room suddenly seemed awfully hot. I felt dizzy.

I heard myself ask, "Why, Charlene? Why?"

Charlene just shrugged her shoulders.

My feet weren't steady under me and I found myself
sittin
'
in the chair with the Sheriff holding my left arm. Then, I watched through the
window as the Sheriff put Charlene into the police car, and all of a sudden I
was alone again with Big Dog.

Charlene, who had never left the house in over two years, was gone.

II

I spent the night with Big Dog wrapped in my arms. I cried and Big Dog cried
too, and we both whimpered in our restless sleep.

When morning came, I went out to start up the truck but the engine wouldn't
turn over. The gas was all used up and when I got out
to look
in the bed for my emergency fuel, I realized the can wasn't back there anymore.
A picture of Charlene pouring gas around the old man in the house flashed into
my mind and I hit my head on the driver's door to make it stop. I could feel
something wet start down my between my eyes and I tasted blood as the liquid
came over my top lip.

I could hardly see through the blur in my eyes as I set off on foot into
town. The three miles felt longer than they ever had before. I didn't know if
it was because I had gotten used to driving the truck into
town,
or because I was
walkin
' slower and slower as I got
towards Main Street.

I wanted to know the truth and I didn't want know the truth. I wanted my
Charlene back and I wanted everyone to leave us alone.

When I got to the police station, I found the Sheriff. He winced and then he
sat me down by his desk and I looked over at Charlene on the cot behind bars,
sittin
' just where I was the day before.

"Did she sign one of those papers you had me sign?" I asked him.

Sheriff Hathaway plucked at his collar, his face going red. I wasn't sure
why he was so embarrassed, but he wouldn't look at me.

"She won't talk
none
, Billy Ray."

"Then how you
gonna
keep her here? If she
didn't sign the paper, she can go home with me, can't she?"

"No, Billy Ray. We got proof she killed him. We got evidence."

I felt kind of sorry for the Sheriff. "Wasn't that the same evidence…
"
I pronounced the word "evidence" clear and
careful, "that you said meant I killed the old man?"

The Sheriff shook his head and now he looked at me more firmly. "No,
Billy Ray, we got real strong evidence now. We got a fingerprint on the box of
matches that we found with the gas can; a box of matches just like the boxes in
your kitchen, the ones you get from the Ben Franklin for lighting your stove."

"Whose fingerprint?"

"Hers, Billy Ray.
Charlene's."

I actually laughed. "Well, she cooks in the kitchen. She lights the
stove,
don't
she?" I was feeling pretty smart
now.

The Sheriff became angry.
"Her fingerprint, Billy
Ray.
On a brand new box of matches near the gas can from your truck.
Only you or
her
could have killed that old man. Take
your pick."

Only me or her.

I looked down at my hands in my lap. I made my fingers lock together and
turn upside down. I heard a little song in my head that my Aunty sang to me
when I was real little. "See all the people in the church"...or
something like that.

I wished I could remember killing that old man. I really wished I could.

********************

The second night without Charlene felt as bad as the first, but Big Dog
whimpered a little less.

I went back to the Sheriff's office in the morning.

"You got my paper with my name on it saying what I did," I
reminded him. "And I've been thinking all night about how you got my gas
can and my matches from the kitchen. So since I said I did it, I must have
did
it."

The Sheriff just looked sadly at me. "Charlene said she did it, Billy
Ray. She said she did it. You go ask her."

He pulled out the cell keys and let me into the cell. I sat down beside
Charlene on the cot. We didn't touch, keeping our hands in our laps.

"Did you, Charlene? They say you did."

Charlene nodded yes, but she didn't say the words.

"Why, Charlene, why?"
I remembered I
already asked her that at the house.

She shrugged again.

I could feel myself getting angry. Not because she killed him, but because
killing the man separated us and she didn't even seem to know why she done it.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her toward me. Then I grabbed her
face in my hands and kissed her hard.

"Tell me why, Charlene? Tell me why?"

She cocked her head kind of funny to the side. I looked into her eyes and I
felt like I was looking clear through her, like she was hardly there.

She stared back at me like she had done the first day we met and she said,
"Who are you? Can I go home with you? Just go home?"

My hands dropped from the sides of her face and I called to the Sheriff,
who'd been
watchin
' us, to let me out. I left without
saying goodbye -- to him, to her, to anyone between me and the road home.

********************

I didn't go to work for the next two weeks. I couldn't stand
seein
' everybody in town,
havin
'
them ask me questions about Charlene, about the trial. I couldn't stand
lookin
' at the Sheriff's office and
thinkin
'
of Charlene in that jail cell. I couldn't stand that she never asked for me,
like I didn't even exist for her anymore.

I felt like never
goin
' back to town. But then the
food ran out and I had to get some money. When I was
sweepin
'
the street, I looked straight down so when anyone came near I didn't have to
talk to them and I kept my distance from the Sheriff's office.

At the end of the day, Mr. Millhouse gave me my money and I walked the three
miles back home and crawled into bed with Big Dog. I finally slept through the
night.

Life didn't change for the next two months. I went to work early and worked
till after dark so I wouldn't have so much time awake at home to
miss
Charlene. Then a lawyer came and stirred up more pain
and my nights of sound sleep were over.

********************

He was a young boy.
White, like Charlene.
He
knocked on my door on a Sunday morning and I was there because I didn't ever go
to church and ever since Charlene was gone, I wasn't on very good terms with
God either.

He looked apologetic, maybe because he was one of those righteous men they
talk about, but
then he wasn't at church neither, so he
couldn't have been all that righteous
. Plus he was a lawyer and I always
heard one should keep as far away from lawyers as you should from doctors. They
both brought bad news that you'd just as soon not hear.

"Can I come in?" he asked, looking all serious in his fancy shirt
and tie.
Made me wonder if he was on his way to church after
all.
No one ever came to my house in a tie...well, no one ever came to
my house.

I waved him in and we sat in the two chairs by the front window. It was fall
now and too cold to sit on the porch this early in the day.

"I'm Timothy Green," he stated, sticking his hand out. I shook it
out of that courtesy stuff. I still had no idea who he was or what he was doing
sitting in my house.

"I am Charlene's lawyer," he explained. "I'm her
court-appointed defense attorney."

I nodded. It hurt me to hear her name.

"She asked for you last week," he said.

I looked up. "She asked for me?"

"Well, she asked of you, I should say. She asked where that nice young
man went to. She asked me every day."

I felt guilty. I should have gone to see her. Just because she killed a man
and stopped knowing me….I swallowed hard.

The lawyer didn't look away when he saw me struggling with my conscience.
"She really could use you to visit her. Maybe it will help her remember
something. These things take time, you see. She has some kind of problem and I
am trying to figure out what it is. I can't defend her without knowing who she
is, where she came from, and what's going on in her mind."

He leaned forward, now very serious. "The prosecution has what they
call an open-and-shut case. A 'slam dunk' it's called. They don't expect me to
do anything but show up in court and say a few words about Charlene being a
nice lady who made a mistake and then the jury will convict her and she will
get a life sentence and we will all be home by lunch."

But I wasn't listening to the rest of it. All I could think was
,
Charlene wants to see me. She wants to see me.

********************

I spent the whole day with Charlene in her jail cell. I brought her some
sweets and she ate them and she smiled at me. She didn't say anything, but she
let me talk to her and when I went to leave she hung onto me. She even let me
kiss her and I felt her tongue warm in my mouth the way she used to do in bed.
I only wish she had said my name.

I started visiting Charlene every day on my lunch break and before I went
home in the evening. We
was
like a couple again
excepting she didn't seem to know who I was and we couldn't lie in our bed
together anymore. But I was there and she was there and so we
was
still together, in a way.

I began to worry about the trial. If Mr. Green was right, Charlene would go
to court in a couple more months and then they would say she killed the old man
and she would be taken away and we wouldn't be together for a long, long time.
The real prison was hundreds of miles away and we would hardly get to see each
other. My heart hurt when I thought about that but I didn't know how you stop
people from saying she did it when the police said she did it and she herself
said she did it. I finally told Mr. Green I would do anything to help Charlene
keep out of prison and he came back up to the house so we could be away from
prying eyes and ears.

Mr. Green took out a pad of paper from a shiny briefcase and pulled off the
pen attached to it. He clicked it to its ready position and he asked me my
name.

"Billy Ray Hutchins".

"
Birthdate
?"

"May 16, 1978".

"Where were you born?"

I guessed it was here. "Here in Whitfield Glen."

"Your momma or daddy alive?"

I shook my head. "Daddy died before I was born and Momma right after.
My Aunty raised me here in this house."

A small smile played on Mr. Green's lips. "You ever go past town in
your life, Billy Ray?"

I didn't quite know what was so funny about that. "No, I didn't have
no
call to."

"When did you meet Charlene?"

"Some two years ago."

"You and Charlene never got married, did you?"

"No." It never crossed my mind to do that and Charlene didn't ask
me to go with her to no church or into any town office to sign no papers. It
didn't seem like it was very important to get people's permission to love each
other.