Only the Truth (4 page)

Mr. Green flipped over the page he had been scribbling on and started in on
a fresh new one.

"Now, about Charlene.
Do you know her full
name?"

"I just know Charlene. That's what she told me."

"Do you know where she was born?"

"I thought here in Arkansas. She never talked 'bout
no
other state."

"How old is she?"

"She told me she was twenty-four the day we met."

"Did she talk about her family?"

"No. She never talked about
no
family. I
figgered
she didn't have one neither to talk about."

Mr. Green looked at me in an odd way.

"Did she ever talk about her children?"

I looked up sharply at Mr. Green to see if he was trying to make me say
things that didn't make sense like Sheriff Hathaway did when he made me tell
stories about killing that old man. "What children?"

Mr. Green looked at me quietly and spoke slowly. "She's had children,
Billy Ray. Didn't she tell you about them?"

I shook my head back and forth and back and forth again. "She
ain't
had
no
children. She told me
she had never been in love and never had
no
boyfriend.
I was her first man. I could tell by the way she was so scared it would hurt
and how embarrassed she was."

Mr. Green didn't speak. I knew I had him. "You making that up, aren't
you, Mr. Green? She didn't say
nothing about no
children."

The lawyer licked his lips. He seemed awfully nervous. I don't know why he
would tell me lies when we were supposed to be on the same side.

"No, Billy Ray, she didn't tell me about any children. She said she'd
never had any children."

It felt
good
proving Mr. Green wrong about her
having babies.

The lawyer went on. "Charlene didn't tell me she had any babies, but
the doctor who examined her says she is a
multipara
."

I screwed up my face.
"A what?"

"A
multipara
.
That
is the word for a woman who has had more than one child in her life."

I felt queasy.

"You okay, Billy Ray?"

"She was a virgin," I muttered. I couldn't even raise my eyes to
look at Mr. Green again and when I heard the front door close, I knew he had
left me with my thoughts, to spend the night staring at the ceiling above the
bed where Charlene had cried out when I entered her for the first time.

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

When I didn't show up at work the next morning, Mr. Green showed up on my
doorstep. "I was waiting for you in town but …..." he smiled half
apologetically.

I didn't feel like letting him in but I knew he wouldn't go away until I
did.

He handed me a paper.

I turned it over and saw a bunch of typing. "I don't read
good
," I said and I handed it back to him. "Just
tell me what it says."

"I'll give you the important details. It's the medical report the
prosecution asked for. It says Charlene is a
multipara
…"
I winced. He went on. "Well, what we discussed yesterday. The report also
states she has had STDs before."

"STDs?"

"Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
It means she
got diseases from having sex with men. Have you ever had any STD's?" The
lawyer wanted to know if I gave her any sickness.

"I never had
no
sex with any girl but
Charlene." I hung my head. I had been teased about that by men in the
liquor store. Some even offered to give me their sister for some money but I
knew they were just playing with me and I never gave them my money.

The lawyer looked sad for me. I didn't know if it was that I never got
none
except from Charlene or that Charlene had gotten some
somewhere else and never told me.

"Charlene has a history of STD's, Billy Ray. This means she got sick more
than once from probably more than one man. We got some men from about an hour
away from here who say they know her from the street. Do you know what that
means, Billy Ray?"

I knew what that meant. I had seen
girls
like that
in town once in a while, passing through.

"Charlene didn't act like one of those girls. She wasn't one of those
girls."

Mr. Green patted me on the shoulder and left me to spend another long day
and night staring at the ceiling wondering what Charlene told the other men she
lied under while she looked up at the stars, and the hotel plaster, and the
little holes in a Ford vinyl roof liner. I cried so much I couldn't breathe
after a while and I woke up Big Dog with my coughing and the two of us didn't
get back to sleep the rest of the night.

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

I couldn't stand to go visit Charlene at the jail anymore. It wasn't just
that she killed a man and that she didn't know who I was no more and it wasn't
just that she lied to me about me being her first man and it wasn't about her
being a whore. It was just I was scared I would hit her and I didn't want her
to hate me for hitting her.

Mr. Green showed up and tried to convince me to go see her. I held the door
open just a few inches and I kept my foot on the backside of it. I wasn't going
to let him in the house to tell me anything more
bad
about Charlene.

He told me she was crying for me.

"She
don't
even know who I am," I
countered.

"But she needs you to visit her anyway," he argued.

I didn't respond.

"I need you to visit her," he pleaded.

"What for?
She don't tell me
nothing
."

"She might."

I laughed bitterly. "Well, she never slipped up all the time we spent
here before she went to jail. All
them
hours we spent
alone, everyday, just the two of us, talking and talking, and she never told me
nothing about herself."

I slammed the door. I didn't want to start crying again. I wanted my
Charlene back, the one I knew, the one I thought I knew. Even the one in jail
was still my Charlene, but every time that lawyer talked to me, he made
Charlene say and do horrible things. And when I went to sleep at night,
Charlene would come into my dreams, getting nastier and nastier, cussing and
screwing and birthing ugly babies. Then, I became afraid to go to the jail, not
because I would hit her but because I was afraid she would act like the girl
that visited me at night and I wouldn't be able to love her any more.

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

I went back to cleaning my streets, looking at the ground, and keeping away
from jail cells, policemen, and lawyers. I swept and swept and this made up my
days for the next few weeks and I pretended that the two of us were all that
lived in the world...just me and Big Dog.

Of course, I wasn't deaf and I heard what they were saying about Charlene.
Charlene or Jasmine or Sugar or whatever other name they say the men over in
Bald Eagle knew her as. The prosecution wasn't being quiet about what they were
going to say about Charlene in court. They were calling her a whore. A whore
who used men and when she robbed a few men too many, she slipped out of town to
hide from the police. She went up the mountain to Whitfield Glen and went home
with the first sucker who would have her and ask no questions. That would be
me.

They said bad things about me, too. They called me a retard and a weirdo.
Said I never had much sense and it was only because I didn't cause
no
trouble and kept the town clean that they left me alone
to myself up on the hill. They said I didn't bother
no one
,
so they didn't bother me.

They said no woman had ever gotten near me on account I was ugly looking and
short and walked funny. They said if Charlene had been a prettier girl and not
a whore, she wouldn't have let me touch her. I didn't trust
no
one
no more.

The prosecution just added Charlene's motive for killing the old man cross
the road. Seems that he was one of the men Charlene slept with for money, but
that Charlene had stolen all the rest of the money he had. He was pissed off
enough to want his money back and that's why he came out to the Glen. They said
that while I was working, she must have been crossing the road to sleep with
him, to pay him back for what money of his she didn't have any more and to keep
him quiet, so he wouldn't tell me what she was. Then they say she got tired of
dealing with him and killed him so she would be free of him. Didn't make no
sense to me that the old man would come all the way here and hang out across
the road unless Charlene took him for a whole bunch of money and she didn't
have
none
that I knew of when she came. But I hear
that all a lawyer has to do is make up some story about why a person killed
someone and if the jury was stupid enough to believe it, then it didn't matter
if it was true or not.

And, in a way, it was a good story for me even if it seemed kind of dumb. I
liked the idea she killed the old man because she loved me and didn't want me
to know what kind of girl she had been before. She lied because she loved me
and she killed because she loved me. She was my beautiful Charlene again. I
started visiting her in the jail most days. She was happy to see me and she
called me by my name though she still didn't seem to know who I was. They let
me see her every evening for as long as I wanted and I started to pretend the
cell was our little home. The guard on duty in the evening went out for a long
smoke between eight and nine o'clock and let us make love on the little cot.

The defense asked for another month's delay which the judge granted and
Charlene and I spent the autumn happy in our new home, eating our dinner
together, and making love as soon as the policeman winked, pulled out his
cigarette pack and stepped out the front door. Charlene didn't seem so much
different than when we were in our house. We were Charlene and Billy Ray again
and I started growing fearful of the trial that would proclaim her guilty of
her love crime and take her away again.

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

It was during our Thanksgiving TV dinner in the cell that I heard the
defense lawyer got the trial postponed again until the New Year. I whooped and
hollered and kissed Charlene a dozen times on the lips! She smiled just a
little at me.

"Don't you know what this means, Charlene?" I said, squeezing her
close to me.

She shook her head.

"We got another two months together before we got to worry about
anything! We're
gonna
have our third Christmas
together!"

Charlene smiled at how happy I was. She kissed me and wanted to make love
right away but the guard wasn't ready to go out for his cigarette just yet. She
didn't seem to understand anything about her trial. She never got upset or
scared or angry. She didn't seem to worry about nothing now. She just saw me
happy and it made her happy. When she is happy, she likes to make love and so I
like to make her happy.

I leaned over to kiss her again and she put her finger to my lips and then
she went over to the cell bars and called to the guard. He came over and she
crooked her finger at him. He leaned his ear over to the bars and she whispered
something in it that made him grin. Then he shot
a thumbs
up at me, grabbed his cigarettes and left the room, an hour before the
appointed time. We made love over and over that evening and he didn't come back
until midnight.

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

I was still in bed the next day recovering from my night with Charlene when
I heard the screech of tires by the side of the house. I slid out of bed, told
Big Dog to shut up and reached the front door just as the banging started. It
was Mr. Green, looking real angry. I didn't have to guess he was bringing
more bad
lawyer news and this time somehow the bad news had
to do with me.

"I need you to be honest with me, Billy Ray." I noticed Mr. Green
wasn't wearing a tie this time when he
came
visiting.

I wondered what I had done wrong.

"Have you been screwing Charlene in the jail cell?"

I wondered why Mr. Green cared. Lovemaking was between a girl and a guy.
What did he want to know for?

"Why are you asking? She's my girl,
ain't
she?" I said defensively.

Mr. Green pulled off his coat and tossed it on the chair. He ran his hand
over his face from forehead to chin and then started rubbing the back of his
neck.

"Billy Ray, Charlene's pregnant."

I guessed I was supposed to be upset about that news, but I wasn't. I was
gonna
have a baby. I never thought I could have no baby!

I smiled at Mr. Green's unhappy face. "We
gonna
have a baby!" I started laughing. I was happier than I had been in the
whole last year. My Charlene was still in the local jail where I could see her
and we was
gonna
have
a
baby. We had two things to celebrate in the
new year
.

The lawyer looked at me with one eyebrow raised. "You aren't a bright
one, are you, Billy Ray?" I guessed he was insulting me but I didn't care
much.

"Billy Ray, try to understand what I am going to tell you. Sit."

We sat facing each other. Big Dog came and lay down between us.

Mr. Green clasped his hands together and took a big breath.

"Charlene is going to trial in January. The prosecution will say she is
a liar, a whore, and a killer. Tell me, Billy Ray, is she a liar?"

"Yes."

"Is she a whore?"

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. "Yes," I whispered.