Paris Trout (12 page)

"Would you get me a Coke-Cola?" he said
again.

She got him the Coke. It was a six-ounce bottle, and
he took all of it at once, drinking as fast as the suction of the
thing would allow, and then set the empty bottle on the table. Lucy
picked it up and put it in a wooden case she kept just inside the
basement steps.

"
Let me take those clothes," she said.
"I'll get them to the cleaner's."

Seagraves stood up and allowed himself to be helped
out of his coat and then his shirt and pants. He stood in the kitchen
in long socks and his underwear, and she held his clothes in her
fingers and studied the spots in the material. "Are you
bleeding?" she said.

"
No," he said, "it's not human."

The pants hung suddenly by less fingers. "I
don't think the cleaner's can get this out," she said.

He walked upstairs, she came up behind him. He washed
his face in the bathroom sink and then drew a bath. She stood at the
bathroom door. He would have told her what had happened — he wanted
to tell what had happened — but it wasn't like a story, with a
natural orderand reason to the events. Lucy needed things lined up in
front of her before she could see them.

She took the curlers out of her hair, and it gave her
a softer appearance. She picked up a brush and began to stroke her
hair. He took a breath, there was a pain deep in his throat from the
vomiting. "Did you say something, Harry?" she said.

He did not answer. The bathroom felt distinctly
empty. She stood on her toes in front of him, putting her face close
to his, and kissed the air near his cheek. "Momma kiss,"
she said.

"
I saw the girl Paris Trout shot," he said.

She pulled away from him, wide-eyed, as he knew she
would be. She always went wide-eyed at news."What did she say?"

He stepped out of his shorts, then his T-shirt. He
climbed into the tub and turned the water off with his toes. She
stood in the doorway, looking down. °°Was it an affair of the
heart?" she said.

Seagraves eased himself in until the water covered
his shoulders.

"
No," he said, "it was business."

°°He did business with a colored girl?"

"That would seem to be a problem," he said.
He saw that his wife was disappointed that it was not an affair of
the heart. She said, "I could understand if it was love . . . I
mean, you've seen his wife. She would not appear to have . . .
affectionate inclinations .... "

"
You can't tell without being in the bed,"
he said. "It might be the opposite, that it's Paris who isn't
interested."

"
I don't think so," she said. "He's
old, but he looks vital."

Lucy only speculated on the "affectionate
inclinations" of women who were attractive in a different way
than she was herself. Mostly the ones who wore less makeup. Neither
of them ever mentioned her own inclinations, which were scarce. She
sat down on the edge of the tub, and he pictured Hanna Trout climbing
the stairs, Nurse Thompson with her wet hair lying against his
shoulder, the girls he'd seen at the college on the way to work.

But the other face came with them, with the sheet
dropped half across its mouth, calm and persistent. He would look
away when he saw it, but in a moment he would see it again. It was
there like his own reflection, glimpsed in unexpected moments.

He sat up in the tub, trying to clear himself of her.
"What is it?" she said.

He picked up the soap and washed his arms and his
chest. "I don't know myself," he said. "I got to sit
down with Ward Townes and Trout this afternoon, and I expect it will
sort out."

"
I wish you would tell me what in hell is up,"
she said.

She didn't swear much, and even "hell" came
out of her awkward. He smiled at that and stood up. His skin had
turned pink in the water. It had been sensitive like that as long as
he could remember.

She said, "At least tell me what's on your
clothes. That's the suit I bought for you in Macon, and if they don't
know what the stains are at the cleaner's, I might have to throw it
away."

Harry Seagraves looked down at himself and said,
"Don't do that. If I got to argue the law without clothes, I'm
finished. I was still getting boners going to the blackboard in law
school. It's the fear that brings it on."

That thought hit her as funny, and he saw her smile.
It was against her will, and when it passed she would be angry. He
reached for a towel and fastened it around his waist, and she covered
her mouth and began to laugh. It came out in little bubbles, like
water starting to boil.

"I can't get that picture out of my head,"
she said finally. "What if everybody came to court naked? Can
you imagine, 'All rise for the judge" and in walks Bear Lewis?"

Bear Lewis was the previous district judge, and he
was a midget. He'd turned political after he'd taken the job — some
could handle it and some couldn't — and Seagraves had brought in
three thousand voters from Homewood and defeated him in the last
election, replacing him with John Taylor.

The laughing stopped the same way it had started,
little bursts of bubbles on the surface. When it was over she wiped
her eyes. "I don't know why that hit me so funny," she
said.

Seagraves moved in front of the medicine cabinet,
found a jar of 5 Day deodorant pads, and used one under each arm. "I
swear I don't know why, but I can't get that picture out of my mind,"
she said. He tossed the pads toward the wastebasket, missing them
both.

"
Harry?"

He turned to her and waited.

"Why is it things always stop being funny when I
think they're funny too?"

"
I got Paris Trout on my mind," he said,
"and the man takes the edge off humor."

She was still then, and he dressed.

He kissed her at the door before he left the house
and saw that all the fun was gone out of her now. Her depression was
insincere, but it still made him sad in a way because he knew what
that was. The fun seemed to have gone out of him too, a long time
ago.

She stalled him at the door. She said, "Harry,
what am I supposed to tell the cleaner's?"

He said, "Why don't you get out of the house
this afternoon? Call Miz Hodges and go shopping."

"I got to tell the cleaner's something,"
she said.

He couldn't say what it was, he didn't know why.
Somehow, little things had turned big, and it had come too far to be
chicken blood.

"
It's blood, isn't it?"

"
Animal blood," he said. "Something
ran in front of the car."

And as he walked out of the house, he
heard her say, "Oh, the poor thing . . ."

* * *

SEAGRAVES RETRIEVED THE CADILLAC from the filling
station and drove
downtown. Bud Ramsey had
vacuumed the feathers out and cleaned the pool of blood off the floor
but hadn't been able to do much with the seat covers.

He parked the car on the street, left the doors open
to air out the smell of chicken, and walked into the courthouse. Ward
Townes's office was on the second floor, next to the desk where you
got licensed. Any license you wanted in Ether County — fishing,
dogs, marriage — you went to the same place.

Paris Trout was sitting on the bench outside, just
beneath a sign that said GUN TOTER'S PERMITS. Seagraves saw that he
had put on a dark blue suit, two inches short in the sleeves, and
polished his shoes. His hair was parted in the middle and slicked
back. He legs were crossed, and he held a straw hat in his lap. He
looked too big for the bench. When he saw Seagraves, he pulled the
watch out of his pocket and checked the time.

"
One o"clock sharp," he said. "Here
I am."

"
Is Ward Townes back from lunch?"

"
He come in a little bit ago," Trout said,
"told me to wait here for you."

Seagraves opened the door to Townes's office and put
his head inside. The prosecutor was sitting at his secretary's desk
with a phone against his ear. Seagraves held up a finger, getting his
attention, and said, "Give me one minute, we'll be right in."

He shut the door without waiting for an answer and
walked Trout to the end of the hall. There was a window there,
overlooking the street. "I went to Cornell Clinic this morning,"
Seagraves said. Trout moved a little to one side and looked out the
window.

"
Did you hear? I went to Cornell Clinic to see
Rosie Sayers. She's passed on."

Seagraves was watching Trout to see how it affected
him. He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on the street. "She was
fourteen years old," Seagraves said.

Trout looked at him quickly and then back out the
window. "I didn't have nothing to do with her birthday," he
said. "I never put myself in her business, she put herself in
mine."

Seagraves moved closer and spoke just above a
whisper. "You put yourself in her house," he said. "You
and Buster Devonne went into this child's house with a gun and shot
her and Miss Mary McNutt something like eight times. Neither one of
them owed you a legal cent, and one of them's dead and the other's
talking a mile a minute. You can depend on that."

"
I told Henry Ray Boxer before he took the car,
I get what I'm owed. There is a natural order of things, and you and
me and everybody down to the poorest nigger in the Bottoms is part of
it, and there ain't no laws can blame anybody for the way God created
the earth."

Seagraves backed away to get a different view of
Trout.

"
Lookit out there," Trout said, "some
fool went and left his car doors open." Then he looked up at
Seagraves, smiling with those yellow, gapped teeth. "People who
let someone take their property is as guilty as the ones that took
it."

Seagraves saw that Trout had watched him park the car
and get out. He said, "Don't be sly with Ward Townes. He won't
appreciate it." Trout said, "There ain't nothing to worry
about, Mr. Counselor. You'll of took care of all this by three
o'clock."

When Seagraves opened the door to Townes's office
again, the prosecutor was off the phone and standing at the far
window with his nose in a lawbook. He did not acknowledge them at
first, even when he heard the door close.

Seagraves took a seat, Trout stood near the door,
holding his hat. Townes rubbed the back of his neck. He was the same
age as Seagraves — they had graduated from high school together at
the officer academy, anyway — but on Townes the years had worn more
away. His hair was thin and gray, he was heavy on his feet, and there
were collections of flesh under his chin and his belt.

He was tired today, and it showed in his movements. A
sick secretary put a mortal strain on anybody. "I heard you were
over to the clinic," he said to Seagraves, ignoring Trout, who
was standing between them.

Seagraves nodded. "It's a shame," he said.
"Little bitty thing like that, and a whole clinic can't do a
thing to help her."

The phone began to ring. Townes sighed, walked to his
secretary's desk and sat in her chair, and stared at it until it
quit. "That's better," he said, and then he had a long look
at Paris Trout, who was still in the middle of` the room, holding his
hat.

"Mr. Trout," Townes said, "I asked
your attorney to bring you into my office as a courtesy. Technically,
I should of had you arrested yesterday afternoon."

Trout did not speak.

"
The reason I did you this courtesy,"
Townes said, "was twofold. One, out of` respect for your family,
and two, I wanted to see which way this went."

Trout nodded, as if those had been his thoughts too.

"
Miss Rosie Sayers, however, as your attorney
may have informed you, died at ten-thirty this morning at the
clinic." He was speaking almost in a monotone, now, which
Seagraves took for a bad sign. "And that leaves this office with
no choice but to charge you and Buster Devonne with her death."

Trout looked quickly at Seagraves, then back at
Townes. Somewhere in the look was another bad sign, and Seagraves
realized if he didn't say something now, Trout was going to.

"
If I might offer two points," Seagraves
said, and he saw Trout beginning to nod his head now. "There is
no argument that Paris and Buster Devonne were in the house, but
there is, I think, some argument that they hold equal
responsibility."

Townes nodded and made a note of that on the pad of
paper in front of him. "Separate trials," he said.

"
Certainly, if it comes to that. But my second
point is that the circumstances of the death are not uncommon in the
area of the community where they occurred, in fact occur there and in
the Bottoms and even in Bloodtown with a degree of frequency, and the
fact that they occurred there on the afternoon Mr. Trout, who has
never been involved in such circumstances, happened to arrive to
settle a business matter may speak more to the environs than to Mr.
Trout himself."

Ward Townes looked at Seagraves and smiled. "You
mean, like a hunting accident?"