Paris Trout (42 page)

TROUT
PART EIGHT

LATE IN THE AFTERNOON of Wednesday, the fifth day of
the official week of the sesquicentennial, Paris Trout stepped out
the door of the Ether Hotel and was arrested on the spot by a
twenty-two-year-old police officer named Bo Andrews.

"Sir," the officer said, "you are
under arrest."

Trout noticed the man had not shaved. It seemed to be
the fashion. The policeman touched Trout's arm, not in an unfriendly
way. Trout pulled away. He had been convicted Friday of attempting to
bribe a federal officer and was scheduled for sentencing the
following month.

"Get the hell away from me," he said. "It
ain't my time yet."

The young policeman reached for Trout's arm again.
"Yessir, it is," he said. The policeman did not know who
Paris Trout was, but he hoped the old man would try to escape. In
four years on the Cotton Point Police Department Bo Andrews had been
outrun only once, by a colored man who had jumped out a window of a
house in the Bottoms and hidden someplace up the hill in Sleepy
Heights.

He tugged, and Trout tugged back. "I've got
cuffs if I've got to use them," the policeman said. The old man
was stronger than he looked. Trout suddenly stopped his struggling
and looked up and down the street. It was five-thirty in the
afternoon, he was on his way to the rest home to see his mother.
There was a nine-millimeter automatic in his coat pocket. The police
officer moved slightly behind him and took out his ticket book.

"
I'll need your name, sir," he said.

Trout did not answer.

"
Sir?"

Trout reached into his pocket, felt the comfortable,
cool weight of the handle. It occurred to him that he should write a
note of explanation soon. He was not sure what the note ought to say
or whom it was for.

"
If you won't give your name," the
policeman said, "I'll have to take you down myself."

And Trout, still thinking of the note, began to walk
with him. When they had gone a block, the policeman began to talk.
"You know, I thought you might run on me back there," he
said. "In a way, I wisht you had. Would of made the papers, I
bet."

Trout stopped, and the policeman stopped with him.
"You Want to make the papers, is that it?"

Bo Andrews blushed. "Not for me," he said.
"just something for my parents, you know, to see their sonny boy
in print." They crossed a street and headed toward the
courthouse. "I don't want the glory," he said. "It's
like a souvenir of the celebration .... "

Trout did not know what
celebration the policeman meant.

* * *

THE PRESIDING JUDGE OF the court Wednesday night was
Carl Bonner. Harry Seagraves sat at his side, acting as bailiff. As
Carl Bonner was not as humorous as the older attorney in his
questioning of the accused, Seagraves interjected remarks when he saw
an appropriate opening. It was almost six o'clock, and the court was
hearing its last case.

It was Seagraves who saw Paris Trout first. The
policeman — he didn't look old enough to be out of high school —
was walking a step behind him, proud as a colored boy in new tennis
shoes.

Trout himself was wearing a passive expression that
was familiar to Seagraves from the days they had spent together in
trial. Seagraves saw Trout had shaved himself pink-cheeked, he saw
the weight in his coat pocket.

The policeman had ears that stuck straight out under
his hat. He stopped Trout at the edge of the circle of spectators and
waited while Carl Bonner weighed the case against a science teacher
at the officers' academy. The science teacher pleaded a skin
condition, which Carl Bonner disregarded for a lack of expert medical
testimony.

The spectators were laughing at the exchange between
the science teacher and the court, and Seagraves was hoping Carl
Bonner would let him off. Fifty cents might mean something to a
teacher. Seagraves couldn't say that, though, without embarrassing
the man worse than he already was.

"
Fifty cents," Bonner said, and pounded the
table with the claw hammer they were using for a gavel. Then he sat
up higher in Judge Lewis's old chair and looked over the spectators.
"Is that all?" he said.

"
One more, Your Honor .... " It was the
young policeman. He stepped in front of Trout and bowed.

"Well, bring him on," Carl Bonner said.

There was some hooting and whistles when the crowd
saw who the officer had brought in, but more of the spectators went
quiet. The antique policemen — seniors from the high school — led
him the rest of the way. Carl Bonner looked down at Paris Trout and
smiled. "What have we here?" he said.

"
An unidentified suspect," the policeman
said. "Arrested on North Main Street, cheeks as smooth as a
baby's behind. Suspect has refused to provide identification or proof
of residency."

Carl Bonner was still smiling. "The court is
able to identify this suspect," he said.

Harry Seagraves saw Bonner's intention. He stood
halfway up and whispered in his ear, "Don't fool with this."

Bonner bent to listen, and then he straightened back
up. "Paris Trout," he said, "you have been charged by
this court of violating city ordinance 404A in that you have appeared
in public shaved during the week constituting the hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the founding of this city. How do you plead?"

Trout stood beneath Bonner, with no intention of
answering.

"
Mr. Trout?"

Seagraves got up again and cupped his hand in front
of Carl Bonner's ear. "Let him the hell go," he said. "I'm
not clowning with you, let him out." As he dropped back into his
chair, Trout followed his movement. That familiar flat, murderous
look on his face. Carl Bonner seemed to be thinking something over.
Then he cleared his throat and spoke. "Mr. Trout," he said,
"seeing how it is a well-established fact in the city of Cotton
Point that you still possess the first nickel you made, this court
has little hope of recovering any fine it might impose. Mr. Trout?"

Trout was still staring at Seagraves. He turned his
head now and fastened his look on Bonner. Bonner returned the look,
calm-faced. "It is the decision of this court that you be
remanded to the stocks for a period of time not to exceed one hour
and that your sentence begin immediately?

There was more whistling, but it was all from the
youngsters. The old-timers, the courthouse secretaries, the
businessmen celebrating on the way home — they all had gone quiet.
Some of them began to walk away even before the antique policemen led
Trout to the stocks. He went with them at first, and then, seeing
what they meant to do, he stopped dead in his tracks and would not be
moved. The antique policemen took an arm each, but they could not
pull Trout any closer to the stocks. As they tried, he turned his
head and looked at Harry Seagraves one more time. The antique
policemen dipped, taking his legs, and carried him the rest of the
way.

Trout began to struggle sincerely. He got an arm
loose and punched one of the boys in the neck, knocking off his hat.
The crowd was quiet, and the sounds of the hissing and grunts and
curses were clear all over the courthouse lawn.

The antique policeman who had been punched got one of
Trout's arms in up behind his back, bending him over. And in that
space, suddenly cleared, Seagraves saw her, framed in the crowd.
Frozen in what was happening. He saw that for all her words to the
contrary, she and Paris were still connected. Seagraves raised up out
of his seat. "Here, now," he said, "there's no need
for that."

Carl Bonner sat still. The antique policemen got
Trout's wrists into place. One of them brought the upper piece of the
mechanism down and held it there while the other secured it with a
wooden bolt. Trout cursed them and stood, bringing the stocks up off
the ground with him. One of the antique policemen tripped and fell,
the other took the full force of a kick from the old man high on the
leg.

The one on the ground tackled Trout's legs and
brought him and the stocks down. The one who had been kicked jumped
on top, his elbow landing across the top of Trout's nose. When
Seagraves pulled the boy on top off, Trout was bleeding.

"
Leave go," Seagraves said.

The antique policeman holding on to his legs would
not let go.

"
This here's a live one," he said.

"
Leave him go," Seagraves said again, and
lifted the boy by the front of his uniform. The material tore. Trout
lay on the ground, his hands still caught in the stocks, his
blood-splattered shirt rising and falling as he breathed. Seagraves
began to loosen the bolt, but then, remembering the pistol, he knelt
in such a way to cover what he did from view and reached into Trout's
coat pocket and removed it, dropping it into his own.

"
I'll leave this for you at the hotel in the
morning," he said.

Trout wiped at his nose with his shoulder. Seagraves
pulled the bolt free of the stocks. Trout sat up, rubbing his wrists,
then dabbing at his l nose. He looked behind him at the spectators
and then pointed his index finger at them, moving in a deliberate way
from one end to the
other.

"He's still sentenced to one hour," one of
the antique policemen said.

"
Be still," Seagraves said.

Trout got to his feet — no one tried to help —
and tucked his shirt into his pants and straightened his coat. In no
hurry. He stepped over the stocks lying at his feet and then walked
through the spectators who were still there to the street. He made a
left turn, in the direction of the nursing home.

"
The old sumbitch was strong," one of the
antique policemen said to the other. " 'Bout broke my leg where
he kicked me."

The other one was wiping at some grass that had stuck
to the front of his coat. "I got him for you," he said. "I
got him good in the nose."

Seagraves walked back to the judges' table, where
Carl Bonner was sitting in his black robe, looking vaguely pleased.
The crowd broke and headed different directions. He looked for Hanna,
but she was gone. Some of the women were unnerved, Seagraves could
see it in their faces. He reassured them as they passed, smiling, as
if what had happened were all some part of the festivities.

They knew about Paris Trout, though, and knew he
wasn't part of any celebration.

In a few minutes Seagraves took the flask out of his
pocket and offered Carl Bonner a drink.

"He went crazy, didn't he?" Bonner said. He
drank and returned the flask.

"
He was already crazy," Seagraves said.

Bonner shrugged. "Everybody's got to obey the
same law."

"
No," Seagraves said, "they don"t."
He put the flask back in his pocket without drinking; the good
feeling was gone.

"
Well, nobody was hurt," Bonner said.

Seagraves reached into another pocket and came out
with the pistol. He laid it on the table in front of the young
attorney without a word.

Carl Bonner shrugged. "Paris Trout isn't the
only one that owns a pistol," he said.

"
He's going off to jail, probably next month,"
Seagraves said. "He can't file his motions at the courthouse
then. In one week you can refile your petitions, and you and your
client can have any kind of divorce you want."

Carl Bonner shook his head. "There's no
satisfaction, is there?" he said. "All the trouble I've
been through on this, and in the end I beat him because he goes to
jail." He pushed the gun away, back toward Seagraves. "All
that effort, he never bent .... "

"
Bent to what?" Seagraves said.

Carl Bonner did not
answer.

* * *

"
I SAW YOU AT the courthouse today," he
said.

She was lying on her back, and the light from the
moon lay across her stomach and shoulders. He was close to the wall,
watching her muscles in the dark. Somewhere firecrackers were going
off.

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"You never think of something like that,"
he said, "that a policeman is going to bring Paris Trout to
kangaroo court. You give people credit for more sense .... "

She put a hand out in the dark, finding his face, and
then rested a finger across his lips. He dropped deeper into his
pillow.

"
You looked stricken," he said a little
later.

He lifted his head to see if she was looking stricken
now. A small, perfect breast in silhouette against the window. She
blinked, and he saw a tear roll over her eyelid. It came to him again
that she still had feelings for Paris Trout. "What were you
thinking," he said, "when they wrestled him to the ground?"

"
Nothing," she said, "I just saw it."

"
Did you remember what he'd done to you?"

It was quiet a moment. Then: "No. It seems like
someone else he did that to."

He kissed the palm of her hand and then her cheek. It
was wet. "You felt sorry for him," he said. His head was
right over hers now, but she looked past him toward the ceiling.