Vernon God Little (7 page)

I look around while everybody shuffles papers. Mom couldn't make it, which ain't such a bad thing. I learned that the authorized world doesn't recognize the knife. Your knife is invisible, that's what makes it so convenient to use. See how things work? It's what drives folk to the blackest crimes, and to sickness, I know it; the thing of everyone turning the knife just by saying hello, or something equally innocent-sounding. The courts of law would shit their pants laughing if you tried to say somebody was turning the knife just with their calendar-dog whimpers. But here's why they'd laugh: not because they couldn't see the knife, but because they knew nobody else would buy it. You could stand before twelve good people, all with some kind of psycho-knife stuck in them that loved-ones could twist on a whim, and they wouldn't admit it. They'd forget how things really are, and slip into TV-movie mode where everything has to be obvious. I guarantee it.

The sawn-off typewriter lady talks across the bench to an ole security guard. 'Oh my, it's a fact.

We had a copy of that same catalog, me and my girls.'

'No kidding,' says the guard, 'that same one, huh?' His tongue pushes some spit around his mouth. That means he's picturing whatever she just said. He shunts some spit around, picturing it for a moment, then he says, 'Don't forget the judge has girls too.'

'That's a fact,' says the typist.

They turn to stare daggers at me. The typist's daggers come wrapped in Kleenex, I guess so they don't get shit on them. I just stare at my Nikes. Things have gone beyond a fucken joke. You just know the justice system ain't set up for folk like me. It's set up for more obvious folk, like you see in movies.

Nah, if the facts don't arrive today, if everybody doesn't apologize and send me home, I'll jump bail and run over the fucken border. Against All Odds. I'll vanish into the cool of tonight, see if I fucken don't, hum cross-country with the moths, with my innocent-headed learnings and my ole panty dreams.

'All-a rise,' says an officer.

A bright-eyed lady with short gray hair and bifocal glasses glides behind the tallest desk. Judge Helen E Gurie says the sign. Her swivel chair rattles politely when she sits. The Chair of God.

'Vaine,' she says, 'it'd have to be one of your cases, now wouldn't it?'

'Gh-rrr. We have a suspect, Judge.'

Abdini stands. 'We apply pearlymoney herring, your honor.'

The judge squints over her glasses. 'A preliminary hearing? Wait one darned minute, I draw both your attentions to the Texas Family Code - this is a juvenile matter. Vaine, I sure hope you observed the provisions for service of process that apply in this instance.'

'Gh-r.'

'And why is no record of interview filed with the complaint?'

Just now the main door creaks open behind me. Sheriff Porkorney scrapes into the room and takes off his hat. Vaine stiffens like a bone.

'We hoped a particular piece of evidence would come in first, ma'am,' she says.

'You hoped the evidence would come in? You hoped it would just fly right in? How long has this young man been in custody?'

'Gh …' Vaine's eye flicks back to the sheriff. He just stands by the door, arms folded, real quiet.

'Good Lord!' Judge Gurie snatches a paper from her desktop. 'You're seeking indictment?' She removes her glasses, fixing a stare at Vaine. 'And fingerprints is all you have?'

'Let me explain, ma'am, that …'

'Deputy, I doubt you'll cook up a grand jury on one set of prints. Won't even defrost 'em.'

'It's more than one set, your honor.'

'Doesn't matter how many you have, they're all from the same exhibit, the sports bag. I mean

- please. Maybe if it was a gun …'

'Ma'am, some new information came into the public domain last night, which I thought …'

'The court isn't interested in what you thought, Vaine. When you take the pointed end of a stick and wake this whole tangled process up with it, we want to hear what you damn well know.'

'Well, the boy also lied, and he ran away from his interview … gh …'

Judge Gurie clasps her hands like a first-grade teacher. 'Vaine Millicent Gurie - I remind you the child is not on trial here. Given the particulars before me, I'm inclined to release your suspect and have a damn long talk with the sheriff about the quality of procedure reaching this bench.'

Her gaze penetrates Vaine's every hole, however many that is. At the back of the room, the sheriff's lips tighten. He puts on his hat and creaks back out through the door. I don't know about where you live, but around here we teach life's hard lessons with our lips.

Abdini stands. 'Objection!'

'Pipe down, Mr Abdini, we have other attorneys on call,' says the judge.

Gurie lifts her eyebrow. 'Your honor, this new information, you know …'

'No, I do not know. What I know ain't a whole lot so far.'

The typist and Gurie exchange a glance. They sigh. The ole court officer immediately turns to frown my way. 'She ain't seen it yet,' the guard behind me says under his breath. Everybody tightens their lips.

'What is going on here?' asks the judge. 'Has this court slipped into a parallel universe? Have I been left behind?'

'Ma'am, some new facts came to light - we're following them up right now.'

'Then I'm going to release your suspect until you can show me some particulars. I also expect you to apologize for all this trouble.'

A high-voltage tremor cracks through me, of hope, excitement, and ass-naked fear. You think I'm going to stick around for the so-called justice system to get its shit together? Am I fuck. Buses leave Martirio every two hours for Austin or San Antonio. The automatic teller machine with fifty-two dollars in it, from Nana's lawnmowing fund, is a block from the Greyhound station. Which is five blocks from here.

The typist sighs, and tightens her lips some more. Then she leans up to the bench and cups a hand to the judge's ear. Judge Gurie listens, frowning. She puts on her glasses and looks at me. Then at the typist.

'When's the next report? Lunch time?'

The typist nods; one righteous eye darts to Vaine. The judge reaches for her hammer. 'Court is adjourned until two o'clock.'

'Bam.'

'All-a rise,' says the guard.

Men hardened by the friction of learning, steel men of savvy quietly applied, crusty ole boys of rough-hewn glory, probably smoke a lonely cigarette in their cells during lunch breaks from court.

They probably don't have to talk to their moms.

'Well Vernon, what I mean is, do you have your own room, or did they put you with other - you know, other men …?'

Barry stands leering by the phone, eyes puckered into goats' cunts. It seems Eileena's eyebrows perch high this lunchtime too, as far as her wooden hair allows. I don't know about where you live, but around here we take the moral high ground with our eyebrows.

'Well you know,' says Mom, 'you hear about the nice boys, the clean boys, always getting - you know, you hear about bigger men, hardened criminals, always getting the nice boys and …'

After God-knows-how-many years of life in this free country she doesn't have the tools to just say, 'Have you been taken up the ass yet by some lifer?' That's how pathetic things are. Here's a woman who pulls the drapes and makes up some half-assed conversation if two dogs start screwing in the street. Yet, for all I know she probably takes a fucken fire-hydrant up the ass every night, just for kicks.

Boy, I tell you.

Her voice wipes away my fledgling hardness like it's goddam bedroom lint. What kind of fucken life is this? Light through the window calls me, sings of melted ice-cream on the sidewalk outside, the ghost of little tears nearby. Summer dresses full of fresh air, Mexico down the way. But not for me. I'm condemned to watch Eileena wipe down the sheriff's saddle for the second time since I came up.

I find myself wondering if the sheriff's saddle usually gets so much attention, and if it does, why it ain't worn away to nothing. Then I see the room has a TV. Eileena's eye snaps to it.

It's the lunchtime news. You hear the fanfare of trumpets and drums, then the face of an asshole appears in the far distance, staring through the back window of a departing Smith County Sheriff's truck.

'Vernon, I have some bones to pick with you,' says Mom.

'I have to go now.'

'Well Vernon …'

'Click.'

My eyes latch onto the screen. A breeze rustles cellophane on the Lechugas' teddy farm, then snags a wire of Lally's hair and floats it off his head. The pumpjack squeaks rhythmically under his voice. 'This proud community takes a decisive step from the shadow of Tuesday's devastation, with the arrest of a new player in the deadly web of cause and effect that has brought the once-peaceful town to its knees.'

'Ain't see me on my fuckin knees,' says Barry, straddling a chair.

'To his neighbors, Vernon Gregory Little seemed a normal, if somewhat awkward teenager, a boy who wouldn't attract attention walking any downtown street. That is - until today.'

Lush pictures fill the screen, of crime-scene tape dancing under a blackened sky, body-bags punctuating drag-marks of blood, moist ladies howling pizza-cheese bungees of spit. Then a school photo of me, grinning.

'I definitely saw changes in the boy,' says George Porkorney. You can see her cigarettes hidden behind the fruit-salad plant on the breakfast bar at home. 'His shoes got more aggressive, he insisted on one of those skinhead haircuts …'

'I know,' says Betty in back.

Cut to Leona Dunt. Her handbag needs to be a yard taller for how big the word Gucci is written on it. 'Wow, but he seemed like such a regular kid.'

Black, disordered xylophone music joins the soundtrack as the camera bumps up the hallway to my room. Lally stops by my bed to face the camera. 'Vernon Little was described to me as something of a loner; a boy with few close friends, given more to playing on his computer - and reading.' The camera takes a vicious dive into the laundry pile by the bed. Out comes the lingerie catalog. 'But we find no Steinbeck, no Hemingway in Vernon Little's private library - in fact, his literary tastes run only to this …' Pages flap across the screen, sassy torsos cut me that once tugged chains of shameful sap through my veins. Then we hit page 67. Flapping stops. 'An innocent prop,' asks Lally, 'or a chilling link to the confused sexuality implied by Tuesday's crimes?' Twisted violins join the xylophone. The shot pans over my computer screen to the file marked 'Homework'. 'Click.' Cue the amputee sex pictures I saved for ole Silas Benn.

'Well golly,' says Mom. 'I had no idea.'

Lally sits beside her on my bed, cranking his brow into a sympathetic A-frame. 'As Vernon's mother, would it now be fair to number you among the victims of this tragedy?'

'Well, I guess I am a victim. I really guess so.'

'Yet you maintain Vernon's innocence?'

'Oh God, a child is always innocent to his mother - well even murderers are loved by their families you know.'

Some fucken powerdime shift. Lally lets it sit there. Even Barry Gurie knows it's all over, he just sighs out of his chair and says, 'Time to go down.' He steadies me to the door, but I turn for the blow I know is coming. Things could've been different if I'd learned to spell earlier, if I'd just been a smarter, more regular kid. But as things turned out, I was almost seven before I could spell The Alamo.

So there's no title at all on the finger-painting I gave Mom when I was five. Just a bunch of stick-corpses and a shitload of red.

'Well, you can see he was just a normal little boy, in almost every way.'

'All-a rise.' The court officer detours around my computer, and a boxload of other shit that turned up on the courtroom floor. Mom's panty catalog has a table all to itself. Even my ole finger-painting is here, but they don't seem to have bothered with my Nike box. The ozone in court has a new, unhealthy crunch to it.

'Mr Abdini,' says the judge, 'I trust your client understands he is being arraigned - I draw your attention to the various issues of waiver that might apply.'

Abdini cocks his head. 'Your honor?'

'The matter will proceed to indictment, sir. Might be time for you to act.'

'Ma'am,' I say, 'this whole thing can be cleared up with a call to my witnesses, my teacher and all …'

'Shhh,' hisses Abdini.

'Counsel, please inform your client that he's not on trial here. Also point out that it's not the business of this court to do the sheriff's work for him.' She sits back for a moment, then turns to Vaine.

'Deputy - you have checked alibi witnesses?'

'I'm afraid the last witness, Miss Lori-Bethlehem Conner, passed away this morning, Judge.'

'I see. What about the boy's teacher?'

'Marion Nuckles didn't mention the suspect's whereabouts at the time of the tragedy.'

'He didn't mention, or you didn't ask?'

'His doctors say he won't be able to talk until the end of March next year. We couldn't get more than a few words, ma'am.'

'Well dammit Vaine. What were those words about?'

'Another firearm.'

'Oh good Lord.'

Vaine nods, tightening her lips. She can't fucken stop herself glancing at me as she does it.

'We apply bail your honor,' says Abdini.

'Is that right,' says Gurie. 'Judge, the boy has a history of absconding, from before he was even in trouble …'

Abdini throws out his arms. 'But little man is part of family home, with plenty things in the house - why he won't stay?'

'It's a single-parent family, Judge. I don't see how a woman on her own can override the will of a teenage boy.' She ain't seen the fucken knife in my back.

'It's nothing short of tragic,' says the judge. 'Every child needs a man's hand. Is there no way to contact the father?'

'Gh - he's presumed deceased, Judge.'

'Oh my. And the boy's mother couldn't make it to court today?'

'No, ma'am - her car is under repair.'

'Well,' says Judge Gurie. 'Well, well, well.' She leans back into her throne and makes a church with her fingers. Then she turns to me. 'Vernon Gregory Little, I'm not going to turn down your application for bail at this time. But neither am I going to release you. In light of the facts here presented, and commensurate with my responsibility to this community, I am remanding you in custody pending a psychiatric report. With reference to any recommendations in that report, I may consider your application at a later date.'