Where Mercy Flows (3 page)

I had not craved my mother’s presence during nine hours of grueling labor in a Nevada hospital. I hadn’t needed pep talks
or hand-holding. But when I first held my son, touched his tiny feet—when he nuzzled and found my breast, his fingers gently
kneading as he sucked—it was then that I wanted my mother desperately. He was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He
was the best thing I had ever done. Now my mother knew—I saw it in her eyes—that something good could come from me.

No one asked why we had come, or how long we would stay. I guess it was evident by the amount of stuff that we all unloaded
from the Jeep (which included my bedside table, two favorite lamps, TJ’s Donald Duck bank, and a stack of mismatched towels)
that it might be more than an overnight visit. Mom seemed to sense my fatigue. She warmed some chowder while the Judge foraged
in the garage for a cot for TJ. I watched her flit from stove to counter to table like she had in one of a thousand childhood
scenes, comfortable and familiar. It felt good to be mothered again.

That night I slept in my old bedroom. My Ferrari posters had at some time been replaced by a couple of tastefully framed floral
prints, and the bedspread was new. But when the light was off and the window opened just a crack, the sweet scent of the cottonwoods
that thrived along the river floated in to me like it had on hundreds of childhood nights. Their green buds were new and fragrant.
I could hear the water rushing past. The sound of it used to stir longings in me that I couldn’t understand, just as the distant
whistles of the midnight trains that ambled across Carter trestle had. Wordless, invisible beckonings that caused my mind
to wander.

Maybe it was the river’s fault that I had wandered so far, for so long. Maybe it had wooed me away subliminally while I slept.
Then again, it was possibly the very thing that called me back. Tomorrow I will explore it again, I told myself, and in my
dreams I was twelve again, running as fast as the river.

THE JUDGE AND TJ tromped past my bedroom window at some ungodly hour of the morning. After that I couldn’t sleep. I followed
the scent of coffee down the hall, still wearing the long T-shirt I had slept in. The kitchen was empty so I poured myself
a cup, draining the pot dry, and took it back to my room.

My hand smoothed the bright new quilt at the foot of the bed. I had been seventeen the last time I slept here. I wondered
what ever happened to the collection of animal skulls that had graced my shelf. There were deer, coyote, rabbit, possum and
my favorite, a beaver whose curved yellow teeth slid up an inch into its skull. That one still had flesh and fur attached
when I found it on the creek bank. I buried it next to Mom’s daisies and dug it up a few weeks later to bake in the sun. It
had turned out real nice.

My son’s voice snapped me back to adulthood. I opened the window and called to him.

“Mom!” He bounded toward me through field grass half his height. “Me and Grandpa went to the river!” He was a beautiful sight
and the morning air smelled sweet.

The Judge waved to me. “Come out here! I want to show you something!”

What could it hurt? I stuffed my nightshirt into my jeans and slid out the window until the dewy grass surprised my toes.

“Hey!” The Judge sounded stern. “What have I told you about using the door?”

“Sorry,” I called back, “just habit.”

“Bring the garbage bucket by the back porch!” he called, and he and TJ headed off toward the barn.

By the time I caught up, there were coffee grounds and something orange on my leg. “What are you doing? Raising pigs?”

The Judge just smiled proudly and guided us through the open barn door. It was dark inside and smelled of damp earth. My pupils
adjusted to the dim light as he led us between two long wood-framed troughs filled with dirt. “Look here.” At that he pushed
up his sleeve, thrust his arm into the soil and pulled up a writhing fistful of purplish-red worms.

“Worms!” TJ was impressed. “Can I hold them?”

My father placed them tenderly on his little palm and then looked at me like a boy himself. “What do you think, Sam? Do you
want to hold some too?”

“I’ll pass.”

Then he went into a long, boring scenario about how to build a worm bed and how you use a mixture of peat moss and manure,
at which point I made TJ dump his handful back in the box.

“You don’t have any animals. Where do you get the manure?”

“From the Duncans’ Appaloosa Ranch. Chester gives me all I need. Of course, it has to be aged beyond the heating stage and
the urine’s got to be leached out. Then you just have pure manure.”

“Pure manure,” I said. “Uh-huh.” I thought to ask about Chester’s son, Donnie, but something caused me to hold my tongue.

“What do they eat, Grandpa?”

The Judge reached for the bucket at my feet. “See that oatmeal you didn’t finish?” TJ peered into the mess of scraps until
he recognized his breakfast and then nodded. “That’s their favorite. Now, I’m going to need your help, son.” He set TJ on
a turned-over washtub and passed him the pail. “Okay, dump it on in there.”

They dug and dumped and smoothed out the soil, while I sat on a stool observing the man I used to know as my father.

Actually, I can’t say that I ever knew him. The Judge’s mind had always been a mysterious universe to me. There seemed to
be no question he could not answer, which was good if you were too lazy to look something up in the encyclopedia but bad if
you wanted to blast through your homework and get on to more worthwhile things. A simple question about the length of the
Panama Canal would inevitably turn into a dissertation on the history and politics of its construction. Worse yet, after the
unwelcome barrage of information, my father had a habit of asking questions back. “So, what do you think? Should the U.S.
have agreed to return ownership and control to the Panamanians?” I never had a clue.

My sister didn’t freeze up like I did. She would screw up her face thoughtfully and then blurt out an opinion with no sign
of fear that her answer might be idiotic. Of course, it never was. Probably because she actually paid attention to what he
had said.

The Judge’s opinions were as solid as boulders and God help the man or child who stood in their path when they rolled. As
a teenager I was crushed by them. Flattened out like Wile E. Coyote, only I didn’t spring back so fast. My policy now, and
believe me I had given the subject much thought, was to avoid any subjects deeper than the weather. So far we were doing just
fine.

I watched him touch my son and wondered if the Judge might have softened up a bit over the years. I could only hope.

In the courtroom the Judge’s words had been known to bring hardened attorneys to the brink of tears. He didn’t put up with
any high-sounding verbosity, and anyone who spent time in his presence left either loving him or hating him. There was no
in-between.

When I was old enough, I became aware that my classmates, most of whom had never met the Judge, had an opinion of him, which
they had inherited from their parents. Regina Wiggins said my father was a “mean, horrible man” and told some kids on the
playground that he beat me and that was why I always had bruises on my legs. I didn’t know about that rumor until about a
year later. The day I found out, I ambushed her on her way home from the bus stop. I ran ahead to where she always took a
shortcut through the woods and hid in the salal bushes with a stick. She never knew what hit her. She ran home screaming and
babbling and the next day told everyone that a crazy man had attacked her, but I set them straight. I told them that her father
kicked her because she didn’t say, “Yes, sir,” fast enough when he told her to take out the garbage.

I defended my father blindly for a few years, not understanding my schoolmates’ accusations any more than they did. What went
on in court was never discussed at our dinner table. Any conversations between my parents about my father’s cases were held
in private, and I rarely thought about his identity outside of our home unless someone brought it up at school. My classmates
had an unfair advantage over me, as their parents rarely made the news.

My ninth-grade social studies teacher, Mr. Murchy, had us dissect the
State of Washington v. Ronald Enrich
case because it was a current event, and one that raised quite a buzz around the beehive since both the accused and the judge
(who happened to be my father) made their abode right here in Carter. Ronald Enrich was only seventeen when, in a fit of rage,
he smashed his mother’s head repeatedly on the stone fireplace mantel in their home.

Once the wave of horror at the actual crime spread through town, people began probing for a reason. Ron was such a handsome
boy. He had big brown eyes and a disarming grin. Sure, he was involved in a few angry scuffles with players on opposing football
teams, but that aggressive tenacity also got Darlington High into the state play-offs. (The team’s ensuing loss, while Ron
was in jail awaiting his trial, was an outright embarrassment to the community.)

Thelma Romack, a waitress at the Halfway Café, said Carol Enrich never left a tip and of course it was no reason to murder
a person, but didn’t she have the most annoying laugh? Alice Forsythe said now that Carol was dead she held no grudge, but
she would always remember how Carol took the credit for the success of last year’s homecoming weekend when Alice was the one
who did most of the work.

It turned out Mrs. Enrich had been reading Ronald’s mail. The public defender apparently had no qualms initially about the
judge and the defendant being from the same small town, obviously thinking it would work in his client’s favor. He was wrong
about that. The Judge had Ronald tried as an adult and he was sentenced to life in the state penitentiary. The public outcry
was heard beyond Carter and our river valley. The case was discussed on a local radio talk show and followed by the Seattle
network news stations. I saw my father’s picture on the second page of
The Seattle Times
, and the headline above it that read,
THE JUDGMENT OF ALMIGHTY DODD
.

The class chewed and swallowed the facts as presented by
The Herald, The Seattle Times
and the
Darlington Weekly
, and then barfed up the verdict. Seventy percent thought Ronald ought to have been given leniency. Most of my classmates
thought my father was a merciless tyrant, and the rest were undecided. I was in the seventy percent.

As a child, I remember the Judge going to the courthouse every morning, returning as faithfully as the tide every night. Sometime
after dinner he would retire to his study, which was sort of like the Holy of Holies because you had better have a good reason
for going in there—or have a rope on your leg so someone could pull you out. The Judge was pretty intense when he was deciding
a case. If Lindsey and I weren’t noisy, he might keep his door open just a crack. I rarely watched him read his boring old
books, but once in a while his strange murmurings drew us to the bright wedge of light in the hall to spy. He would lean way
back in his chair and talk to the ceiling and then he might be quiet for a long time, running those powerful hands through
his dark hair. Finally, he would lurch forward, his open hand smacking the desk, and proclaim, “That’s it!” tumbling his startled
spies backward in the hall.

That’s the way I remember him. And now the powerful hand that raised the gavel was elbow-deep in a trough of horse dung.

“So what’s the plan? Are you going to retire from the bench and sell worms?”

The Judge looked up, obviously amused. “No. I don’t think so.”

“That old guy at Carter Store said he needs a couple dozen more cartons.”

The Judge’s face brightened. “Did he now?” He turned and reached for a stack of white foam cartons on a plank table. “How
high can you count, TJ?”

“Fifty hundred.”

“Good. Here we go.” He proceeded to scoop a pile of dirt from the bed onto a wire mesh screen and shake it like a miner panning
for gold. The black earth mixture and the smallest of worms fell through the holes. The rest wriggled frantically, as if suddenly
caught naked in public. “There’s a nice one,” the Judge said as he dropped it into his cup. “Two, three . . .”

“Four!” TJ chimed in.

“Then why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Well, I enjoy it.” He raised one eyebrow halfway up his forehead. “I didn’t mean to have so many when I started out. I just
wanted a few worms handy for guests who didn’t fly-fish. Matt used to bring his boys over here to toss a line every once in
a while, you know. Then your mother started using them in her planters to improve the soil. She says her geraniums are heartier
and bloom longer. When I got too many, I stuck a sign in the yard. At first I gave them away free, but that makes people uncomfortable.
They don’t come back. Then I painted ‘$1.00’ on the sign. You’d be surprised how many people stop now.”

“You want people stopping here at all hours so you can walk all the way out to the barn and dig worms for them? For a dollar?”

He smiled like he had a secret I couldn’t possibly understand. “It’s no bother. When I’m not here the locals know to just
dish up their own. Sometimes I find bills on the workbench or nailed to the wall. Don comes by every once in a while.” I must
have looked confused. “Donnie Duncan. He asks about you.”

“He’s still here?” I was shocked. Donnie was the one who couldn’t wait to get out of this nowhere town that didn’t even show
up on some maps. The Judge paused and looked at me then, his eyebrows curving down like lazy question marks. He was always
frugal with his words, careful to assemble them just right before they touched his lips. I knew that somehow a connection
had been made to the past simply by the mention of my old friend’s name. Not yet. I wasn’t ready for questions. I turned back
toward the open barn door. “I think I’ll go see what Mom is doing.”

Over my shoulder I saw him staring after me. He forced his eyes back to my son and dropped the last worm into the cup. “Thirteen.
Always give ’em more than they expect. Right, TJ?”