Saturday afternoon spring is definitely in the air.
It has made it all the way to 78 this afternoon.
Even as unobservant as I am, I notice the trees beginning to bud and some daffodils blooming in the yards on Orchard Lane. Bear Creek before the mosquitoes arrive can be a nice place. As a kid here, my memory seems stuck in the sweltering summers of the Delta.
In Angela’s yard there is a for sale sign. I wonder how much her house is worth. With so many others leaving, undoubtedly not as much as she wants. Angela greets me at the door with a warm smile. She is wearing a pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse and nothing on her feet.
“Well, you look comfortable,” she says, giving me the once over. I am wearing a pair of jeans and a pullover short-sleeved shirt that Sarah gave me for Christmas.
And you look sexy, I think, but don’t say. I glance over my shoulder across the street. The house is dark, but Mrs. Petty must be in there somewhere peering out at us. As gorgeous as today is, I would have thought she would have been outside puttering in the flower bed around her house.
“Do you think Mrs. Petty approves of you entertaining in short pants?”
The smile on Angela’s face disappears.
“She died in her sleep while I was in Atlanta. Her sister found her. I wasn’t here to go to her funeral.”
I try not to stare at Angela’s legs. They look great.
“She probably died of boredom,” I comment, “because you weren’t here for her to spy on.”
Angela laughs.
“You’re terrible. We’re all snoops here. You know that.”
I turn my head away and stare at the sign in her yard.
“Bad timing, wasn’t it? Now her house goes on the market at the same time.” Angela says dryly, “I can tell you’re really broken up over this.”
Death. It’s seldom convenient.
“You don’t seem all that upset either,” I observe.
“She had a long life,” Angela says.
“Not everybody does.”
Since it is too pleasant to stay inside, we end up in her backyard drinking margaritas. I must have passed some test for Angela to show me off this way. In the next hour before it grows dark from the small brick patio she waves casually to her neighbors on both sides. I don’t know them, though doubtless with a couple of phone calls they can find out who I am if they don’t already know. Whatever the reason, Angela seems more relaxed. She admits to feeling better now that she’s made the decision to leave Bear Creek.
“When the house sells, I’m going to move. I thought the boys would be angry, but they weren’t.”
“They’re probably relieved,” I say, licking salt from the rim of the glass.
“Farming sounds like hard work. Where are you moving?” I ask, not having anticipated this decision so quickly.
Angela picks at a spot on the arm of the deck chair.
“Maybe Atlanta, maybe Memphis. The problem is, I haven’t seen a lot of job ads for farmers’ wives.”
So that is why she went to visit her old college roommate.
“Have you thought about Little Rock?” I ask, trying to see her eyes for a clue to what she is thinking.
“Now that your boys are in college, you don’t have to worry about the
schools. It’s the center of the state. Granted, there are bad areas, but there are plenty of safe neighborhoods, too. You could easily get a job as a bookkeeper.”
She looks up at me, her face solemn as an owl’s.
“I have thought about it,” she says.
“But I don’t want you to think I’m chasing you, Gideon.”
I laugh at the thought.
“If our relationship so far is your idea of a chase, I figure I’m safe until the turn of the century.”
Instead of smiling, her eyes fill with tears.
“I’m so scared. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve lived here thirty years.
It hasn’t been easy, but we made it.
Now, all I do is lie awake thinking: What if I can’t sell the house?
What if Cecil and Nancy can’t even pay me the first year? Who wants to hire a fifty-year-old woman from the Arkansas Delta who never held a job in her life?”
I reach over and pat her right hand, which has a death grip on her chair.
“It’s going to be okay,” I say, not understanding until this moment how little self-confidence Angela has had. Maybe for good reason. Her life with Dwight wasn’t a bowl of cherries, and as good as she looks, most employers would rather have a perky twenty-two year-old who is already a whiz with spreadsheets than a widow trying to support two kids in college.
Over a delicious dinner of pasta and salad, Angela pumps me about the case. I tell her what I’ve been doing the last week, but feel I shouldn’t reveal to her that Butterfield has offered Class a deal. It is not that I don’t trust her, but even I have my limits of violating client confidentiality.
She sips from a glass of the California zinfandel I brought along and then asks, her voice wistful, “Isn’t there a chance that the case against Paul could be dropped? If they don’t have any evidence other than the tape?”
I eye my empty glass and decide against another one.
“I have no idea,” I say cautiously, but as usual made slightly irritable by her concern for Paul.
“Why do you care so much?”
“Even if he is found innocent, his family will be tarred by this for the rest of their lives,” Angela says passionately.
“I may be leaving here soon, but some people won’t. It isn’t right!”
Again, she breaks into tears, and this time I am allowed to lead her into her sons’ bedroom. She turns on a light between the twin beds and turns to me, her face mostly in shadow.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask, wondering if she will be upset tomorrow.
For an answer, she kisses me and pulls me down on the bed on top of her. For once, we do not talk about Bear Creek or the lawsuit. Sober, I leave about eleven and make the two-hour drive back to Blackwell County. Even though Mrs. Petty is dead, her ghost may be watching.
Wednesday morning Class finally tells me he has decided to reject Butterfield’s offer.
“I don’t want to do that now,” he says vaguely, rubbing his eyes as he stares at me through the glass. He has been complaining he can’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night.
My reaction is mixed, to say the least. I’d love to get Paul, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if my client perjured himself.
“Even if Butterfield tells me this is the only offer he will make, I don’t necessarily believe it,” I say.
“It depends on how bad he wants to get Paul Taylor If he does, he’ll call me right before the trial.”
Bledsoe leans back in his chair and folds his arms. He wants me to get
out of here and get to work.
Twenty minutes later at the courthouse in Bear Creek, Butterfield takes my news calmly.
“I’ll just have to manage without him,” he says, the tone of his voice as amiable as ever.
I hem and haw around, but I can’t get him to give me any indication that this rejection closes the door permanently. Pokerfaced, Butterfield stands and shakes my hand, dismissing me.
“It’ll be an interesting trial. Did you hear what happened in Helena yesterday?”
I nod, feeling a little weak. Butterfield got a first-degree murder charge to stick against a black woman accused of murdering her husband.
Usually, that kind of charge is knocked way down by the time the jury comes back.
“It sounds like you did a good job.”
“I get lucky every now and then,” he says, escorting me out of his office. If he is upset, I can’t tell it.
I head over to Dickerson’s office and find him alone behind a computer modifying jury instructions for a civil trial beginning next week in Blytheville, in the northeast corner of the state. I wonder if he has ever come to his office without wearing a tie. Dick is definitely from
the old school, which holds that an attorney’s name in bold type in the yellow pages is a betrayal of the ideals of the profession.