He didn’t hear much of what Rev. Brown said. Instead, he observed Missy. Her veil hid her face and he couldn’t tell if she was crying, she seemed so still.
When the Rev. Brown turned to her and cued her to toss a handful of dirt on the casket that had been poised over the hole, Joe heard Missy say, “No thank you.”
On their way down a dirt pathway to the parking lot, Marybeth said how odd it was to attend the funeral for a man she barely knew, and she wondered aloud why members of Earl’s extended family hadn’t shown up.
Joe shrugged, wondering the same thing himself.
“I’d like to know how much that monument set Missy back,” Joe said. “It’ll be the tallest thing in the cemetery now.”
April and Lucy argued about where they wanted to go eat since it was Saturday and lunch out had been the incentive offered to attend the funeral.
“I couldn’t tell,” he said. “Was your mother crying?”
“Who knows?”
Joe reached out and found Marybeth’s hand and squeezed it. As he did, he heard a motor start up in the parking lot.
He looked up to see a boxy old-model yellow van back out of a space unnecessarily fast and race away.
“Who was that?” Marybeth asked Joe.
“I’m not sure. I thought I saw two people in the front, but I couldn’t see their faces.”
“I wonder if they were coming to the funeral and got here late. It would have been nice to have a few more mourners.”
“Yup,” Joe said, watching the van descend over the hill as if it were being chased by bees.
AUGUST 29
You cannot make a wind-mill goe with a paire of bellowes.
—GEORGE HERBERT
18
Joe escorted Marybeth up the stone steps of the Twelve Sleep County Courthouse for the arraignment of her mother in the courtroom of Wyoming District Judge Hewitt. The building had been erected of rough granite blocks and topped with a marble dome in the 1880s, and it reflected the original grandiosity of what the town was predestined to become but never did. Joe opened the heavy door for her.
“Your mom isn’t the first celebrity tried here,” he said. “Big Nose Bart was found guilty here back in the range war days. Lots of Old West outlaws were tried here. Most of them found innocent.”
“Joe,” Marybeth said with exasperation, “my mother is not an outlaw.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to provide some historical perspective.”
“That doesn’t help,” she said. “My colleagues at the library tiptoe around me like there was a death in the family.”
“There was,” Joe said, before he could catch himself.
She turned on him. “You are not being helpful. What I mean is, good people don’t know how to act around me. I don’t know how to act around me, either. Do I go about my business as if my mother wasn’t accused of murder, or do I walk around with my head down, ashamed?”
Joe reached out and stroked her cheek. “Keep your chin up,” he said. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.”
She nodded and thanked him with her eyes. “Which way?” she said. “I’ve never been in this building before.”
Judge Hewitt was small, dark, and twitchy. He’d been a judge for seventeen years and Joe appreciated Hewitt’s lack of pomposity and almost manic insistence on a fast, no-nonsense pace in his courtroom. He was known for cutting off long-winded questions and statements and ordering lawyers to get to the point. He often asked especially verbose attorneys, in front of the jury and their clients, “Are you being paid by the word?”
Joe and Marybeth entered the courtroom. It was narrow and ancient with a high stamped-tin ceiling and the acoustics were hollow and awful. The pine-paneled walls were covered by old paintings depicting 1940s versions of local Western history: politically incorrect renderings of Indian massacres filled with dripping scalps and war paint, cavalry charges, grizzly bear hunts, powwows, covered wagons loaded with cherubic children. Joe was intimately familiar with each and every one of them since he’d spent so much time over the years in the room waiting to testify in game and fish violation cases. Joe disliked being inside courtrooms nearly as much as hospitals, and always felt uncomfortable, constrained, and false when he was inside either.
“There she is,” Marybeth whispered, almost to herself.
Joe looked up. Missy sat in the first row on the left side with her back to them, next to the broad buckskin-covered shoulders of Marcus Hand. Missy had her hair up in a matronly bun and was wearing a light print dress. The effect, Joe thought, was that she looked older than her age. He was shocked.
He wondered if Hand had coached her. After all, she’d been at home on the ranch for a week since she made bail, sharing the rambling mansion with Hand and his team of attorneys, paralegals, and investigators. She’d had plenty of time to regroup since the arrest and to work on her appearance, to work her magic. But for those without that knowledge, it looked as though she’d thrown on a dress minutes before court in her jail cell and had been denied makeup or a mirror.
On the other side of the aisle, Dulcie Schalk studied notes on a legal pad. She wore a dark business suit with a skirt and black flats. Sheriff McLanahan lounged next to Schalk, arm flung back over the bench, chin up, and looking smarmy and bored, Joe thought.
Four people stood in front of the bench as Judge Hewitt glared down at them. The two men in the middle were in orange jumpsuits and boat shoes. They had long black hair and dark skin. Joe recognized them as Eddie and Brent Many Horses, Eastern Shoshones from the reservation. They’d been long-distance runners in high school and he’d checked their fishing licenses more than once. Bookending the Many Horses was public defender Duane Patterson on their left, and Dulcie Schalk’s deputy county attorney Jack Pym on their right.
“What’s going on?” Marybeth whispered to Joe, as they found a seat several rows back from her mother.
“Arraignment day,” Joe whispered back. “Judge Hewitt likes to do them one after the other each Monday. The Many Horses brothers are accused of stealing cars and dealing meth. Your mother is next in line.”
“My God,” Marybeth whispered, shaking her head. “This is too unbelievable.”
Joe sat back and took in the scene. Everyone, with the exception of the Many Horses brothers and their counsel, was waiting for the next event. Jim Parmenter and Sissy Skanlon sat amidst a cluster of a half-dozen reporters from various newspapers, radio and television stations. Several of McLanahan’s deputies, including Sollis, took over the seats directly behind Dulcie Schalk and the sheriff behind the prosecution table. A dozen or so local busybodies Joe usually saw clustered around coffee cups at the Burg-O-Pardner and the diner were scattered through the court, simply out of curiosity, he assumed. This was certainly a different feel from the initial appearance, and the gravity of the situation struck him. No doubt, he thought, Missy noticed it, too.
“She’s looking back,” Marybeth whispered.
Missy had turned in her seat to assess the courtroom crowd and her eyes searched slowly through the room until they found Joe and Marybeth. “She sees us,” Marybeth said.
There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin looked like parchment. She looked so sad, so small, so . . . wronged.
Marybeth clenched her fist in a “stay strong” gesture, and Missy smiled sadly and nodded. When she turned back around, Marybeth said to Joe, “I’ve never seen her look worse. How can anyone think she was capable of what she’s accused of?”