Karen and I were horrified. We pleaded with the boys to end the competition and spare the crayfish. We tried to wrestle the buckets away, but the boys were too strong; we threw rocks at them and called them names; we even offered to let them kiss us-and threatened to kiss them if they refused to stop-but it was no use. There must be something genetic in boys that makes the suffering of living creatures an endless source of fascination and amusement.
Even though we couldn’t liberate the crayfish, I was determined to bring the boys to justice for their crimes, so I established a courtroom of rocks and logs along the riverbank and held trials. I had seen my Pop Pop Bellini, valiant and righteous, cross-examining witnesses in court, and I had testified about the accident with my arm, answering the questions Mr. Gwynne asked as carefully as I could, so I knew just how to do it. I appointed myself prosecutor and told Karen she could be the judge and the jury. To my shock and dismay, Karen betrayed both the crayfish and me by refusing to participate, claiming that punishing the boys wouldn’t do any good. I thought she was sweet on one of them, probably Lenny Basilio, who kept running up to show her his crayfish. Even the boys doubted Karen’s motives, but to their credit they knew they’d done wrong, and they’d gotten bored with the killing and thought trials might be fun. Since Karen wouldn’t help, they offered to sit as the jury for each other, promising to listen impartially to the evidence and render a fair verdict. I would hear none of it, but Karen, relishing her role as spoiler, reminded me that a jury is supposed to be composed of the defendant’s peers, leaving me no choice but to agree. I would be both prosecutor and judge, and Karen would sit by and watch.
I put Lenny Basilio on trial first to spite her. Lenny was the fattest boy and the weakest, the one always being pushed around. He was also the nicest. He’d been afraid at first to catch the crayfish and had to be teased by the others into doing it, but once he got started he became very efficient and caught the largest crayfish of the day-a wise old granddaddy of a crustacean the size of a small baby lobster. Although by far the biggest and most powerful crayfish in his collection, it was too heavy and slow to defend itself against the younger ones and became the first casualty in Lenny’s bucket. Lenny looked genuinely remorseful when the big crayfish died. I knew he’d be easy to convict for the murder.
I called him to the witness stand-a flat piece of river rock resting on a platform of sticks-and told him to raise his right hand. We recognized no right against self-incrimination along the banks of the Little Juniata River; all defendants were forced to testify.
“Do you swear to tell the whole truth, Lenny Basilio, so help you God?” I said.
Lenny shrugged his shoulders and sat down.
I placed his bucket before him, fetid and stinking, filled with crayfish parts. “Did you put these crayfish in this bucket?”
Lenny looked into the pail and then over at his buddies.
“Remember, Lenny,” I warned him, “you’re under oath. You’ll be struck dead by a bolt of lightning if you lie.”
Lenny let out a whine. “But the crayfish pinched me first!”
“Yes or no?” I said. “Did you fill this bucket with crayfish?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right, you did. And after you filled it, you stirred it up so the crayfish would snap at each other, didn’t you?”
Before Lenny could answer, I dredged through the water and pulled out the lifeless granddaddy crayfish, already turning white in the heat like a steamed jumbo shrimp. Its right pincer had been amputated, just like my right arm. I showed the crayfish to the jury and made them take a good long look at it; although a few of them snickered and made coarse jokes, the expressions on most of their faces suggested that even they were appalled and saddened by what had happened. Then I showed it defiantly to Karen, who shook her head silently, and turned back to Lenny.
“You did this, didn’t you Lenny Basilio?” I said. “You killed it. You put it in your bucket and killed it. Now it’ll never see its family again. What if somebody reached down here right now and pulled you off that rock and put you in a bucket?”
“But I didn’t mean to,” Lenny pleaded. He looked like he was about to cry.
I dropped the crayfish into the bucket and turned toward the jury in disgust. “The prosecution rests.”
“Guilty! Guilty!” the boys all cheered.
“Wait a minute,” I said sagely. “You’ve got to vote on it to make it official. We have to take a poll. John Gaines, what say you?” I spoke the way the courtroom tipstave spoke while polling the jury during my trial.
John Gaines glared at Lenny. “Guilty,” he said, leaning forward and barring his teeth for effect. “Guilty as sin.”
“Mike Kelly, what say you?”
“Guilty!” he said with enthusiasm.
“Ok,” I said. “Robby…I don’t know your last name.”
“Temin.”
“Robby Temin, what say you?”
Robby looked sympathetically at Lenny. “Guilty,” he whispered.
“Jimmy Reece?”
Jimmy threw a rock at Lenny and laughed. “Guilty…and he’s a crybaby too!”
The boys all laughed.
I slid behind the judge’s bench and banged a stone against the river rock. “Order in the court!” I hollered. “Order in the court!” The boys became silent instantly. I was impressed with my newfound power.
“Wally Nearhoof, what say you?”
Wally glared back at me, full of insolence and venom. He was the biggest and meanest boy, the bully of the bunch. Everybody was afraid of Wally Nearhoof, including me. He had a look of malice about him, and he held it for a long time on me, boring through me like the twist of a drill.
“Not guilty,” he said, keeping his fixed eyes on me.
My jaw dropped. Before I could protest, the other boys chimed in: “What? Not guilty? No way! He’s as guilty as the devil!”
“I said, not guilty,” Wally insisted.
Lenny Basilio’s face brightened. By some miracle, Wally the bully had actually come to his rescue. It was a first. With a warm smile of gratitude and friendship, he virtually danced over to Wally to thank him; but as soon as Lenny got there, Wally cocked his arm and thumped Lenny hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, knocking him to the ground. He leered at the other boys. “Just kidding,” he said. “Guilty. Guilty as hell! Let’s hang him!”
The boys broke into a riot of cheers. “Guilty! Guilty as hell! Hang him! Let’s hang Lenny!”
Lenny scrambled to his feet and backed away. He looked terrified; tears poured from his eyes.
I clapped the river rocks. “Order! Order!” I said. “Order, or I’ll hold you all in contempt and end this trial right now!”
The boys quieted down and I turned to Lenny, staring back at me with miserable, desperate eyes. I felt no sympathy for him. I was still thinking about what he’d done to the crayfish.
“Lenny Basilio,” I said gravely. “You’ve been found guilty of murdering crayfish.”
Lenny hung his head low.
“Murder is the most serious crime there is,” I continued, “but since everybody else did it too, we can’t hang you.”
Lenny perked up but the boys started booing.
I slammed the rocks together again. “Order!”
“We can’t hang you, Lenny, but you’ve got to be punished…” I thought for a moment what his punishment should be, then I picked up his bucket and shoved it in his face. “As the judge of this court, I hereby sentence you, Lenny Basilio, to spend the rest of your life inside a bucket, like the crayfish you killed!” I emptied the crayfish parts on the ground and put the bucket over Lenny’s head like a dunce cap.
“Life in a bucket! Life in a bucket!” the boys all laughed and cheered.
Lenny pulled the bucket off his head. Hatred filled his eyes. “One-armed freak!” he screamed at me. “It should have been you that died in the bucket, not the crayfish!” He punched me as hard as he could in the stomach, knocking the wind out of me, and ran home.