“No, you’re wrong,” Rainey agrees.
“That’s impossible.”
“I didn’t say he did,” I respond defensively, but from the looks on their faces I may have changed their lives forever. A priest at Subiaco used to warn my Christian Doctrine class that faith for some of us would be a rudderless ship subject to the strongest wind. With my words, the storm that lately has been energizing the lives of my daughter and girlfriend may have ebbed. I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t admit that I hoped it was so.
“The jury’s coming back!” Glider’s bailiff yells at me from across the courtroom. My heart thumping, I look down at my watch. It has only been an hour, a terrible omen. The longer they’re out, the better. I hand my cup to Sarah and wave at Leigh to come down front.
Coming toward me, she looks stricken, obviously reading the fear on my face. I try to speak, but no words come out. I can hear the comments tomorrow:
the jury was barely out an hour. Maybe the Arkansas Supreme Court will reverse because of incompetence of counsel. I wonder if I can get back into social work. As the jury files back in, I have given up pretending I can read results on the faces of jurors. I scan their faces, but they merely seem anxious to get home.
Leigh unexpectedly takes my hand and holds it as Grider silently reads the verdict form. Her fingers are rigid as she digs her nails into mine. The room is so quiet I can hear Dan’s slightly asthmatic breathing.
Thank God, Jill didn’t go for the death penalty. I hold my breath as Grider begins reading. And then, suddenly, it is all over acquittal on all charges. As Leigh cries against my shoulder, I feel as if a huge metal ball has rolled off my back. Although I am not much of a believer in an afterlife, I can’t avoid the thought that somehow Chet Bracken is also breathing a sigh of re lief.
Standing in the courtroom moments later with Rainey and Sarah, who are both bubbling with excitement, I watch Leigh’s celebration with her parents and the crowd (presumably from Christian Life) gathered around them. It is hard to escape the sobering thought that a murderer is rejoicing.
“I thought you said you used to play when you were a kid, Mr. Page,” Trey calls as he watches me bend down to pick up the third ball I have dropped.
Beads of sweat from my forehead drop into Chet’s old glove. Maybe I am imagining all those Little League games in Bear Creek. The first ball ever hit to me in areal game went between my legs. I haven’t improved with age.
“I guess I’m pretty rusty,” I say, glancing over at his mother, who is watching us from the deck. Wynona smiles gratefully at me. It has been only a week since her husband’s funeral, and it is nice to see her smile. It is glorious out here behind the house in the April sun. New life is bursting from every tree, every blade of grass. This is the kind of day that must make Chet’s death particularly hard to bear. Yet the air is so soft and the morning so clear and bright with the rich promise of a long Arkansas spring, it is impossible not to feel alive.
After a few more minutes, Wynona tells her son, “That’s enough. Trey. Let Mr. Page rest. I need to talk to him in the house.”
“What about?” Trey asks, throwing the ball up and catching it. I used to do that by the hour in Bear Creek, pretending I was Mickey Mantle.
“He just needs to help me go through a couple of things,” Wynona says gently to her son.
“You play out here by yourself.” On this warm Saturday morning she is wearing a pair of loose-fitting shorts and a man’s workshirt. Chet’s, I suppose. Good legs, I notice.
Trey waves me into the house. I’m no Brooks Robinson, his grin says, but I’ll do until the real thing comes along.
“Thanks for playing with him,” Wynona says, her voice still mechanical with grief as she leads me into the kitchen.
“It’s going to be particularly hard for him.
He and Chet were amazingly close.”
She is talking about herself, I realize, as well as her son. A plain-faced woman in her forties with a kid, her prospects for remarriage aren’t bright. Yet she found Chet, and, I assume, had been married before him.
Some women are better at finding men than others.
“I’m afraid it will,” I say bluntly, thinking of myself and Sarah.
“But he’ll survive. We all do.”
Wynona stands on tiptoes and pulls down a gray metal lockbox from behind a wooden panel above her refrigerator. From the left pocket in her shorts she extracts a key and opens the lock. On top of what appears to be several envelopes is one with my name on it.
Wynona reaches in and picks it up.
“Chet said for me to read this to you, but not to give it to you. Why don’t you go sit at the table?”
Dreading what is coming, I choose the same chair I sat in when I had breakfast with them. Wynona opens the letter, which is not sealed, and begins to read in a clear, patient voice.
Gideon:
I hate to leave you by yourself with Leigh’s trial, but there is no way I can pull this off, knowing what I do.
I feel terrible about deceiving you, but I let myself get sucked into an agreement I know now I never should have made. When Shane first asked me to represent Leigh, he didn’t tell me the truth. He knew Leigh was not her husband’s murderer. Knowing my reputation, he was convinced I could get her off. He didn’t know then I had cancer. I took the case thinking I had more time, and frankly, given the evidence Jill had, I thought I could win it, too.
Here in my final hour of life, I know better than most humans that pride is the mother of all sin. Because of what Shane had done for me, I agreed. Instead of admitting how little energy I had, I convinced myself that I could last through March in good enough shape. You know, of course, what a joke that was.
As I began to investigate the case, it became clear that Pearl Norman knew more than she was telling. Always an alcoholic, she went off the deep end and really crawled inside the bottle. Initially, I thought it was a reaction to the charge against Leigh, but gradually it dawned on me that she might have killed her son-in-law. Finally, in January, after I confronted her, she admitted she went to the house drunk and killed Art after Shane called her from his office and told her that Art had gotten Leigh to dance nude for him. Pearl knew by then about Art’s scam and somehow assumed he was going to turn Leigh into a porn star. She swears she never intended to shoot him when she went there, and I believe her. Knowing his influence on Pearl (and all of us), Shane felt totally responsible for her actions, and begged me to try the case without revealing what I knew. Leigh, of course, was in on all this as soon as Shane came up with the idea. What is most incredible to me is that the disease of hubris contracted through continued success had reached such an advanced stage that, like a damn fool, I agreed. Even as sick as I was, I believed I could pull it off.
As you know now, we went to elaborate lengths to make you believe that Shane murdered Art and that I was being brought around to make that argument, which presumably you made at the trial. Leigh hated this tactic, but Shane and I had finally convinced her that it was the surest way to an acquittal. Much of what I did was to try to keep you off the scent of Pearl.
What you cannot know is how much Pearl means to Shane and to Leigh. They love her very deeply. Both have always felt guilty about her alcoholism and her isolation in the family. Recently, Pearl has been diag nosed as having permanent liver damage. With her prognosis, Shane couldn’t bear the thought of her dying in prison.
I apologize for having deceived you. Though you will try the case without knowing all the facts, you will not be engaging in any act of fraud on the court. I would have, of course, and this is what ultimately I could not do.
What I counted on was your own ambition. You wanted to become the next Chet Bracken! It has taken me a lifetime to realize how much vanity has played in my life. I was an ugly, jug-eared runt from Phillips County who was determined to make something of my self, and I never got past that. Even after my conversion, I never brought my ego under control. But it has helped me understand you. And exploit you. I do not say any of this to hurt your feelings (you have the potential to be an outstanding lawyer) but merely to explain why I have acted as I have.