“Smacked him?” Raymond says, like he’s never heard of such a thing in his whole life.
“Just the back of his head,” I explain. “But it didn’t stop him. He gave the shirt off his back. And he kept going. He was down to his boxers when security got him. I don’t like to think what might have happened next if they hadn’t stopped him when they did.” I deliver that line exactly like Raymond and I practiced it.
But I feel like a traitor bringing up this story this way. I can’t look at Jeremy, but I can imagine the look he’s giving me. I’ve seen it enough to know. Not mad. Disappointed. Like he thought I’d understood that day and now he sees I didn’t and it’s too bad-for me, not for him-that I don’t.
The truth is, when the security officers stopped him, Jeremy didn’t look crazy. I don’t think a single person in that room thought he was crazy. They’d all grown quiet by then. All except me. I shouted for them to get their hands off my brother.
Then this little boy walked up to Jeremy and held out his own jacket for Jer to put on, and Jeremy did. And then a very large woman took something out of a grocery bag, and it turned out to be shoes exactly Jeremy’s size. And not only did she give him those shoes, she put them on his feet. But not before a little girl ran up and gave my brother her own white socks that had little yarn balls on the back of them so they wouldn’t fall down. Somebody else came up with a pair of jeans for my brother. One of the security people helped Jeremy get those jeans over his new shoes because by then guards had his arms behind his back.
When we left that place, people said goodbye and waved. And Jeremy was better off than when we’d come in.
We all were.
I feel sick inside my bones. My whole life I’ve fought anybody who said Jeremy was crazy, or treated him like there was something wrong with him. And now I’ve done that and worse, here in front of everybody and after swearing about it with my hand on the Bible.
“It’s getting late,” the judge says. “We’ll adjourn until nine o’clock tomorrow morning.” She turns to the jury and gives them orders not to talk to each other or anyone else about this case. Then she bangs her gavel on her desk. We all stand up to go home.
Only not Jeremy.
4
I stumble down from the witness box because I have to get to Jeremy fast. He and Raymond are standing up at the defense table, and an officer is heading for Jer. I don’t know what the rules are here, but I need to talk to my brother.
“Jeremy?” I rush over to him before anybody can stop me, but the table is between us. I can’t touch him. I want to hug him, to feel his stiff arms fold around me, to have his chin on my head. “I’m sorry. I had to tell it that way.” I want to shout to Jer that I don’t believe he’s crazy, but I can’t. Raymond told me I can’t ever say that to anybody, especially not in court.
“You need to leave, Hope,” Raymond says. He’s tossing papers and files into his briefcase.
I ignore him. It’s Jeremy I want. “Jeremy, you have to tell them you didn’t do it. Write it out. Please? Just write down what happened.” He can write. Until this… until Coach died… Jeremy wrote notes all the time, in beautiful, pointy, swirling letters, his own brand of calligraphy.
Jeremy turns and gives me a sad, disappointed smile filled with forgiveness. Bile spouts from my belly to my throat, but I gulp it back down. His eyes widen as the officer slaps on handcuffs. His wrists are bruised, and his forearms have blue-and-yellow fingerprints. I’d be horrified if I didn’t know firsthand how easily my brother bruises. It was Rita’s curse when Jeremy was young because the world could see her temper spelled out on Jeremy’s skin in purple and blue. She made him wear sweatshirts and jeans, even in Oklahoma summers. Most of the bruises came from Jeremy’s clumsiness, though. I used to call them nature’s decorations.
“Wait!” I beg. “Please let me talk to him.”
I watch my brother’s hands, his long, knotted fingers twisting frantically in the cuffs.
“Settle down, son,” says the officer of the court, a burly man with tiny wire-rimmed glasses. Except for his soft eyes, he looks like the bald bouncer Rita fell for in Arizona, right after she quit her waitress job. “Come along now.”
Jeremy’s wrists spin faster and wilder. The metal cuffs clink together. He stares over his shoulder at me, intense, desperate.
“Take it easy, Jer,” I urge, angry at myself for making him worse, for upsetting him, for calling him crazy in front of God and everybody.
Then I get it. He’s not trying to wrestle out of the cuffs. He’s doing charades, mimicking the motion of turning a lid on a jar. Jeremy wants one of his jars. He collects empty jars, and he wants- needs -one now.
“I’ll try, Jeremy. I promise. And I’ll take good care of your jars. Okay?”
His hands stop twisting. His body goes limp.
The officer takes him by one arm. “There’s a good boy,” he says, leading him away. “Time to go.”
I stare after Jeremy for a solid minute after he disappears behind a side door. I don’t want to think what’s on the other side, where Jeremy will spend one more night.
I wheel on Raymond. “This is wrong, Raymond. He didn’t do it.”
Raymond doesn’t look up from his overstuffed briefcase. “Hope, we’ve been all through this. Your mother and I settled on a trial strategy.”
“But you pled not guilty by reason of insanity and not guilty?” I sat through as many of Raymond and Rita’s trial talks as they’d let me. I’d wanted them to come out and say Jeremy didn’t do it, but they wouldn’t listen to me. Rita is convinced Jeremy did it but didn’t mean to, so she was all about the insanity plea. Then Raymond told us that in Ohio, you can plead both things, “not guilty” and “not guilty by reason of insanity.” So that’s what we did. He said it was like covering your bases, like telling the jury: “My client didn’t do it, but if he did, he was insane and didn’t know what he was doing.”
Raymond sighs like he’s losing patience with me. “Yes. We pled NG and NGRI, not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. At the insanity hearing, Jeremy was deemed capable of standing trial and helping in his own defense. Hope, I thought you understood that.”
“I did! But if they’ve already said he’s not insane in that insanity hearing, why are you trying to make out like he’s crazy now?”
“One has nothing to do with the other,” Raymond explains. “That hearing was separate from this trial. The jury wasn’t there. Here, in this court, we can still go for not guilty by reason of insanity.”
“But what about proving he didn’t do it? Period! Why aren’t you doing that?” I’m shouting now, but I can’t help it.
Raymond glances around, then whispers, “Because there’s no evidence for that.”
That shuts me up. No evidence, except the evidence piling up against my brother. I haven’t been allowed in the courtroom before now because I had to testify, but I’ve read the newspaper articles about the state’s witnesses, who claim they saw Jeremy running from the barn with a bloody bat, his bloody bat.
I sense someone behind me before he speaks. “I’m sorry. You need to clear the courtroom.” Sheriff Matthew Wells has the gravelly voice of an old-time Wild West sheriff.
I turn to face him. He’s about Rita’s age, tall with a beer gut. The sleeves of his light brown shirt are rolled up to the elbow, showing a purple tattoo of a star, or maybe a badge. His black hair has a circular dent where his hat must belong when he’s not in court. There’s a gun in his holster. “Need to move along, folks.”
“Of course,” Raymond says. “Sorry, Sheriff.” He snaps his briefcase shut and looks over at me. “Hope, I’ll see you tonight, all right?”
I nod. But that sick feeling in my stomach comes back. Raymond wants to prepare me for tomorrow. More testimony, including the prosecutor’s cross-examination. How do you rehearse for that?
“Miss?” Sheriff Wells touches my arm, and I automatically pull away. “You really do need to leave now.”