A Stranger in the Kingdom (36 page)

The study light was still on, and although the shade was pulled partly down, I could see through the bittersweet vines a gaping hole in the window.

“I want her!” Resolvèd shouted. “I want that woman and I intend to have her. I know she's been a-holing up here. You fetch her, mister, or I'll ransack your Christly premises and snake her out myself.”

“You'll do no such thing,” Reverend Andrews said. “Put down that gun.”

In a voice that must have carried halfway out to the gool, my cousin roared, “I paid thirty dollars for her, and I don't intend to stand by and see it go down the drain now that I'm on my feet again. I intend to marry that woman.”

“She's hardly a woman, Resolvèd Kinneson, and you know it. She's not yet eighteen years old.”

“She's woman enough and whore enough to let half the Frenchmen in Canada put the britches to her, and then come prancing down over the line with that fair show and deny me my lawful rights with her and run off to a so-called preacher that ain't no better than he should be. You'll produce her, by the Jesus, or I'll know the reason why.”

“You don't have any rights with her, lawful or otherwise,” Reverend Andrews said. “She doesn't belong to you just because you sent her some money. I'll reimburse you, if that's what you're worried about. But I'm not going to let you take her back up to your place. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I understand that,” Resolvèd said. “And I understand why you're keeping her here. And I'll have you understand that one way or another I'll claim what's mine. I aim to marry that woman, goddamn it. We won't be broke asunder by you.

“I
aim
,” Resolvèd shouted, and with no warning fired the second barrel of the shotgun over our heads and through the glass transom above the parsonage door. Then he lifted the gun like a club over his head with both hands and charged the minister.

As Resolvèd rushed toward him, brandishing the shotgun, Reverend Andrews shot twice. Resolvèd crashed into the gate, whirled partway around, and dropped the gun. He held up his right hand. A little geyser of blood was spurting out of it where the tip of his index finger had been. He looked at what was left of the finger in disbelief.

“Resolvèd,” the minister said wearily, “go home and put a bandage on that. You've been keeping too much company with your friend Old Duke tonight. He's a bad influence on you.”

“You, Preacher,” Resolvèd snarled, pressing his hand against his shirt. “You ever hear of a fella name of Ordney Gilson? You hear, Reverend? Ordney Gilson. You remember that name. Ornery Ordney Gilson.”

Which was when Mason White showed up in his patrol hearse, blue lights flashing, sirens screaming “What's going on here?” he demanded in his high voice as he leapt out of his hearse. “What's going on here, I say?”

“No big problem, Sheriff,” Reverend Andrews said in his agreeable and now once more mildly amused and ironical tone of voice. “My neighbor here was just telling me that he didn't care all that much for my sermons. That's all.”

“Get in the car,” Mason snarled at Resolvèd. “I'll deal with you in a minute.”

“Who's Ordney Gilson?” Nat said as we headed back into the house while his father filled the sheriff in on the shooting.

I was silent.

“Who is he?” Nat said.

“Oh, nobody,” I said. “Just some old farmer who used to live around here.”

“I'm, having trouble believing this,” my father said for the third or fourth time that morning as we entered Charlie's office.

As usual, I had been brought along as interpreter. There definitely was going to be some trouble.

Still wearing his sweat-stained baseball uniform from the big game the day before, my brother was tilted back in his swivel chair with his spikes propped on his desk, sipping a warm beer.

Although it was still early in the morning, the whole village was buzzing. The Folding Chair Club had already set up a reconnaissance outpost on the courthouse portico, and Charlie had been sequestered with Resolvèd in his jail cell since dawn, when my brother had gotten back from an all-night celebration in Canada with his baseball team.

“I know I shouldn't, James,” Dad said, standing with his back to us and staring out Charlie's small window at the distant mountains, “but I'm having trouble understanding what's happening here. A no-good drunken bum fires two blasts of buckshot that can kill a big deer at fifty yards into the home of a law-abiding local citizen. Now your brother's going to represent that no-good bum in court?”

Charlie sighed. “Come on, Jimmy. I've defended Cousin R since the week I opened my practice. How can I stop now?”

“By saying no, James.”

“Damn it, Jim, it's my job. I
can't
say no.”

My father snorted. “I've said this before, James. A job is something you get paid for doing.”

Charlie took a long slug of beer and made a sour face. He set the bottle down on a back issue of
Field & Stream
with a brook trout on its cover far gaudier than any brook trout I had ever seen in Kingdom County, where brook trout were as colorful as any in the world.

“Look, buddy,” he told me, though I hadn't opened my mouth once since coming into his office. “Even Cousin R is innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty. Lord knows that there's enough circumstantial evidence here to convince a jury to put him away for the next couple of centuries. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't defend him. Somebody has to.”

My father turned slightly so that his profile was toward me. He looked more than ever like a somewhat older version of Ted Williams. When he spoke, he seemed to be addressing the statue of Ethan Allen below on the common. “Maybe so, James, but your brother doesn't have to. This is a serious matter. It was well planned. Resolvèd or one of his cronies even went to the trouble of calling Mason White and decoying him off on a wild goose chase just before the shooting. And he used the Montreal highball for cover, just the way the bank robbers did. He ought to be locked up for the next twenty years.”

For once Charlie had no rejoinder. In the ensuing silence it occurred to me that none of this would be happening if, right here in this office less than four months ago, my brother hadn't written that stupid letter for Resolvèd I wondered if he might be thinking the same thing, maybe that was why he felt responsible for defending our cousin now. But none of what had happened in the last twelve hours made much sense to me.

“Look,” Dad said, and though he continued to stare down onto the common, he seemed to be talking more or less directly to Charlie for the first time that morning. “This business goes way beyond Resolvèd's ordinary run-of-the-mill outlawry. We aren't talking about a few poached trout any longer. We aren't talking about a rooster fight or a deer shot out of season or a scuffle over at the hotel barroom.”

“I realize that,” Charlie said.

“I'm glad you do. Because this isn't a question of our family and whatever tribal obligations we both may have or think we have to an outcast shirttail cousin. Whether you defend him or someone else defends him or nobody defends him doesn't matter in the least. The outcome's going to be the same. Zack will throw the book at him, just as he should, and get his big conviction. And he and Mason White will parlay that conviction into at least two more years of disgraceful misrule in this county.”

“Maybe.”

“There isn't any maybe about it. Resolvèd'll be convicted. You won't find a potential juror in the county who won't be outraged over this. Have you stopped to think what's really at stake here? I'll tell you, mister. The entire moral reputation of the Kingdom, that's what. You can't win. You shouldn't win. And if you do go ahead with this, I intend to do everything I can to make sure you don't win.”

Charlie winked at me. “The Civil War is refought in Kingdom County, Jimmy. Father against son. Maybe even brother against brother.”

“This isn't amusing,” my father said. “It's about the least amusing thing I can imagine. Consider what this will do to your own reputation.”

Charlie stood up. “Dad,” he said quietly, “do you know what the charges against Resolvèd are as of right this minute?”

“I can easily enough guess. At the very least, assault with a deadly weapon.”

Charlie shook his head.

My father raised his eyebrows. “Attempted murder? That's why you feel obligated to defend him? Well, good for Zachariah. For once the old fool's done something halfway right.”

My brother sighed. “So far, Resolvèd has been charged with drunk and disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace. Just to get him off the streets for a few days, Zack claims, so that he and Mason can continue their investigation of the incident. The arraignment's this afternoon.

“Now I'm going to tell you something else,” Charlie continued. “Before Resolvèd talked to me, he evidently talked to the sheriff and Zack alone. I haven't been able to find out what was discussed yet. But whatever it was he told them must have influenced Zack's decision to let him off with a light charge.”

“James,” my father said as he walked out of Charlie's office, “this is going to kill your mother.”

 

Resolvèd Kinneson was arraigned at three o'clock that afternoon. This time he was not wearing a suit and tie and shiny dress shoes. He wore the same tattered green work shirt and baggy green wool pants he had been arrested in the night before at the parsonage. Since his court appearance in the incarnation of the Most Peculiar lawyer last May, his hair had grown out quite long again, and he looked more like the woodcut of Pap Finn than ever.

The courtroom was nearly full. Besides the lawyers, Mason White, Farlow Blake, Julia Hefner, and the Folding Chair Club, there were several out-of-town reporters and at least a couple of hundred local spectators and curiosity-seekers.

Just before the arraignment began, Reverend Andrews strolled in and sat down alone in the back of the room across the aisle from my father and me.

“All rise,” said Farlow Blake in his most sonorous and solemn voice as Judge Allen entered, sat down, and immediately began reading the watered-down charges against my cousin.

“. . . and with unruly and tumultuous carriage did endanger the general populace.” The judge paused. “Do you understand what that means, Resolvèd?”

My cousin, who was standing at the defense table with Charlie to hear the charges, scowled “I guess it means I don't rub elbows with the right ones in this so-called village.”

“It means nothing of the sort,” Judge Allen said angrily. “It means that you are being charged with posing a very real danger to a member of this community. Before I ask you formally to state your plea, I want to be certain in my own mind that you understand the charges. Regardless of the wording, you should know that I regard this whole affair as a grave offense and a blight on this entire area. The sanctity of one's home is a basic right in this country, Resolvèd Kinneson. It can't be infringed on with impunity. You wouldn't like to worry about your personal safety every time you turned out your lights and went to bed at night.”

“I don't follow such procedures.”

“What procedures?”

“Turning out my lights. You see, Jedge, I and my brother don't have electric up there.”

“Charles Kinneson, inform your client that if he bandies words with the bench one more time, just once more, I'll slap you both with a cool hundred-dollar fine, payable on the spot.”

Charlie turned to Resolvèd. “Be quiet!” he hissed.

Judge Allen finished reading the charges. “What do you plead, Resolvèd Kinneson?”

“No contest.”

Judge Allen looked at Charlie for a long time. Finally he said, “Very well. Now, Resolvèd, despite the relatively light penalties of a breach of peace charge, this is in fact a serious offense. Understand that I believe these charges are far too mild, the more so in view of the fact that you have been in front of this bench often before. Understand too that regardless of how you have been specifically charged, I view this latest offense as far more serious than all of your prior depredations taken together. This ‘breach of the peace' is a blot on your record not just in this court but in the eyes of all of the law-abiding citizens of this community and this state. For the seriousness of this act lies in its unleashing of violence, which always begets violence—witness your own bandaged hand.”

The judge looked straight at my cousin and said, “Resolvèd, do you have anything to say before I set bail?”

My cousin glanced over at Mason White and Zack Barrows; though I couldn't be sure, I thought I saw the prosecutor shake his head slightly.

“Not just yet,” Resolvèd snarled.

The judge was caught by surprise. After another pause he said, “I must advise you, Resolvèd, if you have
anything
to say on your own behalf that you believe may have a bearing on your ultimate sentence, and on the amount of bail that I impose, this is the time to make your statement.”

Abruptly, my cousin stepped into the aisle between the defense and prosecution tables. “I'll say just this much,” he growled. “I ain't admitting to one thing. Not one thing do I admit to about no so-called shooting or nothing else. We'll have that understood right off quick to the start. The rest of what I've got to say I shall say in my own good time.”

Resolvèd sat back down.

“Very well,” Judge Allen said. “Resolvèd Kinneson, I establish your bail at a thousand dollars. You will be sentenced within the next week. In the meantime, Sheriff White will see you back to your quarters in the county jail in the basement of this building.”

 

NEGRO MINISTER CONFRONTS BACKWOODS GUNMAN