False Entry (44 page)

From down at the far left of the line facing them, an appreciative snicker came, an aged voice assenting. Pierre kept his eyes on the other half of the body of men on the dais, on those who were at the foreman’s left—for Dobbin and himself the right-hand side. Except for this switch, the picture was just as he and his mother had been made to see it from the veranda. On his left must be gathered all those whom he had not yet dared scrutinize singly, for on his right, five in the first row, six in the second, all were new citizens, among them not one face he knew. Several of these were smiling slightly, at Dobbin or the snicker. “Otherwise,” said Dobbin, his eyes crinkling, “the witness will find things a mite more informal than expected. Coats off or on; we find we can still do our business here.” He was drawling now. In this respect, he said, they were perhaps a little luckier than the folks next door. The smiles broadened—then the new judge was a stickler. Again from the left came that slow, cackling “Heh, heh!”

Now at last, under cover of Dobbin’s preamble, he turned his head and looked there. Second from the end, the old man who had made the noise was still nodding with the faint, ebbing tremor of the elderly. He recognized him at once. It was the night watchman—Frazer. He’s the only of them, there on that side, who does not seem to be looking at me; therefore it is safe, safest to look at him. Or is it? Here he was, seen through no window frame now. The old man sat there, a senile St. Bernard, behind gold-rimmed glasses (one recalls he cannot read), wearing the white shirt of the pensioner whose days are all special now, the very clean clothes of the workman who once swung his lantern “Oyez” on a clear night’s zenith and is worth his six dollars per day emeritus still. Here he is, one of the ones from “down there.”

“… crimes against the elective franchise …” Dobbin, at his side, was speaking very rapidly, covering the grounds for indictment in a dull for-the-record tone, coursing through the evidence already heard, using a heavy verbiage that seemed almost designed to obscure it for his hearers.

Charlson has brains enough. Yes, Charlson Evans, his great form seated at the very end of the line as if for ballast, understood what Dobbin was getting at, had shifted his gaze to him. These eunuchoid men are often very quick of brain; how better conceal it? The minister’s bulk had always been useful; he kept a convivial pulpit. And he was known to be softhearted—remember how kind he was to the Denny girl? Between what we do and we do not—in his job he would know about judgment. He and I have not seen each other since my aunt’s funeral. But I remember, on a clear night’s zenith, the minister’s car.

And I remember the doctor’s. He’s not here, Rollins, but he has sent a substitute—the young man on Frazer’s left, by the look of his brother Lee on him—Rollins has sent a son. An honorable custom of war hereabouts, to send a substitute, doubly so if one sends the son. This is Robert then, called Bobby, perennial flunkee, commonly called “Doc.” He looks sulky—too many brothers? Oh Bobby, does your mother, brother, know you’re out? Five or six years older than I am—you could have been there that evening. Depend upon it, your father knows—a doctor’s car is his hallmark. Perhaps we should ask my uncle, an expert on Rollinses. He’s not one to accept substitutes, even in sons. Or rather, say that, confronted with blame to assign, he can. You look frightened. But my uncle has his head bowed again. Until he looks up, until we have to look at him, we are both safe.

“… that murder has been done … has been established sufficiently for the charge … for a charge, mind you; that is our purpose here.” Dobbin’s voice dropped again to its monotone. “Secondly … we then come to …”

The Lemons, father and son (horses and allied arts), see what he’s after too, though one can’t tell it from their faces. Of the senior I know nothing. But Lemon was always one to see certain things early—even if his reach sometimes exceeded his grasp. A boy to brag as syphilis what was only acne, and come off in the end with no more than the clap. It’s thickened him early too; except for his pocks and that Indian hair hanging down just the same, I’d never know him for the string bean I stood up to in the Charlotte gym, doing better than either of us expected. He wasn’t afraid. I was. He’s looking at Dobbin now, got his answer ready, by the grin on him. (“What if we did? No more’n anybody here would do.”) Men who won’t accept the nature of man tend to amuse Lemon. He himself suffers proudly all the manly diseases. And is therefore not afraid.

“… rumors of concerted action by a group … purported to be taking the law into … on that night … Of more recent date …” And Dobbin, still leaning negligently, dropped the name, Bean.

Lemon still has traces of a smile, like a trader recalling a good trade. But even he is no longer looking at Dobbin. They are all staring at the back of the room, a class called to attention, pledging its allegiance to the caretaker’s mop. All do so except one. In the pause that Dobbin intended perhaps, but not for him alone, Hannibal Fourchette, Jr., his bruin gaze swaying—did he know me once?—is heard to be humming. He too has a disease which, when well tended, keeps him fearless. How incredibly it preserves them; he has changed least of all! The strength of his shirt front still upholds him; in some shell for his ear only he must be hearing the Gulf. Tactfully, the man next him touches his arm and he subsides at once, feeling down the side of the chair, his hip pocket, for—a cigarette. The kind neighbor at once strikes a match for it. Morning’s Junior Fourchette’s time of course, but he is still happy. What a fine place, club you might say, a grand jury room is. Lawyers must wait outside it. Even Dobbin, gentleman though he is, must leave before vote is taken. And a judge—no matter who—can never come in here at all. He puts a finger to his lips and nods gratefully at his neighbor. Tact. Tact is all that is necessary in this cat’s cradle world.

Now. Now I must look at his neighbor. His long chin.

“… until now, for lack of witnesses, we have been working pretty much in the dark….”

Neighbor Nellis, lamplighter extraordinary, will strike a match for you. At the end of day, his orange light pops out on the dusk, first one.
You know what grace is
? In all public ceremonies, he shall be the Bearer.
Don’t say nothin’
;
just join hands.
Call for me. When the night hawk flies, then housewives place in the window those hooded lights that mean a man will be late from home. There, the lights go out again, one on a street we know. The last one. Nellis’s light.

“Of course, until now we have not had the resources of the Federal—” Dobbin bowed almost imperceptibly, no more than a shift in accent, to the new faces on his right, then turned again toward the left, where, it might be assumed from this, his own allegiance lay. “Now, however, Washington promises evidence … it may come any time … depositions of witnesses formerly connected with this office, concerning Asher, who was buried as a flood victim. Also, from nearby states, transcripts of records impounded. If we refuse … a show of airing things here … a federal grand jury may not be so persuaded….”

Memory also impounds. Once, Nellis, your heel, slouching past, almost caught on a face raised to look at you from the long grass, next to mine. You don’t know me; you’ve never seen me in your life. I had the matchless invisibility of my age. But you should know well the urge that comes over us when we are in hidden places—toward the enormous joke to be played. You bend now, but only to confer with your neighbor on your other side.

One by one they are all coming out of lodging. One more. Between Nellis and my uncle, a pair of white duck trousers.

And now Dobbin is at last calling his witness. Witness need not stand during testimony. But witness does rise, to face Semple.

For the entire state of Alabama, some say. Or for the world? Strange, how, seeing you here, I no longer trust in the general klandom of evil. Here in this room, we too have no knowledge of how to ascribe evil except singly. It must go by one and one, by face and face.
You.

So, Dobbin, I obey. Truth bombards us from wherever it can. I speak as that boy.

There
is
a place—filled with the moral fragrance of how people really are. Outside its orange lamp we are all Ishmael, until we enter there. There is a town—above the town—Johnny, Johnny Fortuna, I believe you. I believed you all along.

“I kept watch for them in the grove,” I said. “I helped cut the pine and truck it down to the café. I rode lookout for them all that day.”

Y
OU. YOU. YOU, YOU
, you, you, you. I. There was not a face there, no matter its guilts or its sympathies, which was not for that one moment my enemy. And for the same reason—beneath all reasons. When the witness speaks, he brings the problem of truth into the room. There was not one man there who, for a moment, did not curl protectively around whatever secret he thought kept him in swinedom, wishing to be left in his sty with it, only not to have to aspire.

And I watched them with joy, thinking I had found the adversary at last.

“Will the witness explain whom he means by ‘them’?”

So my preceptors had been correct—there were choices to be made. For the general “they” of the feared, we may choose our surrogates. The lie I told then was greater than any I told later. Much may be done in the name of justice by those avenging their childhoods.

“The Klan,” I said.

The word was new to the room. Everybody heard the echoes refuse it. Outside, a bird spoke,
chelo
,
chelo
, from siesta. I had time to remember exactly what I was doing. I tallied it:

I speak as Johnny would, using what he did, what he knew.

Dobbin does not know this. As far as he knows, I alone was “that boy.”

“They,” up on the stand there, will know I am lying.

They cannot declare it.

I even had time to note that the clock over the dais was the same as the one in the main courtroom, even to the gilt “Seminole.” Then Dobbin, rushing in, allowed no further pauses.

“Will you tell the jury what you mean by ‘that day’?”

“The day the dam went.”

“According to record, September 19, 1932. If you don’t mind—would you tell us how old you are?”

“I’ll be twenty-one in November.” Lemon was the one who made me feel youngest. He had taken out a small, old-fashioned cigar clipper and was elaborately fooling at fitting the end of one into it.

“Then, on that date, you were just close on to fourteen. Do you ask us to believe that a kid like that would observe all those details I’m going to have you repeat to these gentlemen? And that seven years later, you can still quote scripture on ’em?”

For one second, his hostility dumbfounded me. Then I almost smiled at him. Oh downy Dobbin. He had to be.

“Nothing so scriptural about it.” My dander was up, tongue loosened. “It wasn’t the kind of day that anybody down here would be likely to forget.” But the very next day, they all had claimed to. Their blank faces remanded me. Not a man could be found.

“Excuse me—Mr. Dobbin?” A man on the other side of the room, the new side, had spoken—the first voice from them. Would they speak much? I had not considered. Now I scrutinized them. But scrutiny was not the word for it. White-shirted, dark-tied, most of them, these new men, more stiff-backed than the others and not as colorful, not as easy in the crotch. Not as much at home here, they offered themselves to the eye as a group, like men in an office picture. Time-study clerks, engineers, office managers, as might be, they had that look, drained of the personal dossier, which went with the man of business. And their business here was precisely that—not to be at home in this place.

“Yes, Mr. Anderson?”

“Excuse me, but I’d like to clear something up—this witness—isn’t he some relation to Mr. Higby, our foreman?”

“Stepson.” My uncle’s face, raised to look across at Anderson, shocked me, seen now in public perspective. It had the shielded, masked guise I had expected of the others. “He’s my wife’s son.”

So that was how he thought of me. I had sometimes wondered.

“Things like that are bound to happen in a small county, Mr. Anderson. Perhaps you’re not yet used to it.” Dobbin showed his teeth very slightly. “We may even bump into—other instances—as we go along. Not unusual.”

“Oh, no reflections on anybody, of course. It’s just that—wasn’t the witness involved in a court case sometime ago—something about his name?” Now I recognized him, the heavy white cheek that he was rubbing. He was the second man in court that day, the man who had helped Dabney Mount bring my mother home.

“I understand he changed his name legally. No ‘involvement,’ as you called it. I believe—a family matter?” Dobbin, addressing me, deflected those probing eyes of his. Probably he too thought me a bastard, if not my uncle’s. For testing opinion, the dock had its use.

“Yes,” I said. “A family matter.”

“Ah,” said Dobbin. “That satisfactory, Mr. Anderson?” Polite, excessively so, he no longer lounged, suddenly tall defender of those privacies that some of us here would hold to be still paramount. Covertly he sent them a glance, these parfit knights on his left, that reassured them. Delicately, for Mr. Anderson and other tiresome bumblers, he checked his watch. “Shall we go on then?”

“I’d like to establish something first,” I said. “My uncle never knew of my—activities. Doesn’t yet.”

“Entirely suitable,” said Dobbin. “Would Mr. Higby like to, er—?”

In the pause, my uncle seemed not to be answering. Then he coughed. From the store of honesty that hampered him, what would he choose? Who was that other man who, from a mouth full of pebbles, learned to speak clear? “No,” he said. “We did not confide.”

“Eh … yes….” Dobbin pursed his lips, for all fathers. And in the same instant he turned on me, hard-voiced, all procurator. “Explain what you meant by ‘the grove’!”

And it was in that moment, with his repetition of the word “grove”—tossed by me, accepted by him—that the full, serious sense of where I was came to me, and its marvel. Once more the owl tapped, showing me the spectacle of what was, the great gamble of what could be, and this time, in this old, professional room, worn and capable as a whore’s bed where the pure and venal chased each other through all the odors and malodors of man, I was not afraid. I apprehended my powers, like sportsmen on those charmed days when the shot, not yet sighted along the barrel, already rings true on the limp, glazed target. Like an actor, stretching his limbs to the arena on that sure day for which all the practice of life had prepared him, I understood how a man might elongate himself until he was of a length to hang another, how he might make those long, simian jumps which are made in dream. The word “grove” had done it, magicked by me out of memory not my own, cast like a boomerang and perfectly returned, whang, to my hand again—“Catch!” I understood without mysticism the power that mind might wreak on matter. From then on I did not falter. I used Johnny’s words. The use of them was mine.