No Defense (2 page)

“No.” I laughed. “Hank and Will are messy,
but we love them. Right?”

Jessie made a face and stuck out her tongue.
As many times as I’d explained it to her, I had no doubt that she
held the twins accountable for our move from Atlanta, Georgia, to
Tallagumsa, Alabama, and for her father’s leaving us not long
thereafter.

I turned the album page and stared at the
photograph that had been printed in all the Alabama newspapers the
day following the courthouse-dedication ceremony. Mother and Daddy,
my sister and her husband, and Eddie, Jessie, and I were standing
on the top steps of the courthouse, the water from the fountain
arcing in the background, all of us smiling-even Eddie, who hadn’t
been thrilled to be in Tallagumsa that day.

Although the ceremony dedicating the
courthouse hadn’t been nearly as happy as it
looked
in these
pictures, if I had known what was to come in the months ahead I
would have savored those hours. Perhaps then I would not have been
so willing to turn all our lives upside down.

CHAPTER
ONE

Just hold the scissors right there by that
pretty red ribbon, Mayor,” Scotty Scott said. “A little higher.
Right there. Good.”

Scotty, the photographer for every official
Tallagumsa event over the last fifty years and the skinniest man in
town, moved his tripod and camera a few feet, balanced his
sunglasses on top of his crew cut, and squinted into the
viewfinder.

“Now smile, Newell,” he said. He snapped a
picture of my father standing next to the dedicatory ribbon strung
between two of the courthouse pillars and tied in a huge bow.

“Open the scissors,” Scotty said. He took
another picture.

“Now cut that sucker! Sure hope the
courthouse don’t fall down.” He laughed at his own joke.

Daddy laughed too, somehow managing to look
dignified and fun-loving at the same time. His dark hair was gray
just around the temples. His green eyes sparkled. Ever the
politician, for the dedication of the courthouse he’d worn a
navy-blue suit, red suspenders, and a white dress shirt. Thin red
and white diagonal lines striped his yellow tie.

While Scotty completed my father’s
individual photographs, the rest of the family waited its turn to
join him. Eddie, Jessie, and I were on the east side of the steps,
where Jessie had ample room to run and play without getting in the
way. I w ted sitting down: Eight and a half months pregnant with
twins, no one dared begrudge me this breach of etiquette. My
sister, her husband, and my mother stood talking among themselves
not far from Scotty.

Most of the people who’d attended the
morning dedication had gone ahead to the reception at the
Tallagumsa Steak House, two blocks down First Avenue. A dozen or so
people lingered on the steps, talking with each other and watching
Scotty in action.

“Stand next to your name over there on the
wall, Mayor,” Scotty said as he carried his camera across the
courthouse landing. He took three pictures of Daddy standing under
the brass letters that read: “Newell Hagerdorn County
Courthouse.”

“I don’t know if I can take much more of
this!” Eddie complained to me. “The way everyone’s acting you’d
think we were in the White House Rose Garden with Jimmy and
Rosalynn Carter and not at some podunk county courthouse
affair.”

I looked up at Eddie from my seat on the
sun-warmed granite steps. He was leaning on one of the courthouse
pillars, smoking a Salem and staring wearily at my father and
Scotty. Tall and good-looking, with straight black hair and
gunmetal eyes, he was still in good shape from his years on the
college track team.

Eddie had tried to abort this trip, arguing
for the last few days that he couldn’t possibly take a day off with
his workload as political cartoonist for Atlanta’s
City
Paper
. After I made it clear to him that Jessie and I would
come whether or not he did, he stayed up until three in the morning
to meet a newspaper deadline, then grudgingly accompanied us on the
two-hour early-morning drive west to Tallagumsa for the
ceremony.

The new Greek Revival courthouse, built to
serve a population of almost one hundred thousand people, took up a
full city block of the small town of Tallagumsa. It could be
reached on any side by climbing two steep flights of stairs to the
massive landing, which led to the entrances. On the west end of the
landing was a large square fountain in which the water rose up out
of the mouth of a bronze fish hovering above a sparkling pool of
water. A bronze statue of Confederate veteran Elijah Ellis bore a
sword skyward, guarding the east end of the landing.

Jessie hopped over to where Eddie and I
waited. With each hop, the pleats of her sailor dress flew up, then
floated back to cover her tiny thighs.

“I’m hungry,” she announced, pulling on my
sleeve.

“As soon as the pictures are taken we’ll eat
at the Steak House. Come here, sweetie.” I kissed her cheek and
handed her a penny from my pants pocket. “Throw that in the
fountain and make a wish, but be careful not to get in Scotty’s and
Granddaddy’s way.” She hopped off.

“I have a wish,” Eddie said. “That this will
be over and we can go home.”

“You never like being here, do you, Eddie?”
I asked.

“Nope.” He looked down at me. His intense
gray eyes blamed me for having dragged him here. “Especially when
it’s some trumped-up celebration in honor of your father.”

He took a final draw on his Salem, dropped
the butt, then stepped on it, grinding it into the granite, where
it left a dark smudge on the pristine stonework.

“It’s not just for him,” I said. “It’s for
the whole county.” At Eddie’s skeptical grin, I laughed despite
myself “I know you think that’s pompous and stupid sounding, but
that’s the point of Daddy’s whole career-to better this county and
this state.”

“That’s why the courthouse is named for
him
and why we’re waiting for
his
pictures and why
we’ll go listen to
his
speech. Not for the good of Newell
Hagerdom-no, of course not-but for the good of us all. You just
can’t see past his act, can you?” He sat down next to me and kissed
my neck. “But I love you anyway.”

“I love you too,” I said.

I looked around for Jessie, who’d thrown her
penny into the fountain and then disappeared around that side of
the building. “Jessie,” I called.

She reappeared, walking slowly, as if each
step were too much for her to bear. “Can we go now?” she asked. The
diversion offered by the penny toss had lasted about two
minutes.

“Sorry,” I said, as sympathetically as I
could.

Her face flushed bright red and she began to
cry. “But I’m hungry and I’m tired!”

“At least it isn’t hot,” I said.

Although it was barely April, in Alabama
we’d had our share of April scorchers. In fact it was a perfect
spring day, the temperature in the midseventies, the blue sky
dotted here and there with innocuous white puffs. A mild breeze
carried only the suggestion of warmer days to come.

“Why don’t I take her over to the park?”
Eddie stood up and wiped off the back of his jeans.

The dogwood trees, azaleas, tulips, and
daffodils in the park, nourished by two weeks of rain in early
March, were in full bloom. Built at the same time as the courthouse
with private Garden Club funds raised largely by my mother, Gladys,
and my sister, Jane, the oasis of green had beckoned to Jessie all
morning. “That’ll take too long,” I said. “We all need to wait
here, Jessie-Scotty said so. I know it’s hard to get up so early
and then just hang out here doing nothing. I have a great idea! How
about this? As soon as we finish, you can get a candy bar at the
Steak House-any kind you want
and
before your lunch.” I
crossed my heart. “Only a little bit longer. I promise.”

I tried to sound soothing as I pulled her
toward me and hugged her, but she pushed away from me, ran around
the legs of the Confederate soldier, and sat down at the base of
the statue’s marble pedestal.

“Next time we come here, LuAnn, you’re going
to have to bribe me too,” Eddie said.

“LuAnn, y’all can come on over,” Scotty
called a few minutes later. “Gladys, Jane, Buck-everybody who’s
family right here, on the top steps of the courthouse with the
mayor.”

“At last,” Eddie mumbled under his breath.
“Jessie,” he called. “Show time.”

She walked over to us.

“See?” I said. “I told you it wouldn’t be
long.” Before getting up I wiped Jessie’s tear-smudged face with a
Kleenex from my pocket. “One of these pictures will be in the
newspaper, so try to look happy. Both of you.”

“Let’s go, let’s go, Annie Hall,” my
brother-in-law, Buck Newton, hollered as he bounded toward us in
his slightly rumpled suit. He wiped the sweat from his wrinkled
forehead, pushing a handkerchief back across his balding head.

I held out my arms to Eddie, who groaned as
he pulled my unwieldy pregnant frame up to a standing position.

“Coming, coming,” I said.

“Annie Hall” was Buck’s attempt at a
humorous reference to my outfit-a white maternity shirt, polka-dot
tie, black vest, baggy pants, and a floppy man’s hat-as well as a
compliment on my looks. Unfortunately, any physical similarity
between the movie character and me was far more apparent when I
wasn’t on the verge of giving birth to twins.

My dark brown hair was pulled back in one
long braid down my back. Hoping to give my face some of the
definition it had lost as puffy cheeks replaced high cheekbones,
I’d recently added a thin layer of bangs that almost touched my
dark eyebrows.

Though Buck tried to hide it, there was an
undertone of irritation in his voice. I knew my clothes bugged both
him and my sister, Jane. Not long ago Mother too would have taken
the time to make an unflattering reference to my appearance, but
around the time Jessie was born she began to look past me. Why
bother with me, clearly a lost cause, when she could try to mold
Jes?

Buck crammed his handkerchief into his back
pants pocket and slapped Eddie on the back.

“Y’all are quite a pair,” Buck said. “Annie
Hall and-who do you think you are, Eddie? Clint Eastwood? Or the
Marlboro Man? Couldn’t you borrow a suit from a friend, big
guy?”

Eddie had on Levi’s, Frye boots, a dress
shirt, and a tie. He was not a hick dressed up to go to town; but
an individualist who refused to wear a suit to the courthouse
simply because he was supposed to.

The three of us walked toward the rest of
the family.

“Why do you worry so much about how LuAnn
and I look?” Eddie asked. “At least I don’t look like a lawyer,
Buckie boy.”

“Well, I am a lawyer,” Buck said.

“No shit,” Eddie said. “Not something I
would brag about if I were you.”

“Y’all don’t start in on each other,” Mother
pleaded when she heard Eddie and Buck exchanging the usual insults.
“We all want the pictures to turn out well, don’t we?” she asked
sweetly.

“Yes, ma’am.” Buck hitched up his pants to
just below his bulging stomach and tucked his loose shirttail
in.

“Good,” Mother said.

Over the years my mother had taken the art
of being a political wife to new heights, submissive to the point
that when standing next to my handsome father she seemed to fade
away. Daddy had just turned sixty. Mother was fifty-seven, but she
looked older than he. With her thick blue-framed glasses, short
curly gray hair, and pale wrinkled skin, she looked like the
grandmother she was. She and Jane shared thick ankles, which I had
been spared, and large breasts, which I had missed out on. For the
ceremony Mother had chosen a navy gabardine skirt, a white silk
blouse, and a red, white, and blue scarf around her neck. A small
gold American flag pin held the scarf in place.

“You go in back, LuAnn, Jessie in front of
you, and Eddie next to you, on the left,” Scotty ordered. “Newell,
you and Gladys stand next to LuAnn, and Jane and Buck should be
next to Gladys, on the right here.

“It looks good,” Scotty continued from
behind his camera. “Smile!” He took two pictures. “Now y’all come
on over next to those main doors, the middle ones.”

“Maybe you should sit, LuAnn,” my father
said as the group made its way to the front entrance. “Are you all
right standing so long?” He looked up at the sun, which was almost
directly overhead. “Is that sun too much for you?”

“I’m just a little tired, Daddy.”

“
A little
?
A little
? You look
totally exhausted,” he said. “Pretty as a picture, dear, but tired.
I’m worried about you. I want you to know that. When the babies
come, something’s got to give. Where you live, how you live, it
just won’t work anymore. You’re not college kids anymore, and I’m
not going to let you kill yourself to prove some stupid point.”