Orrie's Story (28 page)

When the door had closed behind him, Becker said, “They don't come any better than Bobby Terwillen. I never realized that until just lately.” With Augie gone, he really needed to have someone to think ôf as best friend.

All of the jurors, male and female, were ready to exonerate Orrie in the matter of the death of Esther, for no boy who looked like him, waited tables in a college dining room, had been an honor student in high school, and had recently lost his father could possibly have killed his mother except in a second tragic accident.

But unanimity had not been reached as to the death of Erie Mencken. Two men balked at finding a lad of draft age, old enough to be tried as an adult, entirely guiltless in the killing of the male victim.

“All right,” said Harry Warnicke, after a discussion of some length, “at the very least, his judgment is terrible, or his eyes are bad, or something. He shoots down somebody he's known all his life because he doesn't recognize him?”

“It could happen,” insisted Grace Cudahy. “Come on, you know it could. That's what I hate about guns. It's the unloaded ones that always kill people.”

No one challenged her on the irrationality of the statement. She was a housewife and mother, and like the other women on the panel could, have got excused from jury duty for the simple reason that she was female, but in fact had eagerly accepted the summons, assuming it would exempt her from some household chores for the duration of her service. But as it turned out, her teenagers proved to be absolute shirkers and she had to do all the usual work when she got home late each afternoon.

Warnicke was a salesman of wholesale paper products. As most of his income came from commissions, he was losing money every minute he spent in court, so was making his moral point at some material cost. “What I'm saying is, suppose it
was
completely by accident: can we send this kid out to maybe do it again, next time he wakes up from a nap and hears some funny noises?”

Frank L. Perkins was the other holdout, and his argument was sterner than Warnicke's. He had flatly announced as at least a possibility that Orrie had killed Erie by intention.

Margaret Rayburn, an unmarried schoolteacher in early middle age, said angrily, “Then you go out and tell Mr. Furie he should have made the indictment first-degree.”

Perkins was thirty-two years old and a bank teller. He had fair hair and a somewhat darker mustache. “Isn't there something here that wasn't brought out in the trial? First place, his father died under circumstances I'd call suspicious. Then, don't you think it's more than possible something was going on between Esther and Erie? You know what I mean: I don't have to spell it out.”

Miss Rayburn was about to reply, but Ralph Ames, the foreman, said quickly, “The judge told us we really shouldn't consider anything that wasn't brought up in court, and that wasn't.”

“Both sides seemed to be avoiding it,” said Perkins, “though it seemed like something anybody would think of immediately. And all these violent deaths in the same house, within a few days of each other? Isn't it just common sense to at least consider the possibility they were related?”

Ames chuckled. He was a plump man in a drab gray suit, but with a very bright tie. “Hell, our business here ain't common sense, Frank. It's the law. The judge made that clear enough.”

Some of them snickered, but Margaret Rayburn said angrily, “Hasn't the poor boy suffered enough by now? That's what matters here, so far as I can see.”

Perkins squinted at her. “I guess I feel sorry for the boy too, but we can't just let everything be ruled by sympathy. There is such a thing as truth, and sometimes it's unpleasant, maybe even unfair, lousy, wrong, but it's still the truth. Both sides went to the trouble of picking us —”

“And you, like the rest of us,” said Miss Rayburn, “swore you started with an open mind.”

“I still have one. I just say it's our job to ask certain questions and not just rush into a verdict so we can get home more quickly.”

Margaret Rayburn happened to be one of the two jurors who had misrepresented their objectivity during the process of selection. Having heard of Esther Mencken through a colleague who taught at Orrie's school, she knew the woman's reputation as a slut. And Vincent Cardone, a plumber, had failed to reveal that he had done some work for E.G. Mencken, years back, in the squalor of Rivertown, and had never been paid. His resentment was such that he did not worry about the consequences of being found out: he was in the right.

Jerry Baum, whose thickset physique seemed at odds with his profession as an accountant, wrinkled his nose at Perkins, across the table from him. “You don't mean you want to send the boy to prison?” Others made sounds of disapproval.

It was Harry Warnicke who responded. “No, of course not. But suppose we let him off entirely. Suppose he goes on to live a perfectly decent life for years. We'd be glad to hear that. I know I would. I'd like to keep tabs on a fellow whose fate I had something to do with. I'd feel responsible for him in a way. I'd sure want him to keep out of trouble, to do real well. Poor kid!” He looked at Margaret Rayburn. “I agree with you he's suffered plenty. But what about the rest of society? If he's capable of flying off the handle and shooting someone supposedly by accident… I don't want to send him to jail, but shouldn't we do
something?
Just think how we will feel if he might do it again, many years from now.”

Miss Rayburn shook her trim head. “All of this is theoretical, Who knows what anybody will do in the future? You're just playing with words. This boy has his life to live, and without the help of any adult relations. Then there's the little sister to think of.”

“Speaking of her,” said Perkins, “don't you think it's funny Pollo never put her on the stand?”

“Orrie said he was alone with those two. His sister wasn't there.”

“And you believe that?”

Miss Rayburn set her teeth. “You know better? Were
you
there?”

Two of the jurors, a young single woman and a married man a few years older, had developed a romantic interest in each other and yearned for a verdict to be reached so that they could leave the courthouse. Neither contributed to the discussion except to murmur an assent to every argument in favor of total acquittal.

Sally T. Hemphill, the fourth woman on the panel, had lately served in the Women's Army Corps, rising to the rank of Technician Fifth Grade in a payroll office. She had said nothing throughout the deliberations except to vote with the majority. James Donovan, who worked in a canning factory, and Carl B. Ridley, driver of a gravel truck, were also recently discharged veterans. Donovan had been a mechanic in the Air Force; Ridley, a combat infantryman who had been captured by the Germans and held in a prison camp for seven months, a fact the prosecutor did not know, else he would have excused Ridley by peremptory challenge, on the assumption that the man would have an instinctive bias against any authority that had the power to take away an individual's physical liberty. Oscar Ventura worked in a dry-cleaning plant. He resented the effort by Perkins to be better than the others in intelligence and morality as well. But he kept silent because of his accent, which he knew made a certain kind of person look down on him.

Warnicke said, “Maybe if he could be found not guilty but given some kind of special —”

Perkins broke in, with a derisive snort. “Like let off with a warning?”

This offended Warnicke, who had after all been a partial ally of Perkins. He flushed now and told Miss Rayburn that he withdrew his objections and voted for acquittal.

Ames asked Perkins whether he wanted to be responsible for a hung jury. “Now, that's unfair,” said the latter.

Ames raised his hands. “It's your right to do what you will. Nobody's taking that away from you. But it's simply a fact that unless we arrive at a unanimous verdict, this will all have to happen all over again with another twelve people.”

“Maybe not,” said Perkins, with a slight smile. “I don't think Furie's heart's been in it from the first. I think maybe he indicted the boy only because it more or less had to be done in a case of this kind. Maybe he wouldn't bother a second time, and could save the taxpayers some money.”

“That's just silly,” said Miss Rayburn in her most severe classroom manner. “You are just trying to get out of making up your mind. There'd be another trial, and those poor children would have to go through all of it again, and twelve more jurors would have to listen to these awful things and be shown those terrible photographs of the bodies. How can you say you're a decent human being and let that happen?”

Perkins was wounded. “I am as decent a human being as you,” he cried. “That's precisely why I have been taking my time. I don't call it decent to immediately jump to some foregone conclusion when other human beings have lost their lives in a tragedy that for my money remains unexplained. It doesn't behoove you to question my motives.”

Miss Rayburn closed her eyes briefly while saying, “I assure you I did not mean it as personal.”

But even that statement was put in a superior tone, and Perkins could not see it as an apology. He had been on the verge of capitulation to the majority, had resisted thus far only to insure that there would be some real discussion of the essential matter, as he saw it: two people had died violently under conditions that were irregular, disorderly, outside the perimeter of normal behavior: that was the reason for having a trial in the first place. But apparently he was the only responsible person on this jury, for he regarded Warnicke's point as being capricious and exhibitionistic, whereas his own position was one of conscience. He intended to hold out until that truth was acknowledged.

But he told Miss Rayburn, “I didn't take it personally. I assure you all I care is to see justice is done.”

Down at the end of the table, Jerry Baum groaned.

“All right,” Perkins said testily, “be cynical, if you want.
I'm
not.”

“Who's cynical?” Baum asked. “I just think maybe you might have your own private idea of justice.”

“You people should talk about private reasons.” Perkins shook his head in resentment.

The comment alerted Vincent Cardone, who was suddenly worried that Perkins might know of the plumbing bill never paid by the late E.G. Mencken.

“Hey,” Cardone said. “Come on. Don't light into us. We're all in this together.”

“If you really mean that,” Perkins said, “then let's think about the point I raised.” He was trying to calm himself by unscrewing the cap of his fountain pen and then screwing it tight again.

“I
have
thought about it,” said Miss Rayburn. “You'll never be able to make me believe that Orrie shot anybody with malice.”

“But how about if Erie was fighting with his mother, hitting her? Didn't Furie suggest that?”

“The child denied it.” Miss Rayburn assumed her coldest expression, lengthening her upper lip.
“He
was there, and no one else was who is still alive.”

“Is that your idea of conclusive proof?” Perkins asked, with a prosecutor's edge to his voice. “It hasn't ever occurred to you that people on trial tell their own versions of the truth?” He was still smarting from her questioning his humanity, and went for blood: “Are you
that
simple-minded?”

Having taken such a turn, the deliberations would continue.

Orrie stopped to lay the white rose on his mother's grave, the earth of which still looked raw after weeks of rain and snow. The headstone had not yet been delivered: the Terwillens were preparing to complain to the masons.

Mr. Terwillen had discreetly left him there and gone off elsewhere in the cemetery, perhaps to a family plot of his own. It occurred to Orrie that he knew very little of a personal nature about the kind people who had given shelter to himself and Ellie. He should do something about that, talk to them more about themselves. He must also be nicer to Paul. No one ever had such a friend. Paul had even gone so far as to include Ellie in his kindness, and Orrie was most grateful, being aware that, occupied as he had been, he had neglected the little sister who now had no one but himself in all the world.

His failures had been many, but could be corrected. His crime would remain what it was forever, though he had been exonerated by a jury of, not his peers but rather his elders: most of the eight men, four women were old enough to be his parents, some undoubtedly having children of their own. Mr. Pollo had expended a great deal of his notable energy in selecting these people, and went enthusiastically to shake their hands when they brought in the right verdict, urging Orrie to join him in the expression of gratitude. But Orrie declined. It was bad enough that he had had to tell the preposterous story about not recognizing Erie before shooting him to death. That the people who believed it were to be congratulated on their gullibility was too much. If they had not given it credence but proceeded to find him not guilty because they felt sorry for him, which in fact he thought more likely, his complicity in their malfeasance would be even more shameful.

“If they served the cause of justice,” he told Pollo, “then they did no more than their duty, and I've got nothing to thank them for.” They should be insulted by a show of gratitude. Orrie did not expect the lawyer to agree with his point. He and Pollo though associated in this peculiar intimacy had very little in common. He hoped in future to avoid attorneys-at-law, whose sense of morality, being essentially linguistic, was so basically at odds with his own.

He should thank this cruel jury for sentencing him to a lifelong term—of life? While no doubt believing they were doing him a kindness: another pain to add to all the others, for everybody was kind to him. When the verdict was announced, people burst through the gate to come to him, persons he did not recognize, perhaps even strangers, to wish him well, shake his hand, sometimes both hands, and there were women who went so far as to hug him and kiss him on forehead or cheeks. It was extraordinary that killing his mother had made him so popular. Even Mr. Furie, who had supposedly tried so hard to convict him (though, in Orrie's secret opinion, not really), gave him a handclasp and said, “I hope you understand I was only doing the job that is my sworn duty to the citizens of this county and this state.” He wished Orrie a brighter future. The prosecutor seemed to want to be thought a kindly person: he showed that sort of smile. As Orrie was too young to vote, he had to assume Furie was sincere, but he wondered why.