A Covenant with Death (12 page)

Rawlins made a fine impression. He was average. The jury liked that. He was respectful and spoke to the point. When Dietrich asked how intimate the relationship had been Rawlins paused becomingly and dropped his gaze; then looked directly at Dietrich and said, “It became very intimate.” And the jury nodded without prurience, because Rawlins was average and therefore Rawlins's sins were average, and every man in the jury box understood. No visions here of Byzantine orgies, of pernicious acrobatics with ancient names, specifically outlawed by embarrassed statute; this was wholesome and domestic and star-crossed.

“Did you ever have reason to believe that Bryan Talbot knew of your relationship with his wife?”

“Yes,” Rawlins said. “When Louise told me about the rest of it she also told me that she'd told him about us, and that she was going to be a free woman. She told him that—”

“Objection.” The audience sank back, frustrated. “What Louise Talbot told her husband is not for this witness to say.”

“But what she told this witness
is
for him to say,” Dietrich cut in swiftly. “It goes to the nature of their relationship. If he's misquoting her, defense can bring that out later.”

“Denied,” Hochstadter said, and mopped his face with a red bandanna.

“You may continue,” Dietrich said.

“She told him that she'd try to be a good wife in other ways but she needed a kind of love he could never give her now. Those were her words, her very words. A kind of love he could never give her now. She was a very …
sweet
girl. She said she had fun with me, and not much fun otherwise. If you don't mind my saying so, she said this city, Soledad City, was dull, not much to do and she didn't have many friends, and it was all right as long as she was happy with her husband, but not after the … trouble.”

“Did she ever tell you how her husband had reacted to her decision?”

“Yes. She said he was mad—very angry.” He corrected himself with some delicacy. “But there wasn't much he could do about it because he still loved her. Also he had some sort of commercial dealings here and if the story came out he'd be ruined.”

A few of the jurymen glanced at Talbot: the complaisant cuckold, the moneygrubber.

“He was very angry. Did she refer again to his anger?”

“Oh, yes. Every time she came home to Dallas he blew up. Sometimes I thought she enjoyed making him angry, just a little. She giggled once telling me about it.”

“But she never again mentioned leaving Talbot, or marrying you?”

“Oh, yes,” Rawlins said brightly. Fans were stilled; Harvey Bump looked up from his notebook. “The last time I saw her. In February. She said she'd had enough, and she was going to leave him soon, and would I wait a few months more.”

When Hochstadter had restored order, Parmelee asked for a recess. He seemed ten years older, and I thought with alarm of his liver.

6

Bryan Talbot took the opportunity to go to the bathroom, and he dragged Parmelee after him up the slope like a man leading a mule. Bryan was talking all the way, flinging words back over his shoulder; his businessman's face was crimson, his eyes snapped darkly, fury radiated. Parmelee was grim. Tolliver went along with them and he told me later that in the men's room the two had ignored his presence and jawed hotly. “Your wife was a teaser and we've got to bring that out,” Parmelee said, or words to that effect; and Bryan's answer was “She was a damn good wife and that two-bit dance-hall Romeo is a liar,” or words to
that
effect. Bryan denied absolutely that his wife had ever mentioned leaving. “We were back together,” he told Parmelee. “She ran off like that to hurt me and I knew it and I took it because she had
something
coming to her, but it would have ended. I know it would have. We were better all the time.” Then he buttoned up his fly and said, “That Rawlins is going to kill me if you don't break him down. You get after him. You show him up. He's a damned liar.” Bryan washed, and slapped cold water on his face.

Parmelee tried hard. He cross-examined until five, rooting in every cranny of Rawlins's life, but he was up against invincible candor. Rawlins remained courteous, soft-voiced, and forthright. Even when Parmelee required him to supply details of his courtship, Rawlins complied straightforwardly. “No sir. I have a one and a half room apartment of my own, in a new building. Six stories. It's not like a boardinghouse with one entrance for everybody. I can come and go as I please, and with …” (long pause) “…
whom
I please.”

And later, “Yes, sir. We spent many hours together like that. She was my girl. We were happy together.”

“I suppose you'd be shocked,” Parmelee said, “if you heard that she'd had still another boy friend.”

Rawlins was barely contemptuous. “I wouldn't be shocked, sir. I just wouldn't believe it.”

“But you knew that her relations with her husband were normal. That is, physically.”

“Yes, sir. I know that. I never liked it, and she knew I didn't.”

“Did you ever show anger?”

“Well, a little. More like … annoyance.”

“And how did she react?”

“Oh, she laughed and told me not to mind, just to think how much fun it was when we were together.”

The Colonel looked ferocious at that, an avenging angel, as though he had discovered a corporal in the officers' latrine. Juano was in slack repose with an expression of canny sympathy. Tolliver made heroic efforts to appear jaded. Bruce Donnelley was bleak and withdrawn, like a wary mud turtle. The rest of the audience was hot but tireless.

“Did it occur to you that she might also have laughed when she angered her husband?”

Here Rawlins hesitated, and then said, “Yes.”

“But it did not occur to you that she might be the kind of woman who enjoyed playing one man against another.”

“No sir.”

“Or that she might lie to you as you assumed she lied to her husband.”

“She didn't lie to him. She told me she told him all about it.”

“Ah. But did she lie to him when they made love; when she sighed; when she embraced him?”

“She never talked about that,” Rawlins said sullenly.

“Of course not. But did you never think about it? Did you suppose that at home with her husband she was stiff and unyielding and hostile?”

Rawlins sulked.

“Answer the question,” Parmelee snapped. “Did you suppose that?”

“No, I didn't,” Rawlins said. “I tried not to think about it.”

“And were you yourself cold and distant when you were in bed with another woman?”

“That's none of—” Rawlins cut it short with a glare.

“You were about to say, that's none of my business,” Parmelee went on in reasonable tones. “But I really think it is. She, after all, was married to another man. Your own friends were just that—merely friends. Did she object to your other affairs?”

“I certainly object to that question,” Dietrich said. “Witness's relations with anyone but the victim are hardly relevant.”

Parmelee was healthy again; he glowed. “Oh, come now,” he bellowed. “I believe this witness has lied about a good many things and I'm trying to find out just what kind of complicated man he is. Do you want me to take him at face value? Then why let me cross-examine?”

“That's enough, Mr. Parmelee,” Hochstadter said. “Objection denied.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Now then, young man: answer the question.”

“She didn't know about them,” Rawlins said quietly.

“I thought not,” Parmelee said. “Then it is your contention that you, in spite of other lady friends, preferred a woman who was not only already married but barred from motherhood—and to such a degree that you asked her to leave her husband for you. And that she, who understood much of life, was totally ignorant of your other, ah, liaisons, and had promised to leave a man with whom she had been through a shattering time, and who was making a good life for her, and in whose home she was at least outwardly happy. Is that what you claim?”

“Yes, sir,” Rawlins said. “That is what I claim.”

“You were willing to forgo children?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you never thought that in a few years you might change your mind; that when the blush was off the rose she would be in her thirties and without prospects if you tired of her; and that she might have foreseen that?”

“No, sir. I believe we would have been happy together.”

“I find it difficult to believe that Louise Talbot shared that opinion,” Parmelee said. “I find it difficult to believe that she was unaware of your complicated love life. And I find it very easy to believe that she was playing with you, teasing you, lying to you, and never intended at all to leave her husband for you. No further questions.”

Parmelee sat down and heaved a sigh of exhausted satisfaction. For an hour he had wended a thorny way, needing to prove that Louise Talbot was a cheat and a teaser, and even to imply that there might be yet other men involved; but needing also to leave room for the belief that she had reconciled herself to life with Bryan, such as it was. He had done well, but the ultimate obstacle was insurmountable: twist and turn he might, but he had no reasonable alternative to the state's contention that Bryan Talbot had murdered Louise Talbot Bryan might have had a motive that no other man could know, and the couple's troubles warranted any speculation. Battle for battle, Parmelee resisted well; but he was losing the war and we all knew it.

I called Rosemary that night. “Hello,” I said. “It's Ben.”

There was silence, and then she said, “Hello,” and then there was silence again. I closed my eyes. I knew that “hello.” I had known it for many years. It was the hello that preceded empty excuses. The silence before and after was a paraphrase of “You must be that young lawyer who annoyed me at the party” or “Oh yes that clodhopper from someplace out west” or once “You're another of those American officers who call Frenchwomen roundheels.” With that sort of hello the telephone became an instrument of the devil, and I went on in a dry, defensive tone. “How are you?”

“All right.” Another silence.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” I said. “Something's wrong. Can you tell me what?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“Oh, come on.”

“I'm just very busy,” she said. “I've got examinations to prepare. It's the end of the term.”

“Rosemary, Rosemary,” I said. “Have I offended? What is it? We're way past this kind of conversation. Please. Tell me.”

After a moment she said, “Oh, I don't know, Ben. I just don't know. I want to be by myself. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Yes. It's damned unreasonable. Three days ago you loved me until you could hardly talk.”

“I know.” I thought she might have smiled. “Give me a chance, Ben. Call it the natural contrariness of women. I just don't feel like coming down there again.”

“And you can't tell me why? Better than that?”

“No. I feel awfully tired.” She sounded like a child. I calmed myself.

“All right. Suppose I come up there?”

“Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Where would you stay?”

“For God's sake, Rosemary! The town is full of hotels. I can get a guest card at the Bench Club. I'm not going to barge in and take over your bed. What's the matter with you?”

“Nothing,” she said. “It's always that, isn't it? Well, all right. You can come.”

“Such enthusiasm,” I said.

“Oh please stop it. Sometimes you're like a little boy.”

That was unanswerable. I said, “All right. We'll talk about it Friday.”

“Goodbye,” she said.

“Goodbye,” I said, and hung up.

I stomped back to the living room and poured myself a pony of brandy and sat down rudely, spilling some of it. My mother was out clacking tiles around a mahjongg table, and thank God for that; whatever I needed it was surely not the superior wisdom of a mercilessly possessive widdy-woman. I was sore as hell. What clairvoyance did women require anyway? I had not forgotten her birthday; she could not possibly be pregnant; a rival was out of the question, because she would have been pleasant and gay and forestalled my visit somehow; then what was it?

I drank the brandy too quickly and burned my stomach. After a time I said aloud, “Ah, the hell with it.” After a longer time I called Geronimo to ask if there was a game, and there was, and I threw on my jacket and trotted down to the drugstore where I said hello to Geronimo and Juano and George Chillingworth and George Costa and Bill Needham, who was the head of our high school music department and whom I had not liked for some time. He was a skinny blond with glasses and an intellectual snob who scoffed often and prefaced his words of wisdom with phrases like “As Chaucer says.” His instrument was the trumpet, and I warmed up to him when I caught him in a dirty shirt blowing his heart out with the Mexicans on Christmas Eve; and finally I knew he was my friend when he told us that he had worked his way through a Baptist college playing in a burlesque band.

Anyway I lost fourteen dollars in the next four hours. I still think seven seats make a more interesting game than six.

Thursday morning, much purged of evil and nursing no resentment, still bewildered of heart but clear of head, I divided my attention between the destiny of Bryan Talbot and the ebb and flow of Rosemary. Talbot was, I am sorry to say, momentarily more interesting. Dietrich rested the state's case and Hochstadter denied Parmelee's motion for dismissal, a traditional formality. Then Parmelee opened for the defense.

I did not think much of his opening, but it got to the jury, all right. He was almost folksy. “Fifteen years ago,” he said, “there lived not far from here a man named Buck Andrews. Anthony Andrews. They called him Buck.” I remembered. Parmelee looked at me suddenly, and went on looking at me, thoughtful and calm as though he had been put in mind of something else altogether. The jury followed his glance but could make nothing of it. “Mr. Andrews raised sheep,” he went on finally, “in a small way, up on the Ribera Flats and the hills up north. One year he had a lot of trouble; lost about twenty sheep in a couple of weeks. Their throats were ripped out. There hadn't been any mountain lions up there for years, or wolves, and anyway lions dragged off their kill, but none of Andrews's were missing. And wolves killed to eat, but none of the dead sheep had been eaten. So he looked for coyote sign but there wasn't any; only dog sign, and when Andrews found his dog all bloody one night he took him out and killed him. It happens. A dog goes wild, turns into a sheep killer. Andrews got a new dog. And one day a week or two later Graeme Lewis rode through on his way to Mesa Tinta for antelope and in a swale behind a ridge of rock he found the biggest dog he'd ever seen, some sort of mastiff, dead for several days but killed by some animal that gashed him here and there and finally got to his throat.