A Piece of My Heart (23 page)

He spent the day in bed in a surly temper contemplating Beebe's father, who had been the lawyer for the city of Jackson, and who had begun drinking whiskey in genuine earnest the moment destiny locked him onto a course straight for the state supreme court, and afterward expended a great deal of energy appearing drunk in courtrooms, submitting clownish briefs, making ill-considered statements, and ultimately bringing general odium on himself at the expense of judges and juries all over the state of Mississippi.

He could perfectly think of sitting in the sun porch of Beebe's old yellow colonial with a remuda of Impalas and Town Wagons in the drive, while Hollis paced back and forth contrasting the law of Mississippi with the Napoleonic Code of Louisiana and trying to epitomize precisely what it was like to lawyer in the state of Mississippi.

Hollis was a short volatile man with jet hair and small arms, who at certain extravagant moments favored Senator Theodore G. Bilbo. In the course of talking, Hollis would stride out of the sun porch into the living room, speaking all the time, make a circuit through the room, pick up some petty table article and conduct it back to the sun porch cradled in his hand, eventually returning it during the next circuit, when he would appear with something else, a lighter, or a shell figurine, a framed photograph of someone, anything he could conveniently fondle and still talk. He had recognized this as Hollis's ultimate courtroom stratagem, an intrigue for diverting the jurors' attention from what he was saying to whatever singular object he was hoisting around, lulling them into only an addled interest in what he was saying by manufacturing a more thralling interest in what he was holding, and thereby implanting the conviction that he must be saying something worth listening to or they wouldn't be paying such close attention.

At Ole Miss Hollis had come under the sufferance of an agitating nervous tic. At the conclusion of every lengthy sentence, which ended, by design, in a burst of hard short consonantal sounds culminating in an upward trill of voice as if a question were being asked when it was not, Hollis would thrust the left corner of his mouth down and wildly to the side, jarring his body as though he'd been stamped by a horse, and in a way that suggested he might be trying to scratch his shoulder with his chin. Immediately, he would spin heel and toe and stride off in the direction the tic had driven him, so that if the listener was not watching closely, or was watching something else, the speed of the agitation and the evasiveness of the turn might cloak the tic completely, and the listener, already perhaps in thrall to whatever Hollis was holding, would see nothing, yet be convinced something heartbreaking had been said, even though he himself had not heard it.

Hollis had begun the afternoon toting around a small porcelain bird that resembled a stylized replica of a frigate bird, transporting it periodically to the living room, yet returning each time with the same bird webbed in his fingers, as if his point swelled to greater and greater pertinence each time he reunited it with the bird.

His comparison had fulcrumed on the point that in Louisiana deeds and all legal instruments were not collected in a central archive, but were maintained among the papers of the parish magistrates, who exacted unregulated fees to authorize copies and institute searches, and by that fief, oversaw a large pork barrel, the spoils of which were pared in favor of themselves and the governor. The creative case in point had been that of Governor Long, who granted appointments in exchange for whatever obstructions and embarrassments the appointees could promote against the governor's enemies, such as leaking accusations that well-known legislators were partners in Bossier City whorehouses, then being out of the parish when attorneys arrived to certify the deeds.

“In Mississippi,” Hollis declared in a rounding voice, taking a sober look at the frigate bird as if it deserved an immense amount of specific attention, “it is a far simpler system, often too simple for my lights. Litigation is sometimes too available. Yet our deeds
and public records are housed in the capitol”—and he pointed the bird in the general direction of the capital building, several miles back into town—“and legal action is not subject to the canton system, which sponsors so much subornment across the river.” He frowned and looked perplexed in the direction of Louisiana and ended in an upward trill in his voice followed by the trick in his mouth that sent him striding into the living room, but quickly returned holding the bird with an abstracted look as if his exemplum had somehow failed. “It isn't my intention,” he said balefully, “to aver that law practice in Mississippi is interesting or even mildly diverting, which is why I do my practicing before the NLRB and the ICC, which is where the money is, though not the celebrity.” He took a glance into the living room, which was backed up with overstuffed wing chairs, stinking floral antimacassars and mismatched end tables, the sole remainders of his wife's dowry. “The state court of Mississippi is an informal affair requiring an attorney loving humanity somewhat more than the law, affections I lack in favor of loving money.” And he strode promptly out, made a turn in the living room, took a peek into the dining area as if he was contemplating a future trip there, and returned again with the bird.

He himself had since sunk deep into the couch mesmerized by the bird, nodding only when Hollis's voice crescendoed in the manner of a question that didn't desire an answer.

“I believe I can make the point this way,” Hollis said, lifting the bird as if he were about to let it speak for itself. “When I was the prosecutor I was called once to try three Negroes charged with stealing a house off another man's land. We were never able to discover how they actually managed to
remove
the house, but they did it nevertheless, in the space of a few hours. So a little while before their case was to be brought up, they were all three led into the court, just as another case was being concluded. There, the jury had been dismissed, and the attorneys were talking, and the space at the defense table was still cluttered with papers and documents, and the bailiff simply led them to the jury box, sat them down, handcuffed them to the balustrade, and left
the room entirely. The men had already entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of conversion,” he said, “and were there to be placed in actual trial without a jury. So time passed and the other attorneys left, and my assistant and I and the attorney for the Negroes entered, with various of the witnesses, and finally the judge and clerk. The bailiff never did come back. And all of us sat down and I noticed that the three Negroes were all sitting together in the jury box by themselves, looking around as if they knew what they were doing. And the old judge took his seat and looked at the defense and said, ‘Is the defense ready?' And they announced that they were. ‘And is the prosecution ready?' And I said we were ready. And the judge's eyes strayed over to the jury box, where the three Negroes were sitting there like they owned all the chairs, ‘And who are you?' the judge said, somewhat stoutly, since Negroes were not allowed on juries then. And the one tall shovel-jawed nigger jumped up, snatched off his cap, grabbed the balustrade, and said, ‘Why, we's the thieves.' “

Hollis stopped and stared at him significantly, as if taking account of his deep fascination with the bird. “So there you are,” Hollis said very disgustedly. “A mistrial was immediately motioned, granted, and all three of them got off, though I later put one in Parchman for stabbing the poor bastard who confessed.” His mouth snapped toward his shoulder and he went lurching off to the living room and never returned.

And it had stayed in his mind that law in Mississippi would probably be a blend of imbecility and gentle fastidiousness that didn't allow you any recourse but to get drunk and remain that way.

One day three years later, Hollis drove his Cadillac to New Orleans to try a case before a Labor Relations Board referee, and at the noon recess, drove out onto the Huey P. Long Bridge, got out, and jumped in the river. The people who stopped to get a glimpse of whoever it was floundering around in the dishy water said that by a stroke of famous bad luck Hollis had missed the river and landed like a sack of nails on top of the concrete piling. Though, they said, with effort he had managed to crawl off into
the water before anyone could skinny the ladder and hold hirn back, and had gone out of sight immediately.

Beebe said everyone could figure what got him off the bridge. Some people had actually been wondering what had taken him so long. But no one, she said, could understand what got him off the concrete.

And he had sat in his apartment on 118th Street above Columbia and decided that nothing less than two thousand miles would be safe enough to keep him off the bridge. Or worse, that he might just make all the necessary adjustments to imbecility and boredom and unreasonable gentility that everybody there seemed to make, but that nobody seemed to care much about.

Early in the evening Robard arrived, changed to his green rodeo shirt, and left, mumbling about business. He sat on the side of the bed and asked after the nature of the business, and Robard smiled and disappeared out the door.

He lay up and thought about his plans for Beebe since he'd told Mrs. Lamb he didn't have any, and tried to come to what was true. He thought about the pleasure of taking the IC up in the afternoon, getting off at Randolph, and riding a bus to Goethe, then walking the two blocks. At midnight she'd take off to Tokyo or Addis Ababa, and he wouldn't think about her anymore and would take the train home. It made him feel fulfilled.

She had once had a boy named Ray Blier she was in love with, and who had gone to Annapolis. She had spent almost every college spring in expectation of spending nights with Ray Blier whenever there was an opportunity, flying off to New York, amusing herself in the way some women amused themselves sufficient to carry them to their graves. And it seemed strange to him that she would let it go. She said Ray Blier was holding down a pencil in the War College and champing to get back to Ole Miss Law
School, where he'd feel safe. And she said it was venomous and she didn't want it. There were times when she came and didn't call. And there were times when he heard the phone and decided it was her and didn't answer. And none of it was ever charged. Everything was based on a nonchalance that didn't include
plans
in any customary sense. Though there was something to it all that made him feel dreary, and that made him believe it would lead to something bitter, and that it would all sweep over him one day without his knowing it was happening.

“Have you wondered about my eye?” Mrs. Lamb said, setting her cup on the oilcloth, regarding him through a denser aroma of lilacs than usual. She had explained that Mr. Lamb was feverish and had gotten in bed, put his good ear to the pillow, and gone straight to sleep. He felt a vague contrition for having been the catalyst that sent the old man to bed in a snit, and the thought occurred to him that the best thing to do would be to catch the bus after dinner and make the morning train to Chicago.

“I'm sorry,” he said, denying any notice of the eyeball.

“My left eye is a prosthetic one,” she said, concentrating on lining her silverware again along the edge of the table and making no effort to demonstrate the eye in any way. “In 1919, before Mark and I were married,” she said, smiling to herself, “I had a job in a broom factory in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Mark was trying to make a start farming and I was merely marking time until we could get married. It was long before the child labor laws, at least in Mississippi, and I felt it would be nice if I took a job to support myself. My father was considerably older than he should have been to have had a daughter fifteen in 1919. And he worked only now and again, as a cotton estimator, and did well considering the little time he spent at it. So I went to Clarksdale patently against his wishes and took a job in the Choctaw Broom Works, binding
broom ends with red twine. And one day as I was walking out to go sit in the shade, a broom handle went flying out of a circular saw and hit me right in the eye, and I subsequently lost it.”

She smiled and he tried to seize on something sympathetic to say, but had to work to keep himself from looking point-blank at the eye.

“I was vastly afraid Mark would see me with my little glass eye and be reviled,” she mused, toying with her cup handle, “shrink from marrying me. And so I went for some time without seeing him.”

“But he didn't care, though, did he?” he said, denying himself another look at the eye.

“No,” she said. “It didn't bother him. Mark was a very enthusiastic farmer then. He had several hundred acres to farm when he was twenty-two years old. So it wasn't actually until we were married four years that he looked at me one afternoon, sitting in the breezeway of our house in Marks, snapping beans, and said, ‘Fidelia, have you got something in your eye?' I said, ‘No, Mark, I have not.' My terror had considerably subsided, as you might imagine. And he said, ‘I think so.' And it was then I told him about the broom.”

“What did he say?”

“He said . . . let's see if I can remember. He said, ‘Well, that's one less eye to keep on me.' He fancied himself a ladies' man then, but I always thought he was too short.”

“He might've made it up in spirit,” he said.

“I expect he might have,” she said, and brushed at her eyebrows.

The outside light was smeared into the trees, the last of the daylight. Landrieu came in and cleared the table, and went back to the kitchen and began pouring water from a metal bucket into a dishpan.

“The first spring we came,” she said, staring dreamily at the lintel over the gallery door as though the season were represented by a frieze, “the river flooded, and Mark and I had to stand on
the porch killing water moccasins with hoes as they came up out of the water. We were afraid the whole house would break loose and drown us both. I was pregnant with Lydia, and Mark was afraid something awful was going to happen to her on account of my having to kill all the snakes. But I said I wasn't afraid of snakes, and there was nothing to injure the baby, as long as I wasn't bitten, and that seemed to satisfy Mark, who simply wanted somebody to tell him he was wrong. And as it turned out, Lydia was never afraid of snakes, although she is deathly afraid of the river for some silly reason.”