Juice (16 page)

Mr. Gordon took the stand. Mr. Gordon was the old man. His face was drawn; he avoided Joe's eye. He needs a plug and a spittoon, Joe thought. He was old but hale; he had retired to a doorway and was enjoying his late years in the wind and sun. His hands were knobby. His face was seamed and dark. He might have been a seafaring man.

“Now, you saw the impact,” Winkelmann prompted him.

“That's right.” Mr. Gordon cracked his knuckles.

“Please describe it.”

“Well,” Gordon said, “it all happened so fast. The car was comin' along, doin' about thirty-five, I guess.”

You poor old man, Joe thought. There was sweat on Joe's face; he could not look at Gordon. He could not look at anyone. How many times would he have to relive the moment of impact? How many times could shame reach the same intensity? There was Pearson to come; Pearson would not be polite. He smelled like a wine barrel, Pearson would say.

“And I guess Walter—Mr. Storch, that is—was tired and lookin' down, after a day's work, you know, and not payin' much attention. Anyway the car come down on him, and he looked up and tried to get back out of the way, but it was too late. He might better have tried to jump the other way; he was closer to the far curb.”

Joe frowned. Far curb? The right-hand curb?

“Then the car was not over the white line,” Winkelmann said.

“That's right.”

“Had the traffic light turned?”

“No, sir. It turned just after he—after the accident took place.”

“And you corroborate Mrs. Thorpe's description of Mr. Harrison's actions afterward?”

“You mean him stoppin' the car and gettin' out slow, and the papers and all?”

“That's right.”

“She told it right,” Mr. Gordon said. “That's just what happened.”

The judge looked up. “Mr. Davis?”

“No questions,” Davis said calmly.

Joe was still frowning. Of course it was possible. He had seen nothing really until he came to a stop. But this was no place to think it out. He had come into the room with a clear picture of the accident; it was blurring now. The old man, yes, had been on the left; the old lady across the intersection—window shopping, she said. It was not right, but Joe did not see where he could contradict anyone. He looked up at the reporters; they were scribbling. He turned to Mr. Gordon, who looked away gloomily.

The judge dismissed Mr. Gordon. Pearson was sworn in. Now it comes, Joe thought. A flash bulb whitened the room. Pearson, handsome and strong and brave and truthful.

“Please describe your part in the accident from beginning to end,” Winkelmann asked.

“All right,” Pearson said. Joe risked a glance at him; Pearson was impassive, staring at a far corner of the room. “The vehicle approached the intersection at, I would guess, about thirty-five miles an hour.” Joe's head snapped up; he frowned at Pearson, and then let his head sink again. “The victim had started across the street against the red light; I suppose he figured it was about to change. I didn't see his face; he must have been daydreaming. The vehicle hit him just short of the intersection, on the right-hand side of the white line. That is, the vehicle's right-hand side. Immediately after the impact the vehicle slowed and stopped. The driver came out after a few seconds. I can't say what he did between the time he got out and the time he came over to me. I was busy with the body. When he came up to me he handed me his license and registration. I kept them. When the doctor had seen the body and declared him dead, we all went to Justice Lieber's, which is required by law, and reported the accident.”

Joe was numb. No one had mentioned the lunchbox. No one had mentioned the split skull. Pearson was—Pearson was—Joe pressed the heels of his hands to his temples. How—His breath came heavily. He looked up. The reporters were still at work, silently. Davis had no questions. Pearson stood down. The doctor took his place. Joe could not look at Pearson. Sooner or later he would have to. Joe could not have been so wrong; the impressions were garbled now—the white line, the light, he had not seen the traffic light—The doctor said the victim had died immediately through a fracture of the skull caused by the impact of his head against the curb. Davis had no questions. The liquor! Joe thought suddenly; he never talked about the liquor! He started up wildly. Davis laid a hand on his arm; Joe sank to his chair. Mrs. Thorpe; Mr. Gordon; Pearson; the doctor—they were gone from him, unreachable, they would not look at him. Joe's eyes were wide; he had ceased to breathe, to move; for the moment he was frozen. And then he was warm, relieved of a burden. He knew it was all over. Davis stood up; and at that moment Pearson, the blond, blue-eyed, square-faced, twenty-five-year-old all-American cop, looked full at Joe Harrison with shame and loathing and accusation.

Now Joe hardly dared breathe. The judge would bring his gavel down, and they could all go home, Mrs. Thorpe to the girls, Mr. Gordon to his doorway, Pearson to his girl—how bitter he would be!—and Joe to his wife and children.

He broke the brief silence by rising. He frowned and shook his head almost drunkenly. “The liquor,” he said clearly.

Winkelmann leaned forward, solicitous. “I beg your pardon?”

Joe swayed. “Not the liquor itself,” he said. “I wasn't at all, ah, affected. But there was—”

“Your Honor,” Davis said, “I think—”

“Just a minute now,” Joe said.

There was a shuffle of feet from the rear.

“Here! You men!” Judge Winkelmann pounded the block of wood. “Back of that railing! Sergeant-at-arms! Get them back there! I'll clear this room!”

“You're a fool!” Davis was whispering. “Sit down!”

“Take your hand off me,” Joe said. “Sit down yourself.” He turned to the judge. “It's really my own children, you see. The father is God, as we all know, and God has certain responsibilities.” His voice was reasonable, persuasive; Winkelmann had not heard him. Winkelmann pounded again; the reporters took their seats. Joe shook his head again, looked at Davis, looked at the witnesses; the witnesses were pale, and Davis had reddened.

“I don't suppose anyone else could understand,” he said much too loudly. “You have to be in the particular situation—”

“Your Honor,” Davis cut in, quickly and low, “I think this is a delayed reaction. The shock of the accident.”

“Well, no,” Joe said. “It's quite simple.”

“I'd like to ask you to ignore this outburst and set a date for a new hearing.” Davis had ignored Joe. “My client has been under a terrible strain.”

“Yes, I was,” Joe began, “but that was—”

“So ordered!” Winkelmann cried, and pounded again. “The hearing is terminated. Or continued, rather, to tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock.” He glared. “Is that understood?”

There was a murmured response.

“Yes, of course it was Rhein!” Davis was saying. “You idiot! Do you think it was done for fun? A legal exercise?”

Joe sighed. It was a lonely moment, and Joe was badly equipped. There were few truly lonely moments in a man's life. He did not feel exaltation or fear; he felt only that it was so simple, that if they would stop chattering, if the judge would stop pounding, if they would listen for only a few seconds—“I understand,” he said to Davis. “I understand perfectly.” He looked up at the fretting judge. “Bail will be continued?”

“Of course.” Winkelmann frowned.

Harrison turned blandly to Davis. “No deal,” he said quietly. “Good luck to you, but no deal.” And he walked down the aisle, through the swinging gate, out the door, and into the sunny street.

Back in the courtroom Davis sighed, started to smile, thought better of it, and quietly gathered up his papers. His head was bowed; the others could not see the awed exultation, the secret delight, the warrior's glitter, in his satyrical and rapacious brown eyes.

9

Joe Harrison came home not sure that he had done well. He was tired, to begin with. His house, handsome and rustic from the road and the drive, no longer impressed him; he was tired of living in it. He was tired of being a good father, tired of being a good husband, tired of being tireless. He was, as all his friends knew, a winner; you could put your money on Joe Harrison; but favorites carry higher weights; backing one was easier than being one. For twenty years he had been on the rise, and he was (although he did not know it, did not formulate the thought) approaching the moment when he would want to be understood rather than admired. There were traces of that need, that surrender, on his features, in the pouches of his eyes and the sharp wrinkles at the corners of his mouth. A Turkish bath, Rhein might have said; all you need is a night in a Turkish bath.

Harrison stepped into the cool of his own foyer and tossed the Panama hat to a small marble tabletop. Hearth and home, it was, and how good to sit before the fire with a bumper of—that was not the answer either, of course; there was no answer. The day you burned the mortgage you started to think about Arizona or Tanganyika or the Pamirs. Rhine and Rhône; Rome and Nome. Nome—that was the place. Night baseball without lights. A wedding night four months long. And the
droit du seigneur
? How would they work that, north of the Circle? Outside the circle, he thought; outside the circle. Lonely and marvelous. Meanwhile I live here; I own this house; I have plenty of trouble and I'd better stop all this traveling.

“Helen!” His voice echoed faintly; the surfaces of Harrison's house were plane, its walls unadorned. Faintly too a voice responded. Helen was in the kitchen. I'm hungry, Joe thought with surprise. He passed through the dining area, dropped his jacket on a hassock, and pushed through a swing door into his kitchen, where his wife stood smiling, her skirt crooked, her sleeves rolled, a faint film of sweat on her face. “You look like hell.” He smiled.

“So do you,” she said, and did not smile. She came to him and put both arms around his neck and kissed him; her face was sticky and warm. He held her. The kitchen was cool. It was high noon and there was no sun in the room. He smelled onion and was glad. He wanted onion, cheese, salami, dark bread, and beer. He looked over Helen's shoulder and saw egg salad, crabmeat salad, chopped ham, potato salad, whole-wheat bread, and beer. He laughed at himself. “Let me go,” he said.

“Never,” she said.

“Our differences appear to be irreconcilable,” he said. “An impasse.”

She laughed and nuzzled him. “How are you?”

“All right,” he said. “Hungry. We'll talk about it.”

She looked up at him, close, like that, her eyes a few inches from his, and he looked away and she released him. “Do you want sandwiches or a platter?” she asked.

“Sandwiches,” he said. “Not outside. Right here.”

“Yes. You're earlier than I expected.” She sat, and rearranged plates.

“Yes. It was shorter than we thought.” He rolled up his sleeves and removed his tie. It was a twelve-dollar hand-painted tie, subdued, and Helen took it from his indecisive hand and hung it on the rack over a wet dish towel.

She knew that something extraordinary had happened, and Joe was aware that she knew, and the awareness embittered him slightly. Had she expected him to return beaming and tell a joke and say that it was all over? No, maybe she had not. He remembered the glance of complicity, or complicitous fear, between her and Davis; had they both known it would go wrong?

He spread egg salad on a slice of bread and went to the refrigerator for lettuce. This was a kind of luncheon they had often enjoyed, but it did not seem real to Joe today. The light was dull and pink, and the kitchen was white, sterile; their voices were pale.

“You'd better tell me,” she said.

Joe cut his sandwich without speaking.

“Was Mrs. Storch there?”

“No,” Joe said. “It has nothing to do with her. It's past that.”

Helen waited.

“Something's happening to me,” Joe said dully. “How long has it been since I slept alone? Fourteen years?”

“I hope not,” she said. “There were those trips to New York—”

“Stop it,” he said. “What I mean is, I've just made a bed I'll have to lie in alone.”

She was silent. Soon he said, “Do you remember all that nonsense I used to tell you about my father?”

“How could I forget? A tall man and skinny. A teacher of plane geometry who chain-smoked and voted Republican. Never whipped you in your life. Kept a goldfish bowl full of loose change on the mantel.”

“I was thinking of the goldfish bowl,” he said.

“Ah, no!” She closed her eyes. “Please. Not the honor system. Not handsome is as handsome does.”

“No.” Joe tried to smile; he was embarrassed and therefore irritated. “Not exactly. It wasn't the honor system; it hardly had anything to do with honor. I told you I took seventeen bucks once and bought a bicycle—”

“For a newspaper route, and you paid it back out of your earnings in six months.” She leaned forward. “I like a little homely morality myself, from time to time. But between that and this, today, a lot of water has—”

He was shaking his head. “No. You're looking at this like a village schoolmaster. What mattered was not that they trusted me, but that they thought they knew me well enough to trust me, so that my own idea of myself was formed—partly—by their idea of me, and to have let them down would have spoiled the picture, would have made me someone else. I suppose now I'd say, would have made me lose my identity.”

“And your identity is all you have.”

He shrugged. “It seems that way. You sound skeptical.”

“Yes, I'm skeptical.” She sighed. “You're trying to say that you can't change your spots.”

“No.” He was firm. “I'm saying that I don't want to change my spots.”

“This above all,” she recited.