Little Sacrifices (31 page)

‘Oh, driving around.’ He leaned back, flashing a grin at Mark.

‘Where were you driving around?’

‘I don’t remember, exactly. Just around town.’

‘At any time that night did you drive by the schoolhouse on Plantation Road?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You didn’t drive by the schoolhouse. Are you sure?’

‘Yep.’

‘You just said you don’t remember exactly where you were driving. If that’s true, then how can you know for sure that you didn’t drive by the schoolhouse?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Mister Carron, what kind of vehicle do you drive?’

‘A nineteen thirty–six REO Speedwagon.’ He paused. ‘It’s black with a flat bed and low sides.’ Snickers floated up to us. What Earl described was just about every truck on the road in nineteen forty–eight. Harvey slogged on.

‘So your truck is black, with a flat bed and low sides. Exactly the same truck that Duncan Powell saw leaving the scene of the crime, isn’t that right?’

‘Objection. The witness isn’t in a position to know what another witness saw or didn’t see.’

‘Sustained.’

Harvey looked pleased nevertheless to have driven home his point to the jury. Then, having wrung as much paltry help out of Earl as he was likely to get, he turned him over to the defense lawyer, who spent a little while getting Earl to describe what a nice guy the defendant was. He asked no questions about where the defendant had been on the night in question. I was starting to understand that it probably didn’t matter. Harvey was nearly out of witnesses and I didn’t see anything that nailed shut his case.

Harvey next called a doctor from the hospital. He swore his oath and Harvey asked him to tell us all about Mister Johnson’s wounds. He asked whether they could have been caused by a handgun. No, they were shotgun wounds, all right. He described the gore in enough technical detail to render it innocuous. Harvey picked up the little bag of pellets and introduced them to the court. After Duncan’s grilling, the rest of the afternoon was a letdown. When we filed out, Dora Lee made us promise to go straight home and tell Duncan where we’d been. There wasn’t any point in keeping my whereabouts a secret. I knew I wouldn’t resist the urge to rehash the day’s proceedings with my parents.

Chapter 42

Jim was unusually quiet while we walked home. I knew him well enough to know that he liked to chew on things for a while before holding forth on them. We were nearly home when he asked, ‘Do you think he’ll get convicted?’ I knew he’d arrived at his conclusion.

‘I wish I did, but I doubt it. He does deserve to, though, doesn’t he?’

‘Only if he’s guilty.’

‘You think he is, though, right? I mean, Duncan saw him plain as day.’

‘But it wasn’t day, it was dark. Duncan even said so.’

I felt my face flush. ‘Are you saying Duncan lied?’

‘No! Don’t be so sensitive. All I’m saying is that from a legal point of view, there’ll be some doubt in the minds of the jury. Don’t you remember civics class? “Beyond a reasonable doubt.” That’s what the law says. I just don’t think Harvey did a very good job getting rid of doubts, that’s all.’

I didn’t either. Whoever appointed him to the case knew he was green. Maybe they’d have picked someone else as prosecutor under different circumstances.

I scoffed. ‘I hate to see the law get in the way of what’s right.’

Jim wrinkled his eyebrows and stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. ‘I’m surprised to hear that, coming from you,’ he finally said.

‘How come?’

‘How come? Did you forget the cross burning on your front lawn? You sound like a Klansman.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

He shook his head like I was a slow–witted child. ‘May, you have to respect the law. That’s what it’s there for.’

‘Well, it’s not always right.’

‘And I suppose you know what’s right.’

‘In this case, yes I do. Mark’s guilty and you know it. He deserves to be punished.’

‘What do you want to do, string him up?’

‘It’d serve him right.’

‘Because you say so?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then you’re no better than the Klan.’

‘It’s different.’

‘How? Someone’s done something that you think he should be punished for. Even if, under the law, he’s found undeserving of that punishment. If you punish him anyway, you’re doing exactly what the Klan does to Negroes. It’s the same thing. You can’t play by one set of rules and expect everyone else to play by another when it suits you. That’s all I’m saying.’

‘But in this case, it’s what’s right,’ I said, feebly.

‘Just because you say so, doesn’t make it right. Even if I agree with you. That’s why we have the legal system. We’ve got to abide by it even when we don’t like the outcome. It’s the only way to be fair to everybody.’ He looked pleased with himself.

I didn’t like his argument, and I especially didn’t like being compared to the same people I despised. But as usual he’d debated me over a barrel. He really was one smart kid. Anyway, I knew he believed the same things I did.

When I got home Duncan discharged his duty and grounded me for a week, but without much conviction. We decided between us that Harvey was in too far over his head. The Seibert’s lawyer had twenty years experience over the novice prosecutor, and it showed. He handily picked apart Duncan’s testimony, and Harvey didn’t put up much of a fight.

It only took Harvey a couple more days to call all of his witnesses. None of them had much of consequence to say. Then he had to rest his case and hope for the best. The Seibert’s lawyer trotted out every living person who’d ever set eyes on Mark to testify to his good character. According to the defense, we had a saint walking among us. He was a good student, in college even. He loved his girlfriend and was kind to his family. By the time the defense rested, none of us had much hope in the justice of the so–named system.

It took the jury almost a day to decide to acquit Mark Seibert. I had to give credit to whomever held his ground for so long against what was surely heated opposition. Duncan swore a blue streak when he read the paper, his optimism trampled in bursts of profanity. Granted, Harvey was no Clarence Darrow, but he’d managed to present his evidence to the jury without hopelessly botching the job. Maybe the evidence against Seibert wasn’t airtight, but an eyewitness should count for something. Duncan refused to accept that a group of perfectly intelligent men, when faced with a preponderance of the evidence, could fail to convict the defendant. The fact was, there
was
no good reason. Most of the jury probably made its decision before the first testimony was given.

We sat on the porch enjoying the last of the light. A cool breeze was just beginning to sweep away the warmth of the day. The only sounds were the cicadas in the bushes and the occasional rustle of Duncan’s paper. Every so often the ice cubes in one of our tumblers melted enough to make them tinkle against the glass. Ma stretched in the rocking chair, savoring the last pages of her book. I watched Missus Welles methodically trimming the hedges in her yard, watching us from under her hat, exactly as she had a year earlier.

‘At least he went to trial,’ I mused to no one in particular.

‘Hmm?’ Duncan rubbed his forehead and glanced from the paper. He looked tired.

I sat up. ‘I said, at least Mark went to trial.’

‘I didn’t do any good,’ he muttered.

‘Didn’t it, though?’

Ma stared at me, her face working over the events of the past months. Slowly a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘Yeah, it did. I think it did, Duncan.’ She stood awkwardly in front of him. He uncrossed his legs, making room for her to climb on his lap. ‘It really did,’ she said again into his hair as he hugged her tight.

It’s too easy to overlook the small step while we contemplate the staircase, and let what should have happened cast a shadow on what actually did. Little triumphs make us greedy, whetting our appetites to want more. It’s probably just human nature. In another place, in an earlier time, no one would have even come forward to say that a crime had been committed. Mark Seibert wouldn’t have been charged, or indicted, and he wouldn’t have gone to trial. I had to hold on to the fact that when it comes to moving forward, every small step is a victory. I knew that first–hand.

Epilogue

Today I am as comfortable in my Southern skin as anyone born to it. My understanding of the kaleidoscopic South, and myself, was an evolving process, put into motion my first year there. Despite frequent setbacks, disappointments and dissent, the fact was that Savannah, the South, and the entire country was on the precipice of change. Duncan saw it from the start. It took the rest of us awhile to catch up to him. The fifties brought the Korean War, and many of my classmates, including Clay, died on its battlefields. It brought the McCarthy era with its Communist witch hunts and closed–minded suspicions. It also brought the first seeds of the civil rights movement. In nineteen forty–eight the voices raised against the system were reedy and cautious. We didn’t know then, had no reason to suspect, the shadows fated to blanket the South. Even in the face of two hundred years of history, we didn’t foresee the depths to which polite society would sink in its battle to safeguard its position. Nevertheless, like kudzu, once the idea of equality took root, it couldn’t be stopped. Cut back maybe, but never really halted. No one can point to one victory that started the ball rolling. Maybe people just decided they’d had enough. At lunch counters, on buses, in schools and in the streets, regular folks stood up for the rights of everyone. They were all harassed, many were beaten, some were killed. But slowly an opening was forged, and America passed through it, not always easily and not always completely, but eventually we passed through. Savannah’s not perfect today. No place is. But there are more good people than bad, who want the future to be better, and are doing a lot to help it get there.

As for me, I let the fates decide my future. A couple of months after the trial, we all started thinking about college. There were SATs to sit, those dreaded timed tests that sealed the academic futures of America’s teenagers, and applications to fill out. Jim set his heart on Emory University’s law school. I like to think that the trial encouraged his decision, but deep down I know he had the makings of a lawyer long before Mark Seibert ever picked up a gun. Fie said she planned to follow in her mother’s footsteps at Agnes Scott College, a few miles from Atlanta. While we were deciding on BA or BS degrees, Fie’s ambition was to achieve an MRS. She hoped college would provide just the curriculum to allow her to put those three letters in front of her name.

I was tugged in two directions, my past calling me back to Massachusetts, but the present planting my feet firmly in Georgia. Instead of making any decisions, I convinced Duncan to fork over the fees for three applications, and I sent my essays off to Harvard just like I’d promised Lottie, to Agnes Scott and to Oglethorpe University, another little college in Atlanta that was judicious enough to admit women. I’d have loved to join Jim at Emory but they didn’t allow us girls to enroll outside the nursing program until nineteen fifty–three, and I wasn’t exactly the nursing type. We waited on pins and needles into the spring of our senior year to hear the colleges’ decisions. My choice turned out to be no choice at all. The slimness of the envelopes told me before I opened them that Harvard and Oglethorpe didn’t think much of me. Only Agnes Scott sent along the fat envelope that included a welcome letter and orientation materials. Fie and I were roommates all four years and we got good liberal arts educations there. I put mine to use in Savannah’s schools. I’d like to think I’m a good teacher, maybe just a little bit like Duncan.

I tried to see Missus Robinson whenever I was home, but new friends and new commitments made it harder as time went on. She remained a sharp–witted cursing history book until her death in the autumn of my last year at college. I went home for the funeral, where I finally met her children and grandchildren. Besides her family, there were only a few nurses to bid her farewell. She’d outlived her contemporaries and the life she knew. I still think about her, and wonder what she’d make of the world today. She’d probably say it was poxy.

And my family. Well. Ma eventually learned to wear the South comfortably. She took up teaching young people more officially after I went to college, getting her teaching license and going to work in the public schools. When they integrated her school, she was one of those who helped the new students along. It was the time in her life that she was most proud of, though she didn’t live to see its fruition. Her heart gave out on the way to school in nineteen sixty–one, and she died in the hospital a couple of days later. Duncan outlived her by over thirty years, long enough for his granddaughter and great grandchildren to hear his views a thousand times over. He reveled in the peace protests and civil rights marches of the sixties. As far as he was concerned, the world was finally coming to its senses. My husband found him mortally embarrassing, but not me. I’d lived through Duncan’s early years. A single voice raised in protest sounds mad, but millions together have the ring of common sense.

After Ma died, Dora Lee took Duncan on as her personal project. Once Eliza married and moved to Atlanta, Dora Lee gave up the house on the lane. She moved into my old bedroom to look after Duncan full–time. I never asked about the exact nature of their relationship in their last years, but after so long in the same house together they bore an uncommon resemblance to an old married couple.

Minty, Ceecee and Charlene turned out to be little more than a footnote to my life. Their allure rubbed off in the months leading up to the trial. By the time we graduated, we didn’t spend much time with each other. It wasn’t that we disliked one another; we just had different inclinations. They all attended Agnes Scott like me and I saw them every so often on campus, where we’d nod politely and go our own ways. Minty left college our senior year and moved to Charleston to put her debutante training to good use as a society wife. Every so often, news of one of her benefits or charity balls wafts back to Savannah in the pages of the News. Charlene’s life didn’t turn out so good. Despite her best intentions, she walked straight into her mother’s footsteps. She was an unsociable drunk by the time she was thirty, living with her husband and kids in her ancestral home. She hovers at the edges of Savannah’s society today, the subject of idle gossip, which must just kill her.