The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (16 page)

She didn’t think Danny ever saw the purpose behind her seemingly inconsequential messages. He never looked below the surface of anything, unless it had a motor in it. Rose was careful to be lightly amusing and much less trouble than she was worth. She considered it the tax she paid for not being beautiful.

IT WAS JUST AS WELL
that she hadn’t been able to call him tonight. The train trip had exhausted her. She didn’t feel up to inventing funny stories tonight. It was easier to be spritely on paper. You could take your time, and no one could see how tired you were and how hard you were trying. She considered writing about their evening excursion to the Bristol radio show, but Danny didn’t seem very
interested in music—or in anything at all other than flying—and it would take a great many words to set the whole scene for him in order to make an amusing tale of it. She yawned and rubbed her eyes. It was too late for that much effort. She ought to get some sleep in preparation for more travel to come. Just a few lines, then, to keep her memory green for him.

She supposed that she ought to be thinking about an angle to the story she’d begin covering tomorrow, but it was hard to choose one when she had so little information.

Why would a pretty girl kill her father?

Of course, it was nearly inevitable that her angle would be that the girl had done no such thing. Whether they were reading newspapers or fairy tales (which were not so dissimilar, after all) “beautiful” and “good” were inextricably entwined in people’s minds. It would be no work at all to champion the beauty’s innocence. People wanted to believe it. What was odd about this case was: why didn’t her friends and neighbors believe it? She’d lived all twenty years of her apparently blameless life in that one mountain hamlet, probably cousin to half the community. And yet she had been charged with murder. Not manslaughter, self-defense, accidental homicide, but first-degree murder. The townspeople had not risen up to protest this callous treatment of one of their own. In fact, there was some story about the local citizens threatening to lynch her at the old man’s funeral. Now that was a puzzling turn of events.

Rose wondered what that little village knew that no one else did. No, she really wondered which version would make the better story splashed across the front pages of her newspaper: Erma Morton, the beautiful, persecuted innocent, or Erma Morton, the scheming Jezebel. People didn’t really want the truth, anyhow. They only wanted the story to make sense. Real life didn’t always make sense, though; sometimes you had to help it along.

Stifling a yawn, Rose turned her attention back to the sheet of notepaper.

Dear Danny,

Greetings from nowhere-in-particular, U.SA., where I am currently ensconced in the House of Usher, praying that “possum” will not be featured on the breakfast menu. The train ride wasn’t so bad, but there’s a lot of nowhere to get through before you get to the middle of it. Actually, this hotel is fancy enough to make me glad I have an expense account. I even got to wear my blue silk to dinner: the one that matches your eyes.

Tomorrow will be a different story, though. That’s when we get to the little burg where the trial is taking place. I’m sure the trip will be a nightmare over washboard roads, and you don’t know how much I wish there was a certain handsome pilot here to fly me over these mountains in one short hop, but on the other hand, I’m not sure that the prospect of flying over steep mountains fills me with delight, either.

I hope I’ll be back in a week or so, Danny, and then we can talk about that book you want me to write about your exploits in flying. I think you’re right—if you get famous enough, all sorts of opportunities would open up for you in aviation. I’ve been thinking about how to go about it. We’ll talk it over when I return from—the back of beyond.

As ever,
(That was a nice touch, she thought.)

Rose     

IN ACCOMMODATIONS MORE MODEST
than the Martha Washington Inn, Luster Swann’s mind was not on the upcoming trial, either, nor did he have any desire to pen letters to someone back home. There was no one back home to write to, and, strictly speaking, no “back home” for him at all. Swann lived in a cold-water walk-up in a lower East Side neighborhood: a modern version of the Tower of Babel, where no two tenants spoke the same language. Since Swann
never talked to any of them, he rather preferred it that way, because it gave him an excuse to keep to himself. Whenever possible he avoided rudeness, not out of concern for the feelings of others, but because hostility was a form of interaction, and he wanted to be left alone. If he could have been granted one wish, he would have chosen invisibility.

He was stretched out on the narrow bed in his underwear, with a mason jar of whiskey cradled in the crook of his arm. Sleep was only a few swigs away.

Swann had arrived on the same train as the others that afternoon, but he had been careful not to get too close to them, in case they took a notion to invite him to dine with them or to join in some witless excursion in this neck of the woods. He avoided them, because the idea of a social evening with his colleagues made him shudder. They would have expected him to make conversation. They might have asked him questions.

The train ride had been icy and uncomfortable, and his expense allowance would not allow for any improvement in those conditions at his evening’s lodgings. He didn’t care where he stayed, though. There were better ways to spend your money, and it hadn’t taken him long to find them. People called this part of the South “the Bible Belt,” but Luster Swann had assumed correctly that there were still sinners to be found if you put your mind to it. He gravitated to the cheapest-looking hotel within walking distance of the train station, and it only took him three minutes to locate an enterprising shoe-shine boy who was a fount of information about local suppliers of booze and female companionship. As he suspected, he need not stir from the hotel to acquire either one. Swann decided to forego the latter, because he did not feel up to even minimal conversation. Around here the whores all spoke English, after a fashion, and that was too bad. Much better to crawl into a jar of Washington County bourbon and forget his troubles until morning.

Luster Swann was immune to the charms of music, or art, or literature. Not for him the concert or the improving book. He had not been raised to culture, and he did not feel the lack of it. His old schoolmates might be bemused to think of “Lack-Luster” Swann making his living as a writer, but, since he doubted that any of them ever read a newspaper, they probably never knew about it. Anyhow, reporting was a job, and, thanks to the stock market crash, employment was hard to come by these days, especially for the ordinary laborers who were as replaceable as nails. He had stumbled into a higher class job, and worked his way up to a byline, so he reckoned he was safe, if anyone was these days. He didn’t find his work difficult. He got to spend a lot of time alone, and that was good.

Reporting was certainly easier work than loading ships on the docks or hauling garbage. He had a curious knack for making pictures with words. He didn’t use any elegant literary references or complex language—he didn’t know any—but somehow in the simplest words and phrases Luster Swann was able to put the reader into the story, enabling him to see and hear what had taken place. He never analyzed this skill, but dimly he did realize that he thought in scenes, like a movie, and not in strings of words. Perhaps that was why he could re-create action so graphically: he watched the movie in his head and wrote down what he saw.

Swann’s other innate talent was a unique understanding of disordered minds. Whenever there was an occurrence that made people say, “How could he have done such a thing?” or “What was she thinking?” they had only to look to the reporting of Luster Swann for a lucid explanation. Why did the wealthy matron kill her baby? Why did the fussy little shopkeeper poison cats? Somehow Luster Swann always knew, and the way he presented the story made the illogic of twisted minds into a perfectly inevitable course of action:
Why of course he did that. What else could he have done?

As long as Swann continued to write plausible and compelling
stories that sold newspapers, his editors thought it best not to inquire into the whys and wherefores of his affinity with madness.

Now why would a schoolmarm kill her pa? He could think of three or four reasons, none of them pretty, and one that they wouldn’t let him say straight out in a family newspaper. He liked that particular reason; maybe he could figure out a way to slide it past the censors. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

He held up the mason jar, peering at the room’s bare lightbulb through the clear moonshine. He was about two swallows from sleep, and then it wouldn’t matter anymore.

Nora Bonesteel set the old carpetbag satchel on the bed, beside a stack of freshly laundered underclothes and her newly darned wool stockings. There was no point in telling anyone yet that she was leaving, but she didn’t see any harm in taking her time with the packing. She set out one of the cakes of the soap she and Grandma Flossie had made last summer: boiled wood ash and lard, scented with lavender water distilled from plants in her garden. Even country people used store-bought soap nowadays, but her grandmother was particular about things, so she still favored homemade over store-bought.

What else would she need? Nora thought for a moment. Then she took a white towel and a flannel facecloth out of the oak dresser. She had been away from home a time or two, staying with cousins a few miles from the farm, but never as far as this, and she would feel better about it if she left nothing to chance. She put in her blue-flowered flannel nightgown, and wished she had room for a quilt in case the house in Wise was inadequately heated. She wished she knew for sure, but there are some things that one must take on faith.

Nora Bonesteel had been nine years old before she realized that not everyone knew who was coming to visit an hour before they arrived, or whose letter would be waiting in the mailbox before the postman even started up Ash Mountain. Some people, she knew, feared and hated having the Sight, but she never minded, because she valued knowledge of all kinds, and it would never occur to her to refuse the gift of it. But she had learned to be careful about letting on when she knew more than ordinary
people did. In church she would touch the funeral wreaths to make sure they were really there before she mentioned them to anyone, and she willed herself to treat a person just as usual, even when she knew that, because an accident or a sudden illness awaited him, he would be dead in a day or two. It made folks uneasy to think that she held secrets about them that they’d rather not know. She had learned that it was safer to listen more than she spoke, and to let other people introduce the topics of conversation.

When she was younger, she had once asked her grandmother, who shared the gift, if she ought to warn people when she knew what was going to happen to them, but Grandma Flossie told her that there was no point in doing that, because it wouldn’t change anything, and it would cause unnecessary pain to those she tried to warn. So now she held her peace, and pretended she couldn’t see what was coming.

What was coming this time was a letter from Carl, and she reckoned it wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow, so that gave her most of a day to think up something to tell her mother about why she suddenly wanted to visit kinfolks in Virginia.

All night long, listening to autumn winds, wandering in the mountains.

—
MATSUO BASH