The Just And The Unjust (30 page)

'Pretty sure. Miss Wheeler talked to the girls and she's satisfied that he never did any more than that.' Bunting took the sheet out of the typewriter. 'Matter of fact, I think there's something wrong with him.'

'Now you mention it, it does look a little that way,' Abner said, taking up the new sheet. The terms were the same as the last..

'I mean, physically. I'm sending him up to jail to-night. I wanted Doctor Janvier to look him over. The way I think we'll handle it is, we'll arraign him before Irwin upstairs in Number Two to-morrow morning. He'll waive submission and plead guilty. The three girls will have to testify but no one else except Field. The judge can sentence him, and we'll have it all polished off quick.' He paused. 'In a way, it's a break, the other trial. With that going on downstairs, it won't attract much attention. Do you know him so well you don't want to take it?'

'I know him, all right,' Abner said. "But, no, not well enough to mind. I feel sorry for him —'

"Well, I would myself, except for those photographs. Or I might, because some of those little floozies aren't too young to ask for all they get. But a man in his position —'

Steps sounded in the hall downstairs. 'That's probably Maynard Longstreet,' Bunting said. 'I asked him to come over so we could work out what the Examiner had better say. There's going to be an unholy stink. I think it will finish Rawle.'

'I don't see how it's his fault.'

'There's plenty of school board politics in it; but anyone would have a right to ask why, as principal, he never checked up on what was going on for six months or more down in Field's office. Hello, Maynard! Come on in. Did you get over to Delp's?'

'I got over,' said Maynard Longstreet. His heavy black brows were drawn together, his eyes narrow. 'Why, that dirty little son of a bitch!' he said. 'Somebody ought to take him and beat the living daylights out of him! Why —'

'Well, we don't want to start any of that,' Bunting said. 'You don't, huh?' said Longstreet. 'How'd you like it if your two little girls were up there at high school and some teacher did that to them? Why, he ought to be sterilized! What are you going to do to him?'

'Send him to the reformatory.'

'Yes, and they'll let him out in a year or two and he'll do it again somewhere. Another thing. How did he get away with it all that time? Doesn't Rawle know what goes on in his school? The board ought to fire him.'

Bunting looked at Abner, and then back at Maynard Longstreet. 'Come on, Maynard!' he said. 'It isn't the first time in history a man gave some girls a going-over. Let's get it down to normal. The thing is, what you'd better print about it.'

'What I'd better print about it is the facts. And I'm certainly going to ask in an editorial for Rawle's dismissal and a shake-up in the school board. What else?' If Mr. Rawle were dismissed, or forced to resign, the matter of whether Bonnie kept her job or not was settled. A new principal, a man from outside, would want that job for someone he knew. Abner felt an immediate relief — the callousness of feeling relief over what would be a real disaster for Mr. Rawle was apparent to him; but what he felt, he felt — for, if Bonnie lost her position, she lost the basis for the argument. Abner would have to find a way to make his income meet the expenses; and if he had to, it seemed somehow foregone that he could.

Bunting said, 'Print anything you like; but I think it can be phrased so as not to be any juicier than necessary. We don't need a lot of city tabloids on our neck. Will you write it and let me see it?'

'Why should I?' said Longstreet.

Bunting said, 'For the damned good reason that you wouldn't have known anything about it until to-morrow if I hadn't been decent enough to tell you. The next time something comes up, do you want to know about it, or do you want to have to find it out?'

'Say, if you think you're doing me any favours —' Maynard Longstreet began, his black eyes blazing higher. At that moment, the telephone rang. Catching it up, Abner said, 'District attorney's office.'

'Oh, Ab,' said Bonnie. 'You aren't through yet, are you?'

'I'm afraid, not quite.'

'Well, I think I'll go home.'

'How are you going to get there?'

'I'm going to walk, naturally. I do it every day during the winter. I guess I can manage it now.'

'Wait a few minutes. I'll come up.'

'No, don't. I'm leaving now.'

'You sound displeased,' Abner said.

'No. I'm not. I'm sorry if I do. Are there other people where they can hear you?'

'Yes. But-'

'I'll call you to-morrow. Please, Ab. Thanks for dinner.' She hung up.

Putting the telephone down, Abner saw that at some point Maynard Longstreet had begun to laugh. He proved to be saying: '... I don't know what there is about you, Marty, that makes a fellow mad. You're so damned dictatorial, I guess. Didn't you ever hear of the freedom of the press? What do you want to act like God Almighty on wheels for?'

'I know, I know,' Bunting said. 'That's your job, and nobody can cut in on it. Look, Maynard, I'm sorry if I offended you. This Zollicoffer thing dumped on us was bad enough; and now this mess — why don't you co-operate for once in your life?'

'He's asking me!' Longstreet said to Abner. 'All right. Let me have that typewriter. I'll run it off now and you can see it, if you'll shut up for half an hour.'

Bunting said, 'I'll go out. I want something to eat. I didn't get any dinner.'

Maynard Longstreet waved a hand at him. 'Beat it,' he said. 'You, too, Ab. I have to concentrate.'

'Better lock the safe,' Abner said.

Longstreet had noticed the photographs. 'Say!' he said, examining them. 'So this is how you spend your spare time! Say!'

'Put those back when you get through with them,' Bunting said.

'Say, what are these? That's a nice little number.'

'Yes,' said Bunting. 'That's what Field must have thought when he posed her. Now, put them away before we have you sterilized.'

Abner went downstairs with him and out on to the sidewalk in the warm night. Bunting said, 'There's nothing to hang around for, Ab, if you want to go. I'll send the file over to you in the morning, if you don't mind taking it. I'm going to see Irwin at quarter of eleven. He was out to dinner.' He stood still a moment, looking at Abner. His face, though calm and contained, was tired, his expression absent and worried.

Abner's half-formed idea had been to go along with him and tell him, to get it over, about the interview with Jesse. When Marty did find out it would be hard to explain why Abner hadn't told him when he had a perfectly good opportunity to. Abner did not know whether or not he was excusing his own disinclination, his willingness to put off what was bound to be unpleasant, with the argument that Marty had enough on his mind.

'See you in the morning,' Bunting said. He turned and walked down past the dark store fronts toward the lighted windows of the Acme Lunch at the corner.

Abner got into his car and searched for his keys. When he had found them and started the engine, he paused. Bonnie might not have reached home yet; and for an instant be thought of driving over. However, like talking to Marty, it meant a problem in what to say — whether to tell her, since it was likely to concern her, about Field; whether to say nothing. One of the things the business of the law had taught Abner was not to tell all he knew; and the temptation, so urgent to most people, to be the first with news, did not trouble him much any more. He could easily enough say nothing; but to-morrow, when Bonnie, along with everyone else, learned the news, she would think it queer that he hadn't told her.

Abner decided to go to bed. He let in the clutch and the car began to move. At the corner the traffic light held him up. Through the bright window of the lunch room he could see Marty, the only person in the place, sitting at the counter. There was a mug of coffee in front of him and he was talking to Walter Fowler, who was making him a sandwich. Abner remembered that Walter was out on probation. Walter had stolen — that is, taken without the owner's consent — an automobile because he thought he needed it to get married. He had a girl, whose name, somehow absurd and pathetic when you saw her, was Regina; and it had been advisable for Walter to marry her at once. His idea had been that, if he could get a car and take her somewhere out of the state, this could be done inconspicuously. He thought they could then say that they had done it long ago, and Regina's condition would be all in order. Unfortunately, going to pick Regina up, he wrecked the car he had 'borrowed'; making one of those miserable situations that seem to illustrate the scriptural principle of taking even that which he hath from him who hath not.

Marty found Walter the job at the lunch room, so Walter could tell the Judge that he had a job; and Walter was given a suspended sentence. That was not to say that Walter's troubles were over. Walter had married Regina (which Abner was fairly sure Walter didn't want to do); and now he had her and a baby and the payments for the smashed car — all charges on what little he was making as he worked nights at the Acme Lunch. Abner was fairly sure that the courts had not seen the last of Walter, that those slow distracted wits that evolved the original marriage scheme would be driven by circumstance into evolving something equally futile and unfortunate; and when it happened, the fact that the district attorney had been so decent to Walter would be just one more thing against him.

The light changed and Abner let in the clutch again. He swung around the block and back up to Court Street. On the courthouse tower lifted above the trees the moonlight was faint, for the sky had covered over with thin clouds; but the clock face could be seen with the hands at ten o'clock; and at once, slow and harsh, the hour struck through the quiet night. Abner drove on home out through Court Street.

4

Judge Coates had just got to bed. A light was placed so that he could read from a book or magazine leaning on a rack before him, and he sat propped up in the vast old bed; an island of radiance in the dusk of the high-ceilinged, heavily furnished room.

The Judge had called out when he heard Abner's steps on the stairs. When he saw Abner, he said, 'Didn't expect you yet. Go swimming?' Abner said, 'Marty turned up a mess, and I had to come back. I've just been over there.'

'Anything interesting?'

'It's going to interest people around here. We have three A and B indictments against Sam Field for fooling with schoolgirls — you know him? Those were the Fields over at Mill Spring. Sam went to school with me, and then to the State Teachers' College.'

'I know. His father was a minister. So is an uncle of his, I think.'

'Yes, that's right I guess it isn't Sam's fault; but that will make it worse.'

'What happened?'

Abner told him. 'It looks as if Rawle were going to be on a spot,' he said. 'I don't even know who's on the school board any more — except Mrs. Ballinger, and Doc Mosher.'

'Afred Hobbs. Eleanor Carver — and Jesse.'

'Jesse Gearhart?' said Abner. 'What's he doing there?'

'Opinions differ,' Judge Coates said. 'Yes, Jesse has been on the board for years.'

'I never knew that!'

'Maybe it never interested you much.'

'Is he a friend of Rawle's?'

'Yes, I think so. I think he supported Rawle's appointment. I don't know that they were ever close friends. There's been some opposition to Rawle among the faculty, and I know Doctor Mosher thought they ought to make a change.' Judge Coates stirred his body in a frustrated, restless movement and Abner said, 'Can I get you something, sir?'

'No, no,' he said. 'It's just —' He lifted one of a pile of paper tissues beside him and dabbed the corner of his mouth. 'It's wearing,' he said. He made a deprecatory gesture with his good hand. His expression was half angry, half shamefaced. He said, 'I don't like things like that happening! I suppose it's because I'm a sick old man. I don't mean that the way it may sound. Sorry for myself.'

Judge Coates' voice was controlled; but the need to control it showed that what he said was only partly true. He
was
sorry for himself; not in the usual easy emotional way of disappointed anticipation, but because he suspected that he made a pitiable spectacle, because something, his state, drove him to say things that he remembered despising other men for saying. He said, 'I always used to think that it was cowardly not to face facts — young men are great ones for facing facts! Even when they don't like the facts, there's a kind of tonic in them. Dwelling on how all wrong the world is may help them enjoy more the feeling, even if they don't know they have it, that they're strong, they're well, they'll live for ever, they're all right. But when you get older, you can sympathize a little with the rebellious children.'

Looking at Abner, he saw that Abner didn't follow; and he added, 'I mean, in the Bible. "Which say to the seers see not; and to the prophets, prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits".' He shook his head. 'None of you know the Bible any more. Well, why should you? You don't believe in any of it, do you?'

'I wouldn't go as far as that,' Abner said, embarrassed, for there seemed to him little point in discussing religion. 'I didn't know you believed in it, much.'

'I don't know. Old Senator Perkins used to say there's a little something about a drink of whisky. Well, there may be something about some of those sweet passages in the Book. Sometimes I feel they may be true, not words.'

Abner found himself blushing. 'Well, sir,' he said, 'when I've had your experience — Senator Perkins seems to have been quite a sayer.'

'I know,' Judge Coates said. 'It's speaking unto us smooth things, again. Yes, Perkins was a character. They don't have men like that any more. Everybody's more like everybody else —' He sat brooding; and the thought occurred to Abner that, a generation from now, there was a good chance that certain old men (including himself) would be telling young men that old Judge Philander Coates was a character, that they didn't have men like that any more. He said, 'I didn't mean to bother you with the Field business. I don't know why I told you. Just wanted to talk to someone, I guess.'