The Perk (21 page)

"They say women are the tougher of the breed."

"They're right. But like I said, I was
just mad. I didn't use his kid."

Meggie stepped around Beck with the doll.

"Hi, Miss Jodie."

"Well, hi yourself, girlfriend. What's up?"

"We're sad."

"Why, honey?"

"Josefina asked us to have a sleepover with
her."

"Well, that'll be fun."

"We can't go."

"Why not?"

"We might have an accident."

"Oh. Well, you know what you should
do?"

"What?"

"Ask Josefina to have a sleepover at your
house. Your daddy can put a mattress on the floor for her, and you can sleep
in your bed. If you have an accident, it won't be a problem."

Meggie's face brightened.

"We can do that."

She jumped onto Jodie's lap, and they giggled
and chatted about the cheerleaders and the dance team called the Goat Gals, and
for a brief moment Beck Hardin felt whole again.

Beck had read through a year's worth of Annie's emails to
J.B. and J.B.'s emails to her. They had become like father and daughter. His
wife had told his father more than she had ever told her husband; and his
father had told his wife more than he had ever told his son—about his life, his
dreams, his love for his wife, and his love for his son. Beck was about to
quit when he found an email dated a year before Annie had died. The first part
was more family news, but the last part stopped Beck short.

 
Gotta run. Doctor's
appointment. Routine mammogram, first one. Which sounds like a lot of fun,
having my breasts squished flat like pancakes. Can't believe I just typed
that. Love, Annie

Beck quickly scrolled down for the next email. It was from
Annie to J.B. a week later.

 
They found a lump in my breast.
Had an ultrasound. Needle core biopsy tomorrow. That should be fun, getting
stabbed in my breast. (Acting brave here.) I haven't told Beck.

His heart rate jumped. He scrolled down fast and found the next one from Annie a few days later.

 
Pathology came back positive. "Invasive
ductal carcinoma." Not good. MRI tomorrow, surgery soon. I'm scared,
J.B. I've got to tell Beck. Tonight.

"Perfect" had ended that night for the Hardin family of Chicago.

Alfred Giles died a Texas goat
rancher.

But he had been born an Englishman. Alfred
wanted to be a minister; he became an architect instead. After studying at King's
College in London, he traveled to the United States and settled in San Antonio in 1873. He had suffered rheumatic fever as a boy, and Texas' hot, dry climate
suited him.

He arrived just as Texas' two hundred fifty-four
counties embarked on a kind of courthouse competition, each trying to one-up
the other. They called in great architects to design grand structures:
Romanesque, Classic, and Renaissance Revival, Beaux Arts, Second Empire, Art
Deco, and even Mediterranean. Now, Texans might not know Romanesque from Beaux
Arts, but they know what they like; and they liked their fancy new courthouses.

Gillespie County entered the competition in 1881.
But the Germans in Fredericksburg were nothing if not frugal; they simply could
not bring themselves to spend good money to hire a great courthouse architect.
So they held a contest. Sitting in his office in San Antonio one day, twenty-eight-year-old
Alfred Giles opened the newspaper and saw an ad offering a $50 prize for the
winning design for a new Gillespie County courthouse. Two architects answered
the ad; Alfred was one.

Alfred designed a Renaissance Revival courthouse
that would sit on Main Street surrounded by oak trees and one unusual
three-trunk deodar cedar tree. His two-story structure had a footprint in the
shape of two Ts set end to end. The north and south façades were symmetrical
with wide balconies, as were the east and west façades with smaller balconies.
The walls would be yellow limestone blocks, the trim white limestone, and the
arched windows encased in pine wood and secured in place with square-headed
nails. The doors would be pine and the doorknobs copper with a raised hummingbird
etching. The building would be topped by a green standing-seam roof above
ornamental cornices and a cast-iron cresting. Alfred's design was grand, and
it won. The Germans liked the style, the symmetry, and the cost: $23,125.

The Gillespie County Courthouse earned Alfred a
reputation as a great courthouse architect. He went on to design ten other courthouses
across Texas, including the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, generally regarded
as the grandest county courthouse in the state. When his mother died in 1885,
Alfred sold off her London real estate and bought thirteen thousand acres of
land south of Fredericksburg. He named his new ranch Hillingdon, after his
birthplace in Middlesex, and stocked the land with Angora goats. He later founded
the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers' Association. Alfred Giles, the Englishman turned
Texan, raised goats on his land in the Texas Hill Country until he died in 1920.

Alfred's courthouse still stands on Main Street, shaded by those same oak trees; but that lone three-trunk deodar cedar tree is
gone. A year before, James Brazeal, a "chainsaw artist," had carved
the dead cedar tree into the image of an eight-foot-tall eagle with its wings
spread as if taking flight; smaller eagles sat atop each wing. Locals call it
the "Eagle Tree."

Beck walked past the Eagle Tree to the front door
and entered the courthouse. The first floor housed the district clerk's
office, the district attorney's office, the justice of the peace, and the
judge's chambers. Dual staircases led upstairs to the second-floor courtroom where
for one hundred twenty-five years justice had been dispensed in Gillespie County.

Beck stood there dressed in a custom suit; the
last time he had been in this courtroom he had worn jeans. It was the summer
before his senior year. Two boys had been arrested for smoking marijuana—in
the same pickup at the same time. One was German; the other was Latino. Both were
Beck's friends. The German boy's family hired a good lawyer; the Latino boy
had a public defender. Beck had sat in the courtroom on sentencing day and
heard old Judge Stutz say "probation" to Merle Fuchs and "one
year in the state penitentiary" to Miguel Cervantes, and his face had
burned hot. He stormed out of the courtroom and into the fresh air outside.
He sat on a bench and watched Merle leave through the front door with his parents
and Miguel through the back door with deputies. He had decided then that he
would become a lawyer. The matter of Miguel Cervantes haunted Beck to that
day.

Justice in Gillespie County would now be
dispensed by Judge John Beck Hardin.

He had been in courtrooms hundreds of times. He
had tried cases in state and federal courts, and he had argued before appellate
courts and twice before the Supreme Court. But he had always been there as a
lawyer, and the cases had always been about money. He now wondered if he were
up to that task: justice.

But then, he was the judge of a rural Texas county with a population of twenty-three thousand. How hard could it be?

It was eight-thirty, and the courtroom was still vacant.
He walked up the center aisle past the wooden pews and sat behind the bench
beneath an arched wall. The floor was longleaf pine; the walls were limestone
and white stucco; the ceiling was sixteen feet high. The courtroom was
illuminated by eighteen tall windows with green wood shutters and eight black
wrought-iron chandeliers.

To his immediate left was the witness stand;
beyond that was the court reporter's desk and the jury box with thirteen chairs
bolted to the floor. To his right was the district clerk's desk. Behind him
on tall standards hung the American and Texas flags on either side of the
limestone arch.

Behind the bench was an alcove with two twelve-foot-tall
windows looking out on a balcony. He opened one of the windows and stepped over
the low sill out onto the balcony. He had stashed two lawn chairs just inside;
this balcony would be his private retreat, a place to be alone and think.

The first day of October had brought a cool
front to town. Beck stood at the low wrought-iron railing and faced the Adams and
Main Street intersection, the busiest in downtown Fredericksburg. A few pickup
trucks were stopped at the light, people were walking to work, and business
owners were sweeping the sidewalks out front of their stores. The view to the
north across Main Street was of the Marktplatz where preparations for Oktoberfest
were underway; to the east across Adams Street it was of the community college building,
the Beckendorf Art Gallery, L.M. Easterling boot maker, and Texas Jack's Wild
West Outfitter with a wooden cigar store Indian out front of the old stage
depot.

He ducked back inside and shut the window. Tucked
into the corner of the alcove was a narrow spiral staircase built around a
thick pine log. Beck wasn't sure if the architect had intended the stairway as
the judge's private escape route should gunfire break out in the courtroom or just
as a quicker route to an outhouse since the courthouse had no restrooms at the
time it was constructed. It was now his private stairway to and from his
chambers on the first floor.

Beck descended the stairs and entered his
chambers. The room had limestone walls, a high ceiling, and tall windows that looked
out at street level. There were no bars on the windows or other security of
any kind. He sat behind his desk. Above the desk was a black wrought-iron
chandelier. In front of the desk were visitor chairs. Against each wall were bookshelves
with law books; this was also the judge's law library.

"Do I have to call you 'judge' now?"

Aubrey was standing in the doorway, dressed in
his coach's uniform and leaning on his cane. The smell of beer drifted over.

"Only in the courtroom."

"Congratulations, Beck. Still can't
believe you won."

"I didn't, but thanks anyway. And same to
you—four straight wins."

"Slade's unstoppable."

Beck knew that Aubrey hadn't come to talk
football.

"I've been in Austin the last two weeks, Aubrey,
for judge school. But I'll be able to do more now, about Heidi."

"Four years and nine months ago today, Beck.
Ninety-one days left." Aubrey nodded past Beck and said, "You've got
company."

Beck turned. Jodie was standing outside,
tapping on the window. He opened the window, and she stuck a coffee through.

"Small nonfat latte. Figured you might
need one your first day, Judge."

"Feels like when I was a teenager sneaking
out my window to meet Mary Jo."

Her eyes got wide.

"
Mary Jo
Jobst?
"

"Hey, don't say anything, okay?"

"I can keep a secret."

"J.B. said … never mind. Thanks for
the coffee."

She walked off, and Beck shut the window. When
he turned back, Aubrey was giving him a funny look.

"You're not, you know"—he made a
little punching motion with his fist—"with the lesbian?"

"No, I'm not with the lesbian."

The district clerk walked in past Aubrey; he
waved and limped out of sight.

"He smells like a brewery," she said.
"You ready, Judge?"

"As ready as I'll ever be, Mavis."

Mavis Mooney had served as the District Clerk of
Gillespie County for twenty-seven years now; she knew more about being a judge
than Beck did. Beck removed his suit coat, donned the black robe, and grabbed
the latte. They walked out of his chambers and around the corner to the spiral
staircase. Mavis stood aside.

"Go ahead, Mavis."

"You'd better go first, Judge. So you're
not tempted to look up my dress."

She said it with a straight face.

"Uh, okay."

They climbed the stairs and entered the
courtroom. No burly bailiff bellowed out, "All rise!" when he walked
in; Beck just sat down behind the bench like he was chairing a bar luncheon. Mavis
sat to his right. The courtroom was no longer vacant.

Six lawyers stood before the bench. Their arms
were crossed, and they were eyeing Beck like students taking measure of the new
teacher. They were not $800-an-hour lawyers who represented well-dressed white
corporate executives in federal court. This was a rural county court, they
were country lawyers, and their clients were dressed in black-and-white striped
jail uniforms with GILLESPIE COUNTY INMATE stenciled in red across the back. Leaning
against the jury box railing like he owned the place was the Gillespie County
District Attorney.

Beck didn't figure they would be fishing buddies.

Four female inmates sat in chairs along the wall
to Beck's right; they were wearing jail uniforms, white socks, red rubber
slippers, and ankle chains. They were young and white, but their faces were
old. Their eyes were hollowed out with dark circles, and they wore no makeup.
They were chatting casually among themselves like sorority sisters at a chapter
meeting. They were meth addicts.

Eight male inmates sat in the jury box to Beck's
far left. They were young and brown, tattooed and stone-faced, staring at
their cuffed hands as if resigned to their fate. Standing guard next to the
jury box was a tall lean deputy sheriff dressed in a tan long-sleeved uniform
shirt with epaulettes on the shoulders and a silver badge pinned over his
heart, a green tie with a silver handcuff tie pin, green cowboy-cut slacks with
a crease that looked sharp enough to bring blood if you ran your hand down it,
tan cowboy boots, and a tan western-style holster holding a large-caliber sidearm
and a cell phone. His hair was cut in a sharp flattop with the sides combed
back. He didn't look like an old Rod Steiger. He looked like a young Clint
Eastwood ready to draw his big gun on a recalcitrant inmate and snarl through
clenched teeth, "Go ahead. Make my day."