Way the Crow Flies (81 page)

M
ADELEINE IS STANDING
on a box in the witness box. It’s like a penalty box for one.

“Speak up.”

“Pardon?”

“I said, what is your name, little girl?”

Madeleine looks up at the judge. He has a big frog face.

“Madeleine McCarthy.”

“These gentlemen want to hear you—” Off to one side, on chairs ranged like bleachers, a bunch of old men sit facing her. They already look disappointed.

“The jury needs to hear you,” says the judge. “What is your name?”

“MADELEINE McCARTHY!”

He looks startled. Titters from the audience. Madeleine looks out; smiling faces. Where is Dad? Where is her mother?

“Well, Madeleine, how old are you?”

“NINE!” Laughter.

“Order, please.”

She is not trying to be funny, only obedient. But the judge doesn’t sound mad. “You don’t need to speak quite so loudly, Madeleine.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all right. Do you know what it means to take an oath?”

“Yes.”

“What does it mean?”

Ricky Froelich is sitting at a table in front. He is taller. Bony. He is looking at her, but it doesn’t seem as though he is looking at anyone he knows. She smiles at him.

“I don’t think I will swear this child,” says the judge.

Madeleine looks up again—what was the question? She is in trouble now. A tortoise in the court of King Arthur.

“My lord, that is entirely up to your discretion,” says Mr. Waller—he is Ricky’s lawyer. He has bags under his eyes but his black gown shimmers and floats when he moves. “Though I would like the child to be sworn if possible.”

“I know you would like it, Mr. Waller, but that is not why we are here. What grade are you in, Madeleine?”

“I’m going into grade five, your honour.” Not too loud, not too soft, look at the judge, pay attention or you will not get to swear.

“My lord,” says the judge to her.

“Pardon?”

“In Canada a judge is addressed as ‘my lord,’ or ‘sir.’”

“My lord,” trying not to do an English accent—
don’t be smart
.

“We have television to thank,” he says, and people titter again.

There’s Dad. Sitting next to Maman, a few rows behind Mr. Froelich and Colleen. He winks at her. She smiles back as discreetly as she can, and feels like a puppet.

“What does it mean to take an oath, Madeleine?”

“It means you swear to tell the truth.”

“To tell the truth,” he says. “And what is that?”

Is this a trick question? Is he talking about the TV show
To Tell the Truth? Will the real Madeleine McCarthy please stand up?
What does he mean?

“What is
To Tell the Truth?”
she repeats.

“Do you know the difference between a lie and the truth?”

“Yes your ma—my lord.”
Your majesty?!

“What is the difference?”

“The truth is when you say what happened when someone asks you, and you don’t leave anything out just to try and make them believe something else, and you don’t act like they’re only asking you only one exact thing, you have to tell everything and that’s what ‘the whole truth’ means.” She takes a breath. She feels clearer, as though she has just woken up.

The judge nods. “I wish more adults had a similar grasp. What grade are you in, Madeleine—rather, who is your teacher?”

“My teacher last year was Mr. March.”

“Did you like him?”

“No,” she says, and everyone laughs.

“Order please, ladies and gentlemen, I would ask you to remember why you are here.” He looks back at her. “You are being truthful, Madeleine, that’s good.”

Halfway toward the back, Jack smiles and feels his face relax back into flesh. It had tightened across his bones like a burn; he was shocked, like everyone else in this room, by what a little girl said this morning under oath.

“You live in the Permanent Married Quarters with your family?”

“Yes sir,” replies Madeleine.

“Do you go to Sunday school?”

“We call it catechism.”

“What church do you go to?”

“We’re Catholic.”

“Roman Catholic, I see. I think this girl might understand.”

Who is he talking to?

Jack licks the corner of his mouth. A young child, no older than his daughter—a friend of hers if he is not mistaken, pretty little thing; Marjorie. Where did she get her dreadful story? He watched the jury turn to stone as the child testified. But if Madeleine is sworn, her testimony will count. All Rick needs is reasonable doubt. And Madeleine will provide that. She will corroborate what Elizabeth Froelich so painfully tried to communicate to the jury this morning. Karen was there to translate. The Crown turned this to his advantage, claiming the mother was putting words in her daughter’s mouth, since she was the only one who could understand what the poor girl was saying. It ended with Elizabeth in tears, her testimony struck and Mr. Waller—and, by extension, Karen Froelich—chastised by the judge for subjecting a “poor crippled child” to such an ordeal.

The judge turns to Madeleine again. “Do you know you are under obligation here to tell the truth?”

“Yes, my lord,” says Madeleine.

“Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“What is that brooch you are wearing?”

“It’s a lighthouse.”

“Where is it from?”

“It’s from Acadia”—this poor brooch was touched by Mr. March—“my mother is Acadian.” Mr. March never would have touched it if I weren’t ashamed to speak French. “We speak French,” she says.

“I think we should swear this little girl.”

I passed
.

Jack wipes a trickle of sweat from his temple. It’s almost over. He longs to undo the top button of his shirt but he doesn’t wish to worry Mimi, sitting next to him; he’s been a little short of breath lately. The little girl, Marjorie, was convincing. And the statement taken from the absent one, Grace…. Jack shivers. Innocent children. How could they know of such things?

“Bailiff?” says the judge.

A pot-bellied man in a uniform approaches Madeleine. He looks like Mr. Plodd, the policeman in
Noddy
. He has handcuffs on his belt and carries a big book in his hands.

Jack stares at the back of Froelich’s head, then Rick’s. Froelich is a good man, but naive. Where is the boy from? Where was he before the age of twelve? In some institution. Terrible things may have happened to him there. Children learn what they live. Jack knows Rick is innocent of the murder charge, but is it possible that what those little girls said is true? Has he interfered with children? With Madeleine?

“Place your right hand on the Bible.”

Jack watches as his daughter is sworn. If anyone has touched her…. He feels—almost hears—something bend, like a twig, in his left temple. He blinks. He sees his daughter suppressing a grin as she listens to the bailiff—he can tell she is trying not to laugh. She’s fine. This experience will roll right off her back. He would know if anyone had touched her—Mimi would know…. But something must have happened to those other two little girls. Where were their parents? Jack glanced at Squadron Leader Nolan’s face while his daughter gave her testimony. Where was he? If Ricky Froelich molested those children, he deserves to be up there. With that thought, something releases at the base of Jack’s skull. His headache—the low-grade one he has ceased to notice—unlocks and begins mercifully to seep away, like runoff down a grate.

“… so help you God?”

Madeleine says, “I do.”
You may now kiss the bailiff
. She looks out, expecting Dad to be beaming, but he is just watching her steadily. So is Colleen. And Mr. Froelich.

She is ready.
To Tell the Truth
, with Kitty Carlisle and your host….

“Did you know Claire McCarroll?”

She feels hot again. “Yes.”

It’s Ricky’s lawyer. He is on our side.

“Were you a friend of Claire’s, Madeleine?”

“Yes.”

Then why didn’t you take care of her?
Madeleine’s stomach goes gluey.

Mr. Waller says, “Do you know Ricky Froelich?”

“Yes.”

“Was that a yes?”

The judge says, “Yes, yes, it was a yes, the witness nodded, please proceed, Mr. Waller.”

“Were you in the playground with Claire and the other children on the afternoon of April tenth?”

“Yes.” She has to go to the bathroom.

“Speak up, please.”

“Yes.”

“Did Claire tell you—?”

The judge says, “None of that, Mr. Waller.”

Mr. Waller continues, “What did Claire tell you?”

“She told me she was—”

“Speak up, Madeleine.”

“Pardon?”

“What did Claire tell you that afternoon, the afternoon of the tenth of April, in the schoolyard?”

“She said she was going for a picnic with Ricky Froelich.”

Mr. Waller’s shimmering silk robe has begun to look like the uniform of the losing team. He says, “What exactly did Claire say?”

“She said, ‘I’m going for a picnic with Ricky Froelich.’”

“And what did you say?”

“I said—I sang—I hummed ‘Beautiful Dreamer.’”

“Why did you do that?”

“’Cause everyone knows—”

The judge says, “Only say what
you
know, Madeleine.”

“Because I knew she made things up. Not lies, just … her imagination.”

“Why did you think she made it up?” asks Mr. Waller.

“Because she wanted to go for a picnic with him.”

“No, let me—what I mean is, Madeleine, what made you think that it might just be Claire’s imagination?”

“Well, one time she told me they went to a dance together at Teen Town.”

“And had they?”

“No. Only teenagers are allowed. And she said she was going to marry him.”

Madeleine smiles to show that she isn’t criticizing Claire, but no one else is smiling. There is a table full of things over there in front of the jury. A jar of something brownish. A rag with yellowy spots. Bulrushes. Claire’s Frankie and Annette lunchbox. It’s like show-and-tell. What’s in the jar?

“What did you say, Madeleine?”

Did she ask it out loud?

The judge says, “Cover that table back up, and keep it covered.”

Someone coughs. Mr. McCarroll is sitting on the other side of the aisle from Ricky. He is wiping his lips with a hanky. Seeing him gives Madeleine the idea to call on Claire when she gets home this afternoon. Then something jumps behind her eyes—like when you turn a light switch off and on really fast—and her brain flicks on again and says, “You can’t call on Claire, she’s dead.” Madeleine knows that’s true, but there is something else underneath her brain that wants to walk her feet down the street and call on Claire. Something that knows Claire is still there in the green bungalow, if only someone would go and call on her.

Mr. Plodd covers the table with a white sheet.

“And who else was there when you said—hummed, rather—‘Beautiful Dreamer’?” asks Mr. Waller.

“Um. Colleen.”

“Colleen Froelich?”

“Yes. And Marjorie and Grace.”

“So they overheard Claire say that she had received an invitation—”

The judge says, “Mr. Waller.”

“My lord, I am establishing that Marjorie Nolan and Grace Novotny had a basis for concocting—”

“I know what are you doing, Mr. Waller, and you will refrain from it.”

Jack works through the logic of the two girls’ testimony this morning and finds it flawed. Their story hinges on the claim that Rick asked them to go to Rock Bass that day, presumably to do what he had done to them in the past—namely, molest them. And that when they refused, he asked Claire and she obliged—she must have, because she went with him. But Jack knows that Rick didn’t take Claire to Rock Bass. Therefore, it’s reasonable to conclude that he didn’t invite her. Thus the claim that he only invited her because the other two little girls turned him down falls apart. Rick never invited any of them, because he had no intention of molesting anyone at all.

His neck begins to tighten again. The idea that he could have breathed a sigh of relief at the notion of his friend’s son being a child molester—when did I become that kind of man? All the little girls had crushes on the boy, it’s that simple, and that innocent. Jack is relieved to have unflinchingly faced the most unpleasant part of himself. There is no necessity for Ricky Froelich to be guilty of anything. Besides, he will go free because Madeleine will say which way he turned. Jack reaches for Mimi’s hand and squeezes it to reassure her.

Mr. Waller says, “When did you last see Claire McCarroll that day, Madeleine?”

“Me and Colleen—Colleen and I went to Pop’s—”

“What is ‘Pop’s’?” says his Lordship. “I don’t recall ‘Pop’s.’”

“It’s where we got grape pop,” says Madeleine.

“‘Pop’? Is it Pop or Pop’s?” says the judge.

Pop goes the weasel!

“My lord, ‘Pop’s’ is a local variety store,” says Mr. Waller.

“Is it relevant?”

“No, I don’t believe it is, my lord.”

“Then keep moving through, Mr. Waller, you’re taking five steps when you could be taking two.”

Madeleine has tucked her chin in to keep from laughing, but that always makes her eyes bug out. There is nothing safe you can do with your face except forget about it.

“Where did you go after that, Madeleine?” asks Mr. Waller.

“We were going to the willow tree—”

“The willow tree at the inter—? Where is the willow tree, Madeleine?”

“At the intersection.”

“And which direction would you turn if you wanted to go to Rock Bass?”

“Right.”

The judge says, “Do you mean to say you would turn right to go to Rock Bass?”

“Yes, my lord.” She didn’t mean to use the English accent, but the judge seems not to have noticed.

“Good,” says Mr. Waller. “And you and Colleen were on your way to the willow tree at the intersection.”

“We were going cross-country.” She looks out and meets Colleen’s eyes.

“And you could see the willow tree?”

She looks back at Mr. Waller. “Yes.”

“And you had a clear view of the intersection.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you see?”

“We saw—”

“Only
what you
saw, please.”