"Do you know what else happened?"

"Shooting," he said. "Shooting started before I got to the door."

"How many shots?"

He shook his head. "You couldn't say. Seem like firecrackers. They was almost all together, all of it didn't take but four or five seconds."

"What happened after the shooting stopped?"

"After the shooting I went out to the back, there was Momma and Rosie both coming out the house. Momma holding herself here on her breast, Rosie holding her 'tomach."

"Did you see Mr. Trout or Mr. Buster back there?"

"No sir, they gone by then."

'°Was there a pistol in the house at the time all this happened?"

"Yessir, on my side. Right under my mattress."

"Did you ever get that pistol?"

"No sir, I never bothered it till the next morning when they come out after it. I give it to a police."

"Did you fight Mr. Trout any? Did you put your hand on him?"

"No sir."

"Did he put his hand on you?"

"Yessir, but he didn't have his hand on me but a little while. He didn't touch nothing long, but when he left his hands off us, we was changed for good."

Townes stood quietly a moment, giving that time to sink in. Then he looked at Trout and said, "Your witness."

* * *

SEAGRAVES STOOD UP, undecided as to how that last remark had affected the jury. He looked at them again, trying to remember which ones were indebted to him for their city water, but in some way that would not quite come clear, they were not as familiar as they had been an hour before. He smiled, glancing down at the pad in front of Trout. j He was drawing cartoons — ducks shooting guns at each other.

"He didn't touch us long, but when he left his hands off us, we was changed for good." Seagraves repeated the boy's words in a monotone as if he were reading them.

"Yessir."

"Could you tell us how things were before Mr. Trout changed them?"

"I don't know that I exactly could," the boy said.

"Well, let's see. When you needed money, where did you go to borrow?"

The boy did not answer.

"Did Mr. Trout come to you, or did you go to him?"

"He come out that day."

"I'm not talking about the day of the shooting right now," Seagraves said. "We'll talk about that later. Right now I want to know about this beatific life you-all had that Mr. Trout changed."

The boy moved in his seat. "I didn't say it was that," he said.

Seagraves closed his eyes. "What I am getting at here is that Paris Trout was part of the reason you had the good life you did. That he had been a friend to your family, loaned you money when you needed it, and would still be a friend if you hadn't tried to cheat him on this car."

The boy did not answer.

"Am I going too fast?"

"No sir."

"Then answer the question."

"I didn't hear none."

"The question I asked you was to describe the life that you say Mr. Trout changed."

The boy paused. "Rosie's life," he said.

Seagraves felt it getting away from him now. He looked again at the jury and saw the size of his mistake. "Now sir," he said, "when Mr. Trout came up on the porch, did he do anything to threaten you?"

"He put his hand back of my collar, you know naturally that would threaten anybody."

"Were you scared?"

"No sir, I recognize they wasn't coming up there for me. I had one payment before that was overdue, and I just paid them on up."

"Why did you grab Mr. Trout by the neck then?"

"I never grabbed Mr. Trout. I never raised my hand."

"Did you try to fight Mr. Trout?"

"I didn't attempt to fight. If I did, Mr. Buster was glad to shoot me."

"That was the reason you didn't fight?"

"Nobody would fight, somebody got a pistol on them."

Seagraves held his head as if he were dizzy. "All right," he said, "you say Rosie ran into the house, then Mr. Trout, and then your mother."

"Walked," he said. "She just walk in there calm."

"You saw that? She just walked in nice and slow?"

"No sir, she was walking pert. She don't ever walk slow."

"Did you see the rest?"

"I didn't see it all," he said. "I didn't stayed out there. I saw him when he caught up to Rosie, that is the only thing."

"Did you see him hit her?"

"He grabbed her by the head. I don't know what else. He might of hit her."

"You are the gentleman who was there, and you can't say if she was hit or not?"

"Yessir, he hit her with something. I saw the place on her head."

Seagraves moved closer to the jury. "All right," he said, "and then you ducked in the house. Is that where your rifle is?"

"Yessir."

"It's a .22, single-shot rifle?"

"Yessir."

"Did you mean to get it out?"

"Don't I have a right to protect my house?"

"Awhile ago you said you ducked in there because you were scared. Why did you say that?"

"I was scared," the boy said. "I'm naturally scared when somebody is shooting."

Seagraves saw the boy's fingers were shaking. "Which is it? Were you scared or were you mad?"

"Yessir," he said.

"You were scared enough to shoot somebody with your .22 rifle, but you weren't scared enough to shoot them with a pistol?"

"I don't know how to shoot no pistol," he said.

"Then why was it under your mattress? Why take it from your stepfather in the first place?"

"I didn't have no reason, I just liked it," he said.

"Do you know what perjury is?" Seagraves asked. "Do you know it is a crime in this state to tell a lie under oath?"

"I know it."

"I'll ask again. Why did you want it on your side of the house then?"

"I could take what I wanted on my side. Mr. Lyle don't mind what I take."

Seagraves leaned closer to the boy and spoke to the jury. "The truth is," he said, "that gun wasn't there, was it? It was on the other side, and you took it out of there after the shooting, didn't you?"

  "No sir, I had it before."

Seagraves shook his head. "All right, you said Mr. Devonne had a gun too."

"I saw the print of it through his coat."

"Did he say anything while this was going on?"

The boy shrugged. "He didn't say a mumbling word the whole time."

"He just walked in, without rhyme or reason, and began to shoot? Does that make sense to you?"

"I don't know," the boy said. "I never seen people act out like that before."

Seagraves walked back to the defense table and saw that Trout had filled the page. Ducks, mice, guns, pools of steaming blood. A woodpecker smoking a cigarette. He was beginning to draw walls and a window, to make the scene indoors.

"I have no further questions," he said.

Judge Taylor consulted his watch and broke for lunch. It was ten thirty-five, and Paris Trout was out the door before any of the spectators.

* * *

TROUT CROSSED TOWN ON foot, using alleys and backyards, and arrived at the Ether County Retirement Home in ten minutes.

He walked through the lobby without signing the visitors' book, without acknowledging the nurse sitting behind the reception desk. There was a rule that visitors had to sign in and residents had to sign out, but the nurse looked at Trout and decided not to make an issue.

He climbed the stairs to the second floor and walked into room 26 without knocking. His mother was sitting in a wheelchair near the sink, naked.

A fat Negro woman in a green uniform was kneeling in front of her, sponging her feet. The woman looked over her shoulder at the sound of the door, stopping for a moment, and then rinsed the sponge in a bowl of dirty water and started up the old woman's legs. She knew Trout from other visits.

Trout sat down on the unmade bed, watching. His mother's toenails were yellow and thick and had not been cut in a long time. They had not grown straight but followed along the curve of her toes, reminding him somehow of talons.

Her legs were thin and bruised, unshaved.

Her lap was hidden by the way she sat in the chair, a little tuft of gray hair showing at the top. "Miz Trout be finished here in a few minutes, you want to wait outside," the woman said.

Trout did not move.

The sponge went over his mother's knees and then moved to her chest and stomach. He saw little bumps rise on her arms, chicken skin. The woman stood and pulled her halfway out of her chair. His mother's chin rested on the woman's shoulder while she washed her back and bottom.

"There now," the woman said, "we be done in a jiffy." She dropped the old lady back into the chair and studied her work. There was a wet shine over her, top to bottom, and she had begun to shake.

The woman walked into the bathroom and came back with a towel and bent over the old lady, going back over what she had done. She was drying the chest when she noticed the old lady's breathing. "Lord a mercy," she said, "something got Miz Trout excited today."

He saw the rise and fall of her stomach too, it was spasmodic, as if she were crying. "I bet she knows you come to see her," the woman said. "I bet she knows you here." The woman moved until her face was in front of his mother's. "You know your sonny boy come to visit, didn't you?"

She opened the closet door and came out with a white nightgown. She fit it over the old lady's head and then her body, tugging at the arms to get them into the sleeves.

"People 'round here say Miz Trout don't realize a day has passed the last five years, but she knows more than they think."

She took the combs out of the old lady's hair and then smoothed it as it fell, the ends just touching the floor.

"You want to comb your momma's hair?" the woman said. "Sometime peoples like to comb their mothers' hair .... " She thought for a minute. "But I expect it's ladies like to do that, ain't it?"

Without a word Trout stood up and walked out the door.

* * *

THE TRIAL RESUMED AT one o'clock.

Seagraves approached the courthouse by himself, from the back. He'd eaten lunch at the college cafeteria, wanting time alone to think. Something was wrong with the case, the same thing was wrong with him. There was a confusion that defied order, and Paris Trout was in the middle of it, getting clearer all the time.

Seagraves saw Buster Devonne then, standing on the sidewalk where he could watch both doors to the building, and as soon as he spotted Seagraves, he crossed the lawn of newly planted grass to head him off

"Mr. Seagraves," he said, smiling, "if I might have a minute of your time, sir . . ."

Seagraves stood where he was. Buster Devonne stopped close enough so Seagraves could smell his sweat and lit a cigarette. He pulled the smoke deep into his body, and it came back out with the words as he spoke.

"Sir," he said, "there is some feeling among my friends that I am being used in this trial in a way that is detrimental to my own case." Seagraves did not answer.

"On account, you know, of the conflict of my testimony with my original statement."

"You need to talk to your attorney about that," Seagraves said. "I represent Paris Trout's interests."

"That's what I mean," he said. "You see, I ain't got no Harry Seagraves to get me off. I got Bear Lewis, the midget, and he's a worst lawyer than he was a judge."

Seagraves kept still.

"And what I thought," Buster Devonne said, "was it might be to our mutual benefit if you was to represent me also."

"No," he said.

Devonne ran the palm of his hand over his head, from the forehead back to his neck. "I got to protect myself you see. I can't afford no crackerjack lawyer."

"Bear Lewis knows the law," Seagraves said.

"No sir, not good enough. I need me a better lawyer, or I can't go saying nothing at this trial here .... " He smiled and pulled again on the cigarette.

"How much do you want?" Seagraves said.

Devonne left the cigarette in his lips and put his hands in his pockets. He looked at his shoes, caked with fresh dirt. "A thousand," he said.

"A thousand, I ought get me a lawyer of my own .... "

* * *

WHEN SEAGRAVES REENTERED the courtroom, the air was dead weight. Hot and still and dead. It was an effort to breathe. Judge Taylor came in a moment later, pulling at his collar. There was baby powder between his fingers and streaked here and there across his robe. He sat down and broke an immediate sweat. He instructed the court officer to clear the spectators out of the windows and then sent him for a fan. Ward Townes called Mary McNutt. For half an hour Townes questioned her, uninterrupted by defense objection, leading her from her first meeting with Rosie Sayers to the moment things started on the porch.

She said, "I come up on the step, and Mr. Trout had brass knucks on his left hand. He made a rake to hit her, and she dodged.

"Rosie tore off into the house, and he tore off after her, like he was tearing down a panel. I come through the door, and they was at the foot of the bed. He had hold of her, and she had hold of him, around his waist. I saw where he hit her with the knucks. He surely bust the skin. I went in the second room door, and Mr. Buster Devonne come right on behind me and shot me in the back. I walk on, and he shot me again, a little before I got to Mr. Trout and Rosie, right there in my own house."

"And what did you do?" Townes said.

"I kept straight by them, I didn't do nothing."

"Were you hurt?"

"Sir . . . those bullets went inside."

"Could you feel them?"

"I could feel the shock, oh, yes."

Sitting at the table, Seagraves felt them too.

Townes said, "But you went on walking? Did you ever get hold of Mr. Trout?"

"No sir. I went on in there in the kitchen. I just got to the table to lay down, and then I dropped to my knees and couldn't stand up. I felt the bullets a different aspect, and I just wanted to lay down. Then Rosie come in after Mr. Trout had shot her, sat down on the trunk. He had shot her in the arm and the side."

"How many times did Mr. Trout shoot her after she sat down?"

"I know of twice, maybe more."

"And you were there when he did the shooting?"

"I was laying down," she said. "I was laying down with her to die. She said, 'Lord have mercy, Mary, he has shot me in my stomach." I raised up, and just as I turned around Mr. Buster ran in a little piece and shot me again. I said, 'Come on, Rosie,' and she got up, and me and her went out the back door."

Ward Townes waited a moment, and then, quietly, he said, "Can you show the jury any of the places the bullets hit you?"

Seagraves came out of his chair slowly, as if he were undecided whose side he was on.

"Objection," he said, sounding tired. "The witness is not the deceased, the condition of her body, whatever it may be, is not germane to this case and is not admissible."

Townes said, "It is certainly germane to the business Paris Trout conducted that day in Indian Heights. It cannot be separated out because Mrs. McNutt did not succumb to her injuries."

Judge Taylor dropped his chin into the palm of his hand and thought. "Well, Mr. Townes," he said, "I don't think you can make an exhibition of these wounds without subjecting the witness to a certain embarrassment."

"We won't need to disrobe her," Townes said. "All she has to do is pull up her dress."

Seagraves spoke again, more deliberately. "I would further object, for the record, that any such display would be highly prejudicial and would impugn the dignity of this court."

Judge Taylor would not meet his eye. "I will let it in," he said, "if counsel can show the wounds without undue embarrassment."

Seagraves walked back to his seat and heard the first question before he had turned around.

"Now, Miss Mary, where did the initial shot hit you?"

"Right in the middle of the back," she said.

"Would you please stand for a moment?"

The woman stood up and turned around. She had worn a long cotton dress with buttons up the back. Without being asked, she unfastened the top three. Her dress separated, and the skin beneath was rolling and brown, and just to the right of her spine was a black spot the size of a half dollar. Two black lines led from it in opposite directions, as if she had been cracked.

Townes positioned her so the jury could see. Then he said, "Thank you," and she rebuttoned her dress and sat back down. She had not hesitated or fumbled over the buttons.

"Where did the next bullet go?" Townes said.

"In the side," she said. And she reached behind, without standing, unbuttoning herself again, and then pulled the dress open until another black mark appeared. It lay on the wave of flesh beneath her brassiere. "And the next?"

She covered her side and pulled the dress down from the neck. Showing her right shoulder. The spot there was larger than the other two, and unlike them, it rose above the skin. The last mark was beneath her left breast, and she displayed it easily and without embarrassment. Unlike her sons, she was not afraid.

"All this time you were being shot," Townes said, "did any of you folks curse Mr. Trout or Mr. Devonne?"

"No sir," she said.

"Did you have any kind of weapon, any of you?"

"No sir."

"How long did it take? I mean, were the shots fired quick or slow?"

"As quick as anything is ever done," she said.

"And when it was over, what did Mr. Trout and Mr. Devonne do then?"

"When I looked," she said, "both of them was just running like rabbits. I told Rosie then to come on, and me and her made our way out the door. It didn't seem like no reason to stay in the kitchen where it happened. We had other things to do then."

He looked at her, not seeming to understand. But Seagraves did.

"To prepare ourselves," she said.

Seagraves closed his eyes; Trout looked straight ahead. Townes waited a moment, making sure everyone understood. "Did they ever get any of those bullets out of you?" he said finally.

She shook her head. "No sir. I feel them in the night."

"Thank you," Townes said, "that's all I have."

* * *

SEAGRAVES STARED AT THE WOMAN from his seat, she stared back. "Do you own a pistol, Mrs. McNutt?" he said.

"No sir."

"There is no pistol in your house?"

"Yessir, there is one. It belongs to my husband, Mr. Lyle McNutt."

"Do you know where your husband keeps it?"

"Yessir, I know everything in my home."

"What caliber pistol is that?"

"I don't keep track of nothing like that. I just know it's there."

Seagraves stood up and began to walk toward the jury. He had found an assault charge which was filed and dropped against Mary Boxer in Daniel County seven years previous. A white veterinarian claimed she had tried to hit him with a chair in a scuffle over the rent.

He had meant to bring that into it here, he knew he ought to bring it in. Something stopped him, though, he couldn't say what. Only that things were confused enough.

"The point I'm coming to, Mrs. McNutt," Seagraves said, "our contention here is going to be that you are accusing Mr. Buster Devonne because you don't want the jury to believe him later on. I want to give you the chance to speak to that now."

For a moment she seemed to rock, as if a breeze had suddenly blown through the room. "Lord," she said, "I wouldn't say nobody shot me if they didn't."

"You know a good bit about the courthouse, don't you?"

"No sir."

"You and your family know something about how to try a case?"

"Ain't none of us lawyers," she said, and suddenly everyone in the court except Mary McNutt herself was laughing.

Seagraves smiled, and the judge wiped tears out of his eyes. "I didn't mean to accuse you being lawyers," Seagraves said. "I meant you folks have been through this procedure before."

"No sir, I never been in court."

"What about those boys of yours?"

"No sir, they never in nothing like a big court. Henry Ray been in little troubles, but never in nothing with a gun."

"Our contention, Mrs. McNutt," Seagraves said, "is going to be that Thomas came up off that chair and cursed Mr. Trout for everything in the catalog and then came in after the shooting and removed the gun. Is that the truth?"

She and Paris Trout stared at each other then, until Seagraves walked between them.

"No sir," she said. "I told the truth about it. You can make it look any which way now, but I told how it happened."

Seagraves said, "That's what we called the jury for, to decide."

She turned then, looking directly at them. "They don't decide what happened", she said. "It's already done. All they decide is if they gone do something about it."

* * *

HARRY SEAGRAVES ATE A late supper alone with Lucy. The maid had gone home ill, and the liver Lucy cooked had a metallic taste. He had no appetite anyway. He played with his food until she had finished and then stood up, not waiting for dessert, and headed out the front door. "Harry?" she said.

"I've got some things to do," he said, without turning around.

"Are you going to be long?"

"I'm in a trial," he said.

He drove the car to Sleepy Heights, a gritty housing development that overlooked the sawmill on the edge of town. Two-bedroom houses, most of them cheap brick. Brand-new, they were forty-two hundred dollars each. Police lived there, workers from the sawmill, teachers.

The development was built on two hills, and Buster Devonne's place sat in between, at the bottom. Seagraves stopped the car in the road and turned off the lights. He checked to see the envelope was still in his coat pocket. He got out. The air was full of the smell of sawmill chemicals.

The driveway sloped downhill, and ridges of baked clay left by car tires broke under Seagraves's feet and made him unsteady as he walked toward the porch. It was screened in and ran the length of the front of the house. Seagraves knocked and then realized Buster Devonne was sitting six feet away, watching him.

Buster Devonne stood up slowly and unhooked the screen door. Behind him, inside the house, there were lights on. Somebody was playing a piano. Buster Devonne didn't wait for Seagraves to come in but turned his back as soon as the door was unlocked and sat back down and lit a cigarette. "Help yourself? he said, and nodded to the other chairs.

"I didn't come to sit with you," Seagraves said.

"This ain't personal against Paris," he said. "I got to protect my own interests. You explained that to Paris the way I intended it .... "

"I brought you the money," Seagraves said. "I don't run your errands."

Buster Devonne was bare-chested, thick in the neck and shoulders, turning fat. The porch smelled of tobacco and sweat.

"Help yourself." he said again.

Seagraves stayed where he was. The heel of his shoe held the door open, perhaps an inch. He took the envelope out of his coat pocket, feeling the weight. "This is from Paris Trout," he said. "It isn't connected to me."

"Whatever you say."

Buster Devonne accepted the envelope without looking inside, folded it in half and pushed it into his pants pocket. "Mr. Trout don't have nothing to worry about," he said. "All those people looking for is a way to let him go."

Seagraves did not answer.

"I know people, and I lived in this county all my life," he said.

Seagraves walked back to his car, feeling the man on the `porch watching. He got in slowly, feeling as if he'd left something behind. He stared at the porch a moment, and then, before he started the car, he saw the point of Buster Devonne's cigarette glow red and then disappear. In the moment of illumination, though, he saw him. Buster Devonne was counting his money.

* * *

HE DROVE THROUGH SLEEPY Heights and came out on the highway. He turned left, in the direction of town, and a few minutes later he passed his own house and then the college and then the courthouse. He turned right at the river, and the sound of his tires changed as he dropped off the pavement onto the dirt road that led into Indian Heights.

He stopped up the road from the house where it had happened and turned off his lights, thinking of what he had just done.

He watched the windows for most of an hour, trying somehow to weigh the place now without the girl, until a shadow moved and the lights inside went off.

He had no idea why he was there.

* * *

SEAGRAVES ARRIVED AT COURT at five minutes to eight, red-eyed and spent. He had fallen into bed exhausted and then been unable to sleep until after five. Trout was already there, staring in a murderous way across the aisle at Ward Townes. Townes ignored him, and with the jury out of the room, Seagraves ignored him too.

The first witness was Agent E. Smythe of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who referred repeatedly to a small leather notebook he took from his coat pocket.

Agent Smythe had visited Rosie Sayers at Thomas Comell Clinic the day after she was shot and written down what she told him. Seagraves objected before he could read it. "No grounds have been laid for this," he said. "A dying declaration is not admissible without proof that the declarer knew they were dying. There was no doctor present, no medical basis for this at all."

Ward Townes did not wait for the judge to rule. "Did Rosie Sayers know she was dying?" he said.

"She said as much."

"I'll allow it," the judge said.

"Thank you," Townes said, and then to the agent. "What exactly did Rosie Sayers say that indicated to you that she realized her condition was mortal?"

The agent went back to his notebook. "She complained of her stomach," he said. "She believed she was too young to die, that God had made a mistake."

Seagraves stood up again. "That is the statement of a delusional child, Your Honor. I ask that it not be allowed to prejudice this case any further than it already has."

"I think we'll listen to this," Judge Taylor said.

"Did she tell you what happened to her?" Townes asked the agent.

"Yessir. She said Mr. Paris Trout had arrived on the porch with brass knucks and grabbed Thomas Boxer." The agent looked at his notebook again and began to read.

"'I told Thomas the man had knucks, and he said, 'Goddammit, what is it to you?" He chased me in the house and hit me on the head with his knucks. Mary come in and pulled him loose. He shot me in the arm, he shot at Mary too. I went on inside the house and sat on the trunk. He came to the door and shot me in the shoulder and stomach.' "

The agent looked up.

"Did you ask if she had a gun herself?" Townes said.

"Yessir. She said she didn't. She said she didn't even have a stick."

"Was there anything else?"

The agent shook his head. "She couldn't talk much, except to swear under oath it was true."

Townes went back to his table and pulled a folder out of his briefcase. An edge of one of the photographs lay beyond the lower edge of the folder, and Seagraves knew what it was.

"Objection."

The judge looked up, surprised. "To what, Mr. Seagraves?"

"The photographs Mr. Townes is about to offer as evidence are gruesome beyond the matter in front of this court. They show the marks of the surgery."

"Are those pictures, Mr. Townes?" the judge said.

"Yes, Your Honor." He closed the folder of pictures and delivered them to the judge. Seagraves was surprised that he had not taken the pictures out and given the jury at least a glimpse as he carried them up. The judge fit his glasses across his nose and looked them over.

"Is this the girl?" he said.

"Yessir," Townes said.

"Is she deceased here?"

"Yessir."

The judge frowned. Seagraves moved next to Townes and folded his arms. "As Your Honor can see," he said, "the wounds are enhanced by the surgical procedures necessary to remove the bullets. The woman in those pictures has not only been shot, she has been mutilated."

Townes did not reply, and it struck Seagraves that the prosecutor had reservations of his own about showing them to the jury. Judge Taylor, however, had changed sympathies. "I believe the jury is able to see for themselves which wounds were bullets and which were surgery."

He handed the pictures to Seagraves, who took them back to the defense table and studied them, one by one. Trout looked at the first three, and then he moved in his chair until he was facing a different direction.

The pictures showed the girl on an examining table. She was naked, and even with her eyes closed, something in the flashbulbs made her appear surprised. The surgical cuts were closed with tangles of black thread. As Seagraves finished with each picture, he handed it back to Townes, who carried it to the first juror, who passed it on to the second.

It took half an hour for all the jury to see all the pictures, and then Townes showed them to Agent E. Smythe. "Are all these wounds consistent with her description of the wounds she suffered inside the house?"

"I would say so."

"In your experience with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, have you had occasion to visit other victims of gunshot wounds?"

"Yessir."

"Do you have a knowledge of anatomy, Agent Smythe?"

"Yessir, I do."

"And do you have an opinion which one of these shots killed the girl?"

"I would say the one into the stomach."

"Objection," Seagraves said.

The judge said, "I'll allow it," and Seagraves stood where he was a long time, staring at him, until the judge met his eyes. "I believe the agent's opinion would be considered reliably expert in shooting matters, Mr. Seagraves." There was a conciliatory note in what he said, however. Seagraves saw he had remembered who got him elected. Seagraves sat down and stared at the table where Trout was drawing something across the top of his pad.

When he looked again, he recognized it as a family tree.

* * *

SEAGRAVES BEGAN HIS CROSS EXAMINATION. "Agent Smythe, in your medical opinion, how successful was the surgery to remove the bullets from Rosie Sayers's body?"

"I do not know, sir."

"But what I want to know, do you feel Dr. Braver did a good job?"

"I have no way to know that."

"You couldn't say if he might of gone in there with his knife and scissors and cut too much off this or not enough off that?"

"No sir."

"You couldn't say if he might of made it worse .... "

"From the direction of the shot," the agent said, "I don't believe there was a thing your doctor could do to make it worst."

"You have seen wounds like this before?"

"Yessir."

"You have seen someone who was shot in the stomach?"

"Yessir."

"You have seen someone shot in the side?"

"Yessir."

From the table Seagraves leaned toward the witness. "Have you ever heard of somebody died from an operation?"

When Seagraves had finished with the agent, he glanced again at the notepad on the table. At the top of the family tree, where his mother's name was, Trout had drawn a spider that was also a face. It wasn't a face Seagraves recognized — he couldn't say if it was male or female, young or old — but he thought it was somebody real.

Judge Taylor recessed for lunch at ten-thirty again and did not reconvene until one, when Ward Townes called Linda Boxer.

* * *

THE LITTLE GIRL CAME out of the back of the courtroom alone, wearing a new yellow dress, her hair tied in back with ribbons. She was afraid, and when the court officer offered her the Bible, she accepted it as if it were a present. Seagraves noticed the ladies in the jury box smiling.

Judge Taylor leaned toward the child and said, "I'm afraid we need that Bible there for the court, honey, but I'll get you your own if you want."

The girl straightened her dress. "I got my own," she said, and handed it to the judge.

"Would you put your hand on top of it for me?" he said.

She put her hand on the Bible, and the court officer swore her in. When it was done, Townes leaned on the rail in front of the witness box and scratched his head.

"Linda, can you tell us how old you are?"

"Eleven."

"And you say you've got a Bible at home?"

"All us got Bibles."

"You and your sister?"

"Me and my sister and my brothers too. Everyone got us our own."

"And so, when you put your hand on top of the Bible and promise to tell the truth, you know what that means, don't you?"

The child nodded.

"Could you tell us?" _

 She nodded again.

"Now? Could you tell us now?"

"The devil get you if you don't tell the truth," she said. "Come and snatch you up for that."

"All right then, let me ask if you remember the day when the men shot Rosie?"

Seagraves stood up. "Objection. I am understanding of the problems with witnesses of this age, but the prosecutor is leading her here."

Judge Taylor sustained.

"Do you remember the day when the shooting happened?" Townes said. The child nodded, her braids were as stiff as wire and moved with her head.

"You have to say it out loud, honey," Townes said.

"I remember."

"Where were you when the men came?"

"Me and Jane Ray was in the house," she said.

"The boys' side?"

She nodded.

"And what did you see?"

"We seen the men come up on the porch, and then Momma come up there to argue with them."

"Did you go out on the porch too?"

"No sir."

"And did you hear them arguing?"

"They said something, and then they ran into the house and shot Rosie."

"The other side of the house?"

"Yessir."

"Did you see them shoot Rosie?"

' "No sir."

"You heard them?"

"Yessir."

"Did it take a long time or a short time?"

"A long time," she said.

"And when did you see Rosie again?"

"Me and Jane Ray stayed put."

"Did you see Rosie again?" The child did not answer. "Linda? Can you tell us?"

"We seen the men," she said.

"When was that?"

The child began to search the courtroom then, looking for someone. Her thumb went into her mouth, and Seagraves saw that she was about to cry.

"Linda?"

Her eyes filled, and tears the size of marbles rolled down her cheeks. There was no sound at all. "You don't have to talk anymore," Townes said. "You want to stop now?"

"We seen them running out from the back the house," she said suddenly. "They was runnin' and fannin' their coats. When they got into the car, then we come out and saw Rosie."

"And where was she then?"

"Out the back door, on the ground."

"Did Rosie say anything?"

The child shook her head. "To Momma," she said. "We never got that close to hear it."

"Where were you, and where was your momma?"

"Me and Jane Ray come out and saw what they had did. Momma was shot on the ground too, holding Rosie."

The child's eyes filled again. She dropped her head, and Seagraves could see tears dropping into her lap. Townes said, "Did you think your momma was going to die?"

"We thought we was all going to die," she said.

"Thank you," Townes said, and then he turned and looked at Seagraves as if something had been explained.

* * *

SEAGRAVES APPROACHEDTHE CHILD carefully. He said, "Linda, did you know who Mr. Trout was before that day?"

At the sound of the new voice she flattened herself against the back of the chair. The judge leaned toward the child again. just a few more questions, honey. Can you tell us a few more things?"

She nodded.

Seagraves said, "Did you hear of Mr. Trout before he came to your house? Did you know who he was?"

She nodded.

"How was that?"

"When he lent the boys money."

"He lent Thomas and Henry Ray money?"
 

"Uh-hmh."

Seagraves smiled at the child, trying to get her to smile back. "That was a nice thing to do, wasn't it?"

"No sir."

"It wasn't nice to give your family money when you needed it?"

"He didn't give it," she said.

"You're right. He lent it. Do you know what that means?"

She looked beyond him now, into the seats behind the railing.

"Linda," he said, bringing her back, "did you wonder how come Mr. Trout would shoot your momma and Rosie?"

She did not answer but slowly brought herself to look at Trout.

"Linda?"

"It just seem like a natural thing for him to do," she said.

Seagraves held the gate, and she went through it and then to her mother, who was sitting on the aisle in back. Mary McNutt straightened the girl's dress and wiped at her cheeks, and then she picked her up, pressing the child's face into her collar, and carried her out of the room.

Seagraves was watching her when he heard Townes's voice. "That's all for the people, Your Honor."

* * *

SEAGRAVES CALLED BUSTER DEVONNE. He stood in the witness box in a coat that looked like somebody had stolen it off an organ grinder. He put his hand on the Bible and stared right at the jury and swore to tell the truth. He stared at them, and he smiled.

"Mr. Devonne," Seagraves said, "what is your age?"

"I'm forty-four years old."

"Are you employed by Mr. Trout?"

"Yessir, I worked for Paris, off` and on, eight years."

"In what capacity?" Buster Devonne narrowed his eyes. "In what position?"

"I do some collecting," he said.

"Anything else?"

"Whatever else needs to be done."

"And on the afternoon in question did Mr. Trout have occasion to use your services?"

Buster Devonne smiled and shook his head. "Excuse me," he said, "but it struck me comical. It sounded like Twenty Questions." There was some quiet laughter in back, and Buster Devonne straightened in his seat. Seagraves repeated his question.

"Yessir," Buster Devonne said. "he asked me would I drive him out to Henry Ray's, to get him to sign a note on the car."

"Why didn't Mr. Trout just go out there by himself?"

"When he thought there might be trouble, he took somebody along."

"What sort of trouble?"

Buster Devonne shrugged. "There were two pretty big Negroes there, which I had information were very bad, mean Negroes. Plus Mary McNutt and the girl."

"So you went with Mr. Trout to protect him."

"I went to keep things in hand, yessir."

"And what happened when you got to Henry Ray Boxer's house?"

"Well, let's see. Thomas Boxer and Mary Jane was on the porch with this girl that got shot. We stopped at the steps and greeted them very nicely."

"What exactly did you say?"

"Inquired for their health," he said.

"And what did they say?"

"Nothing at First. They stood up on the porch, looking down, and then Mr. Trout talked to her."

"You mean Mrs. McNutt?"

"Yessir. He said, 'We have never put a hardship on you, Mrs. McNutt. We have always done you kindnesses when you called on us, and I can't understand to save my life why you or one of the boys didn't come in and talk this over.' "

"And what did Mrs. McNutt say?"

Buster Devonne shook his head. "Nothing. Then Mr. Trout and myself assented the stairs, and he told them that they would have to sign a blank note. He said, 'You-all know this is right,' and asked me for the note."

"You had the note."

"Yessir. Mr. Trout don't tote papers. And so I handed it to him, and he give it to the boy to sign."

"Did he sign it?"

"No sir. As soon as he touched it, the woman said, 'Don't sign that thing, Tom.' And then she looked at Paris — Mr. Trout — and cussed him."

"'What specifically did she say?"

Buster Devonne shrugged. "She said, 'You white sonofabitch, I will shoot your damn heart out.' You can imagine how I felt."

Before Seagraves could ask his next question, he heard Ward Townes behind him.

"Objection," he said. "No one has more respect for this court than myself: Your Honor, for what it is and what it can accomplish, but everything has its reasonable limits, and asking the court to put itself into Mr. Devonne's mind exceeds them."

There was some laughter again from the back, and Seagraves smiled with it. Buster Devonne put a look on the prosecutor. When the noise had passed, the judge sustained the objection.

"All right, Mr. Devonne," Seagraves said, "wou1d you please tell what happened next."

Buster Devonne was still staring at the prosecutor. "Thomas Boxer got up and grabbed hold of Mr. Trout by the neck," he said, "and the girl commenced to tearing at his clothes, to pull him off-balance. They tussled into the door, and then Mrs. McNutt come in there and jumped on Paris from the back. The girl had a pistol."

"What kind of pistol?"

"A thirty-two automatic," he said, and looked right into the jury box again.

"Then what happened?"

"I was tied up by the door. Thomas Boxer gone disappeared after he grabbed Mr. Trout, and there was supposed to be another Negro somewhere, who was known to be a big bad one. There was shooting then, and then the boy come in from behind to pick up the gun on the floor, and I yelled for Paris to look out, he's coming the other way. I was still waiting on the other Negro to appear and expected Paris could handle the women and Thomas until I got a fix on where he was."

"Did Mr. Trout have a gun?"

"Yessir, he did."

'°Was that unusual?"

"Not that I know. I believe it was an ordinary forty-five automatic."

°'Was it unusual for Mr. Trout to carry a gun along when he went for collections?"

"In Indian Heights? No sir. Paris Trout keeps a bank. He does it hisself; loans and collections, keeps it all in his head. In that business, money and guns go hand in hand."

"Did you also have a gun?"

"No sir."

"Do you own a gun?"

"Yessir, but I didn't have it with me."

"And so if someone comes in here and testifies they saw a gun in your pocket, they're mistaken."

"I'll tell you what they might of saw," he said. "I sometimes put my hand in my coat pocket and stick my finger out, looks like the same thing." Seagraves suddenly had the thought that Buster Devonne was about to wink at the jury.

"So you did not fire any shots that day?"

"No sir."

"Did you go into the house?"

"No sir, I went to the door. That's as far as I got."

"Did you see the shooting?"

"I heard it, a minute after the woman went 'round to the back. But I couldn't say this shot was Bred first and then that one."

"How long did the shooting last?"

"Not long," he said. "It didn't take long."

"And what did you do when it had stopped?"

"Paris come out of there, it looked like World War One. Both of us made to the car as fast as we could get there."

"Did you drive back to town, or did Mr. Trout?"

"I did. He was anxious over what had happened. He said he'd never known a good family to turn on him like that."

"And you went directly to town?"

"I took him back to his store. I did that, and then I called Chief Norland and tol' him what happened?

"Mr. Trout asked you to do that?"

"Yessir. He would of done it himself, but he had pressing business to attend."

"Thank you, Mr. Devonne." Then, to Ward Townes: "Your witness."

* * *

WARD TOWNES FROWNED AND shook his head. For a long, dreamlike moment Seagraves thought he did not mean to cross-examine. Then he stood up, looking at his notes.

"Mr. Devonne, how much do you weigh?"

"I ain't put a penny in Mr. Dickey's scale lately," he said.

"The last time you did, what did you weigh?"

"Maybe two-fifteen."

"Have you seen Thomas Boxer and Henry Ray Boxer in this courtroom? What do you estimate they weigh?"

"I couldn't," he said. "They got to weigh themselves."

"You were a member of the Cotton Point Police Department?"

"Eleven years."

"In all that time you never had occasion to estimate the height and weight of a suspect?"

"Sometimes."

"All right, as a policeman, what would you estimate Henry Ray Boxer weighed?"

"Hundret and forty."

"And Thomas Boxer? Would you say he was bigger or smaller?"

"About the same."

"Is that your idea of big Negroes, a hundred and forty pounds each?"

"It depends on the Negroes," he said. "Mrs. McNutt as big as me all by herself?"

There was some laughter in the courtroom again, but Seagraves noticed there was none in the jury box. Judge Taylor pounded for quiet. "Sir," he said to Buster Devonne, "I will not have women embarrassed in my courtroom."

"All right," Townes said, "now you testified here that Thomas Boxer choked Mr. Trout and then disappeared when the scuffle started?"

"Yessir."

"Once again calling on your experience as a Cotton Point police officer, did you ever see a person disappear? See it for yourself?"

"I sure as hell looked for a bunch of them that seemed to," he said, and the judge himself laughed at that.

"But not in front of your own eyes?"

"No sir. What happened, I was distracted when he and the girl grabbed Paris, and next thing I knew he was gone."

"Where did he go?"

"Don't know."

"Into the other side of the house?"

"Inside, underneath, I don't know."

Townes stopped for a moment, changing directions. "How long did you say you were a member of the police force, Mr. Devonne? Eleven years?"

"Yessir."

"Do you recall why you left that job?"

Seagraves objected, and Judge Taylor admonished the prosecutor.

"Let me ask something else then," Townes said. '°When you spoke with Chief Norland after the shooting, did you indicate then that you had been unarmed?"

"I don't recall," he said.

"You didn't tell him you were in the thick of it out there?"

"I might of left that impression."

"Why would you want to do that, Mr. Devonne?"

"We was in it together," he said. "I didn't want it to look like I was putting the blame on Paris — "

Townes turned his back on Buster Devonne and returned to his table. He sat down, and then, almost an afterthought, he said, "I think we've heard all we need to from Mr. Devonne."

* * *

UNDER THE LEGAL CODE of the state of Georgia, the defendant in a murder trial was allowed to read a statement without any accompanying obligation to face cross-examination. This privilege covered only the statement, and in the event that the defendant also chose to testify, his previous statement became part of the testimony and was opened to the prosecutor's questions.

Paris Trout left the defense table straight and dignified and took the witness stand. "Your Honor," Seagraves said, "on my advice, Mr. Trout will exercise his privilege to read into the record his statement on how this tragedy occurred. This has been an ordeal, as anyone with an ounce of compassion can see, and I do not think it would serve his interests or this court's to have him testify beyond that."

"Thank you, Mr. Seagraves," the judge said. Then he turned to Trout and said, "Whenever you're ready, sir."

Trout took a pair of glasses out of his pocket and fixed them carefully behind his ears. They softened him, Seagraves thought, and made him older. He took two pieces of paper from another pocket, unfolded them, and began to read.

" 'Your Honor, I do not honestly know how all this happened. Mr. Devonne and myself visited the home of Mary McNutt to settle a financial matter of little importance. When we had come upon the porch, Miz McNutt cussed us, and her son Thomas slapped his hands up around my neck, making to choke me.

"There was a girl there, and she attacked me at once with the boy. She looked to be about twenty-five years old and was strong. Stronger than the boy. We struggled for a moment on the porch. I would of just as soon left right there, but the girl broke loose and went running into the house. I heard Mrs. McNutt tell her to shoot my damn heart out. My damn white heart.

" 'I followed into the house after her, trying to keep her from getting a gun. When I caught up, she'd put her hands under the pillow where the gun was. I knew that's what was there. I didn't want to kill her, then or anytime else. I didn't have any business killing people, and it looked to me if I could knock her down, it would settle the whole matter.

"I never raised my fist to a woman in my life, but I did then, to stop her before things got out of hand, and you know, I didn't hit her hard enough. She staggered and dropped the pistol on the floor, but she never fell.

" 'And then she took a breath, like it was just starting, and reached to pick it up. I shot her in the shoulder right there. It could just as easy been the heart. It could of ended then, but I did not intend to kill her. I just wanted to get out without nobody getting hurt.

"At that moment Mary McNutt come in, slammed against me with all her weight, and tried to get her hands around my neck. When I cleared of her, the girl had got to the pistol, and it was in her hand again.

"I grabbed the girl's arm, and the same time I felt Miz McNutt's weight across my back, about pushed me over, and then she grabbed me around the neck, got both hands on my windpipe, and I began to shoot. I don't know how many times. Three, four, five shots, I honestly don't know.

"And then Miz McNutt said, "I am shot," and let loose of my neck. I saw Thomas Boxer next. He came in from behind and grabbed up the pistol. I squared to shoot him, but the girl recovered — I'm talking about Rosie Sayers now — and I shot her again. Then I called out, "Come on, Buster, let's go. There is apt to be more shooting here." And we goose-stepped it into the car and left. I asked Buster to report to the police, and that's all I know, how this came to happen. "

He looked up then, adjusting his glasses, and he seemed to be shaken by what he had remembered. "Is that your statement, Mr. Trout?" the judge said.

"Yessir. I didn't go out there to shoot those people. I am in the business of helping people. That's what we try to do, and we expect to get paid for it, get a living out of it. Colored people aren't the only ones got a right to a living."
 

He folded the papers and put them back into his pocket. "I didn't want nothing like this," he said. "I had nothing against that girl or against the woman. The honest truth is, I don't have nothing against them now. We were all somebody's baby once, we all come from the same place.

"I didn't want to get killed either. That is the reason I shot them, the only reason. In defense of my own life."

He looked at the jury, a long examination. "We are all somebody's baby," he said again.

And then he folded his glasses and put them back into his pocket too, stood up, and returned to the table with Seagraves. Somewhere in the back a woman was crying.

Trout folded his hands and seemed, for a moment, to be praying.

* * *

JUDGE TAYLOR, NOTING THE courtroom was 104 degrees, gave each counsel five minutes for closing arguments, keeping the time on his wristwatch.

"What we have here," Seagraves said, "is a death and two stories how it happened. We all regret that someone was killed, no matter who was at fault. But you are not being asked to regret the loss of Rosie Sayers's life today, you are being asked to decide if Paris Trout, an honest and respected citizen of Ether County, deliberately caused that death, with malice and forethought, as the prosecution claims.

"I want you to think of the times you have seen Mr. Trout on the street or perhaps spoken to him at his store. Ask yourself if it seems possible that same man would drive out to Indian Heights to shoot a girl he did not know.

"Does it make sense, if that is what he intended, to go out there in broad daylight? Do you believe Mr. Trout, a substantial member of this community and the owner of several businesses, would intentionally jeopardize his own life over an eight-hundred-dollar debt?

"Paris Trout did not need eight hundred dollars. His concern was a principle, and the principle is what led him out to Indian Heights. He went there as a reasonable man, to talk.

"Now, the prosecution asks you to believe something else. That Mr. Trout and Mr. Buster Devonne just walked into that house and began to shoot colored people up. They say that Mr. Devonne shot Mary McNutt in the back and the shoulder and the side and the breast, while Paris Trout was shooting the girl. They ask you to believe that the colored people themselves had no guns, that the guns were all in the other side of the house.

"Is that possible?" he said. Seagraves stopped for a moment and seemed to think. "Yes. Is it likely? No. Is there proof that's the way it happened, physical evidence? No. All we have here is the words of the family against the words of Paris Trout and Buster Devonne."

He paused for a moment.

"The real proof, of course, was right in this courtroom yesterday. Not ten feet from where you're sitting. The proof is inside Mary McNutt, the bullets she has never had removed. If those bullets are anything but forty-fives, then somebody besides Paris Trout was shooting at her in that house, and she is telling the truth. But if those bullets are forty-fives, then they came from the same gun that shot Rosie Sayers, and you are obliged to believe Paris Trout."

He had been walking up and down in front of the jury as he spoke, hands in his pockets, but now he took them out and leaned against the rail of the jury box. "We are that close to the proof: and that far away. But if those bullets were inside Paris Trout," he said, "you know he would of found a way to have one of them removed and take the decision of who to believe off you .... "

He looked at the jurors, but the train had left the station. The foreman's face was two feet from his own, and there wasn't'a sign he even understood the words. Seagraves knew to a certainty it had slipped away. It surprised him, to see it was already lost, and insulted him.

He pulled back off the rail, to keep the jury from seeing it.

"The law," he said, "is reasonable doubt. And even if you did not know who Paris Trout was, or that he had been doing honest business in Cotton Point for as long as most of us can remember, even then, you could not look at this case and make more than a guess at what happened. There is no weight of evidence here, it is one story against another. And what we are left with is a tragic death and doubts over how it occurred. Reasonable doubts."

* * *

WARD TOWNES WAS EVEN shorter in his remarks.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "I am not as eloquent as Mr. Seagraves, but then I am not as expensive." There was some polite laughter from around the room, and Seagraves smiled.

"So I think what I will do now is borrow something from Mr. Seagraves's own argument and remind you of his words that the proof was right in the courtroom yesterday, in the person of Mary McNutt.

"I believe that too," he said, and pointed at the empty witness chair.

"She was sitting in that seat, and I think you can weigh what she said. I think you heard Mr. Trout too, and everyone else who was there when Rosie Sayers was killed. People who were in their own house when Paris Trout and Buster Devonne came to visit.

"You have seen the pictures of the girl after Mr. Trout and Mr. Devonne left. You have seen the scars on Mary McNutt's body "There is no reasonable doubt. You all understand what happened out there, and all I am asking you to do now is acknowledge it. To say that it matters."

* * *

THE JURY WENT TO its deliberations at three-thirty. Seagraves took Trout out of the courthouse. They crossed the street and walked half a block to the Dixie Theater, and climbed the stairs. Seagraves's office overlooked the street, and he stood in the window, watching good Cotton Point people taking care of their business, people he knew by name. He had not spoken to Trout since they left the courtroom.

"Am I loose?" Trout said.

Seagraves did not turn around. "Not yet," he said.

"How long does it take?"

"It depends on what they're going to do."

"They ain't going to do nothing," Trout said.

Seagraves did not answer.

"What can they do?" Trout said, a little later.

"Isn't anybody safe, Paris," Seagraves said. "Not all the way. You might keep that in mind next time."

"What can they do?" Trout said again.

Seagraves shrugged. "It's a jury, they can do what they want."

Trout laughed, that barking sound. "I think you forgot where you are," he said.

Seagraves turned away from the window. "Maybe," he said.

Trout slammed his hand against the desk. "I paid you to look after this," he said. "I want more back than maybe."

"You should of come hired me sooner," Seagraves said, feeling the anger returning. "You should of called me up before you and Buster Devonne went over there to shoot that child and Mary McNutt. You should of called and asked my advice then, and I would of given you advice that it was murder."

"That boy owed me money," Trout said. "You ought to explained that better.? He had moved halfway across the desk, and his face was so close Seagraves could see the thin red lines in his eyes.

"There's some things," Seagraves said, thinking of himself; "that business isn't an excuse."

Trout stayed where he was, leaning across the desk. "You think I don't know what a lawyer is?" he said.

It was quiet a long time, and Trout slowly sat back into his chair. His mood seemed to change, and he turned thoughtful. "Say they come back and find me guilty," he said. "What's left then?"

Seagraves shrugged. "Depends on you," he said. "File motions for a new trial. Allowing the pictures was a judicial error . . ."

"What then?"

"Then we go through appeals until we get a new trial or run out of courts."

"How long is something like that take?"

"Depends. A year or two . . . sometimes longer." He turned in his seat and looked back out the window. "It's expensive," he said.

"It's already expensive," Trout said.

"Yes, it is."

* * *

THE JURY WAS out a little over three hours. Seagraves had left Trout in his office, looking at a National Geographic, and was down the hall with a young lawyer named Walter Huff when his secretary knocked on the door and said they'd called from court.

Walter Huff s family owned the Ether Hotel, where Trout was living, and he had just told Seagraves that the maids were afraid to clean the room. "He's supposed to said he's got poison up there," the young lawyer was saying, "and there's guns everywhere."

"You allow him up there like that?"

The young lawyer smiled. "He pays his rent."

Seagraves thought of that on the way back to court. It seemed to him that the young man had good judgment for an attorney fresh out of school. And then his thoughts turned to the Bonner boy, who had graduated Tufts Law School that spring and would be opening his own law practice in the fall, and Seagraves wondered what the schooling had done to him.

Most of them came out thinking they knew something.

Seagraves and Trout walked through the courtroom's main entrance. Ward Townes was already sitting at the prosecution table, the spectator seats were close to empty. People had gone home. The room had a hollow sound without spectators. Whispers carried, words spoken out loud seemed to hang in the air.

Judge Taylor came in buttoning his robe. There was grease on his chin, and he was sweating. When he settled, he checked the papers on the desk in front of him and then instructed the court officer to bring in the jury. Trout stared at them as they filed into their seats. Seagraves could see a pulse in his forehead. Only two of them glanced back, the foreman and a woman from Homewood.

The judge asked the foreman if the jury had reached a verdict. The air in the room smelled a hundred years old. "Yessir," he said.

Trout slowly stood up, his eyes still fixed on the jury box.

The foreman did not see him rise, he stared at the paper in his hands. "We find the defendant guilty of second-degree murder,' " he read.

Then he looked up and found Paris Trout staring at him. A look passed over the foreman's face, and when it was gone, so was his color. Seagraves stood up too. "We request a poll of the jury," he said.

One by one the jurors stood and pronounced the same verdict. Only one — the woman he recognized from Homewood — dared to look Trout in the eye. Seagraves wondered if she cared anymore who it was that had got her city water.

"Mr. Trout," the judge said when the last juror had spoken, "you have been found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Rosie Sayers. Do you have anything further to say at this time?"

Trout turned his look on the judge but did not answer.

"We have no further remarks," Seagraves said.

"In that case, gentlemen, it is the finding of this court that you are guilty of the crime prescribed in the true bill filed by the people July twenty-first of this year — namely, second-degree murder. Further, it is the decision of this court that you be incarcerated in the state work camp in Petersboro County for a period of not less than one nor more than three years."

He leaned forward then, folding his hands, and spoke informally.

"It is this court's fervent hope that you will return to the community at the soonest possible time," he said, "and resume your place among its business leaders."

Judge Taylor looked at Seagraves then in an apologetic way.

"Your Honor," Seagraves said, "in light of Mr. Trout's established business, civic, and family ties to the community, we ask that he be allowed to remain free on his own recognizance until new trial motions are settled."

"Mr. Townes?"

"The people have no objection to that, Your Honor," Townes said.

Judge Taylor thanked the jury and excused them. Trout stared until the last juror was out the door. Then he stared at their empty chairs.

"Mr. Trout," the judge said, "you are free pending your appeal. You may not leave the county or change residences without notifying this court of your intention to do so. You are not to have contact with any of the witnesses or jurors involved in this trial. Do you understand the conditions of your release?"

"We understand, Your Honor," Seagraves said. But there was no sign that Trout understood at all.

They walked out of the courthouse together and then stood for a moment in front of the town monument where, if you believed the monument, the state seal of Georgia had been hidden in a privy when General Sherman came through at the end of the war.

Cotton Point had been a rich place then, the center of the state's agriculture and law. At that time "Gone to Cotton Point" did not refer to the asylum.

Trout took a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and looked back at the courthouse as he smoked.

"I'll let you know where we stand," Seagraves said.

"You said the judge made an error."

"I believe he did."

Trout turned quiet, and Seagraves started to leave. He wanted to walk. "I'll be by the hotel later, when I got some idea where we are."

"Leave word," Trout said. "Don't come up on me unexpected."

A farmer passed them in his pickup, the back end loaded with coon dogs, baying at the sky. There was nothing to chase and tree, so the noise itself had become the purpose.

"How long does it take to figure this out?" Trout said.

Seagraves shook his head. "You work it out," he said. "You get an accommodation. There's no figuring, not the way you mean it."

"Is it more money?"

Seagraves blew all the air out of his chest. He wanted to move to a different place, to walk. He could still hear the dogs, fainter now, like a memory. "You missed the point, Paris."

"If a man stole from me tomorrow," Trout said, "I'd do the same thing again."
 

CARL BONNER
PART FIVE

On an afternoon early in December, five months beyond the trial, a woman arrived at the office of a young attorney named Carl Bonner without an appointment, knocking so tentatively on the smoked-glass window that he thought at first it was the maid.

Carl Bonner walked from his desk through the outer office and opened the door. He did not have a secretary yet and could not persuade his wife to work for him until the practice was making enough money to afford one.

The woman stood in the doorway, looking at him in a direct way. "Mr. Bonner," she said, "I am Hanna Trout. Mr. Seagraves suggested your name to me this morning, and I was just passing your office and thought I might take a chance on catching you in."

He stepped back, making room for her to come inside. "Mr. Seagraves has been very good to me," he said.

Paris Trout's wife was old, of course, but there was something in the way she carried herself that did not fit her age. He watched her a moment from behind and then shut the door. She stopped halfway across the floor and turned, waiting for him to indicate where she should go.

He led her to the smaller inner office, and when they were sitting down, he smiled in an uncomfortable way and said, "What may I do for you today, Mrs. Trout?"

"I called Mr. Seagraves this morning to initiate divorce papers against my husband," she said, "but because he continues to represent Mr. Trout in his appeals, he was unable to handle this for me and suggested your name instead."

Bonner opened his drawer and found a pencil to take notes. "Will Mr. Seagraves be representing your husband in the divorce?"

She shook her head. "He said not. Perhaps someone from his firm, but not Mr. Seagraves himself? She looked around the room then. His degrees hung on one wall, commendations from the war on another. There was a canary in a small cage in the corner.

"Have you handled divorces before, Mr. Bonner?"

"I handle everything," he said, and then moved on, as if that had answered the question. "Is the divorce adversarial?"

"I would think so, yes."

"Has your husband been notified of your intention to proceed against him?"

She shook her head. "He stays at the Ether Hotel, and I do not see him except by chance."

Carl Bonner noted the address at the top of the paper. "How long has he resided out of your home?"

"Since late spring."

"And did he leave of his own volition — were you abandoned — or did you ask him to leave?"

"I asked him," she said. "After the girl was shot, I did not want him in the house."

He looked at her then, studying her face. She looked directly back. There was something incongruous about her appearance, but he could not find its origin. "Is that the reason for the dissolution? Moral turpitude?"

She did not answer at first, and he saw she was weighing the answer. "Is it adultery?" Bonner said. He waited to see if the word embarrassed her and saw that it had not. For a moment, in fact, he thought he saw her begin to smile at what he had said.

"I don't believe so," she said. "In any case, Mr. Trout's sexual interests are not my concern, except in that they have led to abuse."

He wrote the word "abuse" across the top of a piece of paper and underlined it twice. Beneath that he printed the Roman numeral I.

"Physical abuse?" he said. She studied him a moment, trying to make up her mind. He wrote the word "physical" and then an A. beneath that, slightly indented.

"Mr. Bonner," she said, "you are a young man, and I know your time is valuable. This situation, however, is complicated in ways that will not fit into an outline form, and perhaps it would be beneficial if we spoke informally at first, to acquaint you with what has happened."

He put the pencil down and leaned away from his desk until the back of his head touched the wall. He felt as if he had been scolded.

"I didn't mean to rush you," he said.

He felt the embarrassment press into his face like the summer sun.

"Do you know my husband?" she said.

"I know who he is," he said. "I have a passing knowledge of his business interests .... "

"Were you in Cotton Point at the time of his trial?"

"I'm afraid I wasn't," he said. "I certainly heard about it."

"Did you find it frightening?"

"In what way?" he said.

"The arbitrary nature of the act itself, did it frighten you?"

"Shooting a woman and a girl?" He shook his head and answered without thinking. "Mrs. Trout, I spent two years not long ago in a place where they shoot back."

She thought for a moment, her teeth holding the edge of her lower lip. "It frightened me," she said.

"I can appreciate that."

"In the first month of our marriage," she said, "I lent my husband a sum of money. He believed it was all I had — in fact, it was half. Mr. Trout, as you probably know, has substantial holdings, both in Ether County and eastem Georgia, and did not need the little money I could add to it. I have never been privy to the figures, but he is a wealthy man."

"That is my understanding," he said.

"At the time I made the loan," she said, "his assets were tied up in his businesses, at least that was his explanation."

"You believed Paris Trout did not have cash on hand?"

She smiled at him then, he did not understand why. "I came into marriage late, Mr. Bonner," she said. "I was forty-four years old and left a career which I had devoted myself to with some success for many years. I did not marry for security, I gave it up. It was a wager I took which I cannot begin to explain, except to say that the reason may lie in the excitement of the wager itself.

"And so, when, a few weeks after we were married, Mr. Trout asked me for the money I had in the bank, that in some way became part of the wager too." She leaned forward for the first time. "I do not do things halfway," she said.

"I see that," he said. "If I may ask, what was the amount of money involved?"

"Four thousand dollars."

"And you kept another four from him?"

"There is another five thousand dollars in an account in Atlanta, which I have been living off since he left."

"I take it your husband did not return the money."

"No, he did not."

"And is this the primary source of the discord? Four thousand dollars?"

"Not the money itself," she said. "The possession. Paris aspired to render me helpless, Mr. Bonner. It is a pattern. That's what taking the money was about. That is why the child was killed."

She paused, and he waited.

"In the weeks following the murder," she said, "Mr. Trout abused me repeatedly. All pretensions of normal behavior disappeared the moment he entered our house."

"There were no witnesses to this abuse?"

She shook her head.

"Beatings? What else?"

"He is a profoundly disturbed man," she said. "The abuse he inflicted reflected the state of his mind."

He nodded as if he understood her. Something cautioned him not to push her for the dissolution."

"I want my house," she said, "and I want the money."

"How much of the money?" he said quietly.

"The money he took," she said. "I wouldn't touch a cent of the rest. The rest is tainted."

Bonner looked at his notebook but did not try to pick it up.

"You've got to live afterwards .... "

"Alimony?" She relaxed against the back of her chair. "I would as soon stick up a bank."

He shrugged. "He must have assets close to half a million," he said. "You're entitled to some consideration by law."

"The house I claim," she said, "for the two years of servitude which followed my marriage. Until shortly after the killing, I worked six days a week, twelve hours a day in my husband's store. I was his bookkeeper and his secretary and his clerk. I did stockroom work and mopped the floors.

"During that time Mr. Trout treated me as an employee, without warmth or consideration, and would fly into fits of temper at the least divergence from his instructions. He would not allow me to visit my sisters in Savannah or my friends in Atlanta. He would not allow me to visit with neighbors. So I will take the house in payment for those two years, although given the choice, I would certainly have the two years back."

"You are forty-five years old now?" He would have thought she was younger, but it was hard to say. With Bonner there was a single stage women passed into when they were no longer young. He could not attach an age to it, but after women had crossed the line, he lost interest in their appearance and could not differentiate the stages beyond it.

"Forty-six," she said.

"And your husband?"

"Fifty-nine."

"Have you thought of how you will maintain yourself?"

"I have my savings," she said, "and I am not incapable of working."

She thought for a minute. "I may return to teaching, I want to do something now to clean myself of this."

Bonner picked up the pencil and made a few quick notes. She didn't try to stop him. "There won't be any problem," he said, looking at what he had written. "My advice would be to ask for alimony, but if this is what you want, there should be no problem at all."

"You may want to interview my husband before you say that."

"There is one law for everyone," he said. That remark seemed to brighten her spirits, he could not guess why.

"You'll handle it then?"

"It will be my pleasure," he said, and smiled at her the way he had smiled to please adults all his life. And once again it cut her own smile in half. He wondered about Hanna Trout and what she saw in him that she did not like.

She stood up, offering him her hand. He took it, noticing the feel of the skin. She was old, but she wasn't. "How long does something like this take?" she said.

"It depends to a large extent on your husband," he said. "I'll file the papers this week, and it could be over in six months."

"Is that what you expect?"

Bonner was still holding her hand, looking right into her eyes. "I don't know. It could last a longer time if he wanted it to," he said. He watched that register and then tried to soften it.

"It shouldn't be long," he said. "This is a favorable settlement for him, his lawyer will tell him. If he knows what's good for him, this will be over in no time at all."

She said, "I do not think you can count on Mr. Trout's knowing what is in his own interest."

* * *

AT THE TIME OF this meeting with Hanna Trout, Carl Bonner had been back in Cotton Point two months. She was his first real client.

Bonner had been away eight years. He had left the town when he was sixteen to attend Tufts University in Massachusetts on a scholarship. At eighteen he interrupted his education to enlist in the U.S. Army and spent two years in Korea, operating field artillery and reaching the rank of captain. He was shot in the hand and returned to Tufts University, decorated and honored, and finished his degree in zoology.

It took two more years to complete law school.

But if he was absent in that way eight years, in another way he was never gone at all. He had been one of those children who imprint themselves on an adult society; he was a part of the way people thought about themselves and the place they lived.

Carl Bonner had been the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of the state. He was the youngest person ever known to preach a sermon in Ether County.

From the age of six on, he had played football with murderous intentions, unconcerned for his own safety. In high school he ran three distances at the state track meet. Under the supervision of his father, the Reverend P. P. Bonner of the First Presbyterian Church, he had studied three and four hours every night but Saturday, completing both his elementary and secondary education with the highest marks in his class. He won state contests in mathematics and science. His picture was in the Ether County Plain Talk ten times a year, often with accounts of his study habits.

His father made the Plain Talk too, although it was usually with people he'd just married or a story about vandalism at the church. Religion was removed somehow from the real business of the county, and the boy came to understand that his father was insulted to be left out and drove him for that reason.

And he understood that his one abiding interest — the songbirds he kept in a shelter he built in his backyard — would never be more than a hobby. He was not meant to end up teaching biology.

The boy's fascination with birds — like his grades and his Scout accomplishments — was common knowledge in town, and some years fifty or sixty mothers, hoping to influence their own children in the same direction, would empty the five-and-dime of its canaries and  parakeets at Easter, only to bring them back a month or two later for refunds, feet up in the bottom of the cage.

Carl Bonner lost very few birds.

They were his only childhood friends — the birds and the friends he invented.

* * *

CARL BONNER HAD RETURNED to Cotton Point with a wife and opened an office on the second floor of the Jefferson Building, a few hundred yards up the street from Harry Seagraves's firm.

His wife's name was Leslie Morgan Bonner, and she was a sincere disappointment to the many townspeople who felt a personal stake in Carl's life. It had been assumed that he would end up with a Miss Georgia or someone outgoing.

Leslie Bonner was from Ardmore, Pennsylvania, and she kept to herself. While her husband accepted memberships to the Kiwanis Club, the Moose, and the junior Chamber of Commerce, she eschewed the ladies' auxiliaries and stayed home. He taught Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church, she met him in front afterward and attended regular services.

Within a year there would be rumors in town that she could not have children.
 
Their house sat at the end of Leisurebrook, the first development built in Cotton Point. A small brick house with two bedrooms. He mowed the lawn twice a week, and she spent afternoons under a wide straw hat, working in the flower beds. When people waved or blew a horn, she would sometimes look up from her flowers, but she would not return the wave, and she would not smile.

The birdhouse was in back. It was a circular shape, built mostly of wire, with the northern side enclosed. Canaries and lovebirds and , parakeets. The birds were advertised in the American Ornithological Society's monthly publication, and from time to time a pet store in Atlanta or Macon would order a hundred at a time. More often the orders were for two or three birds.

Carl Bonner kept meticulous records and sent Christmas cards to even the smallest customers.

He was as obsessive in business as he had been in school, and as isolated. And even though he had very little, he watched the community of lawyers on Madison Street, thinking they would try to take it away — this in spite of the fact that his only work was what they sent him.

He made collections, he handled their pleas when they were out of town. He would do their research and accept indigent clients they did not want to handle themselves.

* * *

ON THE DAY HANNA Trout hired him, Carl Bonner went home early. There was a Kiwanis Club meeting at seven, things to do at home.

He found the front door of his house locked. Leslie was sitting at the window, reading. She saw him, but she didn't move. The birds began to chatter in back, knowing he was there. He let himself in, wondering if his neighbors had noticed yet how often he needed a key to get into his own house.

People in Cotton Point did not lock their homes, they went off all day without closing the front door.

She was sitting cross-legged on the couch in shorts and one of his undershirts. It hung by narrow straps from her shoulders, sleeveless, the drop of cloth under her arm showing the crease of skin at the bottom of her breast.

He wondered if she had been in the yard without her brassiere again. He walked down the hall to their bedroom and changed into dungarees and an old shirt. She followed him in, still holding the magazine, the New Yorker. He buttoned the shirt and tucked it carefully into his pants, checking himself in the mirror.

"You look fine," she said, "the birds will be dazzled."

He noticed she had not brushed her hair. She lit a cigarette and sat down on the bed with her knees spread wide apart. He saw that she had shaved her legs. The smell of the smoke — a different thing from the smoke itself — filled the room. "Was there any mail," he said, "besides the magazine?"

"Word from the outside world?" she said. He didn't answer, and in a moment she said, "Bird things. They're on the kitchen table."

He went down the hall into the kitchen. Last night's dishes were still in the sink. He found the monthly newsletter from the American Ornithological Society and checked to make sure it had included his advertisement. She came in behind him, bringing the smell of her cigarette, a faint odor of soap. She dropped her magazine on the table and took the newsletter out of his hand.

"I have Kiwanis tonight," he said.

She held his hand against her mouth a moment, then guided it underneath her shirt until he felt the weight of one of her breasts resting on his knuckles. She was always doing something he did not expect. The first night he asked her out, she had come back from the ladies' room and put her panties into the pocket of his coat. Until that moment he had thought she was shy because she didn't talk much.

He did not move now. She stood in front of him, watching his face. Another moment passed, and then she pulled away. "It's not the same here, is it?" she said.

"Everybody's different when they go back where they come from."

"Everybody hates tits in their hometown?"

He saw the windows were open and hushed her.

"I'm quiet," she said. "You couldn't hear a damn shotgun over the birds anyway."

He moved away from her to shut the window. "I wish you'd make a few friends," he said.

"It isn't that easy for me," she said. "Besides, look at you. You don't trust anyone. All this Kiwanis Club, Junior Boy Scouts of Commerce is a pose."

He got the window down just before she finished that. "You can't make everything a choice," he said. "It isn't you on one side and how I make a living on the other. That's not the way things are after you're married."

"We're not married like other people," she said.

"You do what you have to do first," he said, "and then what you like. And right now I have to take care of the birds and then go to Kiwanis."

It was quiet a little while, and then she went back into the living room and opened the magazine.

"I need to see Harry Seagraves tonight and thank him," he said. He waited, but she did not ask for what. "He sent me a client. Hanna Trout." He saw she did not recognize the name. "Married to the man that shot that Negro child this summer."

"Shot a child?" she said.

He nodded. "She's divorcing him. If you would push yourself out the front door once in a while, you'd know what he did."

"Why in the world would I want to know that?"

"It's where you live," he said. "It isn't Philadelphia, but we get a killing once in a while. If it's the noise you miss, there's some to be had."

Outside, a squall of bird sounds rose and fell. "It isn't the noise," she said.

He mixed seeds and vitamins into a bucket and started out the back door and then was suddenly filled with feelings for her.

He said, "You want to help me feed the birds?"

* * *

EARLIER THAT SAME DAY Paris Trout had come to see Harry Seagraves.

In the four and a half months following his conviction on second-degree murder, it was the third time Paris Trout had come to Seagraves's office. The first time was after Seagraves had prepared the appeal to Superior Court, the second time was the day Buster Devonne was convicted of assault and sentenced to six months, and the third visit — today's — was to ask why the appeal had been rejected.

None of those meetings lasted fifteen minutes.

The appeal was written to almost a hundred pages but centered on only two points: that the pictures of the dead child should not have been admitted as evidence and that allowing Mary McNutt to show the scars of her wounds was prejudicial and beyond the scope of the complaint against Trout.

Trout never asked to read the appeal or the opinion rejecting it. He sat in Seagraves's office both times, arms crossed, and listened. And on this morning, when Seagraves finished, he'd said, "What court next?"

Seagraves took a long breath. The papers were lying on top of his desk in an open folder, corners of the pictures showing underneath. He kept them hidden beneath the papers and would have kept them in another folder altogether except he was afraid they would be lost.

"I don't know," Seagraves said. "We ought to think about this, if it s worth your money."

Trout had not changed expression. "Is the State Supreme Court the next court?" he said.

'°You know the courts as well as anybody," Seagraves said.

"Then that's where we're going."

"We need to reconsider our case," Seagraves said. "There"s no hurry now, we got time."

Trout did not seem to hear him. He stood up and walked to the door. "If the court made mistakes — if it wasn't your mistakes — then you got to write it in a way that it's clear," he said. Then he left.

Seagraves pulled the pictures out then.

He was looking at the child again, the reflections of light from the flashbulbs shone on her shoulders and forehead, the places her skin lay against her bones. He knew the pictures by heart, they came back to him sometimes early in the morning — looking at Lucy asleep in her blindfold would in some way remind him of the other darkness that had fallen across Rosie Sayers's eyes — and sometimes sitting in a courtroom or when he was out to dinner or making a speech.

He spent the day in his office, avoiding calls and appointments, thinking of the child and Paris Trout.

At four o'clock Lucy called, wanting to know if he would be home for supper. He could not place her voice at first, and then, even as it became familiar, there was a long minute when he could not remember how she looked.

"I've got Kiwanis," he said.

"Oh, I had Betty get us some sirloins," she said.

"They'll keep a day."

"Then I don't know what to have tonight . . ."

It occurred to him that this same conversation, with variations for chicken or roast beef, had been going on for close to twenty years. And then, as they spoke, he noticed that the low December sun had stretched across the floor and halfway up the bookcase on the far wall, glaring off the titles, and somewhere in that moment the fact of the child's death was fresh again.

"Harry?" It was Lucy, but even the shape of her was gone now. It was as if she were lost somewhere in the dark parts of the bookcase. "Harry, are you there?"

"I've got to go," he said.

"What am I going to do about supper?"

"I've got to go," he said again, and then he hung up.

When the phone rang again, he didn't answer.

* * *

IT WAS SIX O,CLOCK before he left the office. It was beginning to rain, and the air felt cold. He walked across the street to his car, started the engine, and waited for it to warm up enough to put on the heater. In the dark he began to shake.

He put the car into reverse, backed out into Madison Street, and drove, without thinking of what he was doing, to the corner of Draft and Samuel. The lights were on inside, he saw her once, moving toward the back of the house. He found himself walking toward the door, then he was knocking.

A sudden wind almost took the hat off his head, and he held it in place and waited for her to answer. The porch light went on, the door opened. He did not move.

"Mr. Seagraves," she said, not surprised at all.

She stepped out of the doorway and he filled the empty space, dripping rain. "I was on the way to a meeting," he said, "and I saw your light."

She did not answer him.

"Did you contact Mr. Bonner?"

"Yes," she said. "He said he would accept my case."

Seagraves was still holding on to his hat, unsure if he should remove it or not. "He's a fine young man," he said. "I'm sure he can handle it."

"He seemed confident," she said.

He smiled in spite of himself "Young lawyers are always confident. It's a failure of our law schools."

"Let me have your coat." He let her have his coat and his hat.

"Have you eaten?" she said. "I was just fixing myself a bite."

He shook his head. "I have to sit through a Kiwanis dinner in a little bit, and you cannot face that on a full stomach."

"A drink?"

And he smiled and rubbed the rain off his cheeks. "I'm surprised you would take a chance."

She offered him a seat on the couch and fixed him a drink. She made one for herself too.

"Well, Mr. Seagraves," she said, "what is on your mind?"

He sipped at the drink. The room, he noticed, had been painted since his last visit. The windows had been washed, the furniture moved to new spots on the floor.

"I don't know," he said. "I happened to think of you on the way somewhere else, then I saw your lights." She watched him and waited. "I don't know why I stopped," he said.

She said, "Perhaps I reminded you of something when I called this morning."

He took another sip, and with the taste of it still in his mouth he began to tell her. "I am bothered by the case I tried for your husband," he said. "Aspects of it have transcended the courtroom and have not left me alone since."

"Which aspects?" she said.

"The girl herself." It was quiet in the room, and he drank again. "Somehow I've obligated myself to her. The meaning of what has happened will not settle one place or another. It moves, again and again, so I never know where to expect her or when she will intrude on my thoughts."

He stood up and walked to a chair that was closer to hers. "There was a moment today," he said, "when I felt a remorse as strong as if I had shot her myself?"

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, her elbow on her knee, and drank from her glass. He saw that she was not going to answer.

"I remembered today that you warned me."

"I warned you about my husband," she said.

Seagraves nodded. "He was in today, shortly after I spoke to you."

She reached out at that moment and touched his hand, the one holding his drink. She ran her fingers along the side of the glass and then, cool and wet, across the back of his wrist. Her fingers stopped there and settled.

"Does it affect you that way?" he said. "Do you think of her too?"

She shook her head no. He noticed her neck, the tiny wrinkles at the bottom, the smooth rise to her chin. "Not like that," she said. "I saw her alive, in the store. She'd been bitten by a fox, and I took her to the clinic. It's not the same."

It was quiet.

"During the course of the trial," he said, "Buster Devonne asked for a payment for his testimony. We gave him a thousand dollars — I gave him a thousand dollars — for what he said."

She thought a minute. "It didn't help Paris."

"No," he said, "it went against him as hard as it could." Seagraves sighed. "He was convicted, and punishment was handed down, and that ought to be it. But the child is on my mind. The law dealt with this and moved on, and I'm still tied to it."

"Cut it loose," she said.

"I don't know how."

"My husband is the connection," she said.

He thought for a moment, and she absently began to follow the line of his watch with her fingers, teasing the skin next to it. "I can't drop a client in the middle of appeals," he said.

"Why not?"

"It's unethical." He brought the glass to his mouth and took a drink this time, not a sip. "You can't just get rid of a client because you don't like what he did. Not after a guilty verdict. The time for that is before you take the case."

"I got rid of him," she said.

"That's personal, this is business."

She moved her fingers off his arm and sat back in her chair. "We're all only one person," she said. "You can't separate what you do one place from another."

"I have to," he said. "I'm a lawyer."

* * *

THE NEXT TIME SHE went into the kitchen, he followed her. There was a clock in the wall, seven-fifteen. He was already late for the Kiwanis meeting. He leaned against the sink and watched her make the drinks.

The wind was picking up outside and seemed to be coming from the south.

"Is it different now?" he said. "Living alone?"

She smiled at him from the sink. "Do I miss being half drowned in my own bathtub, you mean?"

"I mean, are you still afraid of him?"

"I have more time now," she said. "I think about him."

"Has he been back?"

She shook her head. "Not once since he moved out . . ." Then: "He's afraid, too."

She handed him the glass, and at the same moment he noticed the first feelings of intoxication. It felt like his brain was waking up happy. "Of what?" he said.

She shrugged. "That he's poisoned."

"He thinks you did it?"

"That," she said, "but it's more than that."

"How long has he been believing he was poisoned?"

"I don't know when it started. You don't notice everything at once."

He thought of her new in this house, beginning to notice her husband's peculiarities. He reached out and touched her arm, about the same way she had touched his. She looked at his hand, and for a moment nothing moved. Then she drank from her glass, then she led him into the small room just off the kitchen and sat down on the daybed against the wall. The shoes dropped off her feet. She brought her knees up under her chin and hugged her legs. She took another drink.

He sat down with her, kicking off his own shoes. The only light in the room came from the kitchen and lay in a rectangle across the floor. "I was glad to see you tonight, Mr. Seagraves," she said. "You have a kind nature."

He did not answer for a moment. He heard her drink, the ice cubes falling back into the bottom of the glass. She moved her legs, and the skirt of her dress fell into her lap. She did not seem to notice.

"Somehow," he said, framing the words, "there is a connection. You and I and Rosie Sayers are tied into each other's secrets."

"I told you my secrets," she said. "You haven't told me yours."

"I paid Buster Devonne," he said. "That's a secret."

It was quiet a long time. They drank and stared out the window into the branches of a black tree. The wind was blowing harder now, everything outside trembled.

"I told you about the girl," he said.

He sat farther back until he was resting against the wall. She had not moved, and from his new position he saw the outline of her legs against the light from the open kitchen door. The straight line across the top of her thighs, the roundness underneath, where the muscle lay. He thought of touching her there, underneath.

"My darkest secret," he said.

She turned then and took the glass out of his hand. She put it on the reading table beside the bed, along with her own.

"The thing he did with the bottle . ..."

She waited.

"I cannot get that out of my mind."

Still there was no answer.

"It aroused me," he said, and so it was all out.

He could see her eyes now, the rest of her features were lost in the dark. "That was hardly a secret, Mr. Seagraves," she said finally.

"Are you disappointed?"

He thought he saw her smile. Then her hand was touching his arm and then his cheek. Her face came close, and he felt the heat off her skin a moment before she pressed herself into his neck. He thought she might be crying.

He began to rock her, as you might rock a child. "I didn't mean I wanted to do that myself? he whispered. "I wouldn't inflict that on a person .... " He moved back and forth, smelling alcohol and shampoo, and she moved with him. For a moment they seemed to be synchronized with the tree branches outside the window, but then the wind suddenly died and the branches stopped, and Seagraves kept rocking.

In the sudden calm his voice seemed louder. "There are things like that buried in everybody," he said. "That doesn't mean you want to act on it, just that it's there. We are all flawed people."

She tugged at a button of his shirt then and laid her hand on his stomach. Her face moved against his neck and she kissed him once, softly, along the line of his jaw. His head slid against the wall, and she followed it, kissing him again, moving herself over him until his head was stopped by the bed itself. There was a sudden coolness, and he realized she had unbuttoned his shirt, top to bottom, and pulled it away from his chest.

She sat up, watching him. Her features were distinct now, his eyes were more used to the dark. Her hand moved from his stomach to his belt. There was another tug, and that was loose too. She looked up from her work without a trace of a smile. She unzipped his trousers,  as practiced at it as he was himself. He began to sit up, to help her, but she put her hand against his chest and pushed him back.

Then she was not touching him at all. She reached for something out of his view. Her drink.

She brought the glass to her lips for a long minute, and then put it back on the table. She leaned toward him again and kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were icy at first, and he tasted the liquor, and then they moved, slippery and cold and opening, until her tongue was touching his teeth, and it was cold too. Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, following the places she had kissed, and settled behind his neck, pulling him up into her mouth.

He felt his penis pushing against the opening in his boxer shorts, and he moved a few inches against the bed, trying to realign it. The vision of his penis coming through the opening struck him as childlike and embarrassed him. And at that movement the head found the crack and poked through, perhaps half an inch.

He tried to move again, but she wouldn't let him. A hand on his stomach. She pulled back and stared at the opening in his shorts. She put the tip of her finger in her mouth and turned it as it came out, as if she were carrying something, carrying it down and out of his sight, and then her finger was circling the ridge of his penis, so softly he could not say exactly when it stopped.

She watched him growing and then touched him again, at the mouth. "It's leaking," she said. He lay absolutely still. She pulled away again, unbuttoning her dress. He did not try to help. She leaned forward, and it fell away from her shoulders. She pushed it over her  hips and lifted her legs, without effort, and it was gone.

Seagraves was struck at her acrobatics.

He noticed then that her underwear was gone too, if she had been wearing any. There was no brassiere. He felt her breasts against his chest. He reached behind and touched the back of her leg, feeling the round muscle, and followed it up until he reached her bottom. The edge of his finger lay against pubic hair, and it was wet and cool too. He whispered, "Let me out of my pants."

For a moment she did not move, and then she brought her knees up and lifted herself off him while her hands followed his ribs to his hips, and then his pants and shorts were coming off and down. His penis felt like it was caught outside the elevator door on the way to the top floor.
 

He whispered, "Oh," but she didn't stop, and a moment later his shorts and trousers were down around his knees. He tried to push them further, but she straddled him, holding him still. Pay attention. Her face began to drop toward him again, and a moment after he felt the press of her cheek, he felt her fingers around his scrotum. She used it to guide him inside her. A soft, insistent pressure that would not let him move.

She held him in that way and slowly lowered and raised herself, pulling back to watch his expression. Little bits of light from the doorway caught in her eyes — the spark — and then lightning lit the room, turning her white. The thunder that followed shook the house. He jumped at the noise, and she squeezed him sharply, stopping him, her own lowering and rising progressed without change, unattached.

"Don't move," she said. "Not even when it's time."

He started to answer, but she shook her head. There was another roll of thunder, farther off, then more lightning. Shadows danced over the walls and ceiling. A few minutes later she closed her eyes and seemed to shake inside, a long time. And in her shaking he began a shaking of his own. She held him, though — the only still thing in the room — and he spent himself without the distraction of movement, tracking its course as it came and passed, the clearest the feeling had ever been.

When it was over, she pulled his pants the rest of the way off; and his socks, and lay with him on the bed. The storm came in waves, with quiet moments in between.

"I never paid enough attention to the feeling before," he said.

She did not answer right away. Then: "What is it like?"

"It moves," he said. "It goes through you."

She reached for her glass and drank. The lightning lit her up, and he saw the muscles of her stomach. When she finished, she brought the lip of the glass to his lips, and he drank too. The ice had melted, and the drink was weaker and somehow oily in his mouth.

"Where does it begin?" she said.

"I don't know," he said. "Somewhere inside."

"Show me."

He smiled and shook his head. She took his scrotum again, softly now, and looked at his face.

"Here?"

"No, further inside."

Her fingers moved behind the scrotum, perhaps an inch, and she pressed up into him. "Here?"

"It°s closer there," he said. "I can't say .... "

Her fingers moved again, separating his cheeks, and then she put one finger directly in the middle. "Does it begin in there?" When he did not answer, she pushed her finger into him until she found a place where it seemed to him that the feeling in fact began. He nodded, and she watched him closely, as if he were somehow remarkable or different. "And where does it go?" she said.

"You aren't going to try to follow it the rest of the way," he said. She smiled at him and removed her finger. When it was out of him, he noticed that his penis was half erect. "Where does it go?" she said again.

He thought for a moment, trying to remember. '°Somewhere," he said, "it touches a nerve that runs a message all the way to my toes. The feeling stays in the lower parts, though. There is no direct connection going up."

She did not seem to understand. "The feeling itself, I'm talking about," he said. "The actual release."

She nodded.

"The titillations that build it come from all over, but you know that."

"Yes."

He thought again. "I don't think it's a straight course," he said finally. "I think there is a little track in there like a roller coaster that it follows on the way out .... Little drops and then a big one at the end. That's the killer, the last drop."

She kissed him suddenly in the dark. "Is it the same for everyone?" she said. "You think it's the same?"

"It sounds the same when they talk about it," he said.

They lay still a long time. The rain and thunder stopped, the wind almost quit too. "There'll be stars out before the night's over," he said.

She put her head into the space between his shoulder and his neck, and he thought again that she might be crying.

He held her quietly, thinking of the things they had said. In the calm he saw there was something in it beyond the questions and answers, but he could not see the purpose. As he thought, he noticed the weight of her hand against his leg. It seemed to be the spot they were connected, although she was pressed against him up and down.

Her hand moved — the smallest movement — and settled again, perhaps a quarter inch closer to his groin. His penis crawled toward it, moving on its own across the distance, and touched one of her fingers.

He thought she might be asleep — the steady rise and fall of her back where he held her — but then, unmistakably, he felt her finger. It I moved to the underside, touching a spot just behind the head, and then slowly traced the route backwards, following it into his body at the junction of his penis and scrotum.

Once again she would not let him move. "Is this spot close to where it starts?" she said, pushing into him.

"I think so," he said.

"Closer than before?"

"I don't know."

She pushed into him further, her finger finding what felt like the drop at the end of the track, and moved against it, up and down. He tried to kiss her, she pulled herself back. "Let it come by itself;" she said.

And he waited, and then the feeling came. Clearly defined, a beginning and an end. And afterward there was a deep sting in the place she had found.

She was staring at him.

He moved in the bed, feeling the cool places on his legs where he was wet.

"What time is it?" he said.

"I can look." But she didn't move.

He was suddenly uncomfortable, pressed between her and the wall, and sat halfway up.

"Must be after midnight," he said.

She stood up and walked to the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator door open and close, the sound of ice cubes dropping into a glass. She came back and sat on the bed, her breasts were small without being narrow. She held herself in the same way naked as she did when she was wearing clothes.

She offered him a drink from the glass, which he took. It was fresh and strong and sent a shiver through his body, as spasmodic as the other. "It's one-thirty," she said.

The liquor settled in his stomach and warmed him. He drank again, returned the glass. She swallowed as much as he had and then put it away on the table. "I was surprised you drank," he said.

"It helps me sleep. The house is full of noises."

He sat still and listened, but there was no sound at all. "You're afraid he'll come back?"

When she didn't answer, he said, "It's funny, I am affected the same way. I wake up, every morning since the trial ended, and wonder if Paris Trout is going to come into the office. I dread to see him, without knowing why."

He saw that she was feeling quiet, and it made him want to reassure her. "It's not connected to anything he might do," he said. "Paris Trout lived fifty-nine years without killing anybody, there's no reason to think he's going to go out right away and do it again. But there is a quality about him that reminds a person of something else."

It was quiet again, and he realized that he had missed what he was trying to say. Something depended on getting it right. "I hate to lose," he said. "I should never have lost that case, and your husband knows it."

"Yes," she said, "you should."

"I'm not speaking now of what's right," he said. "Just the legal issue. I'm embarrassed to have lost, and I don't know exactly how it happened. He reminds me of that whenever he comes in."

"That's not it," she said.

He reconsidered, but it came back to the same place. "Professional embarrassment," he said. "I take pleasure in the work I do, and I do it better than most."

She reached over the side of the bed for her things. She got into the dress without bothering with underclothes, then ran her fingers through her hair. He sat on the bed, watching. Presently she handed him his pants.

"All right," he said, "if it isn't professional, what is it? Not this, because I dreaded to see him before this happened."

She moved to the window and looked outside. He dressed himself quickly, the sound of his zipper filled the room. He saw that she had taken the glass with her. "Hanna?" The first time he had called her that.

"The next time he comes to your office," she said, "when he first walks into the room, put the case aside. Don't confuse my husband with what happened at his trial. Don't meet him halfway, just pull yourself back and see what is there."
 

The bedsprings creaked as he sat down to put on his shoes and socks.

She said, "Sometimes if you hold yourself still, you can tell what something is."

She walked him to the door and opened it without checking the street. There was a formality between them that he realized had been there even when their clothes were lying in piles on the floor. She would not allow him any closer. He patted the small of her back, wondering what she was thinking.

"I'll call you," he said.

* * *

CARL BONNER WOKE AT first light and looked out the window, remembering the storm. Leslie was lying with her knees pulled up into her stomach, her arm covering her face and head, as if she had been trying, to protect herself from something in her sleep. He slid carefully out from under the covers, not wanting to wake her.

He walked in his undershorts to the bathroom and closed the door. He ran hot water into the sink and brushed his teeth in the same water that he used a moment later to shave. He combed his hair. He would not go even into his own backyard at daybreak without combing his hair.

He thought of a storm a long time ago when he had been outside all night, shining his flashlight along the floor of the birdhouse, carrying injured canaries into his kitchen.

He thought of that flashlight — three batteries, a present from the Ether County Council of Scouts at the ceremony making him an Eagle — wondering where it was.

He put on his jeans and a pair of slippers and walked from the bathroom to the kitchen and then out the back door. He took two steps in the direction of the birdhouse and stopped.

The floor of the structure was littered with dead canaries. There was a pool of water in the center, and some of them lay in it, half covered. Wings in odd positions caught the breeze and rocked the small, still bodies beneath them.

He began to count the dead birds. At least forty on the floor, two more lying, unexplainably, in the grass outside. He stepped closer, looking into the protected end of the cage, and saw that some of the birds there were injured or sick. He could not say how many.

The storm had come from the south, he thought.

He found an empty seed bag — it was heavy with rain and dripped water across the leg of his pants — and stepped into the cage. He picked up the birds one at a time, looking each of them over, and then put them carefully into the bottom. He remembered the storm from before again; he had lost eleven birds. He was fifteen years old then, and before it was over, he'd crawled over the floor of the birdhouse on his hands and knees, scraping the fingers of the hand that held the flashlight, collecting them one at a time, bringing them inside, laying them across a towel in the sink.

He'd missed school that day — the only day in eleven years he was ever marked absent — and taken care of the birds. The dead ones were heavy and wet, but things always weighed more when they were dead. He remembered standing in the kitchen that morning, trying to understand the source of a bird's weight.

He noticed it again now. The cold, wet, heavy bodies. You could not imagine, finding them like this, that a day before they could fly. He looked up suddenly and found her on the other side of the wire, not ten feet away. She was wearing her nightgown and had pulled a sweater around her shoulders. The sun had broken the horizon, but not the line of pine trees to the east, and there was a light fog over the ground.

Tree branches were blown all over the yard, and he was holding one of the dead canaries in his hand, its head rolled off to one side at his knuckle. "It didn't seem this bad in town," he said.

She said, °'We lost the lights a few minutes." He saw she was looking at the bird in his hand, and he reached into the bottom of the sack and left it with the others.

"It must have come from the south," he said. "Sometimes when it comes from that direction, you get storms within the storm." He looked at the bottom the cage again, wondering how it looked to her.

"Little tomadoes," he said.

She crossed her arms, hugging herself against the morning. "You want me to help?"

"Could you dig a hole?"

She went into the garage for the spade and then began to dig at the edge of their yard. The ground was hard in spite of the rain, and he watched her work a little while, the red clay building into a pile beside her. She liked physical work, it was one of the things that attracted him to her, one of the things that was different from the girls here. She would work without rest or distraction as long as she could see a point to what she was doing. You could not waste her time.

He collected the rest of the dead birds and put the sack on the ground outside the cage. Then, carefully, he went into the protected area and began to inspect the survivors.

When he looked back at Leslie again, she had hung the sweater on the low branch of a pecan tree and was working in her nightdress. He watched the muscles in her back through the silky fabric — it was wet now with her perspiration — and thought for a moment of the neighbors, but he knew they wouldn't be awake yet.

A little later he left the cage and carried the sack to the hole. Leslie's legs were spotted with clay. Sweat ran from her hair down her face, leaving lines in the dust. She did not mind getting dirty. "That's plenty," he said. "The dogs won't dig that far."

She hitched her nightdress and stepped out. He helped her, feeling the sweat on her wrists, and then dropped the sack where she had been. He pulled it back out from the closed end, and the dead birds rolled out. Four and five at a time, they seemed to be stuck together.

"I'm sorry for them," she said. She was leaning on the spade, her chin resting on the back of her hands.

"It's not as personal as it was," he said. "It turned into a business, and that changes the way you feel about them."

"How many are there?"

"I didn't count. Forty-five or fifty, maybe a dozen more back there that won't make it. A hundred and fifty dollars . . ."

She stared into the hole. "It doesn't have to be a business this morning, Carl," she said.

"I'm not fifteen anymore," he said. He thought for a moment and said, "Although you wouldn't know it sometimes, the way people are in town."

"Let them just be what they are," she said, meaning the birds.

He took the shovel from her and began Hlling the hole. The claywas heavy but dry — even standing water wouldn't soak into it more than a few inches — and she winced when it first landed on the birds. In a moment, though, they were covered, and she walked back into the house without another word while he finished the job.

He found her fifteen minutes later in the tub, crying. The door was cracked open or he would not have looked inside. The water had turned dirty orange, and she was lying with her head half submerged, her face wet and streaked, not making a sound.

"Leslie?"

She shook her head, embarrassed. She did not like him to see her cry. He knelt beside the tub, finding one of her hands in the water to hold. "It's only birds," he said. "You don't care about them."

She got her hand away from him and then cupped some water with it and brought it to her face.

He found her hand again and kissed it. The sight of her digging came back to him, a direct and practical kindness. "You'll get used to it here," he said.

She slid farther down, until the waterline was right underneath her jaw. "Something is different here besides the place," she said. "It changed you to come back."

He smiled at her.

"There wasn't a purpose to everything in Massachusetts," she said.

"The day we unpacked our things here, you were deciding which books we could put in the bookcase where anybody could see them."

She found a washcloth somewhere under her legs and ran it over her shoulders. They were like the rest of her, muscled and soft at the same time.

"It isn't college," he said.

"No," she said, "it isn't."

"I didn't have to make a living up there. I didn't have people watching me."

She closed her eyes as if she could not stand to see him. "What is left for them to see, Carl?" she said. "You were the best Boy Scout in the world when you were eleven years old, and somehow that has obligated you to be the best Boy Scout forever."

"Eagle Scout," he said. But she did not smile. She opened her eyes, though, looking at him in a pitying way he did not like.

"I was teasing," he said.

"The other thing . . ." she said. He waited, knowing what was coming. "You worry how I seem to people here."

He shook his head, knowing it was true. "There is nobody going to tell me who to marry," he said.

"We're already married," she said. "What I'm talking about is that you wish you weren't."

He dropped the few inches to the floor as if she'd hit him. He felt her watching him and knew if he said anything false, she would know it. "I worry that you don't try to fit in."

That hung in the air like the heat off the bath water.

"I worry that you try too hard," she said finally. He dropped his chin onto his chest and closed his eyes.

"Do you remember the football game?" she said a little later.

He looked up and found her staring at him. She had stared at him the same way that afternoon, sitting in a crowd of alumni waving Tufts University banners, her hand under the blanket covering their laps, it felt like ice on his cock. He had come off a moment before Holy Cross scored, and the whole side of the stadium had groaned, as if it were hoping for something else.

She groaned for the next two weeks every time he ejaculated. "I want to be like that again," she said. "I want to have those kinds of secrets."

"People find out those kinds of secrets here," he said.

"What can they say? That I gave the first Boy Scout in Ether County a hand job at the football game? Do you think people hold you in less regard for something like that?"

"l think people might not want their lawyer having sex in public," he said.

"I would."

He felt her mood improving and took her hand again. "That's because you don't need a lawyer," he said.

And he saw the confrontation had passed. She stood up and reached behind him for a towel. The last thing he saw before she wrapped herself inside it was the water dripping off her pubic hair.
 

He sat behind her on the floor, his back against the toilet, while she combed out her hair. lt was thick and black, cut short, and stayed exactly where the comb left it against the nape of her neck. He saw the outline of her bottom beneath the wet towel. It was a sweetheart of a bottom, but she was right. Somewhere in the move it had lost its appeal.

"Did you thank Harry Seagraves?" she said.

"No, he wasn't there."