Lucas’d never felt any place as tense as the courtroom that trapped his sister Tuesday morning nine days after Gramma Meg went to the nursing home.
Laura and their parents sat with him on a bench by the railing separating those who came to watch and those who came to do.
Laura wore her best dress. Lucas wore his Easter outfit. His parents looked dressed for the church they never went to or the wedding they’d just seen.
Everyone obeyed when some man at the front of the court yelled, “All rise!”
A judge in a black robe walked in. Banged a gavel. Everyone sat down.
“Laura Ross!” called the court clerk.
Laura stood. Dad patted her arm. Mom brushed off wrinkles in her dress.
The teenage girl took a deep breath.
Walked toward the clerk waiting beside the witness box.
Didn’t look at where Ruth Klise vibrated beside her hollow husband.
Didn’t look at where Pauline Hemmer slumped, her eyes darting from the mother of her son’s dead best friend to her own son at the defendant’s table.
Laura didn’t focus on Hal Hemmer’s white shirt and black tie as he sat beside his brown-suited lawyer who wasn’t Mr. Falk. Nor did she look at the table where prosecutor County Attorney Kohrman sat beside his scuffed briefcase.
The clerk held a black Bible under the teenage girl’s hand. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
Laura said: “I do.”
Lucas scanned the prosecutor, Hal and his lawyer. He turned and looked over his right shoulder and saw the Government classes of high school seniors.
‘The more people who know what happened, the fewer people will bend the truth into trouble,’ he’d heard Dad tell Sheriff Wood. Now all eighty-some of those Government classes’ field trip seniors meekly filled four spectator benches, while up front by the railing sat Neal Dylan.
What is he doing here? thought Lucas.
The judge looked down from his bench to Laura in the witness box.
“We want to be sure you understand what’s going on. The prosecution has stipulated that you are not liable for any charges. This is an evidentiary hearing. You’ve already talked with Mr. Kohrman and Sheriff Wood. We’re going to ask you about what you told them so we can get it on the record. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You’re a minor, so let the record note that your parents are present.”
Me, too! thought Lucas.
The judge said: “Mr. Kohrman.”
“Laura,” said the prosecutor as he stood and walked toward her, “everyone appreciates you doing the right thing. It takes courage to be in that chair.”
A nervous smile twitched on Laura’s face.
“You were at the party near the river the Saturday night before Easter?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Hal Hemmer and Earl Klise there?”
“Yes.”
“Had either of them been drinking?”
“Everybody stood around the bonfire. Some car headlights were turned on and… they were both holding bottles of beer.”
“And you saw them leave?”
Laura nodded. “To go find more beer.”
“Who was driving?”
“They both were.”
“Excuse me?”
“They were laughing. Horsing around. Hal started the car. Earl shoved Hal over from behind the wheel. Hal fell out, ran around like a Chinese fire drill. That’s where you stop at a red light, somebody calls it, everybody jumps out and runs around to beat the green light and—”
“We know what it is, Laura,” said the judge.
Kohrman said: “Just tell us what happened with the driving that night.”
“Hal ran to the car, wrestled Earl over and got behind the steering wheel again. They drove off. Toward the highway.”
“Did you watch them go?”
“Five steps away from the bonfire was dark. You could hear the tires crunching on the gravel road. A few seconds after they started off, I saw brake lights flash and the headlights stop. Car doors slammed. Then the lights went toward the highway. Couple seconds later, I saw brake lights flash again. Headlights stop. Then the lights disappeared.”
“This changing drivers…”
“Hal and Earl did it all the time. Like a game they played.”
“What happened after you saw them leave?”
“Kids began to go home. We—I left.”
“Laura, you didn’t see the boys after that. Do you know anyone who did?”
She shook her head no.
“Is it possible that they drove back to the party but everyone had left?”
Laura nodded her head yes.
“And who would have been driving their car then?”
“I don’t know!”
Don’t cry, Laura! urged Lucas. It’s OK!
Her face pleaded for help as she said: “Both of them!”
Kohrman looked at the judge. “No further questions.”
The judge said: “Mr. Hopper?”
That brown-suited man sitting beside Hal said: “No questions.”
“You can step down, Laura,” said the judge.
She’d only gone two paces away from the witness box when Mr. Kohrman said: “Your Honor, the People have nothing further to present.”
Laura was near the brown-suited lawyer as he rose, told the judge: “Your Honor, the defense has nothing to present.”
Laura put her hand on the smooth wood of the railing gate as the judge said: “The Court finds sufficient evidence to sustain criminal charges. Evidentiary and probable cause hearing is now closed. Proceeding to open court.”
“Your Honor,” said the lawyer in the brown suit, “my client, Hal Hemmer, a minor, with the consent and consultation of his mother and the county attorney, would like to enter a plea and accept judgment.”
Laura slid into her seat between Mom and Dad on the spectator’s bench as the judge said: “Hal Hemmer, please rise.”
Mom patted Laura’s arm. Dad whispered: “You did fine.” Laura sighed. Lucas saw her wet eyes look straight ahead. Lucas stared at the white-shirted teenage boy standing beside the man in a brown suit.
“Young man,” said the judge, “do you understand this is your chance to say what you want, to explain or defend yourself about what happened on that road?”
Hal’s head bobbed up and down.
“Speak up, son,” said the judge. “The law needs to hear your words.”
A whisper flitted through the courtroom: “Yes, sir.”
“The Court is aware that your father died in the Battle of the Bulge—”
Lucas didn’t know that. Was that the Japs—No! Nazis, the “Nuts!” time.
“—but your mother agrees with your decision. Is that correct?”
Mrs. Hemmer nodded. Tears plopped on her dress.
Hal said: “Yes, sir.”
“Mr. Kohrman?”
“Your Honor, the evidentiary hearing established that both boys were violating curfew, illegally procuring, possessing, drinking and driving under the influence of alcohol. Hal—the defendant—has no memory of the accident. Dr. Horn testified that such amnesia came from the car wreck, is probably permanent and definitely not some story faked to cover up what happened. Definitely not. Testimony from Laura Ross—”
Cool! thought Lucas. He said Laura’s name!
“—and evidence gathered by Sheriff Wood indicates that there is no way to establish who was driving the car and thus criminally liable for the fatal accident. In the interests of justice, the People accept Hal Hemmer’s plea of guilty to one count of reckless endangerment.”
“Defense concurs,” said the man in the brown suit. “With stipulations.”
The judge leaned toward the trembling boy.
“Hal, a terrible thing happened. Even though you didn’t want it to happen, you helped set up the circumstances. You broke laws. You got hurt. Your friend Earl died. In life, you have to pay for what you do.”
“Yes, sir.”
The whole courtroom saw Hal tremble as he said: “I… I want to. I should.”
“All the charges on your sheet could add up to a lot of time behind bars. You’re a juvenile, so you’d get shipped off to the Miles City Boys’ Reformatory until you turn eighteen, then sent over to the penitentiary in Deer Lodge to serve out the rest of your term.”
“Ohhn!” Hal knew that groan came from his mom.
He kept his eyes on the judge.
“But what good would that do?” said His Honor. “You weren’t alone out there on that highway. Your friend Earl was there. So were your families. In a way, so was this whole town. You’ve already paid a terrible price that you’ll feel for the rest of your life.
“Justice is about what should happen. The law is about what we can do. Maybe this is one time we can close the gap. If we follow straight law, send you down the prison line, then two of our town’s boys are destroyed by that wreck on the highway. That’s not justice. But it’s also wrong to let you walk away with just your scars. Leave you to have to punish yourself by yourself. Plus, letting you walk tells all the other kids in town that the law doesn’t matter.
“So, like people who care about you have worked out, you’re going to jail.”
The sentenced boy’s mother sobbed.
“But this is our town’s tragedy, so we’ll work it out our way. For your guilty plea to reckless endangerment, I accept the prosecution’s waiver of all other charges and sentence you to three years’ imprisonment. However, all but ninety days are suspended, with probation to run for the full three years. I’m remanding you to Sheriff Wood to serve your time in our county jail. While you’re there, you will continue your education—and you will finish high school next year.
Neal Dylan stood, his hands on the rail.
“Your Honor,” said that sixth grade teacher, “I’ve volunteered with another teacher to tutor Hal at the jail so he’ll be ready for his senior year in the fall.”
“The Court thanks you, Mr. Dylan, and your fellow teacher, too.”
Neal Dylan sat down.
“Hal,” said the judge, “the law’s given you punishment and a chance. Probation is more work than jail. You get in trouble, you break any laws—curfew, booze, speeding—then nobody can help you. A violation rockets you straight out of town to the state system. Prison can be worse than us judges intend. I don’t want to see you locked up behind prison bars. Not you. Not one of us.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, Your Honor. I mean… Yes, sir. Thank you.”
Bang!
The judge’s gavel shattered the glass fist gripping everyone in the courtroom. Lucas felt his father exhale. Hal’s face turned toward heaven while Laura’s hand shielded her eyes. A whirlwind swept people to their feet. The senior class students were shooed from their benches like a herd of sheep.
“NO!” screamed a woman. “This isn’t right!”
Lucas strained to his tiptoes.
There! Up front by the railing. Neal Dylan with a look on his face like he’d seen The Thing as Ruth Klise lunged away from where her husband slumped.
“My boy is killed and he gets—gets a vacation with the sheriff!”
Dad herded Lucas and Laura toward the exit. “Hurry up! Move!”
Ruth Klise waved her arms. “My Earl’s dead and he gets away with it!”
Sheriff Wood charged the woman who bore, birthed and buried one boy.
Pauline Hemmer tore her gaze from her white-shirted lone son beyond the rail to the frantic woman she’d known all her life.
Ruth Klise screamed: “Laura!”
Fought grabbing hands. Pushed toward the teenage girl.
“Laura! You tell them! Tell them the truth! Tell them what’s right!”
Dad shoved past Lucas to loom with Mom between their children and the frantic woman as he threw an order behind him: “You two get out of here!”
Lucas grabbed Laura’s arm. Hurried toward the double doors under the red EXIT sign. Pauline Hemmer cried: “Sorry! Oh, Ruth, I’m, we’re sorry, we’re sorry!”
Laura flung open the doors, Lucas beside her as they heard: “Sorry isn’t anything! Isn’t enough! Isn’t—”
Sister and brother stumbled into the gray marble corridor outside the courtroom as the double doors whooshed closed behind them.
A teacher herded eighty chattering seniors down the main staircase.
“I can’t go that way!” whispered Laura. A clouded glass door filled one end of the corridor. She plucked Lucas’s sleeve. “Come on!”
Lucas barely had time to read the black ink on the door’s clouded glass:
COUNTY CLERK OF RECORDS & DEEDS
He and Laura blew through that clouded door and into a fluorescent-lit room. He smelled ink. Dusty paper. At a desk on the other side of a scarred wood counter sat a beefy woman mouthing a cigarette. Inside a radio on a gray file cabinet, Patti Page sang “Cross Over the Bridge.”
The ember on the desk woman’s cigarette glowed red. Her beady eyes probed the intruders while Lucas’s heart slammed against his ribs.
Laura blurted: “We’re waiting for our parents! We’ll just… wait.”
“Lots of ‘wait’ in this place.” The woman flicked gray flakes into the ashtray. “Your folks got papers?”
“I don’t know,” said Laura.
“Papers is what this place is all about. You need forms to fill out?”
Lucas said: “We already did that at school.”
Laura stepped on Lucas’s foot to make him shut up.
“School stuff’s another office,” said the clerk. “Down the spiral stairway.”
Laura pulled him away from the counter. The clouded glass entrance door waited to their left. A brown door leading deeper into this office waited to their right. That closed inner office door had a brass lever handle.
Laura whispered: “Be quiet! Stand here and don’t make trouble!”
Of course I won’t make trouble! thought Lucas. I’m no dumb little kid!
He leaned on the brass lever doorknob of the door behind him.
Spun backward as the door flew open.
Tumbled facedown onto the tile floor of the storage room.
Sprawled near the table where a man sat, metal shelves of boxes behind him. Lucas first saw the man’s shined shoes and suit pants. Looked up.
“What are you doing here?” lawyer Carl Falk yelled to the boy on the floor.
“I don’t know!” cried Lucas.
He saw a huge map unrolled on the table.
Falk tossed his suit jacket over the map. Slammed a ledger shut.
Yelled at the boy on the floor: “Why are you here?”
“It was an accident!”
Falk blinked. His face turned red as he helped Lucas up.
“Of course it was,” the adult told the trembling boy and his teenage sister, who materialized behind him. “Of course it was an accident.”
“Honest, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t see—”
“There’s nothing to see.” The lawyer’s firm hand urged Lucas and Laura out of that room. “Nothing to tell. Wouldn’t want you two to get in trouble.”
Laura grabbed Lucas, flung open the fogged glass door to the outside hallway. “We’re just waiting! But this is the wrong room. We’re going.”
The fogged glass door closed behind them with a click.
They stood alone in the corridor of doors outside the courtroom.
“I told you not to make trouble!” snapped Laura.
“I didn’t!” said Lucas. “I just fell into it.”
“Watch where you lean.” She stared at the closed offices, the sealed doors to the courtroom, the wide staircase leading down. “Where are Mom and Dad?”
“Why are you asking me? You’re older. You’re supposed to be in charge.”
“Then why can’t I do what I want?” Laura’s eyes went to the wide staircase. “What if people are still down there?”
You don’t mean ‘people,’ thought Lucas. You mean those seniors. Big kids. Cool ones. Who might see you. Who saw you testify. Who might say… something.
“That office woman said there was another staircase.” Lucas ran to a door with a brass plate instead of a knob or a handle.
“Lucas, don’t—”
He pushed the brass plate on that door before Laura could finish her veto.
That opened door led them to a dim shaft of concrete walls centered by a black steel spiral staircase.
“Doors out of here gotta be down there,” said Laura.
They tiptoed down the black steel spiral stairs.
A shaft of light blew into the landing where the staircase curved beneath their feet. Laura jerked to a halt—almost fell when Lucas bumped into her.
An invisible man below bellowed: “Just get in here, Harley!”
Shoes scraped on the metal landing below. The shaft disappeared as that door closed. Angry words from two men clanged up the black steel spiral staircase where the Ross children trembled.
The second man below yelled: “Why the hell—”
“Because it’s better for everybody in here.”
That voice. Lucas saw that Laura recognized it too:
Mr. Makhem, the county superintendent of schools. Boss of all the teachers and even of Principal Olsen.
“You were upsetting my secretary,” Mr. Makhem told the phantom Harley. “Besides, you’re complaining about people being in your business, but when you yell, you get more people in your business than made you mad in the first place.”
“You ain’t running out on me, Makhem! You ain’t dodging this one!”
The school superintendent said: “Do you see me going anywhere?”
Lucas and Laura huddled on the spiraling stairs above the two phantoms.
“You’ve got to understand, Harley. Miss Smith is new in town.”
“That won’t—”
“Doesn’t excuse anything. Nor does it put her on the hook for doing her job.”
“Her damn job is to teach my kid and that’s that!”
“According to Principal Olsen—and he’s no fan of hers—she’s doing that better than most. The kids are doing swell since she came on board.”
“She’s got no right to tell me how to raise my boy! The law says—”
“Don’t tell me about the law, Harley. Every day I juggle more law dos and don’ts and What Fors than you could haul in your pickup truck.”
“Somebody ought to school your Miss Smith on the dos and don’ts in this town. Saying I have to bring my damn boy to that county nurse. That’s messing in my business!”
“She just wants the nurse to look your son over and see that he’s alright.”
“If he ain’t alright, I’ll make him that way. I keep my boy on the straight and narrow. ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ The Bible says so.”
“Actually, that isn’t in the Bible. But folks spout a lot of stuff as ‘Bible’ that isn’t. Easy to see how you’d be confused.”
“I ain’t confused!”
“Good. So coming in here worked out just fine.”
“Don’t go tricky on me, Makhem! If you don’t straighten out that nosy no-man bitch, then somebody else will.”
“If somebody does more than talk like a gentleman to Miss Smith or any other teacher, then that somebody’s got a hard guy like Principal Olsen to deal with. Plus me. And you know me, Harley. I don’t have Olsen’s easygoing ways.”
“Working man always takes it in the neck, don’t he? Well I’m a voter, so—”
“So hooray for America. My reelection comes next year. And don’t give me that ‘working man’ crap. I sweat as much as you do. Got anything else to say?”
“Figured you were a guy who knew better. Knew that folks who mess with the likes of me end up in a mess.”
“Do they. Well, life’s an education, Harley. I hope you learned something today. I know I did.”
Departing shoes scraped the floor of the stairwell below. That door closed.
Below them, Harley bellowed: “Son-of-a-bitch!”
The door they couldn’t see crashed open and blew a shaft of light into the dim stairwell. Boots stomped away as that door swung shut.
“Now!” hissed Laura.
They ran back the way they’d come. Laura slammed the stairwell’s door open to the main corridor outside the courtroom.
Mom, her face drenched with worry: “Where the hell have you been?”
“Looking for you,” said Laura.
Mom scanned the deserted corridor.
“Your father went to work. Let’s get out of here.”
She led them down the main marble staircase and out the side door.
Laura told her mother: “I can’t go to school. Not today.”
“Your Dad says that’s OK for both of you. Take Lucas to pick up his glasses.”
“Mom, no!” cried Laura. “I can’t go downtown either! Not now! Not after…”
“It’s always going to be ‘after.’ ”
They’d reached the Lutheran church corner where Dad’s boss’s daughter got married. Home was to the right. Past the vacant shale lot across the street from the hospital. Past the house where a lawyer named Falk lived.
And lied about him and the courthouse, thought Lucas.
Mom nodded down the hill and past the alley to the passageway between two shops on Main Street. “Go on now, Laura. Get it done before lunch.”
Then she hurried away to their white-walled, blue-roofed house.
In his green office, Dr. Bond settled black-framed glasses on Lucas’s face.
“There you go,” said the kindly toad. “Step outside and check it out. Then come back and I’ll tighten ’em up.”
Lucas held his hand over his glasses so he couldn’t see. Stepped through the optometrist’s door. Heard it close behind him. Took his blocking hand away.
Saw a new world. The same place but… different. Every shape cut by clean lines. A strange car rolled by. Lucas realized he could read the license plate.
“So how does it look?” The kindly toad slid the bows of Lucas’s glasses back and forth through hot white sand to soften the plastic for shaping.
“All I could see was Main Street.”
“If you can see that and see it clear, you’ve seen it all.”
Lucas frowned as the eye doctor waved the glasses in the air to cool them.
“But it’s just Vernon,” said the ten-year-old boy. “There’s a lot more out there. Dad said you were a tank guy with Patton in the war and saw everything.”
As Dr. Bond settled the glasses back on Lucas, the kindly old toad shimmered into a grizzled young man wearing filthy Army khaki and a green helmet above bottomless eyes.
“You know what I saw? I saw the same sons-of-bitches, sad sacks, and fightin’-to-stay alives were everywhere. I still see ’em every day right here.”
Then a kindly old toad shuffled away to his back office.
Laura stood by the door to Main Street. Lucas’s new vision scanned the doctor’s deserted waiting room. Spotted the magazine cover of that bearded Cuban guy named Castro yelling into the microphone like he was Elvis Presley.
Lucas whispered to his sister: “Tell me what Chris Harvie did to Elvis!”
Laura reached for the door. “I don’t need to relive any more trouble today.”
But her brother plucked her sleeve. “That was two years ago!”
Laura looked through the glass door to Main Street.
“Wasn’t just skipping school,” she whispered. “Maybe fifty high school kids did that. None of us in junior high did, not even Claudia and she was already kind of with Chris, just waiting until she got to high school and old enough.
“I don’t remember how but everybody knew Elvis was on the train coming through town from back east. Kids skipped school and went down to the train station. Stood on the depot platform. Waited. Excited. Chris made a banner: VERNON DIGS ELVIS!
“Train roars in. Orange passenger cars. Faces pressed against the windows. A mob of kids bouncing up and down on the platform. Yelling. Waving the banner.
“People got off the train. People got on. Ten minutes plus stop, just like now.
“Then the whistle blows and off it roars. Here then gone. And nothing. No Elvis. He didn’t get off or stand on the train stoop or even open a window to wave. It was like we weren’t even there. Like he didn’t care. Like we didn’t matter.”
He asked her: “So what did Chris do?”
“That got him suspended from school for three days? The telegram. He wrote it. Collected money for it.”
Laura shook her head.
“Claudia has a copy the Western Union guy in the depot typed up for Chris after they sent it so it could be delivered to Elvis at the next station stop: ALL SAVVY STUDENTS HEAVE OFF LOVING ELVIS.”
“Huh?”
“Chris almost got away with it. Almost just got one detention like other kids who skipped school. Then the high school principal noticed the code.”
“What code?”
“You figure it out. I’ll give you a hint: United Nations.”
Laura peered through the glass door. Saw no one nearby on the sidewalk. Opened the doctor’s office door and led her kid brother out.
Lucas frowned as he followed Laura out into the brightness and the sidewalk. United Nations? What does that—
The vision grabbed him:
“Laura! What if Elvis wasn’t really on the train?”
“Elvis was on the train. Elvis is always on the train that goes through town. And he doesn’t get off and you can’t get on.”
United Nations, thought Lucas as he walked beside Laura. He tried to use his new glasses to see the words of Chris Harvie’s telegram. If the UN was the clue, did it mean something about war or peace or…
The UN. “All Savvy Students—”
What comes next? Oh, yeah: “Heave Off Loving Elvis.”
Hanging in the air, Lucas saw: A S S H O—
The door to the Tap Room bar swung open.
A woman pushed a baby carriage out to the sidewalk with a cloud of cigarette smoke, beer, and canned tomato juice. The bar door closing behind her chopped off some man’s laugh as she spotted Lucas and Laura.
“Well I’ll be damned,” said the woman from the bar. “It’s the star witness.”
Lucas felt his sister burst into flame.
“You remember me, Laura.”
The woman’s ash-colored hair brushed her shoulders. She had big brown eyes. Smooth pale skin. The blouse tucked into the waistband of her tan slacks billowed out with a fullness that made Lucas feel strange. He saw chips in her red nail polish as she leaned on the baby carriage. Put a brown paper sack into her purse. Fished out a pack of Lucky Strikes.
A cigarette went between her scarlet lips as she told Laura: “I’d give you a fag, but a girl’s gotta earn her own naughty things.”
The twenty-something mother lit the Lucky.
“Cat got your tongue?” said the smoking woman. “Been so busy talking up there in the big time you can’t say hi?”
“Hello…” Laura’s voice trailed off into known uncertainty.
“You can still call me Rita. I remember babysitting you, even if you don’t.”
“I sort of do.”
“Sort of do?” Rita laughed. “What the hell. Who’s the geek with glasses? He’s awful short to be your boyfriend.”
The baby was strapped in so she couldn’t escape. Sitting up, bright eyes and bouncing. She went “Ooo! Ooo!” as her soft hand summoned Lucas’s finger.
“Should have guessed,” said the baby’s mother. “You go for the older guys, too, don’t you, Rachel? He’s a smart one, too. Figure that from the glasses.”
Rita turned to the now-teenage girl. “You see my Neal up there at the show? He get to be a big shot?”
“He…” Laura settled herself. “Mr. Dylan did fine.”
“You call him Mr. Dylan, you better call me Mrs.” The wife of that sixth grade teacher ground her cigarette into the concrete under her shoe. “You know, he almost was a lawyer once upon a time. Funny how things work out.”
But she gave those words no laugh.
A breeze brushed over them.
Lucas’s new glasses let him see Rita ride that breeze to a wistful vision of what used to be. Or maybe a vision of what was supposed to be.
Then she blinked back to this bright sun on a cracked sidewalk outside a Main Street bar in her hometown where she stood pushing a baby buggy.
“I babysat you,” she told Laura. “Now look at you. A star up in the big time. Looking to dance on out of town, so I hear. Maybe you will, maybe you won’t.”
Laura stood still as a wooden statue.
“You grow up some, your wills and won’ts can surprise you.”
Rita pulled a pair of sunglasses from her purse. Slid them over her eyes.
“Bright out here,” she said. Turned the stroller away from them. “See you kids around town.”
The carriage hit a bump. Baby Rachel’s head bobbled.
And Lucas heard those buggy wheels whirling like a train.
But where, oh where, is Elvis?