Trial Counsel for the United States—in civilian terms the prosecutor—was Victor Beck. In grade school, to overcome the obvious disadvantages of being called Vic Beck, he sought to escape the pot by jumping into the frying pan, and named himself Skip. So what if people said “skip back,” Skip was a popular name at the time and had seemed like a good fix. But why Skip Beck was better than Vic Beck was something understood perhaps only by an eight-year-old. Rarely problematical in the United States, Skip caused some difficulty when, after law school at Columbia, he worked on an M.Phil. at Oxford. In England, every time he introduced himself or was introduced, and every time someone read his name on a form or a list, people smiled. At Magdalen College’s opening convocation, when his name was read out, the audience of several hundred laughed.
After the ceremony, he asked a random person why.
“Why would your parents have named you that?” was the reply.
“It’s a sobriquet,” he said, rather than nickname. After all, he was at Oxford. “Why not?” Laughing, the person whom he had asked walked away.
So he asked another student, a girl. Girls were nicer. They would take the time to explain. But she couldn’t, because she was laughing. “Come on,” he said, “tell me.”
“Don’t you have skips in America?” she asked.
“Of course. I’m one.”
This set her off again. When she stopped, she said, “I understand. Come with me.”
That was easy. Just starting university, she was eighteen, was very pretty, with red hair and green eyes. Their black robes flowing, she led him through a few streets in the heart of Oxford until they reached a construction site. Pointing to a dumpster into which a load of debris had just fallen and raised a cloud of white dust, she said, in her native Scot’s brogue, because now she was out of earshot of her fellow college members, “There, that’s a skip.”
“Ahhh!” he said, “I see.” And he fell in love with her. Now she was his wife. He had been saying, in effect, “Hi, my name is Dumpster,” so he abandoned it before he met her parents and before the wedding, in Edinburgh, as it would have been a problem had he not. Now he was once again Vic Beck. But that name didn’t fit him either. One might think that anyone named Victor Beck would be a bully and a lummox with muscles of steel. Hardly. He was short, slight, and superficially delicate. So is a stiletto. Whereas Frearson was sunny, deliberate, slow to speak, and stolid, Beck was quick, cunning, dark, fast-talking, and fierce.
Perhaps because he was small of stature, he was fanatical about strength and fitness, and could fight like a Tasmanian devil, which actually isn’t that fierce but has a fierce name, as opposed to the gently named honey badger, the fiercest, craziest animal on earth other than a White House correspondent. His energy jumped from him. Though he spoke fast, when he paused he elongated the last sound he had issued into a kind of hum, holding the space until he had decided that he had nothing further to add.
*
Because it was a capital case, the court-martial consisted of a military judge (an admiral) and twelve members. As each one had to be of a rank superior to that of the accused, Rensselaer found himself facing thirteen admirals. The president of the court-martial, a four-star known to everyone in the Navy and many beyond, was Admiral Porter. The others were three- or two-stars, nothing less.
If only for the near-kaleidoscopic flash of their decorations and gold-striped sleeves, the sight when they convened was stunning. An unused helicopter hangar at Naval Station Norfolk had been transformed into a courtroom both large enough to hold the press and spectators and secure enough to assure order. Because the ceiling was so high, a steel frame had been constructed upon which to hang lights in the otherwise preternaturally dim and cavernous hanger. The electricians found that it was easier to rent theatrical spotlights than to install what they called “high hats” on this frame, so that, not surprisingly, the effect was theatrical. Caught in the brilliant light from above, the flags and uniforms exploded in color. As the proceedings advanced in December and promised to continue into the new year, the lights provided more than enough heat, construction-site heaters went unused, and they would have been too noisy anyway.
That November, the vice president was defeated in his run for the presidency. Elevated instead was a Senate independent, Hartsfield, who was politically unclassifiable. He had drawn from the politics and ideologies of both parties while leaving behind their mistakes, idiocies, radicals, morons, criminals, and hangers-on, roundly condemning both in such logical and uninflated oratory that his election promised a sea change. When, after he became president-elect, people called him “Mr. President,” he snapped at them that he was not the president and would not be until the twentieth of January.
That was a good sign, Rensselaer thought, the mark of someone who would act with probity. Frearson was not so encouraged. He said it was a good sign, yes, but the danger was that Hartsfield might be inflexible. These indications, however, were uncertain, especially as Hartsfield kept everything as close to his vest as had Calvin Coolidge—perhaps closer. The press went crazy. He was a prospective president who said little; who had never issued a tweet; who projected seriousness, depth, and dignity. It was a nearly unbelievable change, in that he was neither infantile nor senile, nor a crook, narcissist, or idiot.
*
When the court assembled for the monotonous dueling of preliminaries, in which the frustrated and silent panel of admirals had not even a minor part as most everything was left to the judge, they had little to do but form impressions. Two and a half Becks could fit into a Frearson. Frearson’s fingers were bratwurst-like, his fingernails rounded and showing a lot of white. Beck’s were thin and aerodynamic, the fingernails almost pointy. Frearson reflected the light. Beck absorbed it. When Beck spoke he leaned forward to convince and then leaned back as if his words were a wave that had broken against a seawall and would hit him on the rebound. When Frearson spoke it was as if he were speaking to an unseen judge or God himself, making an argument for its own sake and knowing that if it were true it would succeed regardless of tactics and theatrics.
Frearson’s strategy was to do everything he could to delay and stretch out the proceedings so that the verdict would come down after January 20th. To the extent that the court’s decision would be based on the political mood of the country, he aimed for the quiet period between old and new regimes, when previous fights had been deflated or at least paused, and new ones had yet fully to take shape. Very imprecisely, he thought that in the dormancy of winter, when all life was challenged, mercy and understanding would come more easily.
Christmas and New Year’s became his allies as they brought everything to a halt. From the election to mid-December, he and Beck fought over technicalities, of which an unending supply existed. And in this, Katy assisted remotely, contesting Beck’s subpoenas with a near-magical skill that convinced Beck and his assistants that actually getting her on the stand would be as delightful as sharing a sleeping bag with a porcupine. Beck said, “Call her? No way in hell.”
On 17 December, Frearson took time off to be with his family, Katy was keeping her promise to Stephen to remain in New Orleans until the trial was over, and Rensselaer was excused from woodworking shop and counseling. A lot of guards got leave, and, due to their absence the prisoners spent more time in their cells and more time—in Rensselaer’s case, alone—in their exercise yards. It was unusually cold, and it got dark very early.
One day at five o’clock, alone in his fenced enclosure, in the deep gray dusk just before the floodlights came on, Rensselaer heard a faint, familiar, almost crackling sound, like a cross of rain and wind. Not far to the east on the deserted beaches, the waves broke and the surf hissed ever so quietly as it was blanketed in falling snow. That was it. That was the sound, almost a hiss, steady and quiet, for over Chesapeake, which is not far from the sea, it was snowing. He imagined that on the beaches, though it was dark, snow about to die in the breakers would cast a strange white glow.