Mama led me out to the trees by the front of the courthouse, beneath which Caroline had unpacked a lunch of ham biscuits and sweet tea. I took a seat on the grass next to Daddy and leaned back my head to look up through the tree’s branches. I thought I had best memorize the deep blue of the sky, the tree’s knobby arms. After this trial was over, I might not have much chance to study on such things for a while.
When I sat up again, folks was streaming past us, making a point of not looking in our direction, with one or two exceptions. For example, when Curtis Shrew and Lonnie Matthews ambled by, they paused to have them a little laugh at my expense.
“Why, hey there, Dovey,” Curtis called out. “You looking forward to being a flatlander? They’re going to send you off to that girls detention home in Charlotte when this is all over and done with, that’s for sure.” Lonnie joined him in a big belly laugh at that remark.
“Why don’t you boys move along now?” Daddy said, shifting a bit as though he was going to stand up and help them boys walk on if they didn’t do so on their own.
“See you in twenty years, Dovey!” Lonnie called. Then he and Curtis walked across the street toward Caraway’s.
“Don’t listen to them boys none,” Daddy said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “Everything’ll work out. That judge ain’t sending you nowhere.”
“It don’t look good, Daddy,” I said. “What’s Judge Young supposed to think? There we were, me and Parnell and my knife. Ain’t nobody else to lay Parnell’s death on except me, now, is there?”
Daddy rubbed his eyes with his hands. He looked old all the sudden, and real tired. “Let’s not talk about it right now, Sister,” he said. “Let’s just sit here and eat the lunch your mama made us.”
Caroline passed me a ham biscuit. “Dovey,” she said as I began to take me a bite, “I just want you to know that I realize this is all of my fault. I should have never taken up with Parnell. And I should have told him up front that I was still going away to school and wasn’t interested in marriage. I embarrassed him so bad when he proposed, and then he went and took it out on you.”
“This ain’t no one’s fault, Caroline,” I said after a moment’s quiet. “You had no way of knowing Parnell would be so vengeful. Most men would have just let it go.”
Caroline began to cry silent tears, the way she always had, ever since she was little, never snuffling or sniffling in the least. I felt bad for her, but I couldn’t help but think she was right, that if she’d just told Parnell flat out that she was going to college and wasn’t ever going to marry him, we’d still be living our regular lives. But how could she have known her little games would end up with a man lying dead on a concrete floor?
After we finished with our lunches, Amos untied Huck and took him for a walk down to the creek that ran behind King Street. I started to go after him. I wanted to warn him not to do anything in that courtroom that would make us both sorry. But as I stood to follow him, Daddy took my hand and said, “You best stay here, Dovey. Someone might think you were trying to run off. We don’t want nobody making a scene.”
I sat back down, the knot in my stomach pulling tighter. I needed to talk to Amos, but I weren’t going to get my chance, it appeared. I watched Mama and Caroline fuss with the napkins and waxed paper that the biscuits come wrapped in and then looked past them to the mountains that framed our town like a circle of wise old men and women. I noted Katie’s Knob, one of the tallest and proudest among them, and I already missed running up her trail behind Amos, searching for all the interesting things a mountain had to offer.
Wilson Brown come up on me unexpected and sat by my side. “That Paris sure do like to make things up, don’t she?” he asked.
I give him a nod in response, and Wilson fell silent. He was as good as Amos at picking up my moods, which made him a valuable friend. I wondered if the folks in Charlotte would let me write him letters.
Daddy started humming an old tune, “Sweet Molly Malone,” I think it was, and you’d think it would have made me sad to hear it right then, but strange enough, it made me feel better.
I leaned back again, this time closing my eyes. It was time for me to think about this trial head-on. I needed to do something quick, especially if Amos was up to something, as I suspected he might be. Considering the matter at hand, Mrs. Caraway’s testimony had helped our side, in my opinion, and Paris’s testimony had harmed my chances, true enough. But what of Sheriff Douglas’s testimony? Was there anything he had said that might be used to help my case?
I wished I had paid more attention when Sheriff Douglas had been on the stand, but I’d been too busy worrying about what Paris had said. I thought back as hard as I could. Mr. Jarrell had had the sheriff describe the scene of the crime, how he’d found Parnell’s body and that of Tom’s, how there’d been a cut on his arm and blood from that.
“Did the loss of blood from the cut kill Mr. Caraway?” Mr. Jarrell had asked the sheriff, and everyone had grown real quiet, waiting for the answer.
“Nope, it weren’t the cut that killed him,” the sheriff had answered, and you could hear everyone let their breath out again. “It was the blow to his head from that soda canister.”
The canister had been sitting up on a table beside the witness stand, along with the knife and the shirt Parnell had been wearing, a small spot of blood on the sleeve from where I’d cut him. Mr. Jarrell had pointed to the metal canister and asked, “Is that there the murder weapon?” and the sheriff had nodded. “Yes, sir, it is. Like I said, the doctors say Parnell died from the blow to his head. That cut weren’t deep at all, to tell you the truth.”
Now that seemed to me a good point. Folks had spent far too much time talking about how I’d cut a man to death, but that weren’t it at all. When I’d taken my knife to Parnell, it felt like it barely touched his skin. Most of the cut went into tearing that shirt.
I pictured that soda canister in my head again. It was about three feet high, with a round thing like a real small steering wheel atop it and a place where you attached the hose to let the soda run out. Who would have ever thought you could use such a thing to kill a man? Seemed odd to think about something as happy as an ice-cream soda or a cherry-lemon float being related to such a horrible act.
The last thing I had remembered that night in the back room of Caraway’s was me stabbing at Parnell and tearing his sleeve and then him coming at me and my fall backward. What Mr. Jarrell needed to prove was that I’d gotten back up, taken hold of one of them soda canisters, raised it up high, and clobbered Parnell over the head with it.
How could he prove such a thing? I wondered. And then a worse thought came to me: Did Mr. Jarrell even have to prove such a thing? Was me being alone in the room with Parnell’s body enough to get me convicted? It couldn’t be that easy, could it?
It could have, but in a flash I had me a thought that made me burst out laughing. “I got it!” I yelled, startling Wilson and everyone else. “I know the answer!”
“What is it, Dovey?” Mama cried, coming toward me. “Are you okay? What is it that you got?”
I scrambled to my feet. “I ain’t got time to talk to you now. But I reckon you’ll see what I mean in a few minutes.” With that, I ran toward the courthouse, aiming to hunt down Mr. Harding. I believed I had him a bit of information he could use to help us with our case.
The front hallway of the courthouse was dark and cool. I hurried down the long corridor, past the courtroom, where my very way of life was at stake, past the judge’s chambers and the district attorney’s office. I didn’t rightly know where I was going, but I figured I’d be able to find Mr. Harding around here somewhere, as the courthouse seemed the natural habitat of a lawyer, even during the lunch hour.
All the doors was closed, and no lights shown behind them. I scurried down a flight of stairs at the hallway’s end, my stomach all jittery and my blood racing through me like a train. The basement corridor smelled of mildew and cigar smoke. Once my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw just where that smoke was coming from. A cloud billowed from Sheriff Douglas’s office, the door of which was open. From where I was, I could see Mr. Harding perched on the edge of the sheriff’s desk, a fat cigar in his hand. As soon as he saw me, he stubbed it out. “Miss Dovey, I have some good news for you,” he said, coming out into the hallway. “I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with the sheriff.”
I smiled. “I bet it ain’t as good as the news I got for you,” I said. “It’s going to bust this trial right open.”
Mr. Harding looked at me for a moment, and then a big grin broke across his face. “Does your news have anything to do with a certain piece of evidence?”
I nodded. “It surely does,” I said. I could barely contain myself and thought I might start jumping up and down from sheer excitement.
“You know, Miss Dovey, they say great minds think alike,” Mr. Harding said, motioning me into the sheriff’s office. “Why don’t you come on in here and tell the sheriff what you’re thinking?”
I walked straight into the sheriff’s office. “I’d be glad to, Mr. Harding,” I said, forgiving him all his earlier errors and poor performance. “Why, I’d be downright thrilled.”