It felt so awful when it first happened, when her babies almost died. And it was so wrong, she knew it was, but somehow Loretta Carver believed it would all be made better. Danny was trying to be good for her, she knew that, too, calm and strong, but she could tell he disbelieved. He didn’t even believe in Sheriff Dugan, who, the night the shooting happened, came over a second time—after she had brushed him off with her anger—and talked to her at length in the back of that deputy’s car, finally made her feel everything might be okay again. “We’ll wait and see, Loretta, honey,” was all Danny said, like he knew something she wouldn’t like.
At first, she ignored Danny, let him disbelieve. She thought surely in a few days they’d be called to witness Dr. Pemberton being charged with his crimes. And then there would be recompense like they teach you in school and church, justice for what he did. She would be able to sleep again, and her little girls, too. People should not have their lives be at the mercy of other people who don’t care because they are unhappy or drunk or whatever. They should not be able to visit their miseries on you. She knew that was the way life was, but she refused to believe that was the way it had to be. There had to be justice and recompense.
She would suddenly get so upset she’d have to call the sheriff, even though she was embarrassed to do it, but he always came right on the phone, nice and polite, and listened. “Please be patient, Mrs. Carver,” he would say, and because he was patient and strong, she could be. And all that time, she knew she was real angry deep down about what had happened, so angry she was afraid of it. But she held it in because she knew there would be justice. They were hardworking people, she and Danny. They didn’t ask for that trouble. The county solicitor, Mr. Lamb, said to be patient, too. Loretta had never been in a court in her life. Danny either.
Then, after the preliminary hearing was continued twice in June, and they were given one reason after another why the defendant couldn’t be there, it was finally called in district court. The solicitor called them and told them to be there right at nine, because if the case were called and they weren’t there, it could be thrown out. Sheriff Dugan called, too, just to make sure they’d been called, and she was truly excited and relieved, and told him so because at last it was going to begin, justice would happen and the world would seem right again. Only Sheriff Dugan didn’t sound so sure, trying to calm her, saying, “This could take a long time, Loretta. This is just a preliminary hearing to bind him over to superior court, if we have a strong-enough case,” calling her by her first name like she’d asked him to. Something in the way he said it suggested he thought maybe he didn’t have the case, but she wanted to believe so badly, she kept saying thank you. It was July by then, almost three months after the shooting. She hadn’t slept a full night in all that time, and Danny was being real quiet, hugging her if she got teary or wondered aloud when it was going to be made all right. But Danny didn’t say anything. He was distant, not believing, she supposed. She’d never seen him like that, so distant, except when they almost broke up over their debts. It almost killed her then, being with someone she loved so much and not being able to reach him with words or anything else, so everything felt like a judgment.
The doctors had tested her father in late June and found he had cancer like they suspected, only he wouldn’t listen, and she and Danny and the girls started going back up into Tennessee on the weekends more regularly, just like they’d done that night in April. Except back then, it was spring and there had been a big thunderstorm like you have only up in the mountains, when all the noise rolls here and there. Though it had passed, they could still see lightning over the mountain ridges, scorching the bellies of great clouds. And oh, the smells! All the flowers and leaves and earth opening in the darkness, soaked by the rain. The smells just rushed in the windows that night.
“It’s like we’re headed toward a war,” Danny had said, not upset but with wonder, and she’d said “Yes,” from somewhere in her thoughts. She was happy as she watched their headlights roam through what looked like smoky ruins. The girls were curled up asleep in the back. They had the radio on, but just so they could scarcely hear it. It was tuned to Damascus Country Radio, and a voice was talking about things way down in the valley like it was somewhere in outer space, about how tickets were still available for the Rotary drawing on a new Chevy pickup from Fremont’s Downtown Motors. They were in the Monte Carlo. They’d bought it new a little over a year before from Fremont’s, and it was almost paid for. They already owned the pickup Danny drove to work. They had both come to hate buying on time because they were caught in debt that one time, when it almost took their marriage along with their home and everything else, and Danny had become quiet then, too, like something caged. But they had scrimped and somehow paid their bills. They even kept their credit. Aside from the car, they owed only on the house, and just three years on that. Life seemed simpler that way to both of them, more free and good.
That night was so full of spring, damp and lush, that they had the windows all the way down and finally stopped talking just to feel the mountains and each other, like time didn’t exist anymore. A few years before, they would have pulled off somewhere to make love. He told her once she was the only woman he’d ever known who seemed to really enjoy taking off her clothes, getting bare-naked in front of him. Well, she sure did. She guessed she still did, though it didn’t feel quite the same since the shooting. It felt less free—old, like a movie you never should see more than once or twice. She knew it wasn’t about Danny, though, and she felt sorry when she felt it.
There was always something delicious, a danger, when they used to play like that, taking off their clothes under the heavens like Adam and Eve. It was the mountains and the night, the whisper of trees and splashing creeks. But beautiful sounds hid other sounds; no matter where they were, they always felt watched. She knew Danny wanted to stop that night and just spread her out on the wet, lush ground, and her mouth even went dry. But the girls …
Before they could even cool down, it all changed. Lights suddenly swooped up behind them, and the beeping of a horn began like some kind of yelling from hell, and there was no one else anywhere in all that darkness, just she and Danny and the girls and that car darting from side to side behind them like something wild. It ran up in front of them, then fell alongside and swung at them, and everything went crazy.
They waited all day in district court, Danny taking a day off from his job at the V.A., where he worked in maintenance and grounds, and she from her job at Eckerd’s. It cost them all that money, which was all right, she thought more than once. They sat through all kinds of cases, and it was hot, the courtroom not air-conditioned but like a big amphitheater or church. The seats rose up so high she could look right down on Judge Samuel Ellsworth Walker and at the lawyers down below the judge in what Danny called “the pit,” like for some cockfight or something. The big windows were all open, and though the courthouse was right in the middle of the square in the middle of Damascus, with all those oak trees and grass it had a hush about it, even in the middle of the day. The hard thing was trying to stay awake, it was so hot inside. She’d look out the window and watch the squirrels way down on the ground. She tried not to keep looking at the solicitor. She didn’t want to bother him just because she didn’t know the way things worked, but it would have been nice if he looked at them now and then, and maybe even told them something, she thought. She was worried something was going to happen, something get said, and the case would be thrown out with them right there and not knowing anything had happened. Danny caught her looking at Mr. Lamb and said, “Them lawyers put him up for election. No one runs against him.” He sounded disgusted. “If he was any good, he’d be making real money like the rest of them, not living off the public tit.”
Reggie Tetrault was there, the bailiff, big-bellied and full of himself. She remembered Reggie from high school, still reading in a third-grade reader. She tried not to think about him investigating their case. Lord! And then an attorney came in from a side door—the only steps to the courtroom, which was on the second floor, were on the outside of the building—and talked to Mr. Lamb, the solicitor, and the two went and talked to the judge, and then the judge leaned over and talked to Marianne, the clerk. Then the judge said the preliminary hearing for Dr. Martin Pemberton was to be continued to Wednesday morning three weeks hence, and they could barely believe it. No one even talked to them or asked about their schedules.
She went right down to the jail to see the sheriff and give him hell, only he was gone for the day, and by then she was so angry she could spit.
She shouted at Danny that night. She was angry at him, too, his acting like a know-it-all. He tried to hold her and quiet her down. “Don’t you touch me!” she told him. “What are you being high and mighty about?”
He nodded up the hallway. “The girls,” he whispered.
“They’ll have no life left either if we don’t talk, Daniel Earl Carver! You tell me!”
Then he gave her a look she’d never seen before, like right through her. She saw then he was beyond angry. He was so quiet, his look so cold, it scared her so bad she wished she hadn’t asked what she asked. It made her anger seem like happiness. “We can’t win,” he said. “The man’s rich.”
“Danny, we got the law on our side!” She was almost in tears. He was tearing at something deep inside her. “We have Sheriff Dugan.”
“Don’t count on Dugan or the law. It’s politics. If you’re not on top of the heap, any justice you get is like a scrap you toss a dog. And because it’s either us or that doctor, there won’t be any scraps, honey, believe me. Maybe if he killed someone, someone might say he’d gone too far and do something about it. But no one died, Loretta. That’s the bottom line. We’re here, and the car’s sold only because we couldn’t stand to be in it anymore.”
“Oh, Danny!”
“All we had to do was buy a used car and a little more debt and forget about it.”
He went outside then, just turned and went because he couldn’t stand to be saying it all. But when he came back awhile later, still real quiet but calmer for a moment, she told him she wasn’t going to believe what he said. They were going to see Sheriff Dugan the very next day, and Danny would see that Dugan was a good man, she could feel it. She made up her mind then, and told him so, told him she wasn’t going to despair, wasn’t going to believe their girls had to grow up in a world like that.