THE trees were getting on toward leaf, now. But you could still see through their branches, across the square to the courthouse, and beyond. When they were in full leaf, you couldn’t. Then, above the massy depth of the green, you could only see the roof of the courthouse and the squat, square brick tower with the clock. That happened all at once. For a while after the buds began you could see the individual boughs hung with that uncertain, irregular green that in the fading light, as now, seemed gray, or seemed, on the very highest boughs where the last ray of sun struck, a pale gold. For a while, day after day, there would be the boughs, visible and individual, and through them you could see the courthouse, the benches under the trees, and the buildings on the other side of the square; then suddenly, one morning, you could see nothing, or for the first time you realized that you could see nothing, and you were surprised as though it had all happened, at one stroke, that night. The season had turned.
Mr. Munn kept on looking out of the window of his office at the leafing trees. He was thinking that things were as they were, you thought, and then, even as you looked, were not. There was, for instance, that small pain in the side, a stitch, nothing more, something so familiar that you scarcely noticed it, part of the unvarying, permeating medium in which your being was supported; then it was that no longer, it was cancer, it was death. Death grew in you like the leaves on the trees in spring, gentle and tender and unobtrusive, and then, in the moment of knowledge, was already luxuriant, full-blown, blotting out the familiar objects. If not the small pain in the side, some word you spoke, some careless gesture, some momentary concession to vanity, some burst of pity, or some trivial decision — that was the bud, the leaf swelling toward recognition.
He shrugged his shoulders, and rose from his chair. Doctor MacDonald had said, ‘Well, a man goes his own gait.’ And that was true.
He walked idly about the office, in which the light was getting dim. His eyes rested upon the familiar objects: the tall walnut bookcases with the glass in the doors cracked, the stacks of books and papers, dust-covered, in chairs against the wall, the other chair, the chair where Mrs. Trevelyan had sat that day, the filing cabinets, the pictures, the rifle and the shotgun propped in a corner with old envelopes drawn over the muzzles to save them from dust. He had brought the shotgun back from the Christian place, he remembered, after his last bird hunt with Mr. Christian. They had had a good afternoon, that last afternoon, no wind, the sky clear and distant with a tinge of frosty gray, like iron, on the northern horizon as the sun got low, the dogs working in the tawny sagegrass beyond a cedar grove. He had brought the gun back here the next morning, had set it in the corner, and had put the envelope over the muzzle. How long ago that seemed! But he had not used the rifle for more than two years. He had not touched it except to oil it, not since the time he went down to Reelfoot Lake deer-hunting. He had not killed a deer with the rifle that trip. The only deer he had killed had been brought down with a charge of buckshot at less than fifteen paces. He had been leaning against an oak near the run, and the deer had appeared, momentarily motionless, with lifted head, an easy shot. At night the men had sat in a cabin around a stove, their belts loosened and a whisky bottle on the table, warm with the fire and the food and the drink and in the surety of comradeship. But now he could not even remember the name of one of the men. That, too, was a long time back.
The things you remembered, they were what you were. But every time you remembered them you were different. For a long time you would not notice any difference, as you noticed no difference in the spring when, day after day in the warm nights, the leaves thickened on the boughs, or in the fall slowly dropped away; until the time came when, all at once, there was the difference. Every object in the room, in its familiarity, proclaimed a difference, the shotgun there in the corner, the books he had read, the dusty papers filled with his writing. He had written on those pages for some purpose; the purpose was gone now, but there the writing still was, yellowing out, going too, but outliving the purpose that had guided the pen across the sheets. Over the sights of the shotgun, in the flicker of an instant, he had seen the last quail rise in the whirr of wings against the lemon-colored sky, and his finger had pressed the trigger, and the bird had stumbled, as it were, on the air and plunged downward like a stone. There the shotgun was, as it had been; but the unnamable impulse that had made him lift it and press the trigger that afternoon was gone, exhausted in its fulfillment. The acts remained, irreversible in their consequences and not to be undone, but the impulse, the desire, the purpose, had gone. It was hard sometimes to guess what they had been.
He stopped moving about the office. To hell with it, he thought. That didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was to see MacDonald out, now. There was, at least, that.
That was the only thing that mattered, now, for it was the only thing left to matter.
Five days earlier the board of the Association had voted to sell. Mr. Sills and Mr. Munn had stood out against it. But it had been no use. Some had been hopeless, some had needed cash too desperately, some had been afraid. Looking about the table, Mr. Munn had wondered how many had the threat of an indictment hanging over their heads to force the vote. That’s what the evidence was being used for, to squeeze. And after that it might be used for something else. More than once Mr. Munn had wondered when they would come for him: on the street in broad daylight, some night at the hotel?
Mr. Sills had stood by him, but it had been no use. After the vote, Mr. Munn had gone down the stairs by himself, ahead of the others. It was over. The other men hadn’t been willing to look at each other. They had known it was over.
Mr. Munn had walked down the street and across the courthouse square to the jail. They had let him into the cell. He had not known how, exactly, to say it to Doctor MacDonald.
‘Durn it,’ Doctor MacDonald exclaimed, ‘just like I said, sitting round so much makes me bilious. It’s not natural to a man to be sitting round. And this time of year your blood needs thinning like as not, anyway. I’m sure glad they’ll be starting the trial in a few days.’
Mr. Munn said nothing.
‘Of course,’ Doctor MacDonald added, almost cheerfully, ‘they might decide to keep me indoors for quite a spell afterward. Bilious or not.’
‘You ought never given yourself up,’ Mr. Munn said bitterly, not looking at him. ‘You ought never come down that night. It wasn’t necessary. They would have gone away. After what happened.’
‘Hell, Perse, you keep saying that. How did I know what was happening downstairs, hearing that shooting and all? Anything might have been going on, and me in the attic, not knowing.’
‘You ought never come down,’ Mr. Munn repeated.
‘Well, I did,’ Doctor MacDonald said, ‘and here I am. Only hope I don’t stay here too long.’
‘Listen,’ Mr. Munn commanded, leaning toward him, looking at him now, ‘I don’t know what evidence they got, but I bet they don’t nail you. Wilkins is a good man, a damned good lawyer; he’s no fool; he’ll see to it that jury’s not all one way ——’
‘Sure, Wilkins is all right, I’m not denying that,’ Doctor MacDonald said. ‘But I still wish you’d taken the case. Like I asked.’
‘And have your lawyer get arrested in the middle of it? They may get me any day. Any day they think they’ve got evidence that’ll stick. Wilkins, he’ll manage.’
‘Maybe,’ Doctor MacDonald agreed, in a tone of friendly concession.
‘Listen,’ Mr. Munn reiterated, leaning, ‘let them nail you, and there’s men will take this place apart. Plenty of them. Soldiers or no soldiers. No’ — and he shook his head — ‘they won’t nail you. They’ll be afraid.’
‘Maybe,’ Doctor MacDonald repeated cheerfully. He moved the length of the cell, three paces, short paces for him, and lifted his arms, slowly, almost luxuriously, above his head.
Mr. Munn sat down on the edge of the cot. He felt done in. He felt like a man who, new to a high altitude, runs up an easy slope and finds, suddenly, his knees water and his head giddy with the empty air.
‘Bilious,’ Doctor MacDonald declared; ‘that’s what it does to me. My teeth feel green. Like moss on a rotten shingle. Damned if they don’t.’
Mr. Munn did not answer, looking down at the stained concrete of the floor. He had the impulse to lie back on the cot, to let himself go. If they got him, arrested him and brought him here, he could just lie back and shut his eyes. Then there wouldn’t be any reason not to. He could do it.
‘Well?’ Doctor MacDonald was saying inquiringly. He was standing in the middle of the cell, staring down at him.
Doctor MacDonald stood there, in his shirt-sleeves and with his vest unbuttoned, tall even in his carpet slippers, the light from the window falling directly on his unkempt, strong-boned head. He stood with his weight off his heels, like a boxer, or a man ready to go somewhere. The cuffs of the shirt he wore were fresh and stiff. Mr. Munn looked at them. Cordelia brought him a clean shirt every morning, he knew. She wrapped the shirt up in a piece of paper, every morning, and left the hotel, and walked down the street, not looking at anybody, and crossed the square and came here. She would stand in the cell and hold one of Doctor MacDonald’s hands with both of hers.
‘Well,’ Doctor MacDonald demanded, ‘what’s the matter with you?’
Mr. Munn leaned back until his shoulders came into contact with the stone of the wall. ‘The board,’ he said; ‘they sold.’
‘Our figure?’ Doctor MacDonald asked, almost casually, after the pause of scarcely an instant.
‘No,’ Mr. Munn answered. He did not look at Doctor MacDonald.
‘Licked,’ Doctor MacDonald said.
Mr. Munn slowly raised his gaze. But Doctor MacDonald was looking away. He was looking out the window, and his face betrayed nothing. ‘That’s right,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘Licked.’
Doctor MacDonald continued to look out the little window. Mr. Munn followed his gaze. Outside the window, there was a bough with the leaves putting out, golden-tinged and pubescent.
‘I reckon they just didn’t have it in them,’ Doctor MacDonald remarked.
‘I did what I could,’ Mr. Munn told him. Then added, ‘And Sills did.’
‘It just wasn’t in them,’ Doctor MacDonald said. ‘One way or another, that’s what a man does. What’s in him. A man goes along, and the time comes, even if he’s looking the other way not noticing, and the thing in him comes out. It wasn’t something happening to him made him do something, the thing was in him all the time. He just didn’t know. Till the time came.’
‘No,’ Mr. Munn answered, sitting up on the cot, feeling an alarm stir obscurely in him. ‘No,’ and hesitated; then, less emphatically, repeated, ‘No.’
Almost amusedly, Doctor MacDonald looked down at him. ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ he said. ‘Take the Professor, now. Him doing nothing but teaching his boys and reading his books, all that old history and stuff. You’d never guessed it, but look what came outer him.’
Mr. Munn stood up.
‘Did you ever notice,’ Doctor MacDonald asked, ‘how what happens to people seems sort of made to order for them? When you think about it.’
‘Why don’t matter!’ Mr. Munn exclaimed, and jerked his arm forward in a violent, sweeping gesture of dismissal. ‘We’re licked. The reason for things is gone. For what we did. Like flood water going down and leaving trash and stuff up in a tree.’ He jabbed his forefinger at the other man’s breast. ‘That’s you,’ he asserted, ‘left high and dry. Stuck up in a tree.’ Then, more quietly, he added: ‘And me. Both of us.’
Doctor MacDonald laid a hand on his shoulder, and said, ‘Take it easy.’
Mr. Munn sat down again. They talked of the trial, which would begin in two more days.
As he started out, behind Mr. Dickey, who had come to let him out of Doctor MacDonald’s cell, his glance fell upon the door of the cell where Trevelyan had been. An old man was in there now, lying on the cot, his thin body lax and huddled like a pile of old clothes. He was in for murder. He had gone out to milk one morning, and had brought the milk in and strained it and put it away; then, with an ice-pick, he had killed his wife as she leaned over the stove preparing breakfast, then his pregnant daughter, who was lying in bed, then the young child at her side. He had killed the son-in-law with a rifle when he came back to the house from feeding the stock. He had called the sheriff. Then he had gone to bed and wrapped himself up in the bedclothes. He had been asleep when the sheriff came for him. Now, in his cell, he lay on his cot, only stirring to reply to questions. He answered questions with a dazed and innocent patience, like a man scarcely aroused from sleep.
Mr. Munn could not recall his name.
‘Nuts,’ Mr. Dickey said, and nodded toward the cell where the man lay on the cot.
Outside, when he stood in the courthouse yard, he saw the sunshine falling over the roofs of the buildings and on the stones and the young grass. People were moving up and down the street. People he knew. He walked soberly across the square toward his office.
He had gone to the jail afraid to tell Doctor MacDonald what the board had done. He had been afraid of the way Doctor MacDonald might take it. He should have known, he thought now, the way it would be: Doctor MacDonald standing there in the middle of the cell floor, his weight forward off his heels, his face showing nothing. It was Doctor MacDonald who had laid a hand on his shoulder, and had said, ‘Take it easy.’ It had gone past Doctor MacDonald and had never shaken him.
But the next day when he saw Doctor MacDonald he was not so sure. Watching him stand at the cell door, ready to call Mr. Dickey, Doctor MacDonald said suddenly, ‘Don’t it smell in here to you?’
Mr. Munn turned to look at him.
‘Don’t it stink?’ Doctor MacDonald demanded.
‘Yes,’ Mr. Munn admitted, aware, anew, of the fetid, almost sweet odor, as of rottenness, ‘I reckon it does, a little.’
‘It stunk mightily to me, at first,’ Doctor MacDonald said, ‘but it don’t seem like it stinks now. A man gets used to a thing. It gets natural to him.’ He stopped moving about, as he had been doing, his carpet slippers making a dry, sliding noise on the concrete. ‘That’s what I don’t like,’ he added, ‘it getting so natural. It looks like a stink oughter stay a stink to a man.’
Mr. Munn grinned, thinking it a joke. Then he noticed that Doctor MacDonald was not grinning. Mr. Munn let the muscles of his face relax.
Doctor MacDonald lay down on the cot, staring up at the ceiling.
Mr. Munn called for Mr. Dickey.
While Mr. Dickey was coming, Doctor MacDonald said, ‘If I get out, I’m figuring on leaving this country.’
‘Leaving?’ Mr. Munn echoed, surprise in his tone.
Doctor MacDonald nodded. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, adding, ‘but not so quick anybody’d think he was running me out.’
Mr. Munn did not answer for an instant. ‘Where you going?’ he then asked. He was aware of the unevenness in his own voice. That unevenness, which he noticed, detachedly as in the voice of another person, defined for him the sense of confusion, betrayal, that at Doctor MacDonald’s words had moved smally, almost innocently, in him, like the first tremor of a landslip.
‘Out West somewhere, I reckon,’ Doctor MacDonald was saying matter-of-factly. ‘Arizona, New Mexico, I don’t know. Somewhere where people haven’t caught up with themselves yet.’
Mr. Dickey was coming, his keys jangling as he searched for the right one.
‘I’m not staying round here,’ Doctor MacDonald added. ‘I might get used to the way this country stinks.’
By seven o’clock in the morning on the first day of the trial of Doctor MacDonald on charges of conspiracy and arson, the courthouse square was crowded. The troops kept the courthouse yard clear. When the doors were opened, the troops permitted only five or six men at a time to approach the building, and at the door each man was searched for arms. By half-past eight word came out that the courtroom was full. Although the crowd thinned somewhat, it did not disperse. The people were restless, but unusually silent. When Mr. Munn and Professor Ball and his daughters walked from the hotel to the courthouse, people made way for them, gazing curiously at the faces of the women, and after they had passed talking in low tones, identifying them. Now and then a man would speak to Professor Ball, who would raise the bandaged right hand in a kind of grave salute. Cordelia walked beside him, leaning on his left arm. She was very pale.
A voice from the crowd called out to her, ‘Don’t you worry, Miz MacDonald, we’ll take keer of him.’
She gave no sign of having heard. Professor Ball raised his bandaged hand in decorous salute.
A scuffling began at the point in the crowd where the voice had called. Another voice cried, ‘Hit him again!’ The soldiers tried to force a way into the crowd toward the spot; but they could not. Then the disturbance was over.
At the courthouse door the soldiers stopped them. While the women waited just inside, one of the soldiers patted the men’s pockets and waistbands. Professor Ball, looking straight ahead, seemed unaware of the searching hands on him.
‘They ain’t got nothing,’ the soldier said, stepping back.
‘You can go in now,’ the lieutenant told them.
It was that way every day for three days, in the morning and in the afternoon when the court resumed, the crowd thinner each time but still there, the soldiers around the courthouse yard, where the grass showed an incongruous fresh green as of some pasture corner, and the soldiers at the door. And with Professor Ball, it was the same every day, and with Cordelia. Professor Ball sat in the courtroom, very erect, with his eyes fixed before him as though he were paying no attention to what was going on, and his bandaged hands lying on his bony knees, as passive as stones. Cordelia walked beside him, leaning on his left arm, or sat beside him in the courtroom, still holding his arm; but her glance rarely wavered from her husband’s face. As for Doctor MacDonald, he leaned back in his chair, at ease but alert to what was going on, with his brown hands lying on the table-top before him. Or he inclined his head to hear some remark which his lawyer made in an undertone to him. Once, when almost everybody was watching a witness, Doctor MacDonald — Mr. Munn was almost sure — winked, with an air of sly humor, at Cordelia. Mr. Munn turned, as quickly as he dared, to look at Cordelia. While she watched her husband, her face was pale, but composed. But something else, certainly, some other expression, a smile, perhaps, had been there on her face; and had fled even as he turned to surprise it.
For three days the case moved without taking on definition. Only on the first day, when the jury was being impaneled, had issues taken on any form. But Wilkins, Mr. Munn thought, seemed satisfied enough about the jury. He had not used his last challenge. He acted as if he had put one over. Mr. Munn studied the men in the jury box. He knew some of them. Some of them, he was sure, would like to see Doctor MacDonald catch it, guilty or not as a matter of fact, just because he was in the Association. But Wilkins seemed satisfied. There must be a couple on the jury who, Wilkins thought, could hold out against anything short of an absolute identification. And maybe against that. Mr. Munn tried to figure out who they were, but gave it up. Wilkins was not telling all he knew.
But after the jury was impaneled, things slacked off. Witness followed witness, each one adding some little detail to the picture of the raid on Bardsville. Officials of the Alta Company, and of the other companies, stood in the box, and recited, to the last penny, the costs of the warehouses that had been destroyed, and the quantity and value of the tobacco that those warehouses had contained. That was what it had been, to them, not a picture of men moving in the darkness, and of the flames standing over the roofs, but the sums which each in turn, standing in the box, read from a paper in his hand. A constable told how he had been sitting in the office and how masked men, with drawn pistols, had come in and tied him to a chair. They had brought in two other men, watchmen, and tied them up too. The masked men had stood around, the constable said, making jokes and chewing tobacco. ‘They said they just tied us up for our own good,’ the constable said, somewhat sullenly, ‘so we wouldn’t git in no trouble.’ The masked men, he added, had had some trouble with their masks when they tried to spit. And the first explosion, because the police office was so near Front Street, nearly threw him out of his chair. ‘They must-er used enough that shot to blow up the town,’ he said.
Miss Lucy Mayhew, chief operator for the telephone company, lowered her bony, sallow-skinned right hand after taking the oath, and smoothed the black, lusterless silk of her dress. The prosecutor asked her questions, and she answered them in a low but distinct voice, impersonal as though it were coming over a wire; she did not lift her head when she spoke, and her hands, now and then, patted and smoothed the silk. She fixed the very minute when she had first heard a trampling on the stairs up to the telephone office, for she had just looked at her clock. It was twelve-thirty o’clock, she said. Four men came in, bursting in all at once, and they had white cloths on their faces and pistols in their hands. One of the girls screamed, she said, but she herself, she stood right up to them as good as she could. She wanted to know what their business was.
‘And what did they say?’ the prosecutor demanded.
‘They said, ladies, we hate to bother you, but we just got a little private business in town, and we don’t want anybody to be making it public.’ She smoothed the silk, and her brow wrinkled in thought. ‘At least, that’s as good as I can remember what they said. So we got back from the switchboard.’
‘Did they offer you any violence?’
‘They waved those pistols some,’ she said, ‘but they didn’t point them at us. One of them — he looked like the captain or something, because he had a white bandage on his coat sleeve — he just said for us to come downstairs, and he took me by the arm. And two of the other men, each one took one of the girls by the arm, and one of the girls started pulling back, and he said, lady, you better come on down or you’ll miss something bigger’n Christmas. They took us downstairs, and the man with me held my arm going down like any gentleman would a lady’s.’
One of the men had stayed upstairs, she said, and he was the one who had cut all the wires up there. Or at least she reckoned so, for all the wires were cut up and pretty bad. He was the meanest-looking one, anyway, she said. Then the men made them stand back in the doorway of Gordon’s store, which had a deep doorway. At first there wasn’t anything, then a few men riding down the street, men with white masks on. Then some more men on horseback stopped up at the corner of Main and Jefferson, under the street light, and stayed there the whole time. Then there were the explosions, then the fire over the roofs, and one of the girls began to cry. It looked like the whole town was going to burn up, she said. But it didn’t, and after a while men with guns began marching past.
‘In military formation?’ the prosecutor asked.
‘I reckon you might call it that,’ she answered. ‘It was four abreast, but not in step exactly. And they were singing and shouting some. One man got on the sidewalk and shot off his pistol at the street light and yelled’ — she hesitated, smoothing her skirt. ‘Well, it was improper language,’ she said, ‘and then he yelled out, Boys, they said we couldn’t, but we done it! Then he shot off his pistol, and he hit the street light. But one of the men with us, the one that was captain, he said to one of the others, you go tell that man to move on, he’s using strong language like that, and there’s ladies here. And he went and told him, and he stopped.’
After the others had all left, all except the men on horseback under the street light at the corner, she said, she and the other operators were permitted to go back upstairs. The men had started to go up with them, and the captain was holding her by the arm, but she had said no, thanks, she didn’t want any more assistance from people like that who violated the law. Then the captain laughed, and went away.
After Miss Lucy Mayhew there was old Doctor Potter, who had been picked up the night of the raid, going home from a call. Now, in the witness box, he was still furious, still fuming and biting his words off, as though no time had elapsed and the outrage were still at hand. Then there were the other men who had been picked up, and the station agent, and a drummer who had been staying at the hotel and who had watched everything from his window. For a moment Mr. Munn thought that this might be a man the prosecution was counting on. He had seen a tall man on a bay horse, or what looked like a bay horse, he said, for the light wasn’t so good. The man seemed to be in charge, or something. And the man was a tall man, and lanky. ‘Like him,’ he said, and nodded toward Doctor MacDonald.
But there was nothing there, Mr. Munn thought. It was too easy for Wilkins, when he took the witness for cross-examination.
‘You say it was a tall man you saw?’ Wilkins asked conversationally of the drummer.
‘Yes, sir,’ the drummer said.
‘By the way, Mr. Tupper,’ Wilkins asked, still conversationally, ‘where did you say you’re from?’
‘Huntsville, Alabama,’ the drummer replied.
‘Well, I’ve never been in Alabama, and I can’t say exactly how men grow down there’ — and he hesitated, to cast an appraising glance over the witness, who was a shortish man, and thin — ‘but round here the country produces a right smart of pretty well-set-up fellows. Like my client, there.’ He hesitated again, waiting for the laughter, which came. Suddenly, he flung out an accusing finger at the witness, and his voice mounted: ‘Did you positively, beyond shadow and peradventure of a doubt, identify this man?’
‘Well ——’ the man paused.
‘Well,’ Wilkins snapped; then added casually: ‘I just didn’t want you, Mr. Tupper, to be making any suggestions to these gentlemen’ — he indicated the jury — ‘that you wouldn’t back up. In here, or,’ he added in an ingratiating tone, ‘outside.’
‘I object, Your Honor’ — the prosecutor was on his feet. ‘I object; that’s intimidation of the witness!’
Blandly, in a pained surprise, Wilkins turned. ‘I didn’t mean a thing,’ he declared.
One after another they mounted the stand, and raised the right hand, and listened while the words were said to them: ‘— solemnly swear — will be the truth — nothing but the truth. So help you God.’
‘I do,’ each one said, clearly or mumblingly, in answer to that aimless, dreary intonation.
How many times, Mr. Munn thought, how many times he had heard those words! Day after day, in this room, addressed to all sorts of people, who raised the right hand, swearing. He thought: the truth. Each person there, on the stand, today, was telling the truth. The officials, with their pieces of paper on which the figures were written, down to a last penny, they were telling the truth: their truth. That was what the event was to them. And the constable, the truth to him — what had stuck in his mind and what he would always mention, for years to come now, when he told anybody about that night, what would stay in his mind when he was very old and his past had begun to flow from him and leave only a few little, dead fragments, stranded out of time — the truth to him was the way the men had had trouble with their masks when they tried to spit. And Miss Mayhew would always remember the tangle of cut wires in the office, just that, and the man’s hand holding her arm coming downstairs. That was the truth to her. But her truth, and the constable’s truth, and the truths of the others, they were not his own, which was, if any one thing seizable and namable, that reeling moment of certainty and fulfillment when the air had swollen ripely with the blast. But that had gone. Like the blink of an eye; and would not come back. Even that self he had been had slipped from him, and could only be glimpsed now, paling and reproachful, in fits as when the breeze worries a rising mist.
The truths of those people were not the truth that had been his that night; but that truth was his no longer. The truth: it devoured and blotted out each particular truth, each individual man’s truth, it crushed truths as under a blundering tread, it was blind.
He scarcely listened to the witnesses. He watched Doctor MacDonald leaning back in his chair, at ease, it seemed, and attentive only out of courtesy. What was Doctor MacDonald’s truth? He had never asked himself that question before. Or he watched Cordelia. Her truth, what was it?
The witnesses mounted the stand; and descended. Wilkins seemed bored, and confident. For witness after witness, he waived cross-examination, or asked some single perfunctory question, contemptuous in its perfunctoriness.
Until Mr. Al Turpin came to the stand. But even then, at first, Wilkins did not change.
Al Turpin was a beefy man, blockishly built, with a swarthy skin and thinning, greasy-looking hair. On top of his overalls, he wore a brown wool coat. He would speak heavily and deliberately for a moment or two, then stop in the middle of a sentence, as though he had forgotten what he was there for, as though if he ceased to speak the scene before him might fade into unreality. While the people watched him, he would blink slowly. Then, at a word from the prosecutor, he would shake his head apologetically, humbly, like a man started out of a drowse, and would wet his lips and resume.
A man moved down the aisle, almost on tiptoe, and approached the table where Wilkins and Doctor MacDonald sat. He leaned over the table, talking earnestly to Wilkins. At a gesture from Wilkins, Doctor MacDonald leaned forward, too. Mr. Munn watched them, trying to place the man who had come in. Then he remembered him as a cousin of Wilkins.
Wilkins looked at his watch.
Doctor MacDonald was nodding at something the man was saying, and Wilkins snapped shut his watch. Then the man went out, tiptoeing up the aisle, for the heavy, deliberate voice of Al Turpin was still speaking, giving the testimony. ‘— I was a member of the Association,’ he was saying, ‘and I had my crop in the Association. Going on thirty-five thousand pounds, it was, and fair to middling, the season being what it was and ——’
‘I object, Your Honor,’ Wilkins said, very loud.
Al Turpin turned his slow gaze upon him, with an expression of relief, almost, or of gratitude.
‘I object that this testimony is irrelevant to this case. The poundage of Mr. Turpin’s crop and his relations with the Association ——’
‘Objection overruled.’
Wilkins sat down, but his hands grasped the edge of the table before him.
Al Turpin resumed. What he got for his crop wasn’t bad as some years, he said, but the waiting, that was bad, and people said the price would go down, that the Association was losing members.
Wilkins objected, but was overruled.
‘Then I heard some talk around,’ Al Turpin continued, ‘how some men over in Hunter County was getting together to do something about the way things was ——’
‘Was this represented to you as a terrorist organization?’ the prosecutor demanded.
‘I object,’ Wilkins said, rising and waving his arm. ‘My opponent is leading the witness!’
‘Objection overruled.’
‘But Your Honor ——’ Wilkins did not sit down.
‘Objection overruled.’
‘Will you please answer the question?’ the prosecutor said to Al Turpin.
‘I can’t say as it was, if I rightly know. They just said it was some folks getting together and gonna do something. That’s what ——’
‘I object that this is hearsay and should not be admitted as evidence!’ Wilkins exclaimed, almost shouting.
‘Objection sustained,’ the judge said, then added: ‘The witness will please confine himself to matters of direct observation.’
Al Turpin looked about him, working his big hands slowly on his knees. ‘I been doing the best I know,’ he said. He paused, seemed to sink in upon himself, then began: ‘One day a fellow come to me, I can’t say for sure what day it was, but it was long ’fore setting-out time last spring. He told me his name, but it’s done slipped my mind, it looks like. But he was a sorter middle-size man, you might say’ — he stopped, broodingly, for a moment — ‘and sandy-haired. And he said to me, Mr. Turpin, you don’t look like no man would let his-self be knocked down and spit on. I been a peace-abiding man, but I said, Well, ain’t no man wiped his foot on me. And he said, Now, over in Hunter County ——’
Wilkins shoved his chair back with a sudden scraping on the dry floor. ‘I object! This is hearsay, pure and simple. This middle-size man’ — and he pronounced the words with a hint of mimicry of Al Turpin’s voice — ‘this sandy-haired man whose name the witness can’t remember ——’
The judge struck the desk with his gavel.
‘Objection sustained,’ he ruled. ‘But the attorney for the defense will observe the dignity of this court.’
‘Did you or did you not, Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor demanded, ‘become a member of any secret society?’ He turned away from the witness and looked, with a sudden glint of cunning and satisfaction, at the packed roomful of people, and then at Wilkins.
Al Turpin did not answer. He seemed to be lost, fumblingly, within himself.
Wilkins was looking at his watch.
‘Answer yes or no!’
Al Turpin managed to fix his glance, painful and appealing, upon the face of the prosecutor. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘And was not the purpose of this society to destroy plant beds and barns and to force membership in the Association of Growers of Dark Fired Tobacco?’
‘I object!’ Wilkins almost shouted. ‘He is leading the witness.’
‘Objection overruled.’
The prosecutor leaned toward Al Turpin: ‘Answer yes or no!’
‘Yes,’ Al Turpin replied.
‘Was the name of this society The Free Farmers’ Brotherhood for Protection and Control?’
Al Turpin’s painful gaze left the prosecutor’s face and slowly moved over the other faces, more distant, there before him. His bulk shifted slightly in the chair, making it creak in the quietness of the room.
‘I object! That is irrelevant.’
The prosecutor looked at Al Turpin demandingly.
‘Yes,’ Al Turpin said.
Wilkins, Mr. Munn observed, was looking at his watch, covertly, beneath the level of the table.
‘Now, Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor went on, dropping into a tone of familiarity and lounging closer to the witness, ‘just describe the circumstances of joining this’ — he hesitated, then pronounced the words with almost a grimace, as though they had an evil taste on the tongue — ‘this Free Farmers’ Brotherhood for Protection and Control. Or whatever it is.’
Wilkins seemed about to rise; then restrained himself.
Turpin moved his tongue over his lips, looked at the prosecutor, and then cast a sudden, wide, wild glance over the fixed faces.
‘Mr. Turpin ——’
Al Turpin let his head sink a little, humbly, and said: ‘It was one night last spring; I can’t say as I recollect the day it was, but it was in May. I went down the dirt road out past my house, like they said for me to, and I seen a man on a horse standing there on one side the road, and he said to me, Fair weather. And I said to him, Fairer tomorrow. Like they told me to. And I went on till I come to that old tumble-down church. A nigger church it used to be till it got too tumble-down. And I went round to the back and I seen some horses ——’
Mr. Munn thought, It’s coming. He felt the weight of the silence behind him. He looked at Doctor MacDonald. He had not moved.
‘— and hitched my horse to a sapling. Sassafras, I reckon. I stood there and listened. A horse tromped a little over in the bushes. Then I started walking towards the church ——’
A long time back, Mr. Munn thought, how long; but it was as before him now, suddenly, in his mind, that open space before the dark mill, that open, lighter space before which he had paused that night, the road dipping down across it beside the fallen rail fence, and distantly, the sound of water on stones. That momentary prickling of the spine as he moved into that space, alone, that was with him now, the eyes watching from shadow.
‘— and after while they took me inside and stood me in front of a light with it in my face so I couldn’t see nuthen, and they said the oath for me to say, a little bit at a time. And I said it.’ His voice stopped, ponderously, as though of its own dead weight. Then, his bulk shifting, he said: ‘I didn’t know how it was gonna be, what I was getting into. I never would taken it. Not a oath before God.’ His voice stopped, leaving him there, awkward, motionless.
‘Mr. Turpin, repeat to the best of your ability the oath.’
‘I object!’ Wilkins was on his feet. ‘He’s leading the witness.’
‘Objection overruled!’
‘Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor said sharply.
‘A thing,’ Al Turpin said, ‘a thing don’t stick in a man’s head so good. I can’t say the words, like they were. But I’ll say what they went on to say. It said ——’
‘I object!’ Wilkins cried. ‘This testimony is not admissible. This oath — the witness admits, here in open court, that he cannot remember it. If the welfare of my client is to depend ——’
The gavel struck the desk. ‘Mr. Wilkins!’ the judge exclaimed.
‘Your Honor?’
‘You will observe the proper dignity of this court, Mr. Wilkins.’
‘Your Honor,’ Mr. Wilkins said, gravely, elaborately, ‘I object to the testimony of the witness on the grounds of inadmissibility.’
The judge leaned forward, wearily, and poured himself a glass of water from the china pitcher, which had blue flowers painted upon it. While he drank, the people in the room watched him. He put the glass down, and wiped his lips with a handkerchief. ‘The jury will retire,’ he said then, and stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket.
His eyes seemed to be closed while the jurymen went out. They moved awkwardly, clumpingly, scraping their shoes on the boards. When the door had closed behind them, the judge roused himself and said, ‘Mr. Wilkins, will you present your reasons why the testimony of the witness should not be admitted into the proceedings of this court?’
It was ruled that the testimony concerning the oath was admissible. But when the jury had been summoned, and the men were moving back to their place, looking covertly at the faces of the people before them as though to surprise there the knowledge which had been denied them, the clock in the tower of the courthouse struck. It struck four times, the resonance of each impact dying away, thinning into a drowsy hum like the sound of distant bees. At the motion of Wilkins, over the protest of the prosecutor, the court was adjourned.
The people rose, and began to move sluggishly toward the doors. Wilkins was sitting beside Doctor MacDonald, talking earnestly to him. Doctor MacDonald was shaking his head.
‘I’ll wait,’ Mr. Munn told Professor Ball, and Professor Ball nodded, not saying anything, not even looking at Mr. Munn, and moved away. Cordelia, at his side, clutched his arm. The people thinned out in the courtroom. Doctor MacDonald went away with two deputies, leaving Wilkins there alone at his table, on which the scattered papers lay.
Mr. Munn started to go over and speak to him, then turned away. He left the courtroom, and walked down the dim corridors and across the yet crowded yard to the jail. He sat on the cot, aware of that faint, sweetish stench, and listened while Doctor MacDonald moved slowly back and forth in the cell, talking. The man who had come into the courtroom, that cousin of Wilkins, had come to tell Wilkins that the soldiers had rounded up just that afternoon six men, and every one of them had been in the band Turpin belonged to. That was what had started Wilkins to stalling, Doctor MacDonald said. ‘They got Turpin to turn all of them in. This place’ll be running over by night. They just brought another fellow in before you came. He was in Turpin’s band, too, I reckon.’
‘It’s easy,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘They made a deal with Turpin When they gave him bail we could have guessed. They’ve got that arson indictment on Turpin, and they’re making a deal.’
‘If you want to see what makes it stink in here worse’n usual,’ Doctor MacDonald observed, ‘you can go look down at the far end. They just put Turpin in.’ He stopped moving about, and reached out to grasp strongly one of the bars of the door. ‘But you can bet they put him in one by himself. They want to keep him all in one piece.’
Mr. Munn rose abruptly, and put out his hand. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to find out how bad it was.’
‘Morbid, huh?’ Doctor MacDonald remarked, and grinned.
Mr. Munn went back to his office. He sat there, without making a motion, at his desk, and stared out at the leafing trees. He thought, those trees changed in the spring and you didn’t notice it, really, until the change was complete; and in the fall, when the leaves dropped away, day after day, until, all at once, you saw the final bareness. He saw the shotgun in the corner, and the rifle. He thought of the deer hunt, down near Reelfoot, and the men around the stove, in the cabin, at night. And of that last afternoon hunting birds with Mr. Christian. He stayed in his office, and the light faded over the roofs across the square. He hated to go to the hotel and tell Professor Ball. He hated to look at Cordelia, knowing what he knew.
The next morning Mr. Munn woke up very early. The light was just beginning to come. He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, and thought of the cold, anonymous light unfolding, slowly, over the countryside, over the fields and roads and hedges and the woods, that would be dark longest, and over the roofs of the town, and in bedrooms like this where people slept; but he was not asleep. He felt very tired, but wakeful with a detachment and clarity of mind, as when a man comes out of a fever.
At six o’clock Professor Ball came to his door and he got up. Professor Ball said that he hadn’t been able to sleep either. They were the first people in the dining-room. They ate without talking. When he had finished, Mr. Munn said that he had to go down to the office a minute to leave a note for his secretary, and would come back in time to go with them to the courthouse. Professor Ball said that he would go up and see if the girls were ready for breakfast.
Mr. Munn started to go out the back way of the hotel, to take the short cut down the alley to his office, then changed his mind. He wanted to get a newspaper. He got the newspaper, glanced quickly at the headlines concerning the trial, and with the paper under his arm, walked down the square and turned to the right toward his office. He met two men whom he knew, and spoke to them. At the drugstore under his office, a clerk was propping the front doors open. ‘It’s sure beginning to look tough,’ the clerk said, ‘for that fellow MacDonald. I was saying just yesterday, it looked like ——’
‘Do you think so?’ Mr. Munn said, and turned up the stairs to his office.
He unlocked the door to the office and entered. He leaned over his desk and scrawled a few lines to the girl. Then he raised the window so that the place could be airing out. Clear sunlight now fell over the western side of the square. People, almost a crowd, were beginning to congregate. He looked at his watch. It was getting on toward time. He left the door unlocked, for the girls should be coming in almost any time now, and went down the back stairs to the alley. He saw no one in the alley.
He went into the stable to look at his mare. He glanced at his watch again, and saw that he had a few minutes to wait. He did not want to see Professor Ball and the others until it was time to go. It wasn’t that they would ask him questions; it wasn’t that, but he would discover their eyes fixed upon him. He unfolded the paper, and leaning against the stall door, began to read the account of the proceedings of the previous afternoon. He read on, but realized that the words were meaning nothing to him. He stuffed the paper into his pocket, and stood there.
He entered the hotel by the back way and climbed the narrow back stairs. On the second floor, at the head of the stairs, he saw Isabella, waiting. ‘Hurry!’ she said to him, whispering breathlessly, ‘go away. Soldiers, and some other men, they came for you, they’re hunting you. Hurry ——’
The whiteness of her face was there before him in the dim hall.