Christmas Day, 1900 fell on a Tuesday. Earl Anderson and Thomas Blythe assured Judge Walker that it would not take any longer than three days to try Chester Hedstrom’s case, so even if the trial was not begun until Wednesday, it could still be given to the jury by Friday afternoon. The judge, though, being a man with a skeptical nature, brought the jury panel in on Monday morning. “We’ll pick a jury,” he said, “and recess for Christmas.” Micah had heard stories of Judge Walker from Judge Pullum. Walker was a gentleman with a fondness for the intricacies of the law, but he had little regard for lawyers. He assumed they were all, for some nefarious reason, dedicated to wasting his time. “If we do voir dire on Christmas Eve,” the judge had told the attorneys at a pretrial conference held a month before, “I expect it’ll go a hell of a lot faster.”
Micah sat in the back room of the small house on North First Street, going over his notes. He had eaten Christmas dinner with the others, but as soon as the last of Lottie’s mincemeat pie was gone, he had returned to this room to prepare for the trial that would begin tomorrow.
Judge Walker had been right. The jury selection went quickly. They had chosen the twelve men by two o’clock yesterday afternoon. Micah suspected it went as well as it did for two reasons. One, because, as the judge pointed out, it was Christmas Eve and no one wanted to be there; and, two, both Blythe and Anderson knew they would get a conviction no matter who was in the box.
But Micah felt good about the jury. The twelve men selected seemed a reasonable lot. The oldest was a few years younger than the sixty-year-old maximum allowed by statute, and the youngest almost five years older than the twenty-one-year-old minimum. Micah wished he could have empaneled some women on the jury. Pregnancy—the avoidance of it, or the dealing with it once it came about—was a situation with which women were familiar, and Micah believed women would be more sympathetic to Chester and Polly. Wyoming had granted women suffrage twenty-one years earlier. It had been the first government in the world to take that step. In the earliest days, judges in Laramie and Cheyenne had allowed women to sit on juries, but it hadn’t been long before judges in the smaller communities decided it was inappropriate and in time it wasn’t allowed in any of the courts. A situation Micah hoped would someday change.
Micah snuffed out the butt of his Cyclone. The ashtray was full. He had smoked an entire package today, and his mouth tasted the way the ashtray smelled.
He stood and crossed the room to the vanity that held a basin of water. He washed his face and rinsed out his mouth. At Thanksgiving, Micah had decided he would stop smoking. He finished his open package of Cyclones but didn’t buy more. At least he didn’t until two days later. “I’ll quit after the trial,” he had promised himself at the time, but now that the trial was upon him he wondered if he would.
There was a knock on the door and before he could respond, Fay stepped in carrying a cup of coffee. The room contained a bed, a chair, the vanity, and the small table where Micah had been working. She placed the coffee on the table. “I made a fresh pot,” she said. “How are you doing?” When he didn’t answer, she crossed to him and pushed back a lock of his hair that had fallen over his forehead. As always, she smiled when it flopped right back.
“I’m tired,” he said, and as soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. He knew the response it would bring.
“You shouldn’t be staying with us so much,” Fay said. “With the trial coming, you should be at your own place where you can get some rest.”
He pulled her to him and squeezed. Her body was small, yet strong. “I’m all right.”
“We don’t need you to protect us night and day, Micah. There’s Chester and there’s Jackson. And you know as well as I do that I can pull the trigger on that shotgun there—” She nodded to the gun leaning against the wall. “—as well as any of the three of you.”
The truth was she could do it that well or better. Fay, using the very gun in this room, had killed the two Canada honkers they’d eaten earlier for Christmas dinner.
This was not a new topic of conversation. “If Sonny tries anything,” Micah said for what seemed the hundredth time, “I want to be here.”
Micah hated the thought of hiding Polly and Cedra at Lottie and Fay’s house, but there was nowhere else. So far, though, it had worked. They had been here for three weeks, and there had been no sign of Sonny Pratt.
Micah had stalled as long as he could. But finally he’d had to admit to Blythe that Chester would not accept his offer, and he would not plead guilty.
That had been difficult for Micah. He was furious with Chester. Micah had screamed and threatened. He had begged and cajoled. But Chester was adamant. He would not plead guilty; he would stand trial.
“Why?” Micah shouted at Chester on the night before he went to Blythe’s office to tell him the situation. “Why?”
“For Polly,” Chester said. “I’ve told you that. Sonny has threatened to kill her if the truth comes out. I feel he’ll kill her unless the truth comes out.” They were in Chester’s carriage house, and he was tinkering with the moto-cycle. He was always fussing with the damned contraption, and that also infuriated Micah. The temperature was in the single digits, much too cold for Chester to ride, but the only way Micah could talk to him was to stand in the bitter cold of the carriage house while Chester did whatever the hell it was he was doing. “That’s one reason,” Chester added. “There are others.”
“Right, I know,” Micah said. He paced back and forth, spewing plumes of frosty breath and slapping his arms together in a battle to keep his circulation going. He really hated the cold. “You think it’s a bad law and you want to change it. Let me tell you something, Chester, getting convicted of a crime is not the way to change a law. Felons rotting in prison don’t have a lot of influence with the legislature.”
Chester was squatted beside the cycle and turning something with a wrench. “I do think it’s a bad law,” he allowed. “Any law that requires a woman to bear a rapist’s baby is a bad law. But there’s more to it than that.” He slid a lamp closer to where he was working. “Do you realize, Micah, I’ve almost doubled the power this engine puts out? I expect I’ve got it well over three horsepower. I plan to write Uncle Oscar a letter explaining all the things I’ve done—”
Micah bent down and jerked the wrench from Chester’s hand. “I do not give a god-damn about this toy of yours, Chester. You are about to go to prison. Don’t you understand that? Prison for a long time. That’s bad enough, but what makes it even worse is you don’t have to. I want to understand why you are doing this, and the explanations you’ve given so far don’t hold water, not to my thinking, anyway. So if you’ve got something more, I want to hear it, and I want to hear it right now.”
Chester stood and wiped his hands on a rag. “You’ve become a pushy bastard since your admittance to the bar.”
“I want some answers.”
Chester smiled. “All right, all right. I know you don’t understand my thinking, and I don’t blame you. The truth is I have wanted to talk to you about all this,” he said, “but to you it’ll sound foolish, so I haven’t.”
“Since when did sounding foolish ever stop you, Chester?”
“I know there’s a lot at stake. I’m about to be taken away for a long time. But it seems to me that’s secondary.”
“We’re talking about fourteen years of your life here. What the hell could that be secondary to?”
Chester tossed the rag to the work bench and pulled his coat tighter. For the first time since Micah had come into the carriage house, Chester seemed to notice the cold. “The world’s about to become a different place—”
“Oh, shit, Chester,” Micah interrupted, “don’t start in on this new-century stuff. It’s become a joke, a bad joke.”
Ignoring Micah’s interruption, Chester went on. “The truth is, it’s already changed, but no one’s noticed it yet.”
Micah began pacing again. “The wolf is at the door, Chester. I do not want to hear this.”
“We have to be different, Micah. I love the complexity of this new century we’re stepping in to, but because it’ll be so complex, we have to simplify.”
“Thank you for that insight, Mr. Thoreau.”
Chester smiled again. He seemed to be having fun. “It does sound a bit Thoreau-like, doesn’t it? But I’ve never had much regard for Thoreau. I’ve always thought not only was his message simple, so was a lot of his thinking.” He shrugged. “I guess I still feel that way. I’m trained as an engineer, and I don’t believe the machinery of modern society is a bad thing.”
Micah clamped his gloved hands over his ears. “Damn it, Chester, I am not listening to this.”
Chester went on. “Society’s machinery is now about a hundred times more complicated than fifty years ago when Henry David was sitting around his pond. And soon, very soon, it’ll be a thousand times more complicated.”
“Jesus, Chester, we are not dealing with abstractions here. There’s nothing abstract about hard labor in a state penitentiary.”
“Hear me out on this. You asked why, and I’m telling you. I’m saying we can only succeed in this complex environment if we simplify things within ourselves.” He tapped himself twice on the chest.
“Oh, God.”
Chester waggled an index finger reproachfully. “You’re not listening.”
“I’m listening. I’m listening.”
“The world—maybe Americans more than anyone—has always viewed things in black and white, but things’re becoming grayer all the time. There are no clear lines between black and white anymore. You and Fay should realize that, Micah. But in some instances we need clear lines. It’s our duty to decide where our own personal lines should be drawn, draw them, and refuse to go beyond them.”
Micah had stopped his pacing and now only stood and stared at his friend with disbelief. This was all very interesting, but it was the sort of discussion they had with a brandy or a Scotch in their hands. This kind of talk was left in the parlor. It was not taken into the real world. Certainly not into a courtroom.
Micah would not hesitate to pick up one of the heavy wrenches and use it as a bludgeon if he thought it would do any good.
“Our lives are about to become so complex that there’s a real potential for bad things to happen. Things unimaginable even for us in our own time, much less for Thoreau in his. But his ideas, some of them anyway, were right. Simplify. We’ll never simplify the world around us—I wouldn’t want to even if we could—but because we can’t, we have to simplify ourselves.” There was a stub of a cigar on the edge of the work bench. Chester picked it up and shoved it into his mouth, but didn’t light it. “If we lose track of who we are, Micah, we’ll look for only the most expedient ways to live, and we’ll stop taking stands for those doomed but righteous endeavors that make being human special. It’ll become a century populated by generation after generation of lost cynics.” He grabbed Micah around the shoulder and, with a laugh, he added, “And, God knows, we wouldn’t want that, would we? I mean, hell, there’s only room for so many lawyers in the world.”
Micah offered him a scowl.
“It’ll be all right. Don’t worry,” Chester said. He gave Micah a reassuring shake, and with his big arm still around Micah’s shoulder, he shuttled him toward the carriage house door. Come on,” he said, “let’s go inside, brew some coffee, and warm up. It’s cold as shit out here. Didn’t you notice?”
Micah tried to understand Chester’s thinking, but he couldn’t. As far as Micah could tell, the universe was divided into two categories: things that worked and things that did not. Accepting Blythe’s offer worked; going to trial, losing, and Chester’s ending up in prison did not work. No matter from what distorted angle Chester chose to view it, it did not work.
That conversation had taken place almost a month before. Now, as Micah stood in the back room of the house on First Street, he still didn’t understand.
“I wish we could make love,” Fay whispered.
That brought Micah out of his reverie. He could see a flush in the coffee-and-cream color of Fay’s cheeks. Although at night, in the dark of his room, her deeds were always pleasantly brazen, her speech never was, and he could see she had embarrassed herself. “I wish we could too,” he said.
They relinquished privacy when they set up “The Tiny Fortress,” as Jackson Clark called it. The house was small: a parlor, two bedrooms, a kitchen with a small dining area, and an enclosed back porch. During the day, Lottie and Fay would go to their café as always, and either Chester, Micah, or Jackson would stay with Polly and Cedra. At night they all stayed together. The four women slept in the two bedrooms; the men slept on mats in the parlor, and each man took a shift standing watch. Any time Micah began to question the necessity of such precautions, he remembered the slashed throat of Lester Jones.
“This is almost over,” Micah said.
“Do you think we won’t have to worry about Sonny after the trial?” Fay asked.
“Sonny’s crazy. It’s impossible to predict what he might do, but I have to agree with Chester. Once the story’s out, even though there’s not enough proof to convict Sonny of his crime against Polly, I don’t think he’ll bother her anymore. It would be too risky. If something happened to her after her testimony, even Brad Collins couldn’t turn his back on a coincidence like that.”
“Oh, he could turn his back on it all right,” Fay said, “but, you’re right. I can’t believe he would once the whole town knew about it.”
“You wouldn’t think so, anyway.” The feel of Fay next to him caused a tightness in Micah’s groin. He lifted her chin, gave her a kiss, and said, “I think I’d better drink that coffee you brought in.”
Fay straightened the collar of her dress and rubbed the back of her neck. “I miss our visits,” she said. “Visits” had become the word they used to describe her late-night trips to the back door of Micah’s office.
“I miss them too.”
“It’s all we have,” she said as she dropped into the chair in front of the table where Micah had been working earlier. In a distant voice, more to herself than him, she added, “It’s all we’ll ever have.”
She rarely mentioned their situation. Their inability to be together in the open was something they both were trying to accept. Talking about it didn’t help. But Micah knew it bothered her. It bothered him.
“Only our visits,” she said, “that’s all.”
Micah groped for something to say but came up with nothing.
“It’s Christmas,” Fay continued. “I guess a woman has a right to say silly things at Christmas.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of the large white apron she wore. She touched it to her lips, then with both hands clutched it in her lap. “I’m twenty-four years old, Micah, and I want more for us than our visits. I always feel that way, but sometimes I feel it more than others.”
“I do too, Fay.”
“I want to have your babies, but I know I never will. That makes me sad, especially at Christmastime.” She held the handkerchief up for him to see. “I’m not crying,” she said with what looked to be a forced smile, “but I got this out in case I did.”
He came to her and lifted her out of the chair. “If you want to cry, you go ahead,” he said, pulling her to him.
She lay her face against his chest and said, “I want us to have a big house with a yard and lots of children. I want a Christmas tree ten feet tall, with stacks of presents under it. I want to watch our babies crawling around that tree, shaking the presents, trying to guess what’s inside.” She looked up at him. “I want that, Micah, but it will never be.”
Micah wanted to tell her, yes, it could happen, it would happen, but he knew it could not. His only response was to pull her closer.
“I wish we could make everyone disappear,” she said. “That’s the only way we’ll ever be together is if the rest of the world would disappear.”
“Hell, Fay, if we’re going to make a wish, let’s wish they would change. Let’s wish they wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with our being together.”
She lay her head back on his chest. “No,” she said, “that wouldn’t work. There’s a better chance they’d all disappear than there is they’ll ever change.”