'Not exactly. It's all couched in the conditional voice.'
'Well, put this in the imperative: it must stop. No more. If I hear of another single dog or cat disappearing, he and his family will be charged. Even if there's no evidence, just the accusation will make his neighbors shun them, get his children taunted in school, certainly make people quit hiring him. Some Americans get more upset over abused cats than abused children. His very life might even be threatened if certain men were to hear of it.
'These the same men who eat squirrels and possums and shoot a Bambi for their freezer every fall?' Lu asked sardonically.
'Don't try to justify or rationalize, just tell him what I said, and put in as many cultural taboos as you can.'
There was a long silence when she finished, then Mr. Ou spoke quietly for several minutes.
'He's very sorry if he's done broken our laws and offended you. It's been very difficult feeding his sons. Boys need meat to grow strong, he says, and there was not enough money to buy it. Now, thanks to his lawn service business, he no longer has to forage for meat, but can buy it at a grocery store. He promises it will not happen again. He's very grateful to you for not bringing him to court, and to show his gratitude, he'd like to do this yard for free from now on.'
'That sounds suspiciously like a bribe,' I said. 'Tell him, thanks but no thanks. If he wants to atone, let him put in a yard at the WomenAid house.' * * *
As we walked back to the house, Aunt Zell came out to ask Lu to tell Mr. Ou how really pleased she was with his work and to express her hope that he was finding America a good place to live. She had a small box of cookies for the youngest child. 'Animal crackers,' she beamed.
I thought of the child's sharp little teeth biting off the head of a tiger and decided to skip breakfast and go directly to court.
CHAPTER 21
FRAMING AROUND OPENINGS
Lu Bingham and I crossed paths again sooner than I'd expected. When I walked into court after lunch Wednesday afternoon, there she was sitting in the first row behind the prosecutor's table.
Tracy Johnson was ADA that day. She's tall and willowy, with short blonde hair and gorgeous eyes, which get downplayed with oversized glasses when she's prosecuting. Tracy loves shoes as much as I do, but because of her height, she usually settles for flats and low heels. Some judges of the male persuasion don't like having to look up to a woman.
Shortly before four, Tracy called line thirty-seven. 'Jerry Dexter Trogden. Assault on a female.'
There was something awfully familiar about his Fu Manchu mustache, that bright green-and-purple dragon tattooed on his right forearm, and the swaggering flourish with which he signed the waiver of counsel.
'Weren't you in here a couple of weeks ago?' I asked.
'Yeah, but she took up the charges,' he said.
'She' was the shame-faced teenager sitting close to Lu for moral support. Skinny white blonde. Hair pulled back by a bright pink scarf that matched her cheap summer cotton dress. I sort of remembered that she'd been as pretty as her dress, a shallow-rooted flower doomed to fade just as quickly as that poorly made garment would fade and go limp after two or three washings. She certainly wasn't pretty this afternoon. There were stitches both in her lower lip and over her eye, her face was cut and swollen, and her bruises were as purple and green as the dragon tattooed above the fist that had punched her out.
As Tracy laid out the charges, Jerry Dexter Trogden drummed his fingers on the tabletop before him and kept a sneer on his face.
The testimony of Tammy Epps was as old as the Bible she swore on, as new and unnewsworthy as the back page in tomorrow's paper. They had lived together as lovers for two years, he became violent when drinking, each time he promised he would never hit her again. Last week, she finally realized he would probably wind up killing her if she stayed. When she tried to leave, this is what he did: Exhibit A, Polaroid pictures taken before her gashes were stitched.
'Your witness,' said Tracy.
Trogden had watched enough television to think he was Perry Mason.
He wasn't.
His defense? Innocent because of extenuating circumstance: she was his woman, she had no cause to leave, he had a right to keep what was his.
The longer he talked, the angrier he became. I explained contempt of court; and when he began repeating himself, I asked if he had anything new to add.
'Nothing, 'cepting I don't think I ought to go to jail for trying to hold on to what's mine.'
'How far did you get in school, Mr. Trogden?'
