one wheel hit the shoulder and Aunt Zell’s corn went flying. “You were
“What happened to ‘interesting’ and ‘nice guy’?”
He was too steamed to smile. “The whole time we’ve been together and you never found a spare minute to say ‘Oh, by the way, I used to be married to some redneck speed jockey’?”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about past relationships.”
“Relationships, yes, but marriage is more than a one-night stand. Wasn’t I up front about Jean and Amber?”
“You were married for twelve years,” I said. “And you could hardly keep Amber a secret. Sooner or later I was bound to wonder why your spare bedroom’s done up in ruffles and lace.”
Kidd’s fourteen-year-old daughter is very retro-feminine.
“It’s not funny, Ms. Judge. Is there a kid you forgot to mention, too?”
I was starting to get a little steamed myself. “Does it matter?”
“Jesus Christ, Deborah! Of course it matters. I thought we had something open and honest here. I thought —”
Both hands clenched the steering wheel and he drove in moody silence.
This had the makings of Our First Fight and I was bedamned if it was going to be over Allen Stancil.
“Look,” I said, twisting around till I was sitting on my left leg and facing him across the width of the van. “If you really want to know why I don’t talk about it—why I try to not even
My internal preacher gave my conscience a jab and I amended, “Well, one of the stupidest, anyhow. Sometimes I still can’t believe I was ever that messed up. My only excuse is that Mother had just died. I was eighteen and a freshman at UNC-G, away from home for the first time. I was mad at God, mad at Daddy, not talking to at least eight of my brothers, even mad at Mother for dying.”
The van suddenly felt hot and stuffy. I cracked the window and took several deep breaths. “Running off to a Martinsville magistrate with Allen seemed like a way of getting some of my own back. Of course, we hadn’t been married twenty minutes when I knew it was a mistake, but by then I was so high on pot and tequila, I didn’t really give a damn.”
I lowered my window all the way and cool wind whipped my hair into tangles.
Kidd reached over and laid his hand on my drawn-up knee. “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want to,” he said gently.
“There’s not much more to tell. About a week after we married, he went and called me Debbie one time too many. I was slicing limes with a rusty old butcher knife and I guess I overreacted. Scared the hell out of me. I got him to the emergency room before he bled to death, and then I just walked out the door and kept walking.”
“Home?”
“No. There were some other girls. Women. Race car groupies,” I said vaguely. “I crashed with them.”
I don’t like to think of that brief period. It had seemed like an eternity when I was living it—terrified that Allen might die, then scared he might live and have me arrested for trying to kill him. I freaked and crawled inside a tequila bottle carrying my saltshaker. To this day I still can’t look a margarita in the eye.
“Dallas was the one who’d given us a ride up to Martinsville and when he heard what happened, he came looking for me and tried to bring me home, only I wasn’t ready to come back and be preached at. I did let him take me on up to my Aunt Barbara’s house in Maryland, and while I was there, Daddy and my cousin John Claude— the one that’s a lawyer over in Dobbs? They had the marriage annulled before half my brothers were even aware I wasn’t still at school. It was over two years before I finally came home, so I doubt if there’s ten people outside my family that know it ever happened.”
“Eleven now,” said Kidd.
I slid across the wide seat and tucked myself under his free arm. “I said
4
« ^ »
As so often happens, I no sooner meet someone than he appears in my courtroom.
Wednesday morning, the first day of November, I looked up from the papers before me to see young Billy Wall called to the defendant’s table for issuing worthless checks. A very young, very pregnant woman with short brown curls sat on the bench beside him and she gave his arm an encouraging pat as he stood up and came forward.
The prosecuting witness was Curtis Thornton, a cheerful balding man who owned Thornton Tires, a truck and tractor tire service between Dobbs and Cotton Grove. Mr. Thornton is no stranger here. He’s one of those easy- going businessmen who freely extend credit, accept anybody’s check, and then use district court as their collection agency when the check bounces or the debt isn’t paid.
There’s been some talk about changing the setup and requiring such businessmen to hire private collection agencies or pay the court a fee, but until the laws are changed, all I can do is lecture the Thorntons of the world about their trusting natures and order the defendants to make restitution or go to jail.
Thornton took the stand and testified that this was the second time Billy Wall had made payments with a bad check. “Much as I hate to press charges against such a hardworking young man, Your Honor, you know I do have a
