he got up and took the heavy iron firepoker from behind the wood heater and laid it in Conkle’s right hand. He studied the effect. He smiled onecornered to himself and leant and moved the firepoker right hand to left.
There was a long zigzag crack in the plastered courthouse ceiling, and Sutter spent a lot of time staring at it as if somehow he were above these dull proceedings. The hard back of the oak chair against the base of his skull. Smoking wasn’t permitted, and he worried a small slice of tobacco in his jaw and swallowed the juice while the prosecution went on around him. All this ceremony. All these legalities. He paid it little mind.
The crack in the ceiling became a canyon grown with hemlock and cedar, and he was scrambling down its stony sides toward an ultimate abyss. He came out on a rocky outcropping and lay flat on his stomach on the warm stone and looked down and past the tops of trees so far away they looked like mockups of trees. A river crept like a winding silver thread drawn amongst the rocks.
Then the crack was Flint Creek, where he’d grown up long ago, and he was wandering down it in the warm June sun of youth with a rolled fishline in his pocket just looking for the right cane to cut. A world incredibly green and saturated with sun and scented with the riotous spring growth.
Sutter’s lawyer was named Wiggins. He wasn’t very good, but he was cheap, and Sutter didn’t figure he needed one anyway and had hired him simply as a matter of form. Wiggins wore plaid sportcoats of an almost audible hue, neckties with pictures of mallards flying south on them, and he had the soft indefinable manner of a professional drunk. He always seemed slightly harried, as if he’d like to get all this over with and retire somewhere behind closed doors with a bottle.
Early in the defense he spoke eloquently of the sanctity ofthe home. Of man’s God-given right to defend it. Then he put Sutter on the stand.
Sutter told his tale in a dry, emotionless voice and sat calmly awaiting cross-examination. Without saying so directly he had managed to leave the impression that the whole thing had started as an altercation over Conkle’s wife.
The state prosecutor that year was a young man named Schieweiler. He was extracted from the Swiss who’d settled Ackerman’s Field. He had intense, slightly protuberant eyes and no political debts to pay, and he adhered to a straight and narrow path. He had a great deal of difficulty understanding the fear folks in Centre had for Sutter. He was an earnest young man appalled by the story Sutter had told after laying his hand on the Holy Bible. He sensed a miscarriage of justice in the making here, and he was determined to head it off.
Mr. Sutter, in your long and varied life have you ever previously had occasion to shoot someone who was attacking you with a firepoker?
Sutter seemed to study awhile. I reckon not, he said. I don’t recall it. But if I did, I ain’t on trial for it here.
No. But bear with me. If you had, I think you would see a pattern begin to emerge. A man shot in the head with a high-caliber rifle would be flung backward. Perhaps he would lie on his back with his arms flung wide, the palms of his hands upwards, the way Mr. Conkle was found. What is really remarkable is that the poker, with an unerring homing instinct, would defy the laws of gravity and physics and follow the man across the room and come to rest in his palm. Do you have any explanation for this?
No, I don’t. I never went very far in school. I can’t explain the world to you. Things happen one way, they happenanother. I reckon he was hangin onto the poker and then he opened his hand up.
Mr. Conkle was righthanded, yet the poker came to rest on his left palm. How do you explain this lapse of your judgment?
Objection.
Sustained.
I’ll rephrase it. Do you know of any reason why a righthanded man would attack you with a weapon in his left hand?
Sutter cleared his throat. He grinned at the jury. Maybe he was just spottin me a few points, he said.
The judge leaned from his oaken bench. Answer the question put to you, Mr. Sutter. And one more example of facetiousness and you will be in contempt of this court.
I didn’t know whathanded he was. All I seen was a firepoker comin at me. I never thought it would come any easier lefthanded than any other. It was a goodsize poker and wouldn’t feel too good whatever hand you got hit with.
It’s common knowledge there was bad blood between the two of you. Mr. Conkle had the misfortune to stand by his convictions, a character trait that probably amuses you. What is it with you, Mr. Sutter? Do you think you can kill the whole world? Slaughter a long line of jurors who vote their consciences? Can you silence them all? Do you have access to that many firepokers? You’d have to hire assistants in your war against order. You’re a busy man, Mr. Sutter. All those widows to create, homes to burn, land to salt. I’ve been checking on you, Mr. Sutter. That’s the way you’ve lived your entire life.
Wiggins was objecting vehemently. The defendant is not on trial for his entire life, he told the judge. Only a particularsegment of it.
Confine yourself to the matter at hand, the judge told Schieweiler. The jury is instructed to disregard the prosecutor’s remarks, he added.
Is it not a fact that you addressed Mrs. Conkle as ‘widow’ just prior to her husband’s shooting?
Don’t pop your bug eyes at me, Schieweiler, Sutter said. I don’t know what you want from me. All I was doin was defendin myself. I come and got the law myself, I never tried to hide nothin. Why would I lay a poker in the wrong hand and then call the law?
I don’t know, Mr. Sutter. I’m here to try to extract the truth from you, not psychoanalyze you. Did you call her ‘widow Conkle’ or not?
No. I swear to God I did not.
When the trial was over and Sutter acquitted, Schieweiler still could not let it be. He followed Sutter to the courthouse steps in a rage he didn’t even try to conceal.
You may think this is over, Mr. Sutter, but I can assure you that it is not. I’m going back to Nashville, and there is going to be an investigation of this case and this tainted jury from the top to the bottom. I’m going to get you for something if it’s only spitting on the sidewalk.
You just a bad loser, Sutter said. He grinned like a Cheshire cat. Small yellow canary feathers about his jaws.
Your day is drawing to a close. You can intimidate these people with threats, but you can’t intimidate me.
Sutter was fumbling about his overalls pockets. He heldan imaginary pencil poised over an imaginary pad. Now what did you say your street address was? I might want to drop in on you some night. I’m over in Ackerman’s Field ever now and then.
The first cold spell of winter has routed the old men from their habitual benches on the courthouse lawn and the warm stove in Sam Long’s store has drawn them as a magnet attracts iron filings.
What always got me about him was the way he could just slide out of anything. Killin, burnin, sellin whiskey. He sold bootleg whiskey out of the front door of his house for fifteen year and never even got arrested. They used to worry old man Moose Tyler to death raidin him and finally did send him up to Brushy Mountain for a year or two.
Yeah. And killin folks. He told me one time, said, it’s more people than Fenton Breece can bury somebody. Everbody knowed he killed Clyde Conkle in cold blood, but he never drawed a day for it. They let him walk. You take old man Bookbinder up in the Harrikin. His wife took up with one of them Hankins boys and run off and sent Hankins back to get a bedstead or somethin. Bookbinder was goin to run him off, and he wouldn’t run. They took to scufflin and Hankins got killed. They stuck a stamp on Bookbinder and mailed him straight to the penitentiary. He done ten year. I guess he never had none of Sutter’s luck.
It was the middle of the night when Breece knocked but almost immediately the tiny door-within-a-door opened and a goldflecked eye was regarding him.
Whoever sent for you lied, Sutter said. I’m still alive and kickin.
Breece guessed this was Sutter’s idea of a joke. He wasn’t amused. I need to talk to you on business, he said. Let me in. It’s cold out here.
The door opened. Sutter was fully dressed, as if he slept in his clothes or he slept not at all. The room was dark save a warm orange glow from the woodstove.
