of stealing and fighting and conning people. But I thought that with everything he’d gone through-I thought maybe he’d want to straighten out for the first time in his life.”
“And at first when he came to the commune he was really laid-back. Really cool in a way he’d never been before. I’d see him out back of the barn planting along with some of the others and I’d get tears in my eyes. I really believed that God had granted him another chance. Neil always laughed when I told him that I prayed a lot. But I didn’t care. I kept right on praying for him. And everything was fine until he fell in love with Van. She was so beautiful I couldn’t blame him. But by then Nicole and I were friends and she told me how Van used guys to hurt her father. She wanted to humiliate him by being a whore. I tried to tell him that but he just accused me of being jealous. I just couldn’t deal with him anymore.”
She was more silhouette than person perched there on the railing. I said, “But you knocked me out so he could escape.”
“I was afraid for him. I was thinking maybe he really did kill Van. I didn’t want him to go to prison.”
“But then you couldn’t take it anymore when he got Nicole pregnant.”
She flipped her cigarette into the air, a blazing rocket ship against the moon-bright night. “Nicole is a kid. That’s why I liked her right away. She’s kind of innocent. We had lunch in the city park one day and she brought along a bunch of Archie comic books and talked about how Veronica reminded her of Van in a lot of ways. I laughed about that for a week. She was like this goofy little kid sister I never had. And when he got her pregnant-he couldn’t at least have used a rubber?”
I stood up. “Don’t tell me any more. We need to get you that lawyer first. I’ll start calling as soon as I get home.”
“You going to take me in yourself or have the cops come out here?”
“You got a preference?”
She came over and slid her arms around me. “I’m really scared.” She seemed to fight her tears at first but then she was crying so hard her fear and sorrow came in great spasms.
We said very little on the drive back to town. There wasn’t much point in talking, I guess.
22
I’d gone to law school with David Brunner. He was now a prominent criminal defense attorney in Chicago. You can correctly assume he was a whole lot smarter than I’ll ever be. I explained the case to him and told him that we could cover his fees. The largesse was coming from one Paul Mainwaring. As Marsha explained to me over the phone, Nicole was near a breakdown worrying about her friend Sarah. Mainwaring had saddled her and her sister with a sneering, duplicitous wife and an open marriage so he now saw that he needed to save his daughter. Marsha also told me that Paul and Eve had had two warring days of shouting at each other and that Eve had suddenly packed three suitcases and had taken a room at the Drake in Chicago.
Brunner was in the middle of a trial but promised he’d have one of his assistant attorneys on a train within two hours, which he did. John Silverman was in my office by late afternoon. I briefed him and then took him to the police station to meet Mike Potter and Cliffie. He and Potter got along in a reassuringly professional way. A way that was spoiled when Cliffie came in and began to pontificate about the case and warn John that “out-of-town lawyers” never did well in Black River Falls. He also reminded me several times that he said from the beginning Neil was the killer. Potter and Cliffie left us then to wait for somebody to escort us to a room where we could talk with Sarah. “I can’t fucking believe that guy,” Silverman said. Twice. A mild reaction compared to some when Cliffie was the subject.
The good Reverend Cartwright was presently housed on the fourth floor of the Protestant hospital, where he was making a fraudulent saga of being struck by lightning. He had been pronounced fine by the emergency doc and fine by his own doc, but the Rev insisted he was suffering from terrible but unspecified health problems that only hospital rest could cure. He bravely broadcast from his hospital bed, where he announced a “Fund Drive for the True Friends of Jesus.” He said that God had told him he would recover at the same rate that money poured into church coffers. He never runs out of gimmicks, and damned if most of them don’t work.
Four nights after taking Sarah to the police station, I got home late and weary. I’d been in court all afternoon and the central air there had worked only intermittently. Everybody in Court B was in a surly mood, me included. During lunch, assistant prosecutor, Hillary Fitzgerald, stopped on the step where I was eating my burger from the courthouse menu and said, “I feel sorry for your client, McCain. I’ve never seen Judge Hammond this nasty. Your guy is facing a DUI and I think Hammond is going to give him the chair.” She had a winsome smile.
When I was coming up to the house, I saw that something was wrong. I hadn’t been able to contact Wendy by phone. Now the lights were out and the house had a deserted look. Where had she gone?
Her car was in the garage. Had a friend picked her up?
I hurried to the back door and walked inside. We never locked up until we went to bed.
Refrigerator thrum. Air conditioner whoosh. All those inexplicable sounds of a house talking to itself.
Downstairs empty. Upstairs-
I went straight to our bedroom and there with the bloody sunset filling the window like a wound she lay in a tight fetal position in the center of the bed. Her blue walking shorts and white blouse were badly wrinkled, something she would ordinarily not have allowed.
The bedroom decor was all hers, of course. And it was very feminine, with a canopy bed, a doll collection, a dressing table, enough perfumes to enchant a sultan, and three stacks of fashion magazines from her high school years. I knew this because one night when she was depressed she sat in a chair in the living room with several very old issues, going through them with great interest. I asked her about them and she said, “That was the last time my life was simple. Back when I used to sit next to you in homeroom.”
I knew she was aware of me because the sound of her breathing came sharper now. But she kept her eyes closed. When I saw the envelope on the hardwood floor I reached down to pick it up.
“Don’t look at it.” Her eyes were still closed; she hadn’t moved.
But I did pick it up. I knew what it would be of course. Her mood told me that.
“We’re going to Canada.”
“No, we’re not, Wendy.”
Then she was not only sitting up, she was hurling herself off the bed and standing in front of me.
“Well, you’re sure as hell not going to Nam, I’ll tell you that. I lost my husband over there; I’m not going to lose you the same way.”
“I have to go, Wendy. It’s my duty. Other guard units have gone.”
“Don’t give me any patriotic bullshit. I don’t want to hear it.” I took it as significant that she wasn’t crying. Her fury wouldn’t allow for any softer expressions of pain.
I reached out for her but she jerked away. “Don’t touch me. I can’t believe you’re just going to go along with this.”
“What the hell choice do I have, Wendy?”
“Go to Canada. Or say you’re a pacifist. Or say you’re queer. Some goddamned thing. You’re a lawyer, Sam. Start thinking like one.”
She was doing me a kind of favor. By having to deal with her I didn’t have to deal with my own feelings-fear and anger just like hers-that would be mine when I was alone.
“And think of your mother, Sam. How’s she going to take this? She needs you just the same as I do.”
I knew better than to touch her. “Listen, honey. Why don’t you fix us a couple of drinks while I wash up? Then we can sit on the patio and talk this through a little more calmly.”
“Don’t give me your calmly bullshit, Sam. That’s what you always say when you can’t think of anything else.” Then she waved me off. “This is making me so crazy. I’m like I was after my husband died.” She looked crazy, too. Then, “I’ll go make some drinks.”
In the upstairs bathroom I washed up, and as I did I studied my face in the mirror. I knew what she meant about those old magazines. My face had been very different back then. If I survived the war it would change even more and probably not to my liking.
I’d been taking my time in the bathroom until I heard her weeping downstairs. Great harsh gushes that must
