“Your Honor,” Buzz said, “if you’ll bear with me, I’ll show how Mrs. Maycomb’s and Mrs.
McGilly’s relationship pertains to the case.”
“Go ahead then, Mr. Dobson,” Judge Sanders said wearily.
Buzz repeated the question.
“Why, I don’t think that question’s fair at all.” Ida’s blue eyes were flashing. Lily had never seen her so openly angry before. “How would you feel if some ... some lesbian came and seduced your daughter into a life of sin? Why, you’d just as soon see her dead as —” Perhaps seeing the rays shooting from Stephen Hamilton’s eyes, Ida clamped her mouth shut.
“You are a Christian, are you not, Mrs. Maycomb?”
“I most certainly am.”
“Well, aren’t Christians supposed to believe in forgiveness, in people’s ability to change?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Mr. Dobson.”
“What I’m getting at is ... look at Mrs. McGilly over there. She’s a changed person. She’s married a nice young man and is raising Mimi in a normal small town with more Christians in it than you can shake a stick at. Don’t you believe she’s changed, Mrs. Maycomb?”
Ida looked at Lily as though someone was holding something foul smelling under her nose. “No, I don’t. Not that one. Her sin’s still in there. She’s just covered it up with makeup and a nice hairdo.”
“Let you who are without sin cast the first stone,” Buzz muttered.
“Objection,” Hamilton said. “Mr. Dobson is a lawyer, not a minister.”
Judge Sanders shrugged. “Sustained.”
Buzz smiled sweetly at Ida. “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Maycomb. No further questions.”
Lily couldn’t help but be impressed by Buzz’s line of questioning. Certainly he lacked Hamilton’s slickness and drama, but he did a good job of establishing Charlotte as a rational person and Ida as an irrational one. Of course, Judge Sanders had looked bored throughout Buzz’s presentation, so maybe he preferred a dramatic argument to a rational one.
On the stand for Hamilton, Mike Maycomb blubbered for his sister’s soul. “When I think of my sister, being eternally consumed by the fires of hell, all I can do to comfort myself is to save my niece from that same fate.”
“It’s interesting,” Buzz said in his cross-examination, “how you say the only thing that can save Mimi is to raise her in a Christian family, and yet the McGillys are a Christian family. Why, I see Jennie McGilly and Big Ben’s mama over at the Presbyterian church every Sunday. Doesn’t that sound like a Christian family to you?”
“It’s Mimi’s nuclear family I’m concerned about,” Mike said, pronouncing the word nuclear as nu-kyu-ler. Lily guessed they didn’t spend much time on vocabulary at the Christian junior college he had attended. “I’m sure most of the McGillys mean well, but Lily and Ben ... well, I believe our attorney has some evidence that’ll prove once and for all that whatever their relationship is, it’s not a Christian marriage.”
