Isaiah glanced unhappily at the snowfall. Winter made him cranky, and he was living for the day when he would leave for his honeymoon in St. Thomas. Every conjugal visit, his fiancee would tell him the temperature there. She saw it on the Weather Channel. They would cuddle and talk about how they could spend all day together and drink pina coladas. Isaiah hoped they had a bar you could swim to from the pool and sit with your butt in the warm water.
Christopher was looking out the window, too, but he wasn't watching the snow anymore. He was picturing horses before a snowfall. They'd lift their heads from the hay in their stalls and swing them in a slow arc toward the window. Their dark, wet eyes would be unblinking, their gaze steady. They'd stamp their hooves, expectant, almost hopeful. Christopher knew just how they'd act because he'd grown up with horses and, like them, he'd grown accustomed to waiting. But he'd never allowed himself to hope, until now.
'I'm with Kenny,' Lucky Seven said. 'Let's get this over with so we don't get snowed in. Who says the man's guilty? Me and Kenny and who else?'
'Wait just a minute,' Ralph said. He wielded his yellow pencil like a number two scepter. 'We have to pick a foreman.'
Nick Tullio watched the two of them and felt that burning in his stomach. The doctor said he didn't have an ulcer but Nick knew he did. He had to, he felt that burning whenever he got upset and he was getting all upset now. The moolies would want to send Mr. Steere to jail, but Nick wasn't so sure. He wasn't sure of anything. He wanted to drink his water but he didn't like to show his thumb, so he didn't. What would Antoinetta say?
'Fuck that,' Kenny said. 'We don't need a foreman. We can vote right now.'
Ralph winced. He didn't like swearing around the women. He'd asked Kenny not to do it but that only made him do it more. Ralph knew there was no reasoning with them. His thin lips set in a hyphen of determination. 'Kenny, we're gonna do this orderly. We all want to vote and go home but first we have to pick the foreman.'
'Foreperson,' Megan said, to cut the tension. She felt uncomfortable when it got racial, and it always got racial lately. A white man had killed a black man, and Kenny couldn't see it any other way. God, Megan wanted to go home, where it was just her and her Compaq, and they never fought. 'How about foreplay?' she quipped, and the jurors laughed.
Even Kenny smiled. 'I'm down. Now let's vote. Elliot Steere is guilty. That's one vote for guilty. Who else? Lucky?'
'Me too,' said Lucky Seven, and he snatched the verdict sheet from the center of the table.
'Hey!' Ralph shouted. 'You can't take that. The foreman has to fill that out, and I should be the foreman. I nominate myself.'
Megan shook her head. If Ralph were the foreperson, he'd never shut up. It would take forever. 'No, I had first dibs. I'd like to be the foreperson. All in favor, raise their hands.'
'People, don't fight. If we're going to elect a foreperson, it should be a secret vote,' said Mrs. Wahlbaum. Esther Wahlbaum was a retired English teacher at a city high school, and she knew how to keep order in a classroom. 'That's the official way to do it. A secret ballot.'
Martin Fogel, sitting next to her, rolled his eyes. 'Thank you, resident expert in everything.' Mr. Fogel was an old watchmaker who wore steel-topped bifocals and a thin white shirt. A stripe of thin gray hair covered his head like a seat belt. 'The woman is amazing. You need a plumber, she's a plumber. You want dance lessons, she does the fox-trot.'
Mrs. Wahlbaum pursed her lips. 'Don't start up, Mr. Fogel. Everybody knows a secret vote is more official. Just like with the regular elections.'
Gussella Williams shifted impatiently in her seat, her jersey dress stretched between her large thighs. Gussella was black, a heavyset bookkeeper still unhappy over missing Christmas vacation for this trial. She'd planned to go to South Carolina to see her new grandbaby, who was growing like a weed. 'I'll be damned if I'll miss his first birthday, too,' Gussella grumbled, and nobody asked what she meant because they knew already. 'Let's just get to voting. Secret, public, makes no difference to me. Lord, let's just vote.'
Heads were nodding around the table, even of the two jurors who never participated, Wanthida Chandrruagphen, a thin, graceful Thai whose name no one could pronounce, and Ryan Parker, a shy man who worked for a yarn manufacturer. The jurors could hardly wait to have the trial over with and go home. They thought the lawyers repeated themselves and the exhibits were too technical. The experts talked down to them and the witnesses droned on forever. By the last two weeks of trial, nobody was even taking notes and crankiness had turned to hostility.
Nick looked confused. 'A secret vote? How we gonna have a secret vote? If we close our eyes, who's gonna count?'
Christopher closed his eyes at their chatter. He hadn't heard as much yapping in his life as he'd heard these past two months. Since Lainie had left, he barely talked to anyone at all. At the barns where he did his shoeing, his only contact was with the horses. He avoided the rich ladies who took dressage lessons in tan jodhpurs and velvet helmets; ignored the barn managers who would steady a skittish mare as he pounded a nail into her hoof. No woman had ever really interested him until recently. Christopher felt like he'd been waiting for her his whole life, waiting like a horse for the snowfall. He turned from the window. 'I'd like to be the foreman,' Christopher said, and because he spoke so rarely, each face looked up at him in surprise.
'I think that's a great idea!' Megan exclaimed, because it was a compromise that would head off trouble. Who could object to Christopher? He was serious, smart, and handsome, in a lumberjacky way.
'Good for you, Christopher,' said Mrs. Wahlbaum, pleased that the young man was finally coming out of his shell. It proved what she always told her class about patience.
Kenny looked over his folded arms at Ralph, who nodded back, agreeing tacitly to at least a temporary truce. 'Okay by me,' Ralph said. 'You be the foreman, Chris.'
'Thank you. I appreciate your confidence in me.' Christopher felt good. He had a job now, a purpose. He'd do everything in his power to persuade them to acquit, and fast. He'd take care of her, like he did his horses. Quietly, and without fanfare or thanks. He'd see to it.
For Marta.
* * *
'Okay, we're all agreed,' Christopher said. 'We'll take a vote to start things off. Everybody write down what
