Sharyn McCrumb - MacPherson's Lament

I had never seen him this depressed. Not even when he was failing calculus. “What does your law partner say about all this?” I asked.

“I didn’t tell her,” he sighed. “She’s out of town, defending her first client in a murder trial. She doesn’t need to be worrying about me. I keep hoping I’ll get it straightened out before it’s necessary to tell her.”

“I was hoping to meet her,” I said. Intelligent women in the vicinity of my brother are a novelty. “Well, maybe later. I plan to be around for a while. I want to hear exactly what happened with this real estate transaction that went sour. But could you tell me on the way to a restaurant?”

By the time he finished the story of the Confederate women in all its intricate and puzzling detail, I was pouring Sweet’n Low into my fourth glass of iced tea. I missed iced tea in Scotland. I missed ice. Now, though, I was barely tasting the tea, so engrossed had I been in my brother’s account of the house sale. He had eaten most of a cheeseburger, and now he was pushing French fries around on his plate while he described the visit from John Huff and the assistant state director of art and antiquities.

“I thought I was doing those old dears a favor,” he mumbled.

“You would,” I told him. “It’s all that vestigial Southern chivalry in your veins. You think that old ladies are sweet and helpless, and that you are doing them a kindness by offering them the assistance of your competent little old self.”

“But why would they want to get me in trouble?” moaned Bill. “They were so nice. Look, one of them even gave me a Confederate penny as a souvenir of my first case.” He pulled the shiny copper coin out of his pocket and held it up so that I could see.

“Maybe that’s what they thought your services were worth,” I said, and instantly regretted it, because Bill got that hurt look that always used to make me give him back the last cookie. “I’m sorry I said that,” I mumbled.

“I tried to do it right,” he said sadly. “And I didn’t do anything to make them mad at me. I’m too insignificant to have enemies.”

“I expect you are, Bill. I don’t think you were the target at all. I think they just needed a lawyer. If you’ll pardon my saying so, they probably wanted the dumbest lawyer they could find.”

Bill groaned. “They chose well. Fresh out of law school, wet behind the ears. I was the perfect fool all right. I suppose the real scam was selling the house before the state could evict them?”

“That seems likely.” I yawned again. Three A.M. Edinburgh time.

Bill glanced at his watch. “You must be comatose by now, kid. Where are you staying? With Mom?”

“Not if I can help it,” I said quickly. “How are things going with them, anyway?”

“If I had time to worry about them, I would. They won’t talk to each other, and neither of them seems anxious to confide in me, either. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

“Do they know about the trouble you’re in?”

He shook his head. “They’re not too much fun to have around right now, so I thought I’d try to get out of it on my own. Otherwise there might be a reverse custody battle of sorts: both of them fighting to see who has to claim me.”

“But you told me about it.”

“Oh, you,” said my brother. “What do you care? Trouble is your middle name. I thought you might actually enjoy it.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said, finishing off the last of my tea. “But I don’t intend to sit by and watch it happen. I think I’ll find the old ladies and see what they have to say.”

“I’ve tried,” said Bill. “They aren’t in the retirement community they said they were going to. I can’t find them anywhere.”

“How long have we got?”

“Before the grand jury? About ten days.”

“I’ll find them,” I told him. I should have commended Bill on his customary competence and said I’d just search for the old ladies because I had so much free time and because I might get lucky; but I was too jet-lagged for conversational acrobatics. Southern women spend a lifetime playing down their abilities as a form of politeness. I’ve done it all my life, but I didn’t have time for charades at that moment. I had only ten days to find eight old ladies who were also Southern and-Bill’s opinion notwithstanding-probably smarter than I was.

A. P. Hill took another sip of cold coffee, and looked appraisingly at her client. He was paler now, after a few weeks in prison, but his white T-shirt still bulged with pasty fat. Apparently, he hadn’t found jail food inedible, but the fare wasn’t doing much for his health. His shaggy hair was now greasy and in need of cutting, and his chin was blue with beard stubble. Powell wished he looked more appealing; juries had qualms about convicting good-looking people. They’d put Tug Mosier away without batting an eye. He looked like the villain on a TV movie of the week.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Tug?”

He blinked at her as though it were a trick question. She was the first authority figure who had ever been on his side, and he couldn’t quite separate her from the bullying schoolteachers and pitiless bureaucrats who peopled his past. Sometimes he thought he might trust her, but even if she meant well, she might be too innocent and powerless to do him any good against the System. “Well, I reckon I ought to find out for sure one way or the other.” He hesitated. “But if it’s bad-what we find out-can we just keep it to ourselves?”

“If it’s bad, neither you nor Dr. Timmons will be called upon to testify,” Powell promised him. “But in case it isn’t, we’re going to make a tape of the session. Okay?”

“I guess y’all know best,” he said, shifting his manacled hands and giving them a wary smile. Tug Mosier didn’t trust anybody who’d admit to having gone to college. In the fat cats’ world he was a barn rat, and it was always open season.

Dr. Timmons ushered the uniformed guard to the door of the treatment room. “You’ll have to wait outside,” he said. “The room isn’t soundproof. You won’t be able to hear the session, but if there’s any disturbance, it will come through the walls, and you may interrupt. Don’t expect any trouble, though. I’m going to sedate him right away.”

The guard looked suspiciously at Tug Mosier’s hulking form. “I’m right outside,” he said.

They had borrowed a room at the county hospital, and set up an evening session so as not to interfere with the normal routine of the clinic. It was a small windowless room, containing only a bare metal desk and three straight-backed metal chairs. On the desk, they had placed Powell Hill’s tape recorder, a yellow legal pad, and Timmons’s medical supplies. Dr. Timmons made his preparations, talking in a low reassuring voice to the manacled patient. “This won’t hurt, Mr. Mosier. It may not even work. But if it does, you’ll remember the night in question as if it were a movie that you were watching on television. Do you understand?”

Tug Mosier shrugged. “I know how to watch televsion, if that’s what you mean, doc.”

“That’s about all there is to it. When I put you under, you watch that movie screen in your head, and when I ask you to, you describe for us the things that you see taking place. It’s easy. Can you do that?”

“I reckon.” People had been telling Tug Mosier how easy things were all his life. Making passing grades, holding down a job, staying sober. But nothing came easy to him.

Timmons filled the hypodermic needle and held it up for his inspection. “Seven and a half grains of sodium amytal,” he said. “This ought to help you to remember. You’ll feel the pinprick of the needle, but that’s all. Are you ready?”