Grif Stockley - Probable Cause

“Rainey dropped by a casserole about thirty minutes ago,” Sarah says, following me into the kitchen.

“She said she wasn’t coming over tonight, but that she’d be all right. I’m sure she wants you to call her.”

I do. Her voice sounds calmer.

“Thanks for last night,” she says, declining my offer to come over and eat her own cooking and to spend the night again.

“I need to spend some time by myself tonight.”

I doubt that, but I can understand why she isn’t hungry

“I’ll call you later,” I say, watching Sarah turn on the oven to heat up her gift to us.

“You can always change your mind.”

“Thanks,” she says, her voice warm with gratitude.

“I may do that.”

Knowing she can come over if she needs to is half the battle.

“How’re you doing?” I ask, wishing desperately that last night was only a bad dream. “Better than you,” Rainey answers, for a moment her old saucy self. “It was all Kim Keogh could do on the six o’clock news to keep from laughing out loud when she reported that Andy wanted to represent himself. What’s going on?”

I permit myself a broad smile, delighted she can tease me.

Though it is a breach of my relationship with Andy, I tell her why he feels I’ve betrayed him.

“He’s got a death wish you wouldn’t believe,” I conclude, wondering for the first time if he does. Martyrs don’t lose much time getting on my nerves.

“He’s always been like that,” Rainey says.

“He spoke out against affirmative action when he was a psych examiner at the state hospital.”

I suppress a sigh. What an attractive political candidate he would make to whites. And unlike other first-time candidates, he would have a record to run on thirty years in the Arkansas prison system.

“What did you do today?” I ask, remembering how quickly she fell asleep last night.

“Went to work,” she says.

“Your talking was better than a sleeping pill.”

I laugh. Even if we had wanted to have sex, we wouldn’t have dared. Rosa used to say the walls in our house are so thin that if she so much as coughed in our bedroom it would be damp in Sarah’s room for a week. It felt good just to lie next to her for a few minutes. I thank her for the casserole and hang up, feeling good for the first time since I went to work this morning, and then I try Charlene Newman’s number again, giving up on the tenth ring. I should never have agreed not to subpoena her, but I was afraid she would lie if I forced her to testify. All she would have to answer is that she had never told me that Leon was a member of the Trackers I do not remember if she was ever willing to come out and say directly that he was. While I wait for the casserole to heat, I worry that I have misunderstood the conversation with her that day in Hot Springs. What difference does it make? She isn’t coming anyway. Damn. I’d fuck up a wet dream.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asks, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

“You’re sitting there like a zombie.”

I look up and force a smile, hearing the anxiety in her voice. God, she is pretty.

“What would you think if I quit my job and became a janitor?”

Sarah laughs indulgently.

“No way! You can barely change a light bulb.”

“Thanks,” I say, pretending not to be hurt. I can usually manage a light bulb all right, but the truth is that I’m not fit to do another damn thing in my life except run my mouth. I get up and try Charlene’s number again. Where the hell is she? I sit down, trying not to sigh. Rainey’s casserole is delicious, but I can’t eat it. As I push chicken, cheese, and broccoli around on my plate and try to keep a conversation going with Sarah, some weird things start to occur. The phone rings twice while we are eating, but all there is when I answer is a click.

“What is it?” Sarah asks, watching my face carefully the second time I put the phone down.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I say. I debate telling her. Probably nothing.

After dinner, Sarah, her black eyes no longer trusting me, comes again into the kitchen where I am working on the table and says, “Something’s going on outside. I can hear a lot more cars and trucks going past our house than usual.”

I listen, and hear the sound of a pickup turning the corner.

The sons of bitches. They are watching the house. I feel the hair on my neck standing up like cat’s fur.

“I don’t think it’s anything,” I lie, not wanting to alarm her. They are watching to see if Charlene shows up here.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you what I think is going on.”

For the next fifteen minutes, as I listen for more activity, I tell Sarah everything that is going on in the trial.

“Just to be on the safe side,” I say, “why don’t you and Woogie sleep back in my bed tonight and I’ll sleep on the couch in the den where I can keep an eye on things?”

Sarah’s eyes are round with fear and disapproval.

“Call the police!”

Ah, the police. I can’t tell my daughter I may not be able to trust them either. Candor has its limits. Exhausted, I rub my eyes, though it is only nine o’clock.

“Babe, nobody is doing anything illegal.”

Sarah begins to twist her hair again.

“They’ll hurt her,” she says, her voice almost a sob, “just like they hurt you.”

Not if they can’t find her. I watch as Woogie sidles into the kitchen and rubs against Sarah’s legs. Some watchdog he is. The phone rings, scaring me. I get up and answer it.

“Is this Mr. Page?” Charlene Newman asks.

“Where are you?” I ask, barely able to keep my voice under control. Sarah is watching me as if I were taking a call from the President. If anything happens to Charlene, she will never forgive me.

“I’ve been trying to get you all day.”

“I’m at a service station on Lehigh and Third.”

She is downtown, not far from the bus station. I can hear cars passing in the background.

“I think they’re looking for you.” “A friend warned me,” she says, her voice low and frightened

Though I do not want to say it, with Sarah two feet away from me, I have no choice.

“For your own safety, I think you shouldn’t testify. It’s not necessarily going to do my client any good. Have you got enough money to get back to Hot Springs?”

There is silence for a moment, and I think she is going to hang up. Finally she says, her hillbilly voice cracking in my ear, “I owe Leon, you hear me? I owe that son of a bitch.

You get me a place to stay tonight and a bus ticket to California after the trial, and I’ll testify if you want. I don’t really care what happens to your client. I just owe Leon for all he done to me.”

I look at Sarah. Her face is a stone mask of disapproval.

If I thought I had a chance in the case, I’d tell her to walk back to the bus station. Instead, I give her Rainey’s address and tell her to call a cab.

“Call me when you get there.”

Afterlhangup, Sarah screams, “You can’t involve Rainey in this! She’s got enough to worry about!”

I dial Rainey’s number.

“This’ll take her mind off her self,” I say, hoping she won’t go through the roof. When she answers, I say, unable to keep a smile off my face, “I’ve got a little favor to ask you….”

When I get off the phone with Rainey (as I suspected, she had no problems 1 didn’t quite tell her everything), Sarah is slamming doors all over the house. “You’re horrible!” she screams at me when I track her down in her room. “All you do is manipulate people just so you can win a case! You don’t care what happens to the others just as long as you get your client off!”

I stand under her doorway watching her glower at me from her bed where she is seated, her knees drawn up under her chin like two iron bars. Beside her, Woogie cowers as if this lecture were intended for him.