Маргарет Миллар - Spider Webs

“Shut up, Thatcher.”

“Why?”

“Because you... because I... because. Just because.”

“That doesn’t sound like a legal argument to me.”

“It may not be legal, but I suggest you obey it. Now .”

“Okay, okay. This wasn’t my idea anyway.”

“Now.”

Thatcher darted out of the room like a freed slave. With a sigh Oliver returned the amendment booklet to his pocket. Then he leaned back and closed his eyes.

When Vee came in half an hour later, she found him asleep. She leaned down and kissed the top of his head just the way she had kissed the top of Thatcher’s, with the same mixed feelings of pride, joy and resignation.

“Oliver, dear.”

He awoke with a start. There were no slow, sweet awakenings for Oliver. His eyes snapped open, ready to confront an enemy. “What’s the matter?”

“Your office called. A man named Harry Arnold has been trying to reach you. He’s at five-five-five-one-eight-one-eight.”

“All right. Thanks.”

“Do they have to disturb you like this on a weekend?”

“Harry Arnold is my most important witness in this case. I’ve got to find out what he wants.”

Harry’s wants were simple: two plane tickets back to the Virgin Islands for him and his son, Richie. He was sick of waiting around for his turn in the witness box; he was sick of Santa Felicia, as he was sick of the climate, the people, the food.

“I want to go home,” Harry said.

“That’s impossible.”

“What if I just do it anyway?”

“If you leave now, while you are under subpoena, the court will order you to be brought back, and in addition, they could fine you a considerable sum of money or even put you in jail. My advice—”

“Who asked for it?”

“—is to stay put and consider this a little vacation. The Judge’s allowance for your food and shelter has been very generous.”

“Some vacation, stuck in a crummy motel and my son, Richie, hanging out at the waterfront most of the time. It’s a rough place for a fifteen-year-old, bums, winos, pushers. Sure, he hangs around the waterfront at home, but everybody knows him, and he ain’t the only black, like he is here.”

“I’m putting you on the stand Monday morning. We’ve already discussed in detail the questions I’m going to ask you. After I’ve finished my questioning, the defense will cross-examine. Then I might decide to reexamine, and the defense will very likely recross. You’ve been advised of all this before.”

“What comes after that recross stuff?”

“You may be requested to keep yourself available for further questioning later in the trial.”

“Jeez almighty, I could be here till Christmas.”

“A murder trial is not conducted for the convenience of witnesses. You may consider it bad luck to have been in that particular place at that particular time, but eventually you may come to realize it was good luck because it enabled you to help justice prevail.”

“I don’t want to be a witness. I didn’t see nobody kill nobody.”

“You told me you heard screams in the night. That makes you the last person to hear Mrs. Pherson’s voice.”

“Maybe it wasn’t her voice. Maybe it was the radio.”

“Richie will testify that he, too, heard the screams.”

“Why’d you have to drag a kid his age into it?”

“I didn’t drag him; I didn’t drag you. That’s just the way it happened.”

“It could still of been the radio.”

“You also told me Cully King was drinking heavily and that he has a reputation for violence when he’s drunk.”

“A lot of my friends do.”

“An hour or so after you heard screaming you went up on deck to check a loose cable and you saw Cully King throw some clothing overboard.”

“It could of been trash.”

“What’s the matter, Harry? Up until now you’ve been pretty positive about the woman’s screams and the clothes being thrown overboard.”

“I want to go home. I don’t like it here. I don’t like the way my kid is acting, hanging out with those bums at the waterfront and him only fifteen.”

Owen thought of his own son Chadwick, barely a year younger than Richie but a mere child in comparison. He said, “You’re lucky, Harry, to have a responsible, hardworking son like Richie.”

“No luck about it. I brung him up like that.”

“Be at my office at nine o’clock Monday morning,” Owen said, “and don’t bring Richie. He’s not allowed in the courtroom except during his time on the stand. Nine o’clock and be prompt.”

“Who says?”

“The state of California says.”

There was a long silence, then Harry’s voice, tight and high as if it had squeezed past clenched teeth: “I’ll be there.”

Harry hung up and replaced the telephone on the bedside table. Propped up against two pillows, he looked like a huge man with a barrel chest and overdeveloped deltoids that made him appear neckless. Below the waist he was small and scrawny. All of him was black, the purplish black of the native West Indian. He could climb a mast with the agility of a monkey climbing a coconut tree and slide down again without a drop of blood on his calloused hands. Like Cully King, he’d gone to sea as a boy, but he lacked Cully’s brains and perseverance and remained semiliterate. He couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to computers. They reawakened superstitions long buried, and their language was that of a hostile and barbarous tribe.

He turned on the television set and watched an old movie until Richie came home. It was after ten.

“Where you been?” Harry said.

“Out.”

“Where is out?”

“The opposite of in.”

“That supposed to be funny?”

“Maybe it wasn’t.”

“It wasn’t. So start over. Where you been?”

“Hanging around.”

“Hanging around where, who, what for?”

Richie sat down in the only upholstered chair in the room. He was taller than his father, and lighter-skinned, but he had equally heavy shoulders and arms. He was always growing into or growing out of things. The happy medium passed as quickly as any moment of happiness.

He pulled at the hairs of the seedling mustache on his upper lip to stimulate its growth while his father watched in disapproval.

“You should wash your face better,” Harry said. “So you been out hanging around, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What part of out and what part of around?”

“I was drifting. You know, doing this and that.”

“What’s a this?”

“I played a few video games.”

“Where did you get the money?”

“Helped a guy launch his trimaran this afternoon. Then I walked out to the end of the breakwater to look at the Bewitched. She’s still got some kind of security guard on her. It’s funny, her just sitting there dead in the water when we worked so hard to bring her here for the big race.”

“Hard work never killed nobody.”

“I wouldn’t mind staying here if they let us live on board.”

“We’re going home soon,” Harry said. “I take the stand Monday, and after they finish with me, it’ll be your turn.”

“I got nothing to say against Cully. He’s a good guy, like a father to me.”

“How come you need two fathers?”

It was an old jealousy that cropped up every now and then like a persistent weed. It could be trampled on, mowed down or even uprooted, but it always returned, nurtured by an unalterable fact: Harry and his wife were very dark while Richie’s skin was copper-colored like Cully’s. Harry had never voiced his suspicion, but his friends all knew about it. So did Richie, who was pleased at the idea and looked for secret signs from Cully that it was true.