Mark Dunn - American Decameron

An open-and-shut case of marital self-defense, of moral retribution — so decided those who allowed their feelings to be known where such feelings could be safely aired. The woman had married a freak. To think that there were such men as this in their fine town! Were the children safe? How about the farm animals?

Yet in this particular jury room, with this particular set of jurors, it wasn’t open and shut at all.

Foreman Tuttle tried again: “Shall we vote, gentlemen, or shall we talk ?”

“ I’ll talk,” said Jesse Cates, a young man who took all the baby pictures at Harrell’s Cute Photo Studio. “The law is the law. She shot at both of the men and wounded one of them, and it isn’t our place to consider the moral rectitude, or lack thereof, of her victims.”

“Yet how can we not?” asked Wiley Shube, who worked as an underwriter for the George Washington Fire Insurance Company. “Because — like it or not — there was another crime being committed in that room. Fourteen-dash-one-seventy-seven in the state penal code. A Class ‘I’ felony carrying a presumptive penalty of two years imprisonment. Both gentlemen should be grateful that the district attorney’s hands are tied here; the only witness to this second crime, this ‘crime against nature,’ is the easily impeachable defendant in our case.”

Bob Weaver, who worked as a napper operator for Revolution Cotton Mills, now spoke up: “You’re suggesting, therefore, that we should take the fact of that other crime into consideration when arriving at our verdict?”

“Not necessarily. I’m just laying everything on the table. Each of you is free to do the same.”

The room grew quiet except for the hissing and sphygmoid clanking of the room’s radiator. Emory Jones looked out the window. The dark January sky augured snow.

“May I — may I say something?” he asked, turning back around. There was a catch in his throat. He was nervous. He had every reason to be. Emory Jones, before entering the employ of White Oak Cotton Mills, made his living as a supervisor of telephone operators (both local and toll) at the Southern Bell Telephone Company. He was a man who had never married and who had never even asked a single one of his equally unmarried female operators out on a date. He was generally scrupulous in his behavior, even in his mannerisms and the way that he spoke, lest he be thought to be partial to “crimes against nature” himself. It was not an easy way to live and Emory prided himself on his efforts. Even so, there had been two occasions in which he had surrendered to the inclinations of his true nature, taking no small risk as a result.

The previous summer, Emory Jones, now in his late thirties, had finally given in to a lifelong desire to be with another man. He had found himself in a dangerously frank and flirtatious conversation with a young, strikingly good-looking waiter at the O. Henry Hotel Café. There was an instant affinity between the two men from which Emory would have formerly shrunk away. Yet the young man, whose name was Tracy — Tracy Sprowl — was genial and witty and knew how to put Emory at ease. Tracy was also a dead ringer for a young man Emory had seen in an Interwoven Socks advertisement. The man had taken Emory’s breath away with his square-jawed, collegiate good looks. Emory had torn the ad from the magazine and secreted it away in one of his bureau drawers. It shared space with other choice print advertisements featuring fine-looking young men wearing Knapp-Felt hats, and Arrow collars and shirts, and Kuppenheimer “Good Clothes,” though the athletes in the Kuppenheimer pictures weren’t, in truth, wearing much clothing at all. It seemed as if there were some secret legion of magazine ad men in New York and Chicago who knew that their job was twofold: to sell items of men’s clothing to the male reading public, but also to feed the fantasy appetites of men of Emory’s persuasion.

Emory Jones knew that there must be others like him, men aching with unspeakable desires, men yearning to enlist in that covert society the laws of the land told them was wrong — wrong to the tune of two years of hard labor, or worse. Emory knew this as Tracy led him up to the fifth floor of the O. Henry Hotel and he knew it for certain when, after spending an hour doing things with Emory that seemed both wrong and right at the same time, his new friend complimented him by saying, “You’re the best I’ve had all week.”

“You bring other men up to this room?” asked Emory, lacing his shoes with nervous fingers.

“I do. It’s a hobby of mine. I’m very selective, Jones, so consider yourself quite lucky.” Tracy winked. “Yes, I’m also vain as hell, but wouldn’t you be vain if you looked like me?”

“So you — you have an arrangement with someone here in this hotel?”

“A nice and tidy arrangement, but then I told you that already. Ain’t you been listenin’, honey chile?”

Emory nodded and then he said, “Will you bring me up here again?”

“If you’re good and eat your spinach,” Tracy laughed.

True to his word, Tracy took Emory up to the room again. This visit didn’t go as well as the first. Emory could hear noises coming from the room next door. The noises reminded him that he and Tracy weren’t off on a desert island somewhere frolicking naked in the tropical sun; they were in the middle of a city of over 43,000 other people. These people were always close by, always liable to find out about him and report his illicit behavior to the proper authorities.

It took him out of the mood.

“Not to worry, my buddy—” And then Tracy interrupted himself to sing a line à la Al Jolson from “My Buddy,” one of Jolson’s recent hits. “You’re a fine looker and a real trump and although I can’t give you the key to my heart, here’s the key to this room: 505. Someday, if you find your own sheik and want to take him to Araby, you can bed that Bedouin right up here. I’ll give you the nod down in the café to let you know the room’s available.”

Tracy handed Emory the room key. “Gotta fly, Hot Lips. See you in the funny papers.” And with that, Tracy Sprowl, the most handsome man Emory had ever known, and the only man Emory had known in the Old Testament sense, poked his head out into the hallway, and, finding his escape route conveniently unpopulated, flew down the back stairs to the café, where he was already late for his Saturday afternoon shift.

Emory sat dazed in the chair next to the bed, holding a key that had the potential to open up his twilight world in ways that he could never imagine, though he never found the nerve again. A year and a half had passed and opportunity failed to present itself. Emory concluded that there weren’t many like Tracy or himself in this town — men willing to take a chance and taste forbidden fruits. The pun was a dreadful one, he had to admit, but it always made him smile with guilty satisfaction.

In spite of this, Emory never left his rooming house without the key. Just knowing that he had it with him made him feel special and less alone.

“Go ahead. Say whatever you like, Jones,” said Wesley Lowermilk, who knew Emory from the cotton mill. Wesley, a handsome young man whom Emory nicknamed “Zorro” from his resemblance to the hero of the 1920 swashbuckler picture, The Mark of Zorro , was close to Emory’s age, had been married — unhappily, by Wesley’s own confessional account — and was now waiting with great anticipation for the woman’s return from Reno. Not that he ever wanted to see “Xantippe Redux” again, but he was eager for that happy day when he would know for certain that the divorce was finalized and he had at last been set free.

Emory had always had a crush on Wesley, who reminded him of the cleft-chinned movie actor Bryant Washburn.