I’ve never harmed a living creature. I’ve never tied thread to a butterfly’s wings or pulled a daddy longlegs’ center from his wriggling legs.
Thirty years ago, Ma gave birth to me on a rotting cloth cot strung up in a leaking tar paper shack in the Tennessee hill country. They say a storm rains down babies. Two were born on our hill that night under a thunderstorm that bent trees to the ground as it rolled west from Mt. Juliet. There was only one midwife this far west from Lebanon and she didn’t come our way. She was busy with the Hart’s baby. They were her cousins. We were no relation.
My pa delivered me. Pa’s hands were over big for the task. He panicked when he felt my ma slipping away. His fingers pressed into my soft skull like pincers to get me out fast, so he could see to her. Eight fingerprints hide in my hair, but nothing covers the two sunken troughs his thumbs stamped into my forehead.
Ma named me John. Pa always felt more guilty than ashamed of me. We had a bond, he’d shaped my head. That’s why he left the truck to me instead of his brother Hap.
I loved the truck and going off by myself on the rutted dirt roads and feeling the horsepower under the seat. I loved seeing the bald cypress with their knobby knees protruding above the brownish-gray water and the black walnut with their drooping leaves and furrowed bark. I liked breathing the sweet smell of wet swamp grass and lily pads and every now and again catching a glimpse of a slithering alligator.
The drive that changed my life forever came on a humid, stale summer day when I drove through a swamp noisy with insects. I’d just seen a blue grosbeak launch up from the cattails when I saw a still, pale form lying by the side of the road.
At first, I didn’t believe what I saw, a woman lying next to those brown, thorny bushes. I throttled down so sudden I slammed my chest against the steering wheel. I threw myself out of the truck and landed on my knees in front of her. I’d never seen anyone lying so still, blood pooling beneath her neck and chest and splattered all over, her legs stretched out slender and white. I’d never seen such dainty feet and marveled at her pink frosted toenails.
I longed to comfort her and touched her neck, sliced open like a slaughtered animal. She was so cold. Someone had ripped her pretty white blouse open and left a butcher knife sticking up in the center of her chest. I thought I should take it out and reached for it. That’s when Sheriff Thorn came.
“What’d you do now?” he hollered.
His words struck my heart. Without thinking I grasped the knife to pull it from her chest.
“Shit, you crazy coot, drop it,” he snarled, then grabbed me up and slammed me against the side of the cruiser. “What’d you do?”
I shook my head at his question. “We need to help her.”
“You retard, I knew it would come to this one day,” he said and grabbed me up and shoved me into the back of the deputy’s cruiser. “Matt, take this guy into town. I’ll call the county medical examiner.”
I curled into a ball against the door. Matt didn’t talk to me on the ride to town, and I didn’t speak, out of respect for what I’d seen.
When Matt pulled me out of his cruiser, I said, “I’ve got to get home.”
He just looked at me and crushed a column of ants crawling past his boot, step, step, the way a horse stomps his hoof. “Let’s go,” he said, and pushed me ahead of him through the jail house and into a cell.
“Matt! What are you doing?”
No one came for me, not that I expected Hap to. Loneliness ballooned in me until it swallowed me whole. The first night Matt’s wife, Mandy, brought me dinner. She looked pretty, with a heart-shaped face shiny strawberry-blond hair. I didn’t have an appetite.
The next morning, she brought me a breakfast tray and saw the untouched dinner. “You’re not hungry?” she asked. I shook my head.
She put the breakfast down and took the dinner tray. I looked at the food. It was better than what I usually had. I ate but took no pleasure in it. I was in four walls, all gray, iron bars, one tiny window, gray with dirt.
At noon Mandy came back, with tomato soup and a cheese sandwich. Despite myself, my mouth watered. She saw my hunger and looked at me. “Why’d you do it?”
I looked into her swamp-grass green-gold eyes and distrust stared back at me.
“I didn’t hurt her.” I hoped she might hear me and tell her husband it was different than he thought. Mandy had been two grades ahead and one of the kind ones in school, not shrinking away from me like the other girls did when I walked by.
“Sheriff said your hands were on the knife,” she said with a look like I was a bad taste in her mouth. I knew Sheriff’s word meant more than anything I could say so I didn’t say anything. Mandy didn’t look my way again and it was like a bag of concrete settled on my chest.
I didn’t eat the lunch my mouth had watered for, just hung my head, hot tears leaking down my cheeks. That night when Mandy came with the dinner tray, she saw the uneaten sandwich and soup. She said nothing, only took one tray and left another. She’d brought me a change of clothes.
It was the middle of the night when I heard it, a clang, clang, clang. I looked out at the night bright with moonlight and saw a flagpole with two metal ropes slamming against each other in the wind. It dawned on me I hadn’t heard them until now, but they’d probably been clanging the whole time. Pa used to say “eyes of the beholder” when I asked him why Ma loved me. I guess I had ears of the beholder.
Sleep wouldn’t come and I pulled the dinner tray from the cold, gray concrete floor, set it on the sagging cot and ate a few bites. I missed ma so hard my heart cracked. Every so often, I looked out. Hazy clouds covered the moon. Shadowed trees lay beyond the back alley, small, stunted trees that blended into the brown dirt. I heard a barred owl calling to its mate, or maybe letting the world know it had a mouse.
The next morning, when Mandy came, I saw troubled pity in her eyes. I asked, “Do you think you could ask Matt to swing by the house and bring my Bible?”
She widened her eyes. “You want a Bible?”
“It’s at home. It was Grandpa’s. I’m the only one who reads it.” She looked steady at me before she turned away. If she brought it, I’d have a thing of comfort. Ma used to read it to me, and when she took sick, I read it to her. When she passed, I read it first for a memory of her, and then for me.
That morning, Jeb Maken came. At first, I didn’t know why the deputy would bring him. I didn’t figure Jeb had done anything worth getting put in jail for. But Matt opened the cell door to let Jeb in and in he came, looking none too pleased. He put down a worn brown leather briefcase on the cot between him and me and said, “I’m your public defender. You need to enter a plea today.”
This train was moving forward. I didn’t see how to get off.
And Jeb? Jeb had made fun of me all through school, even though he should have known how it felt. The other kids mocked his thick glasses, skinny build, and buck teeth. He’d hated it when they called him four eyes because that was one of the names they called me.
“A plea?”
“You say you’re guilty.”
“I’m not guilty.”
Jeb reared his head back and looked at me with his lips curled down. Then he continued as if he hadn’t heard me, speaking slowly like I was stupid. “If you agree to plead guilty, we can get the charges reduced. It’ll save the county money not to have a trial.”
He wanted me to lie to save money? That clung to me like a spider web made of steel. He didn’t think I was worth anything.
I shook my head, a taste like horseradish in my mouth.
Jeb looked like an angry eagle, then turned away. “Deputy!”
“Be ready at two,” he said to Matt.
I was kneeling when Mandy came with lunch. I felt Mandy more than saw her and stood. She had the Bible in one hand and a tray in the other.
“You were praying?” she asked, disbelief in her tone.
“Ma taught me.”
Mandy’s face softened, and she turned her head sideways like a bird looking at what puzzled it, maybe an insect rustling through grass. “Here’s lunch.”
I reached for the Bible first, took it on my lap, and then settled the tray on the cot. “Thanks.”
Mandy hesitated in the doorway. “Do you want me to pray for you?”
I hadn’t had that for a long time. “Yes.”
“Anything special you want me to say?”
“I’ve always liked the part about if God is for you, who can be against you.”
“Okay.” Mandy bowed her head and prayed in a lilting voice. “God, we know you are great and good. Help this man search his soul and understand what he must do. For if you are with him, all is good, and who can be against him?”
“Thank you.” I hoped Matt knew what a fine woman he had in Mandy.
Her next words came as a blow. “Matt said it would be easier for you if you confessed.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said. Could she hear me? “I saw her by the road. I stopped to help.”
A shadow crossed her eyes. “Oh, John.” Even though I knew I’d made her sad, I liked that she’d said my name. She shook her head, turned and left.
I never got a chance to eat my sandwich. Matt came for me then, opening the cell door and saying, “Come on out.” He handcuffed me, led me out to his car, and put me in the back. Jeb sat in front. On the way to the Lebanon courthouse, they talked and laughed. Neither said a word to me.
As we drove, my eyes drank in gray-blue sky, pewter clouds, and massive bald cypress trees, some wider than my arms could stretch across, with gray bark and feathery needles. I saw field sparrows and blue grosbeaks and a swamp rabbit with mottled gray and brown fur moving fast on powerful hind legs. The trip was over way too soon.
In the courthouse, there was a bailiff and a young man from the prosecutor’s office. Though Matt and Jeb were a foot from me, I stood alone. The dark brown paneled walls and photos of dead judges closed me in. I longed to be in the swamp again, smelling sweet, fresh air.
We sat at a table in straight-backed chairs with hard bottoms. Jeb hissed in my ear, “You need to plead guilty.”
“All rise, the Honorable Judge Ordway presiding,” the bailiff called as the judge walked in, towering over his bench. “You may be seated. The court is now in session.”
The judge greeted the prosecutor and Jeb and looked out at the empty rows of chairs and then me. “What plead you?”
Jeb rose and pulled me up. His pulling hit me all wrong. I had to make the judge hear.
“I am not guilty.” My voice rang out clear, like the Sunday morning church bell.
The judge looked at me like I was a twig floating in his lemonade and now he’d have to dump it out. Jeb glared at me. The prosecutor called it a capital murder case and demanded a bail of $200,000. The numb feeling I had before swept through me again. The amount didn’t matter. I didn’t have anyone who’d put up money for me.
Matt came forward and led me away. The drive back to the jail was silent. I didn’t look outside, just at the torn, dusty vinyl of the car seat.
Being in court had exhausted me, but as I dropped to the cot, I heard a snowy egret’s raspy call. I sprang up and saw its wings spread wide as if signaling me. Something deep inside me that had inched open in court widened. Ma had read to me, “Stand your ground and put on your belt of truth,” but when kids called me retarded, I had pretended I didn’t hear and bit the inside of my cheeks. Shame had felt like a sunburn and I had shriveled. Not today.
The dinner tray was already on the cot when Matt undid the handcuffs and ushered me into the cell. I had hoped to see Mandy, to see if she could tell a difference in me.
I fell asleep before eating and dreamed of the woman in the swamp. Even in my dreams I couldn’t imagine driving past her. Had I traded my life for hers, like Ma had almost done for me?
The next morning, Mandy had a man with her and two breakfast trays. At first, I didn’t recognize him and then I saw he was Ricky Hart, born the same night as me but all grown up. “John, this is my little brother. He publishes the Lebanon News.”
In grade school, I’d always wondered if I’d have looked like Ricky if the midwife had had time that night for me. We were both good size, six feet plus, but his face looked chiseled and stern. He leveled his slate-gray eyes on me. “Mandy says you like the Bible. What’s your favorite part?”
I felt he was testing me and didn’t like it but answered anyway. “I like the sword of truth.”
A slight smile curved Mandy’s mouth up. “I’ll leave you two with breakfast.”
Why had she brought him? I figured I’d get right down to it. “I’m not sure why you’re here.”
“Mandy’s been talking to me. She says you say you didn’t kill Julia Grosse.”
“That’s her name?” It was a pretty name, Julia. A fresh pang of grief pierced me.
His eyes widened then narrowed. “Talk to me, from the beginning, what happened?”
I told him. He listened. I could tell he didn’t really buy what I was saying, but he didn’t close it out either.
He asked me a strange question. “I heard she was stepping out with Jimmy?”
“Sheriff’s son?”
“Yes. You have any knowledge of that?”
“I don’t get out much.” It hurt me to hear a pretty woman like Julia had been with Jimmy. He had a temper like his daddy, but while Thorn had a fearsome avenging anger for what was right, Jimmy was just mean.
Ricky was interested that I said the body was cold to my touch. He asked what I’d done with my clothes. “They took them and gave me these.” He looked at them with hawk eyes and asked, “Can I take your picture?”
“What do you mean?”
“With this cell phone camera.”
I’d meant to ask “why” about the clothes but now I’d missed my chance. “I guess.” I combed my fingers through my shaggy hair, remembering in time to fold it over Pa’s thumbprints.
When Ricky left, I felt spent. He’d asked so many questions. I laid down on the cot, too wrought up to nap. Ricky’s questions had made me think about what showed I was innocent. Her body had been cold to my touch. The knife, the blood pooling, I didn’t have blood on me.
That afternoon, Matt was back with Jeb.
“I can only help you if you help yourself,” Jeb said, his jaw jutting out.
“I’ll do that.”
“That starts with a guilty plea.”
“No.”
He looked at me like I was something he scraped off his shoes. “If you plead guilty, I can plead you down.”
I didn’t even want to ask what that meant. “I didn’t do it.”
“Do you want to stand trial?”
“No.” I wished I could give him what he wanted. I felt sorry for him. He’d traveled as far as he could in life using his brain. He wasn’t a bad man.
“Can’t you help me more if I didn’t do it?”
“With you over a body not yet cold, pulling out the murder weapon?”
I started to tell him she’d been cold, but he was already turned toward the cell door and yelling for Matt.
The next several days Matt brought my food trays. I wanted to ask about Mandy, but didn’t dare, not with Matt’s face so grim. I asked him for pen and paper and started to write what showed I hadn’t done it. I didn’t know her. I could never do that to anyone and not to anyone so beautiful. I heard a Kentucky warbler each morning and the persistent clang of the flagpole. I longed to be outside with the birds. I let the Bible fall open, like Ma had shown me, and read “Those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles.”
At dinnertime, when Matt brought the tray, I took a risk. “Matt, when you got there, did you check the body?”
“No need to, she was clearly dead.”
“You didn’t know that she was cool already?”
“What are you getting at?”
Matt and Sheriff Thorn had taken the easy answer. I was with the body, so I’d killed her. I was done with letting others take the easy answer about me. “Matt, I didn’t have blood on my clothes.”
He studied me, then turned and left.
Ricky came back twice. He had a nose like a rat terrier for ferreting out what didn’t make sense. For everyone else, I was a perfect fit for a murderer, killer etched on my face. Ricky wanted to know why a man who took pleasure in driving rutted roads so he could listen to birds would kill a woman. I told him more about me, how I could stay for most of a day just looking at the reeds standing tall and golden-green against the sky.
Three days later, I woke up to hear Sheriff hollering at Matt and Matt shouting back, “Don’t you say that about my wife.” The Sheriff stomped down the hall to my cell. “You little shit. Crying a storm to that soft-headed woman and her fool brother.”
I didn’t yell back at him but didn’t grovel either. Sheriff looked like an enraged bull. Was that what his son looked like when he got angry? Had Julia faced that? Sheriff left, hollering at Matt on his way out and slamming the door so hard the building shook. The sky was a clear blue and I longed to be outside.
Two hours later, like a burst of sunshine, Mandy came, with the Lebanon News on the food tray. The headline read, “Wrong Man in Jail? Who Really Killed Julia?” The article revealed a lot of things I didn’t know. Sheriff hadn’t dusted the knife for prints or taken photos of any footprints or tire tracks at the scene. Ricky quoted the Sheriff saying, “We didn’t need to, I caught him red-handed!” Ricky quoted me saying, “The body was cold to the touch.”
Ricky had interviewed Julia’s best friend who said Julia told her she was going to break up with Jimmy, and another friend who’d seen Jimmy rough up Julia one night because a guy flirted with her.
That afternoon, Ricky came. “John, the article raised reasonable doubt and caught the attention of the prosecutors. The Lebanon prosecutor pulled out because the sheriff’s son is involved, and they’re friends. The prosecutor from Nashville sent investigators down. They interviewed Sheriff, Matt, and Jimmy and then went over to the crime scene. They’re going to talk to you.”
That afternoon I was interviewed by two slim men in gray suits. They listened quietly, one stroking a thin, graying mustache, the other so innocent-looking I doubted he could tell who was lying and who was telling the truth. I told them what I knew. They didn’t seem to believe what I said or doubt it. They just took it in. Had I ever been listened to by someone who didn’t pass judgment first?
They took my clothes to run tests. More days passed. I missed the taste of fresh air. Mandy came with the food trays. Some days, she spent time with me, reading. Late one afternoon, Rick came, a smile in his eyes. “You’re going to go to Court. They’ve convened a Grand Jury.”
That night, the wind came up, blew dust swirls through the window and across the moon, and made the flagpole clang. Then a drenching rain cleaned the air of dust. After the storm passed, I saw a flight of birds take wing.
The next day, Matt drove me to Nashville. Ricky and Mandy followed in another car. I didn’t have a Public Defender with me. Matt said Jeb would meet us in at the Courthouse. He didn’t have to tell me Jeb wanted to wash his hands of me.
The air smelled fresh, sweet, that clean smell that comes the morning after a rain and before the heat of the day. I’ve always loved the drive to Nashville, the groves of white pine with their blue-green feathery needles. Birds dipped low and flew high over the flowering dogwood with their purplish twigs and shiny red berries.
The Courthouse had majesty with its twelve rounded pillars, and a quiet inside I found calming. Matt led me to a door of the second-floor courtroom and opened it for me. When I entered, I saw a lady prosecutor, whippet-thin and straight-backed in a black suit. Ricky had told me about her, said she was tough but fair. Three rows of somber-faced jurors, not a smile among them. They were so quiet, like death. I looked from face to face. They looked back.
Ricky thought I’d be scared. He didn’t know I’d stood trial all my life. I’d been judged wrong since birth. Ricky had changed things for me a second time. The first time for bad, but this time for good. He’d opened the door a crack. Time for me to walk through.
I told the truth, plain and simple, what I felt about the swamps, what I’d seen, and what had happened to me since. I said I was sorry I was slow, but I would never hurt a living soul.
They heard me.
p.s. This story (starting from the sheriff scene) was published in After Dinner Conversations in July of 2022.
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