The Accused Part 6

"Al," she told him, "I've found a place. I paid a week's rent and there's some furniture in it already that we can have. Let's go and see it right away."

"Of course," he said. He was happy to see her excitement. Their marriage had thus far been prosaic. Morlock had fancied himself bringing home little gifts, finding her cooking his meals. This had been impossible in the greenhouse hotel existence. Now, with their own place, it would be different. He could bring Paul Martin home for dinner, a nice little affair with wine and after-dinner brandy. Morlock had never had an after-dinner brandy but he suspected that Paul Martin would be impressed by it.

Lolly seemed so happy at the prospect of moving that Morlock forced himself to hide his shock when they turned a corner and she said triumphantly, "There it is."

The tenement was ugly, sordid ugly. He had not expected a vine covered cottage; neither had he expected to live in a house that was flanked on one side by a grocery warehouse and on the other by a bar. When they were inside, he tried not to notice the cracked and stained linoleum, the leprous plaster. "It's nice, Lolly," he said. "We'll fix it up in no time at all." Later, when they left the house to go back to the hotel for the final night, he glanced around him and was struck by the thought that only this neighborhood in all of Warfield resembled Federal Hill in Providence; only this house and a few of its neighbors were architectural cousins to the three-deckers of Lolly's birthplace.

They bought appliances on credit. Morlock brought home paint and brushes and sandpaper and turpentine, with a little picture in his mind of a magazine cover picturing a young couple restoring an old tumbled down house. On the magazine covers the house had graceful lines--as did the people--and needed only a dash of paint to restore its beauty. The tenement that Lolly had picked for them needed more than paint.

There was a wooden wainscoting in the kitchen. It was about five feet high and covered with a Joseph's coat of a dozen layers of paint. Under all this paint, Morlock explained, there was undoubtedly fine walnut. (It was cypress.) This would be their first project. They would strip off the old paint and wax the fine wood. The boards in the wainscoting were eight inches wide.

There had been some excitement for Louise in the first few days of their marriage. When the excitement was burned out, there came the novelty of moving to the new tenement. Other women, she was aware, would have been content, happy, even, with the project of fixing up a home. She waited impatiently for the miracle to happen to her. The wooden boards of the wainscoting were symbolic. Starting with a section of two boards she began sc.r.a.ping and sanding. It was hard work and the turpentine raised welts on her hands. She stayed at it for most of a day, not quite knowing what would be revealed to her when she had stripped off the old paint. When Morlock came home he was delighted.

"It's beautiful, Lolly," he exclaimed. "Look at the grain of the wood."

Actually she had been disappointed. It was, as he had said, wood. She privately thought it had looked better with paint on it. On the following day she did two more boards and thereafter one at a time, sporadically. At the time Morlock went to trial for her murder, less than one wall was done.

For years, food had been to her something that you ate so that you would not be drinking on an empty stomach. But after they bought the stove and moved into the tenement, she made a real effort to plan and cook picture-book meals for Morlock. He came home one night to pot roast and mashed potatoes, broccoli and endive salad. The very next night he came home to cold pot roast and canned peas. The cooking phase lasted days less than the restoration phase.

There came a period when she became addicted to watching television, watching the day by day adventures of the heroines of the daytime serials. Other women, she knew, found them of absorbing interest. She convinced herself that she watched out of a sense of duty to Alvin. After just three weeks of marriage, she was having to fight hard to keep up any sort of pretense at being a happy housewife. One afternoon she walked toward the television set and stood staring down at the screen where a stereotyped heroine was weeping over her lover lost. Louise said out loud, "Bull--," and reached down and cut the set off. She was pleased with the word. She had carefully avoided swearing and vulgarisms except of the mildest kind since her marriage. She said it again. Then she took her coat from the bedroom closet and walked briskly from the tenement.

The bar and grill adjacent to their tenement was called f.a.gin's and the words, Ladies Invited, were stenciled on the front window. Louise walked in without hesitation. It was dim and smelled pungently of beer. A kaleidoscope of a juke box sang softly to itself in a corner of the room. She felt a long-missing contentment as she walked toward the bar and sat on a high stool. There was a sign behind the bar that had the words Bartender on Duty in red enamel over a small piece of slate. On the slate was chalked, Jimmy.

"I'll have a beer, Jimmy," she said pleasantly.

When it came, she sipped it slowly while she looked around the long room. There were half a dozen men drinking quietly at the bar. Four men were cl.u.s.tered about a shuffleboard table opposite the bar, noisily arguing about the game. There was one woman in the room and Louise automatically measured her. She was plain and quite fat; her face was raddled and her eyes vacuous. Louise discarded her.

When her beer was half gone the bartender brought a fresh gla.s.s and nodded toward the shuffleboard table. "On Billy Harrison, Miss," he said. She glanced swiftly along the bar. Jimmy, the bartender, had refilled all the gla.s.ses. Billy, whoever he was, had bought for the bar and was consequently not making a play for her. Nevertheless, she lifted the gla.s.s and turned and nodded in the direction of the shuffleboard players.

There had been a slight lessening of talk, of laughter, and a withdrawal when she walked in at the door and moved toward a stool. She had expected it and she had sensed it. When she had called the bartender by name, there had been a relaxation. Not complete but a relaxation when it became apparent that she was wife to no man in this place and was not here as a troublemaker. When she turned to salute the drink buyer, the noisy talk and laughter in the room returned to its former level. With the gesture she identified herself to these people as a fellow traveler if not a friend. A middle-aged man with a soft hat on at the far end of the bar took out a scratch sheet and began to study it. Now she was home. These were people she understood, friendly people who never read books and who cursed when they felt like it and used dirty words.

A young man took the stool beside her. He wore tight jeans and a gray sweatshirt. His hair was dark and curly and his eyes brown and beautifully clear. He smiled and nodded his head in the direction of the shuffleboard. "You play?" he asked.

"A little," she said, returning the smile and wishing that she had dressed more carefully.

"Want to challenge?" he asked.

"All right," she agreed. She was familiar with the Unwritten law that bar society had developed to keep traffic moving at the shuffleboard table. The winners of any game must accept any challenges or forfeit the table. The bar had a law of its own--not unwritten. The losing team must buy a round for the winners.

"My name's Eddie," he said. She remembered with a sharpness that other Eddie who had been a jockey.

"Call me Louise," she said happily.

"Okay, Louise. Try hard now. I'm on the tab already. You play on Billy Harrison's end. He's half stiff."

She felt vastly protective toward this handsome young man. She would save the game for them both. "Don't worry," she said confidently.

They played and won the first game, with Eddie shouting down encouragement from his end of the table. "Nice shot, Louise." And, "Way to go, Louise." She barely remembered in time not to show too much skill, not to beat Billy Harrison too badly. By the end of the game she was indelibly Louise to the other players and to all the patrons of the bar.

They were challenged and won again. Eddie was now openly boasting of her, introducing her to every newcomer as his partner as proudly as if she were his wife. More proudly. They won beer and they bought beer and Louise glowed, happier than she had been since that afternoon when she heard the two young punks refer to her as having once been something to see. Well, she was something to see right now, wasn't she?

She planned shrewdly a means to protect these golden hours. If she were home at five there would be time to get Al's meal ready and straighten up the house a little. Then tomorrow afternoon--every afternoon--she could come to this place. As long as she left in time to get his supper ready. That left the mornings and the evenings. She could sleep late in the mornings. But she began already to begrudge Morlock the evenings, especially now at four o'clock on the afternoon of the day that she discovered f.a.gin's.

When they lost a game--"My fault, Louise," Eddie grimly admitted--they went back to the bar, taking stools beside the man with the scratch sheet. Louise had noted the men who came in and bought one or two drinks and talked briefly with this man, and she had placed him in his proper category. A bookmaker. She did not feel clever about her discovery. There would be one in a place such as this as a matter of course, and she accepted him as being the bookie as matter of factly as she accepted the bartender as being a bartender or the ladies' room as being a ladies' room.

More out of a desire to impress Eddie with her sophistication--she thought of it as knowing the score--than any urge to gamble, Louise asked the bookmaker, "Are they still broadcasting the fifth race at the Fairgrounds?"

He studied her briefly and then nodded. "If you want something, you'll have to put it in right away."

"Let me take your Armstrong," she asked. When he handed it to her, she glanced quickly at the entries with Eddie looking over her shoulder. She fumbled in her purse for money. "Five to win on War Command," she said casually.

Eddie asked Jimmy to turn the radio on. He said anxiously to Louise, "I don't know, partner. That favorite looks hard to beat."

"He can't carry that much weight," she rea.s.sured him.

War Command broke fast out of the starting gate. He was in front by three lengths down the back stretch, by five turning for home and by seven lengths under the wire. Eddie, throughout the race, moaned and pleaded, "Stay out there. Come on, baby, stay out there!" Louise watched him with a tolerant, almost maternal smile.

The man in the soft hat gave Louise twenty-eight dollars. She handed ten of it to Eddie. "We're partners," she said when he made a token protest. Then she bought a round of drinks for the bar. She felt confident, sure of herself, but she watched the clock. At fifteen minutes before five she got up to go.

Her friends mourned. Couldn't she stay for another one? How about one more game, Louise?

She walked toward the door, a woman of determination and dignity. Jimmy, the bartender, called anxiously, "We'll see you again, Louise?"

At the door, she turned and smiled. "Sure," she said. "See you tomorrow."

Except for the prospect of a long evening with Al, she was quite happy.

Louise hurried up the granite steps to their tenement. Mrs. Carofano, the landlady, was sweeping the front hall on the first floor. Louise smiled and started up the stairs. Mrs. Carofano called after her, "What's the rush? Stop and have a cup of coffee with me."

Louise smiled again and shook her head. "I have to get Al's supper," she said, feeling vaguely like a martyr.

In the kitchen she hastily set out a meal. She waited, in some apprehension, for Morlock to come in. She retained some of the Old World att.i.tude toward marriage that was prevalent on Federal Hill. Women--wives--did not go out drinking in public cafes in the afternoon. She considered chewing gum or brushing her teeth to eliminate the odor of beer and decided against it. Let him find out. It would be interesting to see what he would do about it. She knew what her father or her brother, Dominick, would have done. What they would have done, Morlock didn't do. He came in and kissed her absently, not noticing the odor if any remained. Louise did not feel relieved but resentful.

Morlock had a habit of reading while he ate. He had given it up in the first days of their marriage but had lately resumed it. She watched him as he ate. After supper he would read the paper or correct student examinations, seldom speaking. He would probably stay up until long after she, in boredom, had gone to bed.

Morlock had tried, at first, to make conversation as he had made it in the parlor of Louise's home on Federal Hill, but it had been one-sided. Louise was inconceivably uninformed about the subjects in which Morlock was interested. When he tried, as he had planned earlier, to bring the arts to her, he found that she preferred to turn the television set on--with the volume turned up high enough to prevent conversation.

They had had their first serious quarrel several days before Louise's excursion to f.a.gin's Bar. She was, it had developed, an atrocious housekeeper. Morlock had gone to the bathroom to wash before eating. When he had wet the facecloth and brought it up to his forehead, he had been revolted by the sour odor of curdled soap. He had been angry enough to say, "For G.o.d's sake, Lolly, the least you could do is rinse a few things out once in a while."

She had promptly sailed into battle, almost happily it seemed to him, beating at him with words he would not have believed she knew. Out of his anger he had exploded with a list of her shortcomings. With every one that he mentioned she had responded with a torrent of vileness.

For two weeks after her first visit, Louise spent her afternoons in f.a.gin's Bar. It developed that Anna Carofano was also a regular at the place and Louise complained to her many times. "He don't give a d.a.m.n," she said bitterly. "I cook his meals and keep his house clean and all he does is sit there with his d.a.m.n books." The fact that she neither kept the house clean nor went to any pains to cook a decent meal, Louise considered beside the point. Nevertheless, during the two-week period she carefully left the bar in time to be home when Morlock arrived. She let it be known that she did this out of fear of her husband, getting satisfaction out of the stature this impression of her as an abused wife gave.

One day she didn't bother to leave in time to be home when Morlock arrived. She had been engrossed in a gin rummy game in which she had won heavily, and she had been drinking whisky rather than her usual beer.

She came in the house an hour after Morlock had arrived. Before she opened the door she armed herself with a defensive anger in case he chose to make something of her lateness.

Morlock was sitting at the kitchen table. Hearing her, not looking up, he said mildly, "h.e.l.lo, Lolly. Been to a movie?"

She stood in the doorway, swaying slightly. After a moment she said something so obscene that Morlock was briefly stunned. When he did not immediately respond, she repeated the phrase. This time he rose from his chair, his face pale.

"You're drunk," he said.

"What if I am, professor?" she said, raising her voice. "You're too good to get drunk, I suppose. What about that night in Providence when you puked all over your bed?"

"Lolly," he said. "For G.o.d's sake."

She stared vaguely at him, remembering that she was furious but completely unable to recall what she was furious about or if there was anything to be furious about. She clutched at the first thing that came into her mind. "Books," she said. She made it sound as if she had spat. "You and your books. You want me to tell you what you can do with your d.a.m.n books?"

Morlock, defenseless in the face of her irrational anger, said, "That's enough, Lolly. Let me help you to bed now and we'll talk about it in the morning."

She was slightly appeased now that she had his attention. She held up another grievance, selecting it like a candy from a box. "A movie," she said bitterly. "That's what we do around here for a big time. Why don't anyone ever come to see us? Your fat friend Dodson, he's the only one you bring home. Well--him."

"Lolly," he pleaded, "keep your voice down. Let me help you to bed. I'll make you some coffee and bring it to you."

Her mood suddenly changed. "All right," she said. She giggled. "You'll have to help me off with my clothes."

*In the bedroom she lay deliberately limp on the bed while he tugged and hauled to undress her and to get her nightgown on. When he was finished, she pulled him to her and kissed him wetly. Morlock pulled away, and then, fearing that she would sense his revulsion and become furious again, looked for an excuse.

"I'll go make the coffee," he said. "We'll have a cup of coffee and a cigarette together first." He hated himself for the hypocrisy, but when he had gone to the kitchen he moved as deliberately as he could, hoping that she would fall asleep.

This was the second of their quarrels. Thereafter they were repeated almost weekly. On the occasion of a later quarrel Morlock became furious himself; a mistake he did not repeat. Her coa.r.s.eness, the obscenity of the accusations she made, completely shattered him. He could not match her in either volume or vileness. After that quarrel they made no pretense of making up.

She began to go out in the evenings, usually pretending that she was going to a movie with Anna Carofano. Morlock was not fooled by the pretense, but he did not particularly care. After three months of marriage, he preferred solitude. As an escape from the sordid atmosphere of the tenement, he began to dwell more and more in the past. He became aware of a longing to return to the scenes of his boyhood.

After the humiliating time with the Dean and the appliance company and the loan agency, he decided to implement the longing. On the next Sunday he arose early. Lolly was still asleep; he dressed quietly and went out to have coffee in a restaurant. In the afternoon, after they had had dinner, he decided, he would try once more to talk with Lolly. Their marriage, on its present basis, was impossible. He considered divorce or separation only as remote extremes. He had not married Lolly for love. He could not exactly define now why he had married her. There had been the flattery of her attention on those long evenings in the three-decker house on the Hill. There had been the warmth, after the empty years, of being expected and wanted. There is some Pygmalion in every person. He had recognized her lack of culture and wanted the egotistic satisfaction of developing her mind. The cliche was repugnant but it was a part of the marriage. There had been s.e.x, of course. And still another part of the marriage was--sympathy? Knowing these things and admitting them, he could not now divorce her or leave her when she seemed so badly in need of help.

He finished his coffee and left the restaurant to walk through streets, dozing in Sunday somnolence, to Dodson's rooming house. Dodson's bedraggled convertible was parked at the curb. He knocked at the door and entered. Inside the building he walked through the old-fashioned, high-ceilinged hall to Dodson's room.

Dodson was asleep. He woke him. "Tom," he said, "I'd like to borrow your car for a couple of hours."

Dodson said sleepily, "Go ahead. The keys are on the dresser." He asked more alertly, "Anything wrong, Al?"

"No. I just want to take a little drive and do some thinking."

Dodson turned over and went back to sleep. Morlock took the keys and went out to the old LaSalle. Dodson kept the engine in good running order and it started easily. Morlock headed out of War field on the road to South Danville, the town where he had been born, where he had been a boy, and where he had not returned in fifteen years although it was only a short ride from Warfield.

He had a half-formed idea of driving through the town and seeing how much of it he remembered. He did not intend to visit Abram's Rock until he stopped at a filling station for gas; then, remembering that it was only half a mile away, he had a tremendous urge to see it again.

The filling station attendant was helpful. "Sure," he said. "There's still a road leading right up close to the rock; but you'd better not try to make it in the car. The mud would be right up to the axles."

Could he, Morlock asked, park in back of the station and walk in? He could. He got out of the old LaSalle and started walking toward the great gray boulder. He felt an odd excitement as he entered the grove surrounding the rock. The air was warm and turbulent with the promise of spring. Abram's Rock seemed as awesomely solid, as overwhelmingly huge as it had in the vanished years. Morlock, slowly climbing its flank, remembered the solace he had found here as a child. Even now the rock had that power. Here he had played with Marianna Cruz. Here he had come when he was troubled. Here he had made plans and dreamed dreams. The plans had been fruitless and the dreams had been just dreams. But on Abram's Rock this seemed of little importance.

Chapter 7.

Gurney: You have given your name as William Davis. Will you tell the jury your occupation, please?

Davis: I operate a filling station in South Danville.

Gurney: And that is near Warfield, isn't it?

Davis: Twenty miles, maybe.

Gurney: Did you ever see the accused before?

Davis: Yes.

Gurney: He was brought up in South Danville. Did you know that?

Davis: I heard about it since the trial began. I've only lived there six years or so myself. I didn't know him from the other time he lived there.

Gurney: Under what circ.u.mstances did you see the accused?

Davis: He drove up one day in a big old LaSalle convertible. You don't see many of them any more. I guess that's why I remembered him. He bought five gallons of gas and asked if the road to Abram's Rock was still open.

Gurney: Abram's Rock?

Davis: It's a big boulder, maybe two hundred feet high. There's a dirt road leading there from the back of the gas station but you can't drive a car over it in the spring. Too muddy.

Liebman; The witness is neither a geologist or a weather forecaster. Can't we get on with this trial? I'm sure the prosecution will have adequate descriptions of Abram's Rock for our benefit from more qualified witnesses.

Gurney: Your Honor, the prosecution intends to show premeditation in this crime. We are trying to develop that the accused, Morlock, knew every inch of Abram's Rock.

Cameron: We will bear with you.

Gurney: Mr. Davis, you have testified that Morlock asked you if the road to Abram's Rock was open. When did this take place?

Davis: About a month before he killed-- Liebman: Your Honor!

Cameron: The jury will ignore the interjection by the witness. Mr. Davis, you will confine yourself to answering the questions of counsel without volunteering conclusions.

Gurney: That would have been in the early part of April?

Davis: Yes.

Gurney: What did he do after you told him about the road being muddy?

Davis: He asked me if he could park his car in the back of the station. I told him he could and he did. He got out and started walking up the road toward Abram's Rock.

Gurney: Did anything in his manner at that time strike you as peculiar?