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“Well, let’s at least have lunch,” said Mrs. O’Brien. She led us back out to the square and over to Paul’s Front Porch. The restaurant was smoky and crowded. Everyone who works around the square lunches there, and, by the time we arrived, people were milling around the cash register, waiting to get seated. Bunny knows the head waitress, however, and we were quickly led to the first open table in back. Across the room, Judge Horner, Mr. Moon, and Sergeant Tony were together at a table. Judge Horner wasn’t wearing a jacket, and he had on an
unpleasant brown tie. In his rolled-up shirtsleeves, he looked rather slight. He nodded at Mrs. O’Brien, then went back to his conversation.
Bunny and I weren’t hungry and only ordered tunafish sandwiches. Mrs. Vernon just wanted tea. But Mrs. O’Brien ordered a sliced turkey plate, which arrived with a huge mound of mashed potatoes, a dousing of yellow gravy, and a side dish of corn. The heat spell earlier in the week had passed, but outside it was still in the eighties, and it was particularly warm in the restaurant. The steam rose from Mrs. O’Brien’s plate and circled and hung over our table. My skirt itched and stuck to my legs. Little drops of perspiration appeared on Bunny’s forehead.
“How can you eat all that hot food?” Bunny finally asked, drawing on her second cigarette of the lunch. She’d only nibbled at her sandwich.
“I believe in good breakfasts and good lunches,” said Mrs. O’Brien. “Then a light dinner. That way, you get your full meals and a chance to digest them.”
“Look at those potatoes,” groaned Bunny.
“My conscience is clear,” said the social worker.
At two, we gathered again in the courthouse corridor. This time, there was another group seated on a bench. I recognized Toby Warner, a boy my age who’d been caught breaking into Wally’s Record Emporium last year. His mother sat beside him. From across the corridor, I stared at her feet. She appeared to be wearing a pair of beat-up old bedroom slippers. Even in first or second grade, I remembered, she’d always seemed overwhelmed.
Bunny and I walked down to the end of the corridor, near a window, to get as far away from Toby as we could. The window looked out on the parking lot, and below us I watched a boy, sitting by himself on the curb. He was playing jacks, a game you don’t see much anymore.
Reverend Vaughn returned and came up to us. “Still hanging in there?” he asked me.
I nodded. Behind him, I saw Mr. Moon come out of the courtroom and gesture for Mrs. O’Brien to follow him. They walked a few steps down the corridor to be alone.
“Well, don’t worry,” said Reverend Vaughn. “I think it’s going to work out.” He was bouncing from foot to foot, trying to be cheerful. I smiled, but I kept glancing down the corridor, where Mr. Moon was talking intently to Mrs. O’Brien. The prosecutor’s head shot up and back in short jabs as he made his points.
“And if it gets to that, I’ve got a secret weapon,” the minister went on. He tapped his jacket, over the inside pocket. “I even wrote a little speech—a sermon—in your behalf. If we need to, I’ll pull that out and give the judge some fire and brimstone.”
“Did you pray?” asked Bunny dully.
“What?” said Reverend Vaughn.
Mrs. O’Brien, her head bowed to listen to the prosecutor, suddenly looked up at me. Her eyes were ice.
“You know—pray,” Bunny said. She put her palms together and rolled her eyes up in her head. “That’s what a minister’s supposed to do, right?”
“Oh, pray. Yes, well, I’ve been doing that all along for Martha,” Reverend Vaughn said.
Mr. Moon walked back into court, but Mrs. O’Brien just stood there, staring icily at me from down the corridor. I understood exactly: Everything was lost. It occurred to me suddenly that Reverend Vaughn had been all wrong in his sermon last Sunday. There is a giant wheel that just keeps rolling forward. Even if you don’t see it, the wheel is always there, tracking you, bearing down. There’s no escape, that seemed so clear to me now.
“I don’t think prayers do any good,” said Bunny.
TWENTY-NINE
Mrs. O’Brien returned to her seat on the bench without saying anything, and for the next hour she sat silently by herself, her shoulders pressed stiffly against the wall At three, Josephine finally summoned us. Inside, the high, church-like space of the courtroom looked even more vast and unfriendly than before. Far down in front, Sergeant Tony and Mr. Moon turned to watch our entrance. Walking beside Bunny down the long center aisle, I had the feeling that I was participating in some momentous ceremony, like a wedding or graduation, and that I had to move with a slow, solemn step to keep the mood of it all.
Mrs. O’Brien followed us down to our table in front, just beyond the lip of the judge’s bench. She took a chair to my left. Her anger billowed off her, and finally she said in a low, muttering voice, “You should have told me about last night.” She couldn’t look at me when she said it.
I started to say that I wasn’t quite sure what to make of last night—that I’d had so much on my mind I hadn’t really been able to digest everything. But I stopped myself. She’d just think I was making another excuse. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“You Calhouns.” She made a smacking noise with her lips. “I sometimes think you care more about embarrassing me than you do about solving your own problems.”
Judge Horner came in reading from a handful of papers. In all the courtroom, for several minutes, there was only the sound of the papers he was rustling. I looked up and watched the overhead fans making their slow turns. It seemed they couldn’t possibly do any good, couldn’t possibly cool the air while moving at that lazy, silent pace, so far above.
At last, Judge Horner put the papers down. “This hasn’t worked out, has it?” he said.
Mr. Moon and Mrs. O’Brien exchanged glances. After a moment, Mr. Moon stood. “I take it your honor is referring to the incident last night.”
“Yes, last night. What was going on out there, anyway?”
“Drinking,” said Mr. Moon. “All underage. Those parties out in Banyon’s Woods are getting worse, and the police have decided to clean it up.”
