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“Well, last night was one thing, and last week was another,” the judge said. He picked a sheet of paper off his desk and waved it in the air. “This escapade with Boggs running around drunk and naked. I thought we were getting involved here to do some good?”
“They’ve made it worse,” said Bunny loudly.
The judge glared at her. “I’m not going to have any outbursts today, Mrs. Calhoun. This isn’t the country club, where you can just shout out when you want. Any outbursts like last time, and I’ll throw you right out.” He turned to the prosecutor. “The same goes for you, Mr. Moon. Today’s going to be nice and calm and orderly.”
“Yes, your honor,” said Mr. Moon.
Bunny raised her hand. “Can I say something?” she asked.
The judge nodded.
“Why are we doing this without Martha’s lawyer?”
“Her lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he?”
“He couldn’t make it.”
“Well, who is he? Why didn’t he contact the court?”
“Simon Beach.”
Mr. Moon cleared his throat. “Your honor, if I may address that. Mr. Beach phoned me this morning from Carbondale, where he’s been called on business. He warned me that Mrs. Calhoun may try to claim that she’d retained him in this matter. But he said he told her specifically that he doesn’t handle juvenile matters and wouldn’t take this one on. He’s authorized me to make that representation to the court. He’s not her lawyer, your honor. That’s just a figment of her very active imagination.”
Judge Horner turned to Bunny. “Well?” he said.
Bunny scowled and hunched down in her chair.
“The county is ready to proceed,” said Mr. Moon.
Reverend Vaughn and Mrs. Vernon had sat down together in the first row of spectator seats, and Judge Horner now asked who they were. Mrs. O’Brien stood and made introductions.
“I didn’t recognize you in that pretty dress, Mrs. Vernon,” said the judge.
Mrs. Vernon blushed and fought with a handkerchief in her lap.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” said Reverend Vaughn. “I hope I can be of some help here. I’ve spent a good deal of time with Martha lately.”
“Yes, I know who you are,” said the judge. “I hope you can help, too.” He straightened the papers on his desk. “Well, let’s get on with it and build the record. This is a fact-finding hearing to determine whether the circumstances justify the county getting involved on a long-term basis. If I so determine, we’ll have a separate hearing on the girl’s disposition. All right, Sergeant Tony, let’s hear from you.”
For twenty minutes, Sergeant Tony went over the police reports and read from his notes. He talked in a nasal, bored tone, one that I’d never heard from him before. His sentences were flat and run-on; there were no cracks to get in, no places to interrupt him. He was talking about me, though he had it all wrong. This Martha Calhoun was a stranger, a character out of a book or a movie. She had sex on her mind; she chased after little boys; she hung around with her mother’s boyfriend; she stayed out at wild, teenage parties; she had no conscience. Sergeant Tony was like the last person telling a long story in a huge game of telephone—nothing but a few scattered facts were left of what had really happened. And yet, there was a kind of truth to what he said, or really, there were little pieces of truth all stitched together. It was as if he had taken a few twigs off a tree, woven them into a basket, and then held up the basket, saying, “This is a tree we’re talking about.” It would never have occurred to me to do that—it never occurred to me that you could do that. But when he was finished, nobody objected. Mrs. O’Brien sat with her chin on her chest. Bunny stared at the courtroom wall. Judge Horner thanked Sergeant Tony, and the officer sat down.
Francis X. Moon then stood up. He put on a pair of glasses with heavy black frames and proceeded to read from a long, yellow legal pad. He’d made a list, an accounting of every incident in the police files that involved our family, and the list went on for page after page. The incidents started before I was born, when neighbors called the police because of a loud argument between Bunny and my father. Later that same month, Bunny filed a robbery claim, saying Jeremiah P. Calhoun had run off with the car, the toaster, the silverware, and a bunch of other things. There was a gap of a few years and then a report about someone named Joe Burford driving a car ove
r the sidewalk and onto Bunny’s lawn and passing out on the horn. The next year, an unidentified man was seen yelling at the house in his underwear. The neighbors chased him away.
Soon Tom appeared, and his contacts with the police took up several pages: Tom painting names on a wall at the school; Tom caught breaking into the bowling alley; Tom throwing rocks at cars from the Hanson Street overpass; Tom digging holes in the Little League diamond; Tom over and over and over—more than I ever imagined. He’d been gone long enough now that I’d almost forgotten how bad it had been, how Bunny and I had driven down to the police station so regularly that it was almost like doing the laundry, a chore you expected every week.
Tom dominated Mr. Moon’s list for those years, but Bunny was there, too. She bounced some checks; stores complained. And there was more boyfriend trouble. Once Wayne Wadlinger got mad about something and started throwing furniture and things out of the house onto the lawn. Half the living room was scattered over the front yard before the police arrived. Another time, Lester Vincent got drunk, climbed out a window on the second floor and stood on the edge of the roof, threatening to jump. He was only about ten feet off the ground and would have landed in nice, soft grass, but the police came that time, too.
Even I made Mr. Moon’s list. Years ago, when I was about five, I was out at the country club with Bunny, and I noticed a small riding mower—one of the first I’d ever seen—sitting on a hill next to the clubhouse. Bunny was off somewhere and the mower looked enticing, so I climbed on and pretended to drive. I bounced on the seat and turned the steering bar. Of course, nothing happened. I reached down and pulled a lever. Suddenly, the mower started to roll downhill. I remember thinking for an instant, “Oh, boy!” and then smashing into the window of the basement pro shop. Glass rained down all around and people screamed. I wasn’t hurt, but the pro shop was a mess. I’ve never forgotten that: “Oh, boy!” and then smash.
Beside me in court, Bunny managed to turn and smile when Mr. Moon got to the pro-shop incident.
When the lawyer reached the end of his list, he took off his glasses. He was a dark little man with shadowy olive skin. Even the top of his head had a dark, bruised look, where it wasn’t covered by strands of black hair. “Those are just the reported incidents, your honor,” Mr. Moon said. “There were others, too petty to make it into an official police report. And who knows what went on in that house that we never found out about. For five or six years there, we practically had to have an officer working full time on this family alone.”
