The Silver Star(71)

“Dirtbag liar!” I said. “They couldn’t possibly believe that.”

“I think they don’t know what to believe,” Uncle Tinsley said. “But we really shouldn’t be talking about it until the trial’s over.”

We went over to the Bulldog Diner and took a table in the back, under the photographs of Bulldog players, including the one of Dickey “Blitz” Bryson. The lawyers and the judge came in and took a table in the middle, followed by some of the jurors, who sat at the counter. Just as we were getting our menus, the Maddoxes came in and took a table in the front.

“There’s the dirtbag!” I said.

“Hush,” Uncle Tinsley said. “Don’t talk about the case. You want to cause a mistrial?”

“How can we eat in the same room as him? I’m going to spew this time.”

“Everyone from the courthouse always eats here,” Uncle Tinsley said.

“It’s one of the joys of small-town life,” Mom said.

The waitress came over and asked what we wanted.

“We should all be ordering baloney,” I said loudly.


After lunch, we went back to the courthouse and sat on the uncomfortable benches in the hallway as the jury began deliberating. I figured they’d be there for the long haul, sorting through the evidence and debating legal issues, but in less than an hour, the bailiff called everyone back into the courtroom. He told me that, since the testimony was over and the jury had reached a verdict, the judge was allowing me to return to the courtroom.

The jurors filed in. When I looked at Tammy Elbert, she kept her eyes on the judge. The clerk passed the judge a piece of paper. He unfolded it, read it, and refolded it. “The verdict is not guilty on all charges,” he said.

Aunt Al gasped and Mom shouted, “No!”

The judge banged his gavel. “Court dismissed.”

Maddox slapped Leland Hayes on the back and went over and started shaking the jurors’ hands. Liz and I sat there in silence. I felt completely confused, like the world had turned upside down, and we were living in a place where the guilty were innocent and the innocent were guilty. I didn’t know what to do. How were you supposed to behave in a world like that?

Dickey Bryson stuffed his papers back into his accordion file and came over to where we were sitting. “These he-said-she-said cases are tough to prove,” he said.

“But we had a witness,” I said.

“Not today you didn’t.”





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


We got into the Woody. Uncle Tinsley headed down Holladay Avenue saying nothing. I took Liz’s hand, but she pulled it away and leaned against the door. Mom was so agitated that she could hardly contain herself. Her fingers trembled as she lit a cigarette. That defense attorney was a monster, she told us. All those outrageous, untrue things he had said about her. And the way he had behaved toward her girls was hideous. He had treated Liz even worse than he had me, she went on. He had taken Liz’s imagination and creativity and used them against her. He accused her of constantly making things up—for example, changing the endings of the stories she read to Maddox’s daughter, Cindy. He said Liz’s banged-up face in the police photos could have been caused by Tinsley Holladay smacking her for coming home late. He asked Liz about the perv we’d ditched in New Orleans, then told the jury that this was evidence she called men “perverts” without any proof and that she considered outsmarting them a game and a challenge. The lawyer actually said that Liz’s two favorite authors, Lewis Carroll and Edgar Allan Poe, were themselves perverts. He declared that Liz was essentially a habitual liar with an overactive imagination and an obsession with the idea of perverts—and that in itself, he told the jurors, was more than a little perverted.

Mom started going on about how much she hated Byler. The town was full of hicks, rubes, crackers, and lintheads. It was small-minded and mean-spirited, backward and prejudiced. Sitting in that courtroom was the most humiliating experience of her life. We were really the ones on trial, not Maddox, put on trial for our values and our lifestyle, for our willingness to go out in the world and do something different and creative with our lives instead of wasting away in this stifling, dying, claustrophobic mill town.

“Shut up, Charlotte,” Uncle Tinsley said.

“That’s the problem with this town,” she said. “Everyone’s supposed to just shut up and pretend nothing’s wrong. Little Bean was the only one with the guts to stand up and say it was all a pack of lies.”

“The jury thought what I said was all a pack of lies,” Liz said in a quiet voice. “Nothing happened. You heard the verdict. Nothing happened.” I was sitting next to her in the back of the Woody. She looked out the window. “Was it a pack of lies,” she said, “or a lack of pies?” She pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Pack of lies. Lack of pies. Plaque of eyes, arranged by size. Or black-eyed lies?” Liz was speaking in a distant monotone, almost to herself. “Plucked-out eyes. Lucked-out lies. Synthesize. Between my thighs.” She paused. “To no surprise, to our demise.” She was still staring out the window. “All the liars told their lies.” There was another pause. “Who denies the lies? Who will scrutinize the lies? The size of lies? Who will pluck the liars’ eyes? Who cries, who spies, who sighs, who dies?”