“It must have been harder for your parents than it was for you and Tommy.”
“It’s all relative,” Connie instructs me.
“They made money here and saved almost every penny.
It allowed us kids to escape.”
I’m curious to know what her life is like now, but I’m afraid to ask.
Though she doesn’t seem quite as hostile as she did when we first began talking, there is still an edge to her voice that she doesn’t bother to hide. Blacks, not whites, have been the majority in each place she lived. Though for years they have been saying they were invisible to us, I’ve never admitted to what extent both races were merely background noise.
“If your mother can think of anything that could help find who your father’s murderer is,” I plead with her, “let me know, please. The only person at the plant who’s really been cooperative is the secretary, Darla Tate. Though she hasn’t actually helped his case any, she says your father liked Class, and he liked your father.” “That doesn’t prove anything,” Connie says.
“I’ll talk to Mother if you’ll promise not to accuse her of my father’s murder.”
It hardly seems as if I’m giving anything away-or getting anything, for that matter. Bonner has never considered her a suspect, and he went all through the house the night of the murder.
“I promise,” I say, knowing Dick will suggest it to the jury if I don’t.
Connie hangs up, and I curse myself, knowing how badly I have served my client in this case. I should never have taken it. I couldn’t have screwed up any more than if I had stayed drunk for the last couple of months. The only thing I’m convinced of is that Class is simply trying to save his skin, and I haven’t given him any reason to act otherwise.
“You can’t let Class plead guilty,” I tell Lattice Bledsoe four days before her husband’s trial begins. She has warily invited me into her house as if I were an investigator instead of her husband’s defense attorney. She is seated on a brown tattered couch across from me.
“You know he didn’t kill Willie “He’s saying now he did,” she says, holding a two-year-old on her lap.
With no income coming i in, she baby sits during the day before she works the evening shift at the 7-Eleven. The child’s eyes are enormous brown pools. She leans back against Lattice and stares at me as if I am the first white person she has ever seen.
“I don’t really believe that and neither do you,” I say urgently.
“Almost the first words out of your mouth when I met you were something like, “I know my husband and he’s not a killer.”” “I don’t want him to die,” she says, keeping her voice even, but unable to keep tears from sliding down her cheeks.
I lean forward on my knees and argue, “Take away his explanation that Paul Taylor was going to give him Oldham’s Barbecue and there is absolutely no motive. Half a dozen witnesses, including Mrs. Ting, will have to testify that Willie liked Class, and Class liked Willie.
Without Doss’s testimony there is hardly any evidence of any plan for Class to be paid to kill him.”
The child, whose name is Tisha, is perhaps frightened by my tone, and puts her thumb in her mouth while Lattice reminds me, “Class says you told him once a jury doesn’t need a motive to convict.”
I, of course, have not been honest with Lattice or her husband about why I took this case. I am responsible for Class winding up in this position.
Whether I’ve actually said the words or not, I’ve wanted him to do exactly what he is doing.
“You have to convince Class that he simply has to trust the system,” I argue.
“I think he can persuade a jury he didn’t kill Willie. This isn’t going to be a lynch mob. There’ll be blacks on the jury, and no Chinese.”
Lattice pats Tisha for comfort.
“How do you know he didn’t kill him?” she whispers.
“You can’t be for sure. And neither can a jury. There’s gonna be a black sheriff and a black prosecutor sayin’ he did, and there’re a lot of black people who are ready to believe the worst about ourselves if it’s black people doing the accusing.”
I watch Tisha as she begins to fidget on Lattice’s lap.
“Before he can be convicted, twelve people have to believe that Class is capable of killing someone. If he can convince people he came here, and stayed, he won’t be convicted. No one is going to testify they saw him. I believed him the first time he told me he didn’t do it. Your marriage won’t survive him going to prison, no matter what you think now. You’re selling him short.”
I can see Latrice wavering.
“He won’t do me any good dead,” she says, but there is no conviction in her voice.
“Can you promise you’ll get him off?”
“Even if he is convicted,” I temporize, “I can’t imagine any jury will give Class the death penalty unless they think he was a paid killer.”
But even as I say this, I remember that Darla Tate, despite her testimony that there was a good relationship between Willie and Class, will make a strong, if reluctant, witness, for the prosecution. If the jury wants to, they can simply believe he was hired by someone else.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Latrice says.
I feel my face flush with shame. Under the circumstances, I can’t conceal my own bad motives any longer and admit, “Initially, the reason I took your husband’s case was that I wanted to see Paul Taylor convicted. Because of some things I thought he did to my family years
ago, I wasn’t at all surprised he was charged, and my thinking was originally that Class might be guilty, and if he could plead to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony, I would have done my job and gotten to see Paul Taylor paid back at the same time. But now I think the only reason Class wants to implicate Paul is that he’s afraid.”
Latrice gives me a hard stare.
“So you were ready to sell him out?”
I feel like a moth being pinned to the wall.
“Not sell him out,” I say, unable to meet her gaze.
“I just started off with a different agenda.”
Is that what it was? What words we lawyers use! It was a vendetta, pure and simple.
“Lucy Cunningham said you were pretty much like nearly every other white man she had met-out for yourself,” Lattice says, her voice resigned, “but that you’d probably do a good job eventually.”
I shrug, not having the heart any longer to defend myself. I’ve managed to accomplish nothing here while I waited, hoping Paul would shoot himself in the foot sooner or later. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I’ve assumed my client’s testimony could make it happen if need be.
“I’ll do my best,” I say, not about to use the past tense.
Lattice draws air into her lungs and then exhales, rocking the child gently against her.
“I’ll talk to Class,” she agrees finally.
“He’s okay until he gets to feeling pressure, then he sometimes panics.”
Welcome to the club, I think but don’t say. I thank her and leave before she can change her mind. I want to get out of this place in a hurry.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Melvin Butterfield, resplendent in dark blue pinstripes, begins his opening statement to the jury, “the state of Arkansas will prove that on last September twenty-third, between the hours of two and four p.m.” Mr. Willie Ting, owner of Southern Pride Meats, was murdered in cold blood at his plant by the defendant Class Bledsoe. Further, the state will show that Class Bledsoe, who worked in Mr. Ting’s plant, was hired to commit this murder by the defendant Paul Taylor…”
What Lattice said to convince her husband to go to trial, I may never know. As I listen to Butterfield, I lean back in my seat and watch the faces of the jury. Six blacks and six whites. Dick struck blacks as fast as he could, and I struck whites, unable to shed my belief that blacks will be less likely to convict Class. The whites on the jury, each over forty, are from all over the county, only two are actually from Bear Creek. None of the individuals selected admit to knowing Paul Taylor other than casually. On voir dire Dick asked prospective jurors if anyone had applied for loans during the years Paul was on Farmer’s State Bank’s board of directors. When one old man from Rondo raised his hand,