Copyright 1991 Aya Katz
FROM THE DIARY OF VERITY LACKLAND
Finally got another glimpse of David. Not the judge in his robes or the politician in his underwear, but David the family man. I know this is so unfair, but no matter how much I may censure him in my mind, whenever I see him, I can't help feeling happy about it. It's not anything he does, really, that I can pinpoint. All he has to do is say "Hi, Verity" and I feel so much better. All's well with the world. He even makes me feel ... competent, I guess. I mean, it's not exactly that he makes me seem pretty or clever, but some strange mixture of those things, as if he were saying: you're okay. It's that kind of feeling. I wonder how he does it. Most of all, he's shameless. No matter what he does, he's utterly unabashed. Even when he's keeping an invalid in his place by calling him Bashful.
It all started when I went to my AA meeting this week. You see, they haven't released me yet from my probation. I'm not pressing the issue and I've got the distinct impression that they're not going to get around to it on their own. The momentum was pretty strong before Abner died. After that, nobody was very interested in my case. I don't really care. I have this awful feeling that as soon as I'm released, Nabal will kick me out. He has no earthly use for me anymore. He spends every spare moment on that audit. But I hadn't seen David in ages, and I kept wondering how he looked. I don't mean, how he looked physically. I just mean, how he looked as if he felt. I couldn't help wondering if he looked guilty.
A while back, when Melinda thought I might actually be released and she'd be rid of my silent presence at her group therapy meetings, she took me aside. "Now, Verity, I heard that you might be getting discharged," she said, as if I were in the military or in a hospital or something.
"They may be releasing me from probation," I said.
She nodded. "Yes. And I heard that there might have been some mixup, you know, about putting you in my group in the first place."
I brightened. I thought maybe she was going to apologize. That's all I really wanted: an apology. An honest heartfelt apology. All they had to say was that they were sorry and that they'd never do it again. To anyone.
But she said: "Listen, Verity, I don't want you to give up on therapy just because of this. You need help."
"I need help?"
"Look, I don't know what you were like before all this. All I know is how you've been since you got here. The way you are, quiet like that, holding it all in, that's not good. It's not healthy. You're not dealing with it head on."
My mouth was wide open. For a moment no sound came out. Then I rallied. "I'm not dealing with it head on? You mean, when I told you I wasn't an alcoholic and that I wasn't guilty of DWI and that I'd been railroaded, that wasn't dealing with it head on?"
She shifted her posture. "I'm not talking about the facts, I'm talking about your feelings. I've been watching you for over a year now at these meetings, and you've been behaving like a ... prisoner."
I shook my head in disbelief. "Melinda, that's because I am a prisoner. That's what being convicted means, even if you aren't in jail."
Melinda touched one of her earrings gently. It was shaped like a pitcher and it looked so heavy, I half expected her earlobe to tear from the weight. "Yes, that's what it means, but you don't have to be so negative about it. We all get trapped sometime in life, don't you see that? We don't always get to be where we want to be when we want to be there. It's how you deal with it that matters. And I've got to tell you, the way you've been dealing with this isn't healthy."
I really didn't mean to seem belligerent. I tried to ask calmly, without a hint of sarcasm. "What is the healthy way to deal with being wrongfully convicted?"
She was being patient with me, too. I could tell, because she took a deep breath before she answered. "You see, that's where the problem is. You keep focusing on fault. It doesn't matter whether you were wrongfully convicted or rightfully convicted. The point is you've been convicted and you've had to deal with that. It's a traumatic experience and you haven't accepted it. There's no healing without acceptance. That's what it's about: acceptance, not recrimination. It doesn't matter who's right, because what we do here, Verity, has got nothing to do with right and wrong."
I smiled. "Yeah. I can see that."
She ignored that. "There is another group that I could recommend to you. They deal with some of the problems you've been experiencing."
"There's a therapy group for people who've been convicted of things they didn't do?"
She shook her head. Her answer was perfectly serious, as though it were good idea, in principle. "No. There aren't enough of those for a group. But you see, it's really all the same thing. It's our post traumatic therapy. We have all sorts of people there. People who've served in Vietnam, or were abused as children or by their spouses, or who were accidentally left alone in an enclosed space. Anybody who has experienced the trauma of being helpless."
"But you just said everybody's felt that, at one time or another."
She smiled. "That's right, Verity. And we all need some help, sometime. You just have to know when to ask for it." She handed me a slip of paper. "Just think about it, okay?" And she walked off to chat with some of her other helpless charges.
I went and sat down by Lou Ann, in the last row. "I can't believe it," I said to her. "First they make me attend AA. Now they want to make me join another group, because I didn't handle their making me attend AA so well."
"Let me see," she drawled and reached out for the slip of paper. "Oh, honey, I've been to that group. It's a real ball. I remember one time, this one girl was telling about how she'd been raped, and how she was scratching and clawing and he beat her to a pulp. And when she was done telling it, ol' Melinda gets up there and she asks if anybody has any comments. And one guy, he gets up, and he says 'Why, clear as day, she wasn't handling that right at all. She wasn't acceptin' what was happening to her. Shoulda lain back and enjoyed, seeing as how it was gonna happen, anyway. Gotta make the best of things.' Melinda, she got all white in the face and finally she called the meeting short." Lou Ann gave me back the note. "But I tell you, honey. There is something to this therapy crap. 'Cause I swear, what that man said, it's true. Ought'n't to be true, it sounds all wrong, but it is. Ain't it, now?" She looked me square in the eye and I had to look away. I occupied myself with putting the clipping away.
If it's all right to be a slave, why is it shameful? Nabal doesn't know, but when I find out, I'll tell him.
Anyway that was about a month ago, and this time I got no special attention from Melinda. The whole subject of my release has been dropped, shelved indefinitely. It's not retaliation against me because I wasn't crazy about testifying. At least, I don't think it is. They have other things on their minds, and they've forgotten. Meanwhile, I keep going to AA and and to my probation meetings and Seth Cain is so bored with me, he lets me go after a few stale platitudes. Everything has gotten to be so routine, I marvel at how well I've adapted, despite Melinda's warnings.
Lou Ann and I went to the Brown 'N Serve after the meeting. She had a beer and I had a Coke. "So, your old man giving you a hard time with all those taxmen swarming all over the house."
I shook my head.
"You know how it is. Somebody pushes them around, they have to push you. Or whoever is handy."
I must not be handy, I thought.
"Shame about that. I heard after that shooting, they're giving him the full treatment."
"Yes," I said, looking out for Pipa from the corner of my eye. "They gave him a Miranda warning, so I think that means it's officially a criminal investigation now."
"Of the shooting?"
"No. Of his taxes."
Lou Ann made a face. "You know, none of this needed to happen. All he had to do was act civil. David would have eased up."
I drew on my straw and it slurped. "That's what Abner thought. They killed him."
Lou Ann nodded. "Look, honey, nobody liked that. We're decent folk hereabouts. We don't court that kind of trouble. He was a good Sheriff, even if he did have it coming."
I had trouble reconciling the two parts of that statement. I pushed my Coke away. "You think David knew?"
She shook her head. "Nah. He didn't have anything to do with it. It was out of his hands. Abner wasn't a bother to him. You heard what he said."
"Then why has no one been prosecuted for the murder?" We were sitting at the bar, and Eb came to clear away my glass. "Joe's David's right hand man. He can't let him down. Not before the election. Refill, Miss Verity?"
I shook my head. Eb's voice was friendly and his comment was devoid of acrimony. But his eyes were strange.
Lou Ann said: "It serves Nabal right, how they're doing him. He never lifted a finger to help. He never did anything for anyone."
I gripped my purse. "Why should he?"
Lou Ann was surly. "Things might have been different."
"For him?"
"For everybody." She drummed the table with her fingertips, all the while protecting her nails. "The way it stands now, it's not like we have much of a choice."
"What do you mean?"
"I've heard some grumbling. But let's face it, there's nobody else on the ballot. You know what I mean."
I wasn't sure. "What?"
"What I told you before. There ain't no way to force somebody to act like a Daddy, 'cause if you do, you're more a Daddy than he is. David's not perfect. But at least he tries. And he cares. That makes all the difference."
As I drove back to Carmel, I thought about that. About trying and caring and being a "Daddy." Nabal said that being whipped was shameful, but fetching the whip was even more so. What about a master? Can you make him hold the whip, if he refuses? And if you could make him, would that be shameful, too? If slavery is degradation, then being a master is also degrading. And what if there's no other way?
"You drive awful slow for a witch's apprentice."
My head jerked back and I almost missed a curve.
"Don't let's run off the road," he said. "You can see me in the mirror."
"Bashful!" There was a pause. "I mean, Ashbel."
"No," he said. "Bashful's okay. Everybody calls me Bashful."
"How'd you get in here?"
"You musta left the door unlocked."
"I didn't." I twisted my head a little. "Where's your wheelchair?"
"It's in here. It folds up. David's seen to it I get the best handicapped stuff there is."
"That's nice."
"He wants me to lead a rich, full life and everything."
I laughed. "You seem to be doing that already."
"We've got railings and gangplanks and things sticking out of the floor, all over the house now. Mickey trips over them."
I tried to sound casual. "What are you doing in my car, Ashbel?"
"Goin' for a trip."
We were already on Carmel property and I wasn't about to turn back. Though it did occur to me that I might get my probation revoked if they charged me with kidnapping.
When I had parked the car, I came out to help him with the wheelchair but he kept me at bay. He handled it all by himself. Watching him, I was glad that I wasn't bound to a wheelchair, because if I were, I'd never to be able to get it open much less in it. He was very efficient about it, but once he was in it he said: "If you want, you can push me in now. It sticks on the gravel."
Pilar held the door for us silently, without any comment as I rolled him in. We stopped in the foyer. "I want to see the witch," he said to me.
I looked helplessly at Pilar and she nodded. "I'll see if I can get her."
"Why did you run away?" I asked him.
"I didn't run away. I just wanted to see what she could do."
I shook my head. "I don't understand."
"I just wanted to see what she could conjure."
"Oh. Well, it's not all that spectacular, really. Mostly, she reads tea leaves."
He nodded. "Well, she wouldn't show you the really good stuff, consid'rin'."
"Considering what?"
But just then Pilar came back. "The senora will see you, now," she said.
The boy looked up at me. "You can push." I wasn't sure whether it was a command, or a request, or merely a statement. In any event, I complied. Pilar led us to the kitchen, where Anadora was so busy with the tea kettle she barely noticed us. As Pilar was leaving, she looked at me, shaking her head, and I could see that she didn't approve. "I'm going to call the Judge's office," she said, and the word judge came out strong and odd sounding.
Finally Anadora looked up from the tea cup. She pushed it across the table to the boy. "You answered my summons."
"I didn't get no summons."
"Yes," she agreed.
"Huh?"
Anadora smiled. "Why did you come?"
He thought about it. "Are you really my fairy godmother?"
She nodded.
We sat there silently for a period and the boy scratched his nose. "What does that mean, actually?"
"What?"
"How'd you get to be my fairy godmother? And now that you are, what difference does it make?"
Anadora warmed up by rubbing her hands. Then she started off very slowly. "Your father was a fine man in his youth, taller than any one in the County."
The boy nodded. "Yeah. He was pretty tall, all right. Best thing about him." He looked at my puzzled expression and ignoring Anadora for a moment, he said: "That comes in real handy for when you want to say stuff like `My Daddy's taller than your Daddy.'"
Anadora cleared her throat. That got his attention "He was coming into town one day, just a young boy, really, looking for a missing pickup truck."
"Huh?" "He was working on his father's farm and one day they woke up and their pickup truck was gone. So his father sent him into town to get it back."
"What kind of a truck was it?"
"It was a beat up pick up truck," she said, somewhat annoyed.
"What make and model was it?"
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't know."
"Some witch you are."
"Do not tempt me, Ashbel. I won't let the fact that you're a cripple keep me from turning you into a toad."
He seemed a little chastened, but he corrected her: "Handicapped."
"Cripple!" she spat it right back at him.
We were silent for some time, until he finally said: "Okay... So what happened? Did he find the pickup truck?"
"When he came into town he went to the Brown 'N Serve to get a drink and he heard some people talking about a revival they were having in town that week."
"A revival?"
"Old Sam Beck had put up a tent in the square and he was preaching fire and brimstone to the multitudes. So your father went to see him." She paused.
"What happened?"
"Your father was taken over by spirits and began speaking in tongues. And before the day was over, Sam picked him for the next County Judge. He said his god had sent him."
"What about the pickup truck?"
"He found it parked in the square. Next to the revival tent."
The boy stared into his teacup, as if deciding whether to take a sip. "I don't like tea," he finally said.
"I don't like defeat," she said, "or bitterness and despair. But I drink them just the same. We drink the cup that's poured us."
He squiggled his nose. "You drink feet?" But when Anadora didn't deign to answer, he said: "I know all about that. Brother Nathan told me that story. That's the day my Daddy got saved."
"That's the day he was lost." She spat it out.
He took a sip of the tea. "How come?"
"Sam's god is fickle. Promised him the judgeship for himself and his children. Thirty years later, took it all back. But then you know about that, too, I expect."
He seemed uncomfortable. "David went and bought me a 'vette for my birthday."
This time it was her turn to be confused. "What?"
"A Corvette. It's remote control. I can race it in my bedroom."
She looked down at the table smiling, seemingly at her own incomprehension. "Your birthday is not till next month. The moon will be full."
"David buys me stuff all the time. And he let's me eat at the table with him."
"That's very generous of him." She leaned forward, eagerly. "Does he beat you?"
The boy snorted. "Heck, no. I'm handicapped, remember?"
"A pity. It would be much better if he beat you."
He gave me a confused look, so I said: "Don't worry. She says that to everybody."
Anadora countered: "It's true of everybody."
"We'll have a big party for my birthday and a cake and kids will come."
"The day you were born, I sacrificed a kid and a lamb. Burnt offerings. Your father called me in to care for your mother early in her term. He promised if I brought you through it safely, he'd give me anything. I asked for your soul."
He stared at her.
"He let me name you. You are consecrated to Baal." She pronounced it with two syllables.
"Huh?"
"That's why the others perished ... and you live. Do you understand?"
He shook his head.
"Jonathan was a good boy, but he wasn't mine to spare. Sam's god gave, and what he gave, he took away. You, Ashbel, are a man of Baal. Be sure of it."
The boy frowned. I wasn't sure he understood a word of it. Except he must have, because he said: "Mickey's still alive."
She nodded. "And barren."
He accepted this. But he was still troubled. "My Daddy used to throw things. He had fits."
"An uneasy conscience."
"He sent me away."
"To spare you. He only wanted to spare you." She motioned with her hand. "Drink up." He complied. When he had done, she said: "He came to see me in this very kitchen, the night before he died. He wanted to talk to Sam. And in the end, he only cared about his children. He asked that they be spared."
"Can you really conjure up the dead?"
She nodded. He pushed the cup toward her. "I want to see my Daddy."
She picked the cup and began to examine it. "I see ... no, he's hiding."
The boy rearranged himself in the chair. He moved his limbs easily. "Hiding?"
"There. You can't get away from me, Saul. There he is, but he's trying to turn away."
"What does he look like?"
"He's dressed all in black. Black robes. And his hair is silver and he's begging me to let him go."
"Tell him I want to see him."
"Your son wants to see you," she said, staring into the cup. Then, as if seeking the response, she bent down over it until her right eye was almost inside the cup. Abruptly she looked up from the cup, putting it down. She looked at the boy. "Your father doesn't want to see you."
He frowned. "Why not?"
She smiled. "He thinks you've turned against him."
There was a moment of silence. Then the sound of the wheels as he rolled himself away from the kitchen table. He got stuck at the door, but he extended one leg up from the wheelchair and kicked it viciously open again. Then he backed into it, holding it open, and stopped in the doorway facing us. "Some witch you are. Can't even give the make and model of a truck. I don't need you or my Daddy, either one...And what's more, I like David. David's nice to me!" He rolled himself out of the room.
Anadora started to clear away the tea paraphenalia. Then she sat back down and our eyes met.
"Baal?" I echoed. "You worship Baal?"
She smiled. "Not exclusively."
I wanted to ask her more. I wanted to ask if Nabal prays to Baal, too. Though really I had trouble imagining him in prayer at all. Certainly not on his knees. But she forestalled any further questions by saying: "Go after the boy."
I found him in the sala, looking at the portrait of Abby. He was more tranquil now and he accepted my presence. "She was pretty."
I nodded. "Did you know her?"
He shook his head. "Not too well. I was always away, but I saw her at a couple of fourth of July picnics and in Church and stuff like that. She was always nice to me."
"Yes. She was nice to everybody."
He narrowed his eyes. "And Nabal shot her. He shot real good, huh?"
I wasn't sure whether he was identifying with Nabal or Abby. "Yeah."
"Where'd he shoot her? In the head? 'Tween the eyes?"
I shook my head. "Between the breasts."
He nodded in approbation. "I guess when I grow up, I'd like to shoot a girl like that. Right in dead center. That might be fun."
"It's not something you do for the fun of it."
"Yeah. I know. It's just a thought." He sighed. "Don't worry, I won't be here long. That Mexican lady said she called David. He'll be by for me soon."
"I suppose you're disappointed in Anadora."
He crooked his mouth disparagingly. "Nah. It's okay. She's not that great, but she did conjure up my Daddy. That was him all right."
I was surprised. "It was?"
"Yeah. See, the way I know is, he didn't want to see me when he was alive, either."
I laughed.
He scratched his nose. "You know, he shot himself in the belly."
"So I heard."
"David's letting me live with him. If it weren't for David, I wouldn't even be here."
I couldn't help thinking that if it weren't for David, he wouldn't be a cripple. I tried to ignore that. "Why do they call you Bashful?"
"Oh." He examined his fingernails. "That's something that happened the first day of school. I was on crutches, see, and David came into the class with me. And the teacher, she introduced me to the class and said 'Kids, we have a new student. Ashbel Jones.' And they all stared at me. I just stared back at them. So David said 'Go on now, Ashbel. Don't be Bashful, son.' I guess they kind of noticed that, 'cause they started laughing. So for a while they would all call me Ashbel the Bashful. But after a while it was just Bashful. I got mad and tried to punch a couple of kids out, but it was awful hard, considering that I'm handicapped and all. But then David and I had a talk. And he said that it would be a whole lot better if I just accepted it, instead of fighting it all the time. He said, if I acted like that was really my name and there was nothing wrong with it, then they wouldn't make fun of me no more. And it worked. Now everyone calls me Bashful. Even at home."
"What about the crutches?"
He shrugged. "They didn't work out. Anyhow, I get into lots fewer fights when I'm sitting down, so they're happy with it."
We sat there in silence for a while, staring at the portrait of Abby. That's when Nabal walked in. "Miss Lackland ..." he started to say, as if he had some earthly use for me all of a sudden, but he stopped short when he saw the boy. They stared at each other for a few moments, then Nabal asked, without any real emotion in his voice: "What is that invalid doing here?"
They kept staring at each other while I tried to think of an answer. "He came to see your mother."
He tore his glance away from the boy and looked at me instead. "She must be regaining her popularity." The derision in his voice was not overpowering. It was more like a subtle thread. "It hearks back to the good old days when all the unwashed multitudes are said to have presented themselves at her door."
The boy looked him straight in the eyes. "I know a song about you."
"What?!"
"Do you want to hear it?" But he didn't pause for answer and instead started singing: "Old man Nabal, when he's able, takes account that there's no God. Scorns the people, says they're evil, man he's griping all day long..."
Ashbel had a sweet soprano that only occasionally faltered off key. Nabal stared at him as he sang, and I had no idea what he must be thinking. As if that weren't enough, from the foyer we heard voices. Pilar was letting somebody in. And soon David's rich baritone joined in the song.
"They're all rotten, I'm forgotten, they're all out there doin' wrong..."
He kept at it as he appeared in the doorway, and only stopped when he saw Nabal. Ashbel kept singing: "I despise them, and that's why that, since they left me there's no god." The boy took a deep breath, and then asked: "Do you like it? David wrote it."
Nabal laughed. "No, actually I wrote it."
Ashbel and I exchanged glances, but Nabal and David held steady.
"You wrote it?" The boy finally asked.
"Well, it seems to have undergone certain significant alterations, but on the whole the words are mine."
David shrugged. "Abby showed it to me once. I thought it deserved a tune." He looked down at the boy. "Ready to go home, Bashful?"
"Yeah. But I had neat time here. Do you think I can come again."
David was distracted. "We'll see. Come along now son."
We watched them leave. After they had gone I turned to look at him. "That was strange."
He turned away, as though my looking at him were too intimate to bear. He looked at Abby instead.
"When you came in here," I said. "Did you want something from me?"
He looked at me then. "Yes." I took a deep breath, but he said: "I can't find Naufragios Y Comentarios in the library."
"It's in my room. Remember, you told me to take the books with me, so you could have the library free for the audit."
"The audit is over," he said. "I want my books back."
__________