"I was and I am," he confessed, his voice not faltering. There was a common gasp from the audience, but this time the judge didn't need to rap his gavel. No one uttered another sound. They all just strained forward to catch every word.
"Ya impregnated a teenage girl in yer own home, an unsophisticated, trustin' child, who had been given over ta yer for moral safekeepin'?" Burton continued, leaning toward the reverend.
"Mr. Burton, I never claimed to be anything more than an ordinary man whom the Lord hath chosen to carry His word to other ordinary men. I did my best to reform Fanny Casteel, but it wasn't to be in my providence to do so."
"So ya seduced a fourteen-year-old girl?" Burton snapped.
"Believe me, no man would have ever needed to go to the trouble of seducing that promiscuous young girl. That wicked, sinful girl," he said, pointing at Fanny, his arm extended like the arm of a prophet about to pronounce God's very words, "did steal into my bed and with her lewd, naked body pressed against me, did seduce -me, for as I have told you, I am only a man, made of flesh and blood." He lowered his arm and then his head, shaking it slowly. "Pitifully, shamefully human."
"But the fact remains, ya were the adult and ya did not turn her out?" Burton pursued.
"No, I did not," the reverend said, looking up sharply again. "But I have never once doubted that the Devil was in her and through her, had found a way to pierce the al mor of my Faith, for my Faith was wounding the Devil fatally in Winnerow, as my people will testify. I was glad to get her out of my house," he said. "And I understand why the Lord instructed me to buy her baby. He did not want this child brought up in the home of such a woman, a woman firmly held in the Devil's grip."
"So ya tempted a young girl with ten thousand dollars ta sell her child. What could she do anyway? She was only fourteen," Burton said.
"Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is asking and answering his own question."
"Objection sustained. Mr. Burton. Are you asking Reverend Wise the question?"
"No," Burton said quickly. "No further questions."
"Reverend Wise, let me ask you the question," Camden said before another beat went by. "Did Fanny Casteel have any other choice but to sell her child to you?"
"Of course. She could have kept it. There's welfare; there's charity." He looked out at the audience. "She could have insisted I support her and the child."
"The fact is she didn't want her child, is that not so?"
"No. She only wanted the pleasure, the sinful pleasure, and not the responsibilities."
"No further questions, Your Honor," Camden said.
The reverend stepped down. As he moved back up the aisle, he kept his head high, his gaze just as intense as it had been when he approached the witness chair, but I thought I saw relief in his face, the outline of a slight smile. He had done what he must have wanted to do all these years, confessed his sin and confessed it in such a way that his congregation would have no hesitation in forgiving him. I was sure that his next sermon would be built on the statement "I have seen the Devil and I know his evil power, but I have seen the Lord's forgiveness and I know
He is mightier."
When I turned toward Fanny, I saw that she wasn't smiling the way she had when the reverend first took the stand. Her lawyer was leaning over and whispering in her ear again, but what he was telling her wasn't making her happy. Randall had his head lowered and was doodling with a pencil. Despite myself, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the two of them. Little did they know, but we had only just begun Fanny should have never doubted the power of money and influence, I thought.
"Your Honor," Camden said, "we would like to now call Mrs. Peggy Sue Martin to the stand."
Fanny looked up sharply and her lawyer looked confused. I saw the expression on Fanny's face turn to one of deeper worry. Both Randall and Wendell Burton were asking her who Peggy Sue Martin was, just as most people in the audience were asking one another. The judge rapped his gavel and the audience quieted down as Peggy Sue Martin, a woman in her late fifties, early sixties took the stand.
She wore a cheap, imitation fox wrap and her face was heavily made up, almost as heavily made up as Jillian had been-in her madness . . . rouge patted over her cheeks, her lipstick too thick and wide, her eyelashes almost weighted down with light blue liner. Her hair, dyed a bright yellow, looked as though it had turned to straw. Although she brushed it forward and curled it, you could see where she was losing it. Her thin, lavender dress clung to her heavy hips and the skirt reached just short of midway between her knees and ankles. We had paid her two thousand dollars plus her expenses to bring her here from Nashville.
She was sworn in quickly and sat back, crossing her legs and smiling at Camden as he approached her.
"Mrs. Martin," he began, "please tell the court where you live and what you do."
"I live in Nashville where I own and operate a half dozen houses as a landlord."
"Mrs. Martin, do you know Fanny Casteel?"
"Yes, I do Fanny came to one of my houses a few years back. She had come to Nashville to try to be a singer, just like hundreds of other girls." She smiled at the judge, but he remained expressionless.
"When you say come to one of your houses, you mean to rent a room?"
"That's correct."
"She had money for rent then?"