Lay Down My Sword and Shield (Hackberry Holland 1)

A Negro maid in a lace-trimmed apron served us iced tea with mint leaves and slices of lemon on a silver service, then I began quietly to press Mr. Posey for his reasons in not filing an appeal for Art. Actually, my questions, or even my presence there, would probably be considered a violation of professionalism among attorneys, since I was indirectly implying that he had been negligent in the case; but the flicker of insult never showed in his eyes, and if his tone or the pale expression around his mouth indicated anything, it was simply that I was an idealistic young lawyer who had embarked on a fool’s errand. He lowered his face into the tea glass when he drank, and momentarily the moisture gave his lips a streak of color.

“I didn’t feel there was basis for appeal, Mr. Holland,” he said. “I originally advised Art to plead guilty in hopes of a reduced charge, but he refused, and I doubt if the Court of Criminal Appeals will consider the case of a man who was convicted on the testimony of four Texas Rangers and two bystanders. He did hit the officer twice before he was restrained, and that’s the essential and inalterable fact of the case.”

“Who were these bystanders?”

“Two county workmen who were operating a grading machine on the road when the arrests were made.”

I looked at him incredulously.

“Did you feel these men were objective witnesses?” I said.

“They had no interest in the issue. They merely stated what they saw.”

“I understand that most of the people on the picket line testified, also.”

“Unfortunately, most of them have been in local court before, and I’m afraid that their statements were overly familiar to the ju

ry. One young man admitted to the district attorney that he’d been three hundred yards away from the arrest, but he was sure that Art hadn’t struck the officer. It’s difficult to contest a conviction on evidence of that sort, Mr. Holland.”

His face bent into the iced tea glass again, and a drop of perspiration rolled off his temple down his fat cheek. He shifted his buttocks in the wicker chair and crossed his legs. His massive, soft thighs stretched the crease in his slacks flat.

“Art’s been organizing a farmworkers’ union in this county for the past year. Do you believe any members of the jury had preconceived feelings toward him?”

“None that would affect the indictment against him. He was tried for assaulting a Texas Ranger, not for his involvement in a Mexican union.”

I borrowed a match from Mr. Posey and lit a cigar. I looked at him through the curl of flame and smoke and wondered if he had any conception of his irresponsibility in allowing his client to be sentenced to five years in a case that would be considered laughable by a law school moot court.

He put his empty pipe in the center of his teeth, drew in with a wet rattling sound, and farted softly in the back of the chair. I finished my tea, shook hands and thanked him for his help, and walked down the gravel path to my automobile under the trees. Behind me I heard him snap the metal latch into place on the screen door.

I drove back to town and had lunch and two beers at the café, then spent an hour in the clerk of records office while an aged secretary made a Xerox copy of the trial transcript for me. There was no breeze through the windows, my sunglasses filmed with moisture in the humidity, and the electric fans did nothing but blow drafts of hot air across the room. The deputy sheriff came in once to drop a pile of his penciled reports on the clerk’s desk, and as he walked past me he stared into my face without speaking.

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hotel, with my feet propped in the window, reading the transcript and sipping whiskey poured over ice. The flies droned dully in the stillness, and occasionally I would hear the hillbilly music from the beer tavern. Across the square the sun slanted on the rows of watermelons and cantaloupes in the open-air fruit market.

The transcript was an incredible record to read. The trial might have been constructed out of mismatched parts from an absurd movie script about legal procedure. There had been no challenge of the jurors, each of the Texas Rangers contradicted the others, a Baptist minister testified that many of the union members were Communists, and the two county workmen said they had seen a Mexican attack a Ranger, although they had been eating their lunch in the back of a truck a half mile down the road at the time. The three witnesses for the defense were sliced to pieces by the district attorney. They were led into discrediting statements about their own testimony, forced into stumbling admissions about their involvement in revolution, and referred to sixteen times as outside agitators. And Cecil Wayne Posey never raised an objection. Normally, any two pages torn at random from such a comic scenario would be grounds for appeal, but under Texas law the appeal has to be made in local court within ten days of sentencing, unless good cause is shown for an extension, and since Mr. Posey’s refusal to continue the case had virtually guaranteed that his client would go to prison, I would have to start the whole process over again in Austin.

It was dusk outside now. I threw the transcript in my suitcase, took a cold bath, and shaved, with a glass of whiskey on top of the lavatory. As a rule I didn’t try to correct the inadequacies inherent in any system, but in this case I thought I would send a letter to the Texas Bar Association about Mr. Posey. Yes, Mr. Posey should receive some official recognition for his work, I thought, as I drew the razor blade down in a clean swath through the shaving cream on my cheek.

I ate a steak for supper and drove back to the union headquarters in the Mexican district. There were thunderclouds and heat lightning in the west, an electric flash all the way across the horizon, and then a distant, dry rumble. The air tasted like brass in my mouth. Parts of the dirt road had been sprinkled with garden hoses to wet down the dust, and the cicadas in the trees were deafening with their late evening noise. Fireflies glowed like points of flame in the gathering dusk, and across the river in old Mexico the adobe huts on the mudflat wavered in the light of outdoor cook fires. High up in the sky, caught in the sun’s last afterglow, a buzzard floated motionlessly like a black scratch on a tin surface.

I parked the car in front of the union headquarters and walked up the path to the wooden steps. The boy with the Gibson twelve-string still sat on the porch. He had three steel picks on his fingers and a half-gallon bottle of dago red next to him. His bare feet were covered with dust, and there were tattoos on each arm. He chorded the guitar and didn’t turn his head toward me.

“She’s inside, man,” he said.

“Do I knock or let myself in?”

“Just do it.”

I tapped with my knuckle on the screen door and waited. I heard dishes rattling in a pan in the back of the building.

“Hey, Rie, that guy’s back,” the boy shouted over his shoulder.

A moment later the girl walked through a back hallway toward me. Her arms were wet up to the elbow. She had splashed water on her blouse, and her breasts stood out against the cloth.

“Man, like you really want to meet us, don’t you?” she said, pushing open the screen with the back of her wrist.

“I decided against watching television in the hotel lobby this evening.”

“Come in the kitchen. I have to finish the dishes.”