by Jojo Moyes
The crowd began to murmur.
“What kind of woman kills a decent man with no provocation?”
“This has nothing to do with McCullough and you know it. This is about getting back at a woman who showed you up for what you are!”
“See, ladies and gentlemen? This is the true face of that so-called library. A coarsening of female discourse, behavior contrary to what’s proper. Why, do you think it’s right that Mrs. Brady should speak in such a way?”
The crowd surged forward, and was stopped abruptly by two gunshots in the air. There was a scream. People ducked, glancing around nervously. Sheriff Archer appeared in the back doorway to the jailhouse. He surveyed the crowd. “Now. I’ve been a patient man, but I do not want to hear one more word out here. The court will decide this case from tomorrow and due process will be followed. And if one more of you steps out of line you’ll be finding yourself in the jailhouse alongside Miss O’Hare. That goes for you too, Geoffrey, and you, Patricia. I’ll put any one of youse away. You hear me?”
“We got a right to free speech!” a man shouted.
“You do. And I got a right to make sure you’re speaking it from one of my cells down there.”
The crowd began to yell again, the words ugly, the voices harsh and clamorous. Alice looked around her and began to tremble, chilled by the venom, the hate etched on faces she had previously waved a cheery good morning to. How could they turn on Margery like this? She felt something fearful and panicky rise in her chest, the energy of the crowd charging the air around her. And then she felt Kathleen nudge her, and saw that Izzy had stepped forward. As the protesters railed and chanted around her, pushing and jostling, she limped her way out in front of them, a little unsteady and resting on her stick, until she was underneath the cell window. And as everyone watched, Izzy Brady, who struggled to stand in front of an audience of five, turned to face the shifting crowd, looked around her, and took a deep breath.
And she began to sing.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
She paused, took a breath, her eyes flickering around her.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.
The crowd quieted, unsure at first what was going on, those at the back straining on tiptoe to see. A man catcalled and someone cursed him. Izzy stood, her hands clasped in front of her, shaking slightly, and sang out, her voice growing in strength and intensity.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.
Mrs. Brady, her back straightening, took two, three strides, pushed through the crowd and placed herself beside her daughter, her back against the outside of the jailhouse wall, and her chin lifted. As they sang together, Kathleen, then Beth and, finally, Sophia and Alice, their arms still linked, moved to stand beside them and lifted their voices, too, their heads up and their gaze steady, facing down the crowd. As the men shouted insults, their six voices grew in volume, drowning them out, determined and unafraid.
Come not in terrors, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings,
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea—
Come, Friend of sinners, and thus abide with me.
They sang until the crowd was silent, watched by Sheriff Archer. They sang, pressed shoulder to shoulder, hands reaching blindly for hands, their hearts beating fast but their voices steady. A handful of townspeople stepped forward and joined them—Mrs. Beidecker, the gentleman from the feed shop, Jim Horner and his girls, their hands clasped together and their voices lifting, drowning the sounds of hate, feeling the resonance of each word, sending comfort, while trying to offer a little of that elusive substance to themselves.
* * *
• • •
A few inches away, on the other side of the wall, Margery O’Hare lay motionless on the bunk, her hair stuck to her face in damp tendrils, her skin pale and hot. She had lain there for almost four days now, her breasts aching, her arms empty in a way that made her feel as if someone had reached inside her and simply ripped out whatever kept her upright. What was there to stand up for now? To hope for, even? She was unnaturally still, her eyes closed, the rough hessian against her skin, listening only dimly to the crowd hurling abuse outside. Someone had managed to throw a stone through the window earlier and it had caught her leg, where a long scratch remained, livid with blood.
Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes,
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
She opened her eyes at a sound that was both familiar and strange, blinking as she focused, and it gradually registered that the sound was Izzy, her unforgettable sweet voice rising into the air outside the high window, so close she could almost touch it. It told of a world far beyond this cell, of goodness, and kindness, of a wide, unending sky into which a voice could soar. She pushed herself up onto her elbow, listening. And then another voice joined hers, deeper and more resonant, and then, as she straightened, there they were, separate voices she could just distinguish from the others: Kathleen, Sophia, Beth, Alice.
Heaven’s morning breaks and earth’s vain shadows flee.
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.
She heard them and realized then that it was to her they were singing, heard Alice’s shout as the hymn drew to a close, her voice still clear as crystal.
“You stay strong, Margery! We’re with you! We’re right here with you!”
Margery O’Hare lowered her head to her knees, her hands covering her face and, at last, she sobbed.
TWENTY-FOUR
I loved something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.
• MARGARET MITCHELL, Gone with the Wind
By common agreement, on the opening day of the trial the WPA Packhorse Library of Baileyville, Kentucky, remained closed. As did the post office, the Pentecostal, Episcopalian, First Presbyterian and Baptist churches, and the general store, which opened only for an hour at 7 a.m. and then again for the lunch hour to cater to the influx of strangers who had arrived in Baileyville. Unfamiliar cars parked at haphazard angles all along the roadside from the courthouse, mobile homes dotted the nearby fields, and men with sharp suits and trilby hats walked the streets with notebooks in the dawn light, asking for background information, photographs, anything you like, on the murdering librarian Margery O’Hare.
When they reached the library, Mrs. Brady waved a broom at them, told them she would take the head off any one of them who ventured into her building without an invitation, and they could put that in their darned paper and print it. She didn’t seem to care too much what Mrs. Nofcier might think of that.
State policemen stood talking in pairs on the corners of the streets, and refreshment stands had been set up around the courthouse, while a snake-charmer invited the crowds to test their nerve and come closer, and the honky-tonks offered special deals on two-for-one keg beers at the end of every court day.
Mrs. Brady decided there was little point in the girls trying to make their rounds today. The roads were clogged, their minds were all over the place, and each of them wanted to be in court for Margery. And, anyway, long before seven that morning there was a queue of people trying to get into the public gallery. Alice stood at the head of it. As she waited, joined by Kathleen and the others, the queue built swiftly behind them: neighb
ors with lunch pails, somber recipients of library books, people she didn’t recognize, who seemed to think of this as fun, chatting merrily, joking and nudging each other. She wanted to scream at them, This is not some nice day out! Margery’s innocent! She shouldn’t even be here!
Van Cleve arrived, pulling his car into the sheriff’s parking slot, as if to let them all know just how close to the proceedings he was. He didn’t acknowledge her, but marched straight into court, jaw jutting, confident his own place had already been reserved. She didn’t see Bennett; perhaps he was minding business at Hoffman. He had never been much of a gossip, unlike his father.
Alice waited silently, her mouth dry and her stomach tight, as if it were she, not Margery, who was on trial. She guessed the others felt the same. They barely exchanged a word, just a nod of greeting, and a brief, tight clasp of hands.
At half past eight the doors opened, and the crowd flooded in. Sophia took a seat at the back with the other colored folk. Alice nodded at her. It felt wrong that she wasn’t sitting with them, another example of a world out of kilter.
Alice took her seat near the front of the public gallery on the wooden bench, flanked by her remaining friends, and wondered how they were meant to endure this for days.
* * *
• • •
The jury was called—all men, mostly tobacco farmers judging by their clothes, Alice thought, and none likely to be sympathetic to a sharp-talking unmarried woman with a bad name. Women, the clerk announced, would be allowed to leave several minutes before the men at lunchtime and at the end of the day in order to prepare meals, a fact which caused Beth to roll her eyes. And then Margery was led into the dock with cuffs around her wrists, as if she were a danger to those present, her appearance in court accompanied by low murmurs and exclamations from the gallery. She sat pale and silent, apparently uninterested in her surroundings, and barely met Alice’s eye. Her hair hung lank and unwashed and she looked impossibly weary, deep gray shadows under her eyes. Her arms lay in an unconscious loop, in a way that might have supported a baby, had Virginia still been there. She looked unkempt and uncaring.
She looked, Alice thought, with dismay, like a criminal.
Fred had said he would sit a row behind Alice, for appearances’ sake, and she turned to him, anguished. His mouth tightened, as if to say he understood, but what could you do?
And then Judge Arthur D. Arthurs arrived, chewing ruminatively on a wad of tobacco, and they all were standing on the instructions of the clerk. He sat, and Margery was asked to confirm that she was, indeed, Margery O’Hare, of the Old Cabin, Thompson’s Pass, and the clerk read out the charge against her. How did she plead?
Margery seemed to sway a little, and her eyes slid toward the public gallery.
“Not guilty,” she answered quietly, and there was a loud scoffing sound from the right-hand side of the court, followed by the loud banging of the judge’s gavel. He would not, repeat not, have an unruly court and nobody here was to so much as sniff without his permission. Did he make himself understood?
The crowd settled, albeit with an air of vaguely suppressed mutiny. Margery looked up at the judge and, after a moment, he nodded at her to sit down again, and that would be the extent of her animation until she was allowed to leave the courtroom.
* * *
• • •
The morning crept forward in legal increments, women fanning themselves and small children fidgeting in their seats, as the prosecuting counsel outlined the case against Margery O’Hare. It would be clear to all, he announced, in a somewhat nasal, showman’s voice, that before them was a woman brought up without morals, without concern for the decent, rightful way of doing things, without faith. Even her most visible enterprise—the so-called Packhorse Library—had proven to be a front for less savory preoccupations, and the state would show evidence of these through evidence from witnesses shaken by examples of her moral laxity. These deficiencies in both character and behavior had found their apotheosis one afternoon up on Arnott’s Ridge when the accused had come across the sworn enemy of her late father, and taken advantage of the isolated position and inebriation of Mr. Clem McCullough to finish what their feuding descendants had started.
While this went on—and it did go on, for the prosecuting counsel loved the sound of his own voice—the reporters from Lexington and Louisville scribbled furiously in small lined notebooks, shielding their work from each other and looking up intently at every new piece of information. When he came to the bit about “moral laxity,” Beth called out “Bullcrap!” earning herself a cuff from her father, who sat behind her, and a stern rebuke from the judge, who announced that one more word from her and she would be sitting outside in the dust for the rest of the trial. She listened to the remainder of the statement with her arms folded and the kind of expression that made Alice fear for the prosecution lawyer’s tires.
“You watch. Those reporters will write that these mountains run red with blood feuds and such nonsense,” muttered Mrs. Brady, from behind her. “They always do. Makes us sound like a bunch of savages. You won’t read a word about all the good this library—or Margery—has done.”
Kathleen sat silently on one side of Alice, Izzy the other. They listened carefully, their faces serious and still, and when he finished they exchanged looks that said they now understood what Margery was up against. Blood feuds aside, the Margery the court had described was so duplicitous, so monstrous, that if they had not known her they might have been afraid to sit just a few feet away from her too.
Margery seemed to know it. She looked deadened, as if the very thing that made her Margery had been squeezed out of her, leaving only an empty shell.
Alice wished for the hundredth time that Sven had not absented himself. Surely, no matter what she’d told him, Margery would have taken some comfort from having him there. Alice kept imagining what it must be like to be sitting in the dock, facing the end of everything she loved and held dear. It hit her then that Margery, who loved nothing better than solitude, to be left alone, unexamined, and who belonged outside, like a mule or a tree or a buzzard, was going to be in one of those tiny dark cells for ten, twenty years, if not the rest of her life.
And then she had to stand and push her way out of the gallery because she knew she was going to throw up from fear.
* * *
• • •
You okay?” Kathleen arrived behind her as she spat into the dust.
“Sorry,” Alice said, straightening. “I don’t know what came over me.”
Kathleen passed her a handkerchief and she wiped her mouth.
“Izzy’s holding our seats. But we’d best not be too long. People are already eyeing ’em.”
“I just . . . can’t bear it, Kathleen. Seeing her like that. Seeing the town like this. It’s like they just want the slightest excuse to think badly of her. It should be the evidence on trial, but it feels like it’s the fact that she doesn’t behave like they think she should.”
“It’s ugly, that’s for sure.”
Alice stopped for a minute. “What did you just say?”
Kathleen frowned.
“I said it’s ugly. Seeing the town close against her like this.” Kathleen looked at her. “What? . . . What did I say?”
Ugly. Alice kicked at a stone on the ground, digging her toe in until it dislodged. There is always a way out of a situation. Might be ugly. Might leave you feeling like the earth has gone and shifted under your feet. When she looked up her face had cleared. “Nothing. Just something Marge once said to me. Just . . .” She shook her head. “Nothing.”
Kathleen held out her arm and they walked back in.
* * *
• • •
There were lengthy lawyers’ arguments behind the scenes and these blurred into a break at lunchtime, and when the women left the courtroom they didn’t know quite what to do with themselves so
ended up walking slowly back toward the library in a clump, followed by Fred and Mrs. Brady, deep in conversation.
“You don’t have to go back in this afternoon, you know,” said Izzy, who was still a little appalled by the idea of Alice throwing up in public. “If it’s too much for you.”
“It was just nerves getting the better of me,” said Alice. “I was the same when I was a little girl. Should have made myself eat some breakfast.”
They walked on in silence.
“It’ll probably be better once our side gets to speak,” Izzy said.
“Yeah. Sven’s fancy lawyer will put them straight,” said Beth.
“Of course he will,” said Alice.
But none of them sounded convinced.
* * *
• • •
Day Two, it turned out, was not much better. The prosecution team outlined the autopsy report on Clem McCullough. The victim, a fifty-seven-year-old man, had died from a traumatic head injury consistent with a blunt instrument to the back of the head. He also had suffered facial bruising.
“Such as, for example, could be caused by a heavy hard-backed book?”
“That could be the case, yes,” said the physician who had conducted the autopsy.
“Or a bar fight?” suggested Mr. Turner, the defense lawyer. The physician thought for a moment. “Well, yes, that too. But he was some way from a bar.”
The area around the body had not been carefully examined, given the remoteness of the trail. Two of the sheriff’s men had carried it down the mountain track, a journey that had taken several hours, and a late snowfall had covered the ground where it had lain, but there was photographic evidence of blood, and possibly hoof-prints.