The Buzzard Table

CHAPTER

6


Turkey vultures usually hiss when they feel threatened.

—The Turkey Vulture Society




Wednesday morning

I had been half joking when I said that my mother-in-law would probably cajole Martin Crawford into talking to a class at West Colleton High. It never occurred to me that she would rope Anne Harald in for something as well. Yet when I came back to my courtroom after the midmorning break, there sat Miss Emily on the front bench with Anne Harald on one side and Richard Williams on the other. Miss Emily wouldn’t meet my eyes, but Anne gave me a rueful smile and Richard beamed with his usual friendly optimism.

As the youth minister at the Methodist church here in Dobbs and an advocate for troubled kids, Richard was in and out of the courthouse several times a week pleading that his charges be given another chance to straighten out their lives before they were sentenced to serious jail time. He could be here for the shoplifter, one of the D&Ds, the malicious vandalism, or for anyone else under the age of twenty-five.

But Miss Emily?

I ran my finger down the calendar until I came to Jeremy Patrick Harper, charged back in December with trespassing, and I remembered that she’d asked me where a charge of trespassing on state property would be tried. In district court or superior?

There had been another flurry of peace demonstrations at the small county airport that forms the bottom of a triangle between our house and Cotton Grove, and it had made the national news because the protestors were claiming that the field was again being used for rendition flights. Sheriff Bo Poole’s picture even landed on the front page of the Washington Post because he had sent deputies out to keep order and they wound up arresting a photographer who had breached the chain-link fence and tried to get a look inside one of the privately leased hangars.

“I don’t have a problem with people exercising their constitutional right to protest,” Bo was quoted as saying, “long as they don’t go trespassing on other people’s constitutional rights.”

Like most Americans who like to think that global events don’t really touch their small safe lives, I had been appalled to learn that our country’s war on terror had included torturing suspected terrorists and even more appalled to think that some of the planes that ferried prisoners from Guantanamo to be tortured in foreign countries might have used the little airstrip here in Colleton County as a refueling or transfer stop. Yet this was what the news media claimed six or seven years ago. Call me naïve, but till then I’d been under the impression that it was just a convenience for eastern North Carolina business executives who wanted to park their Lears and Gulfstreams at less congested and somewhat cheaper hangars than Raleigh. Since I don’t own a plane and don’t know anyone who does, I hadn’t paid much attention to that airport except to vaguely wonder why there were no commercial commuter flights in and out. Dwight says its true purpose was the worst-kept secret in the county, but I must have been the last law-connected person in Dobbs to hear that while the field was officially owned by the state, it had been built with CIA money and that the planes that did fly in and out weren’t all corporate jets by any means. Or rather, they were corporate jets, but the corporations were shells set up by the CIA and Blackwater to hide their true ownership.

Blackwater, the guns-for-hire company that originated in the swampy northeast corner of the state within commuting distance of the Norfolk SEAL base, has been renamed Xe. The last I heard, its ex-SEAL founder now lives in Abu Dhabi and claims he’s out of the government contracting business. I don’t know about our own government, but if you Google “Abu Dhabi” and dig down a couple of layers, you’ll find allegations that their government has hired mercenaries to protect the oil fields and prevent another Arab Spring within the emirate. Oh, and the Pentagon is still shelling out millions to buy airplane fuel from them through noncompetitive contracts.

So what else is new?



When Jeremy Harper’s name was called shortly before noon, the teenager who had been seated behind Miss Emily came forward and stood at the defendant’s table beside his attorney, Reid Stephenson, who happens to be my first cousin, once removed, and a former law partner from when I was in private practice with Stephenson and Lee.

Small-town courtrooms can sometimes seem incestuous to strangers, but if judges recuse themselves every time a friend or relative stands up to argue a case for or against another friend or relative, court calendars would become an exercise in futility. No one’s ever accused me of favoring Reid. If anything, John Claude Lee, the other partner in my former firm (and yes, another cousin), complains that I always lean too far backwards in my determination to be fair. He himself won’t come into my court unless his case is totally ironclad.

Today’s ADA was Claudia O’Hale (no kin to any of us), and after she’d read the charges, I said, “How do you plead, Mr. Harper?”

“Not guilty, ma’am.” For one so tall and skinny, Jeremy Harper had an unexpectedly deep voice. He had a prominent Adam’s apple on a slightly longer than usual neck, and it didn’t help that he had very curly, very thick, and very light blond hair that poufed up all over his head. When the light hit it, his fair hair was closer to silver than gold. As he and Reid sat down, those frizzy white curls and the long neck gave him a vague resemblance to a dandelion gone to seed. If I wanted to get fanciful, I could almost imagine that his dark green sweater formed the dandelion’s basal leaves.

Resisting the temptation to look for further parallels, I gave my attention to Claudia O’Hale, who had called the arresting officer to the witness stand. Deputy Tub Greene wasn’t much older than young Harper, but he was the complete professional in his crisply pressed shirt and creased wool slacks, despite a utility belt that strained against his disappearing waistline as my clerk swore him in. Hard to stay in shape when you sit in a patrol car too long and snack on Moon Pies and RCs.

Upon being asked about that December day, Greene described how the protestors had been issued a permit that clearly stated they had to stay outside the fence, but that the defendant had later been caught trying to get inside one of the locked hangars with his camera. When given the chance to leave the premises without penalty, Mr. Harper had become foulmouthed and verbally abusive, whereupon he was placed under arrest.

Reid stood to cross-examine. He’s tall and good-looking, with such a boyish face that women jurors have a hard time voting against him. Unfortunately for him, this was not a jury trial.

“When you say my client ‘tried to get inside,’ Deputy Greene, what do you mean?”

“When apprehended, he was carrying a crowbar.”

“Did you see him actually use it?”

“No, sir.”

“Did he threaten you with it?”

“No, sir.”

“So you arrested him merely because he was carrying a perfectly legal carpenter’s tool.”

“No, sir. I arrested him because he was trespassing and refused to leave.”

“Were you aware that my client is a freelance reporter and has had some of his pictures published in the Dobbs Ledger and the Cotton Grove Courier?”

“No, sir, not at that time. Besides, he wasn’t wearing a press badge.”

“No further questions,” Reid said and sat down.

I looked over at the ADA. “Ms. O’Hale?”

“Redirect, Your Honor. Deputy Greene, were there any members of the press at this demonstration?”

“Yes, ma’am. There was a reporter from the News and Observer and two television stations. There were also stringers for the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press.”

“And did any of these real reporters—”

“Objection,” said Reid.

“Sustained,” I said. “Less pejorative, please, Ms. O’Hale.”

“Sorry, Your Honor.” She turned back to the deputy. “Were those reporters wearing press badges?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And did any of the reporters with credentials push their way onto the field?”

“No, ma’am. They poked their long-lens cameras through the chain-link fence, but they respected our instructions and didn’t try to get in. Just Mr. Harper.”

“Any of them get foulmouthed because you kept them from entering?”

“No, ma’am.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

I looked at my cousin. “Redirect, Mr. Stephenson?”

Without rising, Reid said, “What about you, Deputy Greene? Weren’t you the one who got foulmouthed first?”

The young officer flushed a deep brick red. His mother goes to the same church as one of my born-again sisters-in-law, a church that does not hold with cussing. “I don’t remember,” he said, avoiding my eyes.

“No further questions,” Reid said.

“Ms. O’Hale?” I asked.

“The State rests,” she told me.

“Call your first witness, Mr. Stephenson.”

Reid touched the young man’s shoulder and told him to take the stand. Once Harper had sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he told us his name and that he had turned eighteen a week after the incident.

“In your own words, Jeremy, why did you go out to that airstrip and what did you hope to accomplish?”

Despite his resemblance to a dandelion, there was nothing fuzzy about the boy’s response. He sizzled with self-righteousness. “We heard that they’d started up the rendition flights again and we called for a demonstration against it.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Reid asked.

“P-A-T. Patriots Against Torture. We’re a loosely organized Internet group of concerned citizens from wherever these flights touch down—Nevada, Maine, North Carolina. We’re people who don’t believe America should sanction torture no matter what the excuse or provocation.”

“Where are your headquarters?”

Young Harper gave an impatient jerk of his head. “We don’t have a headquarters. I told you. We’re an Internet group on Yahoo! and I’m one of the group’s administrators. It’s like Facebook except that it’s not as visible. You can’t just Google PAT and enter our website. You have to join and get the password before you can read or post. We have links to some other activist groups, so when we heard that one of the suspect planes had been seen using the Colleton County Airport, the people over in Kinston called for that demonstration. We hoped to get fifteen or twenty people, instead we got nearly forty. And it was really cold that day, too.”

Reid glanced down at his notes. “You’ve told me that the demonstration was supposed to be peaceful and nonconfrontational. Why were you arrested?”

“Because I tried to get inside one of the hangars to get a look at the identifying numbers on the fuselage of that Gulfstream jet. I was really hoping to take a picture of them changing the numbers.”

“Changing the numbers?”

“Rendition planes routinely get new numbers painted on the fuselage to keep people like me from keeping track of where they are. I thought if I could get inside that hangar I could find the paint sprayers and maybe some of the stencils they use for the new numbers, and that would be visual proof that the CIA was using our airport for these illegal activities.”

“Illegal? What’s illegal about the CIA flying in and out of the county?”

“Because they’re flying prisoners suspected of terrorism to foreign soil. Suspected. Not proved, because they won’t put those prisoners on trial.”

“Again, what’s illegal about that?” Reid persisted.

Harper’s hands tightened on the armrest of the witness chair and his curls bounced like springs as he grew more impassioned. “It may not be illegal in the technical sense, although the Constitution mandates speedy trials, but it’s hypocritical and immoral. Our soldiers aren’t fighting and dying so that America can turn into one of those fundamentalist countries where laws don’t protect its citizens. We’re supposed to be Christians. We say we don’t torture people, and it’s illegal for Americans to do it, so we fly them to a different country that’s not so hypocritical and let them be tortured there. We—”

Reid held up his hand to cut off the boy’s rant.

Jeremy Harper sank back into his chair, but instead of waiting for Reid to frame another question, he looked up to me beseechingly. “If they didn’t think it was wrong and that we would care, why do they mess with the planes’ registration numbers?”

“Do you know for a fact that they do?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. One of our members called the FAA in Oklahoma from the Kinston airport. You’re supposed to be able to give them a fuselage number and they have to tell you who it’s registered to. He gave them the number and they told him there was no such plane with that number. He said, ‘Ma’am, I’m standing here looking at the plane and those are the numbers,’ and the woman said, ‘Sir, you don’t understand. There is no such plane,’ and then she hung up.”

“Hearsay, Your Honor,” Claudia O’Hale murmured.

“Sustained,” I said.

“Let’s go back to the day in question,” Reid said. “You knew you were not supposed to go inside the fence?”

As if the tenor of that question had abruptly reduced his actions from high-minded nobility to juvenile misbehavior, Harper gave a sulky, “Yes, sir.”

“Deputy Greene gave you an opportunity to move back behind the fence without any charges, why didn’t you take it?”

“Because he was acting like citizens and taxpayers have no right to question anything the government does, and when he called me a Muslim-loving motherf*cker—sorry, Your Honor—I called him something right back and told him he was like a Nazi soldier. Just following orders without asking if those orders were legal or ethical.”

Seated behind the prosecution’s table, Deputy Greene stared straight ahead, stony-faced except for a dull red flush creeping up from his tight collar.

To my mind, Nazi is an epithet too freely tossed around by people who have no true sense of what it means, but again, as when I’d sustained the hearsay, I held my tongue.

“Thank you, Mr. Harper,” Reid said. “If it pleases the court, Your Honor, my client will change his plea from not guilty to guilty with extenuating circumstances.”

I looked at Claudia, who said, “One question, if I may, Your Honor?”

“Proceed,” I told her.

“Mr. Harper, you talk about citizenship and taxpayers. May I ask how much tax you paid to the IRS last year?”

Now it was Harper’s turn for a red face, but he jutted out his chin and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Nothing,” he said pugnaciously. “I’m a high school student. The only job I can find doesn’t pay enough to let me help pay your salary.”

“No further questions,” Claudia said.

“You may step down,” I told Harper.

When Reid said he had no further witnesses, I looked at Claudia. “What’s the State asking, Ms. O’Hale?”

Several of her male relatives are in the National Guard and she doesn’t have much tolerance for civil disobedience where the military is concerned. She suggested some jail time and an injunction against the young man ever stepping onto the airfield again.

“Mr. Stephenson?”

“Your Honor, as you know, Mrs. Bryant is the principal at West Colleton High School. Before you pass sentence, she’d like to speak on his behalf.”

Dwight’s mother stood up and placed her hands on the rail between her and the defense table. Mid-sixties now, her once fiery red hair has softened into a rusty white, but her commitment to her students still blazes brightly. She described how young Jeremy Harper had entered her school as a freshman with a chip on both shoulders. His parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce, their house was in foreclosure, and as if this weren’t enough, the older brother he idolized was killed in Iraq before midterm exams. He came very close to flunking out.

“When his brother’s effects were sent home, though, they included a good digital camera, and that camera saved him.”

She said the yearbook’s faculty advisor saw some of the pictures he took over the following summer and invited him to join the staff if he could get his grades up. “Last year, we won an honorable mention from the American Scholastic Press Association and they cited the photographs for their excellence.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall above the jury box. It was somewhat past my usual time to recess for lunch. Miss Emily followed my eyes. “I’ll get to the point, Debor— I mean, Your Honor. As you know, Anne Harald is a Pulitzer Prize winner. She’s seen Jeremy’s photographs and she thinks he has a genuine talent. She’s willing to give him pointers about getting good pictures that tell the story without violating legal and journalistic protocols.”

She paused and looked up at the man on her left. “Richard?”

Reid cleared his throat. “Mr. Williams would like to add to that, Your Honor.”

As Miss Emily sat down and Richard Williams stood, I said, “Mr. Williams?” and tried very hard not to beam back at him, but he has one of the most infectious smiles of anyone I’ve ever met. His hazel eyes twinkled behind his glasses, and when he beetled his thick white eyebrows at me, I almost lost it. I knew that if I asked him how he was, he’d say, “Awesome! Absolutely awesome!” and we’d be off and running.

A large tall man of late middle age, his soft white hair was retreating toward the crown of his head. He wore pleated gray slacks and a navy windbreaker that carried the logo of a Methodist youth camp.

Unlike most denominations, Methodists are required to bring in a new head minister every three or four years. I suppose it’s an attempt to keep their churches from forming cliques and splitting up every six or seven years the way the Baptists seem to do every time half the congregation starts to feel that the minister is listening only to the other half. But Richard has been youth minister at the Methodist church here in Dobbs for as long as I could remember. Not that I was ever anything other than a visitor there when invited to attend an event by some of my friends. I was brought up Southern Baptist and have never seen a reason to convert to something else.



I wasn’t quite sure what Richard Williams, who lives and works in Dobbs, would have to do with Jeremy Harper, who attends the high school out near Cotton Grove, twenty-odd miles away.

“Jeremy’s grandparents are members of our congregation, so I’ve known him since he was born,” Richard said. “And now that he and his mother are living with them—”

He didn’t have to explain further. The Cotton Grove house must have gone down the same drain as the parents’ marriage.

“Jeremy’s keeping up his grades and he works weekends at Burger King. I’ve been trying to counsel him about the best way to channel his peace efforts, but I don’t know anything about photojournalism, so when Mrs. Bryant called and told me about Mrs. Harald’s generous offer, it occurred to me that between us we could come up with something meaningful for him to do to fulfill the community service hours you’re going to give him.”

I did have to smile at that. “And just how do you know I’d planned to give him community service instead of jail time?”

He beamed back at me. “Because you’re a kind person,” he said. “Besides, you’ve had nephews who’ve had trouble with the law and you’ve seen the difference between meaningful service and jail time that doesn’t teach them anything.”

“And you think you and Mrs. Harald can design a program that will let him accomplish something more significant than spending a hundred hours picking up trash from our roadsides?”

“Absolutely!”

“Very well,” I said. “Mr. Harper, I sentence you to three days in the county jail, the sentence to be suspended on condition that you not trespass on the Colleton County Airport property and that you complete seventy-two hours of community service as designed by Mr. Williams and Mrs. Harald, subject to the approval of this court.”

Before I could bring down my gavel, Richard said, “What about court costs, Your Honor?”

I sighed. A recent statute requires us to make a special finding before we waive the court costs, but a student with a limited income certainly qualifies.

“Court costs waived,” I said, making the appropriate notation on the form in front of me. “This court will be in adjournment until two o’clock.”