Shad looks at the jury and speaks with quiet conviction. “Ladies and gentlemen, who, upon hearing this tale, would not bring the learned physician before the bar of justice to answer for what happened during that night? That is why I brought this case to trial. For these past few days, the physician’s lawyer has told you what a kind and wonderful man he is. He has not challenged the physical evidence of what transpired during that fateful night. He has rested his defense upon the physician’s character. This physician, he says, has filled all the long years between abandoning his lover and watching her die with good works, and these works should outweigh all else. But take away those things—which I believe were done in penance—and remember the parable as I told it to you. It may be that because of Dr. Cage’s kind face and comforting bedside manner, you cannot imagine the man behind that face committing sinful, selfish acts. But we are all sinners, ladies and gentlemen. We all act to protect ourselves and our families.
“Pondering the parable I’ve told today, I realized that perhaps the learned physician himself did not realize how much closer in spirit he was to the ignorant soldiers than to the woman he seduced and cast into the street. It is not for me to judge him, though. That burden—that duty—lies with you. When you go back into that jury room, think not of Tom Cage and his years of small kindnesses, but rather of the young black girl who met the brutal soldiers on the road, and who came to the learned physician for help. Consider what she received from his hands, both then and on that final night forty years later, when she died. The facts of what happened in that house have not been challenged. The law is clear. And the judgment of the learned physician’s character . . . I leave to you.
“Thank you.”
As Shad Johnson walks to his seat, the sheer brilliance of his closing argument takes my breath away. What has this trial been but a battle of competing narratives? A Rashomon-like drama in which different characters have recounted different versions of the same event and its attendant history? Faulkner did the same thing in Absalom, Absalom, demonstrating that no two people ever experience the same event, and that history is doomed to be only a version of events. In his radically unorthodox closing argument, Shad seized control of the narrative. By stripping away all the distracting particulars of the relationship between Viola and my father, he lifted the story into the realm of the mythic and made it universal. And in that symbolic realm, the tragic truth that underlay their relationship was laid bare.
My father, however pure his motives might have seemed to him while living out that episode of his life, was part of the dominant, oppressive class. Viola was only a few generations out of slavery. The power differential between them was almost incalculable, a gulf that could not be bridged in the context of the era in which they lived. As Viola knew—probably long before my father—no positive outcome for them had ever been possible.
As I feared he would all along, Quentin underestimated Shadrach Johnson. Shad did not make the same mistake. Tactically outmaneuvered by his legendary foe, Shad adapted accordingly. By creating a parable with biblical resonance, and tailoring it to the case before the bar, he beat “Preacher” Avery at his own game. Were my father’s freedom not at stake, I would be filled with admiration for Shad’s accomplishment. But right now my throat burns with the caustic taste of ashes. The cases have been presented, the last argument has been made, and the reality of the present cannot be denied: Quentin Avery miscalculated badly.
And yet . . . despite the genius Shad displayed in his close, no rational jury that followed the law could convict my father of murder. And certainly not this jury, which must contain at least a few people who have loved and admired him for decades.
A few feet ahead of me, my father and Quentin are engaged in muffled argument. Dad is speaking with low intensity, while Quentin seems to be trying to quiet him. Quentin’s white hair bobs up and down as Dad’s voice gains in urgency. The first coherent phrase I catch is “I won’t let you do it.” I’m not sure which of them said that, and before I can figure it out, Judge Elder has turned from the jury and focused on the argument.
“Mr. Avery?” he says. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Yes, Your Honor,” my father says, pushing Quentin away from him. “I want to change my plea.”
The shock produced by this statement is so profound that for a couple of seconds no one even breathes. In this brief vacuum, my father turns in his chair and looks back at my mother, his eyes filled with apology. The sorrow and guilt I see there shake me to the core.
Then Judge Elder says, “You want to change your plea?”
Dad faces forward again. “Yes, Your Honor. I want to plead guilty.”
“Your Honor,” Quentin interjects, “my client doesn’t know what he’s saying. He’s overcome by grief over the death of Mr. Garrity last night, and—”
“No,” Dad says with undeniable force. “I know what I’m doing, Judge.”
Joe Elder’s face darkens as the full import of the situation penetrates his shock. “All right, now. We’re going to excuse the jury, and I’m going to have the lawyers approach the bench to discuss this. Bailiff?”
As the bailiff moves to herd the stunned jury from the court, the gallery explodes into conversation. Only then do I regain my faculties sufficiently to realize my mother is in severe distress beside me. She looks like she did on the night I found her in the upstairs hall, thinking she’d had a stroke. The only difference is that she’s still sitting erect.
“Mom?” I say, gripping her arm. “Can you hear me?”
She turns her head then, and in her eyes I see despair and desperation. “Go with them,” she whispers. “Don’t let him do it. Hurry!”
Jumping to my feet, I scan the gallery for a doctor. Every face out there stares at me like a driver gaping at the carnage of a highway traffic accident. I haven’t been on my feet for three seconds when Drew Elliott steps away from the back wall and waves to me.
“Drew! Mom needs you!”
My old friend hurries forward.
When I turn back to the bar, I see Quentin, Dad, and Shad following Judge Elder through the door to his chambers, with Doris Avery scurrying to catch them. Without Judge Elder to enforce decorum, the courtroom dissolves into chaos. The deputies on the left wall look like witnesses to some one-in-a-million sports phenomenon, while the circuit clerk and court reporter stand together, shaking their heads, their faces red.
“Penn, go after them!” my sister says from my shoulder. “Drew and I will take care of Mom!”
I cross the well at a run and reach the door just as a deputy moves to take up a post in front of it.
“I’m co-counsel for the defense!” I tell him. “Let me through.”
The deputy hesitates, then opens the door and lets me pass.
Ten steps take me to Judge Elder’s office, and by the time I get there, Quentin is begging his old clerk to call a recess and have Dad examined by a psychiatrist. But the instant he falls silent, Dad speaks in the voice of a man completely in charge of his faculties.
“Judge Elder, I understand my attorney’s distress. But I am of sound mind, and I want to change my plea to guilty. I fully understand the consequences of such a change.”
Shad is staring at my father like he might at someone who has done something completely contrary to human nature—which he has.
“Dad, you can’t do this,” I tell him. “Judge, you can’t let him do it. He’s distraught over the deaths of Walt Garrity and my fiancée. He’s been deeply depressed ever since Caitlin’s death, and Walt’s death pushed him over the edge.”
Joe Elder listens very carefully to me. Then he says, “Your father sounded perfectly in control when he testified this morning. And not particularly depressed.”