“That’s quite a change of heart after lying for thirty-eight years, wouldn’t you say?”
Quentin dismisses my implication with a wave of his hand. “The jury wants the truth, Penn. And I’ve finally got a client who’s willing to stand by everything he ever did.”
“So to hell with the rules of evidence?” I glance at Doris, who obviously shares my confusion. “Let’s join hands and listen to Dad’s life story from the age of one, then let the jury decide his fate?”
“If that’s the way Shad wants to go, so be it.”
“What?”
“I trust the jury, Penn. Even at my age. You’re still a prosecutor at heart. I don’t think the jury’s so quick to cast stones.”
“But they are, Quentin. It’s human nature. With some jurors, the higher up you are, the more pleasure they take in pulling you down. With others, the more they worshipped you, the more furious they are when they find you’re not who they thought you were.”
“That’s a sad way to look at the world, brother. You should have a little more faith in your fellow man.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve been through too many murder trials for that.”
Quentin shrugs in his wheelchair. “If you think your father’s ready to trade me for you, go up to the men’s room by the holding cell upstairs. That’s where he is. Give it your best shot. I’ll abide by his decision.”
I’m reaching for the door when Walt Garrity crashes through it, a look of fury in his eye. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” he bellows. Then he looks past me, at Quentin. “You’ve got to put me on the stand! That goddamn pilot didn’t tell half the story.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Quentin says. “I don’t need you.”
Incredulous, the old Texas Ranger looks at me, his face almost purple.
“It’s not Quentin’s decision anymore,” I tell Walt, taking hold of his arm. “Or it won’t be in five minutes. I’ll be calling you to the stand myself in about ten minutes.”
“Goddamn right!” Walt throws a glare at Quentin as he leaves the office.
As I follow him, I look back at Doris. “Please answer your cell when I call.”
She nods once, and I go.
Shaken by my confrontation with Quentin, and speeding from adrenaline at the prospect of taking over Dad’s defense, I experience the walk to the upstairs restroom in slow motion. As I pick my way through the crowd, an old filmstrip of images flashes like a Super 8 movie projected onto my retinas. I see my father as a younger man, wearing sunglasses and a short-sleeve no-iron shirt in glaring sunlight, looking down at my outstretched hands as I beg him to come into the pool with me. So many summer activities revolved around water in Mississippi, but Dad rarely ever went into pools or ponds, or even the ocean. I can still hear my mother telling me, “Daddy doesn’t like to swim,” or “Daddy doesn’t like the sun.” In my mind, this explained why he was always pale, why he never took his shirt off, even when the other dads waded in to lift us onto their shoulders to fight battles in the shallow end.
But a few times, on vacation, Dad did go swimming. Maybe five times in my entire childhood. The time that remains indelible is the summer our parents took us to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for a medical conference. Dad had bought me a toy submarine, a sleek gray plastic model that could actually submerge by means of a dissolvable tablet that trailed bubbles behind the sub. I was having so much fun that I repeatedly begged him to come in, and to my amazement, he finally relented and went back to the room to change into a bathing suit.
When he returned, I saw puckered purple scars on his shoulders, belly, and thighs. Time had faded the marks, but his general color was so pale that they stood out like night crawlers on his skin. Before I could think much about them, Dad splashed into the water and started a game of submarine warfare with me, and I forgot the scars. After we ran out of submerging tablets, he set aside the toy and gave me “real submarine rides” underwater. I’d hold my breath and cling to his neck, then stare at his big freckled shoulders as he frog-kicked between the forest of white legs in the blue-green water of the hotel pool. Looking back now, that might have been the best day of my childhood—the day my daddy did something he hated so that I would be happy. The livid bumps on his shoulders and stomach did little to dampen my fun, but I didn’t completely forget them. Later I asked Mom about them, and I saw sadness come into her face.
“Daddy got those in the war,” she said.
“How?” I asked. “Did the Germans shoot him?”
“A different war. Koreans shot him, I guess, or Chinese. I don’t really know. Daddy doesn’t like to talk about it. So don’t ask him, all right? Not until you’re older.”
I promised I wouldn’t, and for a long time I didn’t. When I finally got up the nerve, at fifteen, Dad shrugged it off and said he’d been hit by shrapnel in Korea, but it was nothing to write home about. Those were his exact words. But if that was so, why did I always perceive a sense of shame when I saw him without his shirt, or wearing short pants? It was like walking into a room and seeing your father’s genitals, only a lot more awkward. Like Dad, I had a penis of my own. But I didn’t have war wounds. Even now, as a man, I have no firsthand knowledge of war. But after hearing Major Powers’s account of what happened in that ambulance, I finally have some idea of what my father did in Korea. Perhaps I also understand the sense of shame that went with his wounds.
Pushing through the men’s room door at last, I find Dad leaning over the sink. He looks like a man who’s been beaten by someone who knows how to hurt you deep without leaving marks on the surface.
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says. “I hoped you’d never have to hear that story. Korea wasn’t all like what happened in that ambulance.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing will ever change the way I feel about you. But right now’s not the time to talk about that. We have to move fast.”
“What do you mean, son?”
“Dad . . . Quentin can’t represent you any longer. I know you had your own reasons for hiring him, but if you let him continue like this, you’ll never hold Annie in your arms again outside a prison.”
He blinks as though this prospect has finally begun to sink in. “What would you do if I fired Quentin?”
“Ask for a mistrial. If I don’t get that, I’ll cross-examine every witness and keep out all inadmissible testimony. The jury should never have heard Major Powers’s story, and Judge Elder knows it. The circuit clerk just told me we need to fire Quentin.”
“But Shad’s almost finished his case.”
“Has he? I’m afraid he’s going to parade a dozen relatives of dead patients through there and have them accuse you of euthanizing their sainted mothers. And Quentin will let him do it.”
Dad shakes his head. “There won’t be any of that.”