Justice For All

by Michael New

When Caleb pushed open the warped door of the shack in Hospital Heights in New Castle, the metallic scent of fresh blood hit him like a physical force. His hand trembled on the doorknob as ancient hinges protested, and for one wild moment, he thought he'd stumbled into something unspeakable. But no— - just a family butchering deer meat out of season, the harsh overhead bulb casting their shadows into grotesque giants against the low ceiling. As he watched the mother and son work their knives with practiced grace, something about their fluid movements made his stomach clench. These were people who knew how to cut things apart and how to separate what belonged together. The same family whose son had allegedly done just that to their niece's innocence.

The ceiling in the room was not more than seven feet above the dirt floor, and the only light was the bulb glowing over the half-slaughtered deer carcass. The cord for the bulb was looped around a J-hook in the ceiling and another over by the door to what at one time was a camper, where the two people with the knives held over the deer—the mother and the older son—directed Caleb to his client, Randy English, a man of nineteen accused of statutory rape. Caleb was the investigator for the Public Defenders in Henry County.

The girl, Eileen Worthington, who was fifteen, said Randy, her cousin, who was home on leave from the Marine Corps, had come in late one night and laid down with her on the couch. They had watched part of a movie, “A Star is Born,” together. Then Eileen said she fell asleep. When she woke up, Randy was doing it to her.

“Doing it to her?” Caleb said, glancing up at David Ballenger, the Prosecutor’s Investigator, the morning read through the report together. “You’re going to have to get more specific than that. This is not the good old days.”

“Everybody knows what she means,” David said. David, a tall, athletic man in his early thirties, had once been a cop and still thought that it mattered whether his shoes were polished. Caleb wore a pair of boots he bought at Penny’s, which, along with his blue jeans and work shirts, David considered unprofessional attire, one of the many reasons that David didn’t care for Caleb. David didn’t care much for the fact that Caleb had been to college. What could college teach somebody about police work? Criminal investigation? The way the courts work? And Caleb knew he was right, of course, but Caleb was a quick learner, and since being hired by the Public Defender’s office, he had been working hard to understand something about criminal law, the local police department, the Sheriff’s department, and the courts. He knew he had a long way to go, but he wasn’t worried, not by David. He seldom saw David move past the secretary at the front of the Prosecutor’s office.

“I was asleep," Randy said. His fingers drummed against the camper's metal table, creating a hollow rhythm that echoed his rising anxiety. The television flickered in the corner, casting shifting shadows across his Marine Corps tattoo. His eyes darted between Caleb and the door as he spoke, like a caged animal seeking escape.

The cramped space seemed to shrink with each passing moment, the aluminum walls holding in the heat of shame and fear.”

“That’s not much of a defense,” Caleb told Randy, who seemed more interested in the television show than with Caleb.

“Well,” the boy finally said offhandedly, “that’s all I got.”

“It’s hard to believe that someone could do that in his sleep,” Caleb said. “I mean I think it’ll be hard to convince a jury that that’s the way it happened.”

“I can’t help that,” Randy said, staring at Caleb in disbelief. “That’s the way it did happen.”

“Have you ever done anything like this before?”

The boy looked indignant.

“To my cousin? We was just friends last year. I don’t care what Mom said. We didn’t do anything. I guess I might, but she didn’t even let me get much past first base.”

“But you got to first base?”

Randy just stared at him.

“It might be important.”

“I didn’t do anything to her,” Randy said emphatically.

“I got you,” Caleb said, “but have you done anything like this in your sleep to anyone before? Do you walk in your sleep a lot?”

“No!” Randy said, again as if Caleb were trying to insinuate something about Randy that Randy didn’t like, although he couldn’t have put into words what that was. He just didn’t like the questions.

“Because,” Caleb said, “if you walked in your sleep, then at least the jury might think that doing stuff while you’re asleep is something you’re capable of doing.”

“I ain’t never walked in my sleep that I know of,” Randy said, “but I’d be asleep anyway, so I don’t guess I’d know, would I?”

“Has anybody ever told you that you walked in your sleep?” Caleb asked. “Like your mother or your brother out there? If they could testify that they’d seen you walk in your sleep and that you’d done some strange things in your sleep before, that’d give us a little something to work with, don’t you think?”

“I ain’t . . .,” the boy started to say. “I don’t know. I don’t think . . .. It’s just one of those things that happened. I don’t know. I’d been drinking and smoking a little. I was messed up; that’s for sure.”

“Statutory rape is pretty serious,” Caleb said.

“I know,” Randy said. “I need to report back to my commander by Tuesday. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“I’ll talk to them,” Caleb said.

Back at the office, Caleb talked to Billy O’Hara, the public defender, about how they might deal the case.

“I don’t want to throw the little stupid bastard in Michigan City,” Bill said. “He’ll come out worse than he went in.”

“What about Pendleton?” Caleb asked.

“I doubt it,” Billy said.

Caleb talked to the commander at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, who said they’d keep him in the brig for a year and then give him a dishonorable discharge.

Caleb walked up to the courthouse and talked to Judge Kellam, who was slated to rule on the case, before calling the commander back.

“That’d work for us,” Caleb told him.

“I’ll send some MPs up to get the stupid bastard,” the commander said. “They shouldn’t give some of these idiots leave; they just get themselves in trouble. They get to thinking that they’re above the regular law, and they get carried away. We keep them under tight control around here, so they get out, get back home, and just bust loose too much. Used to be that people didn’t care much, and they got away with a lot. They hear all kinds of stories like that, so naturally, they go out and get to drinking, and they figure they might as well try their luck.

“Girl’s people, what’ll they say? This work for them? We’ll make him pay for what he’s done; you tell them not to worry about that. The brig’s as bad as these state prisons, but they’re still in the military, so it works out better. They’re not in there with the kind that’d kill you for your watch. We’ll take care of your boy.”

When Caleb mentioned the commander’s concern for the girl’s family, Judge Kellam told him he should visit them and discuss the ruling.

Judge Kellam stood at his chamber window, his reflection ghosting against the glass that had witnessed decades of similar decisions. "See what they say," he said, each word measured like grain on ancient scales. His fingers traced invisible patterns on the windowpane as if trying to map out justice in the air. The leather of his chair creaked as he turned back to Caleb, and something in his eyes seemed to carry the weight of every family he'd ever seen torn apart in his courtroom. "Ask them what they want done." He paused, his hand settling on a stack of case files worn smooth by similar stories. "The girl's all right?"

The afternoon sun slanted through the blinds, cutting bars of light across the judge's desk. Caleb felt the weight of those shadows as he answered, "She's all right," knowing even as he spoke that 'all right' was a lie they all needed to believe. "As all right as you can be after being raped." The word 'raped' hung in the air between them like smoke, refusing to dissipate.

“She all right,” Caleb said, “as all right as you can be after being raped.”

“But he did hurt her?”

“I don’t guess so,” Caleb said. “There was nothing in the medical examination about any kind of trauma.”

“Point that out to the mother or the father, whoever you see,” Judge Kellam said, “and make sure they’re all right with what’s going to happen. Tell them that, in my opinion, this is the best for everybody. We don’t want to throw this boy away, but if they think he ought to be locked up in Michigan City, I want them to say so. I want to know what they think is the best thing to do here. I know the law, but I want to know what they think will be fair. You got that?” Judge Kellam's hand moved from the case files to an old brass letter opener, a familiar motion he'd made thousands of times. "You know, Caleb," he said, testing the dull edge with his thumb, "sometimes the law is like surgery. We cut to heal." He set the opener down with deliberate care. "But family wounds... they tend to keep bleeding.”

The girl's mother, the boy's aunt, was a big woman without any teeth. Her hair, which was gray and short, stood up off her forehead as if she pulled it all away from her face and her ears, her neck, any part of her body, almost like it was standing on it, except that it wasn’t straight, and it didn’t seem tense, just as if it naturally stood up like that. She wore what women like her around there called a “house coat”. It was thin, with no shape, and a pattern of flowers that caused it to resemble, in Caleb’s eyes, wallpaper.

The woman's hands worried the hem of her flower-print housecoat, twisting the thin fabric until it threatened to tear. "I don't know what to do," she said, her voice carrying the weight of generations of women who'd faced impossible choices. The overhead fan stirred stale air, barely moving the gray hair that stood away from her scalp like a crown of thorns. "What would you do?" As she asked, her eyes drifted toward Eileen's room, where the girl's bare legs stretched out from the red swivel chair like an accusation. The mother's fingers released the fabric only to find it again, a nervous dance of indecision. "She's my sister's boy," she added in a whisper that seemed to scrape against the walls. "How do you cut out half of your own heart?"

She moved to the window, her housecoat rustling like dead leaves. Outside, the clothesline where she'd hung Randy and Eileen's summer things side by side since they were children swayed empty in the breeze. "Used to be," she said, her breath fogging the glass, "I could fix anything between them with a popsicle and a stern word." Her hand pressed against the windowpane as if trying to reach through time to that simpler past.

The girl, Eileen, sat in a bedroom adjoining the living room, watching television in a red swivel chair with no back and arms that sloped down to the seat. She sat slumped in that chair, her legs so long that her feet struggled to find purchase.

“Is she all right?” Caleb asked.

“She seen some of them doctors over at the clinic there by the library,” the mother said.

Caleb had read the report.

“I mean,” Caleb said, “is she going to be able to forget all this, put it behind her, and get on with her life?”

“I reckon,” the woman said, looking more confused than confident. “They asked me if I wanted them to give her one of them morning after pills in case she was pregnant,” the mother said, “and I told them absolutely not. If she’s pregnant, then I’ll take care of that baby if nobody else will. This is a mess, but it ain’t that baby’s fault if there is a baby. But I don’t think she’s pregnant. You can tell. My mom could tell just like there.” The woman attempted to snap her fingers but produced no sound. “You been out to talk to his mom?”

“I did talk to her,” Caleb said.

“What did she say?”

“She said that Randy and Eileen had been pretty close before he joined the Marines.”

“I think that’s why she had Randy join up,” the woman said. “She wanted to get him away from Eileen.”

“Would it be all right if I talked to Eileen?” Caleb asked cautiously.

“I reckon,” her mother said.  “If she wants to.”

Caleb waited for the mother to make a move, to ask the girl if she wanted to talk to him, but when it appeared evident that she  had  no intention of doing that, Caleb stood up and stepped over to the bedroom door where he knocked gently on the frame.  The girl glanced at Caleb.  She appeared bored and tired.

“Would you mind,” Caleb said, remaining in the doorway, “telling me what you remember from the night . . . of the incident, when . . .”

Eileen shrugged her shoulders, glanced at the television, and then began to speak.

"We was sitting on the couch. I was brushing my hair, staring at myself up there in the mirror, wondering what was going to happen.  We’d been pretty close before, you know.  I tried to watch what was on the television, but I couldn’t.  I was tired.  It was late.  I wished I was one of the people in the movie.  I might’ve fallen asleep.  Maybe I was dreaming. I felt him touch my hand when he got up.  It didn’t mean anything.  Then, I don’t know.  I put the brush down and laid down on the couch.  Maybe I shouldn’t.  I know. I just . . . .  Then I guess I fell asleep.  That’s what everybody told me happened.  Anyway, I was tired, and I don’t know . . . .  I was watching the movie or dreaming I was, and I liked the movie.  They seemed so happy. Then, I don’t know, I felt funny, like . . . . Then, I woke up . . . . I didn’t scream but pushed him off of me and came in here and shut that door, and when I heard him leave, I went in and told my mom because I thought I might have a baby, and she called the police, and that was awful. I cried and tried to tell them what they wanted . . .  They acted like they knew what had happened all the time.  I just wanted to forget it unless . . .  I still don’t know. . . . Some doctor over at the emergency room there at the hospital told my mom I wasn’t going to get pregnant though, probably.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I guess that’s good, but . . . I don’t know.”  She glanced at Caleb, shrugged her shoulders again as if wanting to dismiss everything that had happened, then turned her attention back to the television.

After his year in the brig, Randy took a job in Oklahoma City as a welder for a man who manufactured pipe for the local oil industry. His hands, which had once held knives over deer carcasses in that dim-lit shack, now joined metal to metal with careful precision. Some things, once cut apart, could be fused back together.

Eileen, on the other hand, remained in New Castle. Caleb saw her mother once at the courthouse and asked about the girl. 

“She just mopes around mostly,” her mother said.  “She ain’t the same.  That took something out of her.  She’s different now than she used to be.  What happened hurt all of us. It’s a shame.”

 So, I thought as I mounted the steps past the statue of Justitia, while some things, when cut apart by circumstances, can be fused back together, others remain forever broken.