A Covenant with Death by Stephen Becker

principle but many in practice. Washington was a long way off and we all felt that we could manage nicely without the Great White Father. Since our full initiation into the Union we had benefitted to the extent of one war and the Eighteenth Amendment. And as far as I could see that was all. My mother thought we should have applied to Mexico or set up an independent state under Pancho Villa.
    John slid out of my seat, but I motioned him back and squeezed in beside him. He thanked me with a glance and we turned to the proceedings, which were barely under way. An elderly gentleman was being sworn. “Clement Hoyers,” John whispered. Her father.
    Clement Hoyers, duly sworn and identified, proved to be a ticket agent for the railroad. He was gray and apparently dyspeptic, belching frequently but with delicacy. He was also grief-stricken and vengeful. Having established, to no one’s satisfaction, Louise’s virtue before marriage; having revealed that he had opposed the marriage because Bryan was not steadily employed; having sniffled a bit and pulled himself together, he entered forbidden territory at Dietrich’s bidding.
    â€œPlease describe the tragic events of nineteen-nineteen,” Dietrich told him. “I know it will not be easy for you. And I want to ask you to repeat only those conversations in which you participated.”
    Oliver Parmelee rose slowly. “Your Honor,” he drawled, “I object to this as irrelevant. I realize that counsel wants to establish a background of conflict and unhappiness, but I’d like to point out that half the marriages in this world survive in spite of conflict and unhappiness, and that the District Attorney is asking us to believe that a general condition—like marriage itself—goes to prove motive in this case. I don’t ask for an offer of proof because I assume I’m right about what he’s after. I say it’s immaterial.”
    A general condition. Like marriage itself. Sad and discouraging words from a father of four. I resented them on Rosemary’s behalf, and glared at the back of his neck. Did he believe it? Did I? I had sensed it, the heap of dust left by friable passion, the murderous daily routine, the cold bed; had sensed it in law students married young and soon sorry, in the fussy and resentful child bride deceived and insulted by hairy reality; or years later in the heavy, sullen husband bringing home his sour stomach, turning with distaste from his expanding wife and her inevitable flowered print, eating his supper and communicating in grunts. Sensed it, but not believed it. Never, for example, with my Rosemary! Behind the drabbest façade, I thought, still stood the fancy house. Or half believed it, realizing after a time that I was lucky because my father pawed my mother cheerfully and often and the sound of hand slapping fanny was in our house a triumphal and celebratory clash of golden cymbals; but also that I lived in a world where that might be rare. I could never be sure whether I had been made privy to a loving way of life or asked to stake my future on an illusion. Parmelee thought it was an illusion, half the time, or so he had just said; and he was objecting to Dietrich’s hint, soon to be magnified, that out of so general a disillusionment could come so specific a murder.
    Hochstadter denied the objection. Parmelee had expected that, and subsided; he was making a record for his appeal.
    â€œWell, in September of nineteen-nineteen,” Hoyers began, “they’d been married about a year and a half, when Louise came home to Dallas one day. She was kind of moody and sad—”
    â€œObjection,” Parmelee called out.
    â€œDenied,” Hochstadter said. “Go on, Mr. Hoyers.”
    â€œWell, she wasn’t happy, I could tell that, and the first night home we heard her crying in bed. I wanted Sarah to go see what was the matter but Sarah said tomorrow, it’s just