Paris Trout by Pete Dexter Page B

affected
him. He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes on the street. "She was
fourteen years old," Seagraves said.
    Trout looked at him quickly and then back out the
window. "I didn't have nothing to do with her birthday," he
said. "I never put myself in her business, she put herself in
mine."
    Seagraves moved closer and spoke just above a
whisper. "You put yourself in her house," he said. "You
and Buster Devonne went into this child's house with a gun and shot
her and Miss Mary McNutt something like eight times. Neither one of
them owed you a legal cent, and one of them's dead and the other's
talking a mile a minute. You can depend on that."
    " I told Henry Ray Boxer before he took the car,
I get what I'm owed. There is a natural order of things, and you and
me and everybody down to the poorest nigger in the Bottoms is part of
it, and there ain't no laws can blame anybody for the way God created
the earth."
    Seagraves backed away to get a different view of
Trout.
    " Lookit out there," Trout said, "some
fool went and left his car doors open." Then he looked up at
Seagraves, smiling with those yellow, gapped teeth. "People who
let someone take their property is as guilty as the ones that took
it."
    Seagraves saw that Trout had watched him park the car
and get out. He said, "Don't be sly with Ward Townes. He won't
appreciate it." Trout said, "There ain't nothing to worry
about, Mr. Counselor. You'll of took care of all this by three
o'clock."
    When Seagraves opened the door to Townes's office
again, the prosecutor was off the phone and standing at the far
window with his nose in a lawbook. He did not acknowledge them at
first, even when he heard the door close.
    Seagraves took a seat, Trout stood near the door,
holding his hat. Townes rubbed the back of his neck. He was the same
age as Seagraves — they had graduated from high school together at
the officer academy, anyway — but on Townes the years had worn more
away. His hair was thin and gray, he was heavy on his feet, and there
were collections of flesh under his chin and his belt.
    He was tired today, and it showed in his movements. A
sick secretary put a mortal strain on anybody. "I heard you were
over to the clinic," he said to Seagraves, ignoring Trout, who
was standing between them.
    Seagraves nodded. "It's a shame," he said.
"Little bitty thing like that, and a whole clinic can't do a
thing to help her."
    The phone began to ring. Townes sighed, walked to his
secretary's desk and sat in her chair, and stared at it until it
quit. "That's better," he said, and then he had a long look
at Paris Trout, who was still in the middle of` the room, holding his
hat.
    "Mr. Trout," Townes said, "I asked
your attorney to bring you into my office as a courtesy. Technically,
I should of had you arrested yesterday afternoon."
    Trout did not speak.
    " The reason I did you this courtesy,"
Townes said, "was twofold. One, out of` respect for your family,
and two, I wanted to see which way this went."
    Trout nodded, as if those had been his thoughts too.
    " Miss Rosie Sayers, however, as your attorney
may have informed you, died at ten-thirty this morning at the
clinic." He was speaking almost in a monotone, now, which
Seagraves took for a bad sign. "And that leaves this office with
no choice but to charge you and Buster Devonne with her death."
    Trout looked quickly at Seagraves, then back at
Townes. Somewhere in the look was another bad sign, and Seagraves
realized if he didn't say something now, Trout was going to.
    " If I might offer two points," Seagraves
said, and he saw Trout beginning to nod his head now. "There is
no argument that Paris and Buster Devonne were in the house, but
there is, I think, some argument that they hold equal
responsibility."
    Townes nodded and made a note of that on the pad of
paper in front of him. "Separate trials," he said.
    " Certainly, if it comes to that. But my second
point is that the circumstances of the death are not uncommon in the
area of the