The Snake Oil Wars by Parke Godwin

Author:Parke Godwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780385247726
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1989-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

13

Mister Godot won’t come today

“How are we doing? I mean honestly?” Lance asked after they’d taken their places at the defense table.

Helm didn’t look up from his notes, small, precise jottings on tiny cards. “We have the people with us. If they are indicative of the jury, we’ve already won.”

Lance didn’t feel much better. Asking assurance of Helm was like warming your hands over a block of ice.

Helm would not share his deeper thoughts with Lance anymore than he would converse with a house cat. He had told a part of the truth. The rest was that Speed worried him. He hadn’t expected yesterday’s resistance, nor did he believe for an instant Speed’s theatrics were any less calculated than his. Purji had gone defensive; no one in the audience but knew what she was. Speed’s ploy and his incessant objections were meant to delay and obfuscate. But surprising. Helm would not have credited him with so much fire.

Helm had tentatively decided on a few witnesses of his own but discarded the notion after seeing his fil d’un chien of an opponent at work. The American term was more puissant: Speed was a though son of a bitch. Amazing that such a quality should have been overlooked in a man who was derided in his own time as a buffoon.

Helm thought of Augustine as a witness: a gutter fighter in debate, but Speed was no complacent Pelagius to be laughed out of contention. Erasmus was too much of a humanist to suit Helm, Thomas More too Catholic and above all as English as the jury foreman, Matthew Wycherley. French-born, Helm had always considered “English” and “enemy” synonymous and distrusted them from pure instinct.

Spiritually treacherous bastards. I never understood them. Who could? Exactly three hundred years after me comes Speed, American but windblown from the same English weed, poisoned with secularity. God himself would not trust them. Did not Henry Taylor, in my own lifetime, make himself Supreme Head of the so-called Church of England? If Speed presses to hard, I will unmask him. That is my weapon.

Helm would have called God to the stand but didn’t delude himself about the possibility, though he had thought to summon Christ – another maddeningly elusive figure difficult to find as an honest lawyer. No, the popular support he leaned on wanted spectacle, not rarefied debate. He would let Speed select witnesses and then demolish them as he had Purji. As for Candor, he already had the sympathy of the crowd and could be tutored for the stand.

All rose when Aurelius entered and settled himself on the dais. “Is Counsel for Plaintiff ready to proceed?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Again I caution both counsels that this court will tolerate no more outbursts such as we were subjected to yesterday.”

“Your Honor, I stand reproved.” Speed’s lanky frame unfolded joint by joint from the chair. He rummaged his pockets for a crumpled note, smoothed it out them lurched across the open space between his desk and the jury. Before he spoke, Speed let his deep-set eyes rove over the expectant audience.

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