The Reservoir by John Milliken Thompson

Author:John Milliken Thompson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590514450
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2011-06-21T10:00:00+00:00

• CHAPTER FIFTEEN •

TO GIVE THE JURY a better feel for the scene of the crime, the prosecution proposes a visit to the reservoir. The defense reluctantly agrees. Evans tells Tommie that by the light of day the reservoir does not look at all like a gloomy, secluded place for the commission of evil deeds. “Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose so,” says Tommie. “I haven’t been there since I was in college.”

So the next day at the noon recess a carriage and two omnibuses carry Tommie and his police escort, the lawyers, the judge, the twelve gentlemen of the jury, and Willie out to the reservoir grounds. They alight in front of the Dunstan house, Tommie not saying a word to anyone. Willie talks cordially to a member of the press.

They climb the embankment steps, the sun making everyone shade their eyes. Tommie stoops to pick a buttercup which he twirls, holding his hands behind his back. He looks into the reservoir, and it is unfamiliar. The water has been drawn off a second time in a search for evidence, though nothing has turned up, and now the bottom is brown muck, reflecting glints of sky.

God be with you till we meet again and the wheezing organ bellows—where was that coming from? It was snowing, the smell of coal fire from the ironworks on a frigid night, her warmth and her naked swollen belly. She made him feel the kicking. And later, I could strike her and no one would hear, could squeeze the life out of her, because it was as though she were screaming in his ear, go on and just do it, Tommie, I want you to, and he felt like screaming himself.

Then it’s daylight again and Willie is over talking quietly with some people, and Tommie has not seen this place since college. So there is that low picket fence around the water’s edge that Mr. Meade described, and the little gate on the south end near where the body was floating, and the sloping brick walls of the reservoir. And down the other side of the embankment—there’s the high board fence, and the loose board where Lillian (and her companion, if she had one) must have come through. It has been nailed back up. They go outside and around to the little smallpox cemetery, and the deadhouse where the hat was found, and the little hospital building, beyond which rises the Confederate memorial over in Hollywood Cemetery. Everything is so peaceful and green.

Tommie looks off toward the river. He could wait until the policemen seem distracted, then run for the bluffs before they have time to draw, jump down through the brambles, cross the railroad tracks, and swim the river. Hide out in farmhouses during the day and move west at night. He looks at his brother—Willie would do it, Willie would help him do it. But, no, the courtroom is more familiar, practically his home ground, and that’s where he has his best chance. Anyway,

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