~ 8 ~

        Several minutes later, breathing heavy from rushing down the hill, I slid next to Walt on a pew in the front row of the courtroom.  The judge on his high seat, behind the oaken hulk of his bench, shuffled papers in front of the tiny spectacles on the tip of his hog-like snout.  Across the aisle, I spotted Dwayne and a few of his buddies.  The left side of his head had a patch shaved bare, and a row of raw stitches.
        The judge hooked a finger to the clerk, who climbed from his desk by the bench, and up to the judge’s side.  They whispered back and forth for a piece, and then the clerk went back to his desk—on his way, passing a paper to a deputy in uniform, standing as bailiff.
        The deputy read the charge—assault with a deadly weapon—and called Walt to the front, opening a gate in the oak railing and guiding him by the elbow to stand before a table.
        The judge growled, “Herman Walter Ryder, how do you plea to this charge?  Guilty or not guilty.”
        “Not guilty, your honor.  I hit him in self-defense.”
        The judge peered over his spectacles at Walt, grunted once, and dropped his eyes to the papers.  
        After a lengthy spell of dutifully studying a page, the judge turned his head to Dwayne, called his full name—Dwayne Allen Williams, Jr.—told him to stand up, and said, “Mr. Williams, I have in my hand a police report which states that witnesses say you threatened Mr. Ryder with a knife.  Is that so?”
        Dwayne shifted his feet, scratched his neck, and whined, “Judge, they done greened me out o’ my money.  And when I took in a-yarnin’ about it, this rascal up and throttles me by my goozle.  So, yessiree, I pull out my frog sticker to fend him off.”
        The judge dropped his eyes again to the paper, and without lifting them asked, “Was that before or after you accosted Mr. Ryder’s associate in the next booth?”
        “Accosted?” Dwayne yelped.  “I didn’t do no accosting.  I bought a game of hoop-toss from her, and gave ‘em a toss.”
        “My report here says you threw an armload of them, all at once, violently at her.”
        Dwayne said nothing to that.
        “Was that the game where you say you were cheated?  The hoop-toss?”
        “No.  T’were a rullion in the tent next door.  Where you roll marbles into holes and count up the score, in some fool football game.”
        “So, you were angry at him, and took it out on the hoop-toss girl.  And when Mr. Ryder came to her aid, you pulled your knife on him.”
        “Well he had no needment to crack my skull with a claw hammer!”
        The judge set down the police report, picked up another paper, studied it, and then wrote something on it.  He slipped them both into a manila file, and then glowered down at Dwayne, telling him, “Mr. Williams, I’ve seen you in this courtroom too many times concerning your violent behavior.  From the evidence presented here, and your own admissions, it’s you who should be charged in this incident.  And furthermore, if you do not change your trouble-making ways, one day you’ll be headed for the penitentiary.”
        And to Walt he said, “Case dismissed.  Not guilty by reason of self-defense.  Mr. Ryder, you are free to go.”
        Walt said, “Thank you kindly, Judge,” and then turned, swung through the gate, led me by the arm out of the courtroom, hurried us out into the square, and fired up the Mercury.
        “We best get a move on before those clems get up a posse of vigilantes,” he said, wheeling out of the square.  Up Main Street and out of town, he hit the gas hard, winding up along Black Creek and over the ridge.  After a few miles, he slowed down some, chuckled, and leaned a big grin in my direction—fancy-free and in high feather.
        “Yee-haw!  Belle, I told you the fix was in.  That dumb rube, Dwayne, he didn’t know what hit him.  Twice.  And if Judge Hogshead weren’t that monkey’s uncle, we wouldn’t ‘ve had to work this dogpatch alibi.  No way, no how.  Hammer his coconut, ding the patch, and that’s all she wrote.  Goin’ through the motions, Belle.  That’s what this courthouse show business was all about.  Dwayne’s lucky the judge didn’t spank him bare-ass, right there and then.”
        “What’s that mean, ‘ding the patch’.”
        “The patch, Carl the patch.  The front-office guy with the short brim and the fat cigar.  He ices heat.  Collects his privilege nightly from the count stores, the gaffed joints, the kootch show, and any fireball alibi agents, depending on the action and how strong the spot’s played.  Carl takes his cut, pays his own privilege to McCain, and the rest goes into the sheriff’s poke.  Now this here fracas, no doubt Ray gave up his whole score from Dwayne to Carl and the sheriff.  Ray fucked up.  He shoved it way too far up Dwayne’s keister.  Play ‘em, for sure, but don’t send ‘em off fit to be tied.  Extra trouble costs extra bag money.”
        “How much did you have to pay?”
        “A yard-note to the Judge Hogshead re-election fund.”
         “A hundred dollars?”
        “I’m drivin’ down the road a free man, ain’t I?  Nick had to pony-up another hundred.  And he ain’t too happy about that, he’s let me know.”
        “How much do you pay every night to the patch?”
        “Belle, I don’t work my joint strong.  I juggle the balls and fairbank ‘em some, but I don’t burn ‘em.  My feature is I play ‘em as they come, and quit when I’m ahead.  No sense in getttin’ greedy.  Copasetic to win what I’ve won, I leave ‘em with the rent money.  No big beefs, no big dings to the patch.  
        “Nick pays Carl a privilege for the basket joint, on top of the nut for his footage.  And I’ll tell you, the way that gig artist J.D.‘s been workin’ it this week, next week Nick’s ding’ll be more.  J.D.’s been disqualified from bushels of basket joints.  He don’t let ‘em go when they’ve had enough.  He’d as soon send ‘em home for the deed to the house, as give up a spoofer.  And he hates the jigs like Hitler hated Jews.  The sooner he gets himself DQ’ed, the better, if you ask me.  
        “I’ve got little to do with who’s beside me in the line-up, but I’ve got everythin’ to do with how I run my own game.  I told Nick that J.D. was slow poison.  But the two of them are counting up fat aprons, and Nick’ll take as much of that as he can get.”
        I said, “I don’t like J.D., either.  He’s cocky in a nasty way....  Does the pitch-till-u-win pay the patch?”
        “No.  It’s a hanky-pank.  What you see is what you get.  No beefs there.  Uh-oh.”
        “Uh-oh, what?”
        “The posse’s come up on our tail.”
        I swiveled to look behind us, and the same beat-up pickup truck that was in the motel parking lot the other night was closing in on our rear bumper, carrying four mountaineers, shoulder to shoulder in the cab, and Dwayne riding shotgun, his arm out the window and his middle finger jabbing upward.

                     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
copyright © 2012 by S.M.Fernand