“Huh.”

  “Think he’ll ever come back to you?”

  I gestured to the pistol. She laughed, a big-bellied laugh that showed her yellow teeth.

  “Well that’s it, then.”

  “That’s it.”

  Gloria left. Shug wandered off eventually. The taste of Gloria’s cigarette lingered in my mouth all night. After sleeping all day I didn’t feel tired at all. I crawled into bed and laid there. Somehow I must have closed my eyes and drifted off into that black, surrounding wakelessness that only comes to the bone-weary.

  Before the sun came up I woke with a horrible pain in my throat. I lurched to the piss-pot and heaved over it. Nothing came up. I felt cold all over, my head as heavy as a gun. I fell back into the pillows.

  Alone. Alone.

  Near daylight a knock came on the front door. Loud and insistent, it broke me from the rigid hold of a nightmare. I staggered to my feet. The back of my nightdress was soaked, my hair flying all over my face. By memory I felt my way to the front door.

  Knock, knock knock.

  “I’m coming,” I cried.

  I prised the door open. A man’s boot preemptively thrust its way inside.

  “Minnie Sampson?”

  I recognized him. “Sheriff Bailey?”

  The door creaked open all the way. He stopped. “What’s the matter with you?”

  I must have looked a sight. I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

  “Nothing. Can I help you?”

  He backed up a step. “You have fever?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He eyed me. Tapped his belt. His eyes swept around the newly-cleaned and dusted kitchen, then back to me. Had I not been pale, sweating, coughing into my fist, he might have attempted something. But now...

  He twisted his mouth. “Does the name ‘John Miller’ mean anything to you?”

  I felt for support. “Yes.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s a friend of mine.”

  The Sheriff delicately extracted a piece of paper from his pocket. He handed it to me. The letters were sweat- blurred, but it was obvious enough: a warrant for my own arrest.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Minnie Sampson,” said the Sheriff, “You know that bigamy is a crime in California?”

  “Thought it was a crime everywhere.”

  “Hold the jokes,” said Sheriff Bailey. “You’ll come with me.”

  “May I get shoes?” I said.

  To my surprise he let me. What else did he have to do that day? I nearly collapsed on my way back to my room. I got my wrap and shoes. I took a long time putting them on.

  “Hurry,” he grunted.

  “Nobody is here,” I mumbled to the Sheriff. “The animals, they’ll need feeding...”

  “Someone will take care of it.”

  But no one would. He had come alone, not expecting me to put up much of a fight. Shug was elsewhere.

  No one saw Sheriff Bailey bundle me into a horse-cart and drive off and away from the property. Maybe I should have fought a little harder. But in that moment I felt too weak to do much.

  I was Arrested. It didn’t hit until I saw the cold bars of the prison and smelled the stench of filthy straw. Until the Sheriff pulled out an iron key and shook it in my face.

  “Tomorrow you go to court,” he said.

  But tomorrow I did not.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Girl.”

  “She’s asleep again.”

  I felt a sharp pain in my side. My eyes fluttered open. Sheriff Bailey removed his boot from my ribcage.

  “There. Minnie Sampson, blink once if you can hear me.”

  I fluttered my lashes. Some days, or hours, must have passed since I last left consciousness.

  “Is she dyin’ sick? Or just sick?”

  “She’ll do. Wake her.”

  The pain in my side again. A sound came out of my mouth. The shapes before me began to arrange themselves into some semblance of familiarity.

  “She’s too sick for court.”

  “Bring her anyway. I don’t need no catchin’ fever in this cell. She’ll be off to the prison by four.”

  Someone got me up and thrust a covering on my head. I was led out of the prison, into an awful blast of sunlight. I shrieked and covered my eyes. The shriek turned into a coughing fit. The men holding me recoiled. I was contagious.

  But they soon got me right. The walk to the courthouse was five minutes of pure hell. Though supported by the Sheriff and one of the Henley brothers who worked for the court, my weak legs could only carry me so far.

  I was half-dragged to a little box to the left of the judge, where everyone could see me. Dizzy and bleary-eyed. I covered my face and eyes with my now-filthy wrap. Whispers broke out among the usual Court hens, who had nothing better to do but wait in the courthouse all day, watching and tittering over the proceedings. I was a Person Of Interest today.

  “Is that her?”

  “The Sampson girl. I know her look.”

  “What’s she in for?”

  I summoned all my strength to sit upright. The judge banged for order. I did not at that moment recall his name; he had moved to Meadows just recently.

  “Are you Minnie Sampson?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes who?” he thundered.

  “Yes, your honor.”

  The judge wrinkled his bulbous nose. “The wench is hardly fit for court. Are you sick, woman?”

  I nodded.

  “Speak!”

  “Yes.” I remembered: “Your honor.”

  He waved his hand. “The defendant will return when she is well. And Bailey. I won’t have a contagion in my courtroom, you understand?”

  I blinked at my surroundings. John Miller was there, with my aunt and Uncle. A smart-dressed white man sat primly in the box with them. Why was I here? I had forgotten.

  “She’ll do fine,” Bailey insisted. I laughed at his absurdity. A little too loud, perhaps.

  “She is half-mad,” said the judge angrily. “Her presence is offensive.”

  The white man sitting with John Miller and my aunt and uncle suddenly stood up and begged Your Honor’s lenience. He said his client, John Miller, had travelled a great way to be here and gone to considerable expense. To delay the trial further would be an inconvenience.

  I immediately pegged this lawyer as one of those liberal types trying to stuff his resume with Negro Cases. Interesting.

  The judge, unimpressed, told the lawyer to sit down. He did not need to be educated on “justice” in his own courtroom. It was already undignified to be forced to hear such a case, which seemed to be a personal grievance among some negroes that could easily be settled among themselves.

  The lawyer carefully, icily, insisted. He hinted that these days, with State agents all about California sniffing for corruption, it was important to hold trials in reasonable time.

  Everyone fell silent after that. He had not worded it like a threat, but it stank of one.

  “Very well,” said the judge, squinting at his watch. “Present the case. You have three minutes.”

  The lawyer hid his irritation. He stepped forward. The facts were summarized. I, Minnie Sampson, had deliberately and with malicious intent swindled his client, John Miller, into a marriage contract, then run off to stay in a whorehouse without holding up my end of the bargain. Then I, Minnie Sampson, had deliberately and with malicious intent married another man in a direct violation of federal and state law. The presentation of these facts took under a minute, and the lawyer spent the rest of his time filling in details about my pernicious character, abhorrent dishonesty, and insatiable lust.

  They were requesting five hundred dollars for damages, and an immediate annulment of my marriage to John Miller.

  The lawyer then adjusted his glasses and sat down.

  Babble stormed through the courtroom. It had a gleeful edge. Scandal is always funny.

  The judge furrowed his brow. John Miller, his head held high, did not look at me. My aunt’s eyes shone. My uncle scratched his dandruff, looking fleetingly concerned and utterly bored in turns.

  “Well,” said the judge, swiveling to me. It was my turn now. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  Was I entitled to a lawyer? Was this legal? My head swam. I just wanted it to end so I could go and lie down and take the light off my eyes and the pounding from my head.

  I ran my tongue over my teeth.

  “Go to hell, John,” I said.

  “What was that?” the crowd whispered.

  “Go to hell and fuck you,” I said, louder.

  “Contempt of court,” said the judge, pronouncing each word with his gavel. He looked relieved. “Remove this woman.”

  Sheriff Bailey, steaming from the ears, took me from the box. “How long?” he gritted to the judge.

  The man shrugged within his robes. Hunched over the proceedings like a crow, he seemed utterly indifferent. “Three days,” he decided.

  The lawyer began to protest. The judge threatened. The lawyer sat down.

  I was removed and taken back to my cell. After the freshness of the courtroom, the smell choked me. The Sheriff kicked me hard in the behind, into the dirty straw. He clanged the bars shut and turned the key.

  “I’ll have you out of my jail by Sunday,” he growled. “In a coffin or a cart. You decide.”

  I went blissfully to sleep again. This time I hoped I didn’t wake up.

  Late at night a maid came to clean the Sheriff’s office. A black woman. I watched her through the bars. She worked until the Sheriff left. Then she hurried outside and brought back a freshly-pumped cup of water.

  She stuck it through the bars of my cell. The water tasted of metal.

  After I finished she brought me another one. I asked if she could let me out. She looked at me, terrified, then finished her work and left.

  The next day another boot to my torso roused me. I had transitioned to a new stage of illness. No more hacking and snuffling. Instead a delirious fever overcame me, and it burned like a nest of scorpions under my skin. I had to be carried into court.

  They set me up in the same box again. The judge ran through the rigamarole. The lawyer repeated his speech. This time I heard nothing; their voices were merely distorted droning; meaningless to me. I’d take any punishment if it meant not returning to that cell.

  John Miller’s lawyer had visited the judge privately the night before, and insisted his case be reviewed again and in haste. Perhaps some more obvious threats had been dropped. The judge had agreed. They were determined to sentence me.

  Towards the end of the proceedings the door to the courthouse swung open. The squabble of the court regulars took a new note. Someone was coming forward, his loud voice booming off the walls. The judge banged his gavel for order. The sound juddered my bones.

  “Stop,” I whimpered.

  “Your honor,” said the newcomer, his voice strangely and suddenly clear to me, “I’m here to say this is a bunch of bunkum bullshit.”

  The court inhaled at once. The judge forgot to bang his gavel. “I beg your pardon?”

  He was not up to date with town gossip, the judge. The newcomer gave his name.

  “And what is your relationship with this case?” the judge snarled.

  “I’m Minnie Sampson’s husband.”

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  The judge scowled. John Miller began to stand up, but his lawyer pulled him down again.

  “Take the witness box,” the judge ordered.

  Jake McCoy climbed up. They brought him a bible, which he swore over.

  “I’m Minnie McCoy’s husband,” he said, remembering to amend the name. “And I’m here to say-”

  “This statement is on record,” said the judge sternly. “Lying in a courtroom is-”

  “Perjury,” said Jake McCoy, sounding like he had just learned the word. “I won’t do any such thing. I don’t lie. Your honor, if Minnie’s bein’ accused of marryin’ twice I’d like to say-”

  “On the record.”

  “On the record, that it ain’t fuckin’ true.”

  Nervous laughter gripped the court. The judge raised his voice and told Jake if he swore one more time he’d spend the night in jail.

  Jake said, “Beggin’ your pardon. Minnie’s first marriage wasn’t legitimate. They never shared a bed.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  Jake worked his jaw. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “ ‘Cause she was with me.”

  John Miller erupted from his seat. My aunt cried out aloud. The lawyer’s face lit up with glee.

  “Oh-ho,” said Fancy Liberal Lawyer. “And can you prove it?”

  Jake’s eyebrows were a solid line. His cap twisted around and around, but his chin was set. “I can. I got a witness.”

  To my eternal surprise, Shortie rose to take the stand. The lawyer’s questions were pointed. But Shortie and Jake had confirmed their story. They parroted the same details. They had been in Floyd for a month during and after my marriage.

  A lie.

  “Minnie would leave the house at night to be with Jake and return in the morning,” said Shortie.

  Another lie.

  “They were in love,” he said, glaring at Jake, who had forced him to say it.

  The truth?

  The longer Shortie talked, the more restless the judge grew. Even in the hell of sickness I knew how it looked. Two white men, men of the town, putting their word against some black folks from out of town. Practically foreigners.

  John Miller’s lawyer angrily demanded to put forth witnesses of his own. The judge let my aunt take the stand.

  She of course declared I had been in the house the whole time.

  The lawyer wanted to question my uncle to confirm, but the judge had heard enough. He threw the case to the jury.

  The first charge: I had deliberately witheld my marital obligations from John Miller and entered into a marriage with him under false pretenses.

  The second: I had caused him emotional trauma and suffering.

  The third: I had knowingly entered into a bigamous union with Jake McCoy.

  The jury left to deliberate. I slumped in my box, holding my head. Jake went over to me.

  “Sir,” the judge barked. “Step away, please.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jake demanded.

  “Step away, or you’ll be committed.”

  “She’s sick,” Jake protested.

  “Sir!”

  Jake backed away. He began to argue furiously with the Sheriff. The judge banged again for order, but the courtroom discipline had started to unravel from all ends. John Miller alone sat stonily silent in his chair, my aunt hanging like a sack on his arm.

  “Order!” the judge roared.

  Jake and Shortie settled down. We waited for the jury. I shivered in my chair. Jake’s eyes were on me, his big hands clenched furiously in his lap. Where was Lucille? Waiting outside with her big belly and green eyes and fuzzy fair hair. Why didn’t he go to her? He didn’t give a damn what happened to me. He’d made that much plain. Why the hysterics now? Probably protecting his neck. As one of my “husbands”, he’d be entitled to part of my money. But no, Jake didn’t care for money. Did he?

  “Go away,” I said aloud.

  No one heard. I repeated it. I think it reached Jake’s ears; he turned his head, his mouth grim and his eyes frightened.

  “Go to hell.”

  Order was acheived. The jury returned.

  “We find Minnie Miller guilty on all three charges.”

  The judge stood.

  “Minnie Miller, you are ordered to pay one hundred dollars to the person of John Miller for damages inflicted. You will be taken from this courtroom to a public place and delivered a flogging of twelve lashes.”

  He cleared his throat. “As you entered this marriage contract with John Miller with intent not to consummate, I declare that marriage, and your marriage to Mr. McCoy, null and void under California law. Failure to pay the defined sum may result in your imprisonment.”