Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic Page A

think…”
    â€œSomeone besides me, Miss Ferber. My boy needs to see somebody besides me. They gave us a court lawyer but no one else.”
    I nodded. “Yes, I will.”
    Again she tapped the back of my wrist. “A blessing from God, you are.”
    â€œYes,” I mumbled, “folks who know me are already engraving that on my tombstone.”
    She took me seriously. “They should.”
    I drew my tongue into my cheek. “Probably sooner than later. My enemies.”
    â€œYou have no enemies.” Said loudly, simply.
    â€œOf course I do. That’s how I know I’m alive.”
    She eyed me curiously as she dug into the patent-leather purse she’d deposited on the seat. I held up my hand. “Let me,” I told her, placing two quarters on the table.
    Back at the jail, the sheriff hadn’t returned—“Delayed, you know,” Deputy Low muttered, then added sarcastically, “There is a murder trial going on, you know.” But he’d telephoned and told Low to allow Cody Lee’s mother a good half hour.
    Hovey Low eyed me suspiciously. “But you was just here, lady.”
    â€œObservant,” I noted. “I like that in an officer of the law.”
    â€œSo what do you want?”
    â€œI’m a friend of Cody Lee’s mother.” I pointed to the woman who nodded at me. “I’m assuming I can visit as well.” I took a stride forward, as though to push past him, and the man, stymied, backed up, actually half-bowed at me.
    We sat in a small, windowless room, a long table and three chairs, the walls painted a dreary deck green that must have induced immediate confession, the door open so Hovey Low could sit in a hallway chair, tilted up, his feet on the doorjamb, yards away but feigning indifference.
    The deputy led Cody Lee in, leg shackles hobbling his steps.
    Cody Lee Thomas had an unshaven chin and uncombed hair in need of a trim. Dressed in green prison fatigues, institutional slippers on his stockinged feet, he was an overgrown boy, a heap of a lad dumped into a chair. His eyes alarmed me: dull gray, shadowy, drained of life. Here was a man felled by events he couldn’t really grasp, the stolid ox lumbering in a meadow startled by the sudden rainfall. An ungenerous description, I freely admit, but not an unsympathetic one: Cody Lee Thomas was the victim of a malevolent god that spat him out and then assumed he’d graze in a faraway field. He looked like the neighborhood boy you always liked but never left alone with the scissors. He smiled wanly at his mother who made a big show of introducing me.
    â€œHer name is Edna Ferber.”
    I realized that Cora Lee had no idea who I was, and probably assumed I was a field reporter for one of the New York dailies—which I was, sort of—or a dilettante visitor to the trial, one of the powdered women in furs and diamonds whose drivers tooled up to the Union Hotel, women who did lunch and murder trials for diversion. She’d never heard of me. Now ordinarily I’d be a tad offended—after all, I was the author of So Big , which had won the Pulitzer, and I was the fairy-tale godmother of the hugely popular stage musical Show Boat —but…so be it…vanity had no place in this awful room.
    He mumbled a greeting at me, perplexed as to why his mother had dragged in the middle-aged woman with the three strands of pearls, the careful spit-curl perm, and an ostentatious fur coat that was one season out of style—at least on Madison Avenue.
    â€œShe believes that you are innocent,” Cora Lee told him.
    He grinned at me. “I am.”
    â€œI know.” My own emphatic words startled me.
    His face got cloudy. “How, ma’am?”
    That stopped me. “Because I believe your mother cannot lie.”
    He nodded quickly, agreeing.
    A grunt from the hallway, Hovey Low marking time.
    â€œWe only have a half hour,” I said quickly.