The Slow Moon by Elizabeth Cox Page A

set, the moon to rise.

Twelve
    T HE COURT BUZZED and crackled, packed with people from town. Reporters stood on the courthouse steps, and in the parking lot visitors kept a curious vigil. It was the day that Crow would testify. The June morning was filled with clouds but remained bright. Stray dogs and cats sniffed the ground searching for food.
    Inside the large courtroom Crow Davenport, his young body tall and tender-faced, sat at the long table next to his lawyer. From time to time they leaned to speak to each other, Butler’s bald head nodding toward Crow; they looked expressionless, waiting for the judge to enter the room.
    The jury sat very still, their faces ready for anything, anything at all, to be written on them. Aurelia Bailey and her son, Bobby, sat in the back row. Sophie had not yet come in, but everyone watched for her.
    As Crow readied himself to testify, he found it hard to breathe. His head felt strange, light with anticipation. He had been coached about what to say when he took the stand, had rehearsed, but Raymond Butler had warned him not to make his answers sound planned. Crow was trying not to plan anything, trying to keep all hope in abeyance.
                      
    The day before, Crow’s mother cornered him in the kitchen. “Have you prayed about this, Crow? Maybe you should.”
    He lifted orange juice out of the refrigerator and drank from the carton. She handed him a glass, but he didn’t take it.
    “I don’t know.” Crow shook his head. He had prayed but didn’t want to admit it. His mother’s eyes bored into him like a beam of light. He had no secrets, but the space inside his head began to create hidden pockets. Her face pleaded with him.
    “Maybe I should leave prayer up to you,” he said. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
    “Well.” She lowered her head. “Johnny wanted me to ask if you minded him being in the courtroom tomorrow. He wants to be there when you testify.” Crow had not wanted his younger brother to attend the trial, but now he thought Johnny’s presence might bring comfort. “He wants to come, Crow. He wants to be there, but if you don’t want him to…” She laid her hand on his shoulder. They were alone in the house. “I know things are going to be all right,” she said. “I just know it.”
    Crow couldn’t imagine how he, how he himself, could ever be all right.
    He had gone to bed feeling nauseated, his belly rising as soon as he lay down. Even though he was ready, prepared carefully for taking the stand, still he couldn’t picture it. He looked at the clock every hour, until four-thirty or five, when he fell into a hole of nightmare: his lawyer’s face floated like someone offstage, and Crow recoiled at the necessity of telling the truth. (“I left her. I put clothes on her and left. I got scared when I heard someone coming. I was afraid they would blame me. And they did.”) This is what he had to say, but even in his dream he couldn’t speak the words.
    He woke to hear his parents arguing downstairs. Their voices sounded emphatic, interruptive.
    “I think it’s going very well, Carl,” he heard his mother say. “I don’t know why you say that. I think the jury believes he’s innocent.”
    “It
is
going well, Helen. And Butler has a good chance of proving reasonable doubt. He says the prosecutor was crazy to let Sophie’s mother and the mayor’s office and the local papers hound them into a trial before they’d nailed down those multiple attackers. That’s why they keep coming to us with this plea-bargain idea. Crow rats out his accomplices and they lighten the sentence.”
    “But he had no accomplices!” Helen roared. “He didn’t do it!”
    “Stop shouting,” said Carl, his throat tight. “I know that. But you asked me how I think it’s going and I’m telling you. The testimony today will cinch it. Crow has to do this right.”
    Crow lay in bed, something sour-tasting rising in his throat. He forced