Murder At the Foul Line

So then the police believed I shot Kyle and wanted to know why. Was it for money? Was there another man in my life? But by then Mawmaw had got Tilden Snow III to represent me and every time I’d open my mouth he’d say, “Don’t answer that, Charmain.” Mawmaw got him because she knew he and his daddy and grandpa were all lawyers, and they knew her from back when she was the White Tornado in their house. He took my case on what he called pro bono.

According to my cousin Crawder, Tilden Snow III only did it because it was a good way for him to make his name as big as his Daddy’s, since newspaper and TV people were crawling all over us at my trial. That was a little bit because they said I don’t look like your regular-type killer, plus had been a Teen for Christ, even if some big snoots in town called my family white trash, and Mrs. Markell didn’t think I was good enough to marry her son Kyle since he’d been a big basketball star in high school and started out that way in college and scored eleven points at the NCAA tournament Sweet Sixteen game. He could of kept on playing too if he hadn’t got caught using cocaine.

But the other thing was two people in Creekside besides me had murdered somebody this same year and it’s not that big a place. So we were getting a reputation. A Mexican man used rat poison on his wife, which folks thought was a accident at first because that part of town did have rats you couldn’t kill with a pitchfork unless you hit them with a sledgehammer first. But then they found the rat poison in his wife’s Maalox. Then Lucas Beebee (who was crazy and everybody in town knew it) used a chain saw on a Jehovah’s Witness and put her toes and ears in a flower arrangement on his mother’s dining room table. A friend of the victim was there for the Beebee Easter buffet and recognized this woman’s earbobs in the ears and called the police. So Kyle’s murder was number three in a year and instead of Creekside, North Carolina, which is our real name, they started calling us “ Homicide, U.S.A. ” for a joke.

So Mr. Goodenough the D.A. said he was going to make an example out of me and he sure has tried. He’s been elected District Attorney in Creekside for twenty years ru

At my trial the D.A. said I had broke every vow I took in church when I promised to love and honor Kyle till death do us part. He said I was a black mark on the holy name of “Wife.” Every chance he got he told the jury how Kyle had been a basketball star and played for the ACC because around here that’s like saying you taught Jesus how to walk on water. He held up that souvenir basketball Kyle had from the Sweet Sixteen game that I’d shot a hole in and he carried on about it almost like it was worse I’d shot the damn basketball than shot Kyle in the head. That’s when I could see Dr. Rothma

Now, my brother Ta

And Kyle didn’t hit me. Oh, he said he was going to hit me all the time, but he didn’t have the guts. His style was more stuff like kicking my dog JuliaRoberts when I wasn’t looking. Or pouring nail polish on my new winter coat and saying Jarrad did it when Jarrad was so little he couldn’t even walk yet. Or making fun of me in front of his stupid buddies at Creek-side Ford. Or smacking Jarrad in the face when he was a tiny baby, which is the one time I ever slapped anybody in my life, when I slapped Kyle as hard as I could except it mostly just got his shoulder and he laughed at me.

So I couldn’t help Tilden Snow with his plan to use the “battered wife syndrome.” The only 911 ever got called from out house was me getting the ambulance for Kyle when he sniffed too much cocaine and knocked over his trophy case and almost bled to death from broken glass. Course if I’d let him die that time maybe me and Jarrad would be in Disney World right this minute, staying at the Polynesian Resort.

I don’t mean to make it sound like I wanted a fancy life. And maybe this is what I would of tried to explain to Dr. Rothma

So that’s really why it all happened. That’s why when I was over at Ta

So that Friday when Ta

Then he starts in on me about the Visa bill and what was I buying shoes for “that kid” for anyhow when he was so dumb he couldn’t even walk yet so he must take after me? I’m looking at Kyle bouncing that basketball while I’m standing there crying, and Jarrad’s crying too because I’m crying. I’m thinking, How dumb was I marrying this man when I was just sixteen when Mawmaw begged me to at least finish high school? How dumb was I not knowing maybe he was a freshman in college and a big basketball player, but he was still, excuse me, a total asshole?

So I’m standing in the living room, holding Jarrad. Kyle’s yelling about the Visa bill, and my whole body fills up with the idea that year after year after year for the rest of our lives Kyle’ll do the same kind of mea