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I put Le
I called him to the witness stand-a flat piece of river rock resting on a platform of sticks-and told him to raise his right hand. We recognized no right against self-incrimination along the banks of the Little Juniata River; all defendants were forced to testify.
“Do you swear to tell the whole truth, Le
Le
I placed his bucket before him, fetid and stinking, filled with crayfish parts. “Did you put these crayfish in this bucket?”
Le
“Remember, Le
Le
“Yes or no?” I said. “Did you fill this bucket with crayfish?”
“Yes.”
“That’s right, you did. And after you filled it, you stirred it up so the crayfish would snap at each other, didn’t you?”
Before Le
“You did this, didn’t you Le
“But I didn’t mean to,” Le
I dropped the crayfish into the bucket and turned toward the jury in disgust. “The prosecution rests.”
“Guilty! Guilty!” the boys all cheered.
“Wait a minute,” I said sagely. “You’ve got to vote on it to make it official. We have to take a poll. John Gaines, what say you?” I spoke the way the courtroom tipstave spoke while polling the jury during my trial.
John Gaines glared at Le
“Mike Kelly, what say you?”
“Guilty!” he said with enthusiasm.
“Ok,” I said. “Robby…I don’t know your last name.”
“Temin.”
“Robby Temin, what say you?”
Robby looked sympathetically at Le
“Jimmy Reece?”
Jimmy threw a rock at Le
The boys all laughed.
I slid behind the judge’s bench and banged a stone against the river rock. “Order in the court!” I hollered. “Order in the court!” The boys became silent instantly. I was impressed with my newfound power.
“Wally Nearhoof, what say you?”
Wally glared back at me, full of insolence and venom. He was the biggest and meanest boy, the bully of the bunch. Everybody was afraid of Wally Nearhoof, including me. He had a look of malice about him, and he held it for a long time on me, boring through me like the twist of a drill.
“Not guilty,” he said, keeping his fixed eyes on me.
My jaw dropped. Before I could protest, the other boys chimed in: “What? Not guilty? No way! He’s as guilty as the devil!”
“I said, not guilty,” Wally insisted.
Le
The boys broke into a riot of cheers. “Guilty! Guilty as hell! Hang him! Let’s hang Le
Le
I clapped the river rocks. “Order! Order!” I said. “Order, or I’ll hold you all in contempt and end this trial right now!”
The boys quieted down and I turned to Le
“Le
Le
“Murder is the most serious crime there is,” I continued, “but since everybody else did it too, we can’t hang you.”
Le
I slammed the rocks together again. “Order!”
“We can’t hang you, Le
“Life in a bucket! Life in a bucket!” the boys all laughed and cheered.
Le
I didn’t cry when I got my wind back. I didn’t care about the punch or the insult. Justice had prevailed. It was the best feeling I’d ever felt in my life. At the age of eleven, I’d won my first trial and the battle of good versus evil. It was a glorious moment. I smiled smugly at Karen, who looked on without saying a word.
But then Wally Nearhoof, the bully, spoke up. “Now it’s my turn,” he said, taking the witness stand. “Bet you can’t convict me.”
I wanted to save Wally for last, but flush with righteousness and invincibility, I accepted his challenge. I couldn’t wait to put the bucket on his dumb, ugly head. I told him to raise his right hand.
“Wally Nearhoof, do you swear to tell the whole truth, so help you God?”
“Yeah,” he said, sneering and patronizing.
I pointed to the rusty, old paint can he used to hold his crayfish. Wally had caught the most crayfish of all, and he’d also been the most cruel, pulling their legs and pincers off and crushing their soft underbellies between his thumbs, breaking their squirming bodies in half and pouring the contents into the water. I hated Wally’s big murderous face and his big murderous hands. I wanted to convict him more than any of the others and went straight for his throat.
“Did you put these crayfish in here?”
“Nope.”
“You’re under oath, Wally,” I warned him, “you have to tell the truth. You put these crayfish in this can, didn’t you?”
“No,” he said. “And you can’t prove I did.”
I guess I wasn’t surprised. Wally was a murderer, after all, why wouldn’t he be a liar too? I stood for a moment thinking how to prove his guilt, then the idea struck me. It was obvious.