“TONY!” Debbie greeted Idabel after he’d parked his pickup. “Thank you for coming!”
“Hi Mom Debbie!”
Matt and Idabel eyed each other nervously, mumbled hello.
“What’s going on?” Idabel asked Debbie. “You said you needed help moving something heavy?”
“I do, honey!” Debbie said. “See that stack of bricks?”
Idabel nodded.
“I was planning to build a garden path out front here, but I’ve changed my mind. I want it in my backyard. Would you move them bricks? You can use that wheelbarrow.”
Idabel gestured towards Matt. “Why can’t he move them? No offense.”
“None taken,” Matt said, brushing dirt from the knees of his jeans. “Heads up, Idabel: we’re being played by Mom Debbie. I’m not sure what her angle is, but she’s playing us. You see, I just moved the whole pile from the backyard. All six hundred pounds. Mom Debbie fed me the same story aboutchanging her mind.”
“Being played?” Idabel looked surprised.
Matt nodded. “The good news is there’ll be pie at the end.”
It was Debbie’s turn to be surprised. “How do you know about the pie? Did you peek in my icebox?”
“My friend Celeste did—sort of.” Matt laughed. “Technically I think some moon goddess did the peeking and then whispered it in Celeste’s ear. The point is that Celeste told me there’d be pie—and a sort of friend, or former friend, I’d be eating it with. I’m guessing that’s you, Idabel.”
“Are you drunk?” Idabel asked.
“He was,” Debbie said. “Hungover.”
Idabel’s face went red with anger. “You haven’t learned a damn thing, have you, Mustang? First, you disrespected the team! Now you’ve no sooner become president of SGA, and you’re disrespecting the whole student body!”
“STOP!” Debbie stepped between them, held up her hands. “Back to the bricks! They’re not gonna move themselves, boys!”
She removed her floppy hat, ran her fingers through her hair to re-inflate it. “I’ve got an errand or two to run, and you boys have some work to do. When you’re finished, there’s a crock pot of stew in the kitchen—and yes coconut crème pie in the icebox. Help yourselves.”
She fixed them both with a glare. “I suggest you patch things up, or we’ll keep doing this dance with the bricks and the wheelbarrow. My neighbors have certainly seen stranger things than that around here.”
Matt snickered.
“We’re family,” Debbie said. “Our only job is to love each other and encourage each other, trusting that the other guy is doing the best he can. Heck, I thought you’d have figured that out already, watching me lead cheers at every one of your dang games!”
Chapter 41: Here Comes the Judge
Friday, April 12, 1996
Matt was a courtroom virgin. He’d seen the places depicted on TV and in movies, everything from the shambly one inNight Courtto the stately one inTo Kill A Mockingbird, and knew that they came in varying shapes and sizes. Still, to have his legal cherry popped in this lousy forum was a major disappointment—like thinking you were going to bed with Tony Danza and then finding Danny DeVito there instead.
The courthouse itself, the Oklahoma County one, was impressive by Oklahoma standards—if you liked art deco-lite built on a Depression-era shoestring budget. It was a ponderous 12-storey phallic nub that, like all public structures from that time, had been intended to convey permanence in times of uncertainty.
And this was the courthouse where Colton’s fate would be decided—but not that day.
That day Matt, Garland, and Paul were there for a more pedestrian purpose.
Garland sported a new suit, the fabric and cut of which conveyed a quiet, bespoke elegance. He strutted with slightly more jaunt than normal.
He shepherded Matt and Paul up the templar steps and into the building’s soaring limestone and granite lobby.
So far, so good, Matt thought, imagining the courtrooms spilling from such a space. He paused to study the wagon hub chandeliers dangling overhead.
