The final case, p.6
The Final Case, page 6
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Third millwright: “I don’t know what kind of book you’re writing. You’re looking for anecdotes, I guess. With me, out of nowhere, Harvey started talking about political crap. One of these people thinks the Rothschilds are the tip of the iceberg. There’s these people, these families, they control everything, they meet in secret, they control the banks, whatever happens, it happens because they make it happen, the rest of us are pawns. I didn’t say nothing in response to that. Let it fade away. He got the message. But then it was like I missed the boat. Like I was just another pawn. He’d poke at it a little. Like, did I know they wanted to reduce the world’s population to five hundred million? Which, actually, I don’t think is a bad idea. He said it meant there would be no more Christians. They want to do away with cash, too. Like, wait and see, that’s how they control things. No rise out of me. Didn’t take the bait. He let some time pass, then it’s ‘You know what their strategy is? Divide and conquer.’ They got the world carved up. They control the IMF, the Fed, the Chinese, the North Koreans. What is this? I don’t get it. Any of you guys hear Smith Bro on this? I turned my ears off, let him talk. But at a certain point, I had to say, Look man, I wanna be polite about it, but I don’t go that way. Let’s talk about something else. Sorta flat after that. There was a cool thing he did. He put together solid steel casters. We used them to roll pallet racks around with a forklift. One time, we had to move this carpet-cutter machine. Smith Bro rigged our dolly. Fifty-five building, they wanted a new overhead crane, new sectional doors. Harvey and me, we did the sectionals. The crane rails were like twenty-four-inch and weighed nine hundred pounds. There were seven to a side. Like I said, I give him credit. We used to tear apart old boxcars. We’d make ’em taller, shorter, whatever, for shipping. Took apart a lot of boxcars with Smith Bro. He and I welded up a shitload of guardrails. We made Jersey barriers—like, hundreds of ’em. For some reason, they thought we had to move our shop from the fifty-six building to the twenty-three. Grumble, grumble. ’Cuz we were being marginalized. They wanted contract union millwrights, ’cuz it was cheaper than us. We’re down to humiliating jobs only. Harvey was no grumbler. He didn’t want to shoot the shit on that, just George Soros and the Rothschilds, the Bitcoin. I don’t even know what currency manipulation is. And I don’t care. Life’s too short. And there’s nothing you can do about it. So shut up and look on the bright side.”
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The last millwright I recorded summed it up, or maybe I stopped there because it felt like he did: “I kinda got the vibe that something was causing Harvey to talk religion. Like something eating at him. The in-laws do that. Chips are down, they pray harder—that’s their way. And lecture people—God this and God that—’cuz they’re stressed out, and they gotta convince themselves. But I’m no psychologist. Man, you could see something on Harvey’s mind. My mother used to say, ‘What’s your brow knit up about, boy?’ Harvey’s, his was knit up like that. And on his phone at lunch. Talking to his wife. Phone rang at lunch, he paced off to talk. Could see his hands moving. Funny how people do that. Walkin’ down the street with earbuds, talking away, moving their hands around like the person on the other end can see—it cracks me up. Delvin’s on with his wife. It’s gotta be his wife. I ask him what’s up, he says, ‘Girl we adopted has got hepatitis, and my wife sorta likes everything just so,’ by which I took him to mean she’s one of those types paranoid about things being sterile, which is a problem my wife has, too, like hand sanitizer, like that’s going to do anything, but, oh well, let her sanitize her hands if it gives her peace of mind, stuff’s cheap. Harvey—it just so happened I was working with him a lot before he got arrested, and, like I say, he was tearin’ his hair out. What I sorta thought, he was headed toward divorce, ’cuz I’ve seen guys split up and the signs were there, divorce. I was wrong. It wasn’t divorce. It was this other stuff. But everyone was like ‘What?’ when he got arrested. I mean, our jaws hit the floor. Not a guy would whale on a child. You couldn’t see Harvey whaling on a kid for nothing. I never even heard him raise his voice. Just blew me away. It would be totally out of the ordinary for him. What they said he did, it wasn’t his MO. Anyway, I was there when they arrested him. Surprised the hell out of me. Out in the parking lot. It was like he knew it was coming, too. Didn’t argue or nothing, just took the cuffs. I’m, like, flabbergasted. What the hell? None of us knew what was going on. You see these stories all the time, someone blows up a subway or stabs people in a mall, afterward his neighbor says, ‘Never woulda thought it, guy seemed like everyone else.’ I used to crack up at this Adam Sandler song. There’s this guy, he buys the school candy bars, he’s got the jumper cables, he takes your mail on vacation, and the chorus? His hobby is moyda. So what I mean is, you can’t pin Harvey down. Maybe he whaled on his kids, who knows. I look at the Nazis in the Nazi pictures, they look normal, so maybe, when Harvey got home, he’s evil. He’s got a stick or a whip and he’s a child beater, mean as hell. Then he puts on his coat and he comes to work, and when he gets here, you’d never know. Plus, I got another theory. To him, he’s the same guy both places.”
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After their arraignment, the Harveys were released on bail. One stipulation of their freedom was that they couldn’t communicate with each other or their children—who now lived in foster homes—so Delvin Harvey returned to Stone Lane, and Betsy Harvey went to live with her parents outside of Everson, near the Canadian border. I drove my father there in December. It was a long journey in gusting winds. Betsy Harvey’s parents lived in a double-wide mobile home landscaped with plastic flowers. Beyond it lay flooded alder forest. Beside it was a van, bronze, with stripes. When I pulled up next to it, my father asked me to come inside to “make a recording of what transpires.” I said I would try.
We went to the porch. Betsy Harvey opened the door. She wore an oversize hoodie, an ankle-length denim skirt with big pockets, moccasin slippers, and no makeup. Her front teeth met the way two playing cards do when stood on end and propped against each other. She gaped at me, brought a hand to her mouth, and said, “Who’s this?”
“This?” said my father, nudging my arm. “This is my son.”
“Why’d you bring him?”
“To make a recording.”
Betsy Harvey assessed me further through the screen. “Wait here,” she said.
She shut the door. All the way. Click. We stood in the wind, which smelled dank and felt frigid. “Betsy,” said my father, “is untrusting of people. And something else. Hygiene is important to her. I say that so you won’t try to shake her hand. Because she won’t do it. She won’t shake your hand. It’s twofold. One, germs. Two, suspiciousness. She doesn’t know what to make of you. She takes one look and figures you’re a liberal. And then she thinks that if you’re a liberal you support this apparatus that’s against her. And if you support the apparatus that’s against her, then you’re part of the conspiracy that got her arrested. The world divides into two kinds of people for her, and she’s in the category that’s persecuted.”
Betsy Harvey opened the door—using, in fact, a tissue. “Wipe your feet,” she said.
We went in. The house smelled like rug cleaner. We followed Betsy Harvey into a living room, where her parents, Henrietta and Carl Huber, sat in chairs with the television on but the sound muted. They’d been watching a drama, I saw, at least in part about romantically entwined police officers. On Mr. Huber’s lap was a miniature poodle, and next to Mrs. Huber’s chair a dog of indeterminate breed, its breathing obstructed, lay asleep in a fleece bed. Beside it was a rubber bone. I looked closely; it seemed to be part schnauzer. I also understood, though it took a while, that Mrs. Huber was sitting in a wheelchair, one with so much padding that in her living room it looked like part of the furniture. She was dressed in an auburn pantsuit and wore her hair in a truncated version of Margaret Thatcher’s Iron Lady ’do. That style contributed to her masculine mien and abetted her aura of indomitability. In short, she looked intimidating.
Mrs. Huber toggled the joystick on her armrest. Her chair pivoted. Her eyes met mine. “My daughter told me one,” she said, pointing at me with a television remote.
My father pointed at me, too. “This is my son,” he said. “He writes books, and because of that he does interviews, and because he does interviews he knows how to use his phone to make recordings, and so today he’s doing that. He’s making a recording. He’ll make a recording, and then we’ll leave. We’ll go back to my office and get a transcript made, and that transcript will help me prepare my case so I can represent Betsy. I hope that makes sense to you.”
Mr. Huber tilted upright. For a moment I thought he was going to say something, but as it turned out, no. He’d decided not to lounge in our presence, maybe. Anyway, he kept a straight face, and a hand on his poodle, then coughed. “He writes books,” Mrs. Huber said. “What kind of books?”
“Novels,” said my father.
“What kind?”
“General,” my father said. “I don’t know what else to call them.”
Mr. Huber stirred again. Light from a window caught his impassive face, and I noticed that the lenses of his glasses were tinted yellow. His sandy hair, or what remained of it, was uncombed. He piped up hoarsely, and with difficulty. “My uncle Lester knew Louis L’Amour when they were in the 3622 Quartermaster Truck Company together,” he said.
“Quiet,” Mrs. Huber said.
There were no more preliminaries. My father, briefcase in hand, asked the Hubers if either of them would be willing to take the stand. At this, Mr. Huber put a forefinger up and said, “When it comes to public speaking, I’m no good at it, whereas the missus there can speak with the best of them, and so can my daughter—she’s a good public speaker. Both of these gals can hold their own, but me, I’m not sharp when it comes to that; fact, I tend to stutter if you put me on the spot, so I try to work things where I stay in the background. You all know that,” he said to his wife and daughter.
Mrs. Huber acted as if he hadn’t spoken. Instead, she pointed at a sofa with her television remote and said, “You two sit there and we’ll hear about this.”
My father and I sat. He set his briefcase down. “What I want to do,” he said, “is simulate the kind of questioning you could get under cross-examination, Mrs. Huber, before we decide anything. Are you okay with that?”
A bare smile—one with a hint of relish—creased Mrs. Huber’s face. “You want to see what happens when someone tries taking me apart,” she said.
“I don’t know if I’d look at it exactly that way,” said my father.
“They’re always trying to make a fool out of people.”
“Who?”
“Lawyers.”
“I’m a lawyer.”
“Do your lawyering, then. Get it done.”
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I didn’t feel comfortable asking Mrs. Huber to hold my phone close to her mouth and speak into its microphone. Instead, from my perch on the sofa, I aimed my phone in her direction as discreetly as possible. My father said, “All right, then, here we go. Mrs. Huber—can I call you Mrs. Huber?”
“You’re not grammatical. You mean may you call me Mrs. Huber.”
“Mrs. Huber,” said my father, “did you provide your son-in-law and your daughter with a length of plumbing line to use for disciplining their children?”
Mrs. Huber: “I did not.”
My father: “Did you provide them with anything to use for disciplining their children at any time?”
Mrs. Huber: “I did not.”
My father: “Did you ever see Abigail physically disciplined with any sort of a belt, or a plumbing line, or a glue stick, or any other instrument?”
Mrs. Huber: “I did not.”
My father: “With a hand?”
Mrs. Huber: “No.”
My father: “Did you ever see anyone in the family spank Abigail?”
Mrs. Huber: “I just answered that.”
My father: “Were you aware that a port-a-potty was brought in for Abigail’s use only?”
Mrs. Huber: “They had that port-a-potty out there for all the children, so none of them came in from playing and got the floor dirty with their shoes every time they needed to use the lavatory.”
My father: “Did you ever see Abigail being separated from the rest of the family for Christmas dinner or Easter dinner or any holiday dinner?”
Mrs. Huber: “I never saw that. She got treated like all the other children.”
My father: “At any time, did you see Abigail being served food that was different from what the other children were served?”
Mrs. Huber: “I remember one time she got a turkey sandwich instead of a peanut-butter sandwich because peanuts were causing a problem with a fungus she had.”
My father: “Do you recall Abigail being served frozen food on any occasion?”
Mrs. Huber: “The only thing I recall is, she ate plenty, and she ate seconds and thirds if she wanted it.”
My father: “Was Abigail in any way treated differently than the other children?”
Mrs. Huber: “I already told you. She got the same as them. Nothing different.”
My father: “Were you ever present when Abigail was sent outside as a disciplinary measure?”
Mrs. Huber: “Sure. And I sent my own children out, too. Your son—you never sent him out?”
My father: “Mrs. Huber. It’s not helpful to be combative during cross-examination.”
Mrs. Huber: “You never sent him out?”
My father: “I can’t put you on the stand if you’re combative.”
Mrs. Huber: “You know what? You’re from Seattle. In Seattle, they elect communists to sit on their city council. They call it socialist, but it’s the same—communist. Seattle got the wool pulled over their eyes. By the people make the commercials on television. You realize that? People at the companies saying to themselves, Where’s the profit at? And the profit’s in putting Blacks in the ads, and putting gays in the ads, and putting women in the ads—and all this women crap. ’Cuz they want to sell stuff. They want to sell, that’s all. So they go on television and use their ads to change things. To make the wrong things normal. These companies are selling us downriver, you know. They don’t care what happens to us, long as they make their money on it. That’s what freedom’s all about for them. All this Black music in the ads. You can’t even call it music. What’s music about it? It’s terrible music. And they got the kids hypnotized with it. All the ads, people gyrating around and making fools of themselves so they can sell you a cell phone. Little speakers in your house listening in so they can spy and figure out more ways to get your money. Things are deteriorating. All these people talking about ‘woke.’ Not even grammatical, way they use it. Stupid idea anyway. Like they’re awake and the rest of us asleep. When actually they’re the ones swallowed the Kool-Aid. Calling people woke. What does that mean? Woke to getting brainwashed? They’re all brainwashed. Kids going around acting like Black people and using Black-people language. And even then they get bashed. Just for being white. It’s to where being white’s the worst thing you can be. Whites at the bottom of everything now. Call us names, put us down, tell us we’re the problem, then they say we ought to be allies. I heard that word ‘ally,’ ‘white ally,’ and I just laughed. Ally. You know what an ally is? Temporary. Like Russia and us, World War II. Not friends. Nothing like friends. Black people just using white people to get to the top. Every company now, they got to hire as many Black people as they can find, doesn’t matter if they’re good enough to do the job, long as they hire Black people they can say they hired Black people, and then everyone loves them and buys their product. Oh yeah. I see the stuff that comes out of Seattle. They think they can commit crimes and break the law and then, when the police come in to do their job, it’s the police get spit on and treated like criminals. The police! The police got a thankless, thankless task. Black does something against the law, police officer says one word about it, everyone takes videos and tells the officer he’s scum. Where’d we be without police officers? All you have to do is show some common sense and some basic respect and just put your hands up and do what you’re asked and everything’s fine, but, no, they have to argue and show disrespect and threaten, and then, when they end up on the ground getting handcuffed, they blame the police officer for doing his job, and it’s stupid and it makes me mad. So does this women crap. ‘Empowered.’ If I hear that word one more time I’m going to strangle somebody. You remember, World War II D-Day, they open up those landing-craft rear ends, all those boys jump out and get killed? Where were the women then? They out there getting killed? Next war, it’ll be the same, men out there dying, women glad they got men. Real glad again. Glad for real men. Not these little weenies you see in the ads. Men in the ads now aren’t even men. Put a real man in an ad, he’s there to be made fun of. Toxic masculinity. I hear them say that, too. Huh. Wait till the next war comes. You have a war, they’ll be showing respect for men again, ’cuz it’ll be men keeping them from rape and pillage. Wonder Woman. You see about that? Every movie now, women out there karate-kicking men or blowing up tanks, that’s not reality. Reality is, you watch football, where’s the women? Women are weaker. We’re not as strong and we’re not as fast. It’s obvious. You don’t even have to talk about it. So what’s this Wonder Woman crap about? Same thing. They’re pulling the wool over your eyes. And I know it’s not popular to say, but a lot of them are Jews. They’re the ones pushing this stuff, and it’s because of the money. They put the money first. They know how to make money. Right now, it’s women. They want to make James Bond a woman. James Bond a woman? That’s about the stupidest thing I ever heard. Or they want to make him a Black. James Bond a Black? If it makes money, they’ll do it. They don’t care. Let society fall apart. Let Christian values fall apart. They don’t care if we lose our values. They don’t care if it all falls apart and we can’t protect ourselves because we’re too busy turning our hair pink and being lesbians and gays, or not even being that, just being someone who won’t say they’re male or female ’cuz they think it’s in their head. Another thing beyond stupid. We can’t even say anymore, Look, you got born with two x-es or an x and a y, period, story over—you can’t say that anymore. And they want to make laws about it. They want to say you can go into any bathroom you want depending on how you’re feeling that day, man or woman, whatever you decide in your head, and that’s so stupid it’s beyond stupid. How’d we come to this? We came to it because we got too fat and happy, everything easy, no war to fight or hard times, everything good, so stupid white people decide, Hey, we got plenty, let’s give some away, and they turned the key and opened the door, and once it was open, naturally, the Blacks came through, and now they got their hands on our throat. What they want, they want to take over. They want everything. They smell blood. Guess what? When it’s just them alone, they laugh at how stupid we are. They call our men white boys, or they call us crackers, and no one says a word. Not wrong for them to do that, but if we call them anything we get fired over it. How’d that happen? And bringing people in from other countries. Bringing in Blacks and browns. That’s a big part of their plan. Bring them in and give them welfare checks and free health care, which the rest of us don’t got, just so’s they’ll vote against white people. You know what? They want to be the majority. They want to outvote white people. We live in an insane world now. You know why? It has to do with colleges. The colleges is where it starts. The colleges decided all the professors have to be Blacks and minorities and gays and lesbians, and now the kids who go to college learn the craziest stuff. They get propaganda. In every class. Everywhere they go. Propaganda. They tell those college kids, If you’re white you oughta feel terrible, and the right thing to do is give all your money to Black people and, oh yeah, Indians. They actually have this con job in Seattle where, if you’re white, you write a rent check once a month to this Indian tribe that used to be here. These Indians, they’re richer than we are. They got their own special laws where they don’t pay taxes and they got their casinos. What’s that about? Paying rent to Indians? They’re crazy in Seattle. You know what? My daughter and my son-in-law are victims of this stuff. You want me to pretend I’m in court answering questions? All right. You know what I’d say? If they gave me the chance? If they give a stupid hick like me one chance? I’d say I’ve had it with this trial of yours. I’ve had it with this game you’re playing. That girl had mental illness. She came here from Africa with mental illness. That girl had problems. Number one, she was disrespectful. She didn’t know how to behave in a household. Number two, she wouldn’t respond to discipline. She went down the wrong road, and she paid for it and died. That’s all. She wouldn’t come in the house. She’s dead because she wouldn’t come in the house. My daughter tried everything to get her to come in. But she wouldn’t come in. Simple as that. She went outside, she wouldn’t come in, she got cold, she froze to death. There isn’t any more to it than that. Unless you just want to take some Christians and crucify ’em for being Christian. And white. That’s what I’d say if you put me on the stand. That they hate us ’cuz we’re Christian and white.”
