Before You Know Kindness Part 12

Dominique Germaine had her doubts about a lawsuit Monday morning, but she wanted to hear more. She liked suing big organizations. In her tenure FERAL had sued dairy councils, meat packers, and public school systems that hung posters encouraging children to drink their milk; they had taken legal action against circuses and aquariums and a marine science museum; they had sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make sure that rats, mice, and birds would be afforded protection in the Animal Welfare Act, and then (just for good measure) they had sued the cosmetics companies, the drug companies, and a couple of shoe companies, too. It astonished her that it had never crossed her mind to have her group sue a gun maker or find someone with a reason-real or imagined-to sue one: After all, she loathed hunting. In this day and age it seemed to Dominique to be an anachronism that was at once barbaric and cruel. And it certainly wasn't a sport, since sport sport implied a compet.i.tion of sorts, the certainty-or, at least, the likelihood-that each side had a fighting chance. Obviously no mallard or deer had a fighting chance against a human with a rifle. No elephant had any prospect of "winning" against a hunter armed with a Holland & Holland .500 Nitro or one of those legal monstrosities that fired armor-piercing sh.e.l.ls into the creatures. A lawsuit was an intriguing idea, regardless of whether Spencer McCullough had a prayer in h.e.l.l of receiving a penny in compensation-in or out of court-because of the way FERAL could use the family's lawsuit to shed light on the mind-numbingly violent culture that surrounded guns and hunting and... implied a compet.i.tion of sorts, the certainty-or, at least, the likelihood-that each side had a fighting chance. Obviously no mallard or deer had a fighting chance against a human with a rifle. No elephant had any prospect of "winning" against a hunter armed with a Holland & Holland .500 Nitro or one of those legal monstrosities that fired armor-piercing sh.e.l.ls into the creatures. A lawsuit was an intriguing idea, regardless of whether Spencer McCullough had a prayer in h.e.l.l of receiving a penny in compensation-in or out of court-because of the way FERAL could use the family's lawsuit to shed light on the mind-numbingly violent culture that surrounded guns and hunting and...deer camp.

The very term gave Dominique the s.h.i.+vers. She had grown up in Montreal and known children whose families owned hunting shacks in the province's eastern lakes region or in upstate New York, and so she had a pretty good idea of the way the men fell back innumerable steps on the evolutionary ladder when they were there. She doubted that they even continued to walk upright after a day or two of eating half-cooked doe meat (yes, she knew they illegally killed does the first day; it was a tradition with many hunting families).

Here before her now, some two and a half hours after he had first broached the idea of a lawsuit, was her deputy director and the organization's general counsel. Keenan Barrett was a tall and elegant southerner with a red cob for a nose, eyes the color of cornflowers in bloom, and a great shock of white hair he kept slicked back with Brylcreem. He was probably pus.h.i.+ng sixty, and outwardly he had the demeanor of a good-natured but slightly ponderous headmaster for a private school long past its prime. It was only after he'd spoken for a few minutes and methodically slogged his way to his point that you got a sense of how sharp he really was-which was part of the reason why he had driven John Seton into such a fury on the phone Sunday morning. He tended to still his adversaries, lulling them so they let down their guards or giving them the impression that he was nothing more than a gracious old windbag. Then he would pounce. Dominique had seen him do this in meetings with Revlon and Gillette and a Quebecois fur company, first causing the eyes of the corporate denizens across the table to glaze during his courtly preambles and then causing their blood pressures to climb like Nepalese trekkers when abruptly he put FERAL's findings or demands (or both) on the table. He was patient as well as intelligent, and as a result he got things done. When Dominique was around him she always felt like a teenage girl who had an ill-advised crush on an older friend of the family.

He sat down in one of the four modern swivel chairs that surrounded the circular table she used for small conferences, and she emerged from behind her own desk to join him. Her office wasn't huge-they were a nonprofit-but it was far from shabby. It looked out on the northern entrance to the Empire State Building. On two walls there were abstract paintings of tropical birds she had found in a Miami gallery, all of which looked like vaguely erotic flowers, and the polished hardwood floor was the silky color of soy milk. If the room struck some journalists and visitors as a trifle tacky, it was usually because in her desire to make certain there were no animal-based or animal-enhanced products in her sight, there was a lot of hemp on the couch and the chairs, and the coffee table, the credenza, and the desk were made from postconsumer recycled paper. It was actually pretty expensive stuff, but it looked like you wouldn't dare put anything heavier than a paper cup of coffee or a yellow legal pad atop any of it.

"You know," Keenan began in his soft, patient voice, "there are myriad reasons why it is just so difficult to be a parent these days. A good parent, that is. My sense is that our friend, Spencer, is going to have a lot of conversations with young Charlotte over the next couple of months that can only be called intense. Same with this John Seton fellow and his little girl. Those conversations will be rather different in nature, as you can imagine, but they will share a certain umbrella reality that may have a good deal to do with what those families read about this story in the newspapers or happen to catch on the nightly news. My guess is that although it's unlikely we'll ever see anything that happened up in New Hamps.h.i.+re go to trial, we may be able to turn what I thought was going to be a public relations nightmare to our advantage."

"I don't think Spencer and Charlotte have intense conversations about anything. Spencer saves his intensity for us."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe Catherine and Charlotte will have to have the hard talks."

"Actually, I find it rather encouraging that you believe a gun manufacturer might even consider settling," she said. "I figured this was all, I don't know, nuisance material. Frivolous. After all, even if there is some tiny defect with the rifle, the man left it sitting around since last November with a bullet inside it. And we still don't know whether there was a flaw or if this brother-in-law is just an imbecile. Besides, the child shouldn't have been playing with the weapon. It's pretty obvious that if you pull the trigger on a gun, there's a chance that someone's going to get hurt. Wouldn't this be like suing a knife company because you cut yourself on the blade?"

"Oh, we can muddy things up a bit. Spencer's lawyers, that is. Especially if the extractor was defective. Then he's in pretty fine shape, though there won't be a doubt in anyone's mind that his brother-in-law should have gotten the darn thing taken care of last year. But even if the extractor doesn't have some little ding somewhere, Spencer's lawyers would have a shot. Pun intended. It comes down to the nature of most gun chambers and magazines. I had my a.s.sistant do a little research online this morning-intellectual curiosity, more than anything. I wanted to see the general shape of product liability with guns, and whether ol' Spencer would have a chance of getting his bad wing in front of a jury. Then I took a walk over to that sporting goods store by Madison Square Garden and looked at the hunting rifles."

"And?"

"Seems to me a lawyer could argue a couple of things. A strict product liability suit: the gun folks have been placing a dangerously defective product in the stream of commerce-"

"The girl fired the gun and it went off. Where's the defect?"

"It goes back to how you unload the weapon. Even after you empty all the bullets from the magazine, there is still one in the chamber. Can you imagine? You have to remove that one separately, using the bolt of the weapon. Now, someone could contend that's a design flaw. All you'd need is one expert-or, if we were very, very lucky, one seriously disgruntled ex-employee-who was willing to suggest that no one at the company ever bothered to link the magazine and the chamber more efficiently because it would cost too much."

"Don't most hunters know that?"

"About the bullet in the chamber? I expect so. But things happen. People forget. This is a route you might go if Spencer's gun experts don't find anything wrong with his actual weapon. If they can't claim his particular gun was uniquely defective, then-what the h.e.l.l?-you take on the whole d.a.m.n Adirondack thirty-ought-six. You argue that the magazine and the chamber should be able to be unloaded simultaneously-or that there should be some sort of indication when there's a bullet in the chamber. A light, maybe, or a flag. Perhaps we contend that the weapon needed to be childproof-have a more secure safety device."

"And it's conceivable that the gun company might settle?"

"Gun companies-Adirondack, Winchester, Browning-have insurance for exactly this sort of thing. It's a cost of doing business."

"What if Spencer refuses?"

"To settle?"

"Uh-huh." Dominique was aware that she sounded hopeful. She could already imagine the publicity that would surround a trial.

Keenan wrote with a fountain pen, and for a long moment he seemed to be staring at the budlike gold nib as he formulated his answer in his mind. His fingers were elegant: not effeminate but as long and slender as a pianist's, and each nail was an immaculate seash.e.l.l pink box with four rounded corners. He had, Dominique thought, the perfect hands for a fountain pen. Finally he answered her. "It goes to court in three or four years," he said, "and then Spencer wins or loses. Who can say? It would depend upon his experts-and theirs. And if Spencer's little girl is sufficiently telegenic, and if Spencer doesn't look downright evil to the jury-"

"Spencer, evil? I can think of many words to describe Spencer, but evil evil isn't exactly top of the list." isn't exactly top of the list."

"Evil either because he looks like someone trying to recoup from an injury caused by his own daughter-that can certainly put off a jury-or evil because he works for us. Obviously we've never done anything as outrageous as, say, the Animal Freedom Front, but we've irritated our share of folks in this world who believe our opinions are a tad extreme. Who knows? Maybe we'll get some doctor or scientist from that medical school on the jury-someone who still hasn't forgiven FERAL for getting their research labs shut down a couple years back."

"They were giving cats AIDS and crystal meth-and then killing them."

He shrugged. "And we might be surprised if somehow we could prevent his brother-in-law from coming across as a moron of Herculean proportions. After all, we'd have an attractive, remorseful teenage girl-Charlotte is what now, twelve?-whom we can portray as desperately traumatized by what happened and a small-town lawyer from Vermont. They might look pretty good to a jury."

"And even if the manufacturer does eventually settle, we still get three or four years' worth of media coverage, right?"

"Probably not that long," he answered. "At some point the judge puts us all under a gag order. Or they settle quickly to make this whole incident go away."

Dominique thought about this and wondered suddenly if Spencer might actually need a windfall settlement. She didn't think so: He came from some money, and Catherine was absolutely loaded. His mother-in-law lived in some ma.s.sive Park Avenue apartment, and the Setons owned that baronial place on a hill up in the White Mountains. She'd seen Spencer's pictures. And it wasn't as if this injury-even if the poor guy did lose his right arm-was going to affect his ability to do his job. It wasn't like you needed two hands to rewrite an a.s.sistant's news release or plan a press conference or make catty comments about bunny-tested eyeliner on TV talk shows.

Besides, that was the McCullough family's decision to make, not hers. Her only responsibility was to FERAL. For all she knew, nothing would come of this, anyway. But she decided that she liked the notion of a lawsuit against a gun manufacturer. She liked it very much.

"It's too bad you can't be Spencer's lawyer," she said.

"Oh, product liability isn't exactly my specialty. But obviously I'd be happy to work with the right person."

"You know who that might be?"

"I'd recommend Paige Sutherland."

"I like Paige."

"Course you do," he said, and he slipped the cap back on his fountain pen. "Want me to call her?"

"And Spencer."

He raised his eyebrows mischievously. "Yes. We can't forget to tell Spencer."

"No."

"I'll call him right now," Barrett said. "Besides, I want someone to photograph his shoulder in the next day or two-before it gets any better."

"I don't believe there's much chance of that."

"Pardon me. Before it outwardly begins to look less repulsive. We want images that show Spencer at his absolute worst."

For a moment she tried to envision what the wound must look like and the sort of agony her communications director was probably enduring, but her mind kept offering images instead of the deer she had seen in the countryside beyond Montreal-upstate New York, the Laurentians-the animals shot and disemboweled and left hanging on the families' front porches. She wanted to be sympathetic to people, too, but the truth was that she just didn't have it in her.

Sixteen

Late Tuesday afternoon, while a photographer was taking pictures of her uncle Spencer in the hospital in Hanover, Willow Seton saw her first urinal. Urinals, actually. There were two of them in the men's room in the clubhouse at the Contour Club. She was showing them to Charlotte-seeing them for herself-because this pair had a unique adornment all the grown-ups knew about but the women (at least) never discussed and because this was the most gloriously anarchic activity she could think of at the moment to take her cousin's mind off her father. Since they'd arrived at the club her cousin had done nothing but continue to wallow in remorse. She'd sat, almost unmoving, in one of the big wrought-iron chairs that faced Mount Lafayette, and she hadn't even bothered to change into her tennis shorts or her gleefully inappropriate string bikini. She wasn't sobbing anymore, but she wasn't talking, either. She was, in fact, barely moving.

Now Willow had her up and about. This wasn't the sort of athletic, good-for-you activity in which her family usually indulged here at the club, but at least it was something. A project. She gestured for Charlotte to wait just outside the wood-paneled door with the silhouette of a male golfer in knickers, while she slithered in first to make absolutely certain it was empty. Willow didn't believe there was a man in there because she had been hovering in the pro shop for close to ten minutes, carefully staking out the door. But she thought she should check-just in case. Charlotte was in no condition to be yelled at.

"Coast is clear," she said, once she had confirmed that the room was empty. She had emerged partway from the doorway and glanced quickly out the club room's picture windows to make sure that her grandmother was still on the practice putting green and her own mother was still reading a magazine with Patrick beside her in his baby chair.

The girls had heard about these urinals and their exceptional artwork-pictures, paintings, or photographs, no one would say-at the bonfire on Sat.u.r.day night. Willow had never before had any desire to see a urinal because until then she hadn't even known such a thing existed. In the last five or six years, whenever she had traveled anywhere alone with her father and needed to go to the bathroom-in shopping malls, in airports-he had sent her into the ladies' room alone and stood guard outside the door. Even when she'd been three years old she was pretty sure that she had been using the ladies' rooms (though in those days, evidently, her father had ventured into the refuge with her, standing beside the mirrors and the sinks as her sentinel against abduction). She'd actually had to ask Charlotte precisely what one was, and when her cousin had described their design to her that evening she wasn't sure whether the notion astonished her more because it meant going to the bathroom with nothing but air between you and the person beside you or whether it was the freedom to go to the bathroom so casually. With such remarkable ease. Now that young Patrick was in her life she saw a p.e.n.i.s with frequency, and its advantages-at least when it came to urinating-were apparent.

No, she decided finally, it was the immodesty that fascinated her more than anything. It was the complete lack of reserve.

"You coming?" she asked Charlotte, and the older girl nodded. She liked this reversal of roles. And so with one last glimpse around her to make sure no adults were nearby, she drew her cousin with her into the men's room, scooted past the corner wall into the bathroom area itself, and saw before her the urinals. There they were, mounted against the far wall, the two of them surrounded by a delft blue tile that looked more interesting or impressive than the pink tile that adorned the ladies' room. Still, the urinals themselves were disappointing: She saw nothing that resembled artwork, no glorious beautification, no flourishes that might elevate them beyond their purpose.

She looked at Charlotte and saw the girl was nodding, a tiny smirk at the edges of her lips. Her arms were folded across her chest, as if she were trying to understand a painting at one of the grand museums across the park from her apartment in the city.

"A guy from Franconia College did it years ago," Charlotte said finally, her voice even now a tad shaky. "One of those hippie guys who went to the school before it closed."

Willow had gotten the sense from her parents that everyone everyone who went to Franconia College before it closed was a hippie guy-or girl. who went to Franconia College before it closed was a hippie guy-or girl.

"You know the painter. We both do," her cousin continued. "He's the man with that Rip Van Winkle beard in the bookstore in Littleton." Willow nodded. She knew exactly whom Charlotte was talking about. Every other day Grandmother took them to the nearby town of Littleton on errands of one sort or another, and inevitably they went to the bookstore. Willow guessed she knew it as well as any of the bookstores near her home in Vermont. There was a fellow who worked there in his late fifties, and he had a bushy beard the color of cigarette ash that fell to the middle of his chest. He was a quiet guy, but when you asked him a question about a book he knew exactly where in the store to find it, and whenever he recommended a novel to Willow there was a very good chance she would like it.

She glanced back at the urinals, wondering exactly what she was missing-what the fellow had painted. She could tell the urinals were made of the same kind of porcelain as a regular toilet, and she'd never before thought about whether a toilet actually had to be painted. Individually painted, that is. The notion crossed her mind that perhaps urinals weren't usually white. Maybe they were some other color. Something that made them even more repulsive than they already were.

No, that wasn't possible. They couldn't be more repulsive.

"Did you think the bugs were real?" Charlotte was asking. "I did when I first saw them."

"Bugs?"

"The flies!"

She turned back to the urinals and understood for the first time what those black smudges were that hung slightly below the midpoint of each smooth-hollowed porcelain wall. They were so perfectly centered that she'd presumed they were merely a manufacturing logo of some sort. She took a step closer, and then another. Sure enough, the black marks were flies-rendered, she saw now, with the exact.i.tude of a naturalist, right down to the tiny hairs on the bugs' legs and the intricate lacework on the insects' wings-one on each urinal.

"Why a fly?" she asked Charlotte. "Do you know?"

"Uh-huh. Aim."

"Aim?"

"Aim. Some people at the club wanted to keep the men's room a little cleaner and they figured out that all men-even my dad, I guess-are hunters at heart."

Willow looked down at the ground around the urinals and then at the walls beside them. Some men, she knew, were better hunters than others, and suddenly she was desperately glad that she was wearing her sandals.

JOHN WAS UNSURE if he was pleased that he was about to be alone with Spencer for the first time since the accident. The photographer was finis.h.i.+ng up now, and Catherine was taking a short walk in Hanover to clear her head. Hours earlier his mother and Sara had brought the three children back to Sugar Hill...or, if he knew Mother, back to the Contour Club. Just because her son-in-law had just had half his shoulder blown away was no reason that she and the two girls couldn't grab a quick swim or sneak in a brief golf or bridge lesson. By now, he guessed, his mother was on the practice putting green or the driving range, and the girls were doing something equally as wholesome and lively. if he was pleased that he was about to be alone with Spencer for the first time since the accident. The photographer was finis.h.i.+ng up now, and Catherine was taking a short walk in Hanover to clear her head. Hours earlier his mother and Sara had brought the three children back to Sugar Hill...or, if he knew Mother, back to the Contour Club. Just because her son-in-law had just had half his shoulder blown away was no reason that she and the two girls couldn't grab a quick swim or sneak in a brief golf or bridge lesson. By now, he guessed, his mother was on the practice putting green or the driving range, and the girls were doing something equally as wholesome and lively.

There was a lot that John felt he had to say to Spencer, most of it apologetic and self-flagellating, though he did want to discuss as well FERAL's plan that he turn a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer into a public spectacle.

Once the photographer had packed his camera bag and left, John sat down on the empty bed across from his brother-in-law and said, "You must be exhausted. That looked excruciating." The photographer had taken some shots with film and some with a digital camera, and twice he had insisted on showing John in the viewfinder the image of his brother-in-law's shoulder that he was preserving for the lawyer-a woman from New York City named Paige. Paige was flying to New Hamps.h.i.+re first thing Wednesday morning, along with that pompous attorney from FERAL. Keenan Barrett.

"Excruciating is...'bout right," Spencer said quietly. The nurse had replaced his bandages and the splint that held his arm flat against his chest. It had been evident that despite the painkillers, the process had been almost unbearable.

"So," John began, deciding now was as good a time as any to ask the question that was standing in the room with them like an uninvited and slightly malodorous third person, "how angry are you?"

Spencer considered his response for a moment before answering vaguely, "Don't know."

"But you know how sorry I am, right? How desperately and sincerely-"

"You're...sorry. I know that."

"You have every right to be angry."

Spencer swallowed and then gave him the tiniest of nods in agreement. John had noticed in the course of the day that Spencer was not merely speaking softly, he was answering in as few words as possible (and sometimes with no words), as if even the act of speaking was at once painful and exhausting.

"May I ask you another question? Are you angry because-"

"Just angry, 'kay? I am...just...angry."

"Because I hunt."

"Yes."

"Because I left a bullet in the gun."

"Yes."

"Because-"

"Because I may...be...crippled. That seems reason...enough." It was the longest response he had heard from Spencer all afternoon, and the length-as well as the wheezy rasp-caught John off guard.

"They don't know that for sure," he murmured, and he feared he sounded blindly-illogically-optimistic.

Spencer rolled his eyes and then grimaced. "When did you start?"

"Hunting? Last fall. I got interested in the summer, around the time we got Sara's amnio results and we realized we were going to have a little boy. A son. I've known lots of people in Vermont who hunt, of course, and I guess I'd always been intrigued. And so I took a course and some lessons-"

"Not enough..."

John sighed, knowing there was nothing he could (or should) say in his defense.

"No. Apparently not. Anyway, I took lessons and I took the safety course and before I knew it, I was"-and he felt himself shrugging, as if he were commenting on a subject as innocuous as which necktie he had worn to work-"hunting."

"You kill something?"

"No. Not yet. Never, now."

Spencer breathed in and out through his nose. It sounded a bit like a small plastic whistle.

"When you feel a little better-and only when you feel better-let's talk about FERAL, okay? About what they want you to do."

"I don't think so."