After a heartbeat of dead silence, the muttering cut off all at once.
Evelyn's knees buckled and she stumbled back a step, the panic on her face impossible to hide now as she shrieked,
"Are you insane? When did I ever say I wanted to call the police? We're all family here. We can just settle this quietly, can't we?"
The cigarette dropped from Chairman James's fingers to the ground. His face went stony as he stepped forward and dropped his voice to coax me,
"Ferris, what's gotten into you, boy? Why make such a mess of this?"
"If word of this really gets out, it's not just your future and your name that are finished. The whole town will get pointed at."
Beside them, the background-review officers exchanged a heavy look.
Was this a breach of conduct, or just a lovers' quarrel?
Or was something else going on?
My brother grabbed my arm, his face taut with worry.
"Ferris, don't do anything rash. Once you call the police, they'll open a case and run the whole review. Even if you're cleared in the end, the background-review window will have closed, and the job you just landed will be gone."
I patted his hand to settle him.
"Don't worry, Ulysses. There's no need for any of that. I can clear my name today, right now."
I straightened my back, swept a cold look across Evelyn and the chairman taking her side, and said firmly,
"Just because I'm about to start at a state-level agency, you think you can smear me out of nothing? You think you can use it to back me into a corner and make me marry some bar-crawling girl?"
These past few years, I'd heard plenty about Evelyn's reputation.
Hanging around bars, tangled up with some divorced guy, and no shortage of men circling her besides.
I fixed my eyes on her white face and hardened my voice.
"Evelyn, you know exactly who raped you. Claiming it was me makes you guilty of filing a false accusation. Once the police get here and start looking into it, whose baby you're carrying will come out clear as day."
"And you know exactly who's going to be facing the law when it does."
The words hit her like a thunderclap. Her whole body shook, her lips trembled, but she still ground out through clenched teeth,
"It was you, Ferris James. I'll say the same thing when the police come, so don't think you can wriggle out of it."
Then she shot a frantic look at Abigail.
Abigail's eyes darted, and she stepped up and slapped a hand down on my shoulder.
"Ferris, cancel that call right now. We're all one family. Do we really have to drag this out into something so ugly?"
"Just agree to marry little Evelyn and we'll drop the bride price. I'll even have Mom throw in a dowry. How's that?"
"Ulysses, I'm telling you, if your brother shames this family, I'm taking little Howie and I'm never coming back, and your brother can rot in disgrace."
By now she'd forgotten all about the commercial storefront in town my parents had left me, and moved on to threatening my brother.
The chairman came forward too, weight behind his voice.
"Ulysses, your parents died young, and the eldest brother stands in a father's place. You settle this today. If real talk starts going around and it drags down this town's name, then don't bother coming back here again."
"This town doesn't take in rapists and people of low character."
Right then a siren went off, and a squad car came screaming up with its red-and-blue flashing, stopping right at my family's gate.
The officers had barely stepped into the yard when Evelyn suddenly threw herself down on her knees in front of them.
"Officers, please, stand up for me. It was that animal Ferris James who forced himself on me."
She pointed at the scratches on me, screaming herself hoarse,
"The marks on his arm are from when he attacked me and I clawed him. There should still be something under my nails."
She thrust her long manicured nails out in front of the officers.
An officer turned serious and looked over at me.
"You're Ferris James, correct?"
I stepped forward and answered plainly,
"Yes. And I'm the one who called you. I did not force myself on this woman."
At that the chairman stepped out, face set, and said loudly,
"Officers, I can testify. That night I did see a man in white come running out of the cornfield in a panic, heading toward the James house. Who else could it have been but him?"
The Lambert family started jabbing fingers at me and cursing,
"Ferris James, you're not even human. You do something this filthy and you've got the nerve to call the cops and turn it back on us? The proof's right here. If you can't clear yourself today, we'll see you locked up till you rot."
Seeing all this, Evelyn played it up, weeping through her tears,
"Officers, never mind, never mind, it's all my own fault, don't blame Ferris. Don't arrest him, don't ruin his future. I'll raise the child on my own. I don't need him to take responsibility, and I don't need him to marry me."
She cried with such grief, spoke with such feeling, that the crowd started to bristle and look at her with pity.
"Ferris James, you're no kind of man. Do the deed and can't own it."
"Thinks that because he's a college grad with some standing he can push a young girl around. Figured she'd just cave to his pressure?"
The blame rose from every side.
I let out a short laugh and slowly straightened my clothes.
"Evelyn, you insisted the man who attacked you was wearing a white shirt and red underwear, and that you clawed his arm. Right?"
Evelyn nodded hard on reflex, and the chairman rushed to back her up,
"Ferris James, you were wearing a white shirt that day, and I saw it with my own eyes, you shoving open the James family gate and running in."
"We've got witnesses and evidence both. What have you got to say now?"
Every scornful, sneering eye landed on me, all of them glaring like they wanted me dragged off to justice on the spot.
I drew a crisp, brand-new surgical record from my pocket, held it up for everyone to see, and said sharply,
"Take a good look. Two days ago I had a circumcision. The wound hasn't even had the stitches out. So tell me, how exactly did I force myself on Evelyn in that condition?"
The color drained from Evelyn's face in an instant, and she went rigid where she stood.
The chairman turned pale, his eyes flinching away, and not one more word of testimony came out of him.
I ran a cold look over all of them, then turned at last to the officers and said, one word at a time,
"Since Evelyn is so certain someone raped her, I'd ask the officers to follow the leads she's given and investigate every man in this town and the neighboring ones. We'll find out exactly who the rapist is."
