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Lew strides in from the corridor and, despite Foote's warning,
the sighs reach a crescendo. He looks the part--every inch
the southwestern hero, tall and tanned, his beard and moustache
trimmed neatly. If he is nervous, he doesn't betray it as he moves
forward to be sworn.
"I can't believe it's really him," a woman breathes. "Right
here in Eugene."
Somehow, sometime--during the weeks of being cloistered in
the windowless courtroom--reality has drifted away for many of
the spectators. They are totally caught up with the leading characters.
The trial has become fiction, an exciting diversion from their
own lives.
Hugi steps almost immediately into Lew's intimate life. They
must sting, these questions about the affair that began when he
broke his elbow in 1982.
When Lew speaks, his voice is a rumbling drawl.
"My wife became aware of it on my birthday--September 12.
I told my wife I has having an affair because Diane accused me of
giving her gonorrhea. I said no ... [but] I had to tell my wife
because I'd probably given it to her. On September 13, I tried to
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break it off. A gun discharged in Diane's trailer that day."
There is no need for Lew to give the details of that gunfire--
Steve had already testified to Diane's hysterical despair when
Lew left her for the first time.
But the affair had continued; it accelerated, Lewiston says.
Diane pushed him to leave his wife, to file for divorce. Sometimes
he said he would--but he changed his mind. Back and forth, he'd
wavered, with Diane pulling at him.
The children?
"I didn't see very much of the kids."
"From Christmas on," Hugi asks, "how were the . . . two
relationships?"
Lew makes a Freudian slip as he tries to frame his answer:
"Worse with my life--er--my wife because I continued to lie to
her. Diane wanted me to divorce my wife and live with her and
the three children. I told her I just didn't want to be a daddy to
I never wanted kids--or to be a father."
A crimson flush creeps up Diane's neck; otherwise, she shows
no reaction. The man on the witness stand might be just another
detective.
SMALL SACRIFICES 395
Still, if one looks closely, there is a tenseness in her body;
every muscle under the seemingly blase exterior is taut. She leans
over to Jim Jagger often, whispering and laughing derisively. She has to act
as if none of Lew's testimony matters--who could
possibly believe that she ever cared enough about this man to hurt
her children? But, even as she works to show disinterest and
scorn, Diane's eyes fall on the new wide gold wedding band on
Lew's finger.
She has not seen Lew for eight months--Lew, her golden
man she once could not live through a night without. When he
leaves the witness stand, it is unlikely that she will ever see him
again.
Answering Fred Hugi's questions, Lew moves verbally through
the seventeen months he'd known Diane before she left for Oregon.
By that time, her conversation had become "an everyday
push for me to get a divorce, sell my house, and get up to Oregon
with her. She wanted me to do it quick enough to come with her.
I always said, 'If it's met to be, it will be.' I just hadn't made up
my mind."
And the gun? What about the .22 Ruger?
"The few days before she left--four or five days before--she
offered the use of her .22 pistol to me. Her ex-husband, Steve,
was not my best friend to say the least . . . Steve threatened to
beat me up."
Lew testifies that he turned down the pistol offer after considering
the gift for a few minutes. "I saw it in the trunk of her
Datsun the night before she left--the .22 Ruger."
"What day did she leave?"
"April 2, 1983."
Once Diane was in Oregon, Lew recalls, "It was basically a
relief that she was gone, and I started to patch things up with my
wife. Diane usually called me every day in the morning or evening.
She sent letters every day. I began to refuse both the calls
I and return the letters. I was back with my wife in two weeks."
As Lew explains that her absence was "basically a relief,"
Diane's armor cracks visibly for the first time since he began to
testify. She stares at him with an expression of ineffable sadness.
He had not missed her; he'd only been relieved.
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Diane came back once, Lew continues, to give him his gold
chain. "After she left on the twenty-eighth, I assumed it was
over. She gave back the chain; I didn't want to come to Oregon,
and I was back with my wife."
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