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The Subtle Artistry of Keith Lee Morris’s “Testimony”

by Kathleen Maher on February 17, 2007

Keith Lee Morris’ short story, “Testimony,” in the latest issue of A Public Space (03) is among the best I’ve read, which is saying a lot, since I have been reading mostly short stories for a year. On the surface, it is a straightforward tale in which a first-person narrator, under questioning in court, relates a tragic chain of events. But on closer look, one can see how the story gains its exceptional power thanks to the writer’s artistry with perspective and voice.

The first-person voice puts us in the head of the narrator, Michael Bond, while he undergoes questioning as state’s witness in a murder case against his friend since childhood. After establishing the courtroom, jury, judge, and lawyers through Bond’s eyes, the author tells the story of the crime through a series of third-person questions, questions posed ostensibly—but not explicitly—by lawyers for the prosecution. At the same time, the narrator thinks of questions he hopes no one will ask him, only to discover that by alluding to them on his own he has dredged up memories and allegiances extending beyond the crime. The more the narrator tries to push the inquiry back and search for excuses, the more the fault lines in his defense appear.

Although the author has presented the lawyers as discrete characters, the use of the disembodied third person questions here is not merely a literary device, but a classic form of self-protection. Sitting on the witness stand, Michael Bond relies on that third person interrogator who, of course, is himself, to bring about a more tolerable perspective. For him and most readers, however, the technique achieves the opposite effect. Driving the story from a deliberately removed position brings about an unexpected and horrific immediacy.

The murder case involves four young men: One the leader, who is on trial, two followers, including Michael Bond, and a fourth, the murder victim, who always stood apart from the group. Through the voice of Bond, the friends’ competitive posturing feels nearly innocent at first. Their joking one-upmanship is not so different from a bravado all but endorsed in the United States, except that the friends happen to be methamphetamine users. Keith Lee Morris slowly turns their bantering behavior until we see its underside. The consequences of a sporting aggression matched by a “cool-guy attitude” are irrevocable.

By the end the narrator finds his moral failing sickening. One young man has died, thus the legal trial. The remaining three live on, but ruined, and the narrator has realized, too late, that had he seized the moment he could have changed their fates.

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