“Page!”
I look up at a black man who has appeared from behind his house which is halfway between mine and Pinewood Elementary on the corner. He shakes his head as if he has had about all of me he can tolerate. I think I know why.
“Woogie! Come on, damn it!” I yell. Like a marble statue, my dog is frozen in the classic posture of an animal doing his business in a neighbor’s yard. Emerging at the east end of this castrated mixture of beagle and melting pot is a soft quarter pounder that would make a St.
Bernard bark with pride.
“We were trying to make the schoolyard,” I explain. As persistent violators of the leash law at all times, Woogie and I escape detection at this time of day only in the dead of winter. On this gloriously mild mid-October afternoon at six o’clock in the evening there is still plenty of light.
“Over the years your dog has dumped enough fertilizer in my yard,” my neighbor says mildly, “to start a nursery.
Actually, I was about to call you.”
“I’m sorry,” I lie, racking my brain for his name. If my memory is like this at forty-eight, I can’t wait for fifty.
Connery? No, Cunningham. Rosa, my late wife, would have known. A native of South America and dark herself, she knew everybody, black or white, on our street. The longer I live in this neighborhood, the fewer “pleasantries there are to exchange. Crime, drugs, racial tensions in the schools, etc.” were supposed to have been solved by now; instead, the problems are worse. Twenty years later, Blackwell County, located in the center of the state, hosts the “Crips” and the “Bloods” and other gangs, almost all black. On our street, mostly a mixture of white retirees and middle-class blacks, it seems as if all we can safely talk about is the latest addition to our medical records, which, as the years pass, are becoming the size of the Dallas phone book.
“I just had anal fissure repair surgery,” Payne Littlefield, my next-door neighbor, recently confided to me.
“I’ve never experienced such pain in my life! …” After a few minutes of this, I’d just as soon watch in silence as Woogie hoses down his rosebush. I was more outgoing and neighborly when my wife was alive, but I realize I’ve become pessimistic about the possibility of lions and lambs even co-existing on the same planet, much less taking a snooze together. When Rosa and I moved to Blackwell County a quarter of a century ago I never dreamed I’d become so wary, but now fear is an emotion I carry around in my back pocket like a wallet.
“It won’t happen again,” I say hastily to Cunningham.
My neighbor, a tall man in his forties who has the gut of an ex-jock, hooks his thumbs in his jeans. He works, I think, at the post office downtown.
“I wanted to find out if you’d be interested in talking about the case of the Razorback football player charged with rape in Fayetteville yesterday. Dade Cunningham is my nephew. His father is inside.”
Dade Cunningham. Now that’s a name I know! Three years ago he was the most sought-after prospect from Arkansas since Keith Jackson signed with Oklahoma back in the early eighties. Lou Holtz had come within an inch of luring Cunningham to Notre Dame, but the pres sure on the kid to stay in-state was tremendous. It would be like Rush Limbaugh announcing he was about to defect to China. Until yesterday, Cunningham, a junior wide receiver with 4.4 speed in the forty-yard dash, was a cinch to be a top draft choice whenever he decided to turn pro. He was on several preseason first team all-American lists and has already had a season most players only dream about. With that kind of future I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. This morning’s front-page article in the Democrat-Gazette about Cunningham’s re ported rape of a University of Arkansas coed (her name was not given) has to be worth four or five points on the betting line out of Las Vegas for the Hogs’ Southeastern Conference game against Georgia this week. On Satur day, Cunningham caught eight passes for over two him dred yards and two touchdowns against South Carolina in the Razorbacks’ 24 to 17 win.
“Sure, I’ll talk to him,” I say.
“Let me get my dog home and put on some pants and a shirt.” I have just been home from work long enough to get out of my suit, and I am wearing a pair of ragged shorts, a wrinkled yellow T-shirt that advertises “Lobotomy Beer” ( a gag gift from my daughter on my birthday) and Adidas running shoes, which are badly in need of washing. Not exactly a business recruiting outfit.
“Don’t take the time to change clothes,” my neighbor says.
“Just come on back. My brother’s got to drive back to eastern Arkansas as soon as he can. He’s got a sick child at home, and his wife needs him.”
I nod and clap my hands at Woogie, who now that he has relieved himself, is markedly more frisky.
“Let’s go home, boy!” Usually, we walk around at the school while he sniffs the empty candy wrappers and waters the playground equipment. As I walk south to the house, followed by my reluctant dog, I try to remember the article in the Democrat-Gazette.
With the paper withholding the alleged victim’s name and the university claiming privacy under a federal law, the story was mostly about Dade Cunningham’s stats. All I remember off the top of my head is that the victim was a twenty-year-old white cheerleader and the rape was supposed to have taken place off campus. According to the paper, Cunningham claimed the girl consented. Of course, there’s probably never been a rapist who hasn’t argued the act was voluntary. Alleged rapist, I remind myself. There’s a double standard at work here. The media withholds the alleged victim’s name but not the alleged perpetrator’s. What’s sauce for the gander ought to be sauce for the goose, my criminal defense lawyer’s mind tells me. But it doesn’t work that way, and with Cunningham being black, if this case goes to trial he’s got an uphill battle. Unless there’s been a racial migration I don’t know about, Washington County, in the northwest corner of the state, is overwhelmingly white, and I don’t know of a single case in Arkansas where a black male was acquitted of raping a white woman.
Maybe there are some, but they didn’t teach them in law school.
“Sorry, boy,” I say inside the house to my dog, who looks at me with the tragic eyes of one who is perpetually wronged.
“We’ll go later.” Sure we will. He slinks into the kitchen to point out to me his empty food dish. A terribly neglectful master. He misses my daughter. So do I. But if I get this case, it will be a chance to see Sarah more often this year. Actually that still may be hard to do, as busy as she is. Sarah, a sophomore who has aspirations to be a varsity Razorback cheerleader, is cheerleading for the junior varsity (a necessary step, she tells me), and is working part-time for a professor in the sociology department What a great kid. She has every reason to be roy ally screwed up, with her mother dying from breast cancer when she was thirteen and me half nuts during that time. Instead, she’s got her head on a lot straighter than most kids her age I know. They would be crazy not to make her a cheerleader. Part Hispanic, Indian, and black as a result of her Colombian mother’s ancestry, Sarah would not only help solve some cultural diversity problems but she is also a knockout. Voted a campus beauty her freshman year, she is the picture of her mother, who, even at the end of an eight-hour shift at St.
Thomas Hospital, where she worked as a nurse, could look stunningly lovely. My only real complaint is that occasionally Sarah does get on a soapbox. Her senior year in high school she was on a fundamentalist religious kick. Now she seems normal again. If I handle her the right way, she might be able to help get me some in formation providing this conversation with the father works out. She surely knows the girl. Like Woogie looking for a corncob, I rummage through the garbage, but the Democrat-Gazette article is drenched with stains from last night’s pizza and is unreadable. I grab a legal pad and head out the door.
As my neighbor lets me in his house, a rangy black man in his early forties stands up in front of a couch and waits for me to come over to him.
“This is the lawyer,” my neighbor says to him, “I was telling you about. He represented Andrew Chapman.”
“Gideon Page,” I introduce myself, and offer my hand, thinking most people forget that Andy Chapman, a black psychologist accused of murdering a retarded child, actu ally was found guilty of negligent homicide. Still, he only got probation and didn’t go to jail, so I’ll take the credit.
“Roy Cunningham,” the man says, and engulfs my palm in his. No wonder his son is a wide receiver. His hand is practically the width of my notebook. Cunningham studies me with an intense expression. I doubt if there is going to be a lot of small talk.
I retreat to a chair opposite the couch. My neighbor’s living room is small and decorated with family pictures.
A snapshot of the Cunningham brothers sits on the table beside my chair. In the picture, which seems recent, they are smiling. Today they are not.
“Have you talked to any other attorneys?” I ask, checking to see if I have any competition. If he has already retained someone, in theory
I’m not even supposed to be talking to him. Rules governing professional conduct among lawyers have somewhat unrealistic expectations if you are trying to earn a living in solo practice.
Roy parks himself beside his brother, who is an older, softer version of himself.
“A couple,” he says brusquely, “but I don’t know nothing about criminal lawyers. My wife and I own a grocery store near Hughes in St. Francis County. We’ve got four other kids to feed.”
I guess he is telling me he couldn’t afford them. Yet, it occurs to me that there are plenty of lawyers who would be willing to take this case for nothing on the hope that if Dade is acquitted, the attorney would soon have a great shot at the opportunity to negotiate his pro contract. With the kind of money these top players at the skill positions are getting, ten percent would be in the millions. Damn, I wish I had taken two seconds and changed clothes. I look like a beach bum. I cluck sympathetically, “These athletes are sitting ducks for women. Your son probably can’t walk down the street without being harassed by them.”
Cunningham sighs and looks at his knees.
“My wife and I told him a million times to stay away from white girls. They’re guaranteed trouble. I saw him in the jail for a little while yesterday afternoon. He said this girl practically attacked him.”
“Had he been friends with her before this took place?”
I ask. With grainy pouches underneath his eyes blacker than the rest of his visible skin, Cunningham looks as if he hasn’t gotten much sleep in the last twenty-four hours. He probably hasn’t. St. Francis County, only thirty miles west of Memphis, is over a five-hour drive from Fayetteville, which is close to the Oklahoma border in the northwest corner of the state.
“He knew her a little just because she was a cheerleader,” he says, smoothing out a wrinkle in his khaki pants, “but he’d had a speech class with her the previous spring, and he said they had worked together some. But that was all until this semester. They have another class together this fall, but he hadn’t talked to her much until the last couple of weeks.”
“Are you sure he hadn’t had sex with her before this incident?” I ask bluntly, guessing their relationship may have more of a history than the father knows. It sounds like date rape to me. If Dade had been warned to stay away from white girls, he might have a hard time admitting he ignored his father’s advice.
Roy Cunningham stifles a yawn.
“I as’t him. He says he didn’t. He says they were studying together at a friend’s house off campus. He said she was all over him from the time she got over there.”
I jot down what he says, knowing there is a lot more to this situation than I’m hearing. If I want this case, I’ve got to give the Cunningham brothers a reason to hire me.
“Has his bond been set?” I ask, wondering what James Cunningham thinks of me. We’ve lived on the same street for years and have barely nodded since Rosa’s death.
When she was alive, we went to a few parties in the neighborhood, but I never felt comfortable around the black males. Too much history and not enough future. I always had the feeling I was on their turf and never felt quite welcome. Still, one on one he seems like a nice guy, and Rosa liked his wife.
James answers, “It’s fifty thousand. I’ve told Roy I’d help him take care of the bond once we got a lawyer for Dade.”
I wonder if James is calling the shots on this job. I wish I had been more friendly over the years.
“Good,” I say.
“The sooner he’s out of jail, the better.” I ask Roy, “Do you know anything about the girl?”
Anger comes into Roy’s voice.
“All Dade had time to tell me was that her name is Robin Perry and she’s from Texarkana. She didn’t even go to the cops until the next morning.”
“It sounds like a classic case of a woman changing her mind after the fact,” I suggest, knowing that this is what the father wants to believe; in this instance it is plausible.
The girl may have decided to scratch an itch and later realized Dade wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Not the end of the world in most cases, but this particular guy is black, which her parents would probably object to and would give credence to the questionable things that hap pen in the Razorback athletic program. In ‘91 there was a major incident in the athletic dorm involving a white woman and four black Razorback scholarship basketball players that is still talked about. No charges were filed because the woman was admittedly drunk and couldn’t get her details straight, but it sent shock waves through the entire state. Who knows? Perhaps Robin Perry had mixed emotions at the time and convinced herself that she had tried to resist. Maybe we can put some pressure on the girl to drop the charge or at least reduce it. What if it had been Sarah? Would she pull a stunt like that? I can’t imagine it.
“That’s what it sounds like to me,” Roy says, as his brother nods in agreement.
“Do you know if alcohol was involved?” I ask Roy. It is obvious that he thinks of his son as a victim.
“Dade said he hadn’t had nothing to drink,” he says defensively
“I was thinking the girl might have possibly been drinking before she got there,” I respond quickly, noting this is a touchy area with the father. His problem or his son’s? Alcohol and women don’t make for the greatest combination in the world. I’ve had a few problems in that area myself.
“She could have,” James Cunningham says, his voice sounding like his brother’s. Eastern Arkansas is like Mississippi The Delta clings to your speech like rich soil.
“Even if he did,” Roy says, his voice low and sullen, “my boy never raped nobody. I didn’t raise my son to be a fool! He knows he doesn’t need to force a woman. Just like you said, he’s always had ‘em runnin’ after him.”
I glance at my neighbor, who appears slightly uncomfortable at these remarks. Less sophisticated, or perhaps just more honest, Roy Cunningham isn’t worried about how he is coming across to me. His son doesn’t rape, be cause women line up to go to bed with him. Yet, in truth, he may be right. If women stopped wanting sex, we’d take it anyway. On the Discovery channel last week there was a program on apes in Saudi Arabia. The females seemed so loving and protective, so human. The dominant males were insanely jealous, forming harems of up to twelve females and demanding and getting sex at will.
“You know this is different,” James says to his brother.
“If the girl had been black, it would have been next to the funnies.”
I look up to see a black woman standing in the door way.
“Hello, Gideon,” she greets me warmly.
“How’re you doin’?” James’s wife smiles as if I were their best friend.
Glad for the interruption, I stand up and speak, relieved I can call her name.
“Gloria, how are you?” My neighbor’s wife is an attractive woman. Her almond colored eyes are always smiling, and ever since I’ve lived in the neighborhood she has maintained a willowy, svelte figure. She is a conscientious gardener, and her long, magnificent legs have piqued my interest every spring while she tends the roses, azaleas, pansies, and violets that bloom in the front yard. Today, her legs are hidden by baggy blue slacks. Rosa had always commented on her flowers and if she knew Woogie had shit on them, she’d be livid at me. She only allowed him to defecate in our backyard and handled his turds as casually as if they were leftover breakfast sausages. I gag if they are the least bit soft, but as a registered nurse, she dealt with far worse on a daily basis.
“I’m doing fine,” Gloria says, putting her hands in her pockets.
“How’s Sarah? She’s a sophomore, isn’t she?”
I marvel at how much she knows. I can’t even come close to remembering the names of their children. I used to try harder at this sort of thing. We had deliberately chosen to live in a mixed neighborhood that the block busters hadn’t finished off. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia back in Arkansas with a wife of mixed blood, I was going to make the old sixties dream of racial harmony come true in Blackwell County, the socalled “civilized center” of Arkansas. Had I been mat naive? Obviously so.
“She’s staying busy. In addition to cheerleading for the jayvees, she lucked into a good job at the university this summer working for a sociology professor who’s got a big grant, and she’s still working part-time for him some this fall.” I wonder at this arrangement. Sarah is gorgeous and friendly and utterly unqualified to do more than run a copy machine. Dr.
Birdseed, or whatever his name is, probably hasn’t employed a male in years.
James clears his throat. His wife has interrupted for long enough.
“How much longer are you going to be?”
she says to him, her voice now businesslike, even cold.
Husbands and wives. He mumbles something I don’t pick up. She nods and smiles at me.
“Tell Sarah hello for me.”
“Sure,” I say, sitting down as she leaves the room.
Whatever transpired, I’m apparently not being invited for dinner. I’ve forgotten that couples develop their own code. Rosa could give an entire lecture on almost empty leftover food containers by raising her eyebrow and sighing in her dramatic Latin way. I’m surprised that Gloria is not included in this conversation. She works in the federal district clerk’s office and knows more lawyers than I do. Yet, she didn’t even acknowledge her brother-in-law.
Maybe they don’t get along. The message I got was that she’s spent years civilizing James; Roy and his family are a lost cause, and she’s not real crazy about her husband putting up the bond. But that’s reading a lot into it. Family dynamics are usually unresolved mysteries. I think of my only sister, Marty, who lives less than an hour north of here: we haven’t seen each other but one time in the last year. History alone ought to bind us, but somehow it always ends up getting in the way.
I continue to ask questions, but I don’t get much more information about the incident. Roy got up there too late to have a normal visit. He mostly tells me about Dade and can’t keep the pride from his voice as he describes his son’s athletic ability.
“A recruiter from Michigan told me when Dade was in high school there were wide receivers in the pros who didn’t have his speed and hands. I should have sent him up there, goddamn it. There would have been enough women there to keep him happy.”
Black women, he means, I realize. The Ozarks are good for chickens but not cotton, with the result that historically few blacks have resided in the northwest corner of the state, a fact that rival recruiters probably don’t overlook in their pitch to young men in their sexual prime. At six feet two and two hundred pounds, Dade has always gotten his share of attention from white girls, his father assures me.
“I told him to leave ‘em alone,” he repeats, shaking his head.
“With the shit that’s happened up there, that’s just looking for trouble.”
I know what he means. Every few years there seems to be a major incident involving Razorback athletics. Yet Roy must know that as important as the Razorbacks are in the scheme of things in this state, you can’t expect them just to stay cooped up in their rooms all year and only be let out on game days.
“Was he home this past summer, or did he stay in Fayetteville?” I ask, wondering again how well Dade might have known the girl. Despite his father’s injunction, this might have been a lovers’ quarrel that got out of hand.
“I had him home working in the store,” Roy says, edging forward on the couch.
“He didn’t want to be there though.”
I can understand why a twenty year old spoiled rotten by the special life of the big-time college athlete wouldn’t want to go home to share a room for the summer with his siblings in one of the poorest counties in the Delta. Sarah didn’t want to come home either. My feelings were a little hurt, but I tell myself I understand.
She’s got her own life to lead, and it doesn’t include pre tending she’s fourteen again, which is the age she claims I treat her as if she’s home longer than a weekend.
“He sounds like a real good kid,” I say, meaning it. What did the other lawyers promise him? I don’t know enough about this case to talk about it. I would brag about my success in rape trials, but I don’t have but a couple of out right acquittals in this area. Most of these cases plead out without going to court.
“He’s a hell of a good boy,” Roy says, his voice flat, as he looks down at his watch. He has at least a two-hour drive ahead of him. Outside, he has a Ford pickup that looks ten years old.
“Is he doing okay in school?”
“Right on schedule,” his father informs me in a mono tone. He seems about to stand up.
“He’s not just up there to play football. We want him to graduate.”
I’ve got to say something quick or I’m going to lose him.
“I can see the possibility of getting this worked out,” I say, more decisively than I feel.
“The plain truth is that the Razorbacks need Dade more than he needs them.
This is our best start since Ken Hatfield took them to back-to-back Cotton Bowls when they were still in the Southwest Conference. Dade is too important to the offense simply to kiss off the rest of the year without a very good reason, and the football program has been down too long to pretend this year isn’t crucial. My recollection is that when the incident occurred in ninety-one involving the basketball team, it was right before the NCAA tournament and none of the players got punished until after it was over. That was a year we thought we had an excel lent chance to go to the “Final Four.” He hasn’t been kicked off the team yet, has he?” I ask, recalling that the article in the paper said neither the university nor Coach Carter had any comment, but the matter was being investigated.
“If Carter has the discretion to keep him on the team, maybe he can finish the season. If we can talk the girl into dropping the charge or, in the worst-case scenario, get the prosecutor to allow us to plead to a reduced charge and get probation, all he’d have to worry about is any disciplinary action by the university. And then he could threaten to turn pro and skip his senior year. That ought to keep any punishment by the school to something reasonable. All that really happened the next year to the players in the ninety-one incident was that they had to sit out a few games at the start of the next season.”
Roy Cunningham looks at me respectfully for the first time.
“The school hasn’t said nothin’ about him being off the team, as far as I know.”
“Well, we need to get busy as soon as possible,” I say, trying to apply a little pressure.
“How much can you afford to pay?”
Roy steals a look at his brother.
“Five thousand dollars,” he answers quietly.
“If my wife and I hired you, when can you start?”
Five thousand dollars for a case involving as much work as this one will is chicken feed but the publicity alone will be worth it.
“Immediately” I say, deciding on the spot not to tie my representation on the rape charge to a deal to represent him on a pro contract as his agent.
Something tells me that this may have already been tried and failed.
Without looking again at his brother, Roy nods.
“That sounds good to me. Let me go call my wife, and I’ll be right back.”
He goes out of the room, followed by his brother, and I am left to think about this case. I am probably in over my head. If the university decides tomorrow that Dade will be kicked off the team and even out of school, what can I do that will be worth a pitcher of warm spit? I am just remembering that in 1978 Lou Holtz, when he coached the Razorbacks, applied the socalled do-right rule, and kicked three black starters off the team who had been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct involving a white coed in the athletic dorm. The university was promptly taken to federal court by two of the state’s most famous civil rights lawyers to get the players back on the team in time for the Orange Bowl against Oklahoma. I can’t remember the details, but they didn’t succeed, and yet the Razorbacks went on to crush Oklahoma 31 to 6, which was poetic justice in the eyes of many white
Arkansans. It seems to me the players weren’t even charged. The story was, as usual, the Razorbacks. Why did James suggest me? There are plenty of lawyers who have bigger names and more resources. As a solo practitioner, I’m going to have my hands full. Yet, why look a gift horse in the mouth? This case could lead to a whole new career.
While I am pondering these questions, Roy returns and tells me that I am now representing his son. Ten minutes later I am escorted to the door, having promised to drive to Fayetteville in the morning after I see a client. In return I have commitments from the Cunningham brothers for my fee and bond money. I need to think, and I drive north twenty-five blocks across town to a junior high school track that attracts dozens of joggers and walkers, most of them upscale whites from the neighborhood. I’ve fantasized for years that I would meet one of the women who come here, but it never happens. Some are very attractive, but I never quite manage to start a conversation that gets beyond the weather. Many of them are twenty years younger, and I look like a cardiac victim after ten minutes on the track, which may have something to do with it.
There is a good crowd tonight, and I stretch my muscles out on the grass of the football field inside the track while gawking at a blonde in pink spandex who is circling the track at a six-minute clip. Although I was a distance runner over thirty years ago at Subiaco Academy, a small Catholic boarding school in western Arkansas, I would be hard-pressed to stay even with her tonight. At five feet eleven, I am carrying saddlebags that could take a packhorse across the Rockies. If I were able to knock off fifteen pounds around my middle, I’d be in a position to work out seriously.
As I begin to run, I replay the conversation with the Cunningham brothers and wonder whether I’d be any different if I had a son. How can a man believe his child has committed the crime of rape? Yet, Roy is obviously more comfortable with his son’s sexuality than I am with Sarah’s. Dade Cunningham has to beat women off with a stick. I’d be livid if I found out Sarah was involved with her professor. It happens. Lawyers with clients, doctors with patients, teachers with students. Dominance. Control We love to call the shots. A form of rape, I guess. I think of those Saudi apes. The females bent over and sub missive. The penises were startling in their resemblance to ours and brutal as jackhammers.
I build up some speed, but I can’t catch up with the blonde tonight. Twenty-five yards ahead of me, she is running easily, her hair swinging behind her in a ponytail. I pass an old man who must be in his seventies. Not an ounce of body fat on him, but he is running in slow motion. He winces at me as if to say it doesn’t matter how much care you take of yourself: the genetic clock in side your body is ticking away like a time bomb. If aliens are looking down on the track, they must be scratching their heads. Why would any sane species chase each other around and around until they nearly pass out?
I glance at my Timex. If I step it up a bit, maybe I can catch up with the blonde. As she rounds the curve by the goalposts on the east end, her long legs scissor the air.
Sweat streams off my face like water cascading over a spillway. I am gaining on her, but my breathing is becoming ragged, and I can barely see. I pull to within ten yards of her. From the rear she looks great. Fantastic legs and ass. There is something about women who run. It is as if she senses someone is chasing her and she picks up the pace. As I come to the curve at the west end, a sharp pain grabs my side and suddenly I feel weak. Only five yards separate us. My eyes seem about to swim out of my head, but I squint to see the outline of her left breast on the curve. Packaged by the spandex, it looks magnificent.
She could be a model working out. I accelerate and am within two yards of her when my stomach turns over. I feel about to throw up. Immediately, I pull up and step off the track into the football field. Have I given myself a stroke? I put my hands on my hips and slowly make my way across the grass toward the bleachers on the north side. You idiot, I think to myself. What was I going to do if I caught up to her? I wipe my eyes with my shirt and realize I could have killed myself. My stomach feels better but my legs are wobbly.
As I cross the track to ascend the bleachers to the only exit, the blonde passes in front of me and is every bit as lovely in full profile as she appeared from behind. Fully focused on maintaining her long stride, she doesn’t even glance in my direction. She doesn’t know I’m alive.
“Hey, Gideon! You look terrible!”
Still half blinded by the sweat pouring off my head into my eyes, I look up toward the stands and see grinning at me my old friend and fellow lawyer Amy Gilchrist. We keep bumping into each other. First, classes in night law school, then she was in the prosecutor’s office while I was at the public defender’s, and we had some cases against each other. Now she’s in private practice, a grunt just like myself, hustling for cases and hoping the bills don’t come in all at once. I stagger across the surface of the track toward her. Her right leg is stretched across the metal railing that separates the bleachers from the track. She bends at the waist, making her torso parallel to her leg. Amy is short, compact, and cute as a but ton. If I weren’t almost twenty years older, I would have hit on her somewhere along the line in the last four years.
“If you were any more subtle, Gilchrist,” I say, wiping my face with my arm, “you’d be mistaken for a blow torch.”
Amy touches the toes of her Nikes, a feat I haven’t managed in years. Dressed in short shorts, a T-shirt that advertises a 10K race in Hot Springs, and spotless shoes, she looks damn good.
“You looked like you were chasing that blonde,” she says, nodding with her chin toward the east end of the track.
“But she was too fast for you.”
I climb the concrete steps and collapse on the first row beside her.
“Everybody’s too fast for me,” I say, too tired to lie.
“You need some water,” she says handing me the plastic container beside her.
“And your hair looks like it’s been electrocuted.”
Instinctively, I feel my head. My hair is mashed up on the sides and I smooth it down. My bald spot feels like the size of a crater on the moon. I must look like a jogger from hell. No wonder the blonde speeded up.
“Gilchrist, how have I been coping without you?” I say, taking a swig of water from the blue jug. If she is worried about germs, she shouldn’t have offered.
“Obviously not very well,” she says humorously, her eyes on the runners passing in front of us.
“I’ve been waiting for years for the opportunity to straighten you out, but you’ve never called me.”
I cut my eyes at her to see if she is serious. Amy is the kind of woman who is so likable and friendly she seems as if she is flirting with every man within ten yards of her.
Reluctant to invest too much in this conversation, I banter “I’ve always been afraid I’d have a heart attack and you wouldn’t try to revive me.”
Her blue eyes, round as two dimes, twinkle mischievously.
“It would depend on how you did. You’re not that old.”
I take another pull at the water. We are having quite a randy chat for friends.
“Aren’t you still a Holy Roller or whatever?” I ask rudely, but wanting to know. Over a year ago through an odd combination of circumstances I saw Amy at a service of the largest fundamentalist church in Blackwell County. I was in attendance as part of my preparation for defending a murder case; Amy was there apparently because she wanted to be. My girlfriend at the time had astounded me by joining the church, causing irreparable harm to our relationship.
“Nope,” she says, apparently not offended. She smiles.
“I’m still searching though.”
“Aren’t we all?” I respond tritely, but relieved. My own search is a little closer to home. For the most part I gave up on religion after Rosa died of breast cancer.
“So, your place or mine?” I kid, forcing her to be serious.
She giggles deliciously.
“Aren’t you still seeing Rainey McCorkle?”
Some women love to flirt if they think you’re safe.
“Rainey and I could never work things out,” I say truth fully.
“We haven’t gone out in months.” Occasionally, she phones to ask about Sarah. Sometimes, I hear a wistfulness in her voice, but basically, she has decided she needs to find a man with fewer warts. For my part, I want someone who needs fewer certainties.
Amy removes her leg from the rail and gives me a dazzling smile as she heads down the steps to the track.
“Well, give me a ring sometime.”
“I will,” I call after her, deciding to break my selfimposed vow not to go out with women as young as Amy. Since they haven’t exactly been lining up outside the house, it has been an easy pledge to keep. I decide to go home, though I’ve hardly worked out. If she compares me with some of the guys circling the track, she could easily change her mind.
After a shower I put on a pair of pants and a T-shirt and call a much younger classmate who graduated law school with me from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Barton Sanders is the only lawyer I know in Fayetteville.
Most graduates migrate to the center of the state, but Bar ton moved to Fayetteville to take advantage of a real estate operation that was already thriving under his father-in-law. Rich and well connected. Barton is a dye ding-the-wool Hog fan and may be able to help me jump start this case if he is willing. Though we are not close, we were friends in law school and I have been by to see him a couple of times since Sarah has been in school at
Fayetteville. His wife calls him to the phone, and I tell him I am representing Dade Cunningham.
“No shit?” Barton exclaims, his voice high and reedy as usual.
“That’s incredible!”
I ask him to fill me in on what he has heard. Although he is excited to be in the loop, it turns out he doesn’t know much more than Roy Cunningham.
“It’s like there’s a news blackout at the university-while they stew about this thing. The girl’s father is a big Baptist,” he says, supplying me with one fact I didn’t have.
“Lots of money. The girl is a looker, too. Have you seen any games this year?”
“Only the one in Little Rock,” I answer, delighted there have been no announcements that Dade has been suspended. The fact is things have been so slow lately that I haven’t really been able to afford the trips this year to Fayetteville, but I don’t let Barton know it.
“Do you have any idea how well Coach Carter would react to a phone call from me? I want to slow this down before they make any decisions that would be hard to reverse.”
“Let me make some calls, and I’ll find out,” Barton volunteers.
“I know a couple of guys who know him pretty well. Carter’s the type of guy who might be willing to talk about this, but I bet he’s getting a lot of pressure from the higher-ups to drop him from the team. The old do-right rule. With all the crap in the past, this is a real PR problem for the school.”
“I know,” I concede, “but Cunningham’s the difference between the Sugar Bowl and another .500 season. All I want to do is talk to Carter. I’ve read that he sticks up for the players.” Years earlier Dale Carter had brought Houston a couple of almost undefeated seasons but had a problem with the bottle and got run off. He dried out and had been coaching quarterbacks with a number of teams when Jack Burke, the Razorbacks’ athletic director, tapped him in the spring to revive the team after a number of bad seasons.
“He does,” Barton agrees.
“In his interviews, he always says he knows what it’s like to be down. I’ll see if I can get his number. It’s probably unlisted.”
“Thanks, Barton,” I say.
“I appreciate it.”
“I’m always glad to help a real lawyer,” Barton says slavishly.
“Barton, you make more in a day than I make in a month,” I remind him. Barton (who was advised by our trial advocacy professor not even to try crossexamining a dead dog because he got so flustered in class), has the kind of mind that can trace a chain of title practically without pencil and paper. I could have five computers working night and day and never get a parcel of land back further than three owners without becoming hopelessly confused. The last time I saw him he had on a Rolex and a gold ring that ought to be locked up in Fort Knox. The metal on my body couldn’t even buy me lunch.
“Don’t kid me, Gideon,” he says.
“I read about you in the papers. You’re the real thing.”
Why discourage him? If he wants to believe what he sees on the tube, that’s his problem.
“Whatever you can find out,” I say, “I’ll be in your debt.”
“No problem,” he says, his voice rushing on to another topic.
“Here’s something that might help. Did you notice this case was actually filed by the assistant prosecuting attorney, a kid by the name of Mike Cash? Our prosecutor is on vacation for three weeks in the wilds of Canada.
There’s a feeling that Mike should have waited until Binkie Cross got back in town to bring this kind of charge. There’s a rumor going around he has a sister who was raped and he’s got an itchy trigger finger when he comes to that kind of crime.”
This is welcome news. There is nothing to say that a charge can’t be dismissed. I thank him and hang up so he can get on the phone. While I’m waiting, I call Sarah to let her know I’ll be coming up tomorrow. She answers on the fifth ring and sounds sleepy. It is only seven-thirty.
She shouldn’t be tired this early on a Tuesday.
“What’s wrong, babe?” I ask.
“You sound exhausted.” I try to imagine her room. Unless she has improved her house keeping, there are more clothes on the floor than in her closet. At least she is living in a dorm. Apartments are nothing but trouble. The year I lived in one at Fayetteville my grades dropped a full letter.
“I’m fine. Daddy,” she says, yawning audibly.
“I had a math test yesterday and stayed up late. I was just taking a nap so I won’t be sleepy later on.”
Damn, what is going to happen that she has to take a nap for? I know I shouldn’t ask. If she doesn’t want me to know, I couldn’t dynamite it out of her.
“You have a party to go to in the middle of the week?” I yelp, knowing I sound stupid and old.
There is silence on the other end.
“It’s not a big deal,” she says finally.
“I was just leaving.”
So make it quick. Dad. I look down at Woogie, who is curled up on the cool linoleum. He isn’t giving me the bum’s rush.
“How was your test?”
“It was hard,” she admits.
College algebra. I made a “D” in it almost thirty years ago at Fayetteville. An excellent student otherwise, Sarah has unfortunately inherited my math brains.
“Hang in there,” I advise.
“And don’t get behind.” The pearls of wisdom are really dropping tonight. I get to the point of why I called.
“I’m coming to Fayetteville tomorrow to interview a client. Do you know Dade Cunningham?”
“Dad!” Sarah shrieks into the phone.
“You’re representing him?”
“His uncle is James Cunningham, who lives down the street,” I explain.
“I just talked to Dade’s father about an hour ago. Do you know Dade?”
“This is so weird!” Sarah wails.
“You’re really going to be his lawyer?”
“Is it going to cause you any problems?” I ask. My daughter has never reconciled herself to the way I pay her bills. She concedes that in the abstract criminal defense work is a necessary evil, but like most people, she believes that once someone is actually charged with a crime, the only worthwhile thing left to do in the case is to figure out the length of the prison term. I should have realized Sarah wouldn’t be too thrilled about my taking this case. A kid goes off to school to get away from her parents, and here I am popping up again.
“I guess not,” she says, her voice sounding even more tired than when we began the conversation.
“I’ve seen him at pep rallies and stuff like that. He was in my west em civ class last year. I know him well enough to say “Hi,” but that’s all.”
Not bosom buddies then. When I took WE, they might as well have taught it in Razorback Stadium.
“People won’t even know,” I tell her, “that we’re related.”
“Of course they will,” Sarah contradicts me.
“This is like the stock market dropping three hundred points in one day up here. All anybody talks about is the Razorbacks.”
An exaggeration, but I know what she means. Bill Clinton is the number one fan.
“Have you heard anything about the incident?” I can’t help but ask, though I know she is anxious to leave.
“Dad, please don’t try to get me involved,” she says impatiently.
“I know how you’ve used Rainey.”
Sarah is always accusing me of using people in my life to get information in my big cases. My off-and-on girlfriend Rainey, a social worker at the state hospital, seemed like a member of my staff she was so helpful.
Sarah would become incensed when I asked Rainey to hide a client or witness for a night or two at her house as I had to do a couple of times. Rainey never complained.
Other things about me upset her. But not my work. Invariably, she would get sucked in once a case got going.
“Have you heard anything about what Robin is like?” I ask.
“Dad!” Sarah pleads.
I back off.
“Be careful tonight,” I advise, unable not to have the last word. I let her go after telling her I will call her for dinner tomorrow evening. I assume I will be spending the night. It is too long a trip
to make often. My fees will be eaten up in transportation and lodging costs.
Yet, if I end up negotiating Dade’s pro contract, it will be the best time I ever spent.
“I love you, Sarah,” I say, finally.
“I love you, too,” she says, her voice full of exasperation, before she hangs up.
After taking a Lean Cuisine out of the freezer and pop ping it in the microwave, I open a Miller Lite and sit at the kitchen table and wait for Barton’s call. I try to read (he part of the paper I missed this morning but give up because I’m thinking about the case and Sarah’s comments about the Razorbacks. Why are they so damn important? Not just to me, but to hundreds of thousands in the state. Including the President of the United States.
And it is winning that is crucial. Not merely competing, not good sportsmanship, not the sheer athleticism of our players, imported or not. Winning, in our brains, equates with respect. And this is what we crave. Why wouldn’t we feel as good about ourselves if we were to achieve the lowest infant-mortality rate in the country? Frankly, we’d rather beat Alabama in football or Kentucky in basket ball.
At ten Barton calls back and gives me Coach Carter’s home and office number.
“He still may be in his office,” he says.
“The coaches stay up there late during the sea son. The two men I talked to said to call him immediately. It can’t hurt. Of course they are the type who would want Dade to play even if he had murdered the chancellor
I laugh. Razorback football and basketball. The meaning of life. I thank Barton and tell him I will come by his office in the next couple of days. Then I dial Carter’s home number.
“Coach Carter,” he says, answering on the first ring as if he were expecting my call. His voice, familiar through radio and TV, is raspy and tough like a drill sergeant’s.
Carter has none of the slickness of the younger breed of coaches, who look and sound as if they were in constant rehearsal for later careers as sport announcers.
I explain quickly who I am and why I’m calling.
“From what I’ve heard, I think there’s a real strong likelihood that Dade didn’t rape this girl. Coach Carter. I’d very much like for you to talk to him yourself before you take any disciplinary action. I should have him bonded out of jail tomorrow afternoon and can have him in your office anytime you say.”
“How do you know he didn’t rape her?” he demands, his voice hard as graphite.
“His father’s talked to him,” I say.
“Dade swears it was consensual. For whatever reason, it sounds to me like she was trying to set him up.” I tell him also that the rape charge may have been filed prematurely and why. He clears his throat a couple of times but hears me out.
“This isn’t a cut-and-dried kind of case where you have a girl who’s been beaten up and raped. She waited until the next day to say anything and didn’t have a scratch on her.
Everything I hear about Dade is that he’s a good kid. In my opinion, he deserves at least a conversation with you before anything else happens to him.”
Carter clears his throat again and grunts, “Where can I reach you tomorrow afternoon about five?”
My mind goes blank. I can’t even think of a single motel in Fayetteville.
“I’ll call and leave a message for you.”
I think I have my foot in the door, but I have no real idea. If Carter doesn’t want to talk to Dade, I sure as hell can’t make him. I thank him and hang up. As I begin to pack, I worry that I may be jeopardizing Dade’s criminal case by having him talk to Carter. He may say something to implicate himself. By trying to save his football career, I may end up helping to convict my own client. Human greed. I can feel it working in me like a virus. After I talk to Dade, I can always change my mind. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.
It is hard to get to sleep. When I try to quit thinking about Dade’s case, my mind automatically defaults to Amy. Damn, she looked good. I’ll call her when I get back or maybe sooner. Woogie, at my feet, moans in his sleep. Do dogs dream? I will. My life hasn’t had so many possibilities in quite some time. Better not seem too eager or I’ll scare her off.