The Appeal (41 page)

The coaches met behind home plate to get organized. There was the usual nervous chatter and cheap shots and lighthearted insults. Most of them had coached in the same league the year before. Ron, back then, had been a popular coach, just another young father who would spend hours on the field from April to July. Now, though, he felt a bit elevated. He had put together a brilliant campaign and won an important political race with a record vote. That made him unique among his peers. There was, after all, only one supreme court justice in the town of Brookhaven. There was a certain detachment that he did not particularly like, though he wasn’t sure if he disliked it, either.

They were already calling him “Judge.”

Judge Fisk pulled a name out of the hat. His team was the Rockies.

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T
he apartment was so cramped during the week they had to escape on Saturdays.

The Paytons coaxed Mack and Liza out of bed with the suggestion of breakfast at a nearby pancake house. Afterward, they left Hattiesburg and arrived in Bowmore before 10:00 a.m. Mrs. Shelby, Mary Grace’s mother, had promised a long lunch under an oak tree—catfish
followed by homemade ice cream. Mr. Shelby had the boat ready. He and Wes took the kids to a small lake where the crappie were biting.

Mary Grace and her mother sat on the porch for an hour, covering the usual topics, avoiding anything remotely related to the law. Family news, church gossip, weddings, and funerals, but they stayed away from cancer, which for years had dominated the chatter in Cary County.

Long before lunch, Mary Grace drove to town, to Pine Grove, where she met with Denny Ott. She passed along her latest thoughts on the new supreme court, a rather sad summary. Not for the first time she warned Denny that they would probably lose. He was preparing his people. He knew they would survive. They had lost everything else.

She drove two blocks and parked in the gravel driveway of Jeannette’s trailer. They sat outside, under a shade tree, sipping bottled water and talking about men. Jeannette’s current boyfriend was a fifty-five-year-old widower with a nice job and a nice home and little interest in her lawsuit—not that the lawsuit was attracting the attention it once commanded. The verdict was now seventeen months old. Not a dime had changed hands, and none was anticipated.

“We expect a ruling this month,” Mary Grace said. “And it will be a miracle if we win.”

“I’m praying for a miracle,” Jeannette said, “but I’m ready for whatever happens. I just want it to be over.”

After a long chat and a quick hug, Mary Grace left.
She drove the streets of her hometown, past the high school and the homes of childhood friends, past the stores on Main Street, then into the countryside. She stopped at Treadway’s Grocery, where she bought a soda and said hello to a lady she had known her entire life.

Driving back to her parents’ home, she passed the Barrysville Volunteer Fire Department, a small metal building with an old pumper that the boys rolled out and washed on election days. The station also served as a precinct, where, five months earlier, 74 percent of the fine folks of Barrysville voted for God and guns and against gays and liberals. Barely five miles from the Bowmore town limits, Ron Fisk had convinced these people that he was their protector.

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P
erhaps he was. Perhaps his mere presence on the court was too intimidating for some.

The Meyerchec and Spano appeal was dismissed by the clerk for a lack of prosecution. They failed to file the required briefs, and after the usual warnings from the clerk their lawyer said they had no desire to go forward. They were not available for comment, and their lawyer did not return phone calls from reporters.

On the day of the dismissal, the supreme court reached a new low in its movement to drastically limit corporate exposure. A privately held pharmaceutical company called Bosk had made and widely marketed a strong painkiller called Rybadell. It proved to be
horribly addictive, and within a few years Bosk was getting hammered with lawsuits. During one of the first trials, Bosk executives were caught lying. A U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania opened an investigation, and there were allegations that the company had known about Rybadell’s addictive propensities but had tried to bury this information. The drug was extremely profitable.

A former Jackson cop named Dillman was injured in a motorcycle accident, and in the course of his recovery became addicted to Rybadell. He battled the addiction for two years, during which time his health and the rest of his life disintegrated. He was arrested twice for shoplifting. He eventually sued Bosk in the Circuit Court of Rankin County. The jury found the company liable and awarded Dillman $275,000, the lowest Rybadell verdict in the country.

On appeal, the supreme court reversed, 5–4. The principal reason, set forth in the majority opinion by Justice Romano, was that Dillman should not be awarded damages because he was a drug addict.

In a rancorous dissent, Justice Albritton begged the majority to step forward and produce any scintilla of proof that the plaintiff was a drug addict “before his introduction to Rybadell.”

Three days after the decision, four Bosk executives pled guilty to withholding information from the Food and Drug Administration, and to lying to federal investigators.

K
rane Chemical’s first-quarter earnings were much better than expected. In fact, they astounded the analysts, who had been expecting about $1.25 per share on the high end. When Krane reported $2.05 per share, the company and its amazing comeback attracted even more interest from financial publications.

All fourteen plants were running at full throttle. Prices had been cut to recapture market share. The sales force was working overtime to fill orders. Debt had been slashed. Most of the problems that had dogged the company throughout the preceding year were suddenly gone.

The stock had made a steady and impressive climb from single digits, and was trading around $24 when the earnings news hit. It jumped to $30. When last seen at that price, the stock was free-falling the day after the verdict in Hattiesburg.

The Trudeau Group now owned 80 percent of
Krane, or around forty-eight million shares. Since the rumors of bankruptcy just before the election back in November, Mr. Trudeau’s net worth had increased by $800 million. And he was quite anxious to double that.

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B
efore a final decision is handed down by the supreme court, the justices spend weeks reading one another’s memos and preliminary opinions. They sometimes argue, privately. They lobby for votes to support their positions. They lean on their clerks for useful gossip from down the hall. Occasionally, there are deadlocks that take months to resolve.

The last thing Justice Fisk read late Friday afternoon was McElwayne’s dissent in the case of
Jeannette Baker v. Krane Chemical Corporation.
It was widely assumed to be a dissent with three others concurring. The majority opinion was written by Justice Calligan. Romano was working on a concurring opinion, and there was a chance that Albritton would write a dissent of his own. Though the details were not complete, there was little doubt that the final decision would be a 5–4 reversal of the verdict.

Fisk read the dissent, scoffed at it, and decided to concur with Calligan first thing Monday morning. Then Justice Fisk changed clothes and became Coach Fisk. It was time for a game.

The Rockies opened their season with a weekend jamboree in the delta town of Russburg, an hour northwest of Jackson. They would play one game on Friday night, at least two on Saturday, and maybe one on Sunday. The
games were only four innings long, and every player was encouraged to pitch and play different positions. There were no trophies and no championships—just a loosely competitive round-robin to start the season. Thirty teams signed up in the eleven-and twelve-year-old division, including two others from Brookhaven.

The Rockies’ first opponent was a team from the small town of Rolling Fork. The night was cool, the air clear, the sports complex filled with players and parents and the excitement of five games going at once.

Doreen was in Brookhaven with Clarissa and Zeke, who had a game at nine on Saturday morning.

In the first inning, Josh played second base, and when he came to bat, his father was coaching at third. When he struck out on four pitches, his father yelled encouragement and reminded him that he could not hit the ball if he kept the bat on his shoulder. In the second inning, Josh went to the mound and promptly struck out the first two batters he faced. The third hitter was a stocky twelve-year-old, the catcher, batting in the seven hole. He yanked the first pitch foul but very hard.

“Keep it low and away,” Ron yelled from the dugout.

The second pitch was not low and away. It was a fastball right down the middle of the plate, and the hitter ripped it hard. The ball shot off the barrel of the aluminum bat and left the plate much faster than it had arrived. For a split second, Josh was frozen, and by the time he began to react, the ball was in his face. He jerked just slightly as the ball hit him square in the right
temple. The ball then careened over the shortstop and rolled into left field.

Josh’s eyes were open when his father reached him. He was lying in a heap at the base of the mound, stunned and groaning.

“Say something, Josh,” Ron said as he gently touched the wound.

“Where’s the ball?” Josh asked.

“Don’t worry about it. Can you see me all right?”

“I think so.” Tears were leaking from his eyes, and he clenched his teeth to keep from crying. The skin had been scraped, and there was a little blood in his hair. The swelling had already started.

“Get some ice,” someone said.

“Call the EMTs.”

The other coaches and umpires hovered around. The kid who hit the line drive stood nearby, ready to cry himself.

“Don’t close your eyes,” Ron said.

“Okay, okay,” Josh said, still breathing rapidly.

“Who plays third base for the Braves?”

“Chipper.”

“And center field?”

“Andruw.”

“Attaboy.”

After a few minutes, Josh sat up and the fans applauded. Then he stood and walked with his father’s help to the dugout, where he stretched out on the bench. Ron, his heart still hammering away, gently
placed a bag of ice on the knot on Josh’s temple. The game slowly picked up again.

A medic arrived and examined Josh, who seemed perfectly responsive. He could see, hear, remember details, and even mentioned returning to the game. The medic said no, as did Coach Fisk. “Maybe tomorrow,” Ron said, but only to comfort his son. Ron had a knot of his own, stuck firmly in his throat, and he was just beginning to calm down. He planned to take him home after the game.

“He looks fine,” the medic said. “But you might want to get him x-rayed.”

“Now?” Ron asked.

“No rush, but I’d do it tonight.”

By the end of the third inning, Josh was sitting up and joking with his teammates. Ron returned to the third-base coach’s box and was whispering to a runner when one of the Rockies yelled from the dugout, “Josh is throwing up!”

The umpires stopped the game again, and the coaches cleared the Rockies’ dugout. Josh was dizzy, sweating profusely, and violently nauseous. The medic was nearby, and within minutes a stretcher arrived with two emergency medical technicians. Ron held his son’s hand as they rolled him to the parking lot. “Don’t close your eyes,” Ron said over and over. And, “Talk to me, Josh.”

“My head hurts, Dad.”

“You’re okay. Just don’t close your eyes.”

They lifted the stretcher into the ambulance, locked it down, and allowed Ron to squat beside his son. Five
minutes later, they wheeled him into the emergency room entrance at Henry County General Hospital. Josh was alert and had not vomited since leaving the ballpark.

A three-car smashup had occurred an hour earlier, and the emergency room was in a frenzy. The first doctor to examine Josh ordered a CT scan and explained to Ron that he would not be allowed to go farther into the hospital. “I think he’s fine,” the doctor said, and Ron found a chair in the cluttered waiting room. He called Doreen and managed to get through that difficult conversation. Time virtually stopped as the minutes dragged on.

The Rockies’ head coach, Ron’s former law partner, arrived in a rush and coaxed Ron outside. He had something to show him. From the backseat of his car he produced an aluminum bat. “This is it,” he said gravely. It was a Screamer, a popular bat manufactured by Win Rite Sporting Goods, one of a dozen to be found in any ballpark in the country.

“Look at this,” the coach said, rubbing the barrel where someone had tried to sand off part of the label. “It’s a minus seven, outlawed years ago.”

Minus seven referred to the differential between the weight and the length of the bat. It was twenty-nine inches long but weighed only twenty-two ounces, much easier to swing without yielding any of the force upon contact with the ball. Current rules prohibited a differential greater than four. The bat was at least five years old.

Ron gawked at it as if it were a smoking gun. “How’d you get it?”

“I checked it when the kid came to the plate again. I
showed it to the ump, who threw it out and went after the coach. I went after him, too, but, to be honest, he didn’t have a clue. He gave me the damned thing.”

More of the Rockies’ parents arrived, then some of the players. They huddled around a bench near the emergency exit and waited. An hour passed before the doctor returned to brief Ron.

“CT scan’s negative,” the doctor said. “I think he’s okay, just a mild concussion.”

“Thank God.”

“Where do you live?”

“Brookhaven.”

“You can take him home, but he needs to be very still for the next few days. No sports of any kind. If he experiences dizziness, headaches, double vision, blurred vision, dilated pupils, ringing in his ears, bad taste in his mouth, moodiness, or drowsiness, then you get him to your local doctor.”