The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (47 page)

“Because I must say I
worry. If these little boys, on top of everything else they've been through, are asked to spend their entire childhood in a dubious environment away from the loving guidance of family, I
do
fear a different lesson will be learned by them, and by all our colored folks: Go to the outside for justice.

“So let me return to the salient question:
Have
the boys learned their lesson?
Are
they reformed? It would be hard for you to fathom as their testimony today may have seemed tentative in the intimidating atmosphere of this courtroom, but if you were ever to talk to them one-on-one you would find that little Jordan is the chatterbox. It was very clear to me from the beginning how sorry he was, he said as much over and over, but then there was nine-year-old Max. The quiet one. Frankly I often just didn't quite know what he was thinking. The addendum we submitted this morning to the brief. It is testimony from our visit with the boys on Monday, our last time to speak with them before this hearing. I decided to take Max aside. He sighed, I would wager because he assumed he would be interrogated for the thousandth time regarding what happened that awful day when he and Jordan played with Ginny Dodgson and Leecy Pike. Instead I simply asked him if he was ashamed of what he had done. He stared at me. Again I asked, ‘Are you ashamed?' and again he did not reply. I asked a third time, and a fourth, now beginning to become exasperated. ‘I am not playing a game with you, Max, you must answer the question! Are you ashamed? Are you ashamed? Are you ashamed?' and finally little Max spoke, very quietly: ‘What
ashame
mean, Mr. Netherton?' ‘Well, Max, shame is an awful sad feeling that you did something terribly wrong, and you're very sorry and you won't ever do it again, but not just because you got into trouble. It's because you know you were bad, and it hurts to know you were bad, it hurts so much that you can't ever ever erase that you were bad, the best you can do is just try and be better.' And little Max stared at me, and slowly the shine came to his eyes, and as he tried hard not to cry he said, ‘I didn't know that word before, Mr. Netherton. I kept looking for that word but I couldn't find it, I kept looking for that word, that word's in my heart.' I believe, your honor,
that
is about as rehabilitated as rehabilitated gets. I'd hate to see Max and Jordan spending the rest of their tender years in the reformatory, two small boys raised away from their parents, in the company of robbers and rapists and a murderer or two, these innocent children growing into their manhood and becoming increasingly bitter with what life has dealt them for a mistake they made before they were old enough to begin to comprehend it. I would hate to see that shame, which would have stayed with them and guided them on the right path, well I'd just hate to see that shame knocked right out of their hearts.”

At which point Steven drops to sit on the couch. “And that, lady and gentleman of the rec room, is that.” He picks up his cup and saucer, sips. “Mmm. Now
this
is good coffee, Diana, you will make your future husband proud. If only it had just a shot of” and Steven is dead asleep, sitting up.

His partners stare at him, looking incredibly balanced and poised holding his cup, The Thinker at tea. Gradually Diana finds her voice. “We were trying to avoid it but.” She turns to Eliot, dazed. “It might work.” She turns back to Steven, hypnotized. Then snaps out of it. “That might do it! We'll have to drag his dumb ass off that couch early, you'll dress him, I'll coffee him up but.” She beams in the direction of her conscious colleague. “We might win. Eliot! We might win!” She throws blank index cards into the air and laughs. “Oh my God, playing fire with cracker fire! You said, ‘Whatever it takes,' well!” She shakes her head at the irony. Then realizes in the dimness she has not been able to see clearly across the room to the desk. “Eliot?”

“Yes. Optimism,” she hears quietly from the corner, and it is because she knows it is
not
sarcasm, that Eliot
does
believe now they stand half a chance for the boys' release and his tone is nevertheless so devastatingly hollow and wretched that she will never be able to bring herself to utter the word again.

 

11

“Oh I made every mistake in the book first year out.
Rape
cases?” He whistles. “I remember this one. College girl trying to press charges against her professor. Her
white
professor, I gotta hand it to her, she had
cojones
! Clearly forced himself on her but this was some tenured guy, published about a hundred books, Reconstruction and Scottsboro and a crack at fiction, his own slave narrative, you get the idea. And the girl
loves
his class, obviously infatuated with the guy, now how the hell'm I supposed to prove it wasn't consensual? That Professor Progressive is really a skunk? It didn't help that the girl lived with a man, of the
Caucasian
persuasion no less, so in the first place she plainly wasn't a virgin, and in the second I don't care if we
are
‘up North,' those sorts of choices don't exactly sit well with the general populace.
So
I enter into the
voir dire
. First error: I'm so thrilled to get a Negro on the jury,
any
Negro, I don't stop to investigate where my only rep of the race is coming from. What do you think he thought of a promiscuous colored girl and her white boyfriend? That she's willing to give it away to any Anglo-Saxon dick, that's what! Another beginner's misstep: selecting some sculptor beatnik. You'd think given who I was trying to prosecute I should have known better than to make any assumptions about white liberals or perceived liberals. Guy turned out to be the biggest cracker of all!”

Eliot, at his desk, wonders if Beau Greene plans to stand in his doorway the rest of the day, lest the junior attorney misconstrue the reasons for his legal team's losing the children's case as related to anything other than his own rookie
naïveté
. A redundant exercise: on the long drive back after Wednesday's decision, Eliot had fluctuated between blaming himself for what he had or hadn't said in court and blaming himself for failing to quit early on and finding a more experienced replacement. And of course his haughty, uncompromising drive toward the
habeas,
refusing to even entertain the notion of an appeal. Steven's oral arguments were at least as effective as they had been in Diana's basement, and with what appeared to be minimal deliberation on the part of the judge over his lunch hour, it had all gone exactly as Didi Wilcox had predicted. And now seeming worse than before. How long would it take for an appeal? Had they gone that route in the first place, they could have already been through it, with a panel of comparably impartial judges in Atlanta having no connection whatsoever to Red Bank. And her suggestion to come to the judge after a year to ask for a modification of the disposition orders. Had the clock started over on that? Five and a half months the boys had already moldered behind those walls, and Eliot feels a little ill now, remembering the look of eager expectation on their faces in the courtroom, with their families near and the attorneys they had come to trust. Though it had been explained to them numerous times that the hearing
might
result in their release, their innocent child's hope interpreted
might
as
will,
and thus the boys were not merely disappointed but stunned to find out at the end of the day they would be returning to the reformatory. And Eliot was suddenly aware of how much he had also accepted that the children would be eating supper with their families that very evening, feeling stupidly jolted back to the miserable reality of what he as attorney, while not presuming, certainly should have been emotionally as well as strategically prepared for: Judge Farn's concurrence with Sawyer's decision that Max and Jordan stay put until twenty-one, near Eliot's age now.

Immediately after the 2:30 announcement, the legal team set aside its personal devastation to offer the parents assurances regarding appeal, and Eliot was on the road by three. He had gotten back to Indianapolis Thursday evening and lain on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Around nine his phone began ringing and he ignored it, as he did when it rang again at 9:30, and at 10, finally lifting the receiver off its hook.

Andi had stared at him when he walked in this morning. It was presumed he would have had post-mortem discussions with his legal team after the hearing Wednesday, then driven Thursday and Friday, not getting back to Indianapolis till this evening after work, and thus not back to the office until Monday. His former girlfriend, or whatever she had been, offered her quiet, heartfelt sympathies, which he graciously and gratefully accepted. They had had little to say to one another in recent months, having not met outside of work since the Mother's Day episode. Their relationship, never officially named, had been equally ambiguous in its breakup, although both parties seemed to have come to recognize that it was over. He wondered, in the way she had trouble looking at him when she had told him how sorry she was this morning, if she felt that he may hold it against her, her insistence that he stay with the case when he had wished to replace himself with someone more seasoned. But if there were blame there, he laid it on no one but himself. After her commiseration, she had told him Winston wanted to see him. Eliot had sighed.

In his boss's office he reported the details of the hearing, and then conveyed the preliminary thoughts he and his colleagues had bandied about regarding appeal. Winston offered quite copious praise of his young recruit for his work on the case before handing him the file on a local police brutality incident that had materialized while he was down South. This afternoon he would meet the man in the hospital. As Eliot returned to his desk, Will Mitchell had stopped him to express his condolences and to assure him that in his absence Winston could not stop talking about how impressed he was with the junior member of his staff. While gratified by all the support from his colleagues, Eliot was still haunted by flashbacks of the children's proceeding, and it was only when he opened the file and was flabbergasted by the graphic photos of his pulverized client-to-be that he was catapulted, for the moment anyway, out of Red Bank, Georgia, and into the present.

He had just put the paperwork back into its folder and pulled out an ongoing accident claim when Beau had come to his doorway to offer his own brand of solace.

“Well of course the prof walked. Though I believe things were shaken up at that school a bit, don't think any Negro co-eds found themselves alone with Professor Broadminded again. As for that poor gal—”

“Beau? Thanks, but I really need to get back to this fender bender.”

“Oh. Oh sure.” Beau turns around to the reception desk. “Andi. Coffee?” And as if he is suddenly so busy that he cannot wait even the minute for her to pour and bring the cup, Beau enters his office and shuts the door, meaning she will have to knock. As soon as she is seated at her desk again, her phone rings.

“Winston Douglas.” At that moment Eliot happens to glance up, and sees she is staring at him. “For you.”

From the look on her face, he knows who it is.

“Thanks, Andi.” He gets up to close his door just before the ring.

“Hey.”

“Hey. Am I speaking to the crazy attorney who rushed right out after speaking to the clients' parents
without saying goodbye
lest he dare miss a day at the home office?”

He smiles. “Sorry. How are you?”

“How are
you?
”

“I've been better.” He rolls his pencil between his pointer and thumb. “Well I think ‘I told you so' is in order.” He laughs and is caught unawares by the subtle cry that escapes.

“It could have been a lot worse.”

He takes his thumbnail and scratches at the writing on the pencil.

“You were right. With the
habeas
there's finally a record of procedure.
Now
we can properly appeal.”

“And how many years do you think that
will take.”

“Maybe not as long as you think. The outside pressure has not died down, it's still a cause célèbre. We're lucky there.”

A memory flashes before him of a day when the four attorneys came to the reformatory, and walking the corridor toward the visitors' space they passed a room where two teenage colored boys were painting the walls under the suspicious eye of a seated guard. Returning from the meeting and chatting, the lawyers were abruptly rendered silent as they inadvertently glanced into the room again, one of the boys having taken off his uniform shirt in the heat which exposed numerous lashes on his lower back and apparently continuing down to his buttocks.

“I kept trying to call last night but you didn't pick up.”

He swallows and hopes she cannot hear. “Where are you now?”

“Chicago. Remember? I flew back. The only way to go, honey.”

He grins. “Your high-powered position.”

“Yes, civil rights law is certainly the jet set. And listen. The next time you're in my town I'm taking you out to Lutz's for chocolate
é
clairs.”

“Maybe we should hold off celebrating until we see if we get the appeal.”

“What about celebrating my job?”

He sets his pencil down. “You're right. But then that would be
my
treat.”

“You're right.”

“I could have taken you out while we were down South but that would have compromised the agreement.”

“It would have. And if you'd've escorted me into some backwoods hogs 'n' dogs place in Red Bank, Georgia, and called that ‘celebrating,' you would have been looking for another lawyer to slip into cheap hotels with.”

The agreement was that no one in Red Bank, including Didi's old friend Diana (Didi had felt a bit guilty about that), would know that Didi and Eliot had been sleeping together. There had been faint signs suggesting such a destiny in the instances when they found themselves alone, the smiles, glances, but nothing had been consummated, or even a word suggesting such until Independence Day. They had an appointment with the court clerk scheduled for the 5th, so Eliot had gotten in his car on the 3rd and arrived the afternoon of the 4th. He had met with Diana, Steven, and Didi for dinner, and afterward he and Didi had returned to the modest colored hotel. Eliot's room was on the second floor, Didi's on the third and top. As they were about to enter the lobby they heard the first bang, and realized everyone in the building was on the roof watching the fireworks. They went up, enjoying them together, and when the show was over they both walked down the steps to the third floor. Eliot never made it back to the second until morning. At the time it had been eight weeks since the blowup with Andi, and while this start with Didi had left him with some vague feelings of guilt, there was no regret. Rather he had felt a bit relieved, as if this finally marked some sort of closure that he and Andi had not been able to find themselves.

Naturally there was suspicion. Diana would look at them sideways. Steven made up a song: “Young Coon Lawyers in Love,” and after he had crooned it enough to commit it to collective memory, he would simply hum it whenever Didi joined their threesome. But she was expert at deflecting, and occasionally in the astonishing feat of shutting Steven up. “Oh yes of
course,
me and Eliot. Well I thought about making it me and
you,
Steven, but then I noticed how your hands and feet are disproportionately small compared to the rest of you and I thought that does not bode well.”

And Andi. With her it had gone beyond suspicion. Didi called often, and Eliot's laughter on the phone, Andi had apparently deduced, indicated a place much deeper than colleague repartee.

A month ago Didi had interviewed with a Negro firm having a mission not unlike that of Winston Douglas, though considerably larger given its Chi-town locale. Two weeks later her future supervisor called her in Red Bank to offer the position, and given that her commitment to the children's case had been in part what had impressed her associates-to-be, they were more than tolerant in allowing her to see the work through. Her first day would be Monday.

“Ready for it?”

“I think so. Though I imagine I
will
miss my old life as a cop.”

Eliot guffaws, then covers his mouth. He doesn't want Andi to hear. Well why
shouldn't
she hear? By sparing her feelings, if she does in fact have any left for him, he only confuses the fact that things are over, so he lets the laugh out, then gags himself again: Beau might complain. As loud as his own pompous ass could be, the older attorney could get surly about other noise around the office.

Since things started, Eliot had spent two weekends in Chicago. He had been surprised and somewhat disappointed to find out Didi's apartment was no bigger than Andi's, or his own, then was ashamed. Was he with Didi just because she was a rich girl? Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. She was smart, she was educated, she was using law as a serious conduit for civil rights. And she was
fun
. She could do all that vital work without being uptight, a trait he and Andi were both sorely lacking. He remembers this particular quality from the privileged students in college and law school. The
ease
of the wealthy.

And of course there was the other matter, the fuse that had lit all the drama that last awful afternoon: Andi's umpteenth rejection of his offer of a weekend together in Gary. He could only interpret her reticence to fully be with him, her younger lover, as a lack of seriousness in them as a couple.

On the third Saturday in August, as they both lay on her bed naked, Didi told Eliot to go through her closet and bureau and come up with an outfit for her. She promised that whatever he'd pick out, she'd wear. He had been granted the power, then, to dress her in the silliest or the most provocative fashion, but rather than enjoy the fun of it, he was seized by a paralyzing terror that he might make a mortal miscalculation. If he chose wrong, would she secretly resent him for it? He cowered and put together an ensemble he had already seen her wear. “You have impeccable taste.” Next she picked up the underthings he had singled out and burst out laughing. “What?” he had cried. “What!” How could he have gone wrong
there?
Underwear is underwear! But she put on everything and refused to tell him what she had found so amusing. At a deli lunch, the guilt of cheating overcame him, and he confessed to having dressed her (except for the underclothes) as he had already seen her dress herself. His shame over the matter only enhanced her merriment. He asked again about the underwear error, but began to see the more he pressed the issue, the more she delighted in his exasperation, so finally he gave up.