The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (72 page)

He's back at his office by 12:05. He spends the last twenty-five minutes of his break reading while partaking of his habitual packed lunch: egg salad sandwich with an orange for dessert. On days when he volunteers to clean up after the meeting, he gets back with just five minutes to devour his meal. He doesn't mind these service tasks, even emptying the ashtrays despite the fact that he is in the minority as a nonsmoker. Nicotine was certainly among his numerous vices for many years, but he'd made a pact with himself when he finally decided once and for all to give up chemical addictions that it would be
all
chemicals.

He sweeps the floor and stage of the auditorium, then mops before rolling out the several dollies on which are folded hundreds of metal chairs, the smaller ones for the little children to be placed in front. Not easy to make neat lines with seats of such assorted sizes but Dwight takes pride in the orderliness of his aisles and rows.

At 1:45 the students start flowing in. Dwight stands at the back and is as mesmerized as the small children by the Chinese acrobats. (The fifth graders are the oldest, and are divided between those gladly giving into the experience and those trying to maintain a cool distance.) In addition to their astounding gymnastics, the performers present mind-boggling tricks with props, such as the woman who tosses saucer, cup, saucer, cup, saucer, cup on top of her head, pitching them without seeing, each new dish landing perfectly balanced on top of the others until there are ten sets. With every new demonstration Dwight holds his breath, worried for the tumblers and jugglers, their humiliation should a blunder occur. And one does, an exhibition with stacked chairs, someone slipping off, but the man merely catches himself and without missing a beat remounts, and the stunt is resumed to its breathtaking finish. Dwight smiles. Mistakes needn't be catastrophes.

One of the second graders sitting at a middle aisle seat is a spellbound black child, and in his expression of eager delight a memory is sparked in Dwight, of coming to Indianapolis for a visit and taking Rett to the circus. The boy was seven, and Dwight never would have guessed it would be the last time he would see him until this coming summer. A decade later the uncle would become disgusted after learning of the abusive treatment of circus animals, but at the time it had seemed that nothing in years had made him so happy as seeing the enchantment on his nephew's face while he stared at the dancing elephants. Afterward they went to an ice cream parlor, and as they sat at the table Dwight taught Rett to draw a three-dimensional box starting with two overlapping rectangles. The child laughed, jubilant, making boxes over and over, squealing every time he had successfully rendered one, and Dwight had laughed, kissing and embracing Eliot's son until finally Rett had to squirm away in order to create his eighth box.

When the assembly is over, Dwight applauds enthusiastically, the curtain call concomitant with the dismissal bell, and the custodian slips out quickly, hearing (after he has made his own escape) teachers yelling at the children for order amid the mad rush for the exit. In his office, he takes the marble composition book out of his bag. He has had memory lapses lately and when a moment comes back to him, such as the Rett circus story, something he hasn't thought about in years, he writes it down so that he will have preserved the recollection before it vanishes forever. By the time he's through logging his entry the building has fallen silent, and he walks down to the auditorium to fold and bus the chairs. Afterward he begins his regular Friday afternoon erasing and washing of the classroom chalkboards and is surprised to find Mrs. Eisentrout hasn't bolted for the weekend like the rest of the faculty but is still at her desk, grading papers.

“I took Kevin Winters aside and told him what you found. He was cantankerous as ever, but after I had a few choice words with him I did get some kind of grudging apology.”

Dwight had forgotten about the offensive defacement. He walks to the desk.

Dwight proceeds to rub the words into oblivion.

 

2

Saturday morning Dwight sits at his drafting table making the finishing touches. He had mentioned in one of his meetings his history with underground comics, and Mervin, an addict who had successfully turned his life around, had taken an interest. The black businessman had commissioned Dwight to imagine some sort of poster that could be displayed around the city and that targeted “us.” Recently the virus, the ghastly existence of which no one could any longer deny, had finally been given a proper name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. (The first draft of the appellation from months before, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, had been pitifully inaccurate regarding the wide range of victims, ultimately proving more effective at raising the level of homophobia than of consciousness.)

The significance of prophylactics in prevention of the disease has been a major breakthrough discovery as, even a year ago, Dwight and many he knew were making wild hysterical stabs at the epidemic's cause. (The club sex-enhancement drug “poppers”?) Dwight's concept is a cartoon of Shaft and Superfly getting into bed together, a one-night stand. Shaft wants to use a condom but Superfly doesn't. Referencing the theme songs of each, Shaft says, “The problem with
you
is the only game you know is do or die!” and, halfway through the comic, Superfly turns to the reader to say, “Wow—he
is
a complicated man!”

At 10:45 Dwight slips the prototype into his portfolio and walks over to the church. He is gratified by his commissioner's enthusiastic response to the model, Mervin rattling off all the places he plans to post the placards.

An hour and a half later, Dwight sits at the bus stop in the late spring sun. Saturday mornings he reads or sketches in his apartment, on nicer days a park, and after his 11 a.m. meeting he partakes in a quick lunch at his favorite taquer
í
a, then walks or rides the bus to a museum or gallery. He invariably tops off his outing with an early dinner in Chinatown before going home to retire for the evening. Routine, routine.

On the bus he stares out at the cars. He misses driving. The second to last time he was behind a wheel was in September of '75, when his Nova swerved and rammed into a guardrail. It was his final DUI, license revoked. He had never been entirely certain if this sentence was for life but, given the recently established harsher penalties for drunk driving, had been reluctant to go to the DMV for verification on the point.

His last time driving was in May of '79. He had just been soothed by a hit after nearly twenty-four hours of a violent withdrawal, and took out the envelope he'd been carrying in his pocket since the end of April. Something had prevented Dwight from severing all ties with family. This, and perhaps some holdover from being a mailman, had resulted in him always maintaining a post office box, the rental of which being the
only
bill he paid faithfully each month, even if it meant skipping illegal substances for a day and undergoing the terrible sickness.

The card, liberally smudged from Dwight's repeated fingering, announced Rett's high school graduation in two weeks. In his medicated state, Dwight focused on the pretentious archaic font his nephew's high school administrators had chosen, the eff-looking esses, when he heard something on the television and raised his eyes. A public interest story about a boy who had had a difficult beginning that he had overcome, an exemplary law student who would speak at the UCLA closing exercises the following day. Dwight had stared at the screen long after the two-minute segment was over. He switched the box off and walked the two miles to Keith's, pushing the buzzer. The proprietor was home. Dwight climbed to the third and top floor, saw that the apartment door had been set ajar, and walked in to find Keith on the couch facing the door, glaring at his visitor.

“I jus need a shower. An my suit.”

Keith didn't blink. Dwight collected a towel and washcloth from the linen closet and went into the bathroom to cleanse himself, something he hadn't thought to do in some time. When he emerged three-quarters of an hour later, the towel wrapped around his waist and legs, he walked to the small closet that had become the storage unit for Dwight's stuff. Now Keith was turned away, staring at the television though it wasn't turned on. A new TV, Dwight noticed, as the previous one had disappeared along with various other of Keith's belongings, pawned by Dwight for drugs. Hanging in the closet was Dwight's only suit, the one he reserved for funerals, and some decent shoes. He left a few minutes later without uttering another word, Keith still turned away from him.

It was around one in the morning when he walked to the quiet, residential neighborhood. He selected the car, a Chrysler Newport, hot-wired it, and drove it to the PCH going south. He kept a bit of narcotic in his system to maintain equilibrium, prevent the nausea, but, as best he could, this day he wanted to be sober. The blue Pacific to his right seemed to wink its approval.

He entered the Los Angeles city limits and took the 405 to Downtown. A mile from campus he finally found street parking, then walked to the university grounds where he discovered thousands in various lines. After he located the ceremony for which he had come, he strategically waited until he spied a large black family and fell in with them in the swiftly moving queue, preparing to slip in on their ticket. As it turned out, the law school commencement was open, requiring no prior reservation.

The seating was outside, the announcements of special awards and honorary degrees seeming to drag on for hours. At long last Maxwell Williams was introduced. Though Dwight had a relatively decent view of the handsome young man, he was grateful to have caught a better glimpse of him on television the night before. Even with the sound system reverb, he did not miss a word of the address.

In February of 1960, four black students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College began to sit in at the Greensboro Woolworth's lunch counter. It was by no means the first such civil rights action in the South, but it set off a year-long epidemic of similar demonstrations from Richmond to Nashville to Houston. In April 1960, students from Shaw University in Raleigh held a conference that soon gave birth to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

And on March 31st of that year, seven-year-old Jordan Price and nine-year-old me played a kissing game with a couple of little white girls that exploded into a local cataclysm and an international clamor. The state of Georgia in all its wisdom had planned to incarcerate us until adulthood. In those pre-
Gault
days when youth were afforded no due process, coupled with Bible Belt racism, we were helplessly at the mercy of a judge's whim, and we may well have served out that verdict if it weren't for the public outrage and the miraculous entrance into our lives of attorneys of extraordinary courage and fortitude. Their choice to petition for a
habeas corpus
was bold, and when their initial attempt failed they immediately filed for appeal, and three months later Jordan and I were released. Thus I stand here today, a graduate of one of the finest law schools in the country, and without a doubt I owe not only my youth and freedom but my life's ambition to my family and to those four lawyers, grown-ups to me then, but now I fully comprehend how young and fierce they were. All of them still in their twenties, three younger than I am now. They were: Deirdre Wilcox, Diana Rubin, Steven Netherton, and Eliot Campbell.

He then elaborated, praising each of them individually in the order he had introduced them, and with Max's first sentence about Eliot, Dwight was already wiping his eyes.

When Max's speech, which drew a standing ovation, was over, Dwight wished to slip out but, not being close to an aisle, it was impossible. As he glanced about restlessly, he snatched a profile two rows ahead. He held his gaze, hoping telepathically to force her to turn to him, he was almost certain it was she but he hadn't yet gotten a clear look. When tassels were being moved to the left twenty minutes later, he watched her stand and it was unmistakable. She was rushing in the direction of the podium, no doubt to catch Max before he disappeared into the throng, and in a panic he called her name. She kept moving, and then he was rudely jumping chairs, pushing through parents Excuse me, Excuse me,
“Didi!”

And now she heard, and turned around, staring at him, stunned. Then slowly breaking into a smile, her eyes glistening.

“Dwight.” He had caught up with her, and she reached out to hold his hands firm and warm, no other words coming to her but to repeat it. “Dwight.”

She led him down to the front, to Max and his parents who were surprised and thrilled to see her as they had long ago lost contact. There were warm hugs, and when she introduced Dwight, the family was very touched as if he were Eliot's proxy, embracing their former attorney's brother as well. The Williamses had restaurant reservations and invited Didi and Dwight to join them, but they both declined, saying they needed to get on the road.

When the family had gone their way, he turned to her to initiate their adieu.

“Well.”

“Oh not yet for you, mister, we have a little catching up to do. Take you to lunch?”

It was a quiet place, and they ordered salads. Didi would be forty-five now, looking gorgeous as ever. She chatted on, the same ease and delight Dwight had remembered from that weekend long ago, Rett's chistening as an infant, she and Dwight among the godparents, and another time when they were both in Indianapolis for the boy's fifth birthday. She had been living in San Diego seven years now and loved the weather if not the political conservatism. She had Nellie, a black German shepherd she cherished, a pool, and her walls were adorned with the work of local artists.

“Would love to buy something from you. Have a drawing of yours in my home.”

“Be happy to make that happen, but it would be a
gift,
no buyin.”

When the salads, which were quite large, were brought to them, Didi had dug into a chunk of chicken, chewing, her thoughts drifting back to the events of the day.

“Funny to think now about the conditions we worked under, defending those little boys back in '60. All the progressive Supreme Court mandates that came down later that decade, and I mean in
addition
to the civil rights laws.
In re Gault
established constitutional rights for juveniles, we would still have been dealing with race, but had
Gault
been in place we wouldn't have felt
so
mice against mountains. Then
Gideon
—did you know before '63 there was no federal directive for a public defender? The poor accused of felonies sent away to the state pen
years
because if they couldn't afford a lawyer, they just had to stand up and defend themselves in court: a layperson against a district attorney! And before
Miranda
'66, the police were under no obligation to inform an arrested individual of his rights, oh my
God!
how did we
do
it?” She shook her head. “But I suppose if we
had
n't been doing it
then, then
would still be
now
.”

“You know what become a the other little boy? The little chatty one?”

“Jordan?” She sighed. “The latest was five to ten for robbing a convenience store. Both those boys spent the rest of their growing up targeted as pariahs by the local whites. And between the bigger boys and the guards, who knows what happened to them those months they were in the reformatory. Jordan became the criminal they all made him. The miracle is Max didn't.” They were both quiet a few moments.

Dwight noticed no wedding band around Didi's finger. She began telling amusing anecdotes about her life since moving to the West Coast, and at one point she mentioned a Glenn twice in the course of three minutes.

“Is this Glenn someone special?”

“Yes. He can hold an erection for thirty minutes straight.” She had squealed with delight, seeing the embarrassment on Dwight's face. “Oh Dwight, I have no interest in marriage or children! I just like having a good time.” She smiled. “Thirty minutes straight. That would be a good line for Tease. Next installment.”

Dwight's face went blank. “You don't know I'm a novelist? I've written a whole series! Black lawyers, mysteries. Ludwig and Tease, attorney partners and lovers.”

“Well. Congratulations!”

“Thank you. Not that I have any delusions that I've created great literature. It's crap. But it's page-turning crap, and it's fun.” She fed herself an olive with her fingers. “I guess something snapped one day, and I finally got too tired and frustrated with the reality of the legal system. So I decided to write it as it
should
be. And if I attract readers who generally do all their book shopping from the supermarket checkout line, then maybe I'm not just preaching to the choir, maybe my life's served some kind of purpose.”

At a far table, a black girl in cap and gown chatted energetically with her proud family. Between his elbowing with all the parents at the graduation and this restaurant lunch, Dwight had been feeling like an impostor all day. Being among folks who had normal functioning lives. His own existence generally fluctuated between part-time and full-time junkie, peppered with sporadic vows to go straight which lasted from a few days to (in one particularly inspired period) six months. Even the year and a half he spent in prison—burglary to support his habit—he barely remembers a day of sobriety. He routinely slept with men who would provide him with a temporary roof. He was doing just that at the time, the apartment where he'd seen the news broadcast that had brought him to L.A. was leased by his latest, a Vietnamese immigrant. (He'll never know for certain whether it was some inadvertent narcotized memory confusion or petty passive-aggressiveness that caused him to shower his filthy self at Keith's rather than at “home.”) These were times of semi-temperance. At worst, Dwight's home was the street. But today had made him long for the luxury of ordinariness and, once again, he made mad promises to himself as he smiled at Didi over the flower vase centerpiece.