The Common Lawyer (14 page)

Andy opened the barbed-wire gate. A few of the big birds—ostriches stood eight feet tall and weighed almost four hundred pounds—had wandered over to greet him; he shooed them away, then rode in and closed the gate behind him. He pedaled up the gravel road to the house.

Tall oak trees shaded the old two-story farmhouse with the wraparound porch where Andy had played as a child. A rainwater collection system gathered nature's water for irrigation and solar panels gathered the sun's energy for electricity; his father enjoyed the summer months when he sold surplus electricity back to the grid. Drought-hardy native Texas plants grew in the garden that followed the porch around the house—the log owl would fit right in—and vegetables in the organic garden out back. A compost stood by the fence line. His folks had been green before green was fashionable.

There was no place like home.

Max was barking. Andy parked and lifted the dog down. Max ran off to chase after the ostriches; and the ostriches would chase him. The two-toed birds could hit speeds of forty miles per hour. So they enjoyed free rein on the land, from barbed-wire to barbed-wire; the fence kept them from wandering onto the farm-to-markets and ending up road kill. Even a four-hundred-pound bird had no chance against a three-ton pickup.

Andy unbuckled the backpack and removed the owl. He stepped up onto the porch and entered the house through the screen door. His folks avoided the air conditioner even in the summer; but the house had been built to catch the breeze up from the creek. From the front door, he knew his mother had been baking a cake in the back kitchen.

"Mom!"

No answer. He knew where he'd find her. He walked through the kitchen where a still-warm strawberry cake—his mother knew Max couldn't eat chocolate—sat cooling on the counter. He continued through the screened-in back porch and out the door. Wind chimes hung from the eaves and limbs of the oak trees and played a symphony in the soft breeze. Colorful yard art—metal birds and coyotes and wind catchers—stood in the open space like a sculpture garden. Thirty steps farther and he was at the barn. From all outward appearances, it was a working barn; but once through the open double doors, the classical music playing on the stereo system told otherwise.

This was his mother's private place, where she could lose herself in her art. It was the same for her in there as it was for him out on the trails: she was free of all worldly constraints. She was in the zone. Jean Prescott was a sculptor. And the barn was her studio.

Andy found her in the back corner where the natural light from the windows filled the space. The back doors were propped open, and the cool breeze from the creek blew in like a whisper. She stood there in her natural element, all five feet five inches of her lithe body clad in jeans and a T-shirt, her stance almost athletic before the sculpture, like a lioness on the African savannah stalking her prey. Some human beings belonged in a corner office thirty stories up; others in a coal mine three miles down. Jean Prescott belonged in an art studio. She was putting the final touches on the clay figure of an angel.

"Nice."

She turned to him and smiled.

"Andy."

But her smile turned into a frown.

"You cut your hair."

He had. Her eyes now seemed so sad Andy almost apologized, but then she saw the owl under his arm and her eyes brightened.

"Andy, I told you, no presents."

He held the owl up for her.

"I know. But this is pretty cool, don't you think? For your garden. Happy birthday, Mom."

She took the owl and admired it.

"It's beautiful. But you can't afford this."

"I can now."

"How?"

"I'll explain later. Where's Dad?"

"In his office." She set the owl on a nearby table and wiped her hands. "Go tell him it's time for lunch. Tofu burgers. I've got him on a feeding schedule like the birds."

Andy stifled a groan. Not tofu burgers again.

Andy walked out the open doors and past the vegetable garden; the tomatoes were fattening up. He continued down the sloping land to Cypress Creek, a lazy slice of shallow water that coursed gently over river rocks and around limestone boulders and under bald cypress trees whose trunks snaked into the creek like long straws. He came up behind his father sitting in a rocking chair on a shady rock outcropping at the water's edge—his office for the last thirty-five years. A fishing pole stood against a nearby tree in case he spotted a catfish worth catching in the clear creek. He was strumming his guitar and singing softly, as if performing for the half dozen ostriches that grazed nearby.

Paul Prescott was tall and lanky as a fencepost with a gray ponytail and a neat beard; he wore old jeans and older cowboy boots. He could pass for Kris Kristofferson, and he possessed the same gravelly voice and the same songwriting ability. But Paul Prescott had never hit it big. Never gotten his big break. Never gotten lucky. So for forty-five years he had sung his songs at local joints in and around Austin, just him and his guitar. And his constant companion, José Cuervo.

Saturday nights at the Broken Spoke or Cheatham Street Warehouse or Gruene Hall, sitting in the back listening to his father sing and falling asleep in his mother's lap—those were Andy Prescott's childhood memories. Other kids had grown up watching G-rated Disney movies; Andy Prescott had grown up in honky-tonks with drunk cowboys and wild women.

It had been a great childhood.

Andy had met Willie and Waylon, Kris and Kinky, Ray Price and Merle Haggard—all the country greats in all the Texas bars. Paul Prescott had opened for all of them, but no one had ever opened for him; he had never been the headliner. When Andy was ten years old, he had been so proud of his father—a star singer up on the stage. By the time he was fourteen, he understood that his father wasn't a star. By eighteen, he knew his father would never be a star. Andy Prescott had always figured on following in his father's footsteps—not as a singer, but as a failure. He wondered if Russell Reeves would be his big break.

His father paused his singing, coughed hard, and spit blood.

Paul Prescott was dying. He was sixty-five, and he had outlived his liver, as he put it. In fact, he had killed his liver with tequila. "Alcoholic cirrhosis," the doctors called it. His scarred liver could no longer adequately absorb vitamins, produce proteins that enabled his blood to clot, or cleanse his body of toxins. He needed a new liver. Without a transplant, he would eventually develop a fatal case of bacterial peritonitis or suffer hepatic encephalopathy and slip into a coma, or the scarring in his liver would cause his blood to back up and he would bleed to death.

His father was one of seventeen thousand people on the national waiting list for a "cadaveric liver transplant"—a liver from a dead donor. He had been put on the list a year before, and the doctor said he would be on the list a year from now. Only six thousand people would get a liver in the next twelve months; his father would not be one of them. Alcoholic cirrhosis patients sat at the bottom of the waiting list.

Donated livers are allocated first to those transplant patients classified as "Status 1," which requires they be in the intensive care unit with a life expectancy of less than seven days. But by then it is often too late; only half of Status 1 patients survive a year after a transplant. Which seemed stupid: livers go to those patients who are least likely to be saved.

His father's only hope—and Paul Prescott struggled with the moral dilemma of hoping that someone else's life would not be saved so his would—was that a donated liver not match the blood type and body weight of the Status 1 patients in the Texas region; only after those patients were ruled out would the liver drop down the list, first to those patients in the region with a life expectancy of less than three months, then to those with longer life expectancies, and finally to the alcoholic cirrhosis patients. The odds were not good.

His father figured on dying.

But he had never complained; he said he had no one to blame but himself. And at least he had health insurance and could get on the waiting list; uninsured patients could not. Ability to pay was a qualifying factor: a five-year-old child without insurance dies; a seventy-five-year-old man with insurance lives. Paul Prescott said, "Life isn't fair. Sometimes that works for you and against someone else; sometimes that works for someone else and against you. But life is always unfair to someone." Andy's father had long ago accepted the fact that life was not fair, even if his son had not. Andy walked closer. His father's soft voice became clear.

 
"Honky-tonk heroes, we're a dying breed now,

The world's gone corporate and the music has too,

Honky-tonks are history and their heroes will soon be,

But their music lives on in the magic of CDs."

"Sounds good."

His father's fingers froze on the guitar strings; he turned and smiled.

"Andy, my boy. How're you doing, son?" He squinted into the light. "You get in a bar fight?"

"The trails. I like that one."

"Might work. Better write it down."

His father jotted in the little notebook he carried with him these days. Forgetfulness was a symptom of liver disease.

"Used to sing thirty songs a night. Now I can't remember one all the way through."

His father cut his own CDs at an Austin studio then sold them in local stores and at his performances. He hadn't sung in public in two years. He wanted to cut one more CD before he died. He finished his notes and faced Andy again.

"You get a job?"

"No."

"Why'd you cut your hair?"

"Oh. I got a client."

"You cut your hair for a speeding driver?"

"I'll tell you later."

Andy squatted next to his father; his skin glowed yellow in the shards of sunlight that cut through the cypress canopy above.

"How're you doing, Dad?"

"I'm still singing … to the birds anyway."

Andy felt the tears come into his eyes. His father ran his hand over Andy's short hair.

"Son, don't cry for me. If it ends now, I've got no complaints. I've had a great life. I've lived life my way and I made music my way. I've had thirty-five years with the best woman I've ever known and twenty-nine years with the best son I could ever have hoped for. I only hope you get a woman as good as your mother and a son as good as you."

"Dad, I'm a traffic ticket lawyer."

"You're a good man, Andy. You've got a good heart."

Andy wiped his face.

"Son, I'm not rich or famous either, but I didn't need to be. I needed to sing my songs, but I didn't need to be a star to be happy. You can't buy happiness in a store, Andy. You live it. I have. I did exactly what I wanted to do every day of my life. I've loved and been loved. That's as good as it gets in this life."

Andy was close to blubbering uncontrollably, so he said, "Mom says it's time for lunch. Tofu burgers."

His father groaned.

"Damn, not tofu again. I need meat."

"Not in that house."

Paul Prescott pushed himself out of the chair; it took some effort. Andy would have helped, but that always annoyed his father. He had never required help.

"What do you say, Andy? Let's you and me sneak into town, get us a big ol' cheeseburger and French fries."

His father swallowed a bite of his tofu burger.

"Mighty good, Jean."

She gave him a "Who do you think you're kidding?" look.

"Been reading about liver transplants in India, says I can get a liver sooner over there. And cheaper."

They were on the back porch eating the tofu burgers and sweet potato fries and drinking iced tea. Andy never drank beer in his father's presence.

"Seems like everyone's going to India these days—for call centers, wombs, livers …"

His mother frowned. "Wombs?"

"Natalie wants to hire an Indian surrogate to have their baby. It's a lot cheaper."

"Global economy," his father said. "Americans shopping the world for cheap labor. Literally, in Natalie's case."

"You really thinking about getting a liver in India?"

"Nah. Those poor folks don't need us coming over there to take advantage of their poverty, buying their body parts on the cheap like we buy auto parts from China."

The Prescott men were hopeless liberals and lovable losers. They voted for McGovern, Humphrey, Mondale, Gore, Kerry, and even Kinky Friedman. Their votes guaranteed the candidate would lose.

His father downed a handful of vitamins and chased them with iced tea then slowly pushed himself out of his chair.

"Hell, I gotta go again."

He walked inside the house. Andy looked to his mother.

"The diuretics," she said. "They make his body produce more urine, to get rid of the fluid in his abdomen."

"His skin and eyes, they're a lot more yellow than the last time I saw him."

She nodded. "The jaundice. Doctor said he'll look like a pumpkin before it's over."