When I was a public defender, even I managed to dress better than my clients, but in private practice I am expected to look better-dressed than I do today: a blue pin striped summer suit that fits as though I stopped at Pinehearst Cemetery on the way downtown and robbed the freshest grave I could find. It has shrunk, but I have not. Not without a trace of envy, I glance at my client. White linen suits on black males historically have a way of arousing my suspicions. In eastern Arkansas, where I grew up, a black man who put on a suit that wasn’t the color of midnight was assumed to be up to no good. Hoping to spruce up my ward robe this spring, I tried on a white suit at Dillard’s that made me look like Moby Dick. It was just as well. Five hundred dollars goes a lot further at Sears. In contrast to his lawyer’s ill-fitting attire, Andy’s suit looks tailored. Where in the world is he getting his money? If Jill Marymount asks Olivia this question, I will object like hell. Maybe I am wrong, but I did not believe Andy when I asked him earlier this morning.
Despite the withering look he gave me, I think he cannot admit that Olivia has agreed to subsidize him. I think, too, that there is at least a good chance they are having an affair.
As we walked into the courtroom this morning, I caught an agonized look before she realized I was watching her. It seems odd to me that there are far fewer interracial liaisons today than in the days of slavery, but perhaps it is not so strange now that I think about it. Before the Civil War, black women had no choice in the matter, and today desirable eligible black men are so scarce a white woman would have to risk censure not only from white men but also from black women.
I turn and look over my shoulder at my daughter, who, to my great surprise, asked if she could come down to watch.
Never before has she showed the slightest interest in seeing her old man leave the house except to take her somewhere, but she has heard that during the second half of Governor’s School a mock trial is part of the curriculum. Hardly an original idea, but to a teacher it must sound good. Surely the national fascination with lawyers will fade when TV moves on to something else. The only thing it hasn’t done, and it’s surely only a matter of time, is a program called “Bankruptcy Court.” Sarah gives me an embarrassed nod, but she can’t very well pretend I’m not in the same room with her today. She is sitting by an old woman in the second row, and wearing a yellow sundress that had prisoners riding up in the elevator with us rattling their chains. The media are out in full force for the hearing, and I wouldn’t put it past one of the males to find out that Sarah is my daughter and try to interview her. I suspect she is the best-looking young woman in this courtroom in a long time. Beautiful people don’t make many appearances in municipal court.
Taking a beating in court isn’t my idea of fun, but Andy needed little convincing that we have no chance in front of Bruton. We could have waived the probable cause hearing, but I wanted to see and hear Warren Holditch and Jill’s other witnesses testify and perhaps do a little discovery as well.
Holditch is most of Jill’s case today, though I suspect that for the main event she will have lined up more than one expert to hammer home the point that Andy knew he didn’t have any business trying shock on Pam.
Jill and Kerr Bowman walk in together. I almost expect him to be carrying her briefcase, but his hands are empty except for a yellow legal pad, as if she doesn’t even trust him to lug her stuff around for her. Jill, trailed by Kerr, comes by the table, and I feel forced to make introductions. I say snidely, “Dr. Chapman, this is the woman who is prosecuting you, Jill Marymount.”
Graciously, Andy has risen to his feet (I wouldn’t have if I were in his shoes, and rudely I remain seated). Jill has the nerve to extend her hand as if she is out campaigning for votes.
“Sorry to meet you under these circumstances, Dr.
Chapman,” she purrs. “Believe it or not, I ‘m aware of what I’m putting you through.”
The hypocrisy of such a statement makes me want to puke, but Andy nods deferentially as if she were a dignitary who had thoughtfully stopped on the street to offer condolences on the death of an aged parent. Kerr, behind her, has to clear his throat to be acknowledged, but I let Jill introduce her own flunky. As he and Andy go through the same charade of civility, I notice Jill looks untypically feminine. Usually, female attorneys have their own battle dress-suits and high-buttoned blouses that make them look as formal and forbidding as their male counterparts-but today Jill is wearing a beige silk blouse over a red skirt that might be more appropriate for lunch at the Blackwell County Country Club. She has deliberately dressed this way for Judge Bruton, I realize.
The old bastard hates woman lawyers and once sent home a woman who dared to show up in his courtroom in pants. If Jill has to play a part to get along with him, she will gladly do so.
Jill’s first witness is Leon Robinson, the technician who was trying to restrain Pam when she grabbed the prod. Leon, in his twenties, is hard for me to figure. I have talked to him briefly over the phone, but he seems to have a streak of bitterness in him toward Andy that extends beyond getting him involved in this mess. Had he been able to keep Pam’s arms pinned, as directed, none of us would be here today. Undoubtedly, he feels guilt and is defensive about his role in this tragedy. Leon is pure country. With sideburns and an inky pompadour he reminds me ofConway Twitty, the country singer who, legend has it, took for his first name the town where Sarah is attending Governor’s School. He is wearing a blue work shirt stufled into faded jeans that are, in turn, jammed into cream-colored cowboy boots. Despite a washed-out junk-food look (too many years on the road), he walks with an ex-athlete’s grace. In a low, sullen voice, he relates how Andy asked him to help with Pam the day before.
He hadn’t really known what was going to happen. All he was told was that they were going to try something new to keep Pam from hurting herself. Andy leans over and whispers to me that he had shown Leon the cattle prod and had told him exactly what would happen. So what, I think glumly.
Andy should never have asked him to get involved in the first place.
It comes out that Leon had become quite attached to Pam.
When she was in restraints, which was most of the time, he fed her, talked to her, even brought his jam box to work to entertain her. None of this is relevant, but it occurs to me that he has insisted that he be allowed to say this before he testifies about how she died. Despite Bruton’s look of impatience (what does this boy’s feelings have to do with the case?), Jill lets him run.
“I went to her funeral,” he says, finally winding down.
“If I had known how bad it was gonna hurt, I would of realized how hard she was gonna try to get away.”
I could be objecting to this, but I want Leon to commit himself to the best memory of Pam he can muster. At the trial I want a jury to see that Pam meant a great deal to the people who worked with her. This wasn’t an experiment on a mannequin. Pam was real, somebody to help if you could.
And you didn’t have to be her mother to think that way.
Finally, he gets to the actual event, which, because of the emotion in his voice, brings me and Andy, I notice, to the edge of our seats. Dr. Chapman told him to take Pam into the treatment room with the one-way mirror. He didn’t even see Yettie Lindsey, the social worker, or Mrs. Le Master until all hell broke loose. He talked to Pam until Dr. Chapman got there and then Dr. Chapman told him to remove her restraints, which he did. His face balled into a frown, he says, “She started hittin’ herself on the side of her face just like I knew she would.”
Leon pauses as if he is trying to get control over himself, but he does not quite manage to do so and speaks now in a scratchy, hoarse tone.
“He told me he was going to shock Pam with this electric rod he had, and it would make her quit hittin’ herself. So when we got in there he said to hold on to her hands so she wouldn’t get free. When he touched her with the prod, it was like she had been struck by lightning she bucked so hard. She just went wild and pulled out of my hands, and that’s when she grabbed the prod. She fell down after that and he hollered for me to go call 911 and get an ambulance. I did, and when I come back Pam was dead.”
He surprises us all by bursting into tears. Astonishingly, this kid, doubtless a redneck, cares deeply about Pam. Jill offers him a tissue, and he takes it and wipes his eyes.
Before he sits down, Jill gets him to identify the cattle prod that killed Pam. It is an ugly thing, much longer than I imagined, probably about three feet in length. I assume it is that length because an animal, either out of pain or rage, would be in a position at close range to take the arm off its tormenter. I notice the black insulation tape that was sup posed to keep this accident from happening and realize that if it had been me, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to know how much tape was sufficient.
Jill turns to me and says blandly, “Your witness.”
As I get up, I introduce myself to him. He rolls his eyes back up in his head as if he has seen his share of lawyers.
During a short conversation on Friday over the telephone, he went into a bit more detail. I had wanted to talk with him in person, but he claimed to be much too busy to visit with me.
I decide not to do too much with him, since I run the risk of reinforcing his testimony.
Grudgingly, Leon admits that Andy had explained to him the night before that Pam would try to pull away.
“I didn’t know she’d go crazy though like she did,” he insists.
“It was like she had superhuman strength all of a sudden,” he exaggerates Knowing I will have another crack at him, I ask him a few more questions to get him to admit that Andy had taken some pains to explain to him what he was trying to accomplish and let him sit down.
Jill wastes no time in calling the doctor who pronounced Pam dead. Dr. Travis Beavers, a GP who was doing an emergency-room stint at St. Thomas, licks his lips and testifies verbatim from the statement he gave to Jill that the cause of death was due to “an apparent fibrillation of the heart secondary to a reported electric shock.”
Dr. Beavers, baby-faced and nervous, can be jumped on with both feet. There was no autopsy report, and her heart had stopped beating by the time he saw her, so for all he knows Pam might have been poisoned. I would just as soon not have the testimony frozen in stone at this point and so I do not object to what is obvious hearsay. Common sense suggests that it was the shock that caused her death, but there is no formal proof. There isn’t much to work with, but it might give a stubborn juror something to chew on in the jury room when the time comes.
When Dr. Warren Holditch takes the stand and begins to speak, I forgo trying to make my usual gibberish of notes (we can obtain the transcript), and sit back and watch so I can try to figure out how to crossexamine him when the real shooting starts. A small, wiry man who looks like a runner, Holditch has none of the polish of the professional witness, which is probably in his favor. As he establishes his credentials, he stumbles over words as if English is a second language. He is nervous, but this is practice for him, too. He says he is from “Pine Buff” for “Pine Bluff” and I hear someone titter behind me. If he can’t even get his hometown right, we’re going to be here for a while. I find myself itching to get at him, even though I know it would be counterproductive as well as futile.
However, once Jill gets him into the substance of his testimony, Holditch’s voice gradually takes on an authoritative tone. Working up a head of steam, he begins to tattoo Andy.
There is a view among some psychologists, he says, that extreme punishment of the develop mentally disabled for treatment purposes, as was used here, is unjustifiable be cause decisions are made for the retarded that we would never make for ourselves. For example, tobacco kills thousands yearly in this country, but Holditch testifies he knows of no treatment in which an adult has consented to be shocked in order to stop smoking. As he talks, he looks directly at Andy as if he is the cross his profession has to bear. If shock can ever be justified (and in his view, it cannot because of its dangerousness and severity), there have to be safeguards that were not present in this case. Now Holditch turns his head and begins speaking directly to Bruton, who has been eyeing the courtroom suspiciously, as if he were afraid that we had conspired to set off some racial incident. Holditch’s voice, small and shy when he began, fairly booms off the walls. He says that it is elementary that aversive procedures, especially shock, not be tried on a retarded person until a psychologist demonstrates that he or she has tried less aversive techniques or has conducted a review of the literature and found that a particular procedure would be futile.
As he speaks, Andy leans over and whispers, his voice angry “We don’t have the staff to try what he’s going to suggest, and he knows it.” He adds, his voice rising, “He knows those procedures don’t work with people like Pam.”
Holditch begins to feel comfortable enough to slouch slightly in the chair as he talks.
“In a perfect world, there would be no need for punishment. Rewards would be enough, and certainly it is often easy to increase appropriate behavior by devising a program of reinforcing activities. I hate to slip into jargon here, but to use correct terminology, one of the most obvious but effective ways to work with retarded per sons is a DRI procedure. DRI stands for differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior. It simply means that you reinforce a behavior you select for the person to engage in which is physically incompatible with the behavior you want stopped. For example, a teacher takes a child who is banging herself on the head with her fist and gets that child to work at a task using her hands.”
Andy pushes his chair against mine and whispers, “When a child bangs her head a hundred times an hour, think of the staff ratio you would need even if it worked completely with these kinds of cases, which it doesn’t. Do you think Arkansas would pay for that?”
Dr. Holditch, now that he has the attention of the judge, turns his head back toward Andy as if he is lecturing a way ward student.
“However, my opinion is that in order to de crease or eliminate certain behaviors, it is sometimes necessary to use punishment as a procedure. But the principle of least restrictive treatment dictates that you try the least aversive techniques first. If you want a cite of the professional literature, see Dr. Richard Foxx’s basic training manual entitled Decreasing Behaviors of Severely Retarded and Autistic Persons.”
Bruton acts as if he is Holditch’s favorite pupil and begins to take notes. I can barely refrain from snorting out loud.
With his reputation for shooting from the hip, Bruton probably hasn’t written anything except his name on a paycheck in the last twenty years. Holditch dips his head slightly as if to indicate he approves of the judge’s willingness to do some thing besides sit there and pretend he is listening. Of course, Bruton could be writing himself a note to remind himself what time Geraldo Rivera comes on. Holditch continues, “Now, it should be mentioned there is a school of thought that says aversive techniques of behavior modification are unnecessary in addition to being immoral.” Holditch pauses and wrinkles his nose before disagreeing.
“Some educators hold to the idea that you can replace a destructive behavior with a skill without having to first eliminate the destructive behavior, but, quite frankly, in some real difficult cases, I think this is simply pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. As I said, in an ideal world there would be no techniques that we call punishment used to decrease unwanted behaviors,” he continues, “but we aren’t there yet for serious self-injurious behaviors-at least I’m not aware that we are in Arkansas.”
I look at the satisfied expression on Jill’s angular face and realize that she has slashed the odds against making her case.
By going with a conventional psychologist who condones aversive techniques of behavior management (albeit allegedly in a judicious manner) she has slipped from my hand a weapon I would have been happy to use against her. So far as I can tell from the admittedly limited research I have been able to do in the last three days, the case for strictly non aversive means to eliminate self-injurious behavior is a matter of much debate. By not turning this case into a propaganda film in which outside experts will be trooped into the state to show our backwardness, she has strengthened her hand immeasurably. I realize now that my friend Amy exaggerated Jill’s zeal to reform the system. Jill will be content to show that Andy hasn’t met the professional standards for psychologists in Arkansas, a much easier task, since it is clear that he ignored the hell out of the usual protocol.
Jill takes Holditch through Pam’s records. It is appalling how little had been done for her since she began to hurt herself when she was twelve. As Holditch drones on about the restraints and the drugs that had been an inseparable part of Pam’s adolescent years, Andy writes on the legal pad and shoves it at me: “The turnover and vacancies on the staff makes it impossible to do anything but keep kids like Pam in restraints or on drugs.”
Holditch says that one of “Dr. Chapman’s” major errors was the failure to obtain the approval of a “human rights committee,” standard procedure in institutions before highly aversive techniques are tried with a retarded individual. Andy whispers loudly that it was “moribund” at the Blackwell County HDC and hadn’t met in months. I make a note to work on somehow minimizing this. It seems it would have been a simple matter to arrange to have his ass covered by a group. Holditch says there is no indication from his review of the records that any committee was consulted.
Jill runs Holditch through a number of recognized behavior-modification programs that he says Andy should have tried before shock: “Extinction,” which, according to him, simply means ignoring the behavior (Holditch concedes this would have been dangerous, given the fact that as soon as she came out of the restraints Pam began to hit herself);
“Timeout,” which would have placed Pam in a room by herself with a one-way mirror for a few minutes at most;
“Overcorrection,” a procedure in which the teacher or trainer may actually guide with his hands the offender’s body in movements that “overcorrect” the maladaptive behavior (Holditch explains, as the judge scratches his head, that, as an example, when Pam began to hit herself, she would have been required to fill a bag with ice and hold it against her head). Finally, he says that forms of punishment other than shock should have been tried first. For example, Pam could have been required to do exercises each time she hit herself.
Andy shakes his head as if Holditch has suggested aspirin to cure cancer, but this seems like such common sense I make a note to ask him about it later.
Jill, who has been appropriately unobtrusive in her questioning on direct examination, asks Holditch about the use of a cattle prod, and it is the introduction of this subject that at a jury trial will do the most damage. Average Arkansans may be skeptical of all the psychological mumbo jumbo but talk about electrocution will wake them up, no matter how bored or confused they have become. Bruton thrusts his chin forward as if now we are getting to an area he can under stand.
“If shock can ever be said to be appropriate as a method of behavior control, and it is still used by some professionals, according to the literature,” Holditch says, tapping his fingers together prissily, ‘one thing is for certain: using a cattle prod to administer the electric current never is. Anyone who familiarizes himself with the literature knows that.”
Again, I feel Andy’s breath on my right ear.
“The man who pioneered the use of shock in this area used a cattle prod.”
But would he use one today? I wonder, as I listen to Hoiditch name a number of commercial products that have been specifically designed for use on humans.
“As far back as 1975, an article was published in the journal Behavior Therapy warning against the use of cattle prods. In fact, my research shows that the hand-held shock apparatus is probably rare today. Remote-control devices are more widely used because they don’t have the generalization problems that are encountered with hand-held products.”
Ramrod straight behind the podium, Jill asks, “What is a generalization problem, Dr. Holditch?”
Holditch, increasingly comfortable in the courtroom, nods patiently.
“It is not at all unusual that unwanted behaviors which have disappeared in one setting, for example, the treatment room, reappear in another. If shock is going to have any meaningful application, the child must be able to live in a normal environment. It is nothing short of cruelty to a child if the behavior soon resumes. In other words, children learn to associate the individual who shocks him or her with the stimulus. According to the literature, and in my own experience, when that person is not present, the self-injurious behavior will typically recur. For that reason remote-control devices have been developed which help prevent this problem from developing.”
Jill asks softly, “Is there evidence that any other apparatus or device was used to shock Pam Le Master other than a cattle prod?”
Holditch shakes his head.
“Not from the records I’ve been given to review.”
Jill asks, “What, if anything, is wrong with using a cattle prod?”
Cattle prod. Cattle prod. If Jill is beating it to death today, wait until she has a jury. Holditch frowns, as if the question pains him.
“According to the literature,” he says, “the type of device used on an animal may not regulate the voltage or current. This type of apparatus can deliver more than eighty microamperes, which, if the current travels through the heart, can produce ventricular fibrillation. By the way, the pain produced has been likened to having a dentist drill your teeth without benefit of anesthesia. Before coming here, I applied a shock to myself, and in my opinion, the pain is worse than that.”
Instinctively, I rise to object, but realize once I get to my feet that the severe pain produced by the shock of a cattle prod is intentional. While I am standing, Jill chooses this moment to ask, “Do you have an opinion concerning Dr.
Chapman’s use of shock on Pamela Le Master?”
I can make objections here, but they will do no good at this hearing, and I pop back down in my seat like a jack-in-the-box in reverse, while he says, of course, that he does, and then proceeds to say how reckless Andy’s actions were and more or less repeats his earlier testimony. It is recklessness that the jury will decide this case on, and the room is hushed when Holditch finishes, and Jill says tonelessly, “Your witness.”
There are weaknesses in this testimony, and I have to bite my tongue when I decline to crossexamine him. Even Bruton’s eyes bulge in disbelief when I say, “No questions.”
I call Olivia as my only witness. I had talked with her briefly on Friday (she surprised me by declining to meet with me again before the hearing), but she seemed as resolute on the phone as she had after the plea and arraignment hearing.
Despite my urging, she has made no public statement and has refused all comment to the press. Andy, who has accepted the inevitable outcome of the probable cause hearing with his customary aplomb, had not wanted me to put Olivia through a court appearance any sooner than we had to, and argued as late as last night that she would not waver from the story she had given to the prosecutor’s office and to me in my office. Perhaps, she won’t, but I think I know better than Andy the pressure she will endure between this hearing and the trial. Getting her on the record now will remove the worry once and for all.
For the hearing she is dressed surprisingly informally. She has donned a navy blue picnic skirt with a simple indigo sleeveless top. Because of their general stylishness, I had not thought to ask her or Andy to wear something more formal.
We do not have to impress a jury, but the press and TV are sure to pick up on their seeming casualness.
Her testimony, as I had secretly feared, is cooler than it was in my office. Though the words do not vary, her tone is quite different. I do not know if she is sounding this way intentionally, but she seems detached, almost as if she has begun to question her own involvement. Though she admits that it was she who had suggested shock to Andy her words are tentative, as if it was a treatment she had only heard mentioned, instead of one that she had spent some time trying to find out about from others. I now feel as if I am tiptoeing through a mine field. I ask her if she was aware that he had never tried shock before; and, as she had in my office, she talks about the difficulty she had finding anyone who would even admit it was an option; but this time there is uncertainty in her voice instead of conviction. I rush her through the actual event, fearing she will say something that will implicate Andy; but her story, when she is finished, is almost identical to Leon’s. She does volunteer that Andy tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation; but, had her direct testimony been given in front of a jury, the impression would have been that she was a reluctant witness.
Jill appears almost gleeful that Bruton had denied her objection that the mother’s consent was irrelevant as she steps in behind the podium to crossexamine Olivia. Yet now that Olivia has performed miserably on Andy’s behalf, she proves an obstinate witness to Jill. Instead of agreeing that Andy had failed to inform her of the dangers of shock, Olivia says that, on the contrary, Andy had warned her that electricity was always dangerous. Jill asks her if Andy had told her that he was going to use a device designed for use on animals.
“Absolutely,” Olivia says.
“He gave me an article to read showing the results of prior experiments. I knew that what he was trying to do was to show the administrator that shock would work so that he could get permission to buy and use remote-control equipment. He explained that the pain would be intense and that I should experience it, and I did. He said the research showed that if the stimulus wasn’t painful enough, some children it had been tried on had adapted to the pain. He explained about the tape being wrapped around the metal part when I asked if it was safe.”
Burned worse than I have been, Jill decides not to push any further, and I also decline the opportunity to redirect.
Olivia leaves the witness stand dry-eyed and cool. So much for my star witness. I had hoped for a stirring defense of Andy, and only got it when I wasn’t asking the questions.
Yet maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Putting a person under oath in a witness box has an unpredictable effect.
After brief arguments from Jill and myself, Bruton rules almost in a perfunctory manner that there is probable cause, and he binds the case over to circuit court. Once we are outside the courtroom the media engulf us, but Andy obeys my instructions to make no comment. Despite my best intentions I can’t keep myself from saying that it was pointless to crossexamine the state’s witnesses.
John Winter of Channel 4 eggs me on.”
“Was your decision based on your belief that your client can’t get a fair hearing in Judge Bruton’s court?”
Now that we are in circuit court, I have nothing to lose, but instead I ignore the question and say that we will present the case to a jury. No matter how much they might agree with me, the other members of the judiciary in Blackwell County will resent it if I continue to go after Bruton.
It is only afterward upon entering the Hardhat Cafe, a local burger place, with Sarah that I find myself at a loss for words. Ignoring the stares of men twice and three times her age (though I can’t), she asks, “If you think the judge was biased against your client, why didn’t you say so?” She seems annoyed with me even though I had told her our strategy on the way downtown this morning.
I squint in the smoky room, trying to find a table. I think of several rationalizations I could offer up to her. She folds her arms and waits. I could tell her I have to make a living;
I don’t want to get in trouble with the professional-ethics people; I don’t want to hurt my client. Finally, I say weakly, “The practice of law is mostly one compromise after another.
I guess it’s a habit.”
Men in suits (professionals enjoying the illusion of a macho atmosphere) are shooting pool with construction workers in the back of the restaurant, and I get us a table so we can watch. Sarah is interested in talking about the hearing and asks me questions until I fear she is beginning to think about becoming a lawyer.
“Dr. Chapman seems to me like a really nice guy,” she says as the waitress brings over fries, cheeseburgers, and Cokes.
I agree. Before we left the courthouse I had introduced her to Andy, and he went out of his way to treat her like an adult instead of a child. I reach for the bottle of ketchup.
“He’s pretty sophisticated,” I say, thumping it on the side. Clan, who must run through a bottle a week, has instructed me, after a lifetime of thumping, that a law of physics prevents ketchup from coming out if you hit it on the bottom. Clan would be hard-pressed to name the law, but typically he is right about the results. Like a river of lava from an active volcano, the ketchup flows thickly but steadily.
Sarah carefully removes the onions from her patty.
“You sound surprised. Can’t a black male be sophisticated?”
“Of course,” I say hastily. Sarah still thinks of me as a liberal. Her own idealism, which has mushroomed in the last three weeks, seems almost quaint to me these days. I have to be careful not to sound like a racist.
“But you have to admit there’re not many black psychologists in Arkansas.”
Sarah, about to bite into her sandwich, puts it down and replies, “That’s not their fault.”
Why the hell not, I think, irritated by Sarah’s knee-jerk response. I bite down on a piece of gristle and have to reach into my mouth with my thumb and forefinger to remove it.
What’s wrong with me? I should be proud of her defending blacks. After all, how many whites really believe blacks are ever going to catch up or really even give a damn whether they do or not? I can count the ones I know on one hand, and it’s not mine. What happened to me? It’s the times, I guess. Still, I can’t bring myself to tell my daughter I’m no longer a child of the sixties, not that I really ever was. But she has this image of my going off to save the world which I am loath to disturb. Despite my recent soul baring, I feel that Sarah needs a few illusions, and, if she wants to think I’m still a defender of the underdog, I’m not going to disabuse her. She’ll find out the truth soon enough. I sip at my Coke to rid my mouth of the taste of grease and say, “You’re right about that.”
She nods, though I think a little disappointed I won’t argue with her. Why should I? There’ll be plenty of people to do that.
As I am paying the bill, Martha Birford, my partner in humiliation at Mays amp; Burton, accompanied by a man I do not know, comes through the door. I wonder if she’s found a job. I hope so. The times I saw her in court Martha was quicker on the draw than her opposition. As we make our way out through the crowded tables, I introduce Sarah, who pleases me by lighting up the joint with one of her hundred-watt smiles.
Acknowledging my daughter with only the barest of nods, Martha says coldly, “Gideon, I see you’ve landed on your feet as usual.”
Too stunned by her rudeness to think of a comeback, I mumble, “I got lucky,” and hurry out the door. Martha and I were, if not close, in the same boat as middle-aged associates who didn’t make the grade. Maybe she has resented me all along, and I was too stupid to notice.
“What was that all about. Dad?” Sarah asks.
“She didn’t seem very friendly.”
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully, squinting into the bright glare. Jealousy, maybe. She knows she’s a better lawyer, but as a woman she might never have an opportunity to prove it.
Outside on Davis Street, as we walk back to the Layman Building where Sarah will call a friend to come pick her up, an old black woman is commanding the center of the sidewalk.
Obviously mentally ill, she is muttering to herself.
Wearing blue scrub pants underneath a tight knit dress with holes in it, she is cursing every other word as she pulls at her wild white hair, which explodes from her head as if she had set off a bomb by biting into it. There is something disturbingly familiar about the woman, but it is impossible to work downtown and avoid these people. I probably have seen her half a dozen times and only notice her now because of Sarah who is staring in fascinated horror at her. As we pass her, the old woman squints at me and croons, “You the white man that got me out of jail!” She smiles at Sarah, revealing jagged gray stumps that once were teeth. A hideous stench reminding me of rotten Chinese food permeates the damp air between us. Instinctively, I grab Sarah’s arm and say in a low voice, “Don’t look at her. Keep walking.”
The old woman calls after us, “You defendin’ that ho, white man?”
Sarah giggles nervously, and I take her arm and march her across the street against the light at the corner so we can get away from the old woman.
“Dad, was she really your client?”
The raspy voice and wild hair come together. I saw her in the jail cell across from Andy the day he called me.
“She’s insane,” I explain needlessly.
“She saw me once down in the jail and for some reason must think I helped her get out.”
Sarah looks back over her shoulder. Even now almost a block away we can still hear her.
“How awful! Why isn’t she in the hospital?”
“I don’t know,” I say, unwilling to pursue this subject.
There are no good answers to most of her questions, but I am reluctant to tell her that, since I still want her to think somebody’s in charge in this country.