Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion (22 page)

The Hogs come out as fired up as the crowd and out quick the bigger Tide linemen as Carter keeps the ball on the ground even in obvious passing situations. By the second quarter with the Razorbacks on top 10 to 7, it is easy to forget Dade is even on the field. Jay Madison, the Hogs’ quarterback, has thrown a total of three passes, all screens to his backs. Incredibly, with one minute left in the half Alabama fumbles inside its own five, and the Hogs recover and go up 17 to 7 at the half.

I realize my dominant emotion is one of relief. The game will put a crimp in some of Dade’s total season statistics, but if Arkansas wins, it can’t hurt him too badly. If Madison doesn’t throw the ball to him, he can’t drop it.

Just at the kickoff I return to my seat from a trip to the bathroom. Predictably, someone was drunk and sick (it sounded like an animal giving birth to a too large off spring). The crowd around me is reasonably in control, but it won’t be if we win. I don’t look forward to the drive back to Blackwell County after the game, no matter what happens.

As I feared, Alabama’s strength begins to tell by the fourth quarter, and their offense begins to look like Sherman marching through Georgia, and they go ahead 21 to 17 with five minutes left. Now, stuck on our twenty-yard line, we have to throw, and everybody in the stadium knows it.

Quickly, the battle between Ty Mosely and Dade be comes awesome to watch. Dade is a step faster, but Mosely has an uncanny gift of being able to react while the ball is in the air, and unless Jay Madison throws the ball almost perfectly, Mosely will just get a hand on it and knock it away from Dade at the last moment. Though there is now double coverage on Dade, the Hogs are still able to move downfield, thanks to Madison’s success in finding secondary receivers. With the ball on the twenty with one minute left, Dade has caught four passes on this drive, three for first downs, so there is no doubt about his ability to perform under pressure. Forgotten is his dropped ball in warm-ups. Even if we don’t win, he has performed creditably.

With second and ten, Dade accelerates faster than I’ve seen him all day and blows by Mosely and heads for the corner of the left end zone. The right safety comes over to cover him, but Dade suddenly plants his foot and cuts to the right at the instant the ball is thrown. The exact moment the ball reaches him, he is almost decapitated by the left safety who has come over to cover him. Somehow, Dade manages to hold onto the ball while being knocked into the end zone, and the stadium erupts as I’ve never seen it. In my excitement I trip over the seat in front of me and fall forward onto the back of a huge fat guy who is so deliriously happy he jumps up and down with me clinging to his shoulders.

“We win! We win!” he screams as tears stream down his cheeks.

Twenty minutes later I am on my way out of town, heading back to Blackwell County, listening to the postgame comments on the radio. Coach Carter calls Dade’s catch the greatest he has ever seen. His interviewer does not mention that if the All-University Judiciary Board’s decision is upheld, it will be the last one he’ll make as a Razorback this season. Caught hopelessly in traffic on Highway 23 (I’ll have to call Amy and tell her I’ll be late), I think that the reason men like sports is that if we try hard enough we can pretend for a couple of hours that the real world doesn’t have anything to do with us.

at two on Monday I am picking up peanut shells from my carpet when Clan saunters into my office. He has converted our office into a peanut warehouse Jimmy Carter himself could be proud of. He has agreed to go with me to the apartment of Gina Whitehall, my dependency neglect case, to see how difficult it might have been for the child to turn on the water. I have the trial later this week. The police have investigated the incident, and I don’t want to cross-examine a cop without having seen the place for myself.

“Are you still going out there with me, or are you coming to weasel out?”

“What a mess!” he exclaims, ignoring my question.

“It looks like those bars where they throw the shells on the floor.”

“Most of them are yours,” I say irritably.

“How much weight have you lost?”

Squeezing into one of my chairs, Clan snorts, his double chin wobbling like a helping of cranberry sauce, “Three pounds. You get sick of the damn things awfully fast.”

I throw a handful of shells into the wastepaper basket beside me and then, despite my best intentions, I take another peanut from my desk drawer.

Clan extracts a reddish substance from his teeth with a straightened paper clip and wipes it on his pants. We seem to be regressing into after-hours behavior without much prompting. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out another nut, shaking his head.

“I hate these damn things.”

I grin at Clan. The son of a gun is irrepressible. His marriage is terrible; his law practice is at a standstill; he is a hundred pounds overweight; he has the emotional maturity of a five year old; and I wouldn’t trade his friendship for anything. As we talk, the phone rings. It is a psychologist friend I contacted at the university to see if there was any research on the reaction of small children to burns. I push the speaker button to let Clan hear. It is not as if he doesn’t know the client.

“Gideon,” Steve Huddleston says, his baritone voice not quite as low over the phone, “I thought I better get in touch with you. I can’t find anything specifically on reactions of small children to the sort of situation you described.”

Damn. I look at Clan and shake my head. I would have figured that with as much useless research as is cranked out in this country some academic psychologist would have zeroed in on this area, given all the attention to child abuse nowadays.

“What do you suggest?” I say glumly.

Gina Whitehall had better start preparing for a criminal trial. If her kid dies, she will be charged with murder.

I listen to Steve clear his throat and watch Clan draw a finger across his own. He ought to be handling this case.

Steve says, “If you’d like, I’d be willing to testify generally about the problem-solving ability of a child this age.

The fact is that a two and a half year old wouldn’t necessarily be able to figure out that she could escape the pain of the hot water by climbing out of the tub. The literature shows by that age a child just doesn’t have the reasoning ability, and I imagine the panic a child would feel wouldn’t improve it any either.”

Clan waggles his jowls at me in approval.

“You realize the client can’t afford to pay you an expert witness fee,” I say, making sure I’m not going to be hit with a bill down the road.

“All I want is a subpoena,” he says, “so I won’t have to take a vacation day.”

Spoken like a true state employee.

“No problem.” I smile, watching Clan pop another peanut into his mouth.

I’ll get him a subpoena, but I suspect I’ll forget about the statutory fee of thirty dollars. After all, he’ll still be receiving his salary from the state.

“Can you be prepared to back that statement up with some research?”

“That’ll be simple enough,” Steve says, sounding pleased to be part of this. Some professors love to testify.

“Do you want me to bring it?”

“Just know it,” I say. The Department of Human Services won’t be prepared to rebut it. There is no sense letting their attorney pick it apart. I give him the date and time and tell him I will be calling him back to go over it Thursday afternoon.

“Where do you find these guys?” Clan asks, genuine admiration in his voice.

“People like to help. You forget I worked for the state for years as a child abuse investigator. You get to know all kinds of folks. Let’s go,” I say, feeling a little better.

This doesn’t mean we’ll win, but at least I’ll have something to argue to the judge.

Clan looks sheepish as he says, “I can’t make it.”

I had a feeling he would wimp out on me. I ask, “Why the hell not?”

“I guess I feel too weird,” he says, looking down at the floor.

“I slept with Gina once at her apartment.”

I look at Clan in disbelief.

“You’re shitting me.”

Dan’s eyes dart around the room, landing everywhere but on my face.

“That’s a hell of a thing to do, isn’t it?”

I try to conjure up the scene: a fat, middle-aged, balding lawyer dropping his trousers to bed down a farm-girl whore who paid his fee with a screw. Now I understand better why he dropped her on me.

“Where was the kid?” I ask, wondering if my client’s child could have been playing in the tub and was burned while Clan was busy with her mother. I feel disgust creeping over me like a dirty fog.

“Day care, I think,” Clan says, his face red with embarrassment.

“I only did it once, but I still feel like an asshole about it.”

I think of the girl: except for her eyes, as uninteresting as a digital clock. I feel sorry for her, but Clan is my friend, and I feel worse for him. Brenda must be giving him hell to drive him to a whore, but he is possibly exposing her to AIDS.

“Did you use a rubber?”

“Two,” Clan says, breaming hard.

“I couldn’t feel a thing.”

“I’ve heard that’s more dangerous,” I say coldly, “because they break that way.”

Clan looks miserable.

“You know, if she reported me to the ethics people, they’d probably jerk my license for this one.”

I stand up, embarrassed for my friend. It hasn’t been too many months since Clan pleaded guilty in municipal court to shoplifting fifty cents’ worth of food.

“Lawyers have done a lot worse than snitched a Twinkie or bartered their fee,” I say loyally, putting the best spin I can on Dan’s activities.

Clan stands and waddles over to the door.

“That’s what’s pathetic about me. I’m so damn petty.”

Awkwardly, I clap him on the shoulder as he goes out ahead of me.

“No,” I say, turning out the light and locking the door, “your problem is you’re so damn human.”

Walking toward his office with his head down, he mutters, “In my case, I don’t see there’s a difference.”

I head down the hall for the elevators, thinking that at least Clan has the guts to admit it and the decency to be ashamed. The older we get, the crazier we become. At the front desk, Julia pops a bubble when I tell her I’m going to Gina’s house.

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” she says, checking her tiny lips in a compact mirror for remains of the explosion.

Don’t tell me that, I think. Julia is wearing a conservative and even elegant dark green paisley dress, but the top two buttons of her blouse are undone, revealing the top of a black lacy bra underneath.

“Maybe I’d be safer,” I say, smiling at the outrageous pretense that we are civilized, “if I didn’t do anything you would do.”

Julia makes a face but doesn’t respond. It is rare that I get the last word. As I stand before the elevators, smugly I glance back at her. She has made a circle with her right thumb and forefinger, and with her left index finger she moves it back and forth through the 0 she has formed, all the while shaking her head. A female client for one of the other attorneys on our floor is seated a few feet away from her desk and is watching Julia with a look of utter amazement. Is this really a law firm?

A light rain has begun to fall, further darkening my mood. I hope the weather clears before I return to Fayetteville on Wednesday for Dade to give Binkie a statement. The euphoria from the Alabama game has already begun to fade, and the question uppermost in my mind is how long it will take the university administration to re view the “J” Board’s decision. If I could get Binkie to drop the criminal charges against Dade, surely that would influence their decision. Dade is doing his part: the Hogs have jumped to fourth in the UPI Poll and fifth in the AP.

We play Auburn, ranked third in both polls, Saturday, and a win, if both Florida and Notre Dame lose, should put us on top. Surely the vice-chancellor and the chancellor are feeling some heat to let Dade finish the season when he is so clearly central to our chances. There isn’t a person in the state who didn’t feel the excitement when the Razorbacks won their first NCAA basketball championship.

With Clinton taking what seems to be a daily pounding by the media, it is about the only thing in the state to feel good about.

On 1-640 heading east I pass a billboard and see beaming down at me a slutty but expensive-looking model advertising pantyhose and think again of Julia’s parting gesture. No wonder women are cynical. They expect the worst from men and with good reason. We are the ones who commit the rapes, the murders, the never ending garden-variety domestic beatings that seldom get reported.

So what else is new? If we ever admitted to ourselves how little men have changed since we dropped down out of the trees, we might just give up on the spot.

I find Gina’s half of a duplex apartment easier than I thought I would. Just five minutes off 1-40 east on the road to Memphis, she is within walking distance of a pancake restaurant, a motel, and a gas station. So much for the zoning laws. On the other hand, given what she does for a living, her place is probably zoned commercial.

Gina comes to the door of her duplex dressed in a thin white T-shirt and purple short shorts that showcase her long legs. With big shoulders and a high waist, she gives the impression today of having a large frame rather than being overweight, as I remembered her in my office.

Dumbly, I realize she expects to have sex with me, too.

Why else would I have come to her place? Lawyers don’t usually make house calls. In my own mind, my motives are pure since I set this visit up before I knew Clan slept with her.

“Hi,” she says demurely, her round eyes reminding me of two blue buttons.

“Come on in.”

As I enter the room, a small black mutt comes up to me. Gina scoops up the dog and speaks baby talk to it. In her own apartment as she coos to the animal, she seems about twelve years old. The only piece of furniture in the darkened living room is a tattered tan couch. It is cold in here. This bleak area won’t qualify for House Beautiful, but since most people don’t use their living rooms either, why bother at all?