Decision

by Allen Drury

  He neared the roped-off area where uniformed guards watched impassively as a small group, some students and some leftovers like himself from an earlier age, stomped and shouted, their placards proclaiming hatred, dire predictions and fear. He stopped for a moment and watched them with contempt. What children they were, even the older, graying ones.

  He felt no community with them anymore.

  His methods were more direct.

  They were window dressing.

  He was reality.

  Casually he stepped behind a tree, stood absolutely still while the remaining stragglers walked down the slight declivity and climbed into the stands facing the huge white plant. Somewhere down there were Janet and John Lennon Peacechild. He had told her to go on ahead, that he wanted to write a little on his “law study” before coming on.

  “You’ll miss the show,” she said. “Why don’t you come with us?”

  “Because I don’t want to come with you!”

  “Well, all right!” she said. “All right! You sure are jumpy tonight. You’d think you were going to be part of the ceremony or something, you act so nervous.”

  “I’m not nervous!” he shouted, making John Lennon Peacechild hiccup and begin to cry.

  “All right,” she repeated. “You don’t have to shout. You do anything you damned well please. Johnny and I will go see the show, won’t we, baby?”

  “You do that,” he said, “and the sooner the better. I’ll be along in plenty of time.”

  “Plenty of time for what?” she asked, eyes narrowing speculatively, voice mocking. “What’ve you got in mind, mister? You going to jump up and make a speech, or something? We going to have a big demonstration, courtesy of Billy Ray? You going to start tearing down that plant block by block? We’ll really have to be sure to get good seats for that, won’t we, baby?”

  “Listen,” he said, trying to sound patient, doing a reasonably good job of it. “What makes you think I’ve got anything against that plant? I’ve never said anything, have I?”

  “No, but you sure have nursed it along every day, step by step,” she said shrewdly. “You’ve sure been interested. You’ve been running by that old plant every hour on the hour for the past three months like a mother hen, hovering around it and keeping an eye on everything. I expect you’ve even been writing about it in that old paper of yours you’re always working on. Why don’t you let me read that paper if it’s so special?”

  “Don’t you touch that paper!” he hissed, standing up and raising his clenched right fist. She flinched and jumped back, John Lennon Peacechild letting out a startled squawk at the suddenness of her movement. “You hear me? Don’t you touch that paper!”

  “All right,” she said, really frightened for once, or simulating it, he couldn’t tell which: but she had damned well better be. “All right! I won’t touch your precious damned paper! And don’t you touch me or John Lennon Peacechild, either!”

  “Get out!” he ordered in a disgusted tone. “Just get out! Go on to the plant and see the show!”

  “Are you coming?” she asked, pausing at the door.

  “I’ll be there,” he promised with a grim little smile. “Just you don’t worry about that! I’ll be there.”

  Now he stood looking down upon the scene, the jostling, excited crowd, the little group of demonstrators off to one side, the thin line of guards, the speakers’ platform filling with dignitaries, the plant with its giant stacks like huge concrete lingams rising floodlit against the mountains and the rapidly darkening sky. Then he slipped quickly off to his right into deeper woods and made his way with a feral stealth like the predator he was, scarcely disturbing a branch or snapping a twig, to a vantage point off to the right from which he could still see the floodlit plant and hear, muffled but distinguishable enough for his purposes, the voices that now began to boom over the amplifiers.

  Months ago he had traced the rusted tracks of the old mine railroad through the mountain and had found to his delight that the cave curved back to the face of the bluff overlooking the blind side of the plant, no more than five hundred feet away. There was another, smaller opening there which, like the other when he first found it, was completely covered with growth. He had not disturbed it until a week ago, when he had moved all of his equipment through the cave—narrowly avoiding a vertical shaft that appeared to be bottomless, about midway in the passage—to this secondary opening. Three nights ago, when there was no moon, he had persuaded Janet to drink herself into oblivion and then after midnight had returned. Waiting until the sleepy guards had convinced one another in loudly reassuring tones that there was, as usual, nothing about but skunks and raccoons and maybe a fox or two, he had made his final arrangements.

  Now he took up his vigil and prepared to watch and wait, absolutely silent, absolutely still, until the moment he considered perfect arrived. It would not be very long. Press and television had been full of the dignitaries who would be there. The most fitting and suitable for his purpose would be at the lectern, he estimated, in just about forty-five minutes.

  Above the enormous floodlit portico the words EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW stood sharp against the marble as the Chief and Birdie, Tay and Mary arrived in the Chiefs official limousine—the one piece of federal folderol, as Duncan Elphinstone described it, that he permitted himself.

  When he first became Chief Justice he had made an unsuccessful attempt to abandon “the Chief’s car,” as being unsuited to the simple dignity that he perceived, correctly, to be one of the Court’s major strengths with the country. He had been overruled, kindly but firmly, by the Congress, whose leaders had their own official limousines and would have been quite embarrassed if the Chief Justice suddenly appeared to be more humble than they were. The Elph had threatened at first to leave the limousine in the garage and never use it, but eventually reached a practical compromise: he never used the vehicle except when an occasion was truly official, or a social gathering of genuine importance to the general image of the Court and his own high office.

  Tonight, he felt, was such an event. He had come to realize over the years that a little pomp and circumstance never hurt anybody when done with skill and at the right time. Tonight The Elph considered it amply justified.

  He also had no qualms about the expense item that would appear in due course on the records of the Court when they went to the Appropriations committees of House and Senate. The committees were never anything but friendly, solicitous and polite—most of their members were lawyers themselves, suitably in awe of the Court and respectful of its powers and position—but even so, the Justices liked to be very sure that their tidy little operation never showed any waste or expenditure that could be even remotely criticized as unwise or unnecessary.

  “Living next door to the whorehouse,” Wally Flyte had chuckled one day with a gesture toward the Congress across the plaza, “we girls have to be good.”

  This disrespectful and unexpected sentiment from an ex-Senator had caused a startled guffaw in the Conference Room that had been heard some distance down the corridor by several passing law clerks, two secretaries and a guard; but the remark had never been repeated outside, so that not even the Justices’ friends in Congress—and most of them had many—knew what was meant when one of them would remark to another, “Living as we do—” and then go off into private chuckles. It was one of their best-kept in-jokes and accurately summarized both their determination to preserve their own immaculate image and their sternly hidden but nonetheless inescapable feeling of superiority toward their co-equal branch of government.

  Tonight, the Chief felt, was a suitable occasion for spending money on all counts. It would be a good and deserved welcome for the new Justice and Mary; it would be a tasteful and dignified occasion that would receive respectful and worthwhile mention (not coverage, for this was never permitted of the Court’s social engagements) in the media; and it would be a chance to bring them all together in a formal/informal meeting at the ending of the term. Along about
Month Five, he had observed, tempers could begin to become a little frayed and things could get a bit itchy. Accordingly he had made it a practice to give these little dinners at about six-week intervals. Together with the Wallenbergs’ brunches in good weather, and occasional at-homes held by the others, they did quite a bit to keep things calm, even when in a legal sense he and his brethren and sister often found themselves diverging, as Justice Hemmelsford put it, “all ways from Sunday.”

  This term, the Chief Justice reflected as the limousine turned down Massachusetts Avenue from Georgetown past the embassies, the division had been less than it had been in the past: but the day would come. Regard Stinnet down in South Carolina had referred in a recent television special to “the growing need for a self-help justice system in the United States.” The public response had been highly enthusiastic, and greatly disturbing to the guardians of the law.

  Duncan Elphinstone sighed and became aware that he was being addressed by his wife. She had apparently been addressing him for several moments because she now said, with a little laugh that sounded as gently annoyed as Birdie ever allowed herself to be,

  “Goodness, Dunc, but you’re a long way away! Mary has asked three times if you are going to have them plant tulips around the Court next spring. Can’t you hear her?”

  The impatient thought: really, what an inane question for a Supreme Court Justice’s wife to ask, shot through his mind; followed by the realization: what a genuinely disinterested question for a Supreme Court Justice’s wife to ask.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I must have been far away. Yes,” he added politely, “I think we will have some tulips next year.”

  “I always think they’re so bright,” Mary said, in her best social voice.

  “Well, dear,” Birdie said, “they are bright, aren’t they? Always so cheerful, I think.”

  “Do the bulbs come directly from Holland?” Mary asked, set on a safe course and, her husband knew from experience, trained and determined to stick with it.

  “I really don’t know,” the Chief Justice said as his driver skillfully negotiated the Friday evening party-going traffic along Embassy Row. “The Architect of the Capital handles all our landscaping and gardening. I believe some of the bulbs do come from Holland, but I suspect they probably also have their own private stock by this time. After all,” he added gently, “the building is fairly old.”

  “When was it built?” Mary took the opening and this time appeared to have hit the right note, for The Elph immediately brightened.

  “Oh, we were built—it was built,” he said earnestly, turning so that he could half-face them in the back seat, “between 1932 and 1935 as the result of persistent lobbying with Congress by one of my distinguished predecessors, former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft. Before, you know, in the very first days, the Court met in the Royal Exchange Building in New York City. Then, when the government moved to Philadelphia, the Court met for a time in Independence Hall, and later in the Philadelphia city hall. As you know, the government moved permanently here to the District of Columbia in 1800 and we went through several changes of meeting place, first in the Capitol building, then for a while, after the British burned the Capitol in the War of 1812, in several private homes. After that we went back to the Capitol and from 1819 to 1860 we were in what is now the restored ‘Old Supreme Court Chamber’ they show the tourists over there. When the Senate moved from its original chamber, now shown as the ‘Old Senate Chamber,’ where all the great pre-Civil War debates were held, we moved to that room and stayed until Bill Taft decided it was about time we had our own quarters and lobbied successfully for them. The building, Number One First Street, Northeast, was dedicated on October 13, 1935, by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, who said, ‘The Republic endures and this is the symbol of its faith… Let us hope,” he added with a rather bleak humor, “that both are still true.”

  “Oh, I think they are,” Mary said politely. “That is very interesting. It’s really quite fascinating.”

  “I doubt it,” the Chief said, but with a gentle smile that robbed it of its sting. “I could go on half the night, of course, Court history of all kinds being one of my hobbies. For instance: the building of course is modeled upon the Parthenon in Athens and its foundation dimensions are 385 feet from front to back on the east and west sides, and 304 feet front to back on the north and south sides. It rises four stories above ground floor at its highest point and is built of three million dollars’ worth of marble combined with a variety of woods, principally American quartered white oak. Vermont marble was used almost exclusively for the exterior. The four inner courts are of white crystalline flaked Georgia marble. Above basement level, walls and floors of corridors and entrance halls are principally of creamy Alabama marble.

  “I might add,” he said with some pride, “that the building, plus furnishings, was brought in ninety-four thousand dollars under the estimated cost of nine million seven hundred forty thousand dollars authorized by Congress, which then-and now—and I am afraid forever-more—remains something of a miracle in the history of these United States.

  “Which concludes my lecture for this evening. That will teach you not to get me started, Mary.”

  “I’m sure there is more,” Mary said in her best party manner. “Someday you must tell me much, much more.”

  “Perhaps,” The Elph said with a chuckle. “It may rank under the heading of things-you-didn’t-really-care-whether-you-knew-or-not about the Supreme Court. However, it is interesting to know about the place where we work. Right, Tay?”

  “It has always interested me,” Tay said, pulled up out of a deep reverie in which Cathy, the Court and his family were swirling in some sort of fandango he could not seem to unsnarl. “I’ve been a Court history buff for a long time.”

  “At his teacher’s knee,” Mary said in a tone that prompted Birdie to laugh quickly and exclaim,

  “My, you have had a real interest, haven’t you! Mary, we ladies of the Court have our little gatherings from time to time—nothing formal, just as the spirit moves. We do hope you’ll join in.”

  “Well—” Mary said in a reserved tone. “I shall have to look at my calendar and see if—”

  “You aren’t doing that much,” Tay said. “It sounds great, Mrs. Elphinstone—”

  “Birdie, please.”

  “Birdie—and I’m sure Mary will be delighted to attend.”

  “I shall have to see,” Mary said in the same remote tone. “You don’t know all that I do, Tay. There are important things that take my time—”

  “But just once every six weeks—!”

  “Now,” Birdie interjected firmly. “We won’t say any more about it. Mary knows perfectly well that she’s always welcome and we’d love to have her, but nobody’s pressuring anybody, on Dunc’s Court. I know Mary will do her very best to be with us when she can.”

  “I hope so,” Tay said, staring out the window.

  “I shall have to see,” Mary repeated, still politely distant. “It will all depend.”

  “I hope I didn’t scare you off with too much history,” the Chief said lightly. “I do go on sometimes, when I get started.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, “not at all. I’m sure you and Tay will find much to talk about in that area.”

  “Oh, we’ll talk a great deal in many areas,” the Chief said, “won’t we, Tay? Particularly,” he said with sudden glumness, “about crime and violence.”

  “Yes,” Tay agreed, forced to drop his own broodings, which he thought was a good thing, and concentrate on the kindly little face and bright little eyes peering at him from beneath the shock of white hair. “It does seem,” he added, suddenly somber, “that things get worse every day.”

  “They aren’t good,” The Elph said grimly. “They are not good. That fellow down in Moss’ state, what’s his name, that attorney general—Regard Stinnet—you probably saw him on the news last night:

  “‘There may yet come a time when an o
utraged citizenry will take matters into its own hands to punish those the courts allow to perpetrate their execrable acts upon society. That time could be very soon. It could be tomorrow. It could be today.’ His statements are getting more and more inflammatory all the time. And you know what he and your attorney general out there in California are proposing: a conference of all the state attorneys general once a month—”

  “‘To coordinate and put into immediate effect’—emphasis mine—‘the spontaneous demand for action which is springing up all across our troubled land,’” Tay finished for him. “There’s a call for nationwide vigilantism if I ever heard one.”

  “And we’re so helpless,” Duncan Elphinstone said. “It’s ironic. The most powerful Court in the land, maybe in the world, and here we sit paralyzed because our only power is appellate. We can’t do anything, in any affirmative sense. We just have to sit and wait until something comes up from the courts below. We can’t make things happen, we can only say they should or shouldn’t. It’s ironic,” he repeated, “and it makes me, for one, feel both foolish and frustrated. Because I’d like to do a lot of things. I’m sure we all would.”

  “‘How many divisions does the Pope have?’” Tay quoted wryly. “Not enough, obviously.”

  “Maybe something will come before you soon,” Birdie said, being comforting as always as the limousine drew up in front of the Court.

  “It can’t be soon enough,” her husband said, a comment he would remember with a rending sadness before the night was out.

  For the moment however, all was cheerfulness, friendliness and goodwill as they emerged from the limousine into the glare of a few modest lights and a couple of hand-held television cameras. Someone in the press room had got wind of their dinner, as someone usually did. The Chief congratulated himself that security was pretty good at the Court but reporters did have their contacts and some of them would talk. As long as it was something harmless like this, however, he didn’t mind. It would be good for a picture in the Post and the Inquirer and perhaps a snippet on tomorrow night’s news. CASTLE STODGY THROWS A BASH, he thought to himself with an inner humor the media might have been surprised to learn he had. It wouldn’t hurt the image.