by Kia Corthron
He sits at the desk in a low lit corner beyond the couch, writing on a legal pad. His coffee mug is navy. She observes his concentration, the dark circles under his eyes. There was a moment way back in May when she had begun to worry, this vague panic in his irises, a distance. He had never said anything to the effect, but after leading them down this habeas path, she was terribly afraid he might just quit. Whatever she was reading in him, it all had abruptly vanished, and she had forgotten about it until now.
Their fears that they would suddenly be assigned a fast-approaching hearing date had proven absurdly groundless: with officials of the court vacating sultry Georgia for more pleasant summer climes, the scheduling of the date had been repeatedly postponed. Given the controversial nature of the case and the publicity it had generated, the defense team suspected the delays were also related to some closed-door meetings between the governor and the court, and thus the hearing to address an incident that had occurred on March 31st, was disposed by Judge Sawyer on April 6th, and granted a habeas on April 29th was at last set for 9 a.m. Wednesday, September 14th—ten hours from now. The attorneys had relaxed into their routine and seen the children regularly, each visit ending either with the boys crying to come home or, even more heartbreaking, fighting their tears in an effort to be brave. What exactly was happening to two innocent children in the unprotected company of bigger boys, and in the unprotected company of reformatory guards, the lawyers shuddered to think, but the staggering guilt would newly energize the legal trio in its pursuits. Over the oppressive summer, their output of hundreds of pages would seem to render them, if anything, overly ready. They narrowed their thoughts to a thirty-seven-page brief which was now in the hands of Judge Farn. It had been decided, to the relief of the defenders, that the other county Superior Court adjudicator would preside over the case, and thus the little boys’ fate would not once again be in the hands of Sawyer. It would be Farn’s first juvenile case, and the defense team held out hope that this bode well, intimating a more open mind.
One evening in the grocery store, purchasing TV dinners and snacks in anticipation of a long night, Diana had tapped Steven next to her in line, and had winked at Eliot near the door. (The latter had given them the money for his frozen meat and potatoes since his presence in the queue would only hold things up, as every single white customer would be served before he could pay for his own provisions.) Diana’s subtle signals had called attention to the fact that Judge Farn was two places ahead in line. He seemed formidably stern, a fiftyish white-haired slim man, setting his collards and lima beans on the conveyor belt. At that moment he looked up. Recognizing Steven, he broke into a guarded smile. “Afternoon, Colonel.”
“Afternoon, Judge.” The polite acknowledgment had been the extent of the conversation. Steven and Diana later explained to Eliot the tradition in the local legal world of Georgian lawyers being referred to as “colonel,” something rumored to have started during the War Between the States, or by some other historical state militia, when lawyers were conscripted as colonels.
Beyond the predictable commendations for the children (well liked in school and in church, never before in trouble with the law) and their parents (reputable hard-working Negroes), the brief went radically further in challenging the juvenile justice system with its presumption of paternalism as a substitute for due process: the lack of a court record (citing Griffin v. Illinois, 351 US 12 [1956]); the children being subject to self-incrimination (citing the Fifth Amendment); the parents being informed of the hearing only the day before, allowing them no time to secure a lawyer (general right to counsel in Uveges v. Pennsylvania, 335 US 437 [1948], and the incompetence of children to waive their right to counsel in Williams v. Huff, 142 F.2d 91 [1944]); the case wholly resting upon unsworn hearsay testimony as the juvenile alleged victim would never be subject to cross-examination (the Sixth Amendment); the confessions by the children having been coerced by psychological means (Watts v. Indiana, 338 US 49 [1949]) and very likely physical means (Brown v. Mississippi, 297 US 278 [1936]); the conflict of interest given that the probation officer was simultaneously charged with making the case against the children while serving as the boys’ only legal advocate (the tenets of our entire American adversarial system of justice, stipulating two opposing sides in order to, presumably, arrive at the truth).
The document concluded with an emphasis on the boys’ extreme youth, too immature to begin to understand the infractions they had been accused of, and contrasted a return to their well-respected parents with the ominous ramifications of a prolonged stint in the reformatory. The oral presentation tomorrow would reflect all these particulars, while the lawyers had made a decision to avoid mention of the crosses locals had burned in the children’s families’ yards, of the Klan visitation to the boys. After much discussion, they had agreed to conduct their argument as if Max and Jordan were white children, tabooing anything racial that might incite the judge or his constituency.
Eliot had sought Winston’s advice on the brief, Diana and Didi had stayed in close contact with their law school professor. They were assured by those with decades of experience that they had done the work and their case was strong, that now it depended on 1) driving it all home in the oral argument and 2) the judge. And yet in their hours together this last day, Eliot, Diana, and Steven had all experienced the nagging sense of a missing piece, the link that would reach a Georgia adjudicator, to have him reconsider the conventional wisdom. Steven had made the suggestion, since their discourse had begun to go around in circles, that they break for a couple of hours to clear their heads and rendezvous back at “headquarters,” as Steven referred to Diana’s basement, at nine. Following the brief recess, Eliot had gently rapped on Diana’s door at 8:55. They waited fifteen minutes for Steven before going downstairs, assuming their senior partner would show up sooner or later.
He and Diana had bounced around ideas for two hours, and for the last forty-five minutes had ceased the jabber to work independently. Now from their subterranean lair, they hear the drawing room grandfather clock striking twelve tolls. The official marking of the day of has not caused Eliot to break in his writing.
“Just in case,” she begins. There is no response from across the room. “Just in case, we should be prepared to go this alone. The two of us.”
“What do you think I’m doing.” He still doesn’t look up from his task, remarkably successful at keeping the testiness out of his tone if not out of his words.
“He’ll come. I believe he—Well, midnight, you know that’s still quite early for Steven.”
“You or me?” He is looking at her now.
She turns away. “I don’t know, Eliot. Men around here call elderly colored men ‘boys’ and forty-year-old women ‘girls,’ so I honestly can’t say which of us stands a better chance.” She moves a card from one column to another. “Maybe you. If Farn walks in the courtroom with suspicion in his heart, at least he wouldn’t see you as a traitor to the South.”
“No, he’d just think all niggers stick together.” He stares at his pad a few moments. “We’ll split it.”
“But who will go second?”
Eliot’s pencil tapping the desk.
“I think it should be you. The lasting impression. I honestly worry he’ll see me as some little girl.”
“Maybe, but—”
“Eliot, we could just as soon toss a coin. Instead I’m going to make an executive decision. You’ll conclude. Okay?”
He considers, then nods. She turns back to her cards. “In the future, I want children. I was thinking. I can speak from the viewpoint of a potential mother.”
“That’s good. And maybe a compelling reason you should go last.”
“We’ll see.” Eliot turns back to his notes.
“I couldn’t believe.” She bites her lip. “Do you think we were too hard on him yesterday?”
“Are you kidding? He was plastered in court!”
“We were just turning in the brief, we weren’t really ‘in court.’ And I don’t think the clerk knew, no one could tell but you and me. Steven does know how to hold his liquor.”
He gives her a look.
“He does!”
“I could smell the alcohol from five feet away, Diana, and he was right up in that clerk’s face muttering some damn Steven joke the guy clearly did not find funny.”
“Well! It happened, it was over and done with. What good did it do for us to chew him out all the way to the reformatory?”
Silence.
“I know! I just— He’s not here! We need him! He seemed fine today but how can anyone guess what’s going through the mind of Steven Netherton. Perhaps he was acting civil just to fool us.” She sighs. “I don’t even want to think about the expressions on Claudette and Minnie’s faces if we walk in without him tomorrow. They’ll look at us, then they’ll look at their little boys, God! He never comes to court drunk! He has his failings but they never affect his work, that’s what I was told. I never would have suggested him if—” She picks up a card and moves it to another column. Picks it up and moves it to another. Picks it up and moves it to another, snatches it and rips it in two. “Dammit!”
“It’s not your fault.” His voice is soft. She turns, gazing at him.
“It’s a whole new world, isn’t it? Just this summer, how many African countries won their independence? And Woolworth’s! I wish I could have been in Greensboro when they served their first Negro. And have you read To Kill a Mockingbird?”
“Not yet.”
“You must! I went out and got it as soon as it hit the bookstores, I’ll loan you my copy. Everything is changing!”
“Too quickly, your neighbors would say.”
“But we don’t want to be completely left behind.”
He looks at his notes, momentarily considering before quietly replying. “You know that’s not the direction we decided to go in.”
“I know, I know.” She sighs again. “Everyone around here would happily lag into the twenty-first century, Segregation Forever. No colored child sitting next to a white in kindergarten, no colored man buried next to a white in the graveyard.” Eliot goes back to writing. “To celebrate V-E Day we had an all-school party. The pictures from the death camps hadn’t come out yet, but the rumors. While the sixth graders all sat at our desks with our pieces of cake, Clay Hummer to my right just stared at me. ‘What did the krauts have for dessert?’” Eliot is looking at her. “I knew not to engage him, I looked away, but he answered anyway. ‘Cherries Jew-bilee, fresh out of the oven.’”
“What made you think of that?”
She swallows. “The picture in the Sentinel, those picketers outside the courthouse, the fury in their faces. They’re not afraid to raise the race issue. The judge’s constituency. They think of me as an outsider nearly as much as you.” She turns to him. “His mind is already made up. It has been, from the beginning. Right?”
“Optimism, Diana.”
She nods. “Optimism, optimism.”
“Your parents were born here. You said.”
“They had siblings in Warsaw. Cousins. Most of them starved to death in the ghettos before anyone ever thought up the word ‘extermination.’ Well. Anyone since Andrew Jackson.” She opens a new package of index cards. “When my father was twenty he was threatened to be lynched. Did I tell you?”
“No.”
“Writing all these letters to the local paper in support of the Scottsboro boys. They were boys! The youngest just twelve, did you know?”
Eliot nods.
“And tried like adults. No gynecological evidence of rape, then one of the two so-called victims recanting, admitting she made the whole thing up. It was as if the more truth my father reported, the angrier his townsfolk got. He sent money to the International Labor Defense. I’m not sure what they found more revolting, him supporting Negroes or him providing funds for their Communist legal team, but one day he received a package in the mail with no return address. A noose.” She gazes at a mosquito dancing around the ceiling light. “Eliot. I never thought until now. If the judge might remember my father from those days, hold it against us.”
“I think with all the screaming protests we would have heard about it if it were in the forefront of the collective memory.” He goes back to his writing.
“Oh! Didi came across some letter to the editor Farn wrote back in 1940 in favor of Chambers against Florida. If that’s true, if he did support the decision to reverse those adult Negroes’ convictions because of coerced confessions, well. There’s a little encouragement. Have you seen Didi lately?”
“Mm hm.” The affirmative, not interrupting his work.
“She’ll be there tomorrow of course, but she really should be facing the judge with us, she was the team before there was a team. I wanted her to stay here with me, but I guess she preferred taking a room in the colored hotel, being closer to the parents. I know she’s been such a comfort to them, someone with knowledge of the law keeping them constantly abreast.” Diana picks up a pad and makes a few notes. “You’re both so good with the boys. They always look so happy when you arrive, Jordan just runs when he sees you and Didi coming! Even Max, reticent as he can be, I see the hope in his eyes when you two walk in. They even get along with old Steven.” She chuckles sadly. Eliot looks up at her. “They sure never run to me. I guess they’re terrified now to come close to anything white and female.”
“We have to get through this, Diana.”
She turns to him. “If he doesn’t come I’ll call him, even if it’s goddamn three a.m. I’ll tell him to be at the courthouse by seven so we can brief him on what we’ve talked about tonight. If he doesn’t show, or shows too late. Or shows up drunk. Well obviously we’ll have to send him home.”
“Really?”
She nods warily. “Steven can be very persuasive but he also has to be alert, tomorrow the judge can and will cut off and challenge his precious soliloquy at any time. Tipsy he can manage that dance, but if he walks in loaded.” She shakes her head. “Maybe we can use it to our advantage. Having to dismiss an—incapacitated member of the team just before we make our oral argument could prove very useful in getting us an appeal. Perhaps it’s all part of Steven’s brilliant plan that he just failed to mention to us.” She looks at her partner. “But seriously? I believe he will show. Tonight.”
“Since neither of us has ever worked with him before this case, I guess the answer to that mystery only time will tell.”
“And when he does come walking down those steps and into this room. There will be relief, but maybe also a bit of disappointment. All the eloquent words we’re scribbling now that no one will ever hear.”
Eliot sits back in his chair. “I know.”
“Because no matter what you and I write, it will matter a thousand times more coming out of the mouth of a local white man.”
“I know.”
“What are your eloquent words, Eliot?”
“Give me another half-hour.”
“Can I have a hint?”
He looks at her.
“Alright, alright!” He goes back to his pad. “It’s just. Like you said. They don’t like things to move too quickly down here. I know! you’re the one who keeps reminding me, no race. I only. It’s late, we’re exhausted. Who knows what crazy ideas might be popping into our heads.”
“Diana, I have been coming down here for five months, you and I and Mr. Jack Daniel’s have been practically glued together the last eight days. I hope by now you know me enough to trust I’m not here to make any speeches about the lunacy of Southern customs and institutions, I’m here to do the best I can to save those little boys, whatever it takes.”
The outside door above them opens: footsteps through the house. Then slowly, carefully calculating each step, he makes his des
cent. When he has reached flat ground in one piece, his face easily betraying his relief, he squints through his bloodshot eyes to properly focus on his partners’ images. Grins.
“So! Ya’all waited up for me.”
Eliot turns back to his work, finishing off at the bottom of one page and slamming onto the top of the next. The room quickly filling with the smell of alcohol and tobacco.
“Very thoughtful of you to leave the front door open.”
“After the last time you came pounding completely tight in the a.m., waking up my family and half the neighborhood.”
The elder attorney laughs. “I never understood ‘tight’ as a synonym for ‘drunk.’ Because right now I can’t imagine feeling any more loose and mellow.” He takes a seat on the couch. “Well, team! Are we ready?”
“Steven. Eliot and I were not even certain you’d be showing up. We were deciding what to do in case you—”
“Oh I’ll be there. I’m all prepared.” He pulls out of his hip pocket several folded sheets of paper, balls them up and basketball-shoots them toward the desk. The wad impressively lands on Eliot’s writing hand, rebounding onto the page he’s composing.
“Did I mention what a shock I had the other day? That picture in the Sentinel—well I’ve never been caught at such a bad angle. There I was between a coon and a Jewess, and I declare I appeared to have the largest nose!”
“Have you thought of this case as nothing but a joke, Steven? From the start?”
“Oh Diana, are you about to take me to task again? Because those lectures are really beginning to bore me. And what kind of hostess are you? You haven’t even offered me a drink.”
