(2014) The Professor

by Robert Bailey

  Robert Bailey

  THE PROFESSOR

  In loving memory of my grandmother, Rene Graham Bailey.

  PROLOGUE

  Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 1969

  The Man said to be at the Waysider at 5.30 in the morning. Tom arrived at 5.20, knowing that it was a bad idea to be late for a meeting set up by the Man. He hoped he would arrive first, maybe drink some water and gather his thoughts, but the Man was already there. Sitting at a table in the corner of the café, Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant read the Birmingham News and drank coffee.

  Tom waded through the other tables and approached the Man, who hadn’t moved since the jingle of the front door announced Tom’s arrival. Reaching the table, Tom cleared his throat.

  “Hey, Coach.”

  The Man looked up from his paper, but didn’t speak or smile. After two or three seconds, his mouth curved into a grin and he extended his hand.

  “Well, you’re still a scrawny sack a shit. Ain’t that woman of yours feeding you?”

  Tom smiled, relieved that the Man had broken the ice. As they shook hands, a waitress came over to take their orders. The Man ordered two eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits and more coffee. Tom said he’d have the same, knowing his stomach couldn’t handle that much food, but too nervous to ask for a menu.

  As the waitress shuffled off, the Man took a sip of coffee and leaned towards Tom.

  “So, how are things in Birmingham?”

  “Great, Coach,” Tom said, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’m with a small insurance defense firm. Getting in the courtroom a little.”

  “So I hear. Three jury trials and three wins in four years, right?”

  Tom nodded, flattered but not surprised. The Man had so many judicial contacts, he could have made one phone call to learn Tom’s trial record. “Yes, sir, I’ve been lucky. George McDuff is a great partner, and he...”

  “Lucky my ass,” the Man said, squinting at Tom. “The guy I spoke to said McDuff lets you run the show. He may help pick the jury, but then it’s your ballgame.”

  Tom’s face flushed with pride. The Man had done his homework. But why? The Man had not explained the purpose of this meeting when he had called yesterday. He had just said he needed to talk about something important.

  “Tom,” the Man said, looking down to light a cigarette. “Jim Heacock came by my office Tuesday morning. You know Jim?”

  Tom wrinkled his eyebrows. “Dean Heacock?”

  The Man nodded, blowing smoke to his side. “Jim said his Evidence professor quit last week and he needs to fill that spot. He also wants someone to start a trial program and field a team to compete against other law schools. Jim really wants some new blood. Some talent. He said there weren’t any good candidates in the teaching ranks and asked me if I knew of any lawyers in the state who I thought would make a good professor.” The Man paused, tapping his cigarette into an ashtray on the table. “The first name that came to me was yours.”

  “Mine?” Tom asked, dumbfounded. He had never given teaching a second thought. He wanted to be a trial lawyer. Just last week, Lawrence Butler of the Jones & Butler firm had invited him to lunch to discuss Tom’s future. Although an offer had not been made, Tom was confident he’d get one soon, if not from Jones & Butler then from one of the other big firms.

  “Yours,” the Man repeated. “Salary is fifteen thousand a year.” The Man set his cigarette on the ashtray, and took a sip of coffee. “Tom, it’s real simple. If you want the job, I’ll tell Jim to hire you.”

  Tom gazed down at the smouldering cigarette. $15,000 a year? That was a little more than what he was making now, but what about the future? What about being a trial lawyer?

  “Coach, I… uh… I don’t know. I’ve never thought about teaching. I’ll need to talk with Julie. When do you need to know something?”

  “Just get back to me in a week. I agree you should talk with your wife. But I want you to think about something.” The Man paused, taking one last pull on the cigarette before crushing it out in the ashtray. “Tom, I’ve always believed in giving something back to the people and institutions that gave to you. The University of Alabama has given me a lot. It’s where I played football and learned I wanted to be a coach. It’s where I got my degree and met my wife. I’ve never regretted coming home.” Then, forming a tent with his hands, he added, “You won’t regret it either.”

  Tom met the Man’s eye, and couldn’t help but think of that moment ten years earlier when the Man sat at another table, flanked not just by Tom but by Tom’s momma and daddy. He could still remember the Man’s words. “Son, you’ll never regret choosing to play for me and choosing to attend school at Alabama.” Turning to Tom’s momma, the Man had said, “Ma’am, I think your son’s a great football player and, more than that, a great kid. We’ll make him a man. We’ll make him go to class and get his degree.” Looking at Tom’s father, the Man had said, “And if he gets out of line, we’ll get him back in line, even if we have to lean on him a little.” Tom’s daddy had smiled at the last statement and met the Man’s gaze. The Man concluded by saying, “Folks, if you send your boy to Alabama, he’ll come out of it a winner. We’ll teach him success on the football field and that success will carry over into every part of his life.” The Man had gone away without an answer that night, but Tom had known. He was sold, just like his parents, on Alabama football and Coach Paul Bryant.

  A few minutes later, the waitress brought their food, and the talk turned to the past, of the ’61 team and whether Tom kept up with any of the boys. The Man ate his breakfast quickly and looked at his watch every so often. He had done what he came to do and now it was on to the next job at hand. When they were finished, the Man picked up the tab, and the two men walked together to Tom’s car.

  “Think about what I said, son,” the Man said, squeezing Tom’s shoulder. “I’d love for you to come home.”

  “OK, Coach, I…” But the Man was already walking away, passing out of earshot before Tom could get the words out. Through the glare of the sun, the Man’s six-foot-four-inch body cast a shadow over half the parking lot. Tom smiled and opened his car door.

  He would talk to Julie. He would speak with George McDuff. He might even write out the costs and benefits of becoming a law professor. But, by the time he was halfway to Birmingham, Tom knew. Just as he had known those many years ago.

  The Man had called. And he knew he must answer.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  1

  At 10.30am on Tuesday, September 2, 2009, Rose Batson stepped out of the Texaco gas station that she managed for a smoke. None of the four self-serve pumps were in use and Rose spat on the ground after blowing out her first puff.

  “Ain’t makin’ no money today,” Rose said to herself, taking a long drag on her Camel unfiltered cigarette. Of course, it made no difference to Rose. She was on salary. But customers helped make the day pass. Yesterday had been crazy, what with all the beachgoers coming home. There hadn’t been a time from 10am to 8pm when at least one of her pumps wasn’t in use. Rose herself had only been to the beach once. Back in the summer of ’67 when she was a teenager. Panama City for a long weekend. Rose smiled to herself, thinking of the long-ago trip that marked the first, second and third times she had ever been laid.

  “Old Rosie could throw that leg,” she said out loud, laughing at the memory of her lost virginity.

  Rose Batson had run the Texaco station at the intersection of Highway 82 and Limestone Bottom Road for over thirty-five years. Raised by her grandmother after her mother and father perished in a house fire, Rose was hired on by Tom Sloan at Sloan’s Bait and Beer Store in 1972. When Sloan sold the store to Texaco in 1990, Rose stayed on to manage the place. There wasn’t a
nybody in Henshaw or Henshaw County that Rose Batson didn’t know or at least claim she knew. She had seen a lot of things too. One night, ten years earlier, she had seen Rodney Carver shoot Henry Dawson with a twelve-gauge shotgun right outside her store window. Henry, or Hal the Pal, as folks in Henshaw called him, had been too close a pal to Rodney’s wife and Rodney took offense. Henshaw County style.

  Rose stretched her arms over her head and her back creaked loudly. She coughed and some phlegm gathered in her throat, which she violently spat out.

  “Fallin’ apart, old woman. You just fallin’ apart,” she growled to herself. Rose tossed the cigarette on the ground and stomped it out with her foot. Looking to her right, she thought she saw an object in the distance. Squinting, she noticed that the object was a car and it was approaching the station. She watched in silence as the car continued its ascent and smiled when its left-turn signal came on.

  “Back in bidness,” she said, turning to walk back into the store. As she opened the door, she saw out of the corner of her eye another vehicle approaching in the opposite direction. As it began to hit a slight dip in Highway 82, Rose felt her stomach tighten. It was an eighteen-wheeler, and, judging from the cylinder shape of its trailer, it was hauling some sort of fuel. She took two slow steps back towards the pumps and watched. As the eighteen-wheeler arose out of the dip and came into view, Rose Batson looked back at the light and saw the red Honda Accord beginning its turn. Oh my God, she thought, as her hands instinctively went to her cheeks and she held her breath.

  2

  Dewey Newton was hung over and running late. Not good, he knew. The goddamn dispatcher had said the rig would be ready by 9, but it hadn’t been. Not my fault. He shook his head. It won’t make a damn. Jack will blame my ass anyway.

  Dewey had made the Tuscaloosa to Montgomery run a couple of times before, and it was no big deal. Straight shot on Highway 82 – an hour and a half’s drive by the speed limit, an hour and twenty if you drove a few miles over.

  But when you don’t hit the road till 10, and you’ve got to be there by 11...

  Dewey squeezed the wheel and began fumbling with the radio, trying to find a station that played country music – not the new hip-hop country that Dewey couldn’t stand, but good old George Jones/Merle Haggard country. Up ahead, he saw a Texaco station and a stoplight. As he passed a faded green “Henshaw City Limits” sign, Dewey glanced down at the clock on the dash.

  10.35am.

  From experience, Dewey knew that Henshaw was the halfway point of the trip. He had made up some time, but he was still fifteen minutes behind where he needed to be.

  Dewey scratched his stubble and wiped sweat from his forehead, thinking about his boss. Seeing the sonofabitch in his mind. Jack Daniel Willistone. Walking the yard, cigarette dangling from his mouth. His face red from exertion, his work shirt damp with sweat. His eyes mean. Unforgiving…

  “We work longer, we work faster, and we work smarter.” That was Jack’s mantra, and Dewey knew only too well what it meant. Drivers were expected to drive more than the eleven hours a day allowed by DOT regulations and fix their driver’s logs to show compliance. Drivers were also expected to push the envelope on the road. If a load typically took an hour, Jack wanted it done in fifty minutes.

  That was the deal, and every man on the yard abided by it. And Dewey knew things were only going to get worse. There were rumors that Jack was talking merger with several of the big dogs up east, and the deal could be worth hundreds of millions. To get the price he wanted, Jack needed two things. More revenue and more customers.

  Which means my crazy ass schedule is only going to get crazier.

  Dewey gritted his teeth, wishing that he could just quit. He had two girls at home. A wife. I’m missing it, he knew. I’m missing their whole life. But if he quit, he’d have to go back to $7-an-hour gigs, moving from job to job, town to town, without any chance of a future. He and Wilma had talked about it a million times. Jack Willistone was a sonofabitch, but he paid almost double what Dewey could make working anywhere else. After the last speeding ticket, Dewey had wanted to quit. He had even filled out his notice. But Wilma wouldn’t let him hand it in. “My girls are going to college. They ain’t going to be waiting tables like me. We’re going to do whatever we have to do to make that happen.”

  I can’t quit, Dewey knew, glancing again at the clock. 10.36am.

  George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” burst out of the speakers of the radio, and Dewey whispered “finally” in approval of the DJ’s choice. He took a deep breath and tried to relax. The highway had dipped a little, but he could still see the top of the gas station and the green of the stoplight.

  Stay green, baby...

  The speed limit on Highway 82 was 65. Pressing the accelerator down until he reached 80 miles per hour, Dewey Newton began to come out of the dip on Highway 82.

  Bob Bradshaw hated Highway 82. But there was no quicker or more direct route from Montgomery to Tuscaloosa. And I need this to be quick, he thought, knowing that the word “quick”, or rather “quick visit”, was a foreign concept to his mother-in-law. Bob shook his head, thinking of Richard T. McMurphy, his partner and boss, who would be riding Bob hard when he returned to the office tomorrow after eight days at the beach.

  “Cows!” Nicole screamed from the back seat, jarring Bob from his fit of worry. He glanced to his left and saw that they were passing a cattle farm. He could see it and, a few seconds later, could smell the evidence. Ah, manure. Perfect, Bob thought, wondering if his mood was going to improve any time soon.

  “That’s right, honey. You’re a smart girl. How do cows go?” Jeannie Bradshaw, Nicole’s mother, asked.

  “Mooooo!” Nicole answered, smiling.

  Bob smiled too. If anything could lift his spirits, it was his little girl. Nicole was really coming along, and her new trick was yelling out things she recognized while riding in the back seat.

  “Can you believe she’ll be three in a couple of months?” Bob asked, one hand on the wheel and the other pushing the stop button on the CD player.

  “I can’t even believe she’s two,” Jeannie said, sighing. “Seems like just yesterday…” But she didn’t complete her thought and she didn’t have to. Bob knew. It seems like just yesterday we were bringing her home from the hospital. Life was moving fast, and, with any luck, Nicole would have a brother or sister in a year or so.

  “Sign!” Nicole yelled from the back as they passed a green sign, indicating “Tuscaloosa, 50 miles.” Bob looked at his watch. 10.30am.

  “Making good time,” he said, more to himself than Jeannie, who just nodded. They had gotten an early start that morning and might make it home by 6pm. Bob grimaced, thinking again of McMurphy and the piles of paper that undoubtedly lay on top of his desk. Lawyers needed vacations just like everyone else. But it’s a bitch coming back.

  Bob sighed and glanced at the gas gauge, which was getting perilously close to “E”.

  “Christ,” Bob said, again more to himself.

  “Gas?” Jeannie said, reading his mind.

  “Yeah.” And Bob again wondered whether this detour was worth it. He really needed to get back, and Tuscaloosa was not on the way. Ruth Ann would probably be coming to Huntsville soon anyway.

  “She’s really excited about seeing us,” Jeannie said. After nine years of marriage, Jeannie had become an expert at telling what Bob was thinking.

  “I know, hon. It’s just...”

  “You’ll get it all done, you always do. But Mom’s been going through a tough time since Dad died, and we promised.”

  “OK,” Bob said. He had already lost this battle a couple of weeks ago, and there was no use pouting. Besides, he had planned around it. They would visit with Ruth Ann for a while, eat lunch, and try to get back on the road by 2.30 or 3pm, which would put them in Huntsville by 6pm. A quick visit.

  Like that’s going to happen, Bob thought now, feeling discouraged and a little foolish. When Jeannie and her mother go
t together, the best made plans usually got thrown out the window. It had been over a month since Ruth Ann had seen Jeannie and Nicole. After lunch, presents, girl talk and God knows what else, they’d be lucky to get out of there by dark. The plan would fail. Trying to plan around a bunch of women... He stopped the thought. There was a gas station up ahead.

  “Here we go,” Jeannie said, and Bob knew she was talking about the Texaco sign.

  “We told Ruth Ann noon, right?” Bob asked. There was a stoplight next to the station, but he couldn’t tell yet if he should go past it to get to the Texaco or turn at the light and come in the back door.

  “Yeah–” Jeannie glanced at her watch “–but it looks like we’re gonna beat that. Maybe I should call her.” Jeannie reached for her cell phone as Bob put his blinker on and began slowing down.

  Bob Bradshaw entered the intersection of Highway 82 with Limestone Bottom Road, and his instincts said turn at the light. He glanced up ahead, saw nothing coming, and turned the wheel.

  “Hello, Mom,” Jeannie said into the cell phone. “It looks like… Bob!

  “Truck!” Nicole yelled from the back seat.

  That motherfucker is not going to… But the red Honda was turning. Coming out of the dip, Dewey had seen the red Honda enter the intersection. It had been going very slow, as if the driver was unsure of what he wanted to do. Now, he’s turning. The motherfucker is turning right in front of me. Dewey hit the brakes.

  “Oh, fuck!” He was fishtailing, the trailer moving left. Come on, move it. But the red Honda was stuck in the intersection.

  We’re gonna hit.

  Bob Bradshaw saw the eighteen-wheeler at the same time his wife and daughter screamed. Where did that truck… He pressed the accelerator all the way to the floor, and his tires spun. NO. Jeannie undid her seat belt and lunged for the back, trying to cover Nicole. The Honda lurched forward. Please make it, Bob begged, hearing the roar of the tractor trailer. Please...