Mark Gimenez: The Color of Law

The girls squealed with delight.

Four months later, Scott was sitting in his pajamas and robe on the couch in the small house over by SMU and smiling as the girls opened their presents early on Christmas morning.

Their lives had been irrevocably changed.

This Christmas, he didn’t have a wife and Boo didn’t have a mother. Rebecca had left and never come back. Every few weeks, he still found Boo crying quietly in bed, and he had cried when the divorce became final. But they were both doing better now. He was sure he wouldn’t marry again, despite Boo’s attempts at matchmaking; she said her teacher had a really big crush on him. Ms. Dawson did seem nice at carpool.

But Boo now had Pajamae and Pajamae had Boo. They attended fourth grade at Highland Park Elementary where Pajamae was the only black girl and Boo the only white girl with cornrows. They were like sisters, and would be when the adoption was final.

Scott had Bobby and Bobby had Karen and Consuela had Esteban and they were having a baby who would be an American citizen. They had married a month ago in a traditional Mexican wedding in the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe Catholic Church in downtown Dallas. Scott gave the bride away and Boo was her maid of honor.

Scott also had Big Charlie back in his life. He often brought his girls over to play with Boo and Pajamae. But they no longer talked about playing football in the old days; they talked about raising kids in these new days. Scott Fenney and Charles Jackson were fathers now and that was good enough.

Scott lost the state bar election to a big firm lawyer in Houston. He now practiced law with Bobby and Karen on the second floor of an old Victorian house renovated into office space and located just south of Highland Park. The Fenney Herrin Douglas law firm represented the thirty homeowners whose residences were being condemned by the city to make room for Tom Dibrell’s hotel; and they were preparing a class-action suit on behalf of the residents of the South Dallas projects against the city for violation of federal fair housing laws. Louis had gone door-to-door signing up residents; Scott’s suddenly lofty reputation in the federal judicial system had allowed him to resolve all of Louis’s outstanding issues with the Feds. Bobby still represented his regulars from the Mexican bar in East Dallas; charges against Carlos Hernandez were dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct. He was training to be a paralegal and acted as translator for their Hispanic clients. Scott wore jeans to the office, ate lunch once a week with the girls in the school cafeteria, and played hoops with Bobby and John Walker at the YMCA.

His office faced due south and offered a nice view of the downtown skyline. He could sit at his desk and see Dibrell Tower out his window. Karen’s ex-secretary at Ford Stevens told her that the firm would close out the year with record profits. Dan Ford sat on top of his world, perfect but for the fact that vandals had repeatedly slashed the tires of his Mercedes-Benz in the parking garage, while Sid Greenberg sat in Scott’s former office, drove Scott’s former Ferrari, and practiced aggressive and creative lawyering for Scott’s former client.

Oddly enough, Scott felt no satisfaction when Frank Turner filed a $10 million sexual harassment lawsuit against Tom Dibrell on behalf of the blonde receptionist; or when Harry Hankin filed a divorce petition against Dibrell on behalf of Tom’s fourth wife alleging infidelity and seeking over $50 million in community property; or when the Environmental Protection Agency filed suit in federal court against Dibrell Property Company and Thomas J. Dibrell jointly and severally seeking $75 million in costs required for the cleanup of lead contamination on the fifty-acre tract of land located adjacent to the Trinity River.

Scott did feel relieved when Delroy Lund was arrested and charged with the murder of Clark McCall and obstruction of justice in the Shawanda Jones case; Hannah Steele agreed to testify. Mack McCall withdrew from the presidential race but was elected senate majority leader; soon after, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Ray Burns was now an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Lubbock. United States District Court Judge Samuel Buford remained on the bench in Dallas.

Right after the trial, Scott had moved Shawanda and Pajamae out of the projects and into a rent house near Highland Park. He paid for Shawanda’s drug rehabilitation; she fought hard and gave it all she had, but she couldn’t break the hold heroin had on her. Two months after the trial, Shawanda Jones injected heroin into her right arm, drifted off to sleep, and never woke up. Pajamae missed her mama very much, but said she’s in a better place now where she doesn’t need her medicine to be happy. She prayed for her mother every Sunday morning when Scott took the girls to church.

Scott had begun reading a new bedtime book to the girls: To Kill a Mockingbird. They loved Boo Radley.