Grif Stockley: Illegal Motion

“If I had just told you about Gina’s case,” Clan says, cracking open a peanut with his left thumb, “you would have turned it down on the spot.”

I reach across the desk and take a peanut.

“You’re damn right I would have,” I complain.

“Even Legal Services turned her down on the basis of merit.”

Clan expertly skins the reddish, papery husk from the meat with his thumbnail and pops the nut into his mouth.

“Who would be better than an expert like yourself to represent her?” he says glibly.

“She’s a good kid, and I kind of believe she didn’t do it.”

One of the goobers inside the shell falls to the floor before I can extract it. I look down at the carpet and see peanuts everywhere. This must be how the diet works. It takes forever to shell the damn things, and then you lose half of what you try to eat.

“Mother of the Year material, no doubt about it,” I crack, eating the remaining nut before it disappears.

“She’s a whore dog, Clan. Not a lifestyle guaranteed to warm a juvenile judge’s heart.”

“Never convicted,” Clan says modestly.

“The Department of Human Services won’t know a thing.”

I study the cartoons behind Dan’s head. Unlike Clan and myself, the characters, despite their problems, never age.

“Two hundred dollars,” I bitch, “is all she gave me.”

Clan smiles benignly as his right hand catches in the almost empty bag.

“See, she’s just like us-just a little whore.”

Before I walk out the door to get on the road to Fayetteville, I call Amy.

“Gilchrist,” I say when she comes on the line, “I was gonna try to play it cool, but I couldn’t wait.” I don’t tell her that I’ve just interviewed a prostitute and started thinking of her.

“Men are so stupid,” Amy says cheerfully.

“I practically invite you to move in with me, and you have to think about it.”

I laugh, trying to picture her in her office. She is in the Kincaid Building two blocks west of the courthouse.

Mostly a domestic law practice. Women attorneys seem to settle into it, though she knows as much, if not more, criminal law than I do.

“Can we eat first?” I ask.

“Are you busy Saturday?”

“I have to warn you that I’m on a ten-thousand-calorie a day diet,” she says.

“You might want to check the limits on your Visa card.”

I think of her trim, compact body. Maybe she’s really fat, and it’s all being held in by a giant safety pin. I don’t think so. She didn’t have that much on last night, and what I saw looked firm.

“Where do you put it?” I ask admiringly. If I eat a single cookie, I can see the outline of it in my stomach for days.

“In my mouth,” she says.

“I’m busy right now. Call me Saturday, okay?”

“Sure,” I say and hang up, a little disappointed. I had wanted to brag that I was going to Fayetteville to represent Dade Cunningham, but maybe it will impress her more when she reads it in the papers. I stand up and retrieve my briefcase from the top of the filing cabinet, realizing I am abnormally pleased. It’s time to quit thinking Rainey and I will get back together. A part of me is still in love with her, but some things aren’t meant to be. Amy sounds like she’ll be fun. Why have I avoided younger women so religiously since Rosa died? Fear of looking stupid, I guess. Am I worried what Sarah will think? Act your age. Dad. She would like for me to be neutered, I’m sure. Poor baby. In my parents’ day, when nobody got divorced, we didn’t have to worry about our parents humiliating us quite so much. Now we act as crazy as our children. No wonder the country is on the verge of anarchy.

As dade cunningham and I come out of the Washington County courthouse into clear, dazzling October sunlight, I look around for the media, but apparently the word of his release hasn’t gotten around.

“What happens now?” Dade Cunningham whispers respectfully beside me. He is quite a specimen. Under his T-shirt his shoulders look like slabs of frozen beef. For a wide receiver he is more muscled-up than I would have imagined. His father is much darker, his features more Negroid than his son’s. Dade, I realize, looks remarkably like Jason Kidd, the incredible point guard recruited hard by the Hogs who ended up at California and turned pro after just two years. I wonder about his mother. I can’t imagine she is white, but she can’t be far from it.

“We’re going to my motel to talk.” I have checked into the Ozark Inn, a dump on College Avenue that actually looks okay on the outside. Inside, it’s better not to look too close. If cleanliness is next to godliness, the Ozark is not exactly on the highway to heaven. But for twenty-five bucks I didn’t expect the Taj Mahal, nor did I get it.

Dade nods gloomily, but based on our conversation so far, I realize he doesn’t have the slightest idea of the obstacles ahead. He will be arraigned tomorrow afternoon.

Now all we have to do is get out of here without saying anything to the media that will piss anybody off.

“If any body asks you a question,” I instruct him, “just say your lawyer has told you not to comment.”

Dade slows his long stride to match mine. He is a good three inches taller, and makes me feel as if I’m hobbling along on a walker.

“Even to my friends?” he asks naively.

“Nothing about what happened between you and Robin Perry,” I say, realizing I may be advising him to spill his guts to his coach later on today. Yet, he can’t tell his story too often, or he will trip himself up for sure.

In my room at the Ozark just down the street from the courthouse, I call Coach Carter’s office to leave my number and then Sarah to suggest we tentatively agree to meet for dinner at seven in the restaurant at the Fayetteville Hilton. I wouldn’t mind going by to see her room after all, I’m paying for it but she dismisses the suggestion.

“You don’t want to come up here,” she humors me.

“It looks like I’m doing the laundry for the whole dorm.”

Deftly, she changes the subject.

“Did you get Dade out of jail?”

“I’ll tell you all about it at seven,” I say.

“We’re going to talk right now.”

My daughter groans.

“It’ll be on the news, won’t it?”

“Probably,” I say, feeling guilty. This is supposed to be her turf now. Yet, why doesn’t she feel pride that her old man is in the news with a hot client? I guess I understand.

If love and hate are emotional kinfolks, pride and embarrassment share a common ancestor as well. It always surprises me that I want her praise and approval as much as she wants mine.

“Dade won’t be coming to dinner, will he?” she asks, her tone clearly indicating her preference.

I look over at Dade, who is pretending not to be listening I haven’t given any thought as to how he will be seen by other students. Given her own bloodlines, Sarah is hardly a racist, but she wouldn’t be wild about going to dinner with somebody who has been charged with raping a classmate. She knows all too well that the overwhelming number of the people I represent are guilty of some thing.

“No, and I may have to cancel. I’ll call if I do.”

“Okay,” Sarah says with obvious relief.

“I’ll see you at seven. You think you can find the Hilton?”

“Even I can find some things,” I say. Neither of us is noted for having a sense of direction. I hang up, thinking that Sarah has rarely displayed any subtlety in my presence What she is like with others I can only imagine.

Perhaps because of her mother’s early death, no third party has buffered our relationship. There has been no mutual interpreter. Sometimes in the past, her senior year in high school especially, emotions passed between us unfiltered by thought, creating situations that were often turbulent.