Grif Stockley - Illegal Motion

As soon as he is gone, Sarah looks at me expectantly.

“It never occurred to me to pay attention,” I confess, remembering the question.

“What researchers have observed is that the white power structure habitually handpicked the whitest-looking African-Americans they could find for socalled leader ship positions. These blacks were imitation whites. The civil rights movement, of course, changed all that.”

“It sounds like,” I point out, “blacks discriminate on the basis of color, too.”

“As a reaction,” Sarah says stubbornly, “against whites choosing lighter-skinned Negroes to be their leaders.”

Tax dollars are being paid to study the skin color of small-town Negroes? No wonder there’s a deficit. Before I can respond, we are interrupted by a classmate of Sarah’s who visits until our food comes, and fortunately our conversation about her job never regains the level of intensity it had when we first sat down. This version of my daughter will take some getting used to. I bring the conversation around to the condition of her Volkswagen, and whether it will make it home for Thanksgiving. It better. I’ve put nearly a thousand dollars into the damn thing in the last two months.

Finally, as we get up to leave, she asks, “Now that you’ve talked to Dade Cunningham, do you think he’s guilty?”

Poor Sarah. What an uncomfortable position I’ve put her in.

“Well, I haven’t heard the girl’s side,” I say, picking up the check, “but after talking to Dade, I honestly don’t think he raped her.”

She bites her lip. I know she doesn’t want me doing this case, but if it works out, she could benefit in ways neither of us dreamed possible. I wonder what she has heard. She probably knows more than I do at this stage of the case. I decide I’d like to meet this Beekman and tell Sarah I might drop by her office tomorrow. It won’t hurt the man to know Sarah has a father who will be checking up on her. Some of these profs, as far as women go, are probably major-league hitters. Sarah is showing all the signs. I’ve never heard her talk like this before. If Beek man is interested, it is easy to understand why. Half the crew of the Hilton practically follows us to the door.

“Thanks, Daddy,” Sarah says, giving me a hug in the parking lot.

“That was good.”

Expensive, too, I don’t add. I still feel guilty about not being able to send her out of state, so it would be too cheap to complain about a meal. I watch her pull out ahead of me and marvel at how well she has turned out. I must have done something right, even if at the moment she sounds like one of those Southerners who finds out how good it feels to beat up on our benighted past. She is young and so self-righteous it makes me want to gag. Experience will knock some of that out of her, I hope.

I look at my watch. Quarter to seven. Time to go see Carter. I turn left onto Dickson and head for the campus.

Carter’s supposed to have as great a football mind as Lou Holtz or Jimmy Johnson. It doesn’t matter. He could have an IQ of 7. There’s only one bottom line, and that’s your won-lost record. A 5 and 0 record says it all for the time being. I just hope he isn’t as politically correct as my daughter, or we are in trouble.

Dale Carter looks older than sixty. His face is lined like an ex-smoker’s, and his unruly hair, more gray than brown, is sparse. His gray sweats don’t hide his gut. This is a man who didn’t get his job on his looks.

“Dade,” he says, without shaking his hand, “come on back to my office. Are you Page?” he asks me warily, as if he had taken a course on lawyers in school and flunked.

“Yes, sir,” I say, offering my hand.

“How are you, Coach?”

He gives me the quickest handshake I’ve ever had, and I feel contempt radiating from all directions. It looks as if we will be going through the motions. Hell, why not?

The state of Arkansas, even if it’s through the auspices of a pissant assistant prosecutor who’s had a bad family experience has put its credibility on the line by charging Dade Cunningham with rape. How can it help the foot ball program in the long run if he lets Dade play out the season? As we follow Carter like two schoolboys about to get a whipping, I think again how easily I am able to deceive myself into believing anything I want. The old saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” finally makes sense. For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been acting as if I were king of the rodeo, when the truth is I’m one of those clowns that tries to distract the bull when the king gets bucked off. I’ve got to figure out a way to get on this man’s good side, and it better be quick.

I glance over at Dade, who looks scared. I don’t blame him. Carter opens the door to his office, and I recognize Jack Burke, the athletic director. Burke is relatively new to the program, and has stayed in the background since he got the job a couple of years ago. Older than his football coach, but not by much, he actually shakes my hand instead of jerking it away as if I had shocked him. He is dressed in a drab gray three-piece suit, as befits his status as an administrator. A former head coach himself at Mississippi State who was a star halfback at Fayetteville in the fifties, he had indifferent success and made his way back to Arkansas, where his only visible decision in the two years he has had the job was to hire Carter. Considered relatively weak after some of the former power brokers who have occupied his position. Burke doesn’t figure to be my problem. He put all his eggs in Carter’s basket, and now he’s got to live with his decision, rotten or not.

Carter’s office has got to be unusual for a football coach. Instead of pictures of star athletes, he has photographs of urban landscapes that look as if they were taken from some fancy book on architecture. I recognize San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Dallas. What is it supposed to mean? Perhaps in keeping with his cerebral image, he is trying to make the point that the real world is not the four or five years spent as a Razorback athlete. On his desk is a picture of a plain-looking woman his age his wife, I assume. She is no better-looking than her mate. More of the real world, I guess. Though there is a couch in Carter’s office, he indicates that we should sit across the desk from him, and Burke, now out of my line of sight, takes the couch. This will obviously be Carter’s show. Leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, he ignores me and says wearily, “Dade, I don’t think I have much choice but to take you off the team at least until your trial is over.”

Dade looks over at me in shock. I say to Carter, “Coach, he hasn’t done anything to be punished for. I’m convinced this wasn’t rape. Dade didn’t force her to have sex. She wanted to. He shouldn’t be punished for that.” I tell him what I have heard about the assistant prosecutor.

“This charge may end up getting dropped when the man who was elected to do the job gets back from his vacation.”

Carter stares at me as if I had suggested that he resign as head coach.

“You don’t know that. What is your inter est in this anyway? Dade’s family doesn’t have any money. Is your representation tied to his future pro contract or what?”

Dade shoots me a look of total confusion, and I say hastily, “Absolutely not. I happen to live down the street from his uncle, who’s a friend of mine, and he asked me to help out.” Carter is as shrewd as his reputation makes him out to be. I have stretched the facts a little, but basically what I have said is correct. I see no point in admit ting that I hope to represent Dade on down the line.

Indifferent to whether he is insulting me. Carter asks Dade, “Is this right?”