Christopher Buckley - Supreme Courtship

Her cell phone trilled. She rummaged urgently in her bag, then saw the call was from JJ.

“Hey,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nuthin’. How you?” Her Texas accent tended to deepen when talking to JJ.

“Nuthin’ name of Bixby?” JJ had never been a big fan of Buddy. He was generally suspicious of anyone who had anything to do with television, the only exception being his granddaughter.

“He’s being a pain in the butt. But I was the one who walked out. Never done that before.”

“Where are you?”

“In a hotel.”

“Hotel? Where?”

“Around the corner from my apartment. It was either that or whack him upside the head with one of my Emmys. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.”

“Hell, make him go check into a hotel.” Pwwttt. JJ’s sentences were punctuated by the sound of expectorated tobacco juice.

“Don’t worry. I’m puttin’ it on his plastic,” Pepper said.

“Hope it’s an expensive hotel.”

“Oh, it is. I’m gonna eat all the macadamia nuts in the minibar. That oughta add a thousand bucks to the tab. So, what’s up down there?”

“Everyone’s having a fit and steppin’ in it over this damn border-mining bill,” JJ said. Pwwttt.

A Texas state senator had introduced a bill in the legislature calling for the state to mine its border with Mexico, on the grounds that the federal government had failed to stem the tide of illegal immigrants. It had started out as a symbolic protest, but America being America -and Texas definitely being Texas -the thing had acquired a life of its own. The bill now had so many supporters it looked like it might actually pass in the upcoming session. Pwwttt.

“I guess I feel as strongly about immigration as the next person,” JJ said, “but I don’t know if the solution is to start blowin’ up Mexicans. Be a heck of a mess. But we got to do something. Juanita feels kinda strongly against it.”

“I’ll bet she does,” Pepper said. Juanita was JJ’s girlfriend. She’d been the housekeeper and cook up until JJ’s wife, Pearl, had passed. Juanita still did the cooking and housekeeping; a few other duties had been added.

“Hold on,” Pepper said. “I think I’m supposed to have an opinion on that. I’m supposed to have an opinion on everything, including the moons of Jupiter. It’s somewhere in here…” She opened her briefing book, flipped through the pages. “Here it is. Get a load of this.” She read aloud:

“Question: In the event the Texas Border Enforcement Initiative (TBEI) becomes state law and is challenged in the federal courts-as would almost certainly be the case-how would you vote on that?

“Answer: I am very glad you raised that, Senator. The issue of illegal immigration is indeed a complex and highly charged one, at the federal, state, and certainly local level. While it would not be appropriate for me to comment about this or for that matter any hypothetical case that might come before the Court, I would point out that in Jimenez v. California, the Ninth Circuit held, in a case involving a private aircraft chartered by an out-of-state corporation, that state legislation permitting the strafing of illegal aliens did not run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause. At the same time, in Montez v. Arizona Minutemen, the Fifth Circuit held, in another case involving a private aircraft chartered from an out-of-state corporation, that Title 14-266 of the Arizona Revised Statutes 19b, which permitted dropping incendiary devices on illegal immigrants, did, in fact, run afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause. Now, as to reconciling these divergent opinions…”

“What in the hell is that?” JJ said. “I didn’t understand one damn word.”

“It’s my homework,” Pepper said. “I got to memorize that, along with a thousand other pages just like it.”

“Julius Caesar. You sure you want this job?”

“Suppose.”

“Suppose? That don’t sound like ‘whuppee’ to me.”

“I don’t know, JJ,” Pepper said, suddenly feeling like she was going to cry. “It’s the Supreme Court, isn’t it? Shouldn’t I ought to want it?”

“Wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to me, either way. We’re already proud of you just for being asked. Juanita’s bought a new dress for the hearings. Oh, I’m supposed to ask you-she supposed to curtsy when we meet the President?”

“No, JJ. It’s America. Nobody’s got to curtsy to nobody. We fought a war over that.”

“That’s what I told her.” Pwwttt. “But you know how she is. Hell, she’s about the first person in her family ever to own a pair of shoes.”

“Well, you tell her not to. Tell her I said. You talk to the bishop?”

“Bishop” was the word Pepper and JJ used privately for the Reverend Roscoe.

“I called him on Monday.” Pwwttt. “He called me back on Thursday. I said, ‘Been so long since I called I can’t remember what I was callin’ you about.’ That boy’s got the manners of a…”

“Now, JJ,” Pepper said. “You go easy on him. You know Daddy ain’t dealin’ off a full deck.”

Pwwtttt. “I know that. I think he’s got a case of the guiltys. He offered me and Juanita a ride up there to Washington on that plane of his.” JJ chuckled darkly. “Preachers with their own planes. I said to him, ‘So what kind of private plane did the twelve apostles have?’ He didn’t laugh none.”

JJ and his son, Roscoe, had a somewhat textured relationship. Though JJ had never admitted as much, Pepper suspected that he’d taken a major amount of ribbing from his fellow lawmen about his son being the one who told Jack Ruby where he could go shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. JJ was as down-to-earth as asphalt. His idea of a religious experience was a pretty sunset; of religious service, doffing his hat when a hearse went by. He tended toward skepticism in the matter of his son’s ministry, with its rhinestone sermons and televised Sunday services, $20 million private jet and all-female choir that looked like the Dallas Cowgirls got up in angel costumes.

“Now, JJ,” Pepper said, “you don’t mind that plane none when he lets you use it to go trout fishing with your buddies up in Montana.”

“That’s different,” JJ said.

Pepper laughed. “How is that different?”

“It’s putting the plane to some decent use. I don’t mind if he’s flying some kid with cancer to a hospital or whatnot, but most of the time, he’s lendin’ it to politicians so they’ll give his church another tax break. What’s he need another tax break for, I want to know. Hell, he’s already got enough money to burn a wet dog.”

Pepper said, “President’s folks asked me to try to keep him from coming up to the hearings.”

“Can’t say’s I blame ’em.”

“They’re just worried it’ll give the media the excuse to drag up the whole damn Ruby business. I told them under no circumstances. And I told them they ought to be ashamed for asking me. Maybe he’s a little unusual, okay, but he’s my daddy and he’s going to be there.”

JJ snorted. “ ‘Unusual.’ You got that right.”

“Now, JJ Cartwright, you look here,” Pepper said. “It would be nice if while the senators are peeling the bark off me, the two of you weren’t sitting behind me pecking at each other like a pair of snake-bit roosters.”

“Don’t you worry none about that. We’ll be quiet as the Tetons. As for those senators,” JJ pronounced the word with disdain, “if there’s one thing they can do, it’s read polls. You’re about the one thing this country agrees on right now.”

“Well,” Pepper yawned, “we’ll see about that. All right. I’m gonna eat a thousand dollars’ worth of nuts and memorize another forty pages of this horseshit. I love you.”