Andy comes for me in half an hour. During that time it seems I have gotten more information out of Homer, my retarded escort the first time I was here, than from Yettie Lindsey. Homer, who saw me sitting in the waiting room on his way outside, greeted me as if I had come to take him home. Unfortunately, I didn’t understand a word he said. He didn’t seem to mind as long I kept smiling. I wish I could make everybody that glad to see me.
Andy doesn’t seem any happier to see me than Yettie was.
“Got called to a meeting,” he explains tersely. We walk side by side in the wide corridor to his office, our silence interrupted only by a retarded man who greets Andy with such genuine enthusiasm that Dale Carnegie himself (were he not dead) would approve of his effort. Though I am on Andy’s shit list, Jake, who looks normal except for his crossed eyes and jug-handle ears, is not: My client lets Jake pump his hand as though both of them expected oil to spurt from Andy mouth. I know Andy resents my talking to Olivia about his affair. Clients want you to help them, but they hate like hell for you to do it.
Andy’s office, I see, has not been repainted. In fact, the room has an even more temporary look than it did before.
On his desk is a cardboard box filled with books as if he were moving in or moving out. Before I can comment, he lights into me.
“You had no right to ask Olivia about our relationship!”
he says, closing the door behind him. His voice is under control but just barely. Standing in front of his door, he has balled both his fists, but I doubt he has ever physically fought another man. Even with his face stretched tight with anger, he looks too elegant. His goatee and mustache look freshly trimmed this morning, and there is not even the hint of a wrinkle in his tan poplin slacks. Mine always make me look as though I have an accordion on my lap five minutes after I’ve put them on. I can imagine Andy fighting a duel with pistols at fifty paces but not in a street bawl.
I turn my back on him and sit down across from his desk, wondering how to handle him. The best defense is a good offense, especially with a cream puff like Andy. As he comes around behind his desk, I say softly, “You sure as hell weren’t going to tell me.” Though his office is at the end of the hall and the door is closed, there is no sense trying to sell some tickets to this conversation.
“I hope you’re not going to tell me an affair with Olivia isn’t relevant to your case.”
Andy is more formally dressed than the last time I visited him here, in a turquoise gingham shirt, blue sports coat, and maroon tie. All heated up, he discards the coat.
“It won’t be if no one knows about it!” he says, still taking time in his rage to hang up his jacket properly and place it on the coat rack in the corner by the door. Neatness counts with this guy, I think, as he goes back behind his desk.
“I suppose,” I say sarcastically, “that you think nobody has a clue to what’s going on.”
Folding his arms across his chest like a used-car dealer who won’t let a sucker get his money back, Andy purses his lips and says disdainfully, “Nobody can prove a thing.”
I resist a smile. This attempted guile has its own charm in a man who usually displays the naivete of a scientist: Who, me blow up the world? This bomb is purely for research purposes. Andy must have lead an unusually sheltered life for a black person. The ones I have encountered have no illusions about whitey’s power.
“If the prosecutor ever gets hold of it, she’ll bring your used rubbers into court if she has to.”
Andy narrows his eyes at me in pure hatred. There has never been a messenger of bad news in the history of the world who hasn’t been despised, and I’m no exception. I know how crude I must sound, but he has to start living in the real world.
I fairly yell at him: “Don’t you realize you have to tell me the things that will affect this case? I can’t represent you in the dark. I ‘m not a magician who can pull a trick out of a hat at the last moment and save you, goddamn it! Frankly, I couldn’t care less whether you’re shacking up with the Queen of England, but you can be awfully damn sure the prosecutor is going to try to get that information to the jury, especially since the Queen is white.”
Andy’s expression changes from one of contempt to disgust.
“I know all that,” he says wearily and leans back hard in his chair.
I continue to press him.
“You don’t act like it. You’re the one who doesn’t want race to be an issue at your trial,” I say, remembering his words.
“I can’t do it without your help.”
This last point seems to mollify him somewhat, and his face loses some of its intensity. He shifts restlessly, as if he is trying without success to think of a comeback. “You could have asked me first,” he says lamely.
This is a minor point to concede, and I try to do so graciously.
“I should have,” I admit, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t tell me the truth and would try to stop me from talking to Olivia about it.”
A frown spreads over Andy’s face as he looks at me for a long moment and then says, in a voice stiff with formality, “I’ve given you absolutely no reason to distrust me.”
I soften my tone and try to smile at him.
“My experience is that we all lie when we’re cornered, Andy. It’s really nothing personal.” Candor is an overrated virtue, since often I resort to it when I need to manipulate somebody, I think, but don’t say.
“How patronizing,” he retorts, glowering at me as he shoves his chair back and turns away to the second- story window directly behind him.
“There was a time right when I first met you,” he says, his voice so quiet and flat I have to strain to hear him since his back is almost directly to me, “when I thought after this was over you and I might be friends. You seemed to be taking my situation personally, and I found I appreciated that.”
Perhaps, as a defense mechanism, I find myself beginning to shrug, but I am uncomfortable: not only do I like this guy, I finally recognize that I have begun to admire the hell out of him. Unless he has managed to fool me completely, his life has awakened in me a memory of the idealism I must have felt over twenty years ago when I joined the Peace Corps. His color-blind stubbornness and his commitment to the Homers of the world are so naive, he seems from another world. I believe he made a serious mistake in using shock on Pam, but unlike so many of us who live our lives virtually indifferent to the horrific suffering that is an inseparable but ignored part of daily life, he made an error of commission, not omission. He is in trouble precisely because he was willing to care and risk himself for other people. It is rare that a lawyer has the opportunity to represent a person in a criminal case whose life he sees as a positive force. At best, my other clients have been, and are, victims. Andy, I have come to believe (unconsciously until this moment I realize) is much more than that. Doubtless, he will appear unaccountably quixotic to a jury composed of ordinary Arkansans; but Andy, I hope I get them to see, though not blameless, should not be judged so harshly that his life and career are destroyed Under the circumstances, Pam’s death is punishment enough. This man is willing to make himself as vulnerable as a teenager who falls in love for the first time.
“You’re absolutely right,” I admit, squaring my shoulders to the desk and looking him in the eyes. “I put all my clients in the same box, and I’m wrong to do that. In fact, I admire you a great deal.”
His brown eyes lose some of their hurt look.
“I’m not looking to be admired,” he instructs, “but by explicitly categorizing all people as being willing to lie, you’ve illustrated what whites do to blacks when they make judgments about us as a race.”
I nod, my agreement automatic, thinking that Andy is obsessed by the issue of race. Though surely he doesn’t in tend it, his effort to pretend his blackness isn’t the denning quality in his life merely emphasizes that it is. Since he insists that he is honest, I have no qualms about testing it.
“Why does Yettie Lindsey hate your guts?”
Andy blinks rapidly.
“I won’t go out with her.”
A button has been punched here. There is something more going on here than a case of hurt feelings.
“That’s all there is to it?” I ask, remembering Rainey’s gossip.
Andy sighs and, as if he felt a sudden chill, hugs himself by squeezing his arms against his sides. He says, “If you’re black, Arkansas is a small state. Yettie’s family and my family have been friends for years. When I was in high school in Fayetteville, she was still a child, but our families used to kid each other that we’d end up together.
