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.
3
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.
I hang up and suggest Dade call home from my room.
Collect, I tell him. I’m not getting enough to pay his phone bills, too.
Now it is my turn to eavesdrop. I am referred to as the “lawyer.” He looks over at me from the one chair in the room and says into the phone that “we’re going to talk.” I am reminded of my conversations with Sarah when she’s not in a mood to talk. Dade, I notice, is more respectful than my daughter, limiting his infrequent responses to “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am.” After a few moments, with a pained expression, he hands me the phone.
“She wants to say something to you.”
Expecting the accent of a poorly educated eastern Arkansas black woman, I am surprised to hear a rich contralto voice that rings with authority, though it still retains the drawl of the Delta.
“Mr. Page, what happens now? Is he out of school?”
“We’ll have to see about that,” I say.
“I wanted to talk to him first.” I haven’t even considered the possibility that the university would not want him to come back to school. I’ve only worried whether he will be kicked off the team.
“The incident happened off campus,” I continue “so ordinarily I would imagine it would be handled like any criminal matter. This might be different. I’ll just have to find out and let you know.”
“I’ve told Dade to do exactly what you say,” she in forms me, “but we expect you to consult with us. When will you be in your office again? I want to meet with you face-to-face.”
There is no give in this woman’s voice. No wonder Dade didn’t want to come home during the summer.
“Friday,” I tell her. Why are black women so much stronger than black men? If Roy Cunningham is in the house, he must be in the bathroom. I haven’t heard a peep out of him.
“Do you and your husband want to come over then?”
“One of us has to be in our store,” she says.
“I’ll see you Friday at ten. Roy has your card, doesn’t he?”
I find myself saying, “Yes, ma’am,” and grin at her son. After I hang up, I tell him, “Your mother doesn’t mince words, does she?”
Dade arches his muscular frame and yawns, showing strong white teeth. I doubt if he got any sleep last night.
“I’m surprised she let you off the phone so soon. She wanted me to go to Memphis so I’d be closer to home.”
“I’m from eastern Arkansas, too,” I tell him to let him know we have something in common. If you’re from the Delta, Memphis means more to you than Blackwell County.
Dade ignores my attempt at camaraderie.
“Did she sound mad?”
“A little,” I tell him.
“A rape charge is serious business.”
“Robin didn’t do nothin’ she didn’t want to do!” Dade shoots back, now rigid in the chair.
He must be scared to death. With the image of Rodney King’s beating by the LA cops forever embedded in the national consciousness, the literature of white justice is getting richer all the time. Why should he trust the system when he has up-to-the-minute documentation that it is still brutal beyond his worst nightmare? At this point
