“Mama says I will if I don’t pick at them.”
If only life were that easy, I think, and stand up, my knees snapping with the effort. I stand and see Roy in the back next to a refrigerated bin containing milk products.
I walk to the front on cold concrete and find a Borden’s milk salesman on his knees beside Roy, stocking his product. Roy pushes up the sleeves of a blue cotton pullover sweater and tells me to go on around the counter and through the door in the back where I will find Dade and Lucy.
“I can’t close the store because this is when a lot of the salesmen come in,” he explains, counting milk cartons.
“I’ll come back and stand at the door when I get through here” He glances past me, apparently looking for his daughter.
“Lashondra’s a doll,” I say, wondering if it is too late to reach this guy. Even if he lived next door to me for ten years, Roy wouldn’t be my best friend, but we can do better than this.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” he says, his eyes on the salesman, who is switching out milk cartons so fast I feel I’m watching one of those guys who cheats you at card games on the streets of New York.
In the back is a combination small office and store room. Dade and his mother are seated at a rickety card table, pouring themselves cups of coffee from a brown thermos, and not for the first time I am struck by the re semblance between mother and son: even their facial expressions are the same. Both look up and scowl at me at the same time, making the same crease in their broad foreheads. She has just told him, I realize. As the messenger of bad news, I should have expected their disapproval. Again, I realize I know too little about them. The chasm that separates us can’t be overcome by telling them my ears sometimes hurt, too.
“Would you like some coffee?” Lucy asks politely, her words at variance with her expression.
“I told Dade,” she says, unnecessarily. Like her son and husband she is wearing jeans; a red bandanna covers her hair, reminding me of some angry black militant from the sixties and seventies.
“I’ll take a little,” I say, needing to take a leak, but too embarrassed to ask. If there is a bathroom, it is hidden from me among the scores of boxes stacked all around us. I study Lucy’s face, looking for cues, knowing intuitively that she is the key to Dade’s decision.
She takes out a mug from a cloth bag by her chair and pours.
“Go ahead, Dade,” she says, her voice low and in tense.
“Tell him how you feel.”
Dade, who has barely looked at me, studies his cup.
“I can’t go to jail for a whole year!” he says fiercely.
“That’s twelve months of my life!”
Though they haven’t invited me to, I ease into the third folding chair and warm my lips with the coffee. It is chilly back here despite the presence of a glowing space heater four feet away from my feet. I’m afraid if I argue with him, all he’ll do is dig his heels in.
“Okay, then, what evidence do we put on in court?” I ask.
“She waited until the next morning to go to the hospital,” Dade replies.
I glance up to see Roy filling the entrance that divides the back room from the grocery. His expression is so melancholy that for a moment I think he has been crying.
I notice the gray in his hair and the beginning of a gut.
Dade is his dream, his escape from the store.
“She’ll say she couldn’t make up her mind,” I point out, “whether to report it.”
“She admits she wasn’t hurt,” Dade responds, glowering at me.
If he looks this angry in court, we won’t have a chance.
“She’ll testify you threatened her and it would have been dangerous for her to resist.”
Hands on his hips, Roy mutters, “Whose side are you on?”
To keep from launching into a sermon, I place my palms flat down on the table, and my fingers almost stick to the surface. This table must serve as the family dining table for Roy and Lucy more often than not.
“My job right now is to give you the best advice I can. If I thought Dade could beat this charge, I’d be the first to say so.”
“You’re selling my boy out!” Roy cries, his face anguished
I feel certain he would like to fire me, but at this late date the judge wouldn’t permit Dade to get another lawyer. The bell on the front door jingles loudly, and Roy stalks off to the front, followed by Dade, who is furious with me. Somehow, I have to make Lucy trust my judgment. I wait until Dade clears the doorway and then I whisper, “The reason I took this case was that I hoped I could get it dismissed and you’d hire me as Dade’s agent when he turned professional. I know that wasn’t the most noble reason on earth for undertaking to defend him on his rape charge, but you need to understand that it was in my interest to try this case. The truth is, the closer the trial gets, the less likely it is that Dade will escape serving some significant time. I can’t in good conscience tell him to go to trial. The only way to avoid that risk is to accept the prosecutor’s offer and concentrate on getting this behind him as soon as possible.”
Lucy shakes her head in apparent disbelief.
“So that was your motivation?” she asks, her eyes suddenly bright with tears.
“You were out to exploit him from the beginning
“For God’s sake, Lucy!” I cry, feeling my face burning.
“I’m no different from any other lawyer in this state.
If I can make a buck, I’ll do it. If there’s something wrong with that, you’re going to have to put most of this country out of its misery. All I’m trying to say is that Dade should take this offer and then get on with his life.
The prisons are filled with people who either entered into a plea bargain or wish they had. If you’re looking for a hero, I nominate the man who’s prosecuting Dade. After this morning, I wouldn’t have given a plugged nickel for our chances to knock this case down to carnal abuse and a six-year sentence, but the prosecutor made this offer because he said Robin’s parents have finally been convinced not to put their child through a trial if they can get this deal.”
These sentiments have come straight from my gut, and I am out of breath when I finish. Lucy makes a small fist with her right hand but shows no other emotion.
“I thought you’d be different.”
“Well, I’m not,” I say hoarsely.
“I can’t change history.
By the way, I’m sorry about your grandmother. My daughter thinks that under the circumstances she was raped. I guess she was. I can’t do anything about that, just as I can’t really do anything about the kind of person who will serve on Dade’s jury. All I can do is tell you what’s likely to happen to Dade if he goes to trial.”
She unclenches her hand.
“You’re putting your racism on that jury,” she says fiercely.
“That’s what’s making you afraid.”
Is that what I’m doing?
“I know what people are like,” I say, breaking it down as simply as I can.
“And so do you.”
Her jaw flexing in anger and her dark eyes flashing, she leans across the table to shake a long black finger in my face.
“I don’t want my son in prison, you hear me!”
Pushing up from the table with both hands, she walks past me and through the door. I am already tired, and it is not even nine o’clock. I close my eyes, wishing I had kept my mouth shut about what has motivated me in this case. In the other room, I hear all three talking at once, Lucy’s voice the loudest. I strain to hear but can’t distinguish more than a few words. I hear Lucy saying, “If you didn’t do it …” and then her voice is drowned out by Roy and Dade.
Just moments later, all three are back, surrounding the table. Dade glares at me as if I were a prisoner who had been charged with some heinous crime.
“I want to go to trial,” he announces.
“I’m innocent.”
I judge by the expression on Lucy’s face that she is fully supportive of this decision.
