That’s all he told me about it.”
I exhale, glad that I have gotten no surprises and that Harris has avoided saying that Dade said he “did” Robin.
I ask him about the party, and try to anticipate Binkie by asking if Dade had ever said that he liked Robin.
Harris smooths down a lapel on his midnight blue wool blazer and wrinkles his face.
“You asked me that at that hearing at the school, and I said then he never said nothing about her except she was helping him. Dade had lots of girls. Me and Tyrone ragged him some after she and her roommate came to the house that day, but, see, you don’t know Dade. If he don’t want to talk, nothing can make him. He talks when he’s ready.”
Well, I hope he’s ready, I think to myself. He’s got some explaining to do.
“How did he act the night he said he had sex with Robin?”
As if I were a slow student he is duty bound to try to help, Harris leans forward, resting his forearms on his colossal thighs.
“He didn’t act any different than usual.
He was listening to his stereo when I went by his room. I asked him what he had been doing. That’s when he said what I just told you.”
“Are you certain Dade didn’t give you any details then or later about what had occurred that night?” I ask, stealing a look at the jury to see what kind of impression Harris is making on them. I notice in particular the face of the unemployed waitress, who is sitting in the front row of the jury box and is the closest to Harris. She is plainly skeptical. All humans gossip, her expression says. This would have been the normal time for Dade to have bragged about it. Robin was beautiful, a cheerleader, and, not least, a white girl.
“No,” Harris says finally, rubbing his hands along the tops of his thighs.
“He didn’t talk.”
I pass the witness.
Binkie approaches the podium with the demeanor of someone who doesn’t believe what he is hearing.
“Mr.
Warford,” he says, now bringing his gnarled hands out of his pockets and draping them over the lectern as if he wants the jury to inspect them, “weren’t you a little curious about the way Robin Perry had supposedly acted that night?”
“Yeah,” Harris says, “I was.”
Binkie drums his thumbs against wood.
“Did you ask him what Robin had been like?”
“I asked, but like I told you, when Dade don’t want to talk, nobody’s gonna make him.”
“What about the time when Robin and her roommate came out to the house on Happy Hollow Road did Dade act as if he was attracted to Robin?”
“I don’t know,” Harris answers.
“I was so busy answering questions her roommate was asking, I hardly noticed her.”
“So if Dade tried to kiss Robin back in the kitchen that afternoon, you didn’t see it?” Binkie asks, his voice be ginning to boom like shots from a cannon.
“Naw,” Harris says, looking genuinely puzzled.
“He didn’t tell me he tried to kiss her.”
Binkie has surely interviewed the others who were there that afternoon and found nothing useful.
“So as far as you know from all you saw or heard, there was nothing in either the behavior or actual words of either Dade or Robin to suggest they were more than friends who worked together in class?”
“Not that I could tell,” Harris says calmly.
“No more questions, Your Honor.”
I lean over and tell Dade he is next.
“Just take your time and remember to think about your answers.”
I stand up and tell the judge, “I call Dade Cunningham.”
Dade turns to look at Lucy, whose forced smile can’t be fooling him. Everyone in the courtroom seems to have drawn to the edge of their seats. He knows it has all come down to him.
Harris’s nervousness has infected Dade, and judging from his answers to some easy biographical questions, it will take a while to settle him down. His voice is tight and raspy as I repeatedly have to ask him to speak up. He momentarily forgets whether the family store is in the city limits of Hughes, and I have to correct him.
Wooden-faced, he sits pinned against the witness chair straining to give the most basic information. Finally, I decide to change my approach and simply ask him, “Dade, did you rape Robin Perry?”
At this direct question, his face becomes expressive and alive as he yells back at me, “No! I didn’t! She wanted it! I was just there to practice on my speech for class!”
This emotional outburst has dynamited an internal log jam, and I wish I had made this my first question.
“Just tell the jury what happened that night.”
Dade repeats the story that I have heard half a dozen times, but now there is passion in his face, and for the first time since he told me that afternoon in the motel I find he is believable. Robin was the aggressor. It was her idea to get in the shower; she washed him and told him to wash her.
“I didn’t even bring protection,” he volunteers.
“We were just friends up until that night.”
“Why did you think you were just friends, Dade?” I ask, willing him to answer.
For a moment he looks directly at his mother and then drops his eyes. His voice low, he says, “I had tried to kiss her in the kitchen that time she and her roommate came over to Eddie’s house last spring. She’s lying when she said I didn’t. She stopped me and said she was gonna leave if I tried to do that again. After that, we didn’t say much until all of a sudden she got friendly again in the fall. After about a month she started talking to me, and we began working together again like we had before. But I wouldn’t have touched her if she hadn’t wanted it.”
Delighted that he has not mumbled his way through an answer, I ask, “Had you been drinking that night?”
Dade grimaces but answers, “I stopped at a bar and had a couple of beers before I got there.”
“Had she been drinking?” I ask.
“I thought I smelled wine,” Dade says, “but I’m not sure.”
“How many times did you have intercourse with her?”
“Just once. She got up and left real quick.”
“Did you threaten her in any way?”
“No!” Dade says defiantly.
“Did you hurt her in any way?”
“She acted like she liked it okay,” Dade says.
“Naw, I didn’t hurt her.”
“Then why did she leave so quickly?” I ask, knowing Binkie will hit hard here.
“She didn’t say,” Dade says, his voice sullen for the first time.
“What did you do afterward?” I ask.
In an assertive, almost strident voice he tells the jury that he drove back to Darby Hall and went to his room.
When Harris came by later, he told him that he’d had sex with Robin but didn’t give him any details and went on to bed that night around midnight after he finished studying.
I get him to go back and fill in some details, but I got what I wanted with that one impassioned denial. He will have to hold up on crossexamination. There will be little I can do to protect him.
Binkie goes after him hard. Standing beside the podium with his feet planted apart, Binkie asks, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Now, correct me if I am wrong, but the story you’re asking this jury to believe is that after this voluntary sex act Robin Perry was so eager to have was over, both of you became deaf mutes and didn’t say a word, is that right?”
Dade’s tone, as I had feared, immediately becomes defensive
