Daddy lowered the newspaper. “I eat prosecutors for breakfast, insurance companies for lunch, and government agencies for supper.”
Jimmy gave Daddy a puzzled look. “I like bacon and eggs.”
Mama placed four slices of bacon on a plate beside a mound of fluffy eggs. Daddy had a single piece of bacon and a smaller portion of eggs.
“Lawyers' helpers don't have to worry about cholesterol,” he grunted.
Jimmy sat at the table and methodically ate his breakfast. Daddy glanced at his watch.
“Hurry, so you can brush your teeth. We need to leave in a few minutes. I have a hearing at nine o'clock in front of Judge Robinson.”
Jimmy ate faster, then ran upstairs and brushed his teeth. He coated the toothbrush with so much toothpaste that in a few seconds the foam spilled from the corners of his mouth and made him look like a rabid dog. He carefully kept his face over the sink. Mama called upstairs.
“Rinse out your mouth! It's time to go!”
Jimmy splashed water on his face and into his mouth. He pulled his lips away from his teeth and inspected his work. Mama and Daddy were waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs.
“You're only going to be at the office until eleven o'clock,” Mama said. “I'll pick you up, and we'll make a few stops before coming home to eat lunch. You'll spend the rest of the afternoon with me.”
“What about Grandpa?” Jimmy asked. “I didn't get to see him this weekend because he was sick.”
“It's time to go,” Daddy said. “You can sort out the rest of the day later.”
Mama hugged Jimmy, holding him longer than she did when he left for school.
Jimmy followed Daddy out the door. The June air was cool and the grass damp. By late July there wouldn't be enough moisture in the air to spare for dew. They rode in silence. Jimmy glanced over at Daddy several times. They parked in the spot marked “Reserved for James Lee Mitchell, Esq.”
D
ADDY'S OFFICE WAS IN A HOUSE ONCE OWNED BY THE GRAND
mother of a local surgeon. Two blocks from the courthouse, the one-story brick house had an archway over the front door. Daddy claimed it was in better condition than when it was first built. Mama especially liked the pretty yard and said it was the nicest law office in Piney Grove.
To reach the front door, Jimmy carefully stepped from one paving stone to the next. Daddy glanced back at him.
“You can't be looking down if you want to work for me.”
“I was checking for weeds.”
Jimmy, hopping on one foot,
hit the center of three more pavers before reaching the front door.
In the room where people waited to see Daddy, fancy chairs sat in front of a fireplace that could be turned on with a switch. Pictures in thick frames of men on horseback with dogs hung on the walls. Jimmy's favorite picture was of a pack of dogs running beside some horsemen after a red fox that was climbing a wall in the far distance.
A lady who worked for Daddy sat at a shiny wooden desk. A fancy red rug covered the center of the wooden floor. Daddy stood beside the lady's desk and flipped through a stack of pink papers.
“I have to go to court in a couple of minutes,” he said to her. “Call David Gallegly and tell him the closing on his new building has been changed to Wednesday at three o'clock. Warn Bryce Thomas that the insurance company may hire a private investigator to spy on him and not to be doing anything inconsistent with the doctor's recommendations.”
Daddy glanced up and saw the lady staring at Jimmy.
“Oh, yeah,” Daddy continued. “You know my son, Jimmy. He is going to help us this morning. You and Delores need to find something for him to do until I return from the courthouse. My hearing shouldn't take more than half an hour.”
Daddy left the room and went into his office. Jimmy stood in the middle of the red carpet. The pretty lady with yellow hair gave him a little smile. She'd been working for Daddy for six months. Jimmy had met her briefly a couple of times when Mama brought him by, but he couldn't remember her name.
“Hi, Jimmy,” she said. “I'm Kate.”
“Hi,” he responded.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
Before Jimmy could answer, Daddy reentered the room. He had his briefcase.
“Jimmy can do more than you might think. Just make sure you show him specifically what you want him to do, and check on him.”
“Yes, Mr. Mitchell.”
The front door closed behind Daddy.
“We have coffee, water, soft drinks,” Kate said. “But I guess you don't drink coffee, do you?”
“No, ma'am. I'm not thirsty.”
“You don't have to call me ma'am.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Kate laughed. It was a friendly sound. She stood up. She was short like Mama but skinnier. Her straight hair fell to her shoulders.
“Do you know Delores?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
“Let's ask her if she has a project for you.”
Daddy relied on Delores Smythe for everything except telling him what to say in court. She'd been his secretary since before he met Mama. She didn't have a husband, but she had three cats. Jimmy didn't know how old she was, but Mama said Delores had reached the place in life where she never got any older.
Jimmy and Kate went into a small office across the hall from Daddy's big office. Small paintings of her three cats hung behind Delores's desk, and photographs of the cats, singly and together, surrounded her work area. Delores was wearing a white blouse with a bright yellow scarf around her neck. Reading glasses hung from a chain that disappeared under the scarf. She looked up when they entered the room and removed earphones from her ears.
“Jimmy,” she said in surprise. “Is your mother sick?”
“No, ma'am.”
“I haven't seen you since Christmas. You're getting taller and taller.”
Jimmy wasn't aware of this, but he'd heard similar comments from several people.
“Yes, ma'am.”
Jimmy glanced at the pictures of the cats.
“How is your dog doing?” Delores asked. “Buster, isn't it?”
“Buster is the best dog in the whole world,” Jimmy answered. “He'd like to play with your cats if you want to bring them over to the house sometime.”
“That's probably not a good idea. My babies spend most of their time indoors.” Delores picked up a photograph of a brown tabby. “Do you remember this one?”
Jimmy squinted at the picture. He'd met the cats several times when Daddy dropped work papers off at Delores's house. All three cats walked around on tiptoe with their backs arched when strangers visited and didn't reveal enough about their personalities to make a name stick in his memory.
“No, ma'am.”
“This is Otto,” Delores replied. She reached for a large photo in a silver frame of a fawn-colored Siamese and a long-haired white Persian lying together on a fancy green pillow and showed it to him. “And here are Maureen and Celine.”
Jimmy looked at the cats. He couldn't understand cats. They didn't seem to care about anything. Except in storybooks, Jimmy had never known a cat to join in an adventure like Buster's trips with him to Grandpa's house.
“Pretty cats,” he managed.
“Doesn't Jimmy have the best manners?” Kate interjected. “He even calls me âma'am,' and I'm barely out of high school. He's going to help us this morning.”
“Help us do what?” Delores asked.
“Work here at the office.”
“What does Lee want him to do?”
“That's up to us,” Kate responded. “Uh, to you.”
The phone rang, and Kate returned to the reception area. Delores tilted her head to the side and put the end of her glasses to her lips.
“So this isn't a fun visit to your daddy's office?”
“No, ma'am. The other night at supper Daddy said he needed help, and I told him I'm a good worker. Mama thinks it would be good for me to spend time at the office so Daddy and I can do things together.”
Delores raised her eyebrows. “Jimmy, I've never heard you put that many words together in your whole life. I guess you're growing up in more ways than inches. What would you like to do? Did you talk with your daddy about it?”
“No, ma'am, but I'm good at pulling weeds from the garden. I can vacuum the floor, put dishes in the dishwasherâ”
“Hold on. That's what you do with your mother, but it gives me an idea.”
Delores pointed to a large white box in the corner of her office.
“I was going to ask Kate to organize the papers in that box, but it might be something you can handle. Do you know the months of the year in correct order?”
Jimmy gave her a puzzled look.
“You know, January, February, March.” Delores stopped and waited.
Jimmy continued the sequence. “April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.”
“Good enough. Bring that box into the conference room.”
Jimmy picked up the heavy box and followed Delores to the rear of the office.
“Is that box too heavy for you?” she asked.
“No, ma'am. I'm getting stronger every day.”
At the end of the hall they entered a rectangular area that had once been a sunroom. Solid walls had been added, but two skylights remained. In the middle of the room was a glass table surrounded by six chairs.
“Put the box on the table,” Delores said.
Delores took out a stack of letters and documents. She picked up a letter
and pointed to the top of the sheet.
“Read this,” she said.
“October 8, 2004.”
“Good.”
She selected several other sheets, and Jimmy correctly identified the date.
“Now, put these five letters in order beginning with the oldest one on the bottom.”
Jimmy stared at the letters for several seconds before shaking his head. “I don't understand.”
Delores placed all five letters on the table. “Which one was written first?”
“I don't know. I wasn't there.”
Delores didn't get upset. “You don't have to be there to know when a letter was written. That's why the date is at the top. Which comes first every year, your birthday or your mama's birthday?”
“My birthday.”
“Is July before December?”
Jimmy didn't answer but glanced at the letters. “So this letter with January on top is before the one with May on top.”
“That's right. It's older. But you have to look at the year, not just the month. This is an old case that has information in it from several years ago. There are letters in this box written in 1998.”
Overwhelmed, Jimmy backed away from the table. “I can't do this. But please don't tell Daddy. Maybe I could work in the yard? I'm a good weed-puller.”
“Don't give up so easily.”
Delores took out a pen and wrote a different year on several yellow Post-it notes. She stuck the notes in a horizontal row across the glass table.
“First, all I want you to do is look at the year on each letter. Put the letter in front of the correct date. After that's done, we will talk about the months. Do you understand?”
Jimmy nodded. “I think so.”
Delores took out a thick stack of papers. “Let me watch you do it.”
Jimmy looked at each sheet for several seconds before placing it on the table. Delores watched without comment. After he'd done twenty, she touched him on the arm.
“You haven't made any mistakes. I'm going back to my desk. Let me know when you've sorted every letter in the box. If you have a question about one, set it aside and we'll talk about it later.”
To Daddy, the correspondence told a fascinating story of corporate intrigue and sophisticated financial fraud, but Jimmy stayed focused on the year listed at the top of each sheet, reviewing the data with computerlike detachment. Within an hour, he had several neat piles of letters on the table. He went into Delores's office.
“I'm done,” he announced.
Delores looked at her watch. “Your daddy should have been back from court by now. I'll come check your work.”
They returned to the conference room, and after quickly flipping through the letters, Delores expressed her satisfaction.
“Now, sort them by day and month, and then you canâ”
Jimmy's puzzled expression stopped her.
“Let's back up,” she said. “We'll keep it simple.”
Delores made notes for each month of the year and stuck them to the table. By the time she finished, Jimmy was nodding his head.
“I know what to do. This time I look at the month.”
“Correct. But don't go to the next year until we sort them by day.”
The work went slower. Jimmy walked up and down the table putting sheets of paper under the right months. Working for Daddy was more fun than he'd imagined. He finished the first year and ran down the hall to get Delores. She returned and made thirty-one stickers for the days of the month. She watched while he completed January and placed it to the side in a neat stack.
“Do the same thing for each month, and then for each year. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
By 10:00 a.m., Jimmy had organized all the papers in the box by year, month, and date. He was straightening up the stacks for the final year when Daddy came to the door of the conference room.
“I'll be back in a minute and give you something to do,” he said hurriedly. “I have to take an important phone call.”
“Yes, sir,” Jimmy replied, glancing up from his work.
Jimmy finished and then got Delores. She surveyed the neat stacks of documents, checked several for accuracy, and pronounced her blessing.
“Good job. This is a lot more help to your daddy than pulling weeds. There is another box containing pleadings filed in the case. Let's get it, and I'll show you what to do.”
By the time Daddy returned to the conference room, Jimmy had started his second project.