The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (43 page)

Steven, who had been glancing between the two of them with a detached amusement, now laughs heartily. “Well! I don't remember playing instructor to anyone since I taught my younger brother how to mix wine and beer without bringing it back up.” He snaps open his briefcase, taking out a file. Bertie enters, setting the ice water in front of him and replacing the coffeepot. “Then let this unstoppable legal team get right down to the business of freeing those fast little pickaninnies!”

“More petits fours?” asks Bertie, holding up the near empty dish. Diana stares at her agape, then turns to Eliot, who replies.

“No thank you.”

The maid turns to the white man.

“Oh none for me. Trying to keep the weight down!” as he pats his faintly round tummy. Bertie leaves. Steven peruses a newspaper clipping. “Now. Between what Diana told me over the phone and according to the
Red Bank Sentinel,
our local bulletin of record, the incident occurred on Thursday the 31st of March, two weeks ago today, and the boys were given their disposition orders on—” He has looked up and is surprised to see the others staring at him. “Yes?”

“Steven!” Diana laughs. Now Steven stares. “‘
Pickaninnies'?
”

Steven appears confused, then turns to Eliot. “Well what do
you
call them?”

“Eliot.” Diana takes a breath. “Steven Netherton is a man of the South. As such, there are certain words. They may seem insensitive to you, but down here. They are often regarded, by
some,
as neutral—”

“I would ask that you
not
speak for me, Diana.”

“Steven, you must see from Eliot's point of view—”

“I am a lawyer. I believe after practicing law in the state of Georgia for three years I have at least earned the right to defend myself in a drawing room conversation.”

“Look,” says Eliot.

“What's wrong with ‘pickaninny'? Pickaninnies are cute little darkies.”

“
Steven—
”

“Oh can it, Diana, I did not just emerge from a cave. I
know
the preferred term is ‘colored.' No,
knee-grow.
The nicest word I grew up saying was ‘Nigra,' which will be the same with the appellate judges we are to face in the capital, and
believe me
the good people of Atlanta will not be so welcoming given the entire state of Georgia has been indicted by the international press, the constituency demanding those uppity little boys
stay
locked up at
least
until adulthood. And they
are
the constituency, Georgia appellate judges
are
elected, and if they want to get
re
-elected they very well may find it expedient to appease the cracker masses. If I'm going to be a part of this, I will not be made to feel uncomfortable every time I open my mouth in a private colloquy with the two of you. I
could
train myself to say what's proper in Mr. Campbell's presence, but quite frankly we don't have time for that and, more to the point, those little boys don't have time for that. If either of you are disturbed by my manner of expression, please speak now and I will gladly leave. Go find yourself a Northern white liberal attorney, yes, we'll see how far
that
gets you. With the sensationalism of this case, we will undoubtedly be called upon to make statements to the press. The men and women who'll stand outside the courtroom waiting for those accounts, or who will read about them in the paper the next day. I know all those white folks, if not personally then let's say we are all of a kindred spirit, and I can guarantee you they will
not
be impressed if I start putting on airs, speaking in all the Yankee-sanctioned vernacular, and neither will our panel of judges who are merely a J.D. removed from the horde. And perhaps I should reiterate here, Cousin Diana, that you and I are kin
only
through marriage. Make no mistake: my lineage is one hundred percent Protestant. And the men of the appellate court we need to persuade and I are of like blood and like minds and you may as well know now that, for the most part, I agree with them.
Our common grievances regarding all the changes suddenly being thrust upon our states. I am
very
conflicted on the subject of school integration, and I am categorically opposed to miscegenation. But to send children
this
small to the youth penal colony.
Well it's absurd. Esteemed fellow members of our potential legal team, I would submit that I, if any of us, would have the trust of those judges, enough that they may actually also come round to seeing the absurdity of it all. But! Whether or not those judges see my name on the briefs. Up to you.” And with one long, luxurious swallow Steven downs the ice water, then sets the glass on the table. Diana looks to Eliot. Her hand clutches her knee, white knuckles.

Eliot gazes at Steven's empty glass, then looks up at him. “I want to petition for a
habeas
.”

Steven stares at Eliot, stunned. Then throws his head back, guffawing. “Did I say Mr. Marshall would be the first Negro to sit on our Supreme Court? I do believe I am in the presence of one who will give him a run for his money!”

“I say this because—”

“Oh you needn't explain, Mr. Campbell.
Eliot.
I follow your line of thinking to the letter and I am all for it. The Great Writ! Why not?” He laughs again, incredulous and merry.

“Then?” They turn to Diana, who continues: “We are a team?”

Eliot studies Steven, considering it all one last time. Then nods. Steven's eyes remain fixed on Eliot. “It appears to have thus been decided, Cousin Diana.”

Diana jumps up, clapping her hands. “Now,” Steven begins, flipping through the pages in the file as Bertie appears behind him in the entry, “the way the judge will see it is niggers gotta know from the start the way to be around white women, which if at all possible is
not
to be around white women. A lesson well learned, but who would expect children so young to understand the proper societal rules yet?”

“More ice water?” Bertie asks.

Steven smiles. “I think I have sufficiently quenched my thirst in that department, thank you. However, I believe I
will
have that coffee after all. And perhaps you might squirt a bit of gin into it?”

 

9

Eliot gazes at Andi's small law library. He has a vague memory of seeing her running around this morning, pulling out her hair curlers and putting on a girdle (something he never understood in shapely women, let alone one as slim as Andi). After he heard the door close he had given his mother a quick call, catching her before church, and then gotten back under the covers for a couple of hours. When his eyes opened again at 10:38, he already felt tardy about starting his workday and dragged his ass off the mattress. It would be well into the afternoon before Andi returned. The trips he's made South over the past month coupled with her studies have considerably abbreviated their hours together.

He had expected resistance to the
habeas
that would prompt his legal team to appeal to a higher court, so he was rather stunned when the initial motion was granted a little more than a week ago. It's still not entirely clear when the hearing will take place, but he and his partners are hopeful a date will be set in the coming days. Ironically, after his argument to Didi that the accelerated
habeas
process would result in the children's earlier release, he (and his associates, he presumes) is apprehensive about an imminently approaching deadline that might catch them unprepared.

Didi had been right about Diana Rubin. Smart and creative, never shying away from hard work while making it clear to her male partners she would undertake no more of the tedious tasks than they: she was nobody's secretary. Steven Netherton was another matter. As would be expected with a lush, his punctuality when they were introduced at Diana's turned out to be an anomaly. He and Eliot nearly came to blows after a meeting with the children's parents when Steven had arrived tipsy and insisted on sipping a rum and Coke throughout the conference. On the other hand, his work was solid, and he spoke so well to the press in his typical faintly inebriated state that Eliot had declined from suggesting he ever face them sober.

He sits on the couch and snaps open his briefcase. The pages he had photocopied from
The Code of Georgia of 1933,
the most recent volume, pertain to adult crime, but since Max's and Jordan's alleged transgressions have actually been named, the legal team will make use of the Superior Court designations. Regarding “assault,” his time in Red Bank has already clarified that there certainly is something to Didi's assertion that locals equate seven-year-old interracial kissing with rape.

CHAPTER 26-14. ASSAULT AND BATTERY.

26-1401.
(
95
P. C.
)
DEFINITION OF ASSAULT
.
—An assault is an attempt to commit a violent injury on the person of another.

26-1404.
(
98
P. C.
)
ASSAULT WITH ATTEMPT TO RAPE
.
—An assault with intent to commit a rape shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor more than 20 years.

CHAPTER 26-61. LEWDNESS; LEWD HOUSES;
DISORDERLY HOUSES; OPIUM JOINTS;
AND KEEPING OPEN TIPPLING HOUSES
ON THE SABBATH.

26-6101.
(
381
P. C.
)
LEWDNESS AND PUBLIC INDECENCY
.
—Any person who shall be guilty of open lewdness or any notorious act of public indecency tending to debauch the morals shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

CHAPTER 26-60. SEDUCTION.

26-6001.
(
378
P.
C.
)
DEFINITION AND PUNISHMENT
.
—Any person who shall, by persuasion and promises of marriage or other false and fraudulent means, seduce a virtuous unmarried female and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces and allow him to have carnal knowledge of her, shall be punished by imprisonment and labor in the penitentiary for not less than two nor more than 20 years.

He sighs. Even in the warped Dixie viewpoint, how could such child's play be defined as “carnal knowledge”? The charges brought against the little boys are a boldface fiction, and Eliot and his team will now have to contribute to that farce, active participants in the Sisyphean task of proving red is red to men determined to believe it is green.

He's briefly startled by the envelope he had absently tossed into his attaché yesterday, and now opens it. A wedding announcement. He had not been in touch with the bride and groom since their college days, both from rich families, which he deduces provided for them to invite everyone and his brother to their nuptials. He has no intention of paying for a bus to Detroit plus hotel fare to celebrate the marriage of two people he no longer knows, and as for a gift, he wonders if anything within his paltry means could be regarded by the couple as other than well-meaning kitsch. He'd send a card. By rumor, Eliot has heard tell of just about everyone with whom he went to school tying the knot. He's twenty-five, high time to be starting a family himself, yet he doesn't feel ready. Perhaps Andi's right when she condescends to him about his age.

Well who
would
he marry? The four months he had been with her had pretty much set a record in stamina after his handful of fleeting relationships in college and law school. But would she feel embarrassed to call someone so much younger “husband”? When he had brought up the weekend away in Gary, she appeared to have liked the idea, but every time he tried to nail her on a date she seemed to put him off.

Is he ashamed of
her?
In truth, he doesn't know. He would like children someday. He knows little about female biology but is aware she still undergoes a regular menstrual cycle and that would seem to be enough. He tries to imagine bringing her home to meet his family, but finds it impossible to separate his own emotions from the fact that she would likely feel so awkward as to infect everyone with her discomfort.

He realizes he is ravenous. There's little in the fridge and he has a craving, so he grabs his jacket and heads out the door. On the landing below he jumps wildly, jolted by the sudden ferocious barking from the other side of the closed door. The notorious third-floor German shepherd. Eliot can almost
hear
the saliva running from the canine's deranged jowls. Its owner had bizarrely built an eyehole at the dog's level, something Eliot cannot fathom since the dumb mutt must hear and smell all anyway. “German police dogs,” he remembers Aunt Beck would call them, and down South he recently had had a brief confrontation with one that clarified for him precisely how justified was the nomenclature. He gallops down the remaining flights, out into the sunshine.

When Eliot was eight and Dwight fourteen, their father brought home a six-week-old collie mix. Eliot made his disinterest decidedly apparent. Dwight on the other hand was instantly enraptured, and he who had been intended to be “the boys' dog,” or more generally “the family dog,” quickly became “Dwight's dog.” The duo would gleefully wrestle all over the living room floor, and some of these playtimes Eliot would glare, on the tip of his tongue
I sure wish I could have Parker to do that with
or
I sincerely hope what happened to Parker never happens to Rex
and Dwight, as if he could read his younger brother's mind, would at once cease the roughhousing and sheepishly race the dog out the back door, his eyes never meeting Eliot's. Dwight had taken Rex with him to Lewis, and when the animal died two years ago, his companion was so distraught their mother made a special trip, for the second time in her life comforting a son grieving the loss of a pet.

At the market he buys eggs, Swiss cheese, peppers, onions. He considers picking up a box of dried pasta and the makings of a good sauce, yet knows the likelihood of her letting him stay for dinner on Sunday, a crucial studying day, is slim to none. He pays for the omelet ingredients.

Eliot leisurely strolls back to the apartment in the spring warmth. He had ordered a dozen roses for his mother which arrived yesterday. When she returns from church, Dwight will undoubtedly be there to hand her his own bouquet in person. She doesn't especially like going out to restaurants so he would bring dinner to warm up, and Dwight is not a bad cook.

Eliot squints into the sun. It isn't just about Parker, his differences with his brother. Why was it that growing up Dwight only seemed to strike up friendships with white boys? And the white-boy thing continued into adulthood, secrets Eliot had gleaned with absolutely no interest in knowing the details of.

“Just catch the key!”

A man's head sticks out of a top-floor window of Andi's building. At the entrance stands a young white woman with short brown hair, staring up at him.

“But what if I miss it?” Her face all worry.

Now the man notices Eliot. “Hey! You mind lettin my girlfriend in?” Eliot has seen him before. Obese, blondish, mid-thirties. The girl looks twenty tops.

“Sure.” Eliot puts his key into the door. She walks in.

“Thanks.”

Eliot nods.

“I'm not his girlfriend. I don't know why he said that.” She glances up the stairs. “I just came to look at the apartment. I called the landlord from the phone booth, said he's on his way over but if I wanted the guy could let me in till he gets here.” She leans in, whispering. “I think he's getting evicted.”

Eliot looks up, as if he could see the sixth floor from the first.

“You like living here?”

“I don't. Live here. My girlfriend does.” And he inadvertently shudders, having rarely uttered “my girfriend” before and never with respect to Andi.

“Oh.”

“Her apartment's nice.”

“Yeah?”

“I guess they're all alike. The neighborhood's nice.”

“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” And she starts to run up the stairs.

“Hey!”

She turns back around.

“You okay?”

She smiles. “Thanks. Yeah, I'm not fool enough to go in there alone with my ‘boyfriend.' But the landlord said there's a nice view from the corridor window up there.” Nice view of the empty lot across the street, Eliot thinks, but she is up the stairs before he can say anything else. He waits, listening to be certain she doesn't knock on the nut's door after all. The outside door opens, and he recognizes the brawny sandy-haired Scottish immigrant landlord. The man remembers Eliot and greets him before heading up, and when Eliot hears a murmuring of the Scot's and the young woman's voices, he lets go of his concern for the girl and ascends the steps himself. He wonders whether the rumor regarding the sixth-floor tenant's eviction may be true, though it would seem odd given his compliance in opening his home to a potential replacement. Eliot had seen him once or twice racing out the building as he and Andi were coming in. She seemed to find him a civil if not especially friendly neighbor.

AARGH GARR RARR RARR

Eliot had completely forgotten about the fleabag. He jumps backwards, grabbing the banister to prevent serious injury, but the carton of eggs falls out of the bag. He snatches up the mess and, blinded by fury and humiliation, runs up the last flight to the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

There's one slice of bread left: the heel. He sautés an open-faced cheese sandwich with the vegetables. Seated on the couch with his plate, he eats his breakfast while skimming through Andi's
Indianapolis Recorder,
the Negro paper. Afterward he takes out his briefcase to catch up on some divorce cases. As he opens the first file, it hits him. When that white girl, that stranger, had walked past, when the landlord walked past, the Terrorist of the Third Floor hadn't uttered a sound. What the hell?

Two hours later, a key jiggles in the lock. Eliot, sitting on the floor, his back against the couch and papers spread all over the coffee table, looks up to see her. Aqua skirt suit and matching gloves and pillbox hat. She carries a paper bag of groceries, a loaf of bread sticking from the top.

“How was it?”

Andi kicks off her shoes. “Good music. I was touched by the sermon. I should go more often.”

“Than once a year.”

“If they kept track, they probably wouldn't know what to make of me. They expect the tourists who only show their faces Easter Sunday, but I'm the oddball who makes her annual appearance on Mother's Day.”

The prospect of him accompanying her was never raised. Despite the fact that he hadn't criticized her decision to attend services, it seemed she'd intuitively sussed out his lack of interest. He didn't know if he could be properly called atheist or even agnostic, given that he just didn't think much about the existence of a Supreme Being nor lack thereof. When he was eighteen “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance and P.L. 84-140 enacted, demanding “In God We Trust” be printed on all U.S. currency, but by then law school had long been in his sights, all
his
trust placed in the U.S. Constitution wherein the word “God” never appears.

She smiles, leaning over to him, and they kiss. “You had breakfast?” Walking into the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

“Then I guess this'll be lunch.” She glances at the clock. “Jesus! Damn Methodist Negroes hold you all day.”

“The Baptists I grew up with weren't any better.”

“We can eat in a half-hour, then I kick you out.” She starts taking the groceries, including a dozen eggs, out of the bag.

“If I'm going, I'd rather you fed my libido than my belly.”

“Hmm.”

“Seriously. I can always pick up something on the street to satisfy my stomach.”

“Your libido too.”

He smiles.

After sex, she lies on her back and tells him about her tenth-grade basketball try-outs back in Iowa, one of the few school systems in the nation supporting girls in the sport, even to the tune of a celebrated high school state tournament. She and another colored girl had made the most free throws as well as garnered the most points in active play, yet neither was chosen for the team. Hoping to prevent a scene, she had said nothing to her mother but the other girl, Gail, told
her
mother, who called Andi's mother, and the next afternoon both Negro mothers were sitting with their daughters in the locker room office opposite the phys ed teacher slash coach. The stocky woman with short auburn hair asserted that while points are a quantitative assessment of a player's performance, other considerations were also factored in: attitude, being a team player. The mothers were well aware that these abstractions were a pile of crap, but the principal defended the coach. The mothers' tempers seethed for a year until the girls were juniors and their mothers and about one hundred other Negro parents, some who had only sons, showed up for girls' basketball tryouts. The principal was summoned, as if this sudden interest by adults in their children was tantamount to some hostile revolutionary coup. He entered the gym, his face a stunning shade of crimson, and ultimately strong-armed the coach into putting both Negro girls on the team. But the victory was bittersweet. Despite their stalwart athleticism, the coach screamed at Andi and Gail constantly, often forcing them to do extra laps, sometimes benching them for entire games even when such a decision sabotaged the victory. The frustrated white girls fluctuated in targeting their anger, at the coach one day, at their Negro teammates the next. The pressure to perform and to perform extraordinarily under such high-stress circumstances finally defeated Andi, and she refused to try out her senior year, she and her mother having a screaming match over the pronouncement. The principal threatened to fire the coach if her antics led to another losing season, and Gail wound up traveling with the team to win the state tournament. Andi did not even attend the games as a fan, had looked at the team's picture in the local paper without comment, each beaming player holding a trophy, Gail grinning third from the right. It was not until graduation, when the shocker of the ceremony was a black girl's citation as most valuable girl athlete—Gail, of course, the one who had
not
quit—that Andi could feel her hands shaking, and when the seemingly endless closing exercises finally reached their conclusion, and while all the other students were tossing their caps into the air, she had sprinted to the bathroom and sat in the corner alone, bawling for a half-hour straight.