A Death in Live Oak

by James Grippando

  “I know you did. But—come on, Leroy. Oklahoma was different.”

  Highsmith popped from his chair. “Damn it, Dick. I’ve been hearing that all my life. ‘This is an isolated incident.’ ‘This is just one bad apple.’ ‘The boy said he was sorry.’”

  “You’re talking as if I did nothing.”

  “You did worse than nothing.”

  “How can you say that? The university expelled Mark Towson.”

  “And he’ll probably enroll in the Ivy League next fall. We’re talking about systemic racism. Expelling one student changes nothing. The system survives. Worse, the system is told—yet again—that it can’t be beat.”

  “I don’t accept your premise, Leroy. There is no systemic racism at this university.”

  Highsmith replied in an even, assured tone. “There is systemic racism at every predominantly white institution in this country.”

  The president locked eyes with his visitor. Highsmith didn’t blink.

  “Well,” said Waterston, slapping his leather desktop. “That’s a debate for another day.” He rose, just in case the slap on the desktop hadn’t sent a clear enough message that the meeting was over.

  Highsmith started toward the door, then stopped and went to the window. In the distance was the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, the big white dome where the Gator basketball team played its home games. O’Connell was a Florida Supreme Court justice for twelve years before he was named president of the university in 1967.

  “You know I’ve never set foot in that arena,” said Highsmith.

  “We just finished a major renovation,” said Waterston. “You should have a look.”

  “I would,” said Highsmith. “If they changed the name to the Virgil Hawkins Center.”

  Hawkins was one of eighty-five black students who applied for admission to the University of Florida between 1945 and 1958. All were rejected. Hawkins took his case all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. Seven justices defied the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education and denied Hawkins’ admission to law school. Then Justice O’Connell concurred in the ruling.

  “Stephen C. changed,” said Waterston. “He became an integrationist.”

  “I’m sure he did,” Highsmith said dryly. “But is that the asterisk you want to follow your legacy?”

  The president had no response.

  “African American students at predominantly white universities see racism everywhere they look, Mr. President. I’m sorry you don’t get that. For a minute there, I thought you did.”

  Highsmith let himself out, closing the door behind him.

  CHAPTER 18

  First thing Friday afternoon, Jack called for a joint defense meeting, lawyers and their clients only. Leonard Oden wanted it on his turf. They met at Robinson Tower.

  Named for Baine’s family, Robinson Tower was a twenty-story private residence directly across the street from the football stadium. The lower fifteen stories were graduate-student housing—a donation from the Robinson family that, reportedly, had greased the bureaucratic wheels for the zoning variance that was required to build the first and only high-rise on University Avenue. The top five floors were for the Robinson family and friends, all “Bull Gators,” the highest honor bestowed on any Gator booster.

  Jack and his client rode the private elevator up to the penthouse and stepped into a veritable Gator sports museum. Shadow boxes on the wall displayed signed jerseys from Heisman Trophy winners Tim Tebow and Steve Spurrier. On a table, lined up one after the other, were more than a dozen autographed helmets from Emmitt Smith, Percy Harvin, and other Gator greats.

  “Baine’s dad uses this place at most five weekends a year for football games,” said Mark. “Can you believe that?”

  Jack would have guessed three, tops. “I can,” he said.

  A butler led them to the dining room, where the other lawyers and their clients were seated around the rectangular table. The décor was of course in the school colors—tacky, unless you were a Gator, but not cheap, even if you were Bill Gates. Jack and Mark greeted the others and took their seats—Jack’s orange, and Mark’s blue.

  Mark looked devastated. His friends looked worried.

  “So, are we next?” asked Baine.

  Jack wasn’t Baine’s lawyer, but Oden seemed equally interested in Jack’s take.

  “Until the final witness, the hearing was all about Mark,” said Jack. “A ‘strange fruit’ cocktail party could put this in the category of collective responsibility.”

  “For the last time,” said Mark, “there was no ‘strange fruit’ cocktail. I was at every party last spring. I had to be. I was president-elect. That drink didn’t exist.”

  “I sure don’t remember it,” said Cooper. “I don’t even remember having a black bartender.”

  “Neither do I,” said Mark. “I can’t understand why, but Brandon Wall is lying.”

  Someone in the room was conspicuously silent.

  “Baine?” asked Jack. “What do you say?”

  Baine glanced at his friends, then lowered his eyes. “Brandon’s not lying. I pulled the plug on it.”

  Mark leaned forward, grilling him in lawyer-like fashion from across the conference table. “Pulled the plug on what, Baine?”

  “The drink. I was in charge of mixers that night. It wasn’t until Brandon got all pissed off that I found out what ‘strange fruit’ was. He quit. I took three cases of watermelon liqueur back to ABC Liquor and bought what we always buy. Cranberry juice.”

  The room was silent, as if everyone needed a minute.

  “Start at the beginning,” said Jack. “Where did you get the idea for the drink?”

  “Last fall I visited a girl I know at Boston College,” said Baine. “We went to a restaurant in Kendall Square. I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Mark. “Are you going to tell us that a bar in Massachusetts has a drink named for lynching?”

  “No,” said Baine. “And that’s the point. No one ever said it was about lynching. The BC girl I visited is an English-lit major. We went there because the cocktail menu had a ‘banned book’ theme. There was a flaming drink called Fahrenheit 451—that sort of thing. This one was named for a novel from the 1940s called Strange Fruit, by Lillian Smith. It’s about a black man and a white woman. The City of Boston banned it. The U.S. Postal Service refused to ship it until Eleanor Roosevelt got her husband to step in.”

  “I’ve never heard of that book,” said Jack.

  “Me neither,” said Oden. “Just the Billie Holiday song.”

  “And I never heard of the song,” said Baine. “Until Brandon said, ‘Fuck you, I’m not gonna serve drinks and say yessuh at a lynching party.’”

  Mark could no longer sit, pacing as he spoke. “Jack, this has to be a game changer. Can we go back to the conduct committee?”

  “Well, slow down,” said Jack. “Good for Theta Pi Omega that there was never a cocktail that celebrated lynching. But what do you want to do? Go back to the committee and say, ‘Hey, great news, everyone, it turns out that we were just looking for a black guy to mix watermelon martinis?’”

  Mark stopped pacing. He fell back into his chair, glaring at Baine, who fumbled for a response.

  “The book’s about a white woman with a black man, and we don’t have any African American members, so—”

  “So you thought we should have a black guy there,” Mark said, disgusted. “As what? A human prop?”

  “It was a bad idea, okay? But I didn’t know it meant lynching.”

  Jack started to say something, but his client reached over and stopped him. “Except that you did,” said Mark.

  “No, I didn’t,” said Baine. “Not until Brandon told me.”

  “Exactly,” said Mark, “that was last spring.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we’re talking about,” said Baine. “The party last spring.”

  Jack sensed it—his client was on to something—and he let him ru
n with it.

  “No,” said Mark. “What we’re really talking about is the party this fall. The night of September twenty-ninth, when Jamal got the text message. You knew that ‘strange fruit down by the river’ meant a black man hanging from a tree.”

  Baine’s mouth opened, but words didn’t come.

  Mark’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know it. Cooper didn’t know it. You’re the only one, Baine.”

  “Well, shit, Mark. I’m not the only one in the world.”

  Jack watched, amazed by his client’s sudden resurrection from the dead.

  “Did you send that text message to Jamal?” Mark asked, his voice shaking.

  “No-o-o,” Baine said, chuckling. “That’s crazy.”

  “Baine,” said Mark, his voice rising, “did you send the text from my cell?”

  “No!”

  Mark launched from his chair, shouting at the top of his voice, “Tell the truth, Baine! Did you send that fucking message?”

  “No, goddamnit!”

  Mark grabbed a water glass and threw it against the wall, smashing it to pieces. “You’re a fucking liar!”

  Jack restrained his client by the wrists, fearful of what he might do next. Mark shook loose and ran from the dining room. Jack followed. Mark flew past the helmet display and was already in the elevator.

  “Mark!” Jack shouted, but the elevator doors closed.

  Oden caught up with Jack in the foyer. “I think we have a bit of a situation with this joint defense arrangement.”

  “Ya think?” said Jack, and then he hurried to the emergency stairwell to catch up with his client.

  CHAPTER 19

  Cynthia turned off the stove, and the kettle stopped whistling. She poured herself a cup of tea and was about to take a seat at the kitchen table when there was a knock at the front door. Virginia was upstairs cleaning, surely unable to hear the knock over the noisy vacuum cleaner. Cynthia left her steaming cup on the table and went to the living room, smiling pleasantly at the familiar face on the other side of the screen door.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Boalt,” she said.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Porter,” the state attorney said in his most southern voice. She was still a “Mrs.” in Live Oak, even after so many years alone.

  “Come on in,” she said, and the door squeaked as she opened it.

  Boalt thanked her and introduced the young African American man who was with him. “Reggie is my district campaign manager,” said Boalt, and Cynthia took “district” to mean the black neighborhoods. Cynthia was one of the old-timers, one of the few white homeowners left on her street.

  Reggie offered her a red-white-and-blue pamphlet. “Would you like some campaign literature, ma’am?”

  “Oh, you can keep that,” said Cynthia. “Mr. Boalt has already got my vote.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “I was just making some.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Boalt. “But no, thank you.”

  The vacuuming upstairs stopped, and her caretaker called out from the top of the stairway, “Everything all right down there, Miz Cynthia?”

  “Just fine, Virginia,” she hollered back.

  Boalt glanced up the stairway, then back at Cynthia. “Would it be all right if I spoke with Virginia a minute?”

  Cynthia smiled. “Courtin’ every vote, are you?”

  He smiled back, then turned serious. “Some more than usual.”

  She knew exactly what he meant, and it explained why he was going door-to-door in her mostly black neighborhood. “I’m sure Virginia would be happy to talk to you.”

  Cynthia hailed her downstairs and then excused herself, leaving Virginia to talk politics with the state attorney and his “district” manager. Her tea was cold, so she put the kettle back on the stove and waited.

  Reggie seemed like a nice young man. Polite. Confident. Handsome.

  Cynthia got a clean cup and dropped in a fresh tea bag. She thought she heard Reggie’s voice from the living room, but it was just her ears playing tricks on her. The hot water gurgled as she poured, and her mind wandered—back to Reggie for an instant, and then to someone like him. A boy she’d once known. She finished her pour and stared down into the cup.

  Steam rose from the clear black liquid like the morning fog on the Suwannee River.

  Cynthia!” her father shouted, still outside her room. “Open this door!”

  Cindy was in bed, reading. She jumped up, pulled on her robe, and let him in. “Yes, sir?”

  Her father entered quickly and closed the door. He towered over her, and she instinctively stepped back. The soft glow of the bedside lamp only seemed to accentuate the anger in his expression. “Did you not tell that boy he owed you a letter of apology?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, her voice quaking. “I did.”

  He pulled the letter from his coat pocket and nearly shoved it in her face. “Is this what that boy calls an apology?”

  Cindy’s eyes widened with fear. “I . . . I don’t know. It’s what he wrote.”

  Her father crumpled the letter into a ball and hurled it at the trash can in the corner. It bounced off the rim, rolled across the floor, and came to rest beneath her vanity. Then he grabbed her by the wrist so tightly that her eyes welled with tears.

  “I need the truth,” he said sharply. “You swear you told him? You told him you wanted an apology?”

  Cindy wished she’d never taken the job at the dime store, wished that Willie James had never given her that Christmas card, or at least that her father had never found out about it. She’d never seen him so full of hatred, and she’d never been more afraid of him. “Yes, sir. I told him.”

  He released her, and Cindy slid her hand into her robe, massaging away the pain in her wrist. Then he leaned toward her and kissed her forehead.

  “That’s all I needed to know, sweetie.”

  Miz Cynthia?”

  Cynthia looked up from her teacup. Virginia was standing in the doorway.

  “Did Mr. Boalt and his friend leave?”

  “Yes, ma’am. They’re gone.”

  “Could you help me upstairs to my room, Virginia? I’d like to lie down.”

  They walked slowly from the kitchen to the chairlift in the stairwell. It had been years since Cynthia had walked up a flight of stairs, and the electric motor hummed as it carried her to the second floor. Virginia followed her to the bedroom and fluffed the pillows the way Cynthia liked them. Cynthia walked past the bed, however, and continued to the bureau. There were half a dozen old jewelry boxes lined up from one end of the bureau to the other, only one of which actually contained jewelry. Cynthia opened the one of burled walnut. Inside were faded photographs and other mementos. She removed a single sheet of yellowed stationery, laid it on the bureau top, and smoothed out the wrinkles.

  It was dated January 1, 1944, but the rest of the writing was too faded for her aged eyes. She handed it to Virginia and seated herself on the edge of the mattress. “Could you read that to me, please, Virginia?”

  Virginia nodded, but her smile turned to bewilderment as she read aloud.

  “‘Dear Friend. I know you don’t think much of our kind but we don’t hate you all. We want to be your friends but you won’t let us. I wish this was a northern state.’” Virginia’s voice trailed off.

  “Go on,” said Cynthia.

  Virginia drew a breath. “‘I guess you call me fresh. Write an’ tell me what you think of me good or bad. I love your name. I love your voice, for a S.H.—’”

  “Sweetheart,” said Cynthia.

  Virginia swallowed, then continued. “‘For a sweetheart you are my choice.’”

  Virginia put down the letter and smiled. “It’s signed Y.K.W.”

  “You Know Who,” said Cynthia, decoding.

  There was silence in the room. Cynthia didn’t look at her caretaker. Her gaze remained fixed on the old jewelry box on the bureau. Finally, Virginia sat beside her
on the edge of the bed. She laid her hand atop Cynthia’s.

  “Miz Cynthia, did you have a sweetheart in high school? A colored sweetheart?”

  Cynthia was silent. Virginia waited a moment, then tried again.

  “Does ‘You Know Who’ still live in Live Oak?”

  Cynthia drew a breath and then looked at Virginia, her eyes clouded with memories. “Willie James will always live in Live Oak,” she said.

  CHAPTER 20

  Jack caught up with his client in the parking garage below Robinson Tower. Walking was quicker than driving to campus, and they went straight to the Office of the Dean of Students at Peabody Hall. For Jack, it was like stepping into a time warp, reminiscent of the time he and thirty other undergraduates had marched into the dean’s office, barefoot, in protest of a university rule that shoes must be worn to class. Simpler times.

  On this occasion, the dean was equally unimpressed.

  “The decision of the student conduct committee has been affirmed by this office and is final,” said Kravitz. “I’m sorry.”

  “But I didn’t send the text,” said Mark.

  Kravitz’s expression was pleasant but unsympathetic. Jack could only surmise that a mature but impassioned plea from a student like Mark was nothing compared to the tears and outright begging that the dean had endured over the years.

  “Unlike a criminal trial,” the dean said, “the standard of proof in a student conduct hearing is not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. It is much lower. The committee found it more likely than not that you sent the text message, or at the very least you knew who sent it and covered for him. Either is sufficient to support the expulsion.”

  “But there’s new evidence,” said Mark.

  “The time to present evidence has passed. You seem to have forgotten that it was your adviser—your father—who demanded that the hearing be held as soon as possible.”

  “So, that’s your answer? Be careful what you ask for?”

  “Let me,” said Jack, interjecting. Allowing the client to speak for himself, in accordance with the hearing rules, wasn’t moving the ball forward. “Dean, I understand the university has a process. But let’s look at the substance. Brandon Wall never mentioned my client’s name. There is no evidence to connect Mark to the ‘strange fruit’ cocktail.”