Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion

by Grif Stockley

  “It is a question of our values as human beings. A woman cries that she has been raped, and no one at the school takes her seriously. But we take football seriously at this school and we take basketball seriously at this school, and if anything jeopardizes the well-being of those sports, another part of the administration acts very quickly, indeed. The first official response on this campus that was taken after Robin Perry said she was raped came from the athletics department, which says volumes about what we value at this university

  .. .”

  As she talks, I look in vain for Sarah. She must be here, but it is too dark and crowded to see her. I wonder if she is going to speak. Surely not. On the other hand, who better than a recent convert? Suddenly, Robin Perry is being introduced, and the crowd, which had been standing in rapt attention, bursts into applause. “… enormous amount of courage for her to be here tonight and come forward publicly,” Paula Crawford is saying. I can’t see anyone on the stage, and then a tall, blond girl appears on the steps beside Paula. Thin, but obviously attractive even at this distance, she is wearing stone chino pants and one of those classy barn jackets I’ve seen on some of the wealthier-looking white students. Robin has the physical grace of a model. Though Dade has described her as a good speaker, tonight, not unsurprisingly, she seems al most too shy and nervous to do more than nod at the crowd. Finally, she manages to say, “I want to thank everybody for their support. I can’t tell you how many other girls have told me that they have been a victim of date rape since this has occurred. It is a crime that most girls still do not talk about, but it happens much more frequently than we are aware. Thank you for being here” As the crowd claps enthusiastically, Paula whispers into her ear. Robin shakes her head and disappears into the crowd off to the left. Paula resumes talking, and then introduces another girl who begins to talk about rape statistics, and with her droning, whining voice she immediately loses the crowd’s interest. I am worried now that I will be spotted by a reporter I recognize and decide it is time for me to leave.

  Back in my room, I leave a message for Dade on his answering machine that he should bring his friends to Barton’s law office, and I read off his address. He picks up just as I am hanging up. He sounds anxious again, and tells me that he can’t find Eddie Stiles and hasn’t found anything out about Robin Perry that I don’t already know.

  I reassure him that Eddie Stiles is not an essential witness Friday and ask him to keep trying to find out any thing about Robin.

  “How was practice?” I ask, trying to calm him a bit.

  “It was hard to concentrate at first,” he says, “but I got into it.”

  I tell him he will be playing in the Alabama game, which has the desired effect of pepping him up a bit. I wish I could tell him that all he had to worry about was playing football, but I can’t. Somehow, I’m supposed to turn this boy into a lawyer between now and Friday morning. How ridiculous! I’m not even going to try.

  “I

  went to the WAR rally tonight,” I tell him, “and saw Robin for the first time. She’s pretty, all right.”

  “What’d she say?” Dade demands, excited again.

  I wish I hadn’t brought her up, but he will hear about it anyway.

  “Hardly anything,” I say, and then summarize the rally for him.

  “She doesn’t seem the WAR type,” Dade observes.

  “She dresses too good for them.”

  “That’s for sure,” I say, wondering whether there is a way to turn Robin’s appearance against her. Maybe we will simply have to depend on the unconscious reactions of the members of the “J” Board. I can’t imagine any of that group will identify themselves as ardent feminists.

  Then again, probably Robin herself would resist that la bel. Tonight, she didn’t have any trouble convincing her self she was merely a victim, one of many.

  After trying to reassure him, I hang up and attempt to reconstmct exactly what Robin said. Something isn’t jelling. I stare at the unadorned pale green blank wall across from the door. Robin identified with girls who had been “date raped.” According to both her and Dade, it was more like “study rape.” What if both are lying? Dade could be lying because he was warned repeatedly not to become involved with white girls, Robin because she knows what her parents and others would think. But then maybe Robin was merely trying to identify with the girls who had talked to her. I know I’m not going to be able to even scratch the surface of this case before the hearing Friday.

  The phone rings again, and it is Clan, who tells me that after getting permission from their parents, he has contacted a couple of girls inside the Chi Omega House, although getting them to say even one negative word about Robin is impossible.

  “She’s become the patron saint of female rectitude,” Clan explains.

  Thank goodness the trial isn’t Friday. Robin is riding a wave of sympathy that seems unstoppable. I tell Clan about her appearance tonight.

  “The last time anyone clapped for me like that was the night I graduated from high school.”

  “She’s pushing the envelope then,” Clan says.

  “A lot of people don’t like those women’s groups.”

  “Maybe so,” I agree, “but publicly this group isn’t nearly as radical as its leader is in private, according to Sarah. How can anyone not be against rape?”

  “Because they’re picking on the Razorbacks,” Clan points out.

  “That’s a major faux pas in this state, and you know it.”

  “It might be in Little Rock and Pine Bluff,” I concede, “but up here on campus the powers that be have to be more sensitive to the idea that the university is supposed to be more than a sports factory.”

  Clan says melodramatically, “I hate it when we try to put on airs in this state.”

  Since he’s paying for it, I tell him what’s been going on since I last talked to him.

  “Barton’s still a nice guy,” I say, “even if he is filthy rich. He’s letting me use his library as an office when I come up here.”

  Clan moans, “Rich? In trial advocacy, he was terrible.”

  “The guys who make the real money practicing law,” I lament, “wouldn’t know a criminal defendant unless they caught them trying to steal their Rolexes.”

  Clan tells me he will keep trying to find some other girls who know some dirt on Robin but not to get my hopes up.

  “It’s a tight group,” he says.

  “But, of course, a middle-aged male lawyer isn’t many coeds’ idea of their typical confidante.”

  “I need a mole,” I agree.

  “Somebody somewhere surely must dislike Robin even if it’s out of simple jealousy.

  But thanks for trying. By the way, speaking of young women, have you heard from your friend Gina? I keep forgetting I’ve got her dependency-neglect trial the end of next week.”

  “She’s very impressed with you,” Clan coos.

  “She thinks you look like Nick Nolte.”

  She’s impressed with my fee. No wonder I’m poor. I finally get Clan off the line by telling him I have to work. I still want to talk to the woman from the Rape Crisis Center who came to the hospital to go through the process with Robin, but she hasn’t returned my call either. I dial her number but for the second time today talk to her husband, who must be a student. He is evasive about when she will be in but says he will give her my message. Sure he will. People don’t like lawyers. I can understand that.

  I’m not that crazy about them myself. We’re too much like public urinals: an unpleasant necessity sometimes but rarely an uplifting experience. I go to sleep waiting for Coach Carter to call. I’m not sure I want him to be at the hearing. Like everything else about this case I’m doing it could backfire.

  At eleven the next morning (an hour late, I point out) Dade brings into Barton’s office Harris Warford and Tyrone Jones. Harris, especially, is enormous. He must weigh almost three hundred pounds and be six and a half feet tall. I wonder how come he isn’t on the starting
team.

  Dressed in black sweats with Razorback insignia all over them, he looks like a road grader with decals. Tyrone, a defensive back who isn’t even on the second team, naturally isn’t as bulked up, but he is plenty big. Wearing an Oakland Raiders cap over similar black sweats, he has a scowl on his face that looks as if it might be permanent.

  Even though they are obviously friends of Dade, I’d hate to meet these guys in a dark alley.

  “The girls didn’t show up,” Dade explains.

  So much for black women supporting their men.

  “I’d like to talk to at least one of them,” I tell Dade. The “J” Board will figure any team member will give favorable testimony to Dade.

  “Let’s see if we can get them in the same time tomorrow, okay?”

  Dade, who is dressed in jeans and a University of

  Arkansas athletics department sweatshirt, says grimly, “I’ll try.” Poor kid. He’s finding it isn’t easy to rally the troops. I know the feeling.

  We do not have a productive session, but I learn a few things. The main one is that I do not want Tyrone within two miles of the hearing or a jury. He has an attitude problem that couldn’t be hidden even if he had been dead a year. Cocky, arrogant, he must be Carter’s worst nightmare.

  He is from Houston and has the big-city kid’s mentality that “baad” is beautiful, and life is one short beauty contest. Rightly or wrongly, if he were the one on trial, it would take a jury about two seconds to convict him.

  He has everything but a neon sign blinking the word “RAPIST” over his head.

  Harris, on the other hand, turns out to be a big teddy bear, and it is he who gives me the most information about Robin.

  “She acted to me like she kind of liked Dade,” he says, oblivious to my client’s discomfort.

  “At Eddie’s she was pretty quiet while her roommate did all the talking. I remember her smiling a lot.”

  Unfortunately, Harris cannot be more specific, though he is willing to talk at length about the evening they were all together. I wish the girls were here. Doubtless, they would be quite a bit more attuned to any signals Robin might have been generating. I see I should have interviewed Harris out of Dade’s presence. He might remember more if Dade weren’t glowering at him.

  “I would have fucked her, too,” Tyrone volunteers as I usher them out the door about noon.

  “She is one goodlookin’ bitch.”

  Thank you for that poignant observation, Tyrone. This case could definitely be worse. I could have Tyrone for a client. I tell Harris that I might want to use him as a rebuttal witness at the hearing and explain what that means.

  He nods soberly. I like him as much as I dislike Tyrone. I only wish he were normal size. Anybody this big and black has got to be a little scary to the average white juror in Arkansas.

  After I go to lunch with Barton, I decide to pay a visit to the Chi Omega House. Probably neither Robin nor her roommate. Shannon Kennsit, will see me, but what do I have to lose? If this were a civil case, I could take their depositions, but this hearing doesn’t qualify as either. I park in a visitor’s slot near the Administration Building and walk east on Maple, passing the law school.

  I am thankful I didn’t want to be a lawyer right out of undergraduate school, for I would have squandered that money as badly as I wasted the money that my mother spent educating me. For the first time in years, I ask my self if it was as much fun as I have told myself I remembered it. Now it seems more frenzied than anything else.

  What I remember most is always being hungover and late to get somewhere to a class, to a meeting, to some event, because I was too intent upon cramming it all in, including enough alcohol to float a battleship. Was the Peace Corps an escape from all that activity, or was it a refuge from the impoverished emotional existence I thought awaited me if I returned to live in eastern Arkansas?

  As I look across the street at the coeds walking past the sorority houses on the other side of the street, I realize I still don’t know

  the answer. The only conclusive fact I have in my head thirty years later is the knowledge that in a drunken stupor early one morning I lowered my pants and crapped on the steps of the Chi Omega House to protest being dumped by a girl I thought I cared about. I cross the street, deciding to wait another thirty years be fore making my confession.

  I last a total of five minutes at the door before being told in no uncertain terms by the housemother, an attractive, blue-haired woman by the name of Ms. Fitzhugh, that neither Robin nor Shannon will be available to see me. Yet, maybe the word will get around to the other girls: if you hate Robin or Shannon, you can tell your story to Dade Cunningham’s lawyer. The little flurry of activity my presence produced was almost comical. You would have thought Fidel Castro was at the door. I should have said that I was a recruiter from WAR and had come by to pack up Robin and take her on a national protest tour. That would have really upset them. These girls in their stockings and tailored clothes don’t seem ready to storm any barricades. I remain impressed that Paula Crawford was able to persuade Robin to appear at the rally. Maybe she could give me lessons.

  During the next day and a half of trying to prepare for the hearing I encounter several more dry holes: Despite going to her house, I never am able to talk to the girl who volunteers for Rape Crisis. Wednesday night Coach Carter calls back and hems and haws but finally tells me that he can not appear as a character witness for Dade be cause it would “compromise his future neutrality” in the matter. What neutrality, I want to scream at him but don’t. His tone makes it clear

  he has made up his mind (or somebody has made it up for him) and I thank him again for all he has done. Dade, he says, is having some good practices this week and seems ready for the Alabama game. Not as sanguine about the hearing, I decline to reassure him that all is going well in my area.

  Thursday morning only one of the girls from Dade’s party back in the spring at Eddie Stiles’s rented house shows up at Barton’s office and is no help at all. Doris Macy would gladly say that Robin and Shannon raped Dade if I wanted her to, but witnesses as eager as this girl hurt the credibility of an entire case. I remember that she is the one who has been described as a “hanger-on,” and I tell her I will call her if I decide she can help at the hearing

  Thursday afternoon before practice Dade shows me where the incident occurred. Even taking a shortcut, Happy Hollow Road is at least a couple of miles east of the campus. Out Highway 16 on the road to Elkins, Dade directs me to turn off to the left, and soon at the end of the blacktopped street we come upon an ugly yellow frame rectangle that can’t contain more than a thousand square feet. There is no house around us for a hundred yards. To the north are fields and the slopes of Mount Sequoyah. As isolated as a place can be in this developing area, this is a perfect spot for an interracial tryst, but a lot of trouble to go to to find a place to study.

  “I can’t find Eddie anywhere,” Dade apologizes.

  “I’ve tried for two days straight.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, stopping the Blazer in a wide space in a road. This place is so rural that the house even has a well. It is

  boarded up, but still, it’s a nice touch. I say, “Dade, you need to level with me. Had you ever had sex with her before? It’s okay if you did. In fact, it’ll help our case if you did.”

  Stubbornly, Dade shakes his head.

  “This was the first time,” he says.

  “She didn’t fight me or anything.”

  Damn. There has to be more to it than this.

  “You think people are going to believe you each drove out in separate cars three miles to this place to study? Nobody is that dumb.”

  Dade looks off into the woods.

  “I tried to kiss her that evening in the spring, but she didn’t want me to.”

  Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. I ask, “What do you mean she didn’t want you to kiss her? Why’d she come over if she wasn’t interested?”

  �
�That’s what I said!” Dade responds hotly.

  “She and I was off by ourselves in the kitchen getting a beer while the rest of ‘em were in the living room. It pissed me off.

  She said we were jus’ friends, and if I was gonna do stuff like that she was gonna leave. She said she’d come be cause Shannon was such a big fan and wanted to meet me. We went back in the living room, and that was it.

  Both of us was kind of cool the rest of the semester, but like I told you, she started getting real friendly just a week or so before she claimed I raped her.”

  More than ever, I’m convinced Robin changed her mind. This year Dade was a bigger star than ever and still a nice guy. His body obviously hadn’t deteriorated any over the summer, and she thought she would try it out, but started feeling guilty almost immediately. Or maybe it was date rape. People lie to themselves all the time about what they are

  doing and why they are doing it. I go back over his story, but I don’t get much more out of him.

  I just hope I’m not the last person to know what happened that night.

  Thursday night I finally get hold of Sarah and meet her for dinner at a cafe Barton has recommended only a block east of the Ozark.

  “Danny’s” has pictures of Elvis and Marilyn on the walls and plays one after another “The Thrill Is Gone,”

  “Dancin’ in the Street,”

  “The Great Pretender,” and “Bridge over Troubled Waters,” before it seriously nose dives with “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.”

  With the music, black-eyed peas and corn bread on the menu, and peach cobbler for dessert, this is my kind of place. Sarah, ever cautious of good food at a reasonable price, orders a Caesar salad and talks about the WAR rally after I explain I was there, too.

  “You should have stayed around to the end to say hello. I would have introduced you to Paula. She’d like to talk to you.”

  I bet she would. Women seem to love to try to straighten me out.

  “I would have liked to talk to Robin,” I say, as I sugar my iced tea, “but she doesn’t want to talk to me.” I do not mention that I couldn’t get my foot in the door at the Chi Omega House. It would embarrass her that I tried.