Gideon - 04 - Illegal Motion

by Grif Stockley

“I just came in from running.

  How’s WAR doing? Have y’all taken over any government buildings or seized any university bureaucrats?” I mouth the word “Sarah” to Amy, who puts her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. The bed, an heirloom from my parents’ home in Bear Creek, groans at my insolence. Amy cannot contain her giggles and smothers her face against her pillow. To complicate matters Woogie, whose sleep underneath the bed has apparently been disturbed, appears from the side and jumps up on the sheets between me and Amy, who now is almost hysterical.

  “Who’s with you?” Sarah asks, dryly.

  “She sounds like she’s having a good time.”

  “Woogie’s entertaining Amy Gilchrist,” I say, at least partially correct.

  There is silence. Though Amy and Sarah have never met, Sarah knows our age difference; furthermore, even after all this time she is still loyal to Rainey. I wait her out.

  “I take it,” she says curtly, “that you’re not as upset as I thought you’d be.”

  “Upset at what, babe?” I ask, putting my finger to my mouth to shush Amy. Damn, Sarah will think she is terrible.

  “Both the vice-chancellor and the chancellor have upheld the T Board’s position! Dade is off the team! We won!”

  I look over at the digital clock.

  “They announced the decision at nine o’clock at night?”

  “It got out,” she explains.

  “And they finally confirmed it tonight. I can’t believe you didn’t know. Are you mad?”

  I relay the message to Amy.

  “Hell yes, I’m mad! What good is this going to do?”

  “Because it’s right. Dad!” Sarah says, her voice shrill.

  “It says that women are more than football games; it tells kids that rape is serious; it tells guys that this campus will listen to women instead of football coaches.” She sounds indignant all over again.

  I’m pissed as hell.

  “All it tells me is that if a pressure group makes enough noise that it can get its way,” I sputter. Amy has withdrawn to her side of the bed and is looking at me with an irritated expression. I don’t care.

  “It’s not a question of right or wrong but who’s got the upper hand. It’s racism, too. Do you think if the chancellor had been a black male, the decision would have been the same? Hell, no. Your group got what it wanted be cause it screamed the loudest and made some white males feel guilty and so they threw your group a bone.

  Dade is a victim, pure and simple. He wasn’t harming anybody by staying on the team; in fact, he was a contributor to the school and to the entire state, and now WAR has taken that away.”

  “Daddy!” Sarah yelps.

  “You sound like some redneck!

  I can’t believe you’re saying all this!”

  I look up to see Amy getting dressed. I say hastily, “Sarah, I have to get off the phone. I’ve got to call Dade and his parents. I’ll talk to you later. I’m sorry if I sounded mean.” Damn it to hell. It’s always the messenger who gets shot. After she murmurs something I don’t catch, she hangs up, allowing me to say to Amy, “You don’t have to go.”

  Most women would gather up their clothes and go into the bathroom. Not Amy. Standing by the bed in her panties, she fastens her bra and looks right through me.

  “I

  wouldn’t stay here if you paid me a million dollars. I’m just appalled by the way you talked to Sarah. Have you heard of the First Amendment? If this had come out the way you wanted it to, the administration would have been wise and wonderful. You don’t get your way one time and you practically call your daughter a fascist. So Dade Cunningham doesn’t play in a few football games it doesn’t mean the world is coming to an end.

  One of the reasons I liked you is that I thought you had some perspective on things. I don’t think you do.” All the while she is pulling on her jeans and sweater as fast as she can.

  I reach down to the floor for my underwear. I don’t have the guts to admit to Amy that I have begun thinking of this case as a potential oil well.

  “A few minutes ago you were telling me why you liked me,” I remind her.

  She sits on the bed to put on her running shoes. Woogie, smarter than I am, has gone back under the bed.

  “Well, I guess I was wrong. I don’t mind admitting that.”

  “Well, I think you’re overreacting,” I say, pulling my pants up. With no clothes on I feel at a distinct disadvantage.

  “And you’re not?” she scoffs and turns on her heels and is out the door.

  “Amy!” I yell, but I hear the front door slam.

  Shit! Am I not allowed to get mad just once without the women in my life going nuts? Poor Dade. I bet he has been trying to call me. Before I can pick up the phone to call him, the phone rings again. It is Clarise Dozier, who tells me she has been trying to get me for an hour. She says that she has already spoken with Dade and insists on reading the chancellor’s statement to me. It is about what I expected full of trite, high-sounding phrases.

  “The university is a venue where education takes place, and it is in this spirit I make this decision….” Bullshit, I think.

  The university is a venue where shoving matches take place, and my client just got out shoved Still, it is not Clarise Dozier’s fault, and I calm down enough to keep a civil tongue in my head. I thank her and tell her I need to call Dade, and she graciously hangs up, proving, I guess, that not every female I know ends a conversation with me by hating my guts.

  By the time I get through to Dade’s parents, I have be gun to put a different spin on events entirely.

  “You need to keep in mind,” I tell Roy, who has answered the phone and has complained bitterly about the decision, “that Dade got to play in the most important game in his life and was terrific. The fact that he won’t finish the season won’t matter that much in the long run if there’s an acquittal In fact, he’ll just avoid a career-ending injury. I know he sounded down tonight, but what he has to realize and what you do too, is that people will remember the Alabama game for a long time especially the pro scouts. That last catch alone was worth millions to him.”

  I hope I’m not coming on too strong. Ideally, the idea will occur to them that I will be the ideal person to negotiate his contract. It can’t hurt to plant a few seeds.

  “It sounds like they just caved in to a bunch of women,” Roy says, but sounding not quite as aggrieved, “I agree,” I say, on safe ground at last. To Lucy Cunningham, who takes the phone from her husband, I explain that the case could still be dismissed by the prosecutor and tell her that Dade’s statement went okay.

  I’ll have plenty of time later to go back and tell her and Roy the bad parts, but they have enough to deal with tonight.

  “The prosecuting attorney said he’d think about it.”

  Lucy Cunningham scoffs at the possibility.

  “Why should he do that? He gets elected by how many he convicts not how many he lets go. What’s another black boy to him?” Her voice is resigned. Don’t try to fool me, her tone implies. How many games Dade played is history.

  The news is that he won’t play any more. Roy may be fooled into thinking the glass is half full, but she isn’t.

  Yet, for some reason I have a good feeling about Binkie Cross: maybe it is unjustified, but I have the sense he likes Dade and would like to have an excuse not to have to try him. Justice is what every prosecutor is sup posed to do, not try people, who are more likely than not, innocent.

  “We may be surprised,” I say, not having the nerve to offer up a platitude to her.

  “What’s important is to explore any opportunity to avoid trial.”

  “You mean, make a deal?” Lucy asks, way ahead of her husband.

  “One hasn’t been offered,” I say quickly, but I don’t see any harm in preparing the way for something down the road. If Binkie were willing to knock this case down to a misdemeanor, I’d advise Dade to take it. I have no doubt his parents will have a major influe
nce on his decision.

  “If that opportunity presents itself, it’d be a mistake not to consider it.”

  Nothing if not pragmatic, Lucy tells me she agrees, and I tell her I will be in touch again soon. There is no doubt in my mind about who runs things in the Cunningham family. His father, Dade told me, got to take off to drive up to the Alabama game, but his mother was the one he called to tell he wasn’t being allowed to play any more.

  Ten minutes after I put the phone down, the phone rings again and I am asked if I can get down to Channel 4 for a live interview on the ten o’clock news to give my re action to the Chancellor’s decision. The caller, who identifies himself as an assistant producer, says, barely containing his fury, that I haven’t been breathlessly waiting by the phone for his call, that he has been trying to get me all night. Still in my underwear, I look at my watch. It is a quarter to ten, and I need a lot of work. I say I can’t make it but will give a statement. In a weary voice, he says go ahead, and I say I am disappointed and reaffirm my belief in Dade’s innocence.

  On the ten o’clock news I watch as Coma Newby, the station’s newest anchor, chops my comment to one word “disappointed” and spends a good two minutes on the phone with Chancellor Henry, letting him pontificate about how educational values have been served.

  Shit, I should have gone down there naked and demanded equal time.

  I wait for the phone to ring after the news, but mercifully it is silent and I go to bed, unable to get out of my mind the words from an old song: “Mama said there’d be days like this. Mama said.”

  “The problem-solving ability of the average two-and a-half-year-old child,” Steve Huddleston testifies in a booming, authoritative tone, “is not developed to such an extent that it can be assumed that she would know by climbing out of the tub she could avoid the hot water.”

  The consternation registered on the faces of the guardian ad litem, Joe Heavener, the attorney appointed to represent the child, and the attorney for the Department of Human Services, Cassie McKenzie, is so obvious I have to resist the temptation to laugh. From my past experiences as a caseworker I know there is no time for preparation of these cases, no discovery of witnesses by the attorneys, and consequently no thinking about the crossexamination of experts, who almost never appear in juvenile court on behalf of typically indigent parents.

  “Your Honor, I object,” Joe whines, pushing his big frame to a standing position.

  “There’s no evidence the child in question is average. The witness admits he’s never seen her.”

  Fighting the urge to lean on the podium in front of me, I turn to Judge Sloan.

  “Your Honor, Glenetta’s doctor at St. Thomas has previously testified she was of average size and weight and seemed normally developed. Dr.

  Huddleston has been qualified as an expert in child development and can testify about what he knows from the literature.”

  Joe looks helplessly at Cassie, who shrugs as if to warn him not to make too big a deal over this. If this testimony can’t be kept out, the only course of action at the trial level is to make an objection and to act as if it is of no importance.

  Until this moment the case for the Department of Human Services has been going more or less as planned. The photographs of the burned child have been enough to turn my stomach. After seeing the pictures, I marvel at the fact that the little girl is still breathing. The term “stocking and glove” burns does not adequately describe the discolored, cooked flesh in the photographs.

  The treating physician at St. Thomas has testified that it was his opinion the burns occurred as a result of the child having been held down in a sitting position in about ten inches of water.

  The only real hitch in the case has been the social worker’s failure to measure the water that was still standing in the tub when she arrived to investigate. As expected, a detective from the police department has testified that the heat of the water from the faucet coming into the tub is 140 degrees, which links up with the doctor’s statement that assuming a water temperature of 140 degrees a child could receive full and partial thickness burns after only five seconds. Steve, decked out in red suspenders and a polka-dotted blue bow tie over a pink shirt and blue suit, is allowed to step down after a few harmless questions from Joe and then Cassie. He plops down in the back of the courtroom to watch the rest of the trial. He may have second thoughts in the morning about what he has done, but now he seems proud to have come through unscathed and gives me a nod as if to say that now I owe him one.

  Chastely outfitted in a teal pleated dress that comes well below her knees, Gina Whitehall makes a tearful witness on direct examination. The pleats emphasize rather than hide her already ample hips, but she is not modeling lingerie. One would never suspect she makes part of her living as a prostitute.

  “I realized Glenetta didn’t have a towel and went downstairs to get one after I turned off the water and left her playing,” she says, her voice tremulous and soft.

  “I stopped to get myself a glass of water, and that was when I heard her screaming.”

  Here, the tears well up in her clear blue eyes. This isn’t quite the version we had rehearsed (she told me Glenetta didn’t have a clean towel, not that she didn’t have one at all), but in juvenile court not every attorney will pick up on the discrepancy between the story she is telling now and the statement she made to the police and to the social worker. If she is charged with a crime, the attorneys in the prosecuting attorney’s office will be swarming all over her.

  I pause in my questioning to let the tears come. Her credibility here is everything.

  “What happened then, Gina?” I ask, putting as much sympathy into my voice as I know how.

  She brushes her eyes with her knuckles and continues in a low but intense tone.

  “I ran upstairs and saw she had managed to turn the tap and I snatched her out of the water and went and called 911” I glance at Judge Sloan’s face. He is one of our younger judges with kids still in grade school. I am hoping he will remember what it is like to have small children bumping into corners of tables, running shoeless over hot-air vents, pulling pans off stoves. If you turn your head for a second, and all of us do, they have fallen or grabbed a pair of scissors from a table. I will remind him of this during my closing argument, but likely he will have made up his mind long before then. I can’t read his expression, but he is listening closely to Gina, and that is all I can ask. He has to be wondering what if he returns the child to her and he’s wrong, will this young woman do it again? He knows as well as I do that child abuse isn’t usually a one-time event. The next time the child may be DOA. I break the crucial moments down for Gina, so she can give the judge as much detail as possible and then finish with her visits to the hospital.

  “They watch me like I’m going to steal her,” Gina says bitterly, her voice hostile for the first time.

  “I don’t think the nurses care whether I visit Glenetta or not. They just want to see how I act.”

  No one from the other table will deny this. If she weren’t visiting regularly or showed little interest in Glenetta when she did, someone from St. Thomas would have been called to testify about her behavior and demeanor.

  Instead, I have subpoenaed the records and have forced a nurse to tell the judge she has come to see her child almost every day and has acted appropriately (talking, holding Glenetta’s hand even though the child had been barely conscious in the beginning) during her visits.

  “Were you angry at Glenetta the morning this accident happened?” I ask Gina, whose own anger at the nurses at St. Thomas has given her voice some steel. It is imperative we overcome the testimony by Glenetta’s doctor that child abuse of this type sometimes occurs as a punishment for bedwetting.

  Gina shakes her head as if she has never considered being angry at her child in her life.

  “Not at all,” she says.

  “She was in a good mood, laughing and playing like she always did. Her bath is one of our favorite times b
ecause she’s always so happy in the mornings.”

  I ask if Glenetta is completely potty trained and how she is punished. Seemingly without a hint of guile, Gina turns to Judge Sloan and tells him that her child occasionally has an accident in her pants but what two year old hasn’t? As for punishment, you don’t hit children. All it does is teach them to hit back. As a prostitute, a successful one anyway, a woman must be a successful actress, and it crosses my mind that Gina is playing the role of the good mother no less skillfully than a woman who convinces a man she is dying to have sex with him. Being the hopeless creatures of ego we are, men want desperately to believe women, and as I listen to my client’s answers, I realize how lucky she is that this case didn’t land in Anne (Queen Anne) Tongin’s division. It wouldn’t even be close. I introduce into evidence the photographs of the bathtub fixtures Gina has taken. A child, they clearly show, could easily have turned the handle.

  During my closing argument, I tell the judge that the burns , though horrible, were accidental and that a single negligent act is not child abuse. Harley Sloan, who likes to brag he has been mistaken for David Letterman, is courteous and attentive. Instead of displaying impatience (he has three more cases to hear this afternoon), he follows me closely as if he is still pondering the outcome.

  As I review the evidence favorable to Gina, I remind him that it is indisputable she called 911 and by so doing saved her child’s life. Gina Whitehall’s behavior through out this case simply does not fit the profile of a child abuser. Do I believe my own words? I don’t know.

  At the end of the hearing. Judge Sloan says he wants a few minutes, and we are in recess. Outside on the grass in brilliant sunshine, Gina, like a condemned prisoner taking her last cigarette, lights up and asks me anxiously, “How’d I do?”

  I look across the street at McDonald’s, and, having missed lunch, wonder if I have time for a chocolate milkshake. Probably not, and besides, it would be stretching civilized behavior to mention food at a time like this.

  Even if my client has given the performance of her life, the odds are against her.