The Paper Chase

by John Osborn

  Susan opened the door, dressed in jeans. She smiled when she saw him.

  “Why, Mr. Hart,” she said. “Are you on vacation from the law school? I should think you have classes.”

  “I canceled class,” he yelled. His hair, unbrushed, stuck up in the air. He hadn’t buckled his belt and it had worked loose, hanging down.

  “Why, Mr. Hart,” she said, “you have a tail!” She bent down, picked up the trailing end of the belt and handed it to him. “There,” she said, “now you’re back in one piece.”

  “I missed class,” he screamed. “I missed class because I can’t get my goddamned mind together with you giving me so much bullshit. I missed it because you won’t let us lead any kind of organized life.”

  “Us?” she said. “Mr. Hart, I agree you need organization.” She looked him up and down. “But, US?”

  “I missed contracts, Susan.”

  “Screw contracts,” she said, turning away. He kept standing there, holding his belt. Then he heard her banging around in the kitchen.

  He followed the sound.

  “What are you doing?” He tried so hard to control the sound of his voice that his words were only a forced whisper. He sat down at the kitchen table. One of the legs didn’t reach the floor and it tilted when he put his arms down.

  “Breakfast,” she said.

  “Well, give me some,” he snapped, hanging his head down over the table. “Or is that too organized?”

  She picked a bowl from the sink, blew in it to make it dry and dropped it on the table. It banged around in a circle before settling in front of him. Then she flipped a piece of shredded wheat from the waist. It flew toward him like a Frisbee, and he pulled away. The bowl caught it. He looked down, crumpled it with his fingers. It came apart at the first touch and he saw dust rising out of the bowl.

  “Do you have any milk?” he demanded.

  “Oh,” she said, her eyes getting big and her mouth rounding out, “you want the deluxe breakfast. Well, I’m so glad you said so.”

  She opened the icebox; it tilted forward but held. Leaving a full carton on the shelf, she picked out a glass of milk, crusted with old cream, lifted the glass to her shoulder and sighted down, letting the milk slop from three feet.

  “One deluxe breakfast for the hungry man,” she called toward the far wall, as if there were another room back there. “One, hot tot, deluxe, superior, top-drawer breakfast … oh go fuck yourself.”

  The milk slid over the rim of the bowl, spattered onto the table, leaked through Hart’s shirt, and spread itself around his elbows.

  He jumped up, shook the milk off his arms.

  “Now get this,” she said. “I want you out of here. And I don’t want you to ever come in here and scream at me again. But I’ll just settle for having you out.”

  He backed into the living room, watched her through the door sponging up the milk. She didn’t look in his direction again and he left.

  His belt fell off on the landing. But he didn’t notice.

  31

  BELL HAD OBVIOUSLY lost touch with his surroundings. He wasn’t in contracts class, but in a courtroom leading the defense. It was as though he’d been galvanized by the portraits of old judges hung around the room and was arguing his case to them.

  These deadman statutes are unfair,” Bell said, speaking slowly and ponderously. “For the life of me, I can’t understand why the judge felt he had to follow them. They don’t give a plaintiff the chance to testify.”

  Thirty seats to Bell’s left, Hart was rubbing the little metal tag stuck to his particular section of the curving desk top. The tag read 259. Not a bad number, Hart thought, but not a great one either. A pretty average seat, not too far back, nor too far forward.

  Hart was bored. Bell was on the right track but he didn’t say it right. He was too pompous. The deadman statutes-which forbid a plaintiff suing an estate from testifying in certain situations-were unjust. But Bell should get on to the ways of bypassing the statutes.

  “It’s not justice,” Bell said ominously. “Why, take Proctor versus Proctor. The girl had worked for her aunt for ten years because the aunt had promised to leave her the house. I say the girl should get the house since she worked for it. It’s a crummy technicality that says she can’t testify. It isn’t fair.”

  Kingsfield glanced absent-mindedly down at the seating chart. The seating chart would list 259, and under it, Hart’s name. The number given Hart in a small brown unmarked paper packet at the beginning of the year. He wondered who assigned him the number. There must be some little man, locked away in the guts of Langdell. But why did he give him 259?

  “Let’s see,” Kingsfield said. “Your name was Bell?”

  “That’s right,” Bell said. “Bell, as in Liberty Bell.”

  “Did it ever occur to you, Liberty Bell was it? Did it ever occur to you that the courts didn’t write the deadman statutes? That the legislature did? That the court is bound to follow the legislature?”

  There goes the bait, Hart thought. Now Bell should say yes, the court should follow the legislature, but there are ways of getting around the deadman statutes, ways which do not warp the statute itself. In fact, there are seventeen ways.

  Hart swung his hand up. If Bell wouldn’t answer, he would. He’d had enough of Bell anyway. Bell was sounding like God. The students around Hart noticed the hand but looked down toward the podium in silence, ignoring him. Jesus, Hart thought, don’t they want a better answer? Don’t they want to know? And then he realized that they didn’t want a better answer, and he lowered his hand slowly to his desk.

  Kingsfield sensed the silence the class expected him to fill. In an almost resigned voice, he said, “I think, Mr. Bell, I shall avoid the privilege of ringing you further.”

  The class broke loose, roared, rocked back in their seats convulsed, ignoring the fact that the joke was stale and trite. Bell looked confused. He hadn’t gotten the point that one should laugh with people, at oneself, and then people will cease to laugh at you.

  The laughter of the class merged with the sound of the students in the back getting out of their seats. The hour had ended. Hart raced to the front of the classroom.

  “Bell was right about the deadman statutes,” he called up to Kingsfield in a worried voice. “There are at least seventeen ways to get around the deadman statutes. You wrote an article showing that.”

  Kingsfield peered down from behind the lectern, looking at Hart like a jeweler examining a watch through his eyepiece.

  “If I wrote an article stating there were seventeen ways to get around deadman statutes, then I don’t need to be told Mr. Bell was correct,” Kingsfield said. “Is there anything else?”

  Kingsfield picked up his books and put them under his arm. He put a hand on the lectern and half turned toward the door. Hart was still standing silently below him.

  “What is your name?” Kingsfield said absentmindedly.

  What was his name? Jesus, was it a trick? A way of putting him down?

  “Mr. Hart,” Hart said.

  “Well, Mr. Hart, I can understand your wanting to ride to the rescue of the unfortunate Mr. Bell,” Kingsfield said, smiling slightly. “But it is a little late now, isn’t it? After all, you had your chance in class. No one stops you from expressing yourself.”

  Hart turned away. He took a step toward the aisle leading back to his seat.

  “Wait a minute,” Kingsfield said. “I’ve got a proposition for you.”

  Hart stopped. He looked up at the lectern with a confused stare.

  “I need a student to research a subject for me. I usually choose second and third year students but you seem to know your stuff. Interested?”

  Hart froze while the enormity of what the professor had said sank in.

  “It’s just background work. You merely research a topic for me and then summarize your findings in a paper. It gives you a chance to do some written work and, of course, aids me. Well?”

  “Sure,” Hart sai
d, gradually melting into an embarrassed euphoria.

  “Come by my office this afternoon. My secretary will give you a data sheet listing the subject. Don’t make the paper too long. Perhaps ten pages. I’ll expect it in about a week.”

  With that Kingsfield jumped through his little door and was gone.

  32

  HART DECIDED from the beginning it would be an exceptional paper. He resolved to follow every reference which the major cases made to the minor cases. He resolved to read every Law Review article on the subject, comb every statute.

  He began with a tremendous burst of energy. It seemed that nothing could tire him as he madly filled up three-by-five index cards with the facts of the cases. At the end of three days, he had over four hundred of these cards, all sitting neatly in a special metal file box.

  Then he started to write. It did not go well. He decided that the problem lay in not having sufficiently dominated his sources and he went back to the library for more research. At the end of five days he had to buy another file box.

  The night before he was to hand the paper in, he cursed himself for thinking he could have done so much. He wished he’d started small and worked like a jeweler. He saw that his mistake lay at the very beginning when he’d tried to do more than he could to please Kingsfield. He stayed up all night, trying to organize his eight hundred cards into a logical sequence and, by five, as the first light was coming to the law school yard, he knew that he would not finish.

  He cursed himself again, looked at his casebooks, at the masses of assigned classroom work he had not done, and wished he’d never taken the project.

  Perhaps he should go and tell Kingsfield. He went to the window, looked at Langdell and gave up that thought. He’d take an extra week. Of course Kingsfield would be mad because the paper was late. But he wouldn’t tell him about it. He’d wait until the end of the second week, until Kingsfield was sure the paper would never be finished and then surprise the professor, present him with a supreme piece that would delight him and justify the tardiness.

  Hart got happy again, thinking about his solution to his troubles. When the library door opened, he raced in, filled with new energy. To make up for the week’s delay, he upped his standards. That called for more research. He bought another file box. But he wouldn’t be caught short. Not again. He worked in two shifts, staying in the library during the day, and then, at night, typing in his room.

  He typed until he had to uncurl his fingers in the morning to hold his pencil in the library. The typed sheets grew, rattling themselves off the machine at the rate of six an hour. At the end of three days, he had piled up more than two hundred pages which sat on his desk, mocking him, because they had no logical order.

  It got hard to stay awake. He bought NoDoz and it made his hands shake. He had to print his notes to make them legible. His production began to fall behind. He bought instant coffee and made it from the hot water tap in the bathroom. His face got a warm patina of caked sweat and ink. Finally, five days into the second week, he had a vision that he would fail. His arms broke out in sweat and he tried to redouble his efforts, forcing the tiredness out of him. He locked himself in his room, alone with the typewriter. He sat and typed. Gradually, his mind blurred over. He concentrated on his first pages, hoping that if he got that right, everything else would follow. Finally, losing his objectivity in the confines of the tiny cell, and knowing it, he concentrated on his first sentence, trying to make at least one permanent block from which he could build the rest.

  On the last night of the second week he knew he could not hand it in. The paper was unorganized, hopelessly long, badly typed. He sat for a long time, too nervous to sleep and too tired to work. Finally, he figured that if the paper was already a week late, another week would make no difference. He slept fitfully for two hours and then rose to begin again.

  This time it was different. He knew that to justify this extra week, the paper would have to be even better. And he knew, though he did not admit it, that no paper could be that good. He grew more tired, until at the end of two weeks and five days, nothing seemed to matter anymore.

  He had reached a sort of watershed in his existence, a balancing point in his mind where the unquestioned assumptions he’d started with withered to nothing. The thought of actually telling Kingsfield that he had not done, and could not do, the paper had been a thought so terrible he had not admitted its possibility. Now, one more visit to the library, typing one more word, was worse. He had not slept for four days.

  On his way to Kingsfield’s office, he wondered if he had really known long before, perhaps a week ago, that it would end this way. He wondered if he had secretly kept going in order to reach this state of tiredness so that he would be able to face Kingsfield.

  Kingsfield’s outer office was deserted. The room trembled slightly as though the walls were waiting for the imminent arrival of a great many people. Hart walked to the electric typewriter sitting on a metal desk that guarded the oak door to the inner office. The typewriter was warm and resting his hand on it, he knew that the trembling was merely the machine, left running. He flicked a button and the room was silent.

  “May I help you?” a girl at the door asked. He pulled his hand off the typewriter. As she walked across the room the string of pearls dangling over her baby blue sweater lapped on the books piled in her arms. She snuggled in behind the desk, swiveling back and forth, moving her hips into the desk crevice. Then she looked up at Hart and jumped.

  Instead of shrinking under the stare, he welcomed it. She was looking at the stained white shirt he had not taken off for a week, the inky hands and the disheveled hair. Hart rolled back on his heels, glad that the effort he had put out was apparent. At least Kingsfield would know he’d tried.

  “May I help you?” she said again.

  “I have to see Professor Kingsfield,” Hart said, half closing his eyes. “It will only take a minute.”

  She used the phone, talking so low he could not hear, and then told him to go in. Hart walked to the great oak door, put his hand on the bronze knob and took a deep breath. For a second, he thought about leaving, going back and trying again. Then he opened the door.

  His feet were covered by a thick green carpet, stretching out before him, rolling down like a field between the dark bookcases, down to a huge plate glass window taking up the entire rear of the room. At a large glossy desk in front of the window sat Kingsfield.

  “Come in,” Kingsfield snapped, pointing toward a leather armchair in front of the desk. Hart walked to the chair and sat. His fingerprints sweated into the chair’s leather arms. He folded his hands in his lap. Kingsfield continued shuffling through the papers on his desk top for perhaps two minutes.

  Finally, the professor’s thick white eyebrows came to the top of his glasses frames. “What do you want?” he said.

  “I couldn’t do the paper,” Hart said. He hesitated, on the verge of pouring it all out. Kingsfield rocked back in his chair. Suddenly the balance tipped the other way. In a burst of moral responsibility-a feeling that he owed more than he could repay, that Kingsfield had trusted him and he’d destroyed that trust-Hart decided that he would finish the paper.

  “I need more time,” Hart said quickly, forgetting the library and how much he hated his typewriter. “Just a couple of days. Really. I can get it done soon. Maybe in two days. Maybe tomorrow.”

  Kingsfield looked out the window.

  “I’ve done all the basic work,” Hart added. “All I need is some time to put it together. I even have a draft.” As he said it, his stomach turned over. He was lying, calling it a draft, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kingsfield said. “I appreciate your telling me the paper is not done.”

  Hart sank back into his chair. Kingsfield was letting him off. Jesus. It was something else to add to the moral scale. Now he had to finish.

  “I can do it,” Hart said.

  “It isn’t necessary,” Ki
ngsfield said.

  “It won’t be hard,” Hart said.

  “When your paper was three days late, I had someone else do it,” Kingsfield snapped. “It was only a background piece. Data for my own work. As you see, your contribution isn’t necessary.”

  The professor looked off again, back toward the window.

  “One more thing,” he said, not turning. “You ought to get some sleep.”

  Hart walked out. He did not say anything to the secretary.

  33

  KEVIN TRUDGED toward the law school. Once or twice he missed the path in the dark and his foot fell six inches into the soft snow. That would slow him down and he’d check his watch. His book was due back at the library before midnight.

  Before he got to the yard he heard the music, loud and out of tune even for a mixer. Harkness was off the direct route to Langdell but he walked by, peeking in from the lawn at the dancers. Law students are the world’s worst, he thought. Caught right in between: too old to let go and too young to foxtrot. They compromised, stood still, swinging their arms. He knew he could do better.

  He pressed his face against the window. A black girl in front of the band danced in a fringed skirt. He remembered reading somewhere about burlesque girls tying tassels on their nipples. When he looked at his watch again, it was past twelve and the library had closed. He walked into Harkness.

  Inside, down the stairs, a greasy dorm committee member was selling tickets, arguing with a student.

  “You going in?” the greasy seller asked the student. “It’ll cost you a dollar, if you have your dorm card.” Kevin peeked in past them, watching the black girl.

  “I’ve got to find my roommate,” the student said to the ticket seller. “It’s important.”

  “Let’s have the band announce it,” the seller said.

  “Oh no,” the student said, turning to go. “It’s just his mother. She has cancer, you know. Nothing serious. He can call the hospital in the morning.”