by Paul Levine
At least I’ve got his attention. Now, be appealing but not seductive, smart but not arrogant.
After telling his abbreviated version of his trip from Everglades City to the Supreme Court, with various stops en route, Truitt said, “I appreciate the fact you’ve had some real jobs. I confess to having a bias against people who were groomed from infancy to become lawyers. It’s a great asset to have some life experiences.”
Does erotic dancing count? You wouldn’t believe what I used to do with my “great asset.”
“Do you have any underlying legal or moral philosophy?” he asked, and she was caught off guard. She knew that he’d written with admiration of the humanism of Jean Calvin, whose teachings provided the bedrock for the protection of individual liberties. She could memorize and take tests and research the law, but …
What do I believe?
It was the same question that plagued her last night. Though she wished it were otherwise, she didn’t believe the slogans on the pediments. At best she had an ideology that came from listening to Max Wanaker’s theory of enlightened self-interest.
Do unto others before they do unto you.
“I’m not sure I have a clear, discernible philosophy,” she said, sounding lame, hating her answer, knowing it disappointed him.
“If you were a judge,” he asked, giving her a second chance, “what moral and ethical framework would you bring to the courtroom?”
She bought time by finishing her Cuban coffee, feeling the caffeine rush. She needed to wing it, to spin bullshit into gold. Wasn’t that a large measure of lawyering? She’d won moot court at Stanford by keeping her poise and cleverly answering the unexpected question, but just now, she lost her concentration. Her mind flashed back to Max and the way he looked last night, how desperate he seemed about the case.
“This is more important than you know.”
Why? And why wouldn’t he tell her more? Sure, the case was important. Jesus, nearly three hundred people had died. Damage claims could exceed half a billion dollars. But that’s why every airline carries massive amounts of insurance. Other than a quick spurt of adverse publicity from a megabucks verdict if Atlantica lost the case, what was the crisis?
Regaining her focus, Lisa was aware of Justice Truitt staring at her, waiting for her answer. “I’d just call them the way I saw them,” she said, using the sports cliché, falling deeper into the pit she had dug. The look on his face told her he was dissatisfied.
“Let’s try it this way,” he said, patiently. “What’s your view of Calvinism?”
She forced herself to focus. That she could be sitting here, in this majestic building, being asked to judge the work of a sixteenth-century French theologian struck her as both quaint and oddly moving. Sam Truitt, a man whose own words would be studied and critiqued by scholars a century from now, actually sought her opinion.
And I have none.
Oh, she could recite Calvin’s belief in the ultimate power of the moral law. She could ace any test on Aquinas or Aristotle, Bacon or Bentham. She was smart with what Max derisively called “book learning.”
But beneath it, she had no core, no body of beliefs that shaped her. She was an empty vessel, and realizing it, she suddenly felt chilled and frighteningly alone.
The justice waited for her reply. The easiest course would be to agree with his well-known written work. But she knew that he hated bootlickers. She needed to get back on track, back to the job she had promised Max she would do.
Oh Max, what have you gotten me into? I can’t hack it here.
Struggling to control her emotions, she pushed away the anxiety and the dread. “You probably don’t agree,” she said, haltingly, “but I’ve never thought that there is a natural law arising independent of governments. I take the view that all moral obligations are artificially realized, imposed by governments.”
“Aha!” he said, rising to the challenge, and in fact rising out of his chair and beginning to pace in front of the credenza. “You’re with Hobbes! You’re a bloody Royalist.”
“He was more realistic than Calvin,” she said. “Hobbes understood that moral obligations require laws, not the goodwill of men. It’s the sovereign that sets the rules, not our own consciences.”
She gave him a half smile and cocked her head. In another setting, it would have been flirtatious. Here, in the midst of a polemical quarrel that Cromwell and Charles the First might have had, if they spoke at all, it was an intellectual challenge.
“I think you have it backward,” he said. “‘We, the people—’“
“To coin a phrase,” she interrupted, beginning to feel more comfortable in the ebb and flow of a dialectic debate she was prepared to win or lose, as the situation required.
He laughed and continued. “The people give the government its rules, but those rules arise from natural laws. Take the Decalogue of Exodus. Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not bear false witness …”
Thou shall not commit adultery.
Funny how that popped into her head as she watched the judge—her judge—stalk around the perimeter of his chambers, a smaller stage than in Cambridge. He had the enthusiasm of a young boy and the wisdom of philosopher. Not to mention the body of an athlete and the easy grin of a man who finds the world amusing.
A damned intoxicating combination in the person of Samuel Adams Truitt. If only you weren’t married, if only this weren’t a job.
Truitt carried on for a while, attacking Hobbes for his view that government could prescribe an official religion and ban all others, which she admitted was a mistake.
“A mistake this Court unanimously followed in 1892,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “when it held that the government can prohibit the exercise of religions other than Christianity. Four years later, the Court upheld laws prohibiting blacks from riding in the same railroad cars with whites. The decisions were wrong because they violated the natural law, as codified in our Constitution. Under Calvin, citizens can resist immoral laws because the sovereign is beholden to the natural law.”
“But who determines what the natural law encompasses?” she asked. “In the 1870s, the Supreme Court said it was the ‘law of the creator’ that women be barred from becoming lawyers. These days, a lunatic in Florida says God tells him to kill a doctor who performs abortions. Does he have the right to ignore the lesser law of the government?”
“No, because the most basic natural law of all is not to kill.”
And so it went, teacher and student, judge and clerk, man and woman, traveling through the centuries on the magic carpet of their mutual knowledge, Truitt noting that being “endowed with certain rights by their Creator” came from Calvin, Lisa responding that the “pursuit of happiness” came from Hobbes.
She was focused now and ready to impress the justice with her erudition on a number of subjects, all of which interested him, she knew from her research.
I’m rallying. I think he likes me.
Truitt sat down again, and they spoke easily for another forty minutes, Lisa working into the conversation a cross section of popular culture. She mentioned novels that moved her, films that resonated, and rock music she loved, the songs invariably stemming from Truitt’s era. She moved the conversation toward the American musical theater and why didn’t they write shows like Guys and Dolls anymore? He agreed, telling her he had acted, though not very well, in a college production of the show about a thousand years ago.
“You must have been a wonderful Sky Masterson,” she said.
“Actually, I was Big Jule.”
“No!” she said, feigning surprise. She’d already seen the yearbook photo of young Sam, brawny in a gangster’s pinstriped double-breasted suit with exaggerated lapels and enough shoulder padding for an offensive lineman. He was hoisting Sky Masterson up by his somewhat narrower lapels, holding him two feet off the stage floor with one hand. “I really would have thought you’d have the romantic lead.” She blushed, her face seeming as red as her hair. “Oh … I didn’t
mean …” The more she stammered, the redder she became, a trick that required holding her breath, or at least not inhaling while she spoke. “I’m sorry, I mean … If I said anything inappropriate …”
“No. That’s all right. I was just the biggest guy in the University Thespians. It was either play the heavy or haul the scenery around.”
She quickly regained the composure she had really never lost. The blushing, stuttering episode had bee i rehearsed in front of a mirror just as Sam Truitt had rehearsed “Luck Be a Lady” so many years ago. It had seemed to her that being too polished, too poised, might come off as artificial and, well … rehearsed. So the momentary slip had the dual purpose of making her seem human and letting him know she found him attractive. I like her, Sam Truitt thought. She’s bright and beautiful, articulate and interesting, but beyond all that … I like her. Obviously, she can do the work. And she’d be fun to have around.
If only she weren’t so damned sexy.
“Is there anything you want to ask me?” Truitt said.
“I was looking at the football you were holding. Did I read somewhere that you were captain of your college team?”
“No, I wasn’t good enough for that. I was captain of the special teams.”
“What made them so special?”
He laughed. At least she wasn’t an expert on everything. “At Wake Forest, nothing, I assure you. I was the long snapper.”
“Sounds like a fish,” she said with a feminine shrug.
“I spent all my playing time looking between my legs, snapping the ball to the punter or field goal kicker. It’s a knack, seeing the world upside down and putting a tight spiral on the ball, getting it to the punter, nose up, in seven-tenths of a second, thigh high, so he can think just about the kick. A good snapper gets the ball to the punter faster than the quarterback can throw it the same distance.”
“Really? I guess it’s much more complicated than most people realize,” she said, encouraging him.
“It sure is. You fire the ball with the right hand, guide it with the left. Before the snap, if you squeeze the ball, or cock your wrist, the defensive linemen will time their rush and get a jump on your linemen. So no hitches, no nerves, and most important, you’ve got to have the perfect stance. You’ve got to keep your ass down.” He laughed and went on, “Which, come to think of it, was the president’s advice when he appointed me to this scorpions’ nest. ‘Keep your ass down until you get the lay of the land.’“
“Sounds smart. You’re here for life. Why be impatient to make your mark?”
“I’ve never been good at laying low,” he said, then walked to the credenza and picked up the partially inflated football. Although he didn’t ask her to, she rose from the chair and joined him there, putting her hands on the cracked leather. It was, in its way, an intimate gesture, each of them touching the other, through an intermediary, the old football. She ran her fingers across the chipped white paint that spelled out, WAKE FOREST 16 – FURMAN 10.
She has beautiful hands. What’s happening? Jesus, Sam, act like a judge, not a schoolboy.
“It was my last game, my only game ball. A reward for playing three years without a bad snap. That and some tackles on the kickoff team. Unfortunately we didn’t kick off much.”
“I know enough about the game to understand that. You didn’t score often, right?”
“Often? The Demon Deacons were scoreless in October.”
‘“Scoreless in October,’“ she repeated with a laugh that trilled like a pine warbler in the Carolina woods. “Sounds like a movie tide.”
“Or a lonely fraternity boy’s lament,” he said, chuckling.
“Or the number of opinions the junior justice writes his first month on the bench,” she said, keeping the ball in the air.
“I’m afraid the C.J. would agree with that,” Truitt said. “It’s going to take me a while to get used to being the new kid on the block. I was playing basketball with Justice Braxton yesterday, and he started calling me ‘Junior’ just to mess up my jump shot. Did you know there’s a basketball court above the courtroom?”
She nodded. “The highest court in the land.”
“Right again. You seem to have a feel for this place.”
And for me. What am I going to do? She’s almost too good to be true.
* * *
Lisa watched him squeeze the old football, seemingly lost in a private thought. “You speak very fondly of your football team,” she said, “even though …”
“We were really abysmal,” he said, finishing her sentence.
“But winning wasn’t everything to you, was it?”
“I haven’t thought about it much, but you’re right. We lost ten games in a row before beating Furman. I loved the game and I loved my teammates, even though we were probably the worst team in the history of college football.”
“No,” she said in mock disbelief.
“You can look it up,” he said, but of course she already had.
“In 1974, we were shut out five games in a row by a combined score of two hundred and ten to zero,” Truitt said. “North Carolina, Oklahoma, Penn State, Maryland, Virginia, and Clemson.”
“Wow, is that some kind of record?”
“Maybe. We even lost to William and Mary, and I suspect Mary could have done it all by herself.”
She laughed, knowing he’d used the line many times before. She was turning the tables on him, becoming the interrogator. “What did you learn from all the losses? About life, I mean.”
“No one’s ever asked me that,” he said, seeming to think it over.
C’mon, Sam. Every man I’ve ever known loves to talk about himself.
“The value of hard work, patience, and discipline,” he said after a moment. “That to win you have to sweat and sacrifice and put the team first and even if you do all of those things, you may still lose, but that it’s no disgrace to lose with honor. Most of all, I learned that you’ve got to play the game within the rules, and that surely goes for life, too.”
The rules. Max Wanaker makes his up as he goes along. Sam Truitt follows the ones engraved in the marble.
The phone buzzed just as Truitt was telling how he got the nickname “Scrap” and how the little-used kickoff team was called the “Scrap Pack.”
“The chief says you’re to come to his chambers right away,” Eloise said over the speaker.
“Tell the chief I don’t work for him,” Truitt replied.
“No, sir!” Eloise screeched over the intercom. “We’re not going to start off seeing who’s got the biggest bulge in his briefs. I’ll tell him you’re in conference and will be there the instant you’re free.”
The intercom went dead, and there was a moment of silence as interviewer and interviewee tried to remember exactly where their conversation had ended.
“That’s probably the only time anyone will catch you quoting Justice McReynolds,” Lisa said.
“You picked up on that?” Truitt asked, astonished. “That’s a really arcane bit of Court trivia.”
He looked at her with something approaching awe, and Lisa smiled.
“Back in the 1930s,” she said, “Chief Justice Hughes left a message with McReynolds’s secretary. ‘Tell the justice to come to my chambers at once, and wear his robes.’ McReynolds responded with … well, just what you said. ‘Tell the Chief I don’t work for him/”
“McReynolds was a real misanthrope, a racist, and a bigot,” Truitt said. “But you probably know that, don’t you?”
“I know he wouldn’t appear for the Court photo because he didn’t want to be in a picture with a Hebrew. That’s what he called Brandeis.”
Showing off now. Put a lid on it, Lisa.
“That was him. And you’re right. It’s the only time I’ll quote the bastard.” Truitt glanced at his watch. “Whoa. We’ve been at it for nearly two hours.”
Sensing that was her cue, Lisa said, “I want to thank you so much for your time, Justice Truitt.”
&nb
sp; “I’ve enjoyed this. I really have,” Truitt said. He paused a moment, as if she shouldn’t leave just yet.
Sam Truitt couldn’t pinpoint the moment he changed his mind about Lisa Fremont, couldn’t even say exactly why he had. She was smart and savvy, and they seemed to have great synergy, and he was tired of interviewing candidates. There was such a relaxed nature to their conversation, he felt as if he had known her forever. So without ever actually consciously deciding, Truitt reached the conclusion that she’d be perfect. He would hire her despite her great looks, though he didn’t think his wife would buy that for a second.
What is he thinking? Lisa wondered. Am I overstaying my welcome? Should I curtsy and head for the door?
“Once the session begins,” Truitt said, breaking the silence, “I’m afraid there won’t be time for what Elly would call ‘high-falutin’ gabfests.’”
As if I already had the job.
“And from now on,” he continued, “it’s just plain ‘Judge.’ That’s what Vic and Jerry call me. Ask Elly for the forms you’ll need to fill out, then get ready to roll up your sleeves.”
Omigod! What did he say?
“You mean I’m hired?”
“Didn’t I say that? No, I guess I didn’t. I must have thought you could read my mind.”
“That would be a pretty good attribute for a law clerk,” she said, beaming. “I’ll work on it.”
“Along with about a thousand cert petitions.” He stood and extended a hand. “Welcome aboard.”
For the second time that day, Lisa Fremont shook his hand, and their eyes locked. This time his expression seemed to come from a deeper place, and for a moment, she felt he was trying to look deep inside her. At the same time, he clasped both hands over hers. There was nothing inappropriate about it, nothing sexual, overt or otherwise. It seemed to be a gesture of comradeship, a recognition that they were about to spend the next year together embarked on a great adventure.
Wow! I did it. I’m a clerk on the Supreme Court of the United States. Me! Lisa Anne Fremont from Bodega Bay. And Max didn’t do it for me.
She allowed herself just a few seconds of elation. Then the realization set in. She wasn’t just Sam Truitt’s law clerk. She was also working for Max Wanaker and Atlantica Airlines, petitioner in one of the biggest cases of the new term. In legal jargon, she had a major conflict of interest. Her job was to subvert justice, not to achieve it. She tried not to think about the cruel paradox, which threatened to ruin the moment.