Dead Peasants

by Larry D. Thompson

Jack had the Bentley washed and polished the day before the game and arrived at Colby’s door at five o’clock for the seven o’clock kickoff. The time was dictated by the start of the season in late August when temperatures were still regularly hitting a hundred and five. Jack walked up the sidewalk to Colby’s door, rang the bell and stepped inside to get out of the heat. He was wearing black slacks with a purple jacket over a white shirt. He waited in the entryway and hollered; “I’m here.”

  “I know.” Colby’s voice came from the back. “I’ll be right out.”

  Colby stepped into the foyer, wearing her own purple and white, purple slacks and a white short sleeve shirt.

  “Perfect,” Jack said as he kissed her on the cheek, noting that she did not push away. Jack opened the door and gestured for Colby to go first. Colby saw the Bentley and asked, “Why the Bentley. Is Lucille sick?”

  Jack hesitated. “Well, I’ve heard that a lot of these TCU alums have money. We’re parking in the reserved lot. I didn’t want anyone to think that J.D. came from the wrong side of the tracks.”

  Colby paused when she heard Jack’s comment and turned to face him. “Jack, you’ve got a chip on your shoulder, and you need to get rid of it. You resent the fact that you were born poor and some of your classmates were rich. So what? Now you’ve made it. We’ve got a lot of poor folks in this town. Are you going to treat them as second class citizens?”

  Jack shrugged his shoulders. “No. Of course, not. But I hear what you’re saying.” Jack paused. “And you’re right.”

  They parked in the place reserved for Jackson Bryant and made their way to the Frog Club, now big, modern and newly remodeled with giant windows looking down from the south end zone. Expecting to go up and down steps, Jack carried his cane, this one with an antler for a handle. They found a place to have coffee as the club filled with alums as excited as if it were Christmas day and they were six years old. A few of the alums greeted Colby and commented that it had been years since they saw her at a game. One of them stopped to visit.

  “How’s Rob faring these days?”

  Colby glanced at Jack to see if he had heard the question. He had.

  “Rob’s fine. Thanks for asking. Now if you’ll excuse us, I see one of my former clients on the other side of the room.” She took Jack’s arm and led him through the crowd until they were at the windows overlooking the field.

  “Wow, look at that, Jack. We could watch the game from here.”

  Jack nodded. “Now, where’s that client?”

  Colby looked around the crowd. “Must have lost her. I’ll catch her another time.”

  She breathed an inward sigh of relief when the crowd started applauding. Albertson Reed was making his entrance. He was the oldest living letterman, having played on Sammy Baugh’s team back in the thirties. When Jack saw someone talking to Reed and nodding in his directions, Reed made his way over. Jack shook his hand. “Jackson Bryant.”

  Reed was stooped in the shoulders but still had a firm handshake and piercing blue eyes. “You’re J.D.’s dad?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ve watched some of the practices. Mark my words. It may take a while, but he has a chance to be something special.”

  Jack beamed as he thanked the old man and then noted that people were starting to leave the club. He and Colby followed, making their way to padded seats on the forty yard line, twenty rows up. The TCU players drifted onto the field, wearing purple jerseys and white pants. Jack spotted J.D. wearing number 81. The Baylor Bears came from the other end.

  After warm-ups, the teams retired to their locker rooms, and the TCU chancellor introduced various dignitaries, thanking them all, the fans and the city of Fort Worth for making the new stadium possible. Then the players returned to the field as the TCU band played the Star Spangled Banner and four fighters from the Air National Guard flew over in formation. After a prayer and school songs, it was time for kickoff.

  The score at halftime was Horned Frogs, 24; Bears 17, a little closer than the Frog fans wanted. The second half was better with the final score Horned Frogs, 57; Bears, 38. J.D. rode the end of the bench even when the game was in the bag.

  Jack and Colby followed the crowd to the parking lot. As they approached the Bentley, he put his arm on her shoulders. Pleased that she didn’t pull away, he asked, “The night’s still young. You want to recommend a place for a nightcap.”

  Colby stopped and turned to look at Jack. “You understand we’re not dating, right?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Then my favorite place for a drink is the Library Bar on Houston Street downtown. They’ve got a piano bar and the best martinis in town.”

  Downtown was full of revelers, most of them celebrating the Horned Frog victory. Jack had to pass by the Library Bar to find a parking place two blocks away.

  Just like the streets, the bar was packed. Jack slipped the girl at the front a twenty to get the last two person table in the place. The piano player/singer played a medley of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. hits. Jack thought for a minute that he was swept back to Las Vegas thirty years ago as he ordered two double Tito’s martinis on the rocks with olives, just a little dirty. Colby smiled her agreement.

  They listened to the singer until the waitress brought their drinks. Jack lifted his for a toast. “Here’s to what I learned tonight.”

  A puzzled look crossed Colby’s face. “I don’t understand.”

  “I learned your boyfriend is named Rob.”

  Colby took a large sip of her martini before speaking. “Yeah, I was worried that might happen.”

  Jack sat his drink down and leaned over the table. “I don’t understand. I’m okay with you having a boyfriend. You’ve established the boundaries and I’ve accepted them. Only, why aren’t you ever out with Rob? Believe me, I’d rather have you out with me, but I’m confused.”

  Colby took the olive spear from her drink and plucked one off, chewing it slowly before she spoke. “He’s a driller. Works in Alaska up on the North Slope. He’s usually there two months and back here for two weeks, sometimes less.”

  “And you’re okay with that kind of long distance relationship?”

  Colby refused to meet Jack’s eyes. “Yeah, for now anyway. They’re opening up more rigs out in the Gulf. He hopes to land one of those this next year. We see each other on Skype two or three nights a week. That’ll have to do for now.”

  Jack finished his drink and ordered a second. He knew that he was not getting the real story from Colby, but decided not to push it. It would come out sooner or later.

  21

  Monday was a cloudy, dreary day with rain in the forecast. Jack awoke and watched the news while he ate a bowl of Cheerios. He wandered around the house and had second thoughts about buying one so big that he never even went to the second floor. Finding his way to the back yard, he picked up a pool skimmer and removed a few pecan leaves from the water. When he glanced up at the trees, he could tell that the pecans were getting ripe. Next, he opened all of the garage doors and started the engine on each of his vehicles, including the RV. After letting them run for five minutes, he went back in the house and found Lisa. His thrice-weekly maid had come. She’s got to be the envy of her friends, he thought. I use what amounts to a one bedroom apartment and she gets paid to clean the whole house. Still, she was punctual and pleasant and filled her hours by washing all the downstairs windows once a week and sweeping the sidewalks. After a shower and shave, he put on his usual casual attire of jeans, boots and a T-shirt, telling Lisa that he was going for a drive. At the back door, he paused to look over his collection of canes and chose one he found in an old shop in Hamburg on a European trip. It had a carved boar’s head for a handle.

  He started for Lucille, then stopped. Today he would drive the Ferrari, maybe open her up if he found the right stretch of road. He returned to the house, replaced the pickup keys on the board by the kitchen door and grabbed the ones to the Ferrari. Jack stoppe
d once more at the pickup to take his Texas map from the passenger door side pocket. He spread it on the hood of Lucille and chose a route of back roads leading at least to Mineral Wells.

  Jack strapped himself into the Ferrari and started the engine, pausing to listen to its low roar. The Ferrari had paddle shifting which Jack loved. No more four-on-the-floor. Now with his hands at the three o’clock and nine o’clock positions, he could shift up through six gears by flicking the right paddle and back down with the one on the left. No clutch, and he didn’t even have to take his foot from the gas peddle. It was a marvel of Italian automotive engineering. Jack put the car in first gear and eased down the driveway. He passed the Rivercrest clubhouse, waving to a couple of the gardeners whom he had befriended and turned right on Camp Bowie and went to second gear. Doing so, he made sure his fuzzbuster was working. It was a Valentine One, capable of spotting both radar and laser beams coming from police vehicles. Soon he was driving through the western outskirts of Fort Worth, headed toward Weatherford. He took a right after a few miles and wandered the back roads. When he found one straight and empty, he went to fourth and fifth gears, hitting a hundred and fifty at one time. On curves that were rated for 35MPH, he dropped to second and took them at eighty, always with a grin on his face. Maybe, he thought, he should do like Paul Newman did and take up road racing in middle age. He slowed as he passed through Weatherford and soon found himself in Mineral Wells where he turned and took the freeway back to Fort Worth. Driving down Camp Bowie, he spotted Colby’s Lexus in front of her office. He went in and found Colby was on the phone. She motioned him to have a seat. He was flipping through a local realtor’s magazine when she ended her call and circled around the desk and gave Jack a brief hug before breaking away with an embarrassed look before. “Hi, there.” She smiled. “What brings you here? Can I sell you another house?”

  Colby sat in the chair beside Jack and waited for him to speak. Finally, he relayed his day’s activities. “I think I’m bored. You’ve done a great job of keeping me entertained, but I don’t want to visit the museums again.”

  Colby frowned.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? I don’t want to go back to being a trial lawyer. Sixty and eighty hour weeks are behind me.”

  Colby pondered his situation before speaking. “Why don’t you volunteer to do some pro bono work? Times are tough. I’ll bet there are tens of thousands of people in this area who could use some free legal advice. You could set your own hours, go and come as you please and do some good for folks who can’t afford a lawyer.”

  Jack nodded his head. “Actually that thought had drifted through my mind lately. I just might give it a try. Got nothing to lose but a little time, and I’ve damn sure got plenty of that.”

  22

  The next morning Jack put on a white dress shirt, slacks, and boots. He located the Fort Worth Volunteer Lawyers Association on the internet and drove two blocks past the courthouse complex on Weatherford to a small two-story building with the association name above the door. He parked Lucille at a meter and dug four quarters from the center console of the truck. After feeding the meter, he entered the building to face a receptionist.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Name’s Jack Bryant. I’m a retired lawyer and would like to volunteer.”

  “Have a seat, sir and I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”

  Jack cooled his heels for fifteen minutes before the receptionist reached into the bottom drawer of her desk and retrieved a multi-page form and a clipboard. “Mr. Bryant, if you’ll step over here to get this form and complete it, I’ll have our director talk to you when he’s free.”

  Jack stared at the woman and wondered why she couldn’t get off her butt and walk to him. After all, he was the volunteer. Still, he rose and walked back to the reception desk. When he looked at the form, it was ten pages. He filled in his name, address, bar number and prior employment in Beaumont before returning to the desk.

  “Here. This ought to be plenty. Your director can read about me on the state bar web site. As you can see, I’m not a baby lawyer and don’t need to give you my life history.”

  “Well, Mr. Bryant,” the receptionist huffed. “These questions are important and necessary.”

  Jack bent over her desk, his face about six inches from hers, “Why don’t you give this to your director and see what he says?”

  The receptionist took the clipboard and motioned him to return to his seat as she went through the door behind her desk. Thirty minutes later a small man, wearing a bow tie, opened the door. “Mr. Jackson Bryant, please come in.”

  The director didn’t offer his hand as Jack approached and passed through the door. They rode the elevator in silence to the second floor and walked to a corner office with Graham Hill, J.D. on the door. Jack thought back through his career and could not recall any lawyer who put his academic degree after his name.

  Hill went around his desk to his swivel chair. “Have a seat, Mr. Bryant. I’ve looked over the very brief information you provided about your career.”

  Jack leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Hill, I don’t need to prove that I’ve earned my spurs. Did you check me out on the bar’s web site or on Google?”

  “I certainly did, sir,” Graham said as he tented his hands under his chin. “We can certainly use you. Since you obviously know your way around the courtroom, we can use you handling divorces. You’ll have to commit to certain hours. We want the same six hours every day. And, your outfit will have to be modified. We want our attorneys to be dressed for success even in the office. That means wearing a suit and tie at all times. We need to be respected by our clients, don’t you agree?”

  “No, sir, I don’t agree. I don’t need a goddamn tie to get respect. Forget it. I’m out of here.” Jack stormed out of Hill’s office, slamming the door behind him.

  23

  That night Jack thought about the wasted meeting with Hill. To hell with him. He still had too much free time and could do some good for people that couldn’t afford lawyers. He’d start his own clinic without the red tape. The next morning he left the house and started driving, this time east on Camp Bowie,. past the museum district until it became Seventh Street. After he passed Monkey Wards, he got to the bridge over the Trinity River. He found it interesting how memories of growing up in Fort Worth popped to the front of his brain. Now he remembered “the tamale man,” a little Hispanic immigrant who had a tamale cart that he parked on the grass on the side of the road just before the bridge. His wife made tamales and he stood there beside his cart every day, rain or shine, selling those tamales. Somehow he and his wife managed to eek out a living, at least enough to feed themselves and two kids. Jack did a double-take when he saw the tamale man still at his post. Jack changed lanes and came to a stop. The man’s face was now wrinkled, but he still smiled as Jack lowered his window.

  “Good morning, sir. How many today?”

  Jack didn’t really want the tamales, but ordered a dozen and tipped the man well before he drove away. Approaching downtown, he marveled at how much it had changed. The so-called skyscrapers of his youth were twelve story brick buildings. Now those old buildings were dwarfed by forty story glass towers, mainly built by the Bass brothers, multi-billionaires who inherited a few hundred million dollars from their bachelor uncle, Sid Richardson, and then made enough shrewd investments that each of them became billionaires. Jack slowly circled around downtown as an idea formed and took shape.

  When he turned onto Main, he saw the old red courthouse, now surrounded by other buildings in the courthouse complex, but still standing out with its red granite exterior, massive columns at the top of the steps and domed roof, complete with a clock. That’s what a courthouse should look like, he mused. People should feel a certain sense of awe as they climbed the twenty steps to seek justice.

  Jack drove around the courthouse and crossed another bridge over the Trinity as he descended from the courthouse bluff to the river b
ottom below. The area on both sides was run down. About the only businesses were a couple of bars, a topless club and some bail bondsmen. That changed as he approached the stockyards. Abandoned and in disarray for many years, some far-sighted citizen saw the potential of a tourist attraction among the ruins. In a matter of years the covered pens became shops. A tourist train weaved through the area. Steak houses and Mexican restaurants sprang up. “Billy Bob’s Texas” billed itself as the world’s largest honky-tonk, attracting some of the best singers that Nashville had to offer. Cowboys were hired to stall their horses there and ride them among the tourists, pausing to pose for photos and accept a tip for their efforts. Every afternoon the cowboys drove a small herd of longhorn cattle through the area, emulating the cattle drives of another era. The folks in Fort Worth liked the stockyards because they served to remind visitors that Cowtown really did have its roots in the old West.

  Beyond the stockyards there was little more to see. A couple of car dealerships had been abandoned, brought down by the great recession. When he got to Meacham Field, once Fort Worth’s commercial airport but now used only by private aircraft owners, he turned and headed back south. Once past the stockyards, he noted a cop shop, the Stockyards Police Station, on the right. A few blocks later he spotted an old fashioned ice house at the corner of Refinery and North Main. Beside it was a vacant lot where he parked and walked the property, using his cane to pick his way among rocks and debris. Big enough, he thought. He looked up to see that the lot was served by electricity. When he got to the back, he looked over the fence to see a neighborhood with homes barely fit for habitation. The roofs on most were patched. Old cars appeared abandoned in front yards. The streets were filled with potholes. These people could use a good lawyer, Jack mused.

  Jack walked to the front and studied the ice house. It, too, was a throwback to days gone by. With rusted metal walls, it had two garage doors in the front that were opened on warm days. A couple of old wooden tables, each with two chairs, were on the concrete apron in front. With no air conditioning, ceiling fans stirred a decent breeze. Jack stepped across the threshold. To his right were four old men drinking beer and loudly slamming dominoes on a table. A worn and scarred bar ran across the back. Three barstools had seen better days, maybe twenty years ago. Jack limped a little, having twisted his knee in the vacant lot, as he took a seat on one of the stools. The bartender had a fringe of gray hair and a black handlebar mustache.