Mr. Justice

by Scott Douglas Gerber

That particular week had started out innocently enough. McDonald had faced the usual crush of publishing deadlines, teaching preparations, and law school committee meetings. However, on Tuesday, February 5—McDonald would never forget the day—he returned to his office to find a telephone message taped to his computer screen. The note, written in his secretary’s familiar succinct style, read:

  PM:

  Call Jim Westfall at the White House ASAP.

  MJ (2:47 p.m.)

  Speculation about who would be nominated to replace Edwin Crandall on the Supreme Court had dominated the blogosphere that week, and any law professor with even a pea-sized brain would know what the message from Jim Westfall meant. McDonald certainly did. But before he returned Westfall’s call, he wanted to talk to Jenny about it.

  McDonald could have contacted his wife on her cell phone, but this news was too important for anything except a face-to-face conversation. The principal reason that Peter and Jenny McDonald’s marriage had stayed so strong for so long was communication. At least that was what Jenny would remind McDonald of every time he reverted to the tight-lipped behavior that John Gray had described so vividly in his mega-selling book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Jenny had bought her husband the book on CD so that he would have no excuse not to read it.

  “What are you doing home?” Jenny said when her husband strode through the back door of their four-bedroom colonial on the south end of Charlottesville. She was folding laundry on the kitchen table. “I thought you had office hours this afternoon.”

  McDonald smiled at his wife and kissed her on the forehead. Twenty years into their marriage, he still got chills when he saw her. “I canceled them. Where’s June Bug?”

  “She’s taking a timeout in her bedroom. She’s been a little cranky this afternoon. She threw a tantrum when I told her to stop wiping her muddy paws on her new outfit.” Jenny reached into the laundry basket for another batch of clean clothes to fold. “Why did you cancel your office hours? Unlike most of the prima donnas over there, you never do that.”

  McDonald chuckled at his wife’s perceptive remark about his law faculty colleagues’ dislike for holding office hours. Meeting with students took time away from research and writing, they insisted. He said, “You might want to sit down for this one, Jen.”

  Jenny’s brows furrowed. “Did something bad happen?”

  “No.” He pulled out a chair for his wife. “Please, Jen. Sit.”

  Jenny sat. She rested an elbow on a pile of laundry. “What is it, Peter? The suspense is killing me.”

  McDonald rubbed the heel of his hand across his cheek to erase any trace of the powdered donut he had eaten on the ride home. He was supposed to be dieting. “I got a call from Jim Westfall today.”

  “President Jackson’s chief of staff?” Even housewives with small children to raise knew who Jim Westfall was. Or at least Harvard-educated ones did. “It’s about the vacancy on the Court, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “‘Probably?’ You mean you haven’t called him back?”

  McDonald blushed. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I wanted to discuss it with you first. It’s not like I’m being asked to deliver a paper in San Diego over the weekend. It’s a lifetime commitment. And not just for me. Do you really want your life to change that much, Jen? And what about Megan’s? Wherever she goes, she’ll be known as the daughter of a Supreme Court justice. Is that fair to her? She’s a little kid.”

  As if on cue from Steven Spielberg, Megan Mallory McDonald came skipping into the kitchen. “Daddy!” She raced to her father and wrapped her tiny arms around his waist.

  McDonald lifted his daughter into the air, smothered her with kisses, and said, “Hi June Bug.”

  “Did you bwing me a prethent?”

  McDonald always brought something for Megan when he came home from work. Jenny said he was spoiling her, but given the difficulty they’d had becoming pregnant, she never discouraged the practice.

  McDonald searched through his pockets and retrieved an individually-wrapped Lifesaver he had snatched from his secretary’s candy dish. “Here, June Bug.” He handed his daughter the candy.

  “Yippee! … A Lifethaver!”

  Jenny beamed at what was transpiring in front her: pure, unadulterated love between a father and daughter. She said, “Obviously, Megan will go anywhere you need her to go, Peter. So will I.” She rose from her seat, ran her fingers through her daughter’s tussled hair, and kissed her husband softly on the mouth. “Accept the nomination, Peter. You’ve earned it.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Peter McDonald snapped back to the moment. “Good afternoon, Mr. President.”

  The president said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, sir. Fine. Thanks for asking.”

  “That’s not what Morris is telling me.”

  So much for doctor-patient confidentiality, McDonald said to himself. Aloud to the president, he said, “You know how doctors are, sir—always viewing the glass as half empty … always making things sound worse than they are … always wanting to be overly cautious.”

  “But in your case, you need to be ‘overly cautious.’ I need for you to be ‘overly cautious.’ The American people need for you to be. Believe me, Peter,”—the president had never called McDonald by his first name before—“I know how worried you are about Kelsi Shelton. We’re all worried about her. But you’re not out of the woods yet. Morris tells me that you’re not strong enough to travel, even if it is only two or three hours from D.C. to Charlottesville. Besides, there’s nothing you can do for Kelsi right now. Morris says that you couldn’t get in to see her even if you wanted to, which I know you do. But it’s up to the doctors now. You need to let them do their job. You need to let Morris do his job. And his job is to help you. His job is to make sure you get well so that you can serve the country for decades to come. Like it or not, those of us called to public service sometimes must make decisions that, at least in the short term, run contrary to what we think we need and what we think our friends and family need.”

  McDonald sat back on the bed. He closed his eyes for a moment to allow the president’s words—the president’s plea—to wash over him. “OK,” he finally said. “I’ll stay in the hospital. But only for a little while longer. I know it’s up to the doctors now, sir, but I disagree that there’s nothing I can do for Kelsi. I can be there for her as a friend. I can be there like I wasn’t for my family.” He hung up the phone, took a sip from the cup of water on his lunch tray, and turned to Morris Tanenbaum. “I assume you heard that, Doctor.”

  Tanenbaum nodded that he had. “I think you’re making the right decision.”

  McDonald held up his hand to signal that he had said all he planned to say about the matter. He settled back into his bed.

  Tanenbaum got the hint. “Come on,” he said to Secret Service Agent Brian Neal. “Let’s let the professor get some rest.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Senator Alexandra Burton switched off the evening news with the flick of an angry thumb. She yanked open the bottom drawer of her desk and retrieved the bottle of Wild Turkey to which she often turned to take the edge off a stressful day. She poured two fingers into a tumbler with the Clemson University logo stenciled across the front. The glass had been a gift from an influential constituent who wanted the senator to remember the university during a recent debate about an appropriations amendment to an education bill. The senator had fought hard for Clemson during that debate, and she had won. The senator always fought hard, and she almost always won.

  Burton got out of her chair and made her way through the suite of staff offices. It was twenty minutes past seven on a Friday evening, and her staff was long gone for the weekend. There was one notable holdover: Jeffrey Oates. Burton had to give Oates credit. The chief of staff certainly worked his ass off. Unfortunately, he wasn’t very effective … and not simply with respect to legislative matters. The evening news h
ad reminded Burton of Oates’s inefficiencies.

  “Senator,” Oates said when Burton appeared in the doorway. “I thought you had left for the day.” Oates began to stand, but Burton signaled that it was unnecessary.

  “I got lost in the news.”

  “What happened?” Oates’s question dripped with concern that he may have missed something important.

  He had.

  “CBS News is reporting that Peter McDonald is alive and kicking.”

  All the color rushed from Oates’s face. “S … sorry, ma’am. It looks like I let you down again.”

  Burton offered no response. She didn’t need to. Oates knew what this meant.

  Oates added, “I’ll try again.”

  Burton shook her head. “You’ve had your chances, Jeff. It’s up to some of my other friends now.”

  Why was Senator Burton telling him this? Oates wondered. Perhaps she wasn’t going to show him the door. Aloud to the senator, he said, “Is there something else you would like me to do?”

  “Yes.”

  A reprieve! Oates sang to himself. “Anything, ma’am. Just name it and I’ll do it.”

  “I’d like you to touch base with Senator Carpenter’s office about the possibility of reconvening Professor McDonald’s confirmation hearings. My guess is that McDonald is too sick to appear. We’ve already postponed the hearings once at his request. You know, when his wife and daughter got killed.” Burton shot Oates a look that Oates had never seen before—a strange combination of pain and pleasure.

  Surely, no one but the most extreme of psychopaths could fail to feel bad about the tragic deaths of Jenny and Megan McDonald. Alexandra Burton was no psychopath. But the senator clearly couldn’t hide the pleasure she felt from wielding power to its maximum degree—taking human life.

  Oates said, “But he’s in the hospital. Won’t it look bad for us if we put pressure on him while he’s recovering?”

  “It won’t be us pressuring him. It’ll be Senator Carpenter’s office. Besides, postponing the confirmation hearing once was unusual enough. Postponing it twice is asking too much.”

  “I’ll get right on it, ma’am. Is there anything else?”

  There was, but Burton had assigned the additional task to someone else.

  CHAPTER 46

  Earl Smith was gnawing his way through yet another packet of Saltine crackers. What he wouldn’t give for a hamburger, a piece of chicken, a hot dog … anything that wasn’t ninety-nine percent flour and salt. He couldn’t afford to stop by a Burger King for a Whopper yet, though. He couldn’t afford to venture more than a few hundred yards from the moonshiner’s shack. It had been only three days since he had fled from the Klan meeting … and from the FBI. The FBI was notorious for its willingness to keep searching until it got its man. The Klan was even more dedicated to that task. Smith should know; he had led dozens of Klan search parties over the years.

  Although Smith was dying for something substantial to eat, he was sort of enjoying the time alone that hiding out in the shack was affording him. He needed some time to himself. He needed some time to think. What was he doing with his life? What was he doing to his life? He was the grand dragon of the South Carolina Realm of the Ku Klux Klan. He had no business falling in love with a black woman.

  The course of Earl Smith’s life had been set by his father. Theodore Smith—“Big Ted” to his friends—was a legend in South Carolina Klan circles. It was Big Ted who had revived the long dormant Charleston den, and it was Big Ted who reminded Klan members across the state at konklave after konklave what the Klan was all about: protecting the white race from Catholics, Jews, and especially blacks.

  Earl Smith could still remember sneaking out of bed as a boy to wait by the kitchen door on the nights of his father’s Klan meetings. His father would arrive home beaming with pride about the course of the evening’s events. Big Ted would regale his young son about the power and glory of the brotherhood. “We are the law itself,” the father would tell the son. “We are patriots dedicated to what is fair and just… . Akia.”

  By the time the son had reached adolescence, he had fully committed himself to the Klan way of thinking and to the Klan way of life. His friends were the sons of klansmen. His nights, like those of his father, were spent fighting for what was fair and just. In Earl Smith’s case, as in the cases of most junior klansmen, “fighting” meant beating up Catholics, Jews, and especially blacks. There was nothing subtle about the mindset of a klansman-in-the-making committed to the cause.

  Eventually, though, Smith began to question the Klan way. He remembered the day he did as if it were yesterday. It was his third meeting as a full member of the Charleston den. He was eighteen years old. He was deep in the woods on the outskirts of the city. A fiery cross was ignited. A young black man was dragged kicking and screaming before the konklave. The sack was removed from the black man’s head. His eyes, as wide as Carolina crab cakes, locked on Smith’s. The young black man’s name was Tim Anderson. He was the starting tailback on the South Charleston High School football team. Smith was Anderson’s blocking back. In short, they were teammates. They didn’t speak much during practices or games, but they were teammates. That was supposed to mean something to Smith. And it did.

  “Please, Earl,” Anderson had said shortly after the sack had been removed from his head. “Don’t let them do this. Don’t let them kill me. Please, Earl. Please.”

  But Smith had to ignore his teammate’s plea. If he hadn’t, he would have been next. In fact, he took the lead in Anderson’s lynching. He tied the noose. He cut the rope. He led the konklave in the singing of the Klan’s sacred song.

  CHAPTER 47

  Billy Joe Collier had just finished his shift at the Taylor Tires plant. Earl Smith hadn’t shown up… . Smith hadn’t shown up in three days. Collier wasn’t surprised. Indeed, he would have been stunned if Smith had dared to come to work. After all, Smith knew what was waiting for him if he did.

  One of Collier’s coworkers passed by on the way to the soda machine and said, “What’ya got planned for the weekend, Billy Joe?”

  Collier said, “I think I’m gonna do me some huntin’.”

  “Huntin’?” The coworker slid a tattered dollar bill into the soda machine. “It ain’t deer season no more. And the ducks’ve already flied south for the winter.”

  “Don’t worry.” Collier watched his coworker struggle to persuade the soda machine to accept the dollar. It finally did. The coworker punched the COKE button. Collier continued: “I’ll find me somethin’ to shoot at.”

  “What about your knee? How ya gonna hunt when you can barely walk?” The coworker drained the soda in three large gulps and pitched the empty can into the recycling bin. Even rednecks had gone green.

  Collier had wrenched his knee when his foot had gotten snagged in a stack of tires that had come off the assembly line too quickly.

  “It don’t hurt too bad.” The pained expression on Collier’s face suggested otherwise.

  “Is Earl goin’?”

  Everybody at the plant knew how close Collier and Smith were.

  Collier didn’t answer his coworker’s final question. He was already out the door.

  Billy Joe Collier limped into his rusty Ford Monte Carlo and exited the parking lot of the tire plant where he had worked ever since he had dropped out of high school when he was sixteen. His guidance counselor had tried to convince him that he should stay in school—that he had only three more semesters until he graduated and that a high school diploma was a prerequisite for a successful life in this day and age—but Collier had told the man to fuck off. Literally.

  But as Collier wended down one back road after another in his search for Earl Smith, he had to admit that perhaps the guidance counselor had been right. What kind of life had Collier led during the twenty-five years since he had walked away from South Charleston High School in the middle of his junior year? He had no wife. He had no kids. He had no house. Shit, he hadn’t been promoted fr
om the minimum wage job he had accepted the week after he quit school.

  Collier did have one thing going for him: the Klan. The brotherhood. The fiery cross.

  Collier might not have been anyone in the work-a-day world that his guidance counselor had been preaching to him about, but he was someone in the South Carolina Realm of the Ku Klux Klan: the klaliff—the second highest-ranking member of the organization.

  After he got through with Smith, he would be number one. Then his guidance counselor and everyone else who had doubted him throughout the course of his sorry life could go fuck themselves for real.

  CHAPTER 48

  Billy Joe Collier pulled his car off the road and locked it into low gear. He spotted a large oak tree with a V-shaped trunk and maneuvered the car across the path to the left of it. His head nearly hit the roof as the car bounced through one hole after another. The path was bumpier and more difficult to traverse than he remembered. But he had never tried to drive it before. He had always walked it in the past. He was tempted to hop out and finish the trip by foot. His aching knee wouldn’t permit it, though. Now he finally appreciated the sense of physical pain that Earl Smith had been trying to convey to him during one of the many hunting trips they had enjoyed together over the years.

  Smith used to love to entertain Collier with stories about what it was like to play high school football back in the day. The thrill of competition. The adrenalin rush of throwing the perfect block. The deafening cheers from the crowd when the team scored a touchdown. The post-game parties at the coach’s house. The cheerleaders … ah, the cheerleaders. That was the part that Collier liked to hear about the most. Hooking up with a cheerleader was every man’s fantasy, and Billy Joe Collier definitely liked to fantasize.