Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  The case went, as was expected, with great rapidity, and Mr. Wu's testimony was due before David was quite ready. Later, Brad reprimanded him: "You should have asked for time. A short adjournment; your client suffering, sick, in great pain, nervously exhausted, in danger of apoplexy."

  "The day that character has apoplexy I'll have twins."

  "David, don't you find yourself feeling a certain affection for the little man?'"

  "Affection!" Then, cooling off, he said, "You know, I do. In an enraged sort of way."

  When he stood to question Mr. Wu he knew his case was in shreds and tatters. This knowledge, coupled with the shredded and tattered state of his nerves, faced as he was by his first live client on a witness stand, seemed to affect his vision, and Mr. Wu was a far-off statue, inscrutable and unpredictable. David's voice was firm, but he could not trust his hands.

  He started to fold them behind his back, decided it looked pompous, and compromised by putting them in his pockets, although he had been brought up on the teaching that this was sloppy. It might be sloppy, but it was also comforting.

  He took his client carefully through the details of the accident, bringing out the fact that he had indeed seen the truck, but too late, stressing the possibility that the truck driver might have failed to come to a full stop at the stop sign, knowing almost certainly that he had made the stop. The man had a record of twenty years without accident or citation. Leaving that phase of the questioning behind with an inner sigh of relief, he began on the sufferings and sorrows of Mr. Wu as a result of the crash.

  "You were in the hospital a long time, were you not, Mr. Wu?"

  "Yes. Very nice hospital."

  "Please, Mr. Wu. Just the question. You suffered a great deal of pain, didn't you?"

  "Sometimes. Nurse give medicine. Pain go—"

  "Mr. Wu, please. You're a brave man. I've had broken bones, and I know the pain is bad most of the time—"

  "Maybe then they not have medicine so good—"

  Behind him there was a choking sound he knew came from the defendant's attorney. He couldn't be surprised. If he was sitting where that attorney was, he'd be in hysterics. Not even Brad could have known Mr. Wu would be this difficult.

  "You lost a lot of time from your work, your office, didn't you, Mr. Wu?"

  "Yes."

  "This meant loss of money—"

  "My business family business. My sons good sons, smart; they take care—"

  David glanced at the judge and wished immediately that he hadn't. That usually dour individual was pink to his hairline, his mouth compressed. If he had given way to the smile he was holding back, thought David, it would be the first time in history, from what he'd been told, anyone had ever seen him do so. And it would be at David Champlin's expense. David squirmed miserably; he and Mr. Wu had been over these points carefully, and he had thought Mr. Wu understood.

  "When you left the hospital, what was the condition of your leg?"

  "In cast."

  "Of course." David lowered his voice to one of tender sympathy. "For a long time?"

  "Yes. Long time."

  Now he felt on safer ground. "And after the cast was removed, Mr. Wu, you were quite lame, were you not?"

  "Yes." Mr. Wu smiled, looking more like an Oriental cherub than ever, and started to elaborate, but David jumped in before he had a chance.

  "Are you still lame?"

  "Just a little. Doctor tell me all O.K. now. Soon, not be lame at all."

  David stopped him somehow just before the judge mercifully called noon recess. The defendant's attorney came up to David and put a consoling hand on his shoulder. "My God!" he said. "The slaughter of the innocents."

  David looked at the other man with bleak despair. It was bad enough to watch your client throw his case out the window, weak though the case might be, but when opposing counsel offered sympathy before the jury was even out it had to be the zenith of frustration.

  Mike Shea had dropped in to watch the proceedings just before recess and insisted on taking David to lunch. They revised and attempted to strengthen David's presentation to the jury, and Mike said: "Don't lose your sense of humor. It's what gives perspective. So help me, another five minutes and I'd have been rolling on the floor. But not laughing at you, son. You're doing a fine job. Brad's pleased as a mother cat with a new kitten."

  "He was there?"

  "He came in a couple of times. You were too busy to notice."

  "I was too busy to notice anything. Can't we drop the damned case?"

  "Sure, you know better than that. Not without your client's permission. Or a settlement out of court."

  "They'd have to be certifiable to offer that, even five dollars."

  He was dry-mouthed and blank-minded when the time came to present his case to the jury. A few weeks ago, at home, he had told Gramp he knew he'd be tongue-tied from stage fright the first time he addressed a jury, and Li'l Joe had said, "Ain't nothing to worry about; just relax and God'll send you the words."

  God wasn't going to send him any today; it would be an imposition on the Almighty even to ask it. Suddenly he found himself smiling at a picture of an amused Deity, saying, "Man, you're licked. Don't bother me. Come round next time and I'll see what I can do." The foreman of the jury returned the smile with the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, keeping his mouth straight and set. David could not tell what the smile meant, but it gave him courage and started him off on his opening sentences. Before he was well into the presentation of his case he discovered that he was becoming downright involved emotionally with a charming and honest little Chinese whom, a few hours before, he would gladly have shot. He remembered Brad's advice: "Identify with your client. And try to make each juror believe you're talking to him personally, appealing to his or her—especially her— sense of fairness and compassion."

  It was a warm day, but not warm enough to account for underthings soaked with perspiration when he finished. As he turned away to go to the counsel table, he saw Mike Shea standing by the doorway grinning, David thought, like a damned Halloween pumpkin.

  Two hours later he stood in stunned disbelief by the side of his client, too shocked even to move forward and shake hands with the jury foreman, who had just finished announcing that Mr. Wu, as a result of being banged into by a truck because without glasses he hadn't been able to judge its distance, would be the richer by fifteen thousand dollars.

  Eventually he revived enough to thank the jury and return to glare at his client. "You were lucky, Mr. Wu."

  His eyes suddenly wise and smiling, Mr. Wu said, "No. You good lawyer. I not think we win."

  David gasped. "You not think we win!" The tension gone, he began to laugh so that the few people left in the courtroom turned to look at him, smiling themselves. He had misjudged Mr. Wu. The award was less by many thousands than the suit had asked, but Mr. Wu was happy. He had had his accident and been paid for it, and his conscience was as unsullied as the conscience of the newborn.

  Mike Shea greeted him on the sidewalk. "A drink, my boy."

  "I need it."

  At the bar Shea ordered a soft drink, and David a bourbon. "Why?" he said. "Why?" and Shea said, "Didn't we tell you to be loading the jury with Irish and women?"

  "Ye-es, and I did my best. But Mike, you're Irish and you're no damned fool. You're a smart cookie."

  "I'm Irish and I like a good fight. And the underdog, boy, the underdog. The little guy."

  "But his eyesight, man! His eyesight."

  "He said he saw the truck, didn't he? Sure and everybody knows what a truck driver's like. And they'd no witnesses that the truck driver didn't jump the light. And the judge was so sure you'd lose he didn't bear down. It was no handsome award. It wasn't much more than he'd have grossed if he'd been at his desk all those months—"

  "His sons! His blasted, bloody smart sons!"

  Shea shrugged. His eyes were still bright with amusement. "If they'd thought you'd anything going for you on that score, Dennis might
have been making a thing of it. Let what happened to your opponents be a lesson to you. When you've got your man on the ropes swing harder. They laid back—"

  After he returned to the office David sat contemplating his new briefcase, a present from the Prof, lying unopened on his desk. He had won his first case, and there was a vague taste of dust and ashes in his mouth. He heard footsteps in the hall, and then Brad thrust head and shoulders around the half-open door. "Don't get carried away. You won't win 'em all."

  "For gosh sake, come in! Why'd I win that one? It's all wrong. It's haywire. The man's a menace on the highway. I'm not even going to tell you what his vision test was."

  "Don't. I already know. I don't want to dwell on it." Brad came in, stood looking down at his troubled protege. "I'll tell you what really happened. And it won't be easy to take. Not for you, anyway. That verdict was in favor of two babes in the woods. Let's admit it, Counselor; to have found against you would have been downright unkind. And by and large, the American jury is kind where large sums of money are concerned—especially if possessed by large corporations. It's their way of embracing a share-the-wealth principle while remaining loyal to the capitalist concept. It cost them nothing to make our Oriental cherub happy; he was obviously a good and honest man. They should be so honest! At the same time they could give a boost to an unhappy young lawyer with a personality equally winning in its own way. And they were unquestionably aware that it was your first case. These things get around."

  "Jesus have moicy! And he a Chinese and me a Negro!"

  David looked around the room. "You want to buy a mess of thirdhand lawbooks, marginal notes included free?"

  Brad's smile broadened. "Go on home. You'll lose a few, too. Console yourself with the thought that they'll reverse us on appeal."

  ***

  The next weeks, except for one break, were filled with dry, routine work that increased rather than decreased the pain of day-by-day living without Sara. He saw Sudsy and Rhoda infrequently, not enjoying time spent with them as a couple, able to see Sudsy for lunch or a companionable drink only occasionally because Suds was spending most of his time at the clinic preparing for the grind of fourth-year medical. The break in the monotony came ten days after the Wu award, while he was still smarting and embarrassed over the hollowness of his victory, when Chuck Martin unexpectedly appeared at the office late one afternoon.

  David was inordinately glad to see him, and urged him to come out to the apartment and stay with him.

  "Can't," said Chuck. "I got in late last night and I'm already booked into the hotel. Telegrams and mail and stuff will come there—"

  "Well, you can eat at my place, can't you?"

  "I wasn't going to ask outright, just hint. Thanks."

  There would be, thank God, a few meals not eaten alone or with friends who carefully and noticeably stayed clear of the subject of Sara Kent. Peg Willis was on a drinking bout, and Brad was remote and what Dora called "fractious."

  For the first time since Sara had left, he hummed as he prepared dinner, felt for the first time a sense of pleased anticipation of what the next few hours would bring.

  The "few hours" stretched into a full night, and as the apartment windows showed a gray prophecy of dawn Chuck yawned, stretched, and said, "I should have known better than to pay for that room in advance."

  "Anyhow, we got a fair amount accomplished," said David.

  "Not enough," said Chuck. "We've been talking about Harlem for two hours now, and we still haven't got the kids out of it before it gets 'em." He got up and began to walk slowly up and down the room. "Now and then some of them make it, David. But they don't leave it behind, anymore than you've left the South behind. You've brought with you certain attitudes, certain reflexes. So do the ones who break out of Harlem. And I contend that their attitudes are harder to shake, their reflexes more basic. By the time a Harlem kid is eight years old he's seen a killing or two, and a cutting is routine. Half of them don't even know what a father looks like, and a lot of them aren't too sure about a mother. Even those with stable homes—give me a week and I could name two or three—don't have much of any place to go except the street. A kid doesn't always steal because he needs the money—he steals because it's more fun than earning it, and it gets you accepted by your peers. Isn't that the big thing today? The peer group? And when the standards of that peer group are petty thievery and skill with a knife, and being able to outrun a cop—it plays the devil with the optimism and the hope of people like me."

  "You think there is hope?" asked David.

  "I say 'yes' but I think I mean 'perhaps.' One thing I believe—there's more hope for the Negro in the South than for the Negroes in Harlem or South Chicago or East Philadelphia, or Los Angeles—"

  "Why do you say that? There's more hate among the whites in the South—"

  "Man, that's why! Wait now, before you start asking questions. Your people can fight the whites down there, and eventually you will. And you'll have a lot of white bleeding hearts on the barricades with you. Why? Because it's more dramatic, man! The scene down there has everything. Slave descendants who never were freed, their rights denied, expected to fight for their country but not allowed to vote—name it, man! To arms! Charge! Come the call, and the so-called liberals will be singing 'We're coming, Father Abraham' and marching down there in regiments. But how many are going to march against filth and vice and unemployment and lousy schools and crooked, brutal cops? How many are going to fight for the kids who are gangsters at ten, addicts at fourteen, killers at seventeen, dead inside at twenty?"

  "Damned few," said David slowly. "Very damned few. It sort of opens up a new area of thought. No one seems to get too jittery about a Harlem riot—except temporarily. It's like a riot in a prison. Who gives a damn about a riot in a prison except the prisoners and the warden and guards? That's what a Harlem riot is, really. Or any other ghetto race disturbance."

  "That's what I'm trying to say. The Negro in the South actually has the hatred of the southern whites going for him, in one sense. All the white liberals here shudder about it, go all clammy thinking about it. It's something they get all het up about, think they've got to do something about it. But who really hates the Negro up here, David? I mean, the way they are hated down there—except, of course, for those Southerners who love their Negroes like pets. But up here—who gives enough of a damn about you as a Negro to bother hating you? Any more than who gives enough of a damn about convicts rioting in Sing Sing. Actually, most of the whites up here have it all figured out that the Negro in the North asked for it; nobody forced him to come up here, did they? He can vote, can't he? He can send his kids to a white school legally even if he can't actually; he's out of the galleon, isn't he? What's he squawking about? And when someone tries to tell them, to make them understand, they shy away. This is their part of the country, and it makes them feel good to criticize the South. I've heard some of them make a big, inconsistent point about wishing they could go down there and show those uncivilized red-necks a thing or two about a man's rights."

  David stood up, shook the coffeepot, and found it empty. Chuck said, "Don't make more, not for me, anyway." David set the pot down, stretched and said: "All night, by God, all night we've talked, and all we've got to show for it is a coffeepot empty for the third time and the well-known conclusion that nobody loves us black boys. And that unfortunately nobody up here hates us either."

  "I think that unless something gives pretty soon you'll have some of that hate, because you'll have fear. And come fear, come hate. The walls around Harlem aren't going to hold up forever, not with what's inside them."

  "They'll build higher ones next time," said David.

  "No," said Chuck. "From what I've seen at first hand, there's so much hell bottled up, so much howling, hidden hell that it will break down any wall, and enough of it will spew out to scare the pants off the people on the outside."

  "We need a Joshua."

  "Amen, brother," said Chuck. "Amen. Amen
." He was standing now, straightening clothes mussed from long sitting. His face was frowning and troubled. "You know the other name for Joshua? There was another Joshua—called Jesus— and no one paid much attention."

  "The world was smaller then by a few billion," said David. "Suffer little children—love thy neighbor—hurt the least of these and you're hurting me. How long did the words last ex-

  cept in print? And how much more than print are they to the people outside the walls?"

  " T hear their gentle vo-oi-oices calling'—" As Chuck laughed, David said: "That's just an intro. What I've heard 'em singing, a long time ago, was 'Pharaoh's Army Got Drownded.' It used to be my favorite hymn, when I was a brat, before I started figuring out that somebody either made a mistake or they weren't talking about us—"

  "You mean the song, 'Oh, Mary, Don't You Weep,'" said Chuck.

  "It doesn't matter, nit-picker. Any old way you name it, that army's a long time drowning—"

  ***

  The last week in August, Isaiah Watkins arrived in Boston to confer with ALEC officials at headquarters on the crisis that was building rapidly in Little Rock. He brought with him a jar of fresh filet powder from Gramp, as well as a number of admonitions and warnings. David's conscience hadn't let him tell Li'l Joe that he'd won his first case; he was still smarting with chagrin, and if he was going to brag he'd wait till he had something to brag about that would be to his credit as a lawyer.

  Several weeks before, Brad had asked him to pinch-hit for a while at ALEC meetings. "I'm up to here in work," said Brad. And added, "As well as trouble." There was no necessity now for Brad to mince words with David. Both David and Sara had answered late at night "emergency" calls when Brad was out of town, and, fearful of mistaking a real cry of distress for a cry of "Wolf, Wolf!" had hurried to the Willis home and sat with a Peg Willis they scarcely knew: talkative, repetitive, tearful at times, progressing to incoherence and finally to a submissive somnolence, letting them put her to bed as they would a child. Then weeks would pass before they heard from her. Eventually there would be an invitation to dinner, either out or at home for the filet gumbo or deviled crab David had taught her to cook, and no mention of their last meeting; it might never have happened.