Illegal Motion g-4 Read online

  ” Marty points at me with her knife.

  “Don’t start that phony liberal crap with me,” she says, her voice immediately warming to the subject.

  “If they didn’t act like niggers, I wouldn’t use the term, but good God, why are they so self-destructive? How many of the men support their children? Where are their families? All these damn gangs and senseless shootings they don’t care whether they live or die anymore. Blackwell County has as high a murder rate as New York City, did you read that?”

  “Things seem to be getting worse,” I admit, draining the last of my beer. There was an article this week in the Democrat-Gazette about school bus drivers and the anarchy that reigns before the kids even get to the classroom.

  The violence, intimidation, and profanity were shocking, and the article, without mentioning the ethnicity of the students, left no doubt about their race. One poor driver lost it fifteen minutes into her route and headed straight to a police station.

  “Worse?” she chuckles bitterly, spearing an onion.

  “They’re committing suicide. You know, desegregation was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Schools have been fully integrated for a quarter of a century, and they’re still not catching up. Of course, they blame it on whites. They blame every problem they have on racism, and all whites want to do is to get their kids a halfway de cent education and keep their children from being mugged. Even some of the blacks who have money send their kids to white private schools. They hate niggers, too” Despite myself, I laugh, irritated that I am doing so. I say soberly, “A lot of the motivation by whites to get away is just plain discrimination, and you know it.”

  Marty again jabs the knife at me.

  “Why shouldn’t we be able to discriminate against people who turn the schools into a battle zone? You know the schools weren’t like this when it was only white kids. Below a certain economic level, it’s a whole different culture. Jesus, Gideon, if two come in my store and start jib bering that nigger talk, I can’t understand ‘em.”

  I crush my beer can in frustration. It is hard to argue with the substance of what she is saying. At a bus stop I pass every day downtown I can’t pick up half of what is said by the blacks.

  “I hope you don’t talk this way around Sarah,” I say, willing to score a point any way I can.

  “You seem to forget she is part black.”

  Marty finally puts down the knife and replaces it with a peeler and goes to work on a cucumber the size of a base ball bat. Her zest for her work makes me glad she isn’t a urologist.

  “It’s not race or color, damn it, and you know it. I’m talking about intelligence and character. Remember the Chinese families we had in Bear Creek. They were smart and they worked their butts off. Henry Quon was vice-president of my senior class and editor of the annual. Mary Yee was captain of the cheerleaders the year before I graduated. Tommy Ting was a year behind you and he was the smartest one of them all. They didn’t ask for a damn thing. Their families worked night and day in those junky stores they owned selling to niggers. I guess they still are. The point is, slavery was the biggest mistake this country ever made. We should never have brought a damn one of them over here, and you know it.”

  I cannot resist smirking at this final leap of logic but realize it is pointless to respond. I don’t understand either why blacks haven’t made more progress in the last thirty years. Is everything the fault of whites? She is right about the Chinese families in Bear Creek. The adults kept to themselves, and their children starred in whatever activities were available. I don’t remember that they dated, but, hell, maybe they were afraid they would bring their race down by mixing with us. I flip the empty can into the box Marty has marked for recycling. She doesn’t seem the type.

  “So your solution,” I say mockingly, “is to run away from them, huh?”

  Marty makes a face that suggests I have been working too long around lead-based paint.

  “In this country that’s all you can do anymore. Even the black teenagers carry guns in Blackwell County. If any white public official dared to suggest aloud in public that blacks might be the cause of their own problems, it’d start a race war. This state’s become so damn “PC,” you’d think we were living on a college campus on the East Coast. No white person can say what we think without being called a racist. Hell, it’s easier just to move. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t get out of your neighborhood if you could afford it. Compared to that housing project just east of you Somalia looks like a vacation spa. I’m surprised you haven’t been killed by a stray bullet.”

  “Needle Park,” she means.

  “It’s not so bad,” I lie. Actu ally, it is. A person drives through the streets of the Blackwell County Housing Authority at his own peril.

  Gang warfare, arson, drugs, drive-by shootings, and theft are regular occurrences. A high percentage of the units are boarded up because of the rampant vandalism and pilfering. It is Marty’s strongest argument that something is terribly wrong in the black community.

  “Don’t bullshit me,” she snorts, opening her refrigerator and handing me another beer.

  “I read the papers. That place is a hellhole if there ever was one. The kids can’t even play outside because of all the shit that’s going on.”

  “It’s poverty,” I respond.

  “The blacks in my neighbor hood don’t act like that. They’re just as middle class as they can be.”

  “I didn’t say every black person is a nigger,” Marty says, washing off a handful of raw carrots.

  “But tell me the truth. Ever since Rosa died, you don’t have a thing in common with them, do you?”

  “I don’t really have the time to socialize much since being out in private practice,” I say, once more puzzling over the reason why I don’t interact more with my neighbors.

  When I returned from the Peace Corps, I had every intention in the world of living out my ideals. After all, I had spent two years in a nearly color-blind society on the northern coast of Columbia. Spanish, Indian, and African blood came together in that area of South America like tributaries forming one giant river.

  “That’s crap, too,” my sister says benignly.

  “With Sarah off at school, you probably just sit in the house and drink.”

  Damn. Has she been peeking in the window?

  “Neither of us has led exactly model lives,” I say, more than ready to shift the spotlight off myself.

  “You can say that again,” she says, with a big grin on her face.

  “But the difference is that I’ve finally got my shit together.”

  “And I’m happy for you,” I say sincerely.

  “It looks like you’ve got a good fit.”

  As if on cue. Sweetness comes in with the meat, and as he passes in front of me, she pinches him on the butt. He laughs, delighted at the attention she gives him. Though Marty and I are not on the same wavelength and probably never will be, I am pleased for her. True love has been a rare animal in her life and is worth a celebration.

  We get through the meal arguing politics. Sweetness can’t stand the Clintons. Bill is an opportunistic career politician who can’t keep his pants zipped; Hillary is a ball busting feminist. Since Sweetness’s construction company has benefited mightily by low interest rates and his wife runs a prosperous business, it is hard to take him too seriously. Perot, I point out, sounds like a Peeping Tom with all his investigations of employees and enemies.

  “I’d rather have a President who does it,” I say loyally, “than one who pays people to dig up the dirt on the rest of us.”

  Marty laughs at me. Politics has never been my game.

  I figure we get the government we deserve and usually let it go at that. I drive home, not sorry I came. For all her harshness, Marty makes sense. If I’m smart, I’ll forget Lucy Cunningham ever said a word about my grandfather.

  Saturday the Democrat-Gazette is still carrying Coach Carter’s decision and the reaction to it as page-one news.
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br />   With Woogie at my feet beneath the kitchen table, I read the paper over a cup of coffee. I had hoped the furor would die down, but as one reporter noted, the women’s groups on campus have found a cause to rally around this year. A new group, WAR (Women Against Rape), has sprung up overnight. Their leader, Paula Crawford, a law student from Rogers, is a long-haired, willowy blonde whose picture reminds me of Gloria Steinem. She claims that the university, by its inaction, “is sending a message to women on campus that they are third-class citizens.” The article says over a hundred women attended.

  Other reactions on campus seemed divided.

  Though several faculty members who were willing to be interviewed

  professed to be outraged by Carter’s decision, some students, typically males, thought Dade should be allowed to remain on the team until he was found guilty of a crime. The leader of the African American group on campus was reported saying that if Robin Perry were black, no one would be paying any attention, a fact, he claimed, which showed that “racism is alive and well on the University of Arkansas campus.”

  My eyes wander back to the picture of war’s leader. She isn’t bad looking. Years ago, you used to hear more about feminists. Rosa, I recall, had mixed emotions about them.

  She liked the part about equal pay, but being a devout Catholic made her uneasy about their stand on abortion. I remember that she went to a couple of meetings, but they got mad if you disagreed with them. Rosa liked men. A lot of them didn’t, she said.

  While I am reading the funnies, the phone rings.

  “Dad,” Sarah says, when I answer the phone in the kitchen.

  “Did I wake you up?”

  Instantly I think something is wrong. It is only nine o’clock. To my knowledge, Sarah hasn’t been up this early on a Saturday since she was ten years old.

  “Are you okay, babe?” I say anxiously, wondering what she could want.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “I just haven’t been able to sleep very well the last couple of days. I’ve been going to some meetings that have been held by a group of women who are upset that Dade is still allowed on the team. You may have read about it. They call themselves WAR Women Against Rape.”

  I pick up the front section of the paper again.

  “What do you think of Paula Crawford?” I ask, squinting at her

  picture.

  “Do people like that still burn their bras?” I ask, hoping I can get her not to sound so serious. Her voice sounds like it did when she got on her fundamentalist kick a couple of years ago.

  “Dad, they make a lot of sense,” my daughter says, “if you take the trouble to listen to them. All she does is point out that this country has a history of violence against women that has become an epidemic. I’ve never paid much attention to women who identify themselves as feminists but she really isn’t all that radical. Dad, I want you to be honest. Do you think Dade could be lying to you?”

  I look out the kitchen window and see nothing but driving rain. The weather for the game in Knoxville this afternoon is supposed to be no better. Dade won’t even be able to see the ball, much less catch it, if it doesn’t clear up a little.

  “Sure, he could be. That’s always a possibility. But after listening to him for two days, I’m convinced he’s not.”

  “Do you realize how common date rape is?” Sarah asks.

  “It happens a lot.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But the problem with statistics is they don’t help you decide if a particular male at one moment in history did or didn’t commit rape. It’s like saying women don’t do as well at math as men and then making a prediction about how you’re going to do on a test.”

  “That’s not the point,” Sarah says.

  “A student has been accused of a violent crime, and it’s business as usual.

  That’s wrong. He should at least have been suspended from the team until this is over.”

  “Why?” I argue.

  “Why should one student have that kind of power over another? Dade is no threat to her. All he wants to do is play football.”

  “He shouldn’t be allowed to!” my daughter says emphatically

  “She’s quit the cheerleading squad; it should be the other way around.”

  This is interesting news. Maybe some of her col leagues will be more likely to talk to me about her if she’s no longer around.

  “I think she’s overreacting,” I say unsympathetically.

  “I doubt if Dade would try to assault her in front of fifty thousand people.”

  “Don’t you understand. Dad?” Sarah almost shrieks.

  “She feels ashamed. Everybody knows who she is. She’s been degraded and humiliated by this. Her life is going to be affected forever, and everyone else is acting as if it’s only the accused who has rights. What about her right as a student to be believed, to be taken seriously? The police believed her enough to file charges, at least.”

  “The assistant prosecutor,” I correct her, and then ex plain he may have been influenced by personal considerations I add, “She’ll be taken seriously in court, and the likelihood is that because Dade is black and the jury will be white, he won’t be. Women can complain all they want to about the difficulty of proving a rape charge, but when the accused is a black male, it’s a different story.”

  Despite trying to keep my voice under control, I know I am almost shouting at her.

  “Besides,” I add trying to lighten things a bit, “Dade may be our kinfolk.”

  As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I hadn’t said anything. Sarah exclaims, “What are you talking about? How could he be?”

  “He’s not at all,” I say hastily and then have to explain about Lacy Cunningham’s visit and her remark and then my mother’s denial.

  “It’s the rankest kind of gossip, but once it gets started, people will repeat it for the next fifty years. I know how the President feels. If you believe what you hear, he’s gone to bed with every woman except Mother Teresa.”

  “But it was Dade’s great-grandmother,” Sarah says, refusing to laugh.

  “His mother ought to know whether it was true or not.”

  “No, she doesn’t!” I say sharply.

  “She knows gossip.

  She knows what she’s been told. Just because somebody repeats a story doesn’t make it true. When are you going to learn that?”

  Sarah’s voice loses some of its certainty.

  “Is his great grandmother still alive?”

  “I don’t think so,” I say, though I have no idea. This is a closed subject as far as I’m concerned.

  Knowing I don’t want to pursue this subject, Sarah returns to the reason she called.

  “If people didn’t care about winning so much, Dade would probably be off the team,” she says stubbornly.

  I start to tell Sarah about what I have heard about Coach Carter and his reputation for sticking up for players, but the truth of Sarah’s remark is self-evident. The pressure to win must be factored in somewhere, whether it is acknowledged or not.

  “We blow it up all out of proportion,” I concede.

  “You might be right.” I do not want to alienate Sarah. Nobody is more important to me. I tell her that I will watch the game this afternoon on TV with Clan but omit telling her about my date with Amy tonight.

  I don’t want to get her started on how young Amy is. We talk a few more minutes about nothing in particular, and I hang up, wishing I had warned her not to get too caught up with WAR. I don’t have anything in particular against the women’s movement, but I know women, just like men, can find reasons to feel they’ve been given a raw deal. Hell, she could have been born a Muslim woman in Bosnia. Now those women have something to complain about.

  At two Clan comes over to watch the game, wearing a “Hog Hat,” a red plastic contraption complete with snout that looks ridiculous but is in great demand. He is also carrying in a cooler of beer, which he seems already to have sampled.


  “Go, Hogs!” he screams as he sits the cooler down beside the couch in my den.

  “Kill the bastards!

  Cripple ‘em! Tear their heads off! Rah! Rah! Rah!”

  I laugh, knowing Clan doesn’t really care about the game. In fact, he visibly flinches at a particularly vicious tackle. It’s the beer and comradeship he enjoys. I take a Miller Lite and tell myself to go slow. The last thing I want to do tonight is nod off at nine o’clock.

  “I still can’t believe I’m taking that dependency-neglect case you ought to be doing,” I chide him as the Razorbacks kick off.

  “I’ll get you back, don’t think I won’t.”

  Clan plows into the cheese dip I have provided, using a tortilla chip like a road grader.

  “You’re a miracle worker,” he says, grinning.

  “You’ll get her off. You know as well as I do that Dade Cunningham ought to be here watching with us instead of getting his butt soaked in Knoxville.

  Did you bribe Carter or what?”

  As the game progresses, I tell him what has occurred. Clan may not be

  much of a courtroom lawyer, but he usually displays some common sense as long as it is not related to his personal life. While we talk, the Hogs look tight as if all of them are feeling the pressure, not just Dade. Tennessee scores twice in the first quarter and would have scored again in the first half but fumbles inside the ten yard line. On offense Jay Madison, the Hogs’ quarterback, overthrows Dade twice, once for what would have been an easy touchdown. Open underneath a deep zone coverage, Dade has caught five short passes but has dropped one in a critical third-down situation.

  Once he does catch it, he runs without authority, unlike the first five weeks of the season when he averaged twenty yards a reception.

  As the teams come off the field at halftime, Clan mutters, “What’s the fuss all about? They couldn’t beat their way out of a paper bag.”

  I open only my third beer of the day and push the “mute” button.

  “They can’t even blame the weather,” I say gloomily. The rain has stopped, leaving the turf slick, which gives the offense an advantage, since it presumably knows where it is going.