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  she says to him, her voice now businesslike, even cold.

  Husbands and wives. He mumbles something I don’t pick up. She nods and smiles at me.

  “Tell Sarah hello for me.”

  “Sure,” I say, sitting down as she leaves the room.

  Whatever transpired, I’m apparently not being invited for dinner. I’ve forgotten that couples develop their own code. Rosa could give an entire lecture on almost empty leftover food containers by raising her eyebrow and sighing in her dramatic Latin way. I’m surprised that Gloria is not included in this conversation. She works in the federal district clerk’s office and knows more lawyers than I do. Yet, she didn’t even acknowledge her brother-in-law.

  Maybe they don’t get along. The message I got was that she’s spent years civilizing James; Roy and his family are a lost cause, and she’s not real crazy about her husband putting up the bond. But that’s reading a lot into it. Family dynamics are usually unresolved mysteries. I think of my only sister, Marty, who lives less than an hour north of here: we haven’t seen each other but one time in the last year. History alone ought to bind us, but somehow it always ends up getting in the way.

  I continue to ask questions, but I don’t get much more information about the incident. Roy got up there too late to have a normal visit. He mostly tells me about Dade and can’t keep the pride from his voice as he describes his son’s athletic ability.

  “A recruiter from Michigan told me when Dade was in high school there were wide receivers in the pros who didn’t have his speed and hands. I should have sent him up there, goddamn it. There would have been enough women there to keep him happy.”

  Black women, he means, I realize. The Ozarks are good for chickens but not cotton, with the result that historically few blacks have resided in the northwest corner of the state, a fact that rival recruiters probably don’t overlook in their pitch to young men in their sexual prime. At six feet two and two hundred pounds, Dade has always gotten his share of attention from white girls, his father assures me.

  “I told him to leave ‘em alone,” he repeats, shaking his head.

  “With the shit that’s happened up there, that’s just looking for trouble.”

  I know what he means. Every few years there seems to be a major incident involving Razorback athletics. Yet Roy must know that as important as the Razorbacks are in the scheme of things in this state, you can’t expect them just to stay cooped up in their rooms all year and only be let out on game days.

  “Was he home this past summer, or did he stay in Fayetteville?” I ask, wondering again how well Dade might have known the girl. Despite his father’s injunction, this might have been a lovers’ quarrel that got out of hand.

  “I had him home working in the store,” Roy says, edging forward on the couch.

  “He didn’t want to be there though.”

  I can understand why a twenty year old spoiled rotten by the special life of the big-time college athlete wouldn’t want to go home to share a room for the summer with his siblings in one of the poorest counties in the Delta. Sarah didn’t want to come home either. My feelings were a little hurt, but I tell myself I understand.

  She’s got her own life to lead, and it doesn’t include pre tending she’s fourteen again, which is the age she claims I treat her as if she’s home longer than a weekend.

  “He sounds like a real good kid,” I say, meaning it. What did the other lawyers promise him? I don’t know enough about this case to talk about it. I would brag about my success in rape trials, but I don’t have but a couple of out right acquittals in this area. Most of these cases plead out without going to court.

  “He’s a hell of a good boy,” Roy says, his voice flat, as he looks down at his watch. He has at least a two-hour drive ahead of him. Outside, he has a Ford pickup that looks ten years old.

  “Is he doing okay in school?”

  “Right on schedule,” his father informs me in a mono tone. He seems about to stand up.

  “He’s not just up there to play football. We want him to graduate.”

  I’ve got to say something quick or I’m going to lose him.

  “I can see the possibility of getting this worked out,” I say, more decisively than I feel.

  “The plain truth is that the Razorbacks need Dade more than he needs them.

  This is our best start since Ken Hatfield took them to back-to-back Cotton Bowls when they were still in the Southwest Conference. Dade is too important to the offense simply to kiss off the rest of the year without a very good reason, and the football program has been down too long to pretend this year isn’t crucial. My recollection is that when the incident occurred in ninety-one involving the basketball team, it was right before the NCAA tournament and none of the players got punished until after it was over. That was a year we thought we had an excel lent chance to go to the “Final Four.” He hasn’t been kicked off the team yet, has he?” I ask, recalling that the article in the paper said neither the university nor Coach Carter had any comment, but the matter was being investigated.

  “If Carter has the discretion to keep him on the team, maybe he can finish the season. If we can talk the girl into dropping the charge or, in the worst-case scenario, get the prosecutor to allow us to plead to a reduced charge and get probation, all he’d have to worry about is any disciplinary action by the university. And then he could threaten to turn pro and skip his senior year. That ought to keep any punishment by the school to something reasonable. All that really happened the next year to the players in the ninety-one incident was that they had to sit out a few games at the start of the next season.”

  Roy Cunningham looks at me respectfully for the first time.

  “The school hasn’t said nothin’ about him being off the team, as far as I know.”

  “Well, we need to get busy as soon as possible,” I say, trying to apply a little pressure.

  “How much can you afford to pay?”

  Roy steals a look at his brother.

  “Five thousand dollars,” he answers quietly.

  “If my wife and I hired you, when can you start?”

  Five thousand dollars for a case involving as much work as this one will is chicken feed but the publicity alone will be worth it.

  “Immediately” I say, deciding on the spot not to tie my representation on the rape charge to a deal to represent him on a pro contract as his agent.

  Something tells me that this may have already been tried and failed.

  Without looking again at his brother, Roy nods.

  “That sounds good to me. Let me go call my wife, and I’ll be right back.”

  He goes out of the room, followed by his brother, and I am left to think about this case. I am probably in over my head. If the university decides tomorrow that Dade will be kicked off the team and even out of school, what can I do that will be worth a pitcher of warm spit? I am just remembering that in 1978 Lou Holtz, when he coached the Razorbacks, applied the socalled do-right rule, and kicked three black starters off the team who had been accused of some kind of sexual misconduct involving a white coed in the athletic dorm. The university was promptly taken to federal court by two of the state’s most famous civil rights lawyers to get the players back on the team in time for the Orange Bowl against Oklahoma. I can’t remember the details, but they didn’t succeed, and yet the Razorbacks went on to crush Oklahoma 31 to 6, which was poetic justice in the eyes of many white

  Arkansans. It seems to me the players weren’t even charged. The story was, as usual, the Razorbacks. Why did James suggest me? There are plenty of lawyers who have bigger names and more resources. As a solo practitioner, I’m going to have my hands full. Yet, why look a gift horse in the mouth? This case could lead to a whole new career.

  While I am pondering these questions, Roy returns and tells me that I am now representing his son. Ten minutes later I am escorted to the door, having promised to drive to Fayetteville in the morning after I see a client. In return I have commit
ments from the Cunningham brothers for my fee and bond money. I need to think, and I drive north twenty-five blocks across town to a junior high school track that attracts dozens of joggers and walkers, most of them upscale whites from the neighborhood. I’ve fantasized for years that I would meet one of the women who come here, but it never happens. Some are very attractive, but I never quite manage to start a conversation that gets beyond the weather. Many of them are twenty years younger, and I look like a cardiac victim after ten minutes on the track, which may have something to do with it.

  There is a good crowd tonight, and I stretch my muscles out on the grass of the football field inside the track while gawking at a blonde in pink spandex who is circling the track at a six-minute clip. Although I was a distance runner over thirty years ago at Subiaco Academy, a small Catholic boarding school in western Arkansas, I would be hard-pressed to stay even with her tonight. At five feet eleven, I am carrying saddlebags that could take a packhorse across the Rockies. If I were able to knock off fifteen pounds around my middle, I’d be in a position to work out seriously.

  As I begin to run, I replay the conversation with the Cunningham brothers and wonder whether I’d be any different if I had a son. How can a man believe his child has committed the crime of rape? Yet, Roy is obviously more comfortable with his son’s sexuality than I am with Sarah’s. Dade Cunningham has to beat women off with a stick. I’d be livid if I found out Sarah was involved with her professor. It happens. Lawyers with clients, doctors with patients, teachers with students. Dominance. Control We love to call the shots. A form of rape, I guess. I think of those Saudi apes. The females bent over and sub missive. The penises were startling in their resemblance to ours and brutal as jackhammers.

  I build up some speed, but I can’t catch up with the blonde tonight. Twenty-five yards ahead of me, she is running easily, her hair swinging behind her in a ponytail. I pass an old man who must be in his seventies. Not an ounce of body fat on him, but he is running in slow motion. He winces at me as if to say it doesn’t matter how much care you take of yourself: the genetic clock in side your body is ticking away like a time bomb. If aliens are looking down on the track, they must be scratching their heads. Why would any sane species chase each other around and around until they nearly pass out?

  I glance at my Timex. If I step it up a bit, maybe I can catch up with the blonde. As she rounds the curve by the goalposts on the east end, her long legs scissor the air.

  Sweat streams off my face like water cascading over a spillway. I am gaining on her, but my breathing is becoming ragged, and I can barely see. I pull to within ten yards of her. From the rear she looks great. Fantastic legs and ass. There is something about women who run. It is as if she senses someone is chasing her and she picks up the pace. As I come to the curve at the west end, a sharp pain grabs my side and suddenly I feel weak. Only five yards separate us. My eyes seem about to swim out of my head, but I squint to see the outline of her left breast on the curve. Packaged by the spandex, it looks magnificent.

  She could be a model working out. I accelerate and am within two yards of her when my stomach turns over. I feel about to throw up. Immediately, I pull up and step off the track into the football field. Have I given myself a stroke? I put my hands on my hips and slowly make my way across the grass toward the bleachers on the north side. You idiot, I think to myself. What was I going to do if I caught up to her? I wipe my eyes with my shirt and realize I could have killed myself. My stomach feels better but my legs are wobbly.

  As I cross the track to ascend the bleachers to the only exit, the blonde passes in front of me and is every bit as lovely in full profile as she appeared from behind. Fully focused on maintaining her long stride, she doesn’t even glance in my direction. She doesn’t know I’m alive.

  “Hey, Gideon! You look terrible!”

  Still half blinded by the sweat pouring off my head into my eyes, I look up toward the stands and see grinning at me my old friend and fellow lawyer Amy Gilchrist. We keep bumping into each other. First, classes in night law school, then she was in the prosecutor’s office while I was at the public defender’s, and we had some cases against each other. Now she’s in private practice, a grunt just like myself, hustling for cases and hoping the bills don’t come in all at once. I stagger across the surface of the track toward her. Her right leg is stretched across the metal railing that separates the bleachers from the track. She bends at the waist, making her torso parallel to her leg. Amy is short, compact, and cute as a but ton. If I weren’t almost twenty years older, I would have hit on her somewhere along the line in the last four years.

  “If you were any more subtle, Gilchrist,” I say, wiping my face with my arm, “you’d be mistaken for a blow torch.”

  Amy touches the toes of her Nikes, a feat I haven’t managed in years. Dressed in short shorts, a T-shirt that advertises a 10K race in Hot Springs, and spotless shoes, she looks damn good.

  “You looked like you were chasing that blonde,” she says, nodding with her chin toward the east end of the track.

  “But she was too fast for you.”

  I climb the concrete steps and collapse on the first row beside her.

  “Everybody’s too fast for me,” I say, too tired to lie.

  “You need some water,” she says handing me the plastic container beside her.

  “And your hair looks like it’s been electrocuted.”

  Instinctively, I feel my head. My hair is mashed up on the sides and I smooth it down. My bald spot feels like the size of a crater on the moon. I must look like a jogger from hell. No wonder the blonde speeded up.

  “Gilchrist, how have I been coping without you?” I say, taking a swig of water from the blue jug. If she is worried about germs, she shouldn’t have offered.

  “Obviously not very well,” she says humorously, her eyes on the runners passing in front of us.

  “I’ve been waiting for years for the opportunity to straighten you out, but you’ve never called me.”

  I cut my eyes at her to see if she is serious. Amy is the kind of woman who is so likable and friendly she seems as if she is flirting with every man within ten yards of her.

  Reluctant to invest too much in this conversation, I banter “I’ve always been afraid I’d have a heart attack and you wouldn’t try to revive me.”

  Her blue eyes, round as two dimes, twinkle mischievously.

  “It would depend on how you did. You’re not that old.”

  I take another pull at the water. We are having quite a randy chat for friends.

  “Aren’t you still a Holy Roller or whatever?” I ask rudely, but wanting to know. Over a year ago through an odd combination of circumstances I saw Amy at a service of the largest fundamentalist church in Blackwell County. I was in attendance as part of my preparation for defending a murder case; Amy was there apparently because she wanted to be. My girlfriend at the time had astounded me by joining the church, causing irreparable harm to our relationship.

  “Nope,” she says, apparently not offended. She smiles.

  “I’m still searching though.”

  “Aren’t we all?” I respond tritely, but relieved. My own search is a little closer to home. For the most part I gave up on religion after Rosa died of breast cancer.

  “So, your place or mine?” I kid, forcing her to be serious.

  She giggles deliciously.

  “Aren’t you still seeing Rainey McCorkle?”

  Some women love to flirt if they think you’re safe.

  “Rainey and I could never work things out,” I say truth fully.

  “We haven’t gone out in months.” Occasionally, she phones to ask about Sarah. Sometimes, I hear a wistfulness in her voice, but basically, she has decided she needs to find a man with fewer warts. For my part, I want someone who needs fewer certainties.

  Amy removes her leg from the rail and gives me a dazzling smile as she heads down the steps to the track.

  “Well, give me a ring sometime.”
>
  “I will,” I call after her, deciding to break my selfimposed vow not to go out with women as young as Amy. Since they haven’t exactly been lining up outside the house, it has been an easy pledge to keep. I decide to go home, though I’ve hardly worked out. If she compares me with some of the guys circling the track, she could easily change her mind.

  After a shower I put on a pair of pants and a T-shirt and call a much younger classmate who graduated law school with me from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

  Barton Sanders is the only lawyer I know in Fayetteville.

  Most graduates migrate to the center of the state, but Bar ton moved to Fayetteville to take advantage of a real estate operation that was already thriving under his father-in-law. Rich and well connected. Barton is a dye ding-the-wool Hog fan and may be able to help me jump start this case if he is willing. Though we are not close, we were friends in law school and I have been by to see him a couple of times since Sarah has been in school at

  Fayetteville. His wife calls him to the phone, and I tell him I am representing Dade Cunningham.

  “No shit?” Barton exclaims, his voice high and reedy as usual.

  “That’s incredible!”

  I ask him to fill me in on what he has heard. Although he is excited to be in the loop, it turns out he doesn’t know much more than Roy Cunningham.

  “It’s like there’s a news blackout at the university-while they stew about this thing. The girl’s father is a big Baptist,” he says, supplying me with one fact I didn’t have.

  “Lots of money. The girl is a looker, too. Have you seen any games this year?”

  “Only the one in Little Rock,” I answer, delighted there have been no announcements that Dade has been suspended. The fact is things have been so slow lately that I haven’t really been able to afford the trips this year to Fayetteville, but I don’t let Barton know it.

  “Do you have any idea how well Coach Carter would react to a phone call from me? I want to slow this down before they make any decisions that would be hard to reverse.”

  “Let me make some calls, and I’ll find out,” Barton volunteers.