Becoming Andy Hunsinger Page 19

  We all four said, “Amen.”

  Jake and I exchanged hugs and kisses with both our parents, and then we left. We headed north on U.S. Highway 29. The land rolled by. We passed through farmland where peanuts and soy beans grew in vast swaths of cleared property. After crossing the Florida-Alabama state line, we encountered slash pine forests so dense I couldn’t see twenty feet past the edge of the roadway. The day was damp and overcast. Rain spotted my windshield.

  Jake turned on the radio; he twisted knobs, trying to find a station worth listening to. But this was south Alabama, where rock ‘n roll didn’t sit well with folks. All the stations Jake found played either country-western or gospel music. At one point, I heard a few verses of Daytime Friends, before Jake turned the knob again, and then I thought of Jeff Dellinger.

  Of course, I hadn’t attended Jeff’s funeral. I didn’t even know where Jeff’s family lived; that’s how little he’d ever told me about himself. But I imagined Jeff’s body resting in a freshly-dug grave, and then a shiver ran through me.

  He’s dead. Let go, Andy.

  Before long, we merged onto I-65, a four-lane highway divided by a grassy median. The land continued to roll. At the time, federal law had reduced speed limits on all interstate highways to fifty-five miles-per-hour, to promote fuel conservation. I drove sixty. We passed transfer trucks, Greyhound buses, and military convoys. The rain’s intensity grew. The Vega’s wipers worked back and forth, making slapping sounds, while my tires hissed on the slick roadbed.

  Jake rearranged his limbs. He drummed the dashboard with his fingers, raised and lowered his passenger window several times. Then he chewed a hangnail. He kept fiddling with the radio’s knobs, producing little but static and gibberish, until I finally switched the radio off.

  “Try sitting still, Little Brother. You’re driving me batty.”

  Jake twisted here and there in his bucket seat. The vinyl upholstery crackled under his weight, and I was reminded of my sex with Aaron at Alligator Point, so many months before.

  “I can’t help it,” Jake said. “I’m nervous as shit.”

  I nodded. “I don’t blame you; today’s a big day.”

  Jake cracked his knuckles. “Can you remember your first day at college?” he asked.

  “Sure, I do; just like it was yesterday. And I’ll tell you a secret if you promise never to repeat it.”

  Jake looked at me and gathered his eyebrows. “Go ahead.”

  “Dad drove me to Tallahassee. A tropical storm brewed in the Gulf. Rain fell so hard you could barely see the car ahead of you, a dreary day. We arrived at campus and all these kids were moving into my dorm, Smith Hall, an ugly place that looked like a prison.

  “For some reason -- I can’t remember why -- Biff Schultz hadn’t arrived yet. So, I had the place to myself.”

  I stared out the windshield, flexing my fingers against the Vega’s steering wheel.

  “After we’d carried all my things up to my room, Dad took me to McDonald’s for lunch, and then he drove me back to the dorm. He left me there, on the sidewalk. Rain still fell, and I can remember standing there at the curb, watching him drive away. I felt so damned sad.”

  Jake made a face. “Sad about what?”

  “I was lonely, Little Brother. I didn’t know a soul in Tallahassee. And I guess I’d never realized how much I loved my life in Pensacola. I swear, if Dad would have let me, I’d have returned home with him, that very day. But I didn’t, of course. He and Mom would have been so disappointed.”

  “What happened next?” Jake asked.

  “I went to my ugly-ass room. Then I lay on my bed and bawled like a baby.”

  Jake looked at me and blinked his eyes. “Did you really?”

  I nodded.

  Jake turned his gaze to the windshield; he worked his jaw from side to side and rubbed his lips together. “Do you think Dad and Mom pampered us?” he said. “Is that why leaving home was hard for you? Is that why I feel like crying right now?”

  I kept quiet a minute or so. Then I spoke.

  “I think we got lucky -- I’m talking you and me -- to have the parents we do. I didn’t know how lucky until Dad’s heart attack happened. That’s when I realized nothing lasts forever, especially not who or what we love the most. It’s all slipping away, in little increments.

  “Just the same,” I said, “you can’t go back, and neither can I. We have to move forward, even though it hurts like hell.”

  Jake chewed another hangnail. “I should have enrolled at FSU,” he said; “then we could have lived together. We’d have each other instead of no one.”

  I shook my head. “You have to get out there on your own; you’ll never become the person you’re meant to be until you do. Trust me on that, will you?”

  Jake drew a breath. Then he let it out.

  “Can I call you,” Jake said, “whenever I need to, even if it’s at three A.M.?”

  I thought of all the lonely nights I’d spent in Smith Hall, especially when the rain fell and I’d press my cheek to the screen on the window near the head of my bed. I recalled the wind sweeping across nighttime Tallahassee, how it stirred the branches of live oaks, and how it tossed Spanish moss beards about.

  My lips parted into a tiny smile, and then I patted Jake’s shoulder.

  “Of course, Little Brother, of course you can.”

  ***

  The morning following Labor Day, one hundred and twenty first-year law students, including me, crowded into the our school’s main lecture hall, a semi-circular room with tiered seating and desks descending from the rear of the room toward a podium with a lectern and microphone. The lectern stood before an enormous chalk board. A crush of conversation filled the room, sometimes punctuated by a guy’s throaty laugh or a woman’s cackle. Fluorescent, overhead lights cast their milky glow upon heads and shoulders. Most students were my age, an equal mix of males and females. People dressed casually: T-shirts, blue jeans, sneakers.

  I didn’t see a single person I knew.

  Yawning, I stretched my limbs. I’d slept fitfully the night before: I tossed and turned while the whippoorwill sang his tune and a full moon bathed me in silvery light. I couldn’t stop thinking about my parents, and about Jake. Were they okay?

  Now, a man with a mane of silver hair entered the hall through double swinging doors behind me. He descended a flight of steps bisecting the hall, with a vinyl-clad notebook under an arm. He wore charcoal dress slacks, a Navy blue blazer, a bow tie, and wing-tipped lace-up shoes. A corncob pipe protruded from his face like an outrigger. When he reached the lectern, he fiddled with the microphone, causing pops and rumbles in the hall’s loud speakers. Then he put down his pipe and cleared his throat.

  The hall fell as silent as an empty church. Then the man at the lectern spoke in a stentorian drawl. He sounded like Colonel Saunders, the fried chicken mogul.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Robert Mabry, Dean of the Florida State University College of Law. If you are a Geology student, you came to the wrong building this morning.”

  People chuckled.

  As Mabry spoke, his head swiveled. His gaze traveled from face to face in the crowd.

  “I’m here, first of all, to welcome you. Our faculty and staff are glad you’re here, and we look forward to getting to know you; we truly do.

  “I am also here to caution you. Law school is tough; we will work you like you’ve never before worked in your life. We will challenge you intellectually, physically, and spiritually. And some of you -- a healthy percentage, in fact -- will not survive the process.

  “Have a look, right now, at the persons seated on either side of you. Go on, look...”

  Nervous conversation erupted while folks looked here and there at their neighbors. Then we all looked back at Mabry.

  “I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it’s quite likely at least one of your neighbors, and possibly both, will not be here when we return here from Christmas break. Every year, we h
ave a thirty-three percent attrition rate among our freshmen class. That’s a sad, but true fact.”

  Great, just great.

  Mabry’s basso boomed.

  “The law is a jealous mistress, ladies and gentlemen. She will consume your every waking hour, and then she’ll haunt your dreams. This quarter, you will read more material than you did in two years of undergraduate study. Your books shall be your constant companions, supplanting your friends and family. You will learn to speak a new language, and learn to analyze matters in a peculiar manner known only to those who study the law.

  “I’ve often heard this said: Your first year we scare you to death. Your second, we work you to death. And the third... we bore you to death.”

  A ripple of laughter moved through the hall.

  “Students, the law demands sacrifice. But she also rewards the diligent, not just with lucrative careers, but with intellectual stimulation, and the ecstasy of courtroom triumph. Few persons will ever know the thrill of winning a jury verdict in a criminal or civil trial. It’s better than liquor, better than drugs, and even better than sex, some say.”

  Mabry gripped the edges of the lectern, leaned toward the crowd.

  “I urge you: apply yourselves like you never before have. Put yourselves to the test. Survive the crucible, if you can. Do your level best.”

  Mabry picked up his pipe and notebook. “Let’s get to work,” he said.

  Then he strode from the hall.

  ***

  Three days later, on a Friday afternoon, I lay on my living room sofa with a pencil stuck sideways between my teeth. I studied a New Jersey appellate decision rendered a dozen years before. The decision permitted a consumer who’d bought a defective automobile to sue the car’s manufacturer, despite the fact no contract existed between the carmaker and the consumer.

  I had read the case, back in Pensacola, and would likely read it again.

  That morning, a girl in my torts class had stood before sixty of our fellow students, in a lecture hall. She “recited” the New Jersey case, discussing the court rendering the decision, the principal issues in the case, and how the court had disposed of those issues.

  Afterward, Professor Lars Vanderbleek, an enormously fat and rheumy-eyed guy, brought the girl to tears through use of the “Socratic method” of teaching. He questioned the girl at length about the finer points of the case, going into details I had not even considered.

  “Exactly what does ‘privity’ mean, in the context of this decision?” Vanderbleek asked the girl.

  “It’s a contractual relationship between two parties,” the girl said.

  “Which parties?”

  “In this case, no contractual relationship existed.”

  Vanderbleek scowled. “Of course one did. The plaintiff had a contract with a car dealer, correct?”

  “Yes, but --”

  “Why not let the plaintiff sue the car dealer?”

  “The dealer was bankrupt, he --”

  “Oh, so the dealer’s financial irresponsibility results in the manufacturer paying the piper. Is that fair? Is that justice, Miss... What’s your name again?”

  “Jamieson, sir. Maxine Jamieson.”

  Vanderbleek rubbed his chin with a knuckle. “Do we simply pin the tail on the donkey with the moneybags? Isn’t that what the court is doing here?”

  “The car was defective, sir, and --”

  “Allegedly defective. This case was still in the pleadings stage when the plaintiff appealed the trial court’s dismissal of his claim against the manufacturer, correct?”

  “That’s true, but assuming --”

  “Assuming?” Vanderbleek thundered. “Don’t ever assume anything when you walk into court. Be prepared for any and all possibilities. And do the same when you enter my classroom. Understood, Miss Jamieson?”

  And so on.

  My Contracts professor, Charles Scully, was a florid-faced Harvard Law grad, a retired federal judge from Boston, married to a woman twenty years his junior. Rumor had it Scully liked his booze and gambling at the greyhound track in nearby Monticello.

  My Criminal Law professor, Kenneth Barkley, was barely older than his students. His wavy hair was as long as Fergal’s. A dedicated distance runner, his long-sleeve T-shirts and blue jeans clung to his skinny frame. Barkley had clerked for the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, after graduating from Duke University’s law school. He was considered an authority on search and seizure law, and more than once, The Florida Supreme Court had asked Barkley to file an amicus brief in thorny criminal appeals before the court. Then they asked Barkley to participate in oral arguments, a rarity and an honor. During class, he paced while he talked, and light from the lecture hall’s overhead fixtures reflected in the round lenses of his wire-rimmed eyeglasses.

  My Real Property professor, Amos Barron, was a balding, wizened little man with skin as white as paste, a reedy voice, and plastic, horn-rimmed glasses. He wore ill-fitting, plaid sports jackets, polyester slacks, and patent leather slip-ons. I didn’t dislike Professor Barron, but the material he taught us seemed as dry as the chalk dust that smudged his slacks. His class began at eight A.M., three days per week, and I’d already dozed off once while he lectured.

  My only female professor was Patricia Donatelli, who taught Research & Writing. The top of Donatelli’s head came level with my chin, but she strode through the halls at the law school like a linebacker. She favored pantsuits, kept her dark hair precisely coifed, and painted her fingernails fire-engine red.

  On my first day at school, she took my fifteen-member class on a tour of the law library. While we cruised between shelves, passing volumes of American Jurisprudence and the Southern Reporter, she told us this:

  “The library is your friend. Get to know it well, learn to love it, and it will love you back. Thorough research is the key to successful litigation, and to advising clients on complex matters. Knowing where to find the law relevant to your practice is a skill you must cultivate and, ultimately, master.

  “A law library is a living creature. The books you see here, be they case reporters or statute books, are the creature’s organs, each offering information and enlightenment on the law’s many facets. I will teach you how to navigate the creature’s organs, to make the creature work for you, and to do your bidding.”

  Whenever I was around Donatelli, during that first week of class, I felt energized. She had a knack for remembering students’ names -- already she knew mine -- and right away, I liked her very much. Her class would last all three quarters of my first year of law school, culminating, she informed us, in preparation of legal briefs on a selected issue, and oral arguments in a moot court competition, at the end of the school year.

  “Your performance in my class this year,” Donatelli said, “will determine your chances for making law review. Keep that in mind. If you dream of clerking for the Florida Supreme Court, or a federal judge, you won’t stand a chance unless you’ve served on law review while you’re here.”

  A pale, slender boy with bushy brown hair, wearing jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, raised a hand. “What’s ‘law review’?”

  Donatelli clapped her hands. “Good question,” she said. “Three times per year, the college publishes a book, primarily authored and edited by our students and faculty. If a significant decision has been rendered by a Florida court, be it state or federal, we will discuss the decision and critique its reasoning. We also feature articles on legal topics of current interest to lawyers and the judiciary. For instance, administrative law and environmental law are new and emerging areas. People in the profession look to us to help explain these fields to them. Law review’s hard work, but rewarding. It’s nice seeing your name in print, and even nicer seeing your participation noted on your resume when you’re looking for work.”

  At the end of Donatelli’s first class, I struck up conversation with the boy who’d asked about law review, while the two of us walked to our cars in the law school parking
lot, both of us toting a stack of books. The boy’s name was Spencer. A Tallahassee native, his tenor voice carried the same drawl as Loretta McPhail’s. He walked with a slight limp, and when he talked, his free hand flipped here and there.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said. “I knew law school would be competitive, but we’re already supposed to worry about our resumes? Hell, we just got here.”

  It turned out Spencer was an Emory graduate; he’d majored in History while there.

  “My senior year, I realized my degree wouldn’t get me a job, other than teaching at a high school. So, I thought I’d study law. Tallahassee’s full of attorneys.”

  When I told Spencer my brother was an Emory freshman, he narrowed his sea-green eyes and crinkled his forehead. “It’s a tough school; you’re competing against some of the smartest kids in the South, most of them from wealthy families. After four years, I’d had enough.”

  I pointed over my shoulder with a thumb. “I don’t think this place will be too easy, either.”

  He shrugged. “At least everyone here doesn’t look the same. Emory’s overwhelming white, a very button-down, khaki pants kind of place. Half the guys seem to have Roman numerals behind their names. Know what I mean?”

  I nodded, wondering just how Jake would fit in up there. Who knew? After all, Jake wasn’t me. Maybe he’d like Emory’s preppy atmosphere.

  Now, before we parted, Spencer and I exchanged phone numbers.

  “They say it helps to have a study partner,” he told me. “I’ll give it a try if you will. Maybe we can help each other survive.”

  Now, on my living room sofa, light slipped from the room. Already the sun had descended behind buildings to the west. Just when I reached to switch on a floor lamp, my phone rang.

  My caller was Biff Schultz.

  “Hey, cocksucker, I heard about your dad. Is he okay?”

  I told Biff about the weeks I’d spent in Pensacola. Then I asked about his summer.

  “I worked my ass off, but I learned a lot. If you break an ulna, I’ll know how to set the bone and cast it. Or I can take your temperature anally; I know you’d like that.”