I look at my watch. Quarter to seven. Time to go see Carter. I turn left onto Dickson and head for the campus.
Carter’s supposed to have as great a football mind as Lou Holtz or Jimmy Johnson. It doesn’t matter. He could have an IQ of 7. There’s only one bottom line, and that’s your won-lost record. A 5 and 0 record says it all for the time being. I just hope he isn’t as politically correct as my daughter, or we are in trouble.
4
Dale Carter looks older than sixty. His face is lined like an ex-smoker’s, and his unruly hair, more gray than brown, is sparse. His gray sweats don’t hide his gut. This is a man who didn’t get his job on his looks.
“Dade,” he says, without shaking his hand, “come on back to my office. Are you Page?” he asks me warily, as if he had taken a course on lawyers in school and flunked.
“Yes, sir,” I say, offering my hand.
“How are you, Coach?”
He gives me the quickest handshake I’ve ever had, and I feel contempt radiating from all directions. It looks as if we will be going through the motions. Hell, why not?
The state of Arkansas, even if it’s through the auspices of a pissant assistant prosecutor who’s had a bad family experience has put its credibility on the line by charging Dade Cunningham with rape. How can it help the foot ball program in the long run if he lets Dade play out the season? As we follow Carter like two schoolboys about to get a whipping, I think again how easily I am able to deceive myself into believing anything I want. The old saying, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” finally makes sense. For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been acting as if I were king of the rodeo, when the truth is I’m one of those clowns that tries to distract the bull when the king gets bucked off. I’ve got to figure out a way to get on this man’s good side, and it better be quick.
I glance over at Dade, who looks scared. I don’t blame him. Carter opens the door to his office, and I recognize Jack Burke, the athletic director. Burke is relatively new to the program, and has stayed in the background since he got the job a couple of years ago. Older than his football coach, but not by much, he actually shakes my hand instead of jerking it away as if I had shocked him. He is dressed in a drab gray three-piece suit, as befits his status as an administrator. A former head coach himself at Mississippi State who was a star halfback at Fayetteville in the fifties, he had indifferent success and made his way back to Arkansas, where his only visible decision in the two years he has had the job was to hire Carter. Considered relatively weak after some of the former power brokers who have occupied his position. Burke doesn’t figure to be my problem. He put all his eggs in Carter’s basket, and now he’s got to live with his decision, rotten or not.
Carter’s office has got to be unusual for a football coach. Instead of pictures of star athletes, he has photographs of urban landscapes that look as if they were taken from some fancy book on architecture. I recognize San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Dallas. What is it supposed to mean? Perhaps in keeping with his cerebral image, he is trying to make the point that the real world is not the four or five years spent as a Razorback athlete. On his desk is a picture of a plain-looking woman his age his wife, I assume. She is no better-looking than her mate. More of the real world, I guess. Though there is a couch in Carter’s office, he indicates that we should sit across the desk from him, and Burke, now out of my line of sight, takes the couch. This will obviously be Carter’s show. Leaning back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head, he ignores me and says wearily, “Dade, I don’t think I have much choice but to take you off the team at least until your trial is over.”
Dade looks over at me in shock. I say to Carter, “Coach, he hasn’t done anything to be punished for. I’m convinced this wasn’t rape. Dade didn’t force her to have sex. She wanted to. He shouldn’t be punished for that.” I tell him what I have heard about the assistant prosecutor.
“This charge may end up getting dropped when the man who was elected to do the job gets back from his vacation.”
Carter stares at me as if I had suggested that he resign as head coach.
“You don’t know that. What is your inter est in this anyway? Dade’s family doesn’t have any money. Is your representation tied to his future pro contract or what?”
Dade shoots me a look of total confusion, and I say hastily, “Absolutely not. I happen to live down the street from his uncle, who’s a friend of mine, and he asked me to help out.” Carter is as shrewd as his reputation makes him out to be. I have stretched the facts a little, but basically what I have said is correct. I see no point in admit ting that I hope to represent Dade on down the line.
Indifferent to whether he is insulting me. Carter asks Dade, “Is this right?”
Dade nods.
“My mama said Uncle James and he are neighbors. He’s got a daughter who’s a cheerleader for the jayvees-Sarah Page.”
Carter shrugs.
“People, including coaches, try to exploit these kids all the time,” he says.
“It makes me sick.”
I try to seize the tiny opening he has given me.
“That’s what I think this is all about. It’s not just greedy lawyers who use athletes. This girl, who pretended to be a friend of Dade’s, knows how vulnerable athletes up here are to the charge of sexual misconduct. What I figure is that she got interested in him because he was a star and a real attractive young man. They were in class together and she got to know and like him. One thing led to another, and she went to bed with him. Later she got scared people would find out about it, and knowing how her parents would feel, she claimed she was raped. I don’t need to tell you there’s a lot of racial prejudice in this state, and I’d be willing to bet her parents, who I hear are very prominent in southern Arkansas, would have yanked her out of school if they found out their daughter was going to bed with a black male, even if it was Dade Cunningham. Dade, tell Coach Carter what you’ve told me,” I say, looking at my client. I can’t read Carter. For all I know, he may think I’m a total opportunist and Dade is guilty as hell. Without more time, I can’t prove him wrong on either count.
“I didn’t force her. Coach,” Dade begins, his voice full of emotion. He suddenly tears up, surprising me. I don’t know about the coaches, but I am not used to seeing men the size of Dade Cunningham cry.
“I didn’t even know she wanted to do it until she got over to Eddie’s house.”
“Who’s Eddie, son?” Carter asks gently. For the first time since we’ve been in the room he is completely focused on his player. I look back over my shoulder and see Burke leaning forward, straining to hear.
“Eddie Stiles he’s a student,” Dade explains, wiping his eyes.
Damn. I wish I had this on tape and could show it to Dade if he goes to trial. No jury, even an all-white red neck one, could fail to be moved by the genuine emotion in Dade’s face and voice. He has to be telling the truth.
As I listen to him again, I fear that by the time he goes to trial he will have told the story so many times the details will be too stale for him to summon the raw emotion he is displaying today.
Carter is unable to restrain himself from interrupting with questions.
“Dade, you know you wanted in her pants,” he responds after Dade says they decided to meet at Eddie’s to study together, “or you wouldn’t have gone off campus.”