I am thankful I didn’t want to be a lawyer right out of undergraduate school, for I would have squandered that money as badly as I wasted the money that my mother spent educating me. For the first time in years, I ask my self if it was as much fun as I have told myself I remembered it. Now it seems more frenzied than anything else.
What I remember most is always being hungover and late to get somewhere to a class, to a meeting, to some event, because I was too intent upon cramming it all in, including enough alcohol to float a battleship. Was the Peace Corps an escape from all that activity, or was it a refuge from the impoverished emotional existence I thought awaited me if I returned to live in eastern Arkansas?
As I look across the street at the coeds walking past the sorority houses on the other side of the street, I realize I still don’t know
the answer. The only conclusive fact I have in my head thirty years later is the knowledge that in a drunken stupor early one morning I lowered my pants and crapped on the steps of the Chi Omega House to protest being dumped by a girl I thought I cared about. I cross the street, deciding to wait another thirty years be fore making my confession.
I last a total of five minutes at the door before being told in no uncertain terms by the housemother, an attractive, blue-haired woman by the name of Ms. Fitzhugh, that neither Robin nor Shannon will be available to see me. Yet, maybe the word will get around to the other girls: if you hate Robin or Shannon, you can tell your story to Dade Cunningham’s lawyer. The little flurry of activity my presence produced was almost comical. You would have thought Fidel Castro was at the door. I should have said that I was a recruiter from WAR and had come by to pack up Robin and take her on a national protest tour. That would have really upset them. These girls in their stockings and tailored clothes don’t seem ready to storm any barricades. I remain impressed that Paula Crawford was able to persuade Robin to appear at the rally. Maybe she could give me lessons.
During the next day and a half of trying to prepare for the hearing I encounter several more dry holes: Despite going to her house, I never am able to talk to the girl who volunteers for Rape Crisis. Wednesday night Coach Carter calls back and hems and haws but finally tells me that he can not appear as a character witness for Dade be cause it would “compromise his future neutrality” in the matter. What neutrality, I want to scream at him but don’t. His tone makes it clear
he has made up his mind (or somebody has made it up for him) and I thank him again for all he has done. Dade, he says, is having some good practices this week and seems ready for the Alabama game. Not as sanguine about the hearing, I decline to reassure him that all is going well in my area.
Thursday morning only one of the girls from Dade’s party back in the spring at Eddie Stiles’s rented house shows up at Barton’s office and is no help at all. Doris Macy would gladly say that Robin and Shannon raped Dade if I wanted her to, but witnesses as eager as this girl hurt the credibility of an entire case. I remember that she is the one who has been described as a “hanger-on,” and I tell her I will call her if I decide she can help at the hearing
Thursday afternoon before practice Dade shows me where the incident occurred. Even taking a shortcut, Happy Hollow Road is at least a couple of miles east of the campus. Out Highway 16 on the road to Elkins, Dade directs me to turn off to the left, and soon at the end of the blacktopped street we come upon an ugly yellow frame rectangle that can’t contain more than a thousand square feet. There is no house around us for a hundred yards. To the north are fields and the slopes of Mount Sequoyah. As isolated as a place can be in this developing area, this is a perfect spot for an interracial tryst, but a lot of trouble to go to to find a place to study.
“I can’t find Eddie anywhere,” Dade apologizes.
“I’ve tried for two days straight.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say, stopping the Blazer in a wide space in a road. This place is so rural that the house even has a well. It is
boarded up, but still, it’s a nice touch. I say, “Dade, you need to level with me. Had you ever had sex with her before? It’s okay if you did. In fact, it’ll help our case if you did.”
Stubbornly, Dade shakes his head.
“This was the first time,” he says.
“She didn’t fight me or anything.”
Damn. There has to be more to it than this.
“You think people are going to believe you each drove out in separate cars three miles to this place to study? Nobody is that dumb.”
Dade looks off into the woods.
“I tried to kiss her that evening in the spring, but she didn’t want me to.”
Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. I ask, “What do you mean she didn’t want you to kiss her? Why’d she come over if she wasn’t interested?”
“That’s what I said!” Dade responds hotly.
“She and I was off by ourselves in the kitchen getting a beer while the rest of ‘em were in the living room. It pissed me off.
She said we were jus’ friends, and if I was gonna do stuff like that she was gonna leave. She said she’d come be cause Shannon was such a big fan and wanted to meet me. We went back in the living room, and that was it.
Both of us was kind of cool the rest of the semester, but like I told you, she started getting real friendly just a week or so before she claimed I raped her.”
More than ever, I’m convinced Robin changed her mind. This year Dade was a bigger star than ever and still a nice guy. His body obviously hadn’t deteriorated any over the summer, and she thought she would try it out, but started feeling guilty almost immediately. Or maybe it was date rape. People lie to themselves all the time about what they are
doing and why they are doing it. I go back over his story, but I don’t get much more out of him.
I just hope I’m not the last person to know what happened that night.
Thursday night I finally get hold of Sarah and meet her for dinner at a cafe Barton has recommended only a block east of the Ozark.
“Danny’s” has pictures of Elvis and Marilyn on the walls and plays one after another “The Thrill Is Gone,”
“Dancin’ in the Street,”
“The Great Pretender,” and “Bridge over Troubled Waters,” before it seriously nose dives with “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do.”
With the music, black-eyed peas and corn bread on the menu, and peach cobbler for dessert, this is my kind of place. Sarah, ever cautious of good food at a reasonable price, orders a Caesar salad and talks about the WAR rally after I explain I was there, too.
“You should have stayed around to the end to say hello. I would have introduced you to Paula. She’d like to talk to you.”
I bet she would. Women seem to love to try to straighten me out.
“I would have liked to talk to Robin,” I say, as I sugar my iced tea, “but she doesn’t want to talk to me.” I do not mention that I couldn’t get my foot in the door at the Chi Omega House. It would embarrass her that I tried.
“Dad, it took a lot of guts for her to speak at the rally,” Sarah says defensively.
“I couldn’t have done it.”
“Yeah, how did Paula manage to bring that off?” I ask, noticing that Sarah is wearing no makeup. Great. Next, she’ll be telling me she’s joining a convent.
“I’ve told you,” Sarah says, spooning ice from her water and putting it into an ashtray.
“Paula is very persuasive. I think you’re afraid to take her on.”
A no-win situation if there ever was one.
“You make her sound like a prize fighter,” I say, over “Midnight Hour,” the Wilson Pickett version, though I like the way it was done in the movie The Commitments. Maybe Sarah and I should just listen to the music.