Julia sometimes gets carried away and forgets that those walls aren't all that historical nor all that old either, if truth be told. Yes, court had been held on this site since the late 1700s, but this particular building was erected in 1921, not 1821. Even so, the rotunda was a better choice for this sweltering July day. Modern air-conditioning couldn't keep the sunny atrium as cool as the thick marble that surrounded us; and Carly Jernigan's robe not only smelled like a wool horse blanket, it was starting to feel like one. * * *
One of the Marthas handed me a cup of slushy lime punch before I took my place in the receiving line. Too sickly sweet, but at least it was cold and wet.
Against his wishes—"I'm not an invalid and I can damn well stand"—they had brought a chair for Daddy and he was holding his own court at the far end of the line. For the last few years, he doesn't leave the farm all that often, so there were lots of folks to crowd around and shake his hand, glad to see him again.
I stood with Judge Frances Tripp on one side and John Claude Lee, Julia's husband, on the other. John Claude's an older cousin and the current Lee of Lee & Stephenson, the law firm where I was no longer a full partner.
Genealogy is still the favorite parlor game in every southern house that still has a parlor; but for those who don't really care who fits in how, here's the Cliffs Notes version: my mother was a Stephenson, her mother was a Lee. Lee & Stephenson, Attorneys-at-Law was begun in the 1920s by John Herman Lee, my first cousin twice removed on Mother's Lee side, and old Brixton Stephenson, her paternal grandfather. My younger cousin Reid, Brixton's grandson, is this generation's Stephenson.
If you're any good at this sort of thing, then you've already worked it out that, while I'm cousin to Reid and John Claude both, they're no blood kin to each other.
But unless you've got some reason to worry about whether or not you could get a fair trial in my courtroom, the relationships are moot at this point and you don't really have to keep it all straight. The firm of Lee, Stephenson & Knott had gone back to being plain old Lee & Stephenson again. I was legally out of it, and all my personal clients had been shifted to John Claude or Reid, who has trouble keeping his pants zipped, but who's a damn fine attorney.
That's a personal opinion, though, and I promise you it's not something I'm going to let bias me. Sooner or later they'd both be pleading cases before me and I planned to be totally objective.
"Long as you don't bend over backwards to be fair," said John Claude when I was cleaning out my office in the 1867 house his great-grandfather (my great-great-grandfather) had built half a block from the courthouse. John Claude's mother was once his second-grade school teacher. His hair is silver now and she's almost ninety yet he's never forgotten the way she always took the other child's side in any dispute.
"Don't you worry, not one little minute," I soothed. "When it's your turn to take out the kickball, I won't give it to anybody else." * * *
The receiving line from hell continued to snake past. My fellow attorneys were amiable and friendly, but their joshing remarks lacked the usual barbs.
When Judge Perry Byrd had his stroke, I was in the middle of a runoff campaign for a different judge's seat. Then, instead of getting better, as his doctors had originally thought, Byrd had another stroke and died just as my own campaign crashed to a halt at the runoff primary. In North Carolina, when a judge dies or resigns in the middle of his term, the local bar associations get together and present the governor with a slate of candidates from the judge's same party. Because I'd polled enough votes to force a runoff in the first place, I was put on the slate as a courtesy, but it was generally thought that Chester Nance, a white male ADA from Black Creek, would get it.
To everyone's surprise—everyone who didn't know about the keg of Republican dynamite my daddy was sitting on—our Republican governor appointed me.
I'd been kicked up a notch in the pecking order and as they passed through the line, I could feel my colleagues already beginning to distance themselves from me. No more sharpening our spurs on one another before the bar. Now I would be above the fights, judging their words and deeds, and nobody knew for sure what sort of things I might let ruffle my feathers. They'd be walking on eggs till they got a feel for my way of doing justice.
I just wished certain elderly cousins and aunts would exhibit a similar reticence. In the same breath, they could offer congratulations—loving and completely sincere congratulations— and still make it crystal clear that the next time they hugged me in a receiving line, they sure hoped I'd finally be wearing white satin and orange blossoms.
"Oh, it'll have to get a lot colder than this," I said sweetly when Aunt Sister asked if becoming a judge meant I was about ready to settle down.
She gave me a blank smile and passed on, but Frances Tripp put her lips close to my ear and murmured, "Like when hell freezes over?"
"Give or take a few degrees," I muttered back.
All around the rotunda, my brothers and their wives and children were clumped in animated conversation with friends and relatives. Among the teenage girls helping the older women of First Methodist serve were Seth and Minnie's Jessica and Herman and Nadine's Annie Sue. I was glad to see that Annie Sue and Herman seemed to be speaking to each other today. A lot of days, they didn't.
From infancy, Annie Sue had tested the limits of paternal authority; but she'd turned sixteen this spring and now that she had her driver's license, she wanted more freedom and less accountability than ever. According to Minnie, they'd had a monumental clash last weekend. I didn't get all the details; but I gather it involved a broken curfew and confiscation of car keys. Nothing new there except that both my brother and my niece had lost their tempers and Herman had warned Annie Sue—and in front of her friends, which made it twice as humiliating—that she wasn't too big to get a switching if she didn't apologize at once.
"In the same breath as she apologized, she swore she'd never speak to Herman again as long as she lived," Minnie had reported with a shake of her head. "Herman's way too strict, but that child's sure got a talent for pouring kerosene on a hot fire."
I watched her pour Herman a cup of punch with every appearance of daughterly affection and hoped their reconciliation would last a while this time.
A moment later, my spirits were buoyed by the sight of Lu Bingham beaming at me from across the rotunda. The Marthas had set out silver trays of miniature ham biscuits, cucumber sandwiches, and pecan puffs to go with their lime punch and butter mints, and Lu was loading her paper napkin to the spilling point. She has a way with young people and seemed to be bantering with my nieces. Even across the rotunda, I could hear her booming laughter.
We'd gone all through grade school and high school together, but I was still fighting to stay a size twelve while Lu had long since surrendered to an eighteen. On her, though, it was okay. She looked solid and comforting and infinitely capable of shouldering the responsibilities of the world. Not a bad thing since she was the guiding spirit and most of the muscle behind WomenAid.
WomenAid. Women helping women to cope with life's sour lemons—from Cambodian refugees to a battered wife in one of Dobbs's oldest families. My internal preacher nodded approval, but the pragmatist was slowly shaking his head.
Now why was the thought of that nonprofit organization suddenly making me uneasy?
Even as I continued to smile and accept congratulations and good wishes, I kept a wary eye on Lu. She was working her way through the crowd, probably hitting on everyone she spoke to for a donation. She was an ace at writing grant proposals and getting corporate funding, but much of her support came from the grassroots level and working every crowd seemed to have become an automatic reflex.