He kneels beside me and stares at the pile of books. “What’s this?” he asks.
“It’s not the bar exam. Just a little research for Smoot’s class.”
“You’ve never researched for Smoot’s class.”
“I know. I’m feeling guilty.”
Booker stands and leans on the side of my carrel. “Two things,” he says, almost in a whisper. “Mr. Shankle thinks the little incident at Brodnax and Speer has been taken care of. He’s made some phone calls, and has been assured that the so-called victims do not wish to press charges.”
“Good,” I say. “Thanks, Booker.”
“Don’t mention it. I think it’s safe for you to venture out now. That is, if you can tear yourself away from your research.”
“I’ll try.”
“Second. I had a long talk with Mr. Shankle. Just left his office. And, well, there’s nothing available right now. He’s hired three new associates, me and two others from Washington, and he’s not sure where they’re gonna fit. He’s looking for more office space right now.”
“You didn’t have to do that, Booker.”
“No. I wanted to. It’s nothing. Mr. Shankle promised to put out some feelers, shake the bushes, you know. He knows a lot of people.”
I’m touched almost beyond words. Twenty-four hours ago I had the promise of a good job with a nice check. Now I’ve got people I haven’t met pulling in favors and trying to locate the tiniest scrap of employment.
“Thanks,” I say, biting my lip and staring at my fingers.
He glances at his watch. “Gotta run. You wanna study for the bar in the morning?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll call you.” He pats me on the shoulder and disappears.
AT EXACTLY ten minutes before five, I walk up the stairs to the main floor and leave the library. I’m not looking for cops now, not afraid to face Sara Plankmore, not even worried about more process servers. And I’m virtually unafraid of unpleasant confrontations with various of my fellow students. They’re all gone. It’s Friday, and the law school is deserted.
The Placement Office is on the main floor, near the front of the building, where the administrating occurs. I glance at the bulletin board in the hallway, but I keep walking. It’s normally filled with dozens of notices of potential job openings—big firms, medium firms, sole practitioners, private companies, government agencies. A quick look tells me what I already know. There is not a single notice on the board. There is no job market at this time of the year.
Madeline Skinner has run Placement here for decades. She’s rumored to be retiring, but another rumor says that she threatens it every year to squeeze something out of the dean. She’s sixty and looks seventy, a skinny woman with short gray hair, layers of wrinkles around the eyes and a continuous cigarette in the tray on her desk. Four packs a day is the rumor, which is kind of funny because this is now an official nonsmoking facility but no one has mustered the courage to tell Madeline. She has enormous clout because she brings in the folks who offer the jobs. If there were no jobs, there would be no law school.
And she’s very good at what she does. She knows the right people at the right firms. She’s found jobs for many
of the very people who are now recruiting for their firms, and she’s brutal. If a Memphis State grad is in charge of recruiting for a big firm, and the big firm gets long on Ivy Leaguers and short on our people, then Madeline has been known to call the president of the university and lodge an unofficial complaint. The president has been known to visit the big firms downtown, have lunch with the partners and remedy the imbalance. Madeline knows every job opening in Memphis, and she knows precisely who fills each position.
But her job’s getting tougher. Too many people with law degrees. And this is not the Ivy League.
She’s standing by the watercooler, watching the door, as if she’s waiting for me. “Hello, Rudy,” she says in a gravelly voice. She is alone, everyone else is gone. She has a cup of water in one hand and a skinny cigarette in the other.
“Hi,” I say with a smile as if I’m the happiest guy in the world.
She points with the cup to her office door. “Let’s talk in here.”
“Sure,” I say as I follow her inside. She closes the door and nods at a chair. I sit where I’m told, and she perches herself on the edge of her chair across the desk.
“Rough day, huh,” she says, as if she knows everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.
“I’ve had better.”
“I talked to Loyd Beck this morning,” she says slowly. I was hoping he was dead.
“And what did he say?” I ask, trying to be arrogant.
“Well, I heard about the merger last night, and I was concerned about you. You’re the only grad we placed with Brodnax and Speer, so I was quite anxious to see what happened to you.”
“And?”
“That merger happened fast, golden opportunity, etc.”
“That’s the same spill I got.”
“Then I asked him when they first notified you about the merger, and he gave me some double-talk about how this partner or that partner had tried to call you a couple of times but the phone was disconnected.”
“It was disconnected for four days.”
“Anyway, I asked him if he could fax me a copy of any written correspondence between Brodnax and Speer and you, Rudy Baylor, regarding the merger and your role after it took place.”
“There’s none.”
“I know. He admitted as much. Bottom line is that they did nothing until the merger was over.”
“That’s right. Nothing.” There’s something cozy about having Madeline on my side.
“So I explained to him in great detail how he had screwed one of our grads, and we got into one huge catfight on the phone.”
I can’t help but smile. I know who won the catfight.
She continues, “Beck swears they wanted to keep you. I’m not sure I believe it, but I explained that they should’ve discussed this with you long before now. You’re a student now, almost a graduate, damned near an associate, not a piece of property. I said I knew he ran a sweatshop, but I explained that slavery is over. He cannot simply take you or leave you, transfer you or keep you or protect you or waste you.”
Atta girl. My thoughts exactly.
“We finished the fight, and I met with the dean. The dean called Donald Hucek, the managing partner at Tinley Britt. They swapped a few phone calls, and Hucek came back with the same spin—Beck wanted to keep you but you didn’t meet the Tinley Britt standards for new
associates. The dean was suspicious, so Hucek said he’d take a look at your resume and transcripts.”
“There’s no place for me at Trent & Brent,” I say, like a man with many options.
“Hucek feels the same way. Said Tinley Britt would rather pass.”
“Good,” I say, because I can think of nothing clever. She knows better. She knows I’m sitting here suffering.
“We have little clout with Tinley Britt. They’ve hired only five of our grads in the past three years. They’ve become so big that they can’t be leaned on. Frankly, I wouldn’t want to work there.”
She’s trying to console me, make me feel as if a good thing has happened to me. Who needs Trent & Brent and their beginning salaries of fifty thousand bucks a year?
“So what’s left?” I ask.
“Not much,” she says quickly. “In fact, nothing.” She glances at some notes. “I’ve called everybody I know. There was an assistant public defender’s job, part-time, twelve thousand a year, but it was filled two days ago. I put Hall Pasterini in it. You know Hall? Bless his heart. Finally got a job.”
I suppose people are blessing my heart right now.
“And there are a couple of good prospects for in-house counsel with small companies, but both require the bar exam first.”
The bar exam is in July. Virtually every firm takes its new associates in immediately after graduation, pays them, preps them for the exam, and they hit the ground running when they pass it.
She places her notes on the desk. “I’ll keep digging, okay. Maybe something will turn up.”
“What should I do?”
“Start knocking on doors. There are three thousand lawyers in this city, most are either sole practitioners or in
two- or three-man firms. They don’t deal with Placement here, so we don’t know them. Go find them. I’d start with the small groups, two, three, maybe four lawyers together, and talk them into a job. Offer to work on their fish files, do their collections—”
“Fish files?” I ask.
“Yeah. Every lawyer has a bunch of fish files. They keep them in a corner and the longer they sit the worse they smell. They’re the cases lawyers wish they’d never taken.”
The things they don’t teach you in law school.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Sure. Anything.”
“This advice you’re giving me right now, about knocking on doors, how many times have you repeated this in the past three months?”
She smiles briefly, then consults a printout. “We have about fifteen graduates still looking for work.”
“So they’re out there scouring the streets as we speak.”
“Probably. It’s hard to tell, really. Some have other plans which they don’t always share with me.”
It’s after five, and she wants to go. “Thanks, Mrs. Skinner. For everything. It’s nice to know someone cares.”
“I’ll keep looking, I promise. Check back next week.”
“I will. Thanks.”
I return unnoticed to my study carrel.
Six
T
HE BIRDSONG HOUSE IS IN MIDTOWN, an older, affluent area in the city, only a couple of miles from the law school. The street is lined with ancient oaks and appears secluded. Some of the homes are quite handsome, with manicured lawns and luxury cars glistening in the driveways. Still others seem almost abandoned, and peer hauntingly through dense growth of unpruned trees and wild shrubbery. Still others are somewhere in between. Miss Birdie’s is a white-stone turn-of-the-century Victorian with a sweeping porch that disappears around one end. It needs paint, a new roof and some yard work. The windows are dingy and the gutters are choked with leaves, but it’s obvious someone lives here and tries to keep it up. The drive is lined with disorderly hedges. I park behind a dirty Cadillac, probably ten years old.
The porch planks squeak as I step to the front door, looking in all directions for a large dog with pointed teeth. It’s late, almost dark, and there are no lights on the porch. The heavy wooden door is wide open, and through the
screen I can see the shape of a small foyer. I can’t find a button for the doorbell, so I very gently tap on the screen door. It rattles loosely. I hold my breath—no barking dogs.
No noise, no movement. I tap a bit louder.
“Who is it?” a familiar voice calls out.
“Miss Birdie?”
A figure moves through the foyer, a light switches on, and there she is, wearing the same cotton dress she wore yesterday at the Cypress Gardens Senior Citizens Building. She squints through the door.
“It’s me. Rudy Baylor. The law student you talked to yesterday.”
“Rudy!” She is thrilled to see me. I’m slightly embarrassed for a second, then I am suddenly sad. She lives alone in this monstrous house, and she’s convinced her family has abandoned her. The highlight of her day is taking care of those deserted old people who gather for lunch and a song or two. Miss Birdie Birdsong is a very lonely person.
She hurriedly unlocks the screen door. “Come in, come in,” she repeats without the slightest hint of curiosity. She takes me by the elbow and ushers me through the foyer and down a hallway, hitting light switches along the way. The walls are covered with dozens of old family portraits. The rugs are dusty and threadbare. The smell is moldy and musty, an old house in need of serious cleaning and refurbishing.
“So nice of you to stop by,” she says sweetly, still squeezing my arm. “Didn’t you have fun with us yesterday?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Won’t you come back and visit us again?”
“Can’t wait.”
She parks me at the kitchen table. “Coffee or tea?” she
asks, bouncing toward the cabinets and swatting at light switches.
“Coffee,” I say, looking around the room. “How about instant?”
“That’s fine.” After three years of law school, I can’t tell instant coffee from real.
“Cream or sugar?” she asks, reaching into the refrigerator.
“Just black.”
She gets the water on and the cups lined up, and she takes a seat across from me at the table. She’s grinning from ear to ear. I’ve made her day.
“I’m just delighted to see you,” she says for the third or fourth time.
“You have a lovely home, Miss Birdie,” I say, inhaling the musty air.
“Oh, thank you. Thomas and I bought it fifty years ago.”
The pots and pans, sink and faucets, stove and toaster are all at least forty years old. The refrigerator is probably of early sixties’ vintage.
“Thomas died eleven years ago. We raised our two sons in this house, but I’d rather not talk about them.” Her cheery face is somber for a second, but she’s quickly smiling again.
“Sure. Of course not.”
“Let’s talk about you,” she says. It’s a subject I’d rather avoid.
“Sure. Why not?” I’m braced for the questions.
“Where are you from?”
“I was born here, but I grew up in Knoxville.”
“How nice. And where did you go to college?”
“Austin Peay.”
“Austin who?”
“Austin Peay. It’s a small school in Clarksville. State-supported.”
“How nice. Why did you choose Memphis State for law school?”
“It’s really a fine school, plus I like Memphis.” There are two other reasons, actually. Memphis State admitted me, and I could afford it.
“How nice. When do you graduate?”
“Just a few weeks.”
“Then you’ll be a real lawyer, how nice. Where will you go to work?”
“Well, I’m not sure. I’ve been thinking a lot lately of just hanging out my shingle, you know, running my own office. I’m an independent type, and I’m not sure I can work for anyone else. I’d like to practice law my own way.”
She just stares at me. The smile is gone. The eyes are frozen on mine. She’s puzzled. “That’s just wonderful,” she finally says, then jumps up to fix the coffee.