Run Before the Wind (2 page)

Dean Wallace Henry was an aloof, dry, nearly expressionless man in his sixties who had been an assistant attorney general in the Johnson administration and had come to his position in the law school on the election of Richard Nixon to the Presidency. It was said that Johnson, given the opportunity, would have appointed him to fill the next vacancy on the Supreme Court. He was very formal, very southern, and held fixed opinions on what constituted proper behavior and scholarship in a student in his charge. I was afraid of him, as was nearly every other law student, and I had avoided contact with him as much as possible. We had held one or two cramped conversations at teas, when he would arrange his thin mouth in something resembling a smile and try, not very hard, to be avuncular. It never worked.

The door to his office was open (he maintained an "open door" policy, he said, but as far as I knew nobody had ever taken him up on it); he saw me approach his secretary and beckoned me into his paneled and carpeted presence. I approached his desk with my hand outstretched and as much of a smile as I could muster.

"How are you, sir?" I began hopefully.

He ignored my hand, pushed back from his desk, and swiveled his chair so that he faced the windows. A shaft of sunlight reflected off his shiny, black head of hair, which hosted no gray. Rumor was he dyed it.

"Close the door," he said, "and sit." So much for the open door policy. I closed it and sat quickly, like a terrier on command.

I felt it would be an affront if I should cross my legs. He swiveled back to face me and, to my astonishment, placed a large, Cordovan, wing-tipped shoe against his desk top. Such uncharacteristic informality. I crossed my legs.

"You are a very fortunate young man," he said. For a brief moment I thought I had mistaken his reason for summoning me, and a tiny ray of hope pierced my anxious gloom. Dean Henry quickly extinguished it.

"Had that been the Athens City Police last night instead of the campus cop, you would have missed your examination today and been out of law school, never to return. I would be bailing you out just about now instead of inviting you in for a chat, and with the subsequent criminal proceedings you would have forfeited a career in the law."

I uncrossed my legs.

"Sir----" "Mr. Lee, in spite of your apparent intelligence and even quite reasonable grades, you are not a shining scholar. And grades notwithstanding, your work--if I may laughingly call it that--[he was not laughing] has been such as to barely keep you in my good graces. Cramming for examinations and getting Bs is not enough to make you a decent lawyer, and that is what I try, given the material disgorged by the undergraduate schools, to produce."

"Sir----" "You seem to have a minimalist view of the educational process;

you apply your intellect to determining the smallest effort necessary to remain in the University of Georgia Law School and out of the United States Army." The Vietnam War was, you will remember, still raging in 1970.

"Sir----" "You shine on your feet, Mr. Lee; you perform impressively in Moot Court, if someone has read the relevant law for you; you answer well in class--well, that is, for someone with so little knowledge of your subject. You are a talented politician--you managed, I recall, to be elected president of your freshman law class, in defiance of your peers' usual insistence on accomplishment in their leadership instead of charm. You are a charming young man, Mr. Lee, I will give you that. You are a remarkable tap dancer

"Sir----" "Well, you have just stubbed your toe rather badly, Mr. Lee.

Those few whiffs of that .. . controlled substance .. . last evening have ruined your little tight-rope act, and you are falling, falling."

He leaned forward, placed his elbows on the leather desk top, and rested his chin in both hands.

"Did you wish to say something, Mr. Lee?"

"No, sir."

"I should think not. I have very little more to say, myself." He leaned back in his chair and placed the foot back on the desk.

"You will not be rejoining us in the autumn, Mr. Lee. Oh, I'm not going to expel you, nor even make it impossible for you to return. You see, I am an optimist; I still believe that you might possibly make a decent attorney, even a fine one, should you gather your wits about you. I also have a high regard for your father, although I do not know him well. I admired his conduct during his term as governor, and, who knows? he might even serve his state well in the United States Senate one day, should his efforts in that direction not be unreasonably handicapped by the actions of an unthinking son."

I stared at my shoes on that one.

"Take a sabbatical, Mr. Lee. Think. I suspect you've never done much of that. Go forth and serve your country, should it call, and I expect it will, things being what they are on the Asian continent these days. This won't go on your record, and I won't speak to your father. Tell him what you like but don't come back here unless you are willing to exhibit to me a veritable transmogrification." He opened a file on his desk and began to study it. I sat, frozen with relief.

"Goodbye, Mr. Lee," he said, without looking up.

I rose and propelled myself toward the door.

"Oh, Mr. Lee," his voice from behind me halted me in my tracks.

I half turned.

"Yes, sir?"

"Don't get your ass shot off."

"No, sir." I fled the office, pausing at the building's entrance to press my brow against the cool marble. My relief at not being publicly humiliated was rapidly giving way to anxiety over what I would tell my parents. Shortly, I composed myself and started toward my dormitory. At least I wouldn't get my ass shot off. The old bastard. Apparently, he had not known that I was 4-F in the draft.

The following afternoon I entered my father's study and confronted him "and my mother with my plan, or rather, my lack of one. He was silent for a moment after I had finally stumbled through what I had to say. It was a habit of his to pause a bit before addressing any serious matter. It got him the undivided attention of his listener and, I suppose, gave him time to think. It was a habit that had served him well in the Georgia State Senate, as lieutenant governor and as governor, and might one day, as Dean Henry had noted, serve him well in the United States Senate.

"Two years in law school is a large personal investment to simply set aside," he said, finally.

"I'm not necessarily setting it aside permanently. I may go back and finish, I just don't know yet." I stole a careful glance at my mother, who was, uncharacteristically, holding her peace. She is

Irish.

"It's just that it doesn't seem real, yet. Law is still just an exercise, something to memorize and discuss, not something to do.

It was even that way when I interned at Blackburn, Hedger last summer; it was all so technical; I felt removed from it." All of this was true, though it had entered my consciousness only during the time since my meeting with the clean.

"Will," my mother said, "how long have you been thinking about this?"

"All year," I lied.

"When I came home for Christmas I didn't want to go back, but it seemed stupid to drop out in the middle of the year."

"It's not sudden then," she said, resignedly.

"No, Ma'am." I hated myself a little for deceiving her.

"I take it you don't know exactly what you want to do?" my father asked.

"Well, sir, I'd like to go ahead and visit Grandfather in Ireland, the way I'd planned [that would please them] and then .. . I'd just like to keep going for a while, take a year and travel."

"Travel where?"

"Everywhere, anywhere." I honestly didn't know.

"I see. How were you planning to finance all this travel?"

"Well, I can get about a thousand for my car, and I've got my calf money." We lived on a cattle farm in Meriwether County, near the town of Delano. The land had been in my father's family since the 1850s, but it was my mother who had been the real farmer, building up the place after World War II, when my father was starting his law practice and his political career.

"That's a little over three thousand dollars. I can get a student air fare and hitchhike in Europe."

My mother was looking at my father and shaking her head.

"Billy, I am not going to have him hitchhiking.

"Tt was my first inkling that they were not going to try to talk me back into law school--not yet, anyway. I looked back to my father.

He went through his drill of silence again before speaking.

"Tell you what," he said.

"I'll loan you another three thousand. Buy a good used car--no hitchhiking. You can sell the car when you come back and pay me back then." It was typical of him to make it a loan.

"In September of next year you either go back to law school, or to graduate school if you'd rather, or you're on your own in the cruel world. Fair enough?"

I found that I had been holding my breath, and in my sudden exhaling I found wind to say back to him, "Fair enough."

A few minutes later I passed the study door and heard them talking quietly.

"Maybe it's a good thing for him. Billy," my mother said.

"Maybe," my father replied.

"I was just thinking about all those unfinished model airplanes when he was a kid. Those just about drove me crazy."

"I know," she said.

"He was never much for finishing things. I hoped he would get over that."

"Maybe he will. He still may go back and finish."

"I hope so. I won't count on it."

Young men who cannot be counted on should not listen at doors;

it shames them and stings their eyes. I got out of the house as quickly as possible.

THE TWO-HOUR FLIGHT to New York and the six-hour flight to Shannon gave me an opportunity to think--or rather, forced thought upon me. I was running, I knew that; I had done a lot of running from problems in my short existence. I also knew that, had I wished to summon all the persuasive powers at my disposal, I could have convinced Dean Henry to let me remain in law school.

I was good at convincing. Had I remained, though, I would soon have disappointed him again. I would not have been able to back up my persuasion with performance. A long series of childhood and school day incidents had brought me to know that as a part of myself. I didn't like it, but I didn't know how to change it. I looked out the jet's window at the floor of rosy cloud beneath us and tried to summon the resolve for an assault on my flawed character, but I was cautious about making promises even to myself. Instead, I began to look forward to my newfound freedom. Maybe in Europe I might find something in myself that I could admire without shame.

I arrived in Ireland with a sense of freedom only partly gained.

I had the obligatory family visit ahead of me before finally cutting the bonds. I approached it impatiently. My grandfather didn't know quite what to make of me, but he was kind. I had not visited him in County Cork since I was twelve, but he and my grandmother had stayed with us in Georgia when I was sixteen--and she was still alive. He seemed much, much older, and though in good health, shrunken in his appearance and careful in his movements.

He had become accustomed to solitude and was not anxious to change his habits.

I exercised his hunters--he was grateful for that in the off11

season--galloping them over long stretches of densely green countryside, down to where his land touched the water at the entrance to Kinsale Harbour. There I would walk, leading the animal of the day, and watch the sailboats cruise in and out, or, on Sundays, watch them race--the tiny dinghies with their red sails, squirting here and there. I had spent six summers at a sailing camp on the North Carolina coast--two as a camper and four as an instructor--sailing dinghies and small cruisers, and I thought I might look for a ride in some neighbor's boat. The neighbors, though, were of my grandfather's generation and were more oriented toward horses than boats.

I drove into Kinsale in Grandfather's Land Rover to shop for him and passed a squadron of young girls playing field hockey in a meadow beside the road. I stopped and watched for a moment, watched their coach, mainly, a sturdy blonde girl of about my own age, with good, if muscular, legs and largish breasts. I experienced a stirring in the loins, I believe the expression is. I have never known exactly where the loins are located, but believe me, they stirred. I must have produced some primitive animal scent that wafted over the field, for she began stealing glances at me, and when the play was over she waved the children back toward their school and ran over to the fence. For a moment I was gripped with a panic that she was angry at my watching, and I nearly bolted, but she was too quick for me.

"You'll be Miles Worth-Newenam's grandson," she said, still panting from her play.

"I am," I said uncertainly. This was before I learned that everybody in Ireland knows everything about everyone else.

She waited for me to say something else, but I couldn't seem to think of anything.

"D'you have a name, then?" she asked, impatiently.

"I do," I replied.

"My name is Will Lee." I was careful, as always, to enunciate clearly. My name could too easily come out as "Willie", and in my South that was a black's name. I was no racist, but like all southerners, white and black, I made certain distinctions.