Allegiance (4 page)

I pause at the bottom of the stairs. I do not, I realize, know exactly where to go. My instructions were to come to the Court at eight, only that. Casting my eyes about, I see a knot of men nearby. Some of them are looking at me, making no attempt to conceal their interest.

They are surely Court workers, perhaps even my fellow clerks. I look back, trying to appear friendly and inquisitive, open to advice but not lost without it. Then one of the faces strikes a note in my memory. There is a certain sameness to the people here; wherever I have gone in the city, the streets are crowded with dark-suited men, brushing past me with the indifferent arrogance of high purpose. They are largely indistinguishable, and already today I have found myself pulling up, sure I've seen a face before. This one, though, I know from somewhere other than the sizzling sidewalks. A blond forelock dipping into the eyes, broad shoulders, a swagger of athletic grace . . .

“Haynes,” I call triumphantly. “Phil Haynes.”

He grins and trots toward me. I have met Haynes once or twice, I think, though not for several years. There was a boat involved; the memory is vague.
But I know his family, Boston folk acknowledged tolerable by proper Philadelphia. “Cash Harrison,” I say.

“Of course.” He takes my hand. “You're the new Black clerk. I'm with Frankfurter.”

“What are you doing here?”

“We're waiting for you.”

“So you're the welcoming committee?”

“Something like that.”

The other men have been drifting over. My comrades, my brothers in arms. They helped decide the saboteurs' case; they did the nation's work. One of them pushes his way around Haynes. He is smaller and pale, with black curly hair. “Gene Gressman,” he says. “With Justice Murphy. Welcome.”

“Thanks,” I say, and shake his hand.

He looks at me a moment. “So why don't you go up and knock on the doors?”

“That's what you do?”

“Sure it is.”

I start up the steps, clutching my briefcase. The Art Museum has more, but the Court's risers are higher, and I feel as though I am ascending in some more than literal way. The levers of power, the Judge said. I missed the saboteurs, but I am here now. Reporting for duty. Walking up the sharp-edged steps, knocking on the massive bronze doors . . . waiting for them to open.

The doors remain closed, though, and as I knock again the insignificance of my fist against the metal tells me I've been had. From the bottom of the stairs the clerks watch; Gressman waves at me encouragingly. I feel a light touch on my hat brim, then my shoulder. There is a yellow-gray stain on my suit. I look up and spot a bird overhead, more droppings descending.

Squash is a fast game, and I still have the reflexes. I sidestep briskly, stumble on the steps, and shoot out my arms to catch myself. The briefcase flies from my hand, and I regain balance in time to watch it coast away. In Hawaii, men slide on boards down the sides of waves, and just like that my leather case descends the steps. As it nears the bottom, Phil Haynes steps forward and arrests it with his foot. The group claps, for which of us I am not sure.

He picks the briefcase up and starts climbing. I am thinking of what I will
do to him when he reaches the top, but by the time he gets to me my anger has subsided. “This is how you greet all the new fellows?”

“I'm afraid so.”

“Why?”

His shrug is eloquent, dismissive. “Ask Gene. It's his tradition.” I look down the stairs. Gressman's arms are folded, his eyes fixed on us. Haynes claps me on the shoulder. “Come on, I'll show you the side door.”

TWO WEEKS LATER
I am at my desk in Justice Black's chambers listening to the Ink Spots lament a missed Saturday dance. The song hits too close to home to enjoy. At Merion they will be crowding the floor, and girls will sing along softly into boys' necks, and boys will sing to girls' hair. It makes no sense, now that I think about it, for the song is about
not
dancing, and the only people in a position to sing along are the ones like me. But I do not feel like singing.

The Court's term will not begin until October, and with the saboteurs' case resolved, most of the Justices are away. Even those in town seldom visit the Court. The clerks are here, some nervous newcomers like me, projecting a shell of confidence, and some old hands at the end of their year. Haynes has only a few months more experience than I do, but he has put it to good use. He walks about in seersucker and a straw boater, greeting the marshals by name. Gene Gressman has been here two years already and is staying for more; the other clerks call him Mr. Justice Gressman and joke that he should write a book about Supreme Court practice. Owen Roberts has a married couple as a permanent clerk and secretary, but they are older and no one calls them anything.

I think we should come up with a better way of welcoming the new hires, but no one asks my opinion. As that first morning taught me, we do not go
in the front doors. Those lead to the public areas of the Court, the profane. Tourists wander there, looking at the statues and marble busts. They rub John Marshall's toe, where the brass will soon wear bright; they gaze at us curiously through the gates. We are angels walking, or museum exhibits come to life. I am not sure how they think of us, or if they even know who we are. Either way, we are part of the Justices' space, a sacred realm the public cannot enter. Under the watchful eye of the Court's marshals, we take the side entrance and walk down vast marble corridors with thick red carpets. The Justices' chambers lie along these halls, and also four small courtyards in the interior of the building, open to the sky. We meet the public only in the courtroom, where the two worlds come together.

But we will not be there for a while yet. Without the Justices, we rattle around the enormous hallways like coins in a jar. We lunch together in a downstairs room set aside for that purpose, or one of the interior courtyards. We stand at the bottom of the front steps and send newcomers up to knock on the bronze doors and meet the starlings. We argue about the war, whether the Russians can hold in the West and whether Midway has turned the tide in the East; we bounce balls down the long spiral staircase. And in the rest of the time, which is most of the time, we work on certs.

The certs—petitions for certiorari—are the vehicles that bring cases to the Court. They arrive to the tune of a thousand a year; on my first day in the Black chambers I was ushered into a room where they covered the floor a foot deep. Now that room is my office and the petitions have moved to my desk, or the mobile bookshelves we load with files and case reporters. For each I write a one-page memo, typed on six-by-eight paper, summarizing the facts and making a recommendation as to whether the Court should hear the case, whether the petition should be granted or denied. Mostly they are to be denied. There are many thousands of people who want their cases heard, but the Court will take only cases that present issues of great importance, when the lower federal courts cannot agree.

Knowing that most petitions should be denied does not make the work go faster, and certs are a constant part of life even for the Justices. Black consumes cert petitions like a nervous man smokes cigarettes. He carries a stack
with him at almost all times and pulls one out in any spare moment—in the middle of a meal, or a walk, or as a sign that I am losing his attention in conversation.

But Black can tear through a petition in minutes and read them anywhere. It takes me substantially longer, and since my memos are confidential, I can't write them at home. I stay at work late into the evenings, tapping out memos on an Underwood I've brought from Columbia. I hide the typewriter under a coat each evening; there is a shortage, and reportedly the administration renews its supply by taking them at random from office desks. I doubt anyone will come to the Supreme Court, but there's no point in taking chances.

Thus far, the job is little like my expectations, less like my dreams. The load is crushing, but the work itself is tedious, the boredom leavened only by the knowledge that with any one of these petitions I could be making a catastrophic error. Recommend a denial and I might bury an issue of national importance. Recommend a grant and I could be humiliated when the case turns out to be insignificant.

Petition after petition they come, an unending stream. I pore over each, trying to figure out if this is the one that will ruin me, and they arrive faster than I can read them. I am drowning in paper. I have not been out to a movie since starting work. I have not been back to Philadelphia once. For the first time in my life, I am dealing with sustained and intense sleep deprivation, and handling it turns out not to be one of my strengths. I am so tired that I am imagining things. As though my mind has energy for only a limited number of faces, I think that strangers on the street are people I've seen before. At the Court I fail to recognize people whom I do in fact know. I am short on the phone with Suzanne, who wonders what I could be doing that is so important while the Justices are away. I am, in brief, a mess.

I reach to the little radio and change the station. I have brought it to keep me awake, a function it serves after a fashion. This being a Saturday night, there is the
Lucky Strike Hit Parade
. But the music annoys me. The songs are about squabbles, separation, lost love. The Mills Brothers have quarreled with Sue; that's why they're blue. She's gone away and left them just like all dolls do. Pleasant enough if you're swaying with a warm armful, just trying out the accents of grief. Less so if you have in fact just quarreled with someone
named Suzanne, if you have heard that three straight weekends in Washington are not a promising sign.

Other men are around, the 4Fs and the older ones, but also the boys in uniform who haven't shipped out yet, burning with a doomed glory. And there is Suzanne, all by herself. Her friends are getting married and she has nothing to do but knock around the house in Haverford while the Judge mumbles in his study. Of course she wants to get out every once in a while, to see a movie, to ride the wood-embowered Wissahickon trails. If John Hall comes up on leave and stops by, well, they're old friends. It's only natural. It's purely innocent.

So she says, and I can't dispute it. The problem is of my making, and even as John Hall's grinning mug swims before my eyes I know her stories are mostly for my enlightenment and edification. Mostly. Would I rather have a paper doll to call my own than a fickle-minded real, live girl? I consider the possibility and decide against it. I have had enough of paper. What I want is to be out at the club, watching the sun set over the new-cut lawn, to be in a movie theater with her at my side, watching images dance across the screen heedless of the sun's height.

I take a sip of my coffee and frown at the bitter taste. I didn't drink coffee in college, or even law school, and I've picked a poor time to start. Sugar has been rationed since May, and laughing stewards in the Court cafeteria tell me not to worry because coffee is next. What I want is to be in a malt shop, hearing the last of an ice cream soda rattle through a striped straw.

Down the hallway footsteps approach, accompanied by a whistled tune. Justice Black whistles while he walks, but he has taken his family to Alabama, and this is not him, returned early. He whistles a song he calls “All Policemen Have Big Feet,” which I know as “London Bridge.” The one coming down the hall now is more complicated, though still somehow familiar. As I struggle to place it, the chambers door opens.

The man who enters is someone I have not seen before, but only one of the Justices would walk in so casually. Neatly trimmed silvery hair, a suit of English cut, features that resemble Claude Rains.

I hurry to switch off the radio. “Are you looking for Justice Black?”

The man smiles. “No, I wouldn't think to find my brother Black in chambers
at this time of evening. He keeps banker's hours.” He crosses to the desk and offers a hand; I rise to shake it. “Felix Frankfurter,” he says, the voice lightly accented.

“Caswell Harrison,” I answer. “Justice Black works at home.” I have not seen much of Black, but even so I feel a loyalty to him.

“Working at home is an easy way to slack off,” Frankfurter says. He touches his lapel. “Like working in casual clothes.”

I am wearing a suit myself, so I merely nod in response. “And Hugo would not be listening to such jaunty music,” Frankfurter continues. He inclines his head toward the radio. “No, I stopped in to welcome a new colleague. But what are you doing here so late?”

“Certs,” I say. He smiles, and I continue. “It takes me forever to get through them, and at the end I don't even know if I've done it right. It seems a big responsibility.”

The silvery head nods. “The Court is a place of great responsibility. It is a temple of truth. We who work here must dedicate ourselves to worship and service.” Suddenly he is leaning closer and his eyes are searching mine and the words come louder. “And if you have come here for any other purpose you will be disappointed.”

I hold his gaze, mystified. “I can assure you I have not, Mr. Justice.”

For another moment Frankfurter's face quivers. Then whatever it is leaves him and he smiles again. “Do not worry yourself about the certs. If you're not scared stiff to begin with, you might as well fold up. But having once plunged in, to question your fitness every day—you know, that way madness lies.” He pauses. “I used to pick Brother Black's clerks, when I was still a professor. Good Harvard men, but none of them any finer than you, Cash.”

I frown at the nickname. “You know me?”

There is ease and pleasure in his face now. “Knowing things is my business. And Herbert Wechsler and I are good friends. Do not doubt yourself. You are one of us now.”

“A little too late, maybe. I feel like I missed the action.”