The Professor (19 page)

41

Rick and Dawn dropped Powell off at his apartment. “You sure you’re OK to walk up those stairs?” Rick asked, laughing.

“Drinking and walking is not against the law, sir.” Powell pointed at Rick. “As a district attorney, I know these things.”

Powell took Dawn’s hand and planted a kiss on it. “Ms. Dawn, I have a new appreciation for Tanya Tucker after meeting you.” He opened the door and stumbled forward, singing the words to “Delta Dawn” as he walked, holding his trophy up high.

“He kills my soul,” Dawn said, smiling as she watched Powell walk away.

As they drove to the office, Rick caught himself glancing at Dawn every few seconds. At Powell’s urging, Dawn had done a few more “cannonballs” from the Crawfish Cup, but she didn’t appear drunk. Just relaxed.
And beautiful
, Rick thought.

“Do you mind if I come in and get some coffee?” Dawn asked when Rick parked in front of the office. “I doubt I should be driving.”

“Not at all,” Rick said.
Not at all.

When they got upstairs, Rick made a pot of coffee, and they stood in the reception area.
Stop staring at her
,
Rick told himself.

“What?” Dawn asked, punching him on the shoulder.

Rick shook his head. “Nothing. Just . . . I can’t believe this is happening. With Mule saying what he said, we can add Ultron as a defendant. We can tell the jury that Ruth Ann’s family died because of a conspiracy between two huge companies to make more money by encouraging speeding and DOT violations. Newton was speeding at the time of the accident and complained about his schedule at the time of pickup. You heard what he told Mule. ‘Guess I’ll either make it or I’ll get a ticket.’ ”

“ ‘Same shit, different day,’ ”
Dawn added.

Rick slapped his hands together. “Mule told the plant manager—”

“Buck Bulyard,” Dawn interrupted.

“About what was happening and—”

“Bulyard told Mule not to worry about it.”

“Right,” Rick said, again slapping his hands together. “So we have evidence that a higher-up at Ultron knew about the situation and let it go.”

“Time to sue the bastards,” Dawn said, laughing and causing Rick to laugh.

“Sue the bastards,” Rick repeated, making a mock toast with his drinkless hand. “Think Willistone and Ultron will want to settle?” Dawn asked.

Rick wrinkled up his face. “Are you kidding? They’ll be begging for a settlement. I can just see Tyler now—”

“That arrogant SOB,” Dawn cut in. “So how did it go with Ms. Batson? We were so busy with Mule, I never got a chance to ask you about that. Was Tyler his normal asshole self?”

Rick felt his stomach tighten as the conversation with Tyler came back to him. Tyler’s hiring of an accident reconstructionist. The allegations against Dawn. The photographs . . .

“It was a good day,” Rick said. “Let’s not ruin it.” He took a step closer and glanced down at her breasts, their outline barely visible underneath her conservative black blouse. He saw the wet T-shirt in his mind, the hard nipples poking against the damp fabric.

“OK,” Dawn said, creasing her eyebrows slightly. “I . . . I had fun after the festival. Powell really is a trip.”

Rick took another step toward Dawn. “He is.”

Again, neither of them spoke, and Rick took another step closer, violating her personal space. He wasn’t sure what he was doing—he knew he should confront her about the things Tyler had said—but the heat he felt below his waist was unbearable. The confusion and anger from the conversation with Tyler, the elation over the meeting with Mule, and his pent-up, long-repressed desire for Dawn had combined with the alcohol to make him loopy.

Dawn averted her eyes and looked down. “So, what do you want to do now?” she asked, her voice soft. She looked up at him, and Rick finally let himself go.

He pressed his lips to hers and plunged his tongue into her mouth with an energy that was desperate and uncontrollable. When his mind returned to the photographs, he squeezed his eyes shut and kissed her harder, moving his hand up under her shirt. He expected her to protest but she didn’t. Instead, she pressed into him, and her hands began fumbling at Rick’s belt buckle.

Rick caressed her breasts, but his mind could not stop seeing the wet T-shirt. Dawn had leaned into the Professor and hugged him, just as she was leaning into Rick now. He could almost hear Tyler’s laughter.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Rick. The Professor is playing you like a fiddle.

Rick started to kiss Dawn again but then pulled away from her. He turned his back and wrapped his hands around his neck. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I . . . Don’t be,” Dawn said, sounding confused. “It’s OK. I . . . I want to.” She walked over to him and gently put her hand on his arm. “I want to,” she whispered.

She raised on her tiptoes to kiss his neck. “Rick—”

Before she could say anything else, Rick wheeled around.
Don’t do this
, he thought, but the words were already coming out of his mouth. “Is the Professor paying you to work for me?”

“What?” Dawn took a step back.

“It’s a simple question. Is the Professor paying you to work for me? Jameson Tyler thinks he is and said so today. I blew Tyler off because you told me you were working for the experience, and I didn’t think you’d lie to me. But now I’m asking. Is he paying you?”

Dawn’s lip began to tremble and she looked down at the floor. “Rick—”

“Answer the question,” Rick interrupted, feeling anger boiling inside him as the truth shone on Dawn’s face.

“Yes,” Dawn croaked, closing her eyes. “I’m sorry. I meant to tell you but—”

“Bullshit,” Rick said as the confirmation burned through him like buckshot. “You lied to me and didn’t mean to tell me shit.” Rick turned away, feeling heat behind his own eyes. How could he have been so stupid to think that a young, pretty, smart law student would voluntarily work for him for free?
You are an idiot.

“Rick, please listen,” Dawn said, her words distorted with emotion. “The Professor
has
been paying me to work for you. I . . . I know I should have told you earlier, but the Professor told me not to say anything to you about it. He said that you wouldn’t understand that he was trying to help you.”

Rick’s jaw stiffened. He didn’t want to hear this crap. “Let me ask you, Dawn, when the Professor was giving you these instructions, was it in his bedroom, or did y’all just find a place at school to do it?”

“What?”
Dawn stopped trembling and glared at Rick, which only seemed to fuel his anger. He took a step toward her.

“Tyler showed me photographs of you leaning into the Professor and hugging on the Professor and wearing a wet T-shirt. So, my question is, when you struck this deal with the Professor, did you do it before you had sex? Afterwards?
During
? Are you meeting him on the weekends and giving him a little consideration for his payment? Tyler called you the Professor’s
whore
.
Is that—?”

Rick couldn’t finish the question, because Dawn’s slap caught him right across the face. Before he could say anything else, she slapped him again, this time harder, and stuck her finger in his chest. “Don’t you
ever
call me that again. The Professor is paying me to work for you because he felt guilty that he was forced to leave after hiring me to be his student assistant. I accepted because I’m a single mother and his offer was better than what I could get working as a law clerk for any other firm in town. Yes, I took the deal, and yes, I should’ve told you about it, but the rest of what you said is an outright lie.”

Rick knew he needed to calm down, but he couldn’t contain his emotion. “I saw the photographs.
I
saw
you leaning into him and hugging him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dawn said. “What photographs? I remember the Professor walking me to my car in the rain one night when I didn’t have an umbrella. I hugged him at the car to thank him. That’s it!”

“Why should I believe you?” Rick asked, feeling the bitterness in his words. “You’ve lied to me from the beginning. About everything. Tell me why I should believe a word you say.”

Dawn put her hands on her hips and glared at him, not saying anything. Her lip had started to tremble again. “Rick . . .” She cut herself off and bit her lip. “You know what? I don’t care if you believe me or not.” Then, blinking back tears, she calmly walked to the counter, where the coffee had finished brewing. She poured herself a cup and grabbed her purse from the floor. When she reached the door, she paused but did not turn around. “I quit,” she said.

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out,” Rick said, walking toward the door and catching the knob before it closed shut. “And tell the Professor that I don’t need his help or his hand-me-downs. I’m sure you’ll be seeing him soon.
Tell him
!”

Rick watched her as she slowly descended the steps, his blood boiling with anger and bitterness. Part of him wanted to stop her, but he was just too angry. He started to slam the door, but Dawn’s voice stopped him.

“You know what, Rick?” Her voice cracked with emotion, and when she turned around, tears streamed down her face. “The Professor was right about one thing. You
are
a hothead. And a liability. Maybe not in the courtroom, but you’re a liability to your
self
.
If you would just have calmed down and let me explain . . .” She chuckled bitterly and wiped her eyes. “But it doesn’t matter now. All that matters is you’re still hung up on what happened between you and the Professor.”

42

Jameson Tyler woke up at 5:00 a.m. and, before getting ready for work, checked the computer in his office. He clicked on the website for the
Tuscaloosa News
, waiting impatiently the two seconds it took for the site to open. When he saw the front page headline, he laughed out loud. “Student Believed to Be in Inappropriate Relationship with Professor Revealed.”

When he had leaked the details the day before, he had known the
News
would be all over it. But the front page?
Even better than I could have hoped.
The photograph was perfect too. Nothing overly salacious. Just Ms. Murphy’s picture from the law school directory.

Jameson laughed. The case might not be perfect but it was starting to come together. Rose Batson’s testimony had allowed him to retain an accident reconstructionist, which Drake didn’t have. Plus, according to Jack Willistone, Wilma Newton was “handled,” and there was no need to depose her. Though Jameson was uncomfortable letting a client “handle” anything, his adjuster, Bobby Hawkins, had instructed him to leave Willistone alone—saying that Willistone’s “cowboy shit” always had a way of working out. So Jameson would follow his marching orders, which was a lot easier to do with Batson deposed and an expert on board.

And now there should be considerable tension in the Wilcox camp
, Jameson thought, laughing all the way down the hall.

“Everyone’s right about you, Jamo,” he said out loud as he climbed into the shower. “You are such a bastard.”

43

Rick drove for hours. Up and down McFarland. Back and forth down University and over to Paul Bryant Drive. He cranked the radio loud and he just drove. All he wanted was for the conversation with Dawn to have not happened. Why had he gotten so mad?
Are you gonna let your temper blow things with Dawn like it ruined nationals?

At 7:30 a.m. he stopped at McDonald’s for two sausage biscuits and a couple of coffees. He figured Powell would probably be hungover from the night before and craving some grease.

As he walked back to his car, he almost spilled one of the coffees when he glanced at the newsstand and saw the front page headline of the
Tuscaloosa
News
. Rick quickly put the food in his car and fiddled in his pocket for change. He walked back to the stand, bought a paper, and skimmed the contents of the article as fast as he could.

As he read, anger and adrenaline again broke through his fatigue. The
News
wouldn’t run this story unless they had it on good authority.
He shook his head and trudged back to the Saturn, trying to calm down.
It says “believed to be,”
he thought.
Not “is” or “was.” They qualified it.
He sighed. She could still be telling the truth. Rick looked at the photograph on the front page and for a second pictured Dawn’s horror when she saw it. He closed his eyes and beat his head softly on the steering wheel.
This is so fucked-up.

Rick drove over to Powell’s apartment in a confused haze. He knew he needed to get some rest. But he couldn’t sleep. Not with all the crazy thoughts swirling around in his head.

Seeing Powell’s place brought on a deep sadness, and he felt numb as he walked up the steps. Everything had been so right when he and Dawn had dropped Powell off last night. Now everything was so incredibly wrong.

When he reached the door, he extended his hand to knock, but the door swung open. Powell, wide-eyed and alert, stared at Rick.

“Dude, where you been?” Powell’s voice was frantic, and he ushered Rick inside. “I was about to drive over to your place.”

“Just, uh, out and about,” Rick said. “I brought you some—”

“I been trying to call you since three this morning,” Powell interrupted. His face was red, and he looked more agitated than Rick had ever seen him.

“I left my cell phone at the office. Powell, what’s—?”

“That’s when Doolittle Morris called me,” Powell continued as if Rick hadn’t said anything.

Rick felt his whole body tense. Doo? Mule’s cousin
.
“OK, what—?”

“Dude,” Powell interrupted again, running his hand through his sandy hair and sighing. “Mule is dead.”

PART FIVE

44

Tom cast his line out over the creek and slowly reeled the hook back in, grateful for the change of season. Tom had always been a hot-weather person, and the first week of June had brought temperatures into the nineties. For some reason the heat seemed to relax his aching bones. It also seemed to make “the torture”—Tom’s phrase for his chemo treatments—more bearable. As the sound of a bobcat’s squeal cut through the air, Tom recast his line, smiling at the memory of the fear in Bocephus Haynes’s eyes when Bo had heard that same sound several months before. The squeal also stirred Musso, who was lying at Tom’s side, from his sleep, and the bulldog cocked his head from side to side and cleared his throat.

“Easy, boy,” Tom said.

“Easy, my ass,” came a voice from behind Tom, which he recognized right off.

Tom laughed. “Bocephus, I was just thinking about you.”

“You sure those things are harmless?” Bo asked.

“As a mouse,” Tom said, shaking his head and inspecting his line. “Bobcats are only dangerous if they’re rabid, and besides, he’s not as close as you think.”

Tom recast his line, and this time the hook landed a good thirty feet away.

“Nice form. Caught anything?” Bo asked.

“Nope. May try to catch a buzz here in a few minutes. There’s beer in the cooler in the back of the truck.”

The creek was at the edge of the farm, a good two miles from the house. Though Tom had walked this trek many times, he had decided to drive today because of the soreness from that morning’s torture.
Bo must have followed the wheel tracks to find him.

“So what gives me the honor?” Tom asked as Bo handed him a beer and they both popped the tops. “Can’t you get enough of me?” Bo had taken Tom to his treatment earlier that morning and as always had stayed until Tom had rid the poison from his bladder.

“Thought you might like to see this,” Bo said, reaching into his pants pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “I printed it off the
Tuscaloosa News
website. I get on there from time to time to read about the football team, and this article jumped out at me. It ran in today’s paper.” Bo paused. “Front page.”

Tom set the fishing rod on the ground and unfolded the piece of paper. His fingers tensed when he saw the headline. “Still No Word.” Underneath was a photograph of him.

“Jesus, when will they let it go?” Tom said, sighing and taking a sip of beer.

“Just read it,” Bo said.

Tom lowered his eyes and read as fast as he could. He stopped when he got to the part about Dawn. “Finally, the Professor has not responded to the allegations that he was forced into retirement due to the board’s belief that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a student, which the
News
reported in April was allegedly with his student assistant, Dawn Murphy.”

Tom looked up from the article, and Bo was squinting at him.

“I don’t remember you mentioning anything about a girl, Professor.”

“Do you have the article from April?”

Bo nodded, reaching into his pocket and pulling out another piece of paper. Tom snatched it from his hand and cringed when he saw the photograph. It was the picture of Dawn that was in the law school face book. He had looked at this same photograph when he called on Dawn for the first time.

She did nothing wrong
, Tom thought as he read.
Tyler said the board would take no action against her. So why release her name? Why now?

Tom folded both articles and looked up at Bo, who continued to gaze at Tom with his piercing black eyes.

“Well?” Bo pressed.

“Dawn was my student assistant. I had just hired her. When I gave her the job, she got emotional, and the dean saw me holding her hand. Then a couple days later I helped her to her car in the rain. She hugged me, and somebody was watching. They took photographs and showed them at the board meeting.”

“That’s it?” Bo asked.

Tom nodded, feeling anger pulse through him.

“That’s
bullshit
, dog.”

“When I told them I was leaving, they said they weren’t going to take any action against Dawn.”

“
They
being Jameson Tyler.”

Tom nodded.

Bo snorted, beginning to pace beside the creek bed. “I told you, Professor. Tyler’s a
motherfucker
,
and there’s only one way to deal with a motherfucker. And you know that way.
You know it
.”

As Bo paced, Tom glanced up at the pine trees that surrounded the creek on both sides. When his daddy had needed time to think, he’d always come here. Tom would be sent out by his momma “to find Sut,” and Tom would invariably find him here, fishing by the creek bed, the only sounds the chirp of the crickets and the occasional song of a bluebird. Now, as the sun began to set and light shone through the pines, Tom recast his line and searched for his own answers. He had not heard from Dawn yet, and she was the only person who knew the number at the farm. He had given it to her when he hired her to work for Rick.

Why hasn’t she called?
Tom unfolded the article again and looked at the date. The article had run on April 10, 2010. That was almost two months ago. Tom had sent her checks for April and May, but he hadn’t been checking his mail.
Did she send them back?

Tom slowly reeled his line back in to shore as Bo finally stopped pacing. “Thanks for letting me know about this,” Tom said.

“So what are you gonna do?” Bo asked, the challenge evident in his voice.

Tom sighed, not looking at Bo. Instead, he gazed at the dying sunlight as it flickered across the creek. It would be dark in less than an hour.

“What can I do, Bo?” Tom asked, hating himself as he heard the words come out of his mouth.

From the corner of his eye, Tom saw Bo cross his arms, but his former student didn’t say anything. Several seconds passed with the only sounds being Musso’s snoring and the chirps of several crickets.

“You’re serious?” Bo finally said, sounding disgusted.

Tom looked at him. “Yes, I’m serious. What can I do? I’m a sixty-eight-year-old cancer patient. At the treatment this morning, they scoped me again and found some more of the shit. Not a full mass, just fragments of one. The doctor here thinks Bill probably just didn’t get all of it the first time around, which he said happens sometimes. Course, it could mean the cancer has already come back. Either way I’ve got more surgery in my future.”

Bo’s arms remained crossed. “So what? You’ve got to have more surgery. You just gonna quit?”

Tom felt heat on the back of his neck. “Listen, Bo—”

“No, you listen, Professor. I’m not blind. I’ve seen all that mail piling up on your kitchen table. I bring it every time I come, and there’s a steady flow. You haven’t opened a letter in months. If that’s not quitting, I don’t know what is.”

Tom threw down his fishing pole and stood from the log, his legs shaking from the effort. “I don’t need a lecture from you.”

Bo also stood, walking in front of Tom. “I think that’s
exactly
what you need, dog. What the hell are you doing out here? Are you just gon’ stay out here the rest of your life?” Bo grabbed Tom’s shoulder, making him stop. “You know what I think?” Bo asked.

“No, Bo.” Tom turned around, brushing Bo’s hand off his shoulder. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re scared, Professor.”

Tom glared back at him. “You think
I’m
scared.
Me
?”

“As a prissy schoolgirl,” Bo said.

Tom felt a flash of anger and he wheeled toward Bo, his hands tightening into fists. “Now, you listen here, Bocephus. I appreciate all that you’ve done, but I’m about to—”

“You’re about to what?”

Tom blinked, hesitating.

“Go on, say it. You know what you want to say. You’re about to whup my black ass. Right? That’s what you want to say. When I challenged you, you came back at me. Now, you’re pushing seventy years old and eighteen hours removed from chemotherapy. I’m a six-foot-four-inch, two-forty-pound black man who did fifty pull-ups this morning and stopped ’cause I wanted to, not ’cause I couldn’t do any more. But when I threatened you, your first reaction was to fight. That’s what you do when challenged, Professor. You fight. That’s who you are.”

Tom turned away.

“So what’s the holdup?” Bo asked, continuing his rant. “The cancer? So it came back. So what? The doctor will take it out, you’ll go through some more chemo washes, and it’ll be gone for good. You’re old? So what? I’ve seen you work as hard as a man twenty years younger. You’re still strong as a bull, dog.”

“I don’t know what to do, goddamnit!” Tom yelled, unable to take it anymore. “And yes, you’re right, Bo. I’ll admit it. I’m scared, OK. Happy? The old professor is scared. I’m sixty-eight years old, my wife is dead, I don’t have a job, my family has moved away, my old dog is about to die, and I don’t have a
fucking
clue what to do.”

“What do you want?” Bo asked, his voice quieter.

“Part of me wants to go back. Fight . . .” Tom sighed. “The other part”—Tom glanced at his sleeping dog—“just wants to go where Musso’s going soon . . . see Julie again.” He stopped, feeling his chest swelling with emotion. “Bo, part of me was glad today. When the doctor said the cancer was back, part of me was happy. I . . .” Tom stopped, unable to continue. He stared at the ground but looked up when Bo’s shoes came into his line of sight. “Look, Bo—”

“No,
you look
,” Bo interrupted, digging his finger into Tom’s chest, his eyes spitting fire. “You’re telling me you just want to die? That dying is an option here? Well, forgive me, Professor, but
fuck you
.
My daddy died when I was five years old. He was hung by a rope by twenty white men wearing sheets and hoods. You ask me why I practice in Pulaski. Well, I’ll tell you why: ’cause every day I want to show the bastards who hung my father that Bocephus Haynes hasn’t forgotten. I’ll never stop fighting, Professor.
Never.
Fighting’s in my blood. It’s what I was born to do. You can’t fake who you are. When I said you were scared, you didn’t hesitate. You rose to fight. By quitting you’re going against who you are.” Bo stopped, breathing heavy.

“I’m not quitting,”
Tom said. He glared at Bo, tiring of the lecture.

Bo glared back, but after several seconds his face broke into a smile and he glanced down at the ground. “We are who we are, Tom. And me and you, we’re like that bulldog over there.”

Tom wrinkled his face in confusion as he looked at Musso, snoring away.

“Yeah,” Bo continued, smiling at Musso. “You look at Musso, what do you see? A docile, sweet dog that licks your face and likes to lay around all day. That’s how he is ’cause that’s how people for years have conditioned him to act. His ass has been domesticated. You hear me?”

“I hear you, but what are you trying to—?”

“I’m getting to that. Now, the English bulldog wasn’t meant to be a damn lapdog. The English bulldog descended from the bull mastiff, a fighting dog. A war dog. Back in the day the bulldogs were used by the police to catch wild bulls that had gotten loose.
Wild bulls.
They’d grab the bull by its nose, close their eyes, and hold on until the officer could corral the bull. That’s what Musso is. At his core that’s what he is. And let me tell you, it’s a shame you’ll never see it. Musso is about gone and hasn’t ever been challenged. But you can bet your ass, Professor, that even now, even as old as Methuselah in dog years, if Musso was ever threatened he would not walk away and lay in the grass and die.” Bo paused. “Mark my words, as Jesus Christ is my witness and Bocephus Haynes is my name,
that dog would fight
.”

For a long time Tom gazed at Bocephus as a gentle breeze filtered through the pine trees. Finally, he couldn’t help but smile.

“Where’d you learn so much about bulldogs?”

“Jazz loves the History Channel,” Bo said, smirking. “Shit’s on all the time.”

Tom laughed and his groin flared in pain. He squinted at Bo. “So you’re telling me I’m a bulldog?”

Bo smiled but his eyes remained intense and he took a step closer. “What I’m trying to say is you’ve been challenged by the law school and Jameson Tyler, and you’re going against who you are by not coming back at them. It doesn’t matter that you’re sick or old. You are who you are. Just like I am.” He paused. “Just like Musso is.”

Bo reached forward and grabbed Tom around the back, squeezing him tight. “That’s my closing argument, dog.”

Bo started to walk away but then stopped, keeping his back to Tom. “Professor, I’m sorry about the last sentence of today’s article. I just thought you might need a push in the right direction.”

Tom wrinkled his brow and pulled out the article. He had stopped reading it after the part about Dawn. He skimmed down to the last sentence. Tom felt his blood pressure go through the roof as he read the words aloud.

“Believed to be sick and possibly near death, the Professor has retired to his family farm in Hazel Green, Alabama.”

“They didn’t get the ‘sick and near death’ part from me, but I think it’s a nice touch,” Bo said, beginning to walk away.

“
Goddamnit,” Tom said. “They’ll descend like vultures on this place. What the hell were you thinking, Bo?” Tom was exasperated. “Bo!”

As Bo reached the edge of the clearing, he turned and smiled. “You can’t hide out here forever, dog.”