“Sure, he could be. That’s always a possibility. But after listening to him for two days, I’m convinced he’s not.”
“Do you realize how common date rape is?” Sarah asks.
“It happens a lot.”
“I don’t doubt it. But the problem with statistics is they don’t help you decide if a particular male at one moment in history did or didn’t commit rape. It’s like saying women don’t do as well at math as men and then making a prediction about how you’re going to do on a test.”
“That’s not the point,” Sarah says.
“A student has been accused of a violent crime, and it’s business as usual.
That’s wrong. He should at least have been suspended from the team until this is over.”
“Why?” I argue.
“Why should one student have that kind of power over another? Dade is no threat to her. All he wants to do is play football.”
“He shouldn’t be allowed to!” my daughter says emphatically
“She’s quit the cheerleading squad; it should be the other way around.”
This is interesting news. Maybe some of her col leagues will be more likely to talk to me about her if she’s no longer around.
“I think she’s overreacting,” I say unsympathetically.
“I doubt if Dade would try to assault her in front of fifty thousand people.”
“Don’t you understand. Dad?” Sarah almost shrieks.
“She feels ashamed. Everybody knows who she is. She’s been degraded and humiliated by this. Her life is going to be affected forever, and everyone else is acting as if it’s only the accused who has rights. What about her right as a student to be believed, to be taken seriously? The police believed her enough to file charges, at least.”
“The assistant prosecutor,” I correct her, and then ex plain he may have been influenced by personal considerations I add, “She’ll be taken seriously in court, and the likelihood is that because Dade is black and the jury will be white, he won’t be. Women can complain all they want to about the difficulty of proving a rape charge, but when the accused is a black male, it’s a different story.”
Despite trying to keep my voice under control, I know I am almost shouting at her.
“Besides,” I add trying to lighten things a bit, “Dade may be our kinfolk.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I hadn’t said anything. Sarah exclaims, “What are you talking about? How could he be?”
“He’s not at all,” I say hastily and then have to explain about Lacy Cunningham’s visit and her remark and then my mother’s denial.
“It’s the rankest kind of gossip, but once it gets started, people will repeat it for the next fifty years. I know how the President feels. If you believe what you hear, he’s gone to bed with every woman except Mother Teresa.”
“But it was Dade’s great-grandmother,” Sarah says, refusing to laugh.
“His mother ought to know whether it was true or not.”
“No, she doesn’t!” I say sharply.
“She knows gossip.
She knows what she’s been told. Just because somebody repeats a story doesn’t make it true. When are you going to learn that?”
Sarah’s voice loses some of its certainty.
“Is his great grandmother still alive?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, though I have no idea. This is a closed subject as far as I’m concerned.
Knowing I don’t want to pursue this subject, Sarah returns to the reason she called.
“If people didn’t care about winning so much, Dade would probably be off the team,” she says stubbornly.
I start to tell Sarah about what I have heard about Coach Carter and his reputation for sticking up for players, but the truth of Sarah’s remark is self-evident. The pressure to win must be factored in somewhere, whether it is acknowledged or not.
“We blow it up all out of proportion,” I concede.
“You might be right.” I do not want to alienate Sarah. Nobody is more important to me. I tell her that I will watch the game this afternoon on TV with Clan but omit telling her about my date with Amy tonight.
I don’t want to get her started on how young Amy is. We talk a few more minutes about nothing in particular, and I hang up, wishing I had warned her not to get too caught up with WAR. I don’t have anything in particular against the women’s movement, but I know women, just like men, can find reasons to feel they’ve been given a raw deal. Hell, she could have been born a Muslim woman in Bosnia. Now those women have something to complain about.
At two Clan comes over to watch the game, wearing a “Hog Hat,” a red plastic contraption complete with snout that looks ridiculous but is in great demand. He is also carrying in a cooler of beer, which he seems already to have sampled.
“Go, Hogs!” he screams as he sits the cooler down beside the couch in my den.
“Kill the bastards!
Cripple ‘em! Tear their heads off! Rah! Rah! Rah!”
I laugh, knowing Clan doesn’t really care about the game. In fact, he visibly flinches at a particularly vicious tackle. It’s the beer and comradeship he enjoys. I take a Miller Lite and tell myself to go slow. The last thing I want to do tonight is nod off at nine o’clock.
“I still can’t believe I’m taking that dependency-neglect case you ought to be doing,” I chide him as the Razorbacks kick off.
“I’ll get you back, don’t think I won’t.”
Clan plows into the cheese dip I have provided, using a tortilla chip like a road grader.
“You’re a miracle worker,” he says, grinning.
“You’ll get her off. You know as well as I do that Dade Cunningham ought to be here watching with us instead of getting his butt soaked in Knoxville.
Did you bribe Carter or what?”
As the game progresses, I tell him what has occurred. Clan may not be
much of a courtroom lawyer, but he usually displays some common sense as long as it is not related to his personal life. While we talk, the Hogs look tight as if all of them are feeling the pressure, not just Dade. Tennessee scores twice in the first quarter and would have scored again in the first half but fumbles inside the ten yard line. On offense Jay Madison, the Hogs’ quarterback, overthrows Dade twice, once for what would have been an easy touchdown. Open underneath a deep zone coverage, Dade has caught five short passes but has dropped one in a critical third-down situation.
Once he does catch it, he runs without authority, unlike the first five weeks of the season when he averaged twenty yards a reception.
As the teams come off the field at halftime, Clan mutters, “What’s the fuss all about? They couldn’t beat their way out of a paper bag.”
I open only my third beer of the day and push the “mute” button.
“They can’t even blame the weather,” I say gloomily. The rain has stopped, leaving the turf slick, which gives the offense an advantage, since it presumably knows where it is going.
“Carter might want to take advantage of the halftime and make some calls for a job in the Knoxville area,” Clan cracks.
“He bet on the wrong horse. I almost feel sorry for him. What’s he really like? He looks like he’s a hundred years old.”
I watch Carter on the screen trotting with his head down to the visitors’ dressing room. His eyes appear to be almost shut and his lips moving.
“He’s praying for a stroke,” Clan hoots, “so he won’t have to come back out on the field.”
“That or a drink,” I say, marveling at the pressure men put themselves under. No wonder we die sooner than women.
“He’s probably not a bad guy, just in over his head like the rest of us. He gave me the impression that he cares about Dade, but who knows? He’s got a lot riding on him.”
“Like you, huh?” Clan says softly. I have told him how much I would like to negotiate a pro contract for Dade.
“Like me,” I admit.
In the second half the Razorbacks play like a different team. Dade catches six passes in the third quarter alone and runs like a wild man, scoring twice, and with the second extra point the score is tied at 14 to 14. In the fourth quarter Dade takes some sickening hits as the Vols’ safety, gambling now that he isn’t going long, time after time explodes against his back just as the ball reaches him.