Dade turns to look at Lucy, whose forced smile can’t be fooling him. Everyone in the courtroom seems to have drawn to the edge of their seats. He knows it has all come down to him.
Harris’s nervousness has infected Dade, and judging from his answers to some easy biographical questions, it will take a while to settle him down. His voice is tight and raspy as I repeatedly have to ask him to speak up. He momentarily forgets whether the family store is in the city limits of Hughes, and I have to correct him.
Wooden-faced, he sits pinned against the witness chair straining to give the most basic information. Finally, I decide to change my approach and simply ask him, “Dade, did you rape Robin Perry?”
At this direct question, his face becomes expressive and alive as he yells back at me, “No! I didn’t! She wanted it! I was just there to practice on my speech for class!”
This emotional outburst has dynamited an internal log jam, and I wish I had made this my first question.
“Just tell the jury what happened that night.”
Dade repeats the story that I have heard half a dozen times, but now there is passion in his face, and for the first time since he told me that afternoon in the motel I find he is believable. Robin was the aggressor. It was her idea to get in the shower; she washed him and told him to wash her.
“I didn’t even bring protection,” he volunteers.
“We were just friends up until that night.”
“Why did you think you were just friends, Dade?” I ask, willing him to answer.
For a moment he looks directly at his mother and then drops his eyes. His voice low, he says, “I had tried to kiss her in the kitchen that time she and her roommate came over to Eddie’s house last spring. She’s lying when she said I didn’t. She stopped me and said she was gonna leave if I tried to do that again. After that, we didn’t say much until all of a sudden she got friendly again in the fall. After about a month she started talking to me, and we began working together again like we had before. But I wouldn’t have touched her if she hadn’t wanted it.”
Delighted that he has not mumbled his way through an answer, I ask, “Had you been drinking that night?”
Dade grimaces but answers, “I stopped at a bar and had a couple of beers before I got there.”
“Had she been drinking?” I ask.
“I thought I smelled wine,” Dade says, “but I’m not sure.”
“How many times did you have intercourse with her?”
“Just once. She got up and left real quick.”
“Did you threaten her in any way?”
“No!” Dade says defiantly.
“Did you hurt her in any way?”
“She acted like she liked it okay,” Dade says.
“Naw, I didn’t hurt her.”
“Then why did she leave so quickly?” I ask, knowing Binkie will hit hard here.
“She didn’t say,” Dade says, his voice sullen for the first time.
“What did you do afterward?” I ask.
In an assertive, almost strident voice he tells the jury that he drove back to Darby Hall and went to his room.
When Harris came by later, he told him that he’d had sex with Robin but didn’t give him any details and went on to bed that night around midnight after he finished studying.
I get him to go back and fill in some details, but I got what I wanted with that one impassioned denial. He will have to hold up on crossexamination. There will be little I can do to protect him.
Binkie goes after him hard. Standing beside the podium with his feet planted apart, Binkie asks, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Now, correct me if I am wrong, but the story you’re asking this jury to believe is that after this voluntary sex act Robin Perry was so eager to have was over, both of you became deaf mutes and didn’t say a word, is that right?”
Dade’s tone, as I had feared, immediately becomes defensive
“She said she had to go.”
“What did you say when she told you she was leaving?”
“Nothing much, I guess ” Dade says.
“How long was she out there from start to finish?”
Binkie asks.
Dade won’t look Binkie in the eye as I had instructed.
Instead, he seems to be staring at his belt buckle.
“About an hour, I guess,” he says, hesitating.
“Well, if this was her idea of a big fling, she had gone to a lot of trouble for just an hour, hadn’t she?” Binkie says, swinging his hands together as if he were about to challenge Dade to a fight.
To Dade’s credit, he answers, “I don’t know what her idea was. I just know what she did.”
“So your testimony is that you were sitting there together in the room working on the speech and she just up and attacked you, got what she wanted and left without a word, huh
Behind me a couple of people snicker. With some dignity Dade says, “She didn’t attack me. I could just tell by the way she came over and sat by me she wanted me to kiss her.”
“Do more than kiss her,” Binkie says, smirking at him.
“She wanted you to ravish her, didn’t she?”
Dade says grimly, “She wanted sex.”
Deadpan, Binkie goads him, “She didn’t tear your clothes off, did she?”
Dade looks over at me as if he is wondering whether he has to answer, and I nod. He sighs and says, “No.”
“Did she leave any passion marks on you?” Binkie asks, now folding his arms in front of him but exposing his big ugly knuckles.
“No.”
Binkie’s plan is obviously to ridicule Dade, and he keeps him on the witness stand a solid hour, asking his questions in the most scathing tone he can muster.
“So she didn’t say anything after you were finished,” he finally concludes, “about what kind of a lover you were?”
Throughout, Dade has looked increasingly hostile, glaring at Binkie between questions as the prosecutor has postured in front of him. My warnings to Dade that Binkie would try to make him angry have been all but forgotten.
“I’ve said five times she didn’t say anything!”
Binkie shrugs and abruptly turns his back as Dade answers.
“Your witness.”
I wish desperately I could call a timeout and confer with Dade, but, of course, I am not permitted to do so.
Dade may be too pissed to answer my questions on redirect honestly, but I will have to risk that he understands that it is in his interest to convey to the jury that Robin was more to him than a football groupie. Suddenly, I realize I have sold him short by not forcing him to admit that he did feel something other than lust for Robin those few minutes that night. The jury badly needs to see an other side of Dade. I wait until the prosecutor sits down and ask Dade in a serious tone, “Had you liked Robin be fore the night she said you raped her?”
For the first time since I’ve known him, Dade looks glad to see me.
“She had really been nice to me, helping me so much,” he says earnestly.
I could hug him. He is smarter than I thought.
“Did you think she was pretty?”
“Uh-huh,” Dade responds. Long gone is the attitude that she was too skinny for his tastes.
“Had you ever before had a romantic or sexual relationship with a white girl?” I ask.
His face becomes stiff.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I was told not to.”
Binkie is on his feet objecting.
“We’re getting into hearsay. Your Honor.”
I respond, “He can say what motivated him. Judge.”
“He just did, Mr. Page,” Judge Franklin says.
I’m happy to leave things as they are. Maybe the jury will think the chancellor of the university has a talk with all the incoming black freshmen. I sit down, happy in this instance to let the judge have the last word.
Having chosen to go down this road, Binkie has to stay with it. He strides to the lectern and rubs his hands together.
“So you were in love with Robin Perry,” he says, making the word sound as hokey as it does on daytime soap operas.
In control of himself, Dade answers softly, “I liked Robin a lot.”
“Did you like her-so much you couldn’t stop from raping her?” Binkie yells.