Before I can speak, the woman, who seems to be sorting some papers as the men look on, says, “Homer, where’re you taking him?”
Without breaking his shuffling gait, Homer makes a series of noises, the last part of which sounds to me like “Lapland.”
Chapman. The three give me a hard stare but say nothing. Everybody in America knows a lawyer when they see one.
Andy is reading what appears to be a textbook in a small, dingy office with the door open and looks up as Homer brings me into view. The green concrete walls are mostly bare except for a calendar and an empty metal shelf. It is as if Andy has already been packed up.
I explain, “Homer brought me.”
Andy smiles, his eyes crinkling with pleasure at the sight of Homer, who now looks relieved to have discharged his unpopular task.
“Thank you, Homer,” he says formally.
“You did a good job. Go on back to the dayroom.”
Homer nods and moves off, his peculiar old-man’s gait no longer as distracting to me as when I arrived.
Andy rises and gravely offers his hand.
“Have a seat. I’ve been transferred up here out of harm’s way,” be says, his voice sounding sarcastic and at the same time embarrassed.
Wearing a short-sleeved sky-blue knit shirt over a pair of comfortable-looking pleated khaki pants, he is dressed far more casually than I expected. But then, I suppose Homer doesn’t mind. I sit in a metal folding chair opposite him, already feeling closed in.
“What are you supposed to be doing all day?” I ask, trying unsuccessfully to read upside down the title of his book. “Right now I ‘m reviewing our training literature,” he says mock-importantly, and then mutters, “as if it matters.”
I pick up the book from his desk. It is entitled: Nonaversive Intervention for Behavior Problems: A Manual for Home and Community. I flip through the pages, realizing I know zero about what is expected of retarded people.
“Doesn’t it?
“I ask.
A bitter look crosses Andy’s face.
“It’s supposed to, but there’s so much turnover,” he says, looking past me into the hall, “Homer isn’t going to do anything the rest of his life except wander these halls.”
“What about that suit to shut down places like this?” I ask, feeling the waxy cover of the book beneath my thumb.
Andy gives me an indulgent smile and for the next ten minutes lectures me on the myths of what he calls the deinstitutionalization movement.
“You get all these Utopia training models like this,” he says, pointing at his book, “but it’s not the real world. What good does it do to put a nonverbal, severely retarded man in a group home? There’s no place for people like that in American society. Retarded people are, by definition, the losers, the bottom of the barrel, in a country that insists on competition from the moment a child is born. Sure, the mildly retarded can learn enough adaptive behavior to get by, but the Homers of the world don’t fit in anywhere. In a consumer society people like him won’t ever be accepted because they don’t have any value.”
I nod, more interested in the emotion in his voice than in what he is saying. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t want Homer moving in next to me. The price of real estate in my neighborhood is already low enough without having to worry about Homer coming over to peep in Sarah’s window. What I want a jury to hear, though, is that Andy cares about these people even if they don’t. And it won’t hurt if they agree with him.
All Andy was trying to do was stop this child from mutilating herself-he wasn’t trying to move her into the half-million-dollar homes overlooking the Arkansas River. To get him to talk more, I deliberately bait him.
“You don’t sound too liberal on this subject. I thought you’d tell me that retarded people were like blacks-just give ‘em a chance to show they’re regular folks.”
Andy gives me a look that reminds me of the first time I talked to him in my office: Is this white asshole educable?
“The people who write these books and lead these movements are basically ideologues, no matter how much they’ve worked with the develop mentally disabled. It doesn’t matter whether you call them liberals or conservatives. They have this grand vision of how things ought to be. Frankly, I think they’re dangerous as hell,” he says, softly slapping the table in front of him.
Feigning disapproval, I cross my arms in front of me, anxious to keep him going. A jury has got to be made to see the guy’s no Dr. Strangelove rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of Armageddon. Down deep, Andy is paternalistic He just wants to stay down on the farm and take care of his retarded folks. He is probably deeply conservative, like most Arkansans. If so, I want to exploit that identification at the trial.
“You’re going to play into the prosecutor’s hands,” I say, believing just the opposite.
“She’s going to try to paint you as a real Neanderthal, the kind of professional who’s keeping Arkansas in the Dark Ages. Shocking defenseless children, keeping them locked up in institutions.”
Andy stands up and looks out his window. I can’t see what he is looking at, but probably he is staring off into the woods.
He says, after a long pause, ” You really think desegregation, when you weigh the pluses and minuses, has benefited most blacks? Look at where a lot of blacks are in the average school. Special ed. The slow classes. Or out of school hanging out, getting stoned on drugs and killing each other. In the United States there can only be so many winners. For whatever reason blacks aren’t ever going to win in America.
Sure, there are exceptions. The liberals will trot out a black who’s made it to prove integration is working. But you don’t prove anything by how your best kids do; they would have made it anyway. It’s your average kid who proves whether the system is working or not, and for most black kids it’s going to be the bottom, and it’s not really getting any better
His voice trails off, as if I should be making a connection.
What is it? Is he conceding black inferiority, or what? Is he saying blacks are like retarded people too stupid to compete? I stare at his back, unable to try to read his face. I have lost the thread somewhere. “It’s too late to go back to Africa, Andy,” I say, wondering whether he will take this as a slur.
He turns around and gives me a wintry smile.
“All I’m talking about is a sense of identity. These reformers have decided retarded people should be a part of the American rat race as if that were a good thing. I’m not so sure the Homers of this world would be better off competing and losing in a society that values only winners.”
I look toward the door, wondering if I should get up and close it. We are at the end of the hall, so it hardly seems worth it. The fire has gone out of Andy’s voice as if he has gotten stuck. Perhaps he has. Somebody is always ahead of us, but that doesn’t mean we have to slit our wrists. Normal everyday life has compensations other than just winning.
Maybe, though, if you’re forced to compete and you usually come in dead last, it’s hard to see the virtue in lining up for the next race. I say carefully, “I want the jury to see you have a point of view, but I’m not sure a racial analogy is going to be appreciated, however sympathetic it is.”
Andy props one leg against the wall and leans back against the windowsill with both elbows resting on the edge. He says sarcastically, “You really belisve in this legal crap, don’t you?”
My right ear itches and I dig at it with my little finger, a pleasure so sublime I scratch until it hurts. Is that how a self-abusive child begins? How to explain I don’t “believe” in the law.
“A friend of mine,” I say, remembering Clan Bailey’s beatific expression after he won his first jury trial “once said the law is like toilet paper; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.” I study Andy’s puzzled expression and decide to spell it out for him.