«Quite correct, Colonel.»
MacKenzie Hawkins strode into the large mahogany-paneled room, his feathers flying, his supporting contingent following in dignity, when suddenly the blaring, deafening sounds of a frenzied Indian war chant, drums and voices, filled the sacrosanct enclosure. Up on the semicircular dais, the previously stern-faced judges reacted in panic, as to a man and a woman, they fell below the surface, one by one emerging, wild-eyed and terrified, but relieved that no violence had ensued. Mouths gaped at the feathered monster below them; they did not rise, but remained, their faces in shock.
«What the hell have you done?» whispered Sam behind the Hawk.
«Little trick I learned in Hollywood,» answered MacKenzie under his breath. «A soundtrack heightens a climax when the words don’t do it. I’ve got a triple-volume, high-impedance tape recorder in my pocket.»
«Shut the fucking thing off!»
«I will just as soon as those quivering pumpkins recognize that Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis, is in their presence and his tribal position demands respect.»
And once again, one by one, the stunned justices of the Supreme Court rose slowly off their knees—no one, however, above the chest. The music diminished and then stopped. The justices looked questioningly at one another and returned to their chairs.
«Hear me, you wise elders of this nation’s justice!» roared Thunder Head, his voice echoing off the walls. «Your people have been caught in an insidious conspiracy to defraud us of our rights of proprietorship, to take from us our fields and our mountains and our rivers that provide us with the necessities of life and survival. You have confined us to the ghettos of barren forests and unwatered ground from which nothing grows but the most unwanted weeds. Was this not our nation? Our nation in which a thousand tribes existed both in peace and war as you did with us, and as you did with the Spanish, then the French and the English, and then finally among yourselves? Have we no more privileges than those you conquered and then forgave, absorbing them into your culture? The blacks of this country have gone through two hundred years of servitude; we have endured five hundred. Will you now in this day and age permit that to continue?»
«Not me,» said one justice quickly.
«Nor me,» said another, even more quickly.
«Certainly not I,» protested yet another, violently shaking his head, his jowls jiggling.
«Oh, Lord, I’ve read that brief ten times and each time I cried,» said the lady justice.
«You’re not supposed to do that,» said the Chief Justice, glaring at the woman, then instantly turning off the microphones so the Court could confer in quiet.
«I love him,» whispered Jennifer in Sam’s ear. «Mac said it all in a few sentences!»
«He never swam thirty-seven miles through a hurricane at sea!»
«Our general is very eloquent,» whispered Pinkus. «He knows his subject well.»
«I’m not too happy about his black comparison,» said Cyrus, also whispering. «Hell, his Indian brothers and sisters weren’t put in chains and sold, but his thrust was right.»
«No, Cyrus, we weren’t,» added Redwing. «We were merely slaughtered or driven to places where we starved to death.»
«Okay, Jenny. Checkmate.»
The microphones were turned on again. «Yes, well, ahem!» said a justice from the right end of the Court. «As the distinguished attorney from Boston, Counselor Pinkus, is in attendance with you, we certainly accept your credentials, but are you aware of the magnitude of your suit?»
«We want only what is ours. Everything else is negotiable—anything else is intolerable.»
«That wasn’t necessarily clear in the brief, Chief Thunder Head,» said the black justice, in his eyes a glaring disapproval as he picked up a single page of paper. «Your attorney-of-record is one Samuel Lansing Devereaux, is that correct?»
«It is and I’m he, sir,» replied Sam, stepping forward beside Hawkins.
«A hell of a brief, young man.»
«Thank you, sir, but in all fairness—»
«You’ll probably be shot in the head for it,» continued the judge, as if Devereaux had not spoken. «However, throughout I find an underlying streak of vitriol, as if you were not so much interested in justice but in vengeance.»
«In retrospect, I was offended, sir, at the injustice.»
«You’re not paid to be offended, Counselor,» said a justice on the left side. «You’re paid to present the truth of your petition. Without the many long-since-deceased alive to defend themselves, you’ve made startling insinuations.»
«Based on the evidentiary materials uncovered, sir, they were, indeed, insinuations, or, if you like, speculations. None, however, were without corroborative historical foundation.»
«You’re a professional historian, Mr. Devereaux?» asked another.
«No, Mr. Justice, I’m a professional lawyer who can read and follow lines of evidence, as I’m sure you can, sir.»
«Nice of you to grant our colleague that ability,» said yet another.
«I meant no offense, sir.»
«Yet, in your own words, you’re capable of being offended, Counselor,» observed the lady justice. «So I must assume it follows that you can give offense.»
«Where I believe it’s justified, madam.»
«That’s what I was getting at, Mr. Devereaux, when I mentioned that streak of vitriol in your brief. It didn’t strike me that you wanted anything less than abject surrender on the part of the government, a total capitulation that would place an extraordinary burden on every taxpayer in this country. A liability far beyond the nation’s ability to absorb.»
«If the Court will allow me to interrupt,» broke in Thunder Head, chief of the Wopotamis, «my brilliant young counsel here has a reputation for righteous indignation when he feels a cause is just—»
«What?» whispered Sam, his elbow crashing into Hawkins’s ribs. «Don’t you dare—»
«He dares to tread where angels fear to, but who among us can fault the truly honest man who passionately believes in justice for the disenfranchised? You, sir, stated that he’s not paid to be offended—you’re only half right, sir, for he’s not paid at all, merely offended on his own time, no reward in the future for his passionate beliefs… And what are those beliefs that drive him so on our behalf? Let me try to explain. Or better yet, rather than any explanation on my part, have each of you visit a dozen reservations on which our people live. See for yourselves what the white man has done to our once proud Indian nations. See our poverty, our squalor, our—yes, our impotence. Ask yourselves if you could live that way without being offended. This land was our land, and when you took it from us, we somehow understood that even a greater, single nation could evolve, and that we would be a part of it… But no, that wasn’t to be. You cast us off, shunted us aside, consigned us to isolated reservations without any share in your progress. That is documented history, and no one can dispute it… Therefore, if our learned counsel has filled his brief with a certain anger—‘vitriol,’ if you like—he’ll go down in the chronicles of twentieth-century law as the Clarence Darrow of our day. Speaking for the victimized Wopotamis, we worship him.»