Part 4 (1/2)

'Of course.'

'Thanks.'

'Stu said I should charge you, even if they are just leftovers.'

'Remind Stu that I didn't charge him for his murder case.'

A year before, Myrna's husband had accidentally run over an armadillo in his four-wheel-drive pickup truck. An animal-rights activist, which is to say, a resident of Austin, had witnessed the 'murder' and called the police. The district attorney, up for reelection, charged Stu with animal cruelty. Book defended him and won an acquittal.

'Mail?'

Myrna pointed a thumb at his office door behind her. He walked through the open door and into his office crowded with a leather couch, a bookshelf filled with casebooks and a crash helmet, law review articles stacked along the walls, Southwestern art and framed photographs of himself with Willie Nelson and ZZ Top and other Texas musicians, a cluttered desk with an open laptop, and a work table where a young woman sat reading his mail.

'Who are you?'

'Nadine Honeywell. I'm a two-L. The dean of students sent me over. I'm your new intern.'

Tenure had also earned Book a paid student a.s.sistant to help with his research, his law review articles, and his correspondence.

'Where's Renee?'

'She quit.'

'Why?'

Nadine shrugged. 'All she said was, ”I didn't go to law school to get shot at.” She was just joking, right, Professor?'

Book dropped the armload of books and notes and Myrna's plastic container onto the couch then stepped to the solitary window and stared out at the treed campus. He had grown to like Renee. Just as he had grown to like all of his interns. But sooner or later, they all quit.

'Right, Professor?'

He sighed. 'Yes, Ms. Honeywell. She was just joking.'

'I thought so.'

He turned from the window. Nadine squirted hand sanitizer from a small plastic bottle into one palm then rubbed her hands together. The room now reeked of alcohol. She wore a T-s.h.i.+rt, shorts, sandals, and black-framed gla.s.ses riding low on her nose. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and Book could discern no sign of makeup or scent of perfume. She was skinny and looked thirteen. She picked up an envelope and used a pocketknife to slice open the flap.

'Is that my pearl-handled pocketknife?' Book asked.

'Must be. I found it on your desk.'

She gestured with his knife at the pile of mail on the table in front of her.

'Myrna said you get hundreds of these letters every week.'

'Every week.'

'So people all over the country write to you and ask for help? Like you're some kind of superhero or something?'

'Or something.'

'And do you?'

'Do I what?'

'Help them.'

'A few.'

'Why the snail mail? Haven't they heard of email?'

'I don't publish my email address. I figure if they want my help, they should at least be willing to write a real letter. And you can tell a lot more about a person from a letter.'

'I can tell there are a lot of sad people out there. Single mothers not getting their child support-'

'Send those over to the Attorney General's Child Support Office.'

'-inmates claiming innocence and wanting DNA tests-'

'Send those to the Innocence Project.'

'-people wanting to sue somebody-'

'No civil cases.' Book took a step toward his desk. 'Tell me if you find something interesting.'

'I did.'

Nadine held up an envelope.

'You should read this one.'

Book took the envelope, walked over to his desk, and was about to drop down into his chair when he heard Myrna's voice from outside.

'Faculty meeting!'

He pushed the envelope into the back pocket of his jeans, grabbed the plastic container with Myrna's quesadillas, and walked out of his office and down the corridor.

Chapter 3.

The University of Texas School of Law opened its doors in 1883 with two professors teaching fifty-two students. White students. State law forbade admission of black students. In 1946, a black man named Heman Sweatt applied for admission to the UT law school; his admission was denied solely because of his race. The infamous 1896 Supreme Court ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson had deemed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment satisfied if a state provided 'separate but equal' accommodations for the races. So, rather than admit Mr. Sweatt, UT opened a separate law school for blacks only. But while the UT law school then had sixteen professors, eight hundred fifty students, a 65,000-volume library, and alumni in positions of legal power throughout the state, the blacks-only law school had three professors, twenty-three students, a 16,500-volume library, and exactly one graduate who was a member of the Texas bar. Mr. Sweatt sued but lost in the state trial court, state appeals court, and state supreme court. So he took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Court ruled in 1950 that the blacks-only law school did not offer a legal education equal to that offered whites and ordered Mr. Sweatt admitted to the UT law school. Sixty-two years later, the University of Texas School of Law had seventy-two full-time professors, 1,178 students, a million-volume library, and sixty-two black students.

Book opened the door and stepped inside the faculty conference room where most of the full-time faculty were already engaged in vigorous debate. He tried to walk unnoticed around the perimeter of the large room, but the discussion abruptly stopped, and all heads turned his way, as if a student had invaded their private sanctum.

'Ah, our very own Indiana Jones is honoring us with his presence this morning. How wonderful. My, the press does love our das.h.i.+ng young professor, don't they?'

Addressing Book from the head of the long conference table was Professor Jonah Goldman (Harvard, 1973, Environmental Law), the faculty president. Book's exploits in East Texas had made the national press.