PrettyFakes

I’m not on top like I used to be
Well I give in when I know I should be strong
I still give in even though I know it’s wrong
I guess I’m dumb, but I don’t care

“Guess I’m Dumb,” as recorded by Glen Campbell, 1965

Russ Titelman put lyrics to that Brian Wilson-penned song almost thirty years ago. It was supposed to be a love song, but the first few bits read like the best biography of Mr. Wilson that will never be written: the one he writes himself when he tours behind 1967’s Pet Sounds in the Twenty-First Century.

Friday I sat with eight other students at the Mississippi Supreme Court—robes and all. We were playing not Justices Smith or McRae (the conservative and liberal poles by which our state court flows and ebbs), but Stevens, Scalia, and et al, and we “heard” five currently pending cases, thoughtfully prepared by other classmates.

It’s much harder to simply ask questions than one might think, for the members of the Court often pitch a phrase or two in a certain way to elicit certain responses. In my role as Justice Ginsburg, I wanted to bring forth the same arguments in Hibbs v. Nevada Department of Human Resources that I knew she would, wanted to hear the words that she wanted her colleagues to hear: disparate, intention, violation, anything to drive the point home to the other Justices.

The most noteworthy example of the Court encouraging answers—and thus modification of the debate, and of the intention of the parties—was in 1973, when they suggested to a young lawyer named Sarah Weddington that there might be a right to privacy suggested by her argument. She said something quite like, No, your honor, I don’t believe there is but they asked her are you sure? and sent the counsellors home to do a bit more research & come back for another oral argument (an exceeding rarity).

She came back with the argument that a woman has a right to privacy suggested at the outside of the Constitution. So they question for you is, gorjus babies, who writes the story? You or me?

We had lunch—all of us, from those working on Nike, Inc. v. Kasky to those with clenched teeth over Grutter v. Bollinger—at Isaak Byrd’s 930, a few blocks up from the court. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten there—just been drunk watching Bobby Rush once and threw a little party to raise some money for a candidate for judge—and it was just so-so, especially with prices guaranteed to please nobody but the IRS.

Lawrence v. Texas was last, and the woman who was arguing for the state of Texas (arguing that they might have a law that only applied to homosexuals, and no one else) was nervous. Nervous because her mom and her dad, a Baptist preacher, were in the audience.

She wasn’t just great, she did so much better that the real lawyer for that gargantuan state that they out to figure out a way to go back in time, Sam Beckett-style, and get her to take up the cause for them. The only bad thing that came out of it were her parents being a little embarassed—not by the topic of discussion, but that their daughter had to argue from such a horrible position. Her momma told her, “honey, don’t you know that God gives us folks free will?” I suppose she knows that, and God does, too, but the state of Texas sure as hell doesn’t.

We wrapped and a pal and I head to the Jitney 14 to buy some beer. Her husband “is off in some goddamned biker bar, I mean it, with all these motorcycle types all just playing pool,” and she’s not going. Instead we head over to the Kitchens place.

Jim Kitchens is one of my favorite folks in the world. He was a D.A. here in the county a few years back, and has the scars to prove it. I remember him telling me about things gettings hot once. There were pursuing a big drug investigation, and a fellow had called and told him to meet him down the street, because he had some real good information they could use.

“Don’t go, Jim,” said his wife.

“I have to, honey. It might break the case.”

These words are not just said in movies: they are also said by people that believe in things.

So Mr. Kitchens walks outside to head to the truck and a man in black walks out of the bushes and pulls a gun and Mr. Kitchens’ hand comes up covering the barrel and the shot cracks out, the whole neighborhood hears it, and he’s holding the gun with his left hand which has a hole in it and he punches the guy, hard on the jaw, knocking him flat down,

and he turns on his heel, walking inside, blood pouring out of his hand. “Honey, call the police.” But when the police come the assassin with the broken jaw is gone and ten years later there’s just a scar and a story. The man in black was never found.

So this man, the one with the scar on his hand and the snow-white hair and the belly laugh, who has never shied away from doing his duty as a lawyer, no matter how difficult—and no matter how much some cannot understand it, is throwing a party for two of his sons, who will soon be Members of the Bar. One already is. The party is crawfish and beer and friends and Tom Petty on the stereo on a perfect spring day, one of the thirty or so we get a year, before it starts getting so you have to wipe your face every few minutes when you walk, because your glasses are sliding down, there’s so much sweat.

We get there at four and I guess I leave around midnight, my poor best suit rumpled to hell and back, lucky tie somewhere in some car, hopefully with my pocketknife, blade sticky from cutting limes for somebody’s Corona Light. In there was a lot of laughing and a bathtub full of beer and a jumping Jack Russell Terrier and a hundred pounds of crawfish dumped on tables marked conspicuously with the name of a local Christian private college. I ask where they came from, and it seems that a cousin or so of somebody’s might be a maintenance fellow over there, or maybe in facilities use, so we got to borrow five or six tables and forty chairs.

The sing-a-long was around in there, maybe at ten. In the middle of the office is this giant poster of Robert Johnson, framed, right over an old upright. Mr. Kitchens sits down and just starts barreling through a medley of Jimmie Rodgers songs, and I’m so drunk, and it sounds like it’s right out of a saloon in a movie, like what you want music to sound like. It sounds like the greatest thing in the world, this rolling blues jangle, like something I wish I could record and listen to every time I get drunk.

So we all gather around and sing songs by Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed (a big favorite) and lots of Jimmie Rodgers. And Robert Johnson, who has a special place in the heart of the Kitchens family.

You see, Robert Johnson had one son: Claud. No one believed Claud, despite a lot of good evidence to the fact he was the true biological son of our greatest blues hero, and he never saw a cent of the growing monies slung around from his father’s fame, which is probably larger right now in 2003 than it ever was in 1933 or even 1963. Claud never saw a cent, that is, until he got a little country lawyer down in Jackson to help him work his claim. If you can figure out who that was, you win the prize.

To celebrate that victory, and celebrate Robert Johnson, Mr. Kitchens wrote a song of his own, which we sang Friday nite: flushed with beer, sunburned foreheads and ears, mouths still stinging from too much-never enough Zatarain’s all over the potatoes and corn.

“Brother of the Blues”

composed by Jim Kitchens, May 8, 1999

Oh, I’m the son of Robert Johnson,

But didn’t nobody know my name.

Oh, I’m the son of Robert Johnson,

But didn’t nobody know my name.

Before I reached my manhood,

I was made to go by Cain.

Robert Johnson was my daddy,

That’s what they told me from my birth.

Robert Johnson was my daddy,

That’s what they told me from my brith.

Other people said he wasn’t,

When they learned what he was worth.

My dad died in the Delta,

Back in 1938;

When St. Peter saw him coming,

People say he shut the gate!

But I’m the son of Robert Johnson,

So I miss him all the same;

And the way that I was treated—

It’s a low-down, dirty shame!

When I was a little fella,

Mama married Pluchie Cain.

When I was a little fella,

Mama married Pluchie Cain.

He didn’t want to call me Johnson,

So he made me use his name.

I got grown and I got married,

Back in 1952.

I got grown and I got married,

Back in 1952.

That’s when I gave back Cain to Pluchie,

And all OUR kids are Johnsons, too!

Well they say that Robert Johnson,

Was the Father of the Blues,

Just listen while I tell you

Revolutionary news:

We had the same daddy—

I’m talking ‘bout Claud and The Blues—

We both are Robert’s children;

So I’m the Brother of the Blues!

Let me tell you, babies, there’s no better place in the world then where I live. No other place is just as filled up with real people as here. If you come visit, I will fill you up with beer and music and slaps on the back.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 30th, 2003 at 2:55 pm and is filed under Gorjus, Law & Jurisprudence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.