The Fiction of Owen Thomas

A Better Place (“The Calling”)

A Novella

Excerpt A

He was a specimen, this judge.  Henry O. Manumitt III. Like a young king, father still cooling in the grave. Up there on his throne, casting down over the proceedings, stroking his coarse black beard, his right eyebrow cocked with interest, as if it were propped up on an elbow, stretching out from the king’s brow to get a better view of the squabbling serfs.

The women on the jury, all seven of them, would have gladly born the judge’s children, had that been another part of the jury service requirements, along with not discussing the case with others, and keeping an open mind, and keeping their cell phones off-all-the-way-off, and submitting their parking reimbursement slips at the end of every day.

They smiled when he smiled. And when the furrows of concern deepened across the judge’s forehead, they each offered their own furrows to help carry the weight. Were he to drop his pen and step down from his throne and climb into the jury box and take each of them, seriatim, moving from one to the other, pinning them against the burnished mahogany railing as the witnesses droned on about rights and expectations, contracts and contingencies, they would submit to his will without complaint.

The men in the box sat taciturn and emasculated in another man’s house. In the palace of the king. None of them, Tyler guessed, would offer up any resistance to le droit du Seigneur, the rule of Prima Nocta transplanted into an American courtroom, in defense of their women. No indeed. A couple of the men had tried to assert themselves in voir dire, declining to answer questions about themselves, declining to account for their beliefs and activities.  The judge had looked down upon them with something short of a smile.

You can answer the question, Mr. Peterson.

You can answer the question, Mr. Collins.

You can. As if their objections had been but a public display of low self-esteem and doubts about their ability to form the words that might be arranged into the answer to a simple question.

Well, it seemed the judge was right after all. For they could and they did.

Every so often the judge looked down at Tyler sitting at the table with Grace. This was usually whenever Grace stood to make an objection, swiveling the judge’s attention from the witness, or from the debonair sanctimony of the plaintiffs’ attorney, Mr. Glass. But not always. Tyler had caught several sly sideways appraisals by the judge, even as Grace sat quietly listening and doodling her three-dimensional boxes on her notepad, asking for no judicial attention whatsoever. 

It was as if the Judge were trying to take Tyler’s measure in small, unguarded moments, while everyone’s attention was directed elsewhere. On each such occasion, Tyler had met the judge’s gaze, directly and without apology, and the judge had slowly returned his attention back to the stilted, robotic repartee between witness and lawyer.

The looks from the bench might have been to remind Tyler who was king. That Tyler was in the courtroom at all meant he had already lost a battle with the judge and the justice system. The judge might have thrown the entire case out on a pre-trial motion. Or at least the claims against Tyler, leaving only the allegations against the studio to occupy the jury. But the judge had had other plans and the entire case had been allowed to lumber expensively and inconveniently forward, dragging him along behind, like a thrown rider caught in the stirrup.

After two years of argument and a small fortune in legal fees, today was Tyler’s first day in the courtroom and the judge was obviously intrigued to see in the flesh the man about whom so much paper and argument had been devoted. He had tried mightily not to be in the courtroom and, truth be told, he was still not convinced that it was necessary. He had given his deposition. He had told his story. Said everything there was to say. So why did he need to sit and listen to every agonizing word in person? Why was that necessary? Yes, he owned the studio, but Kevin was the Director of Creative Development. This case was all about, and only about, creative development. Kevin had attended every hearing and every deposition. Kevin had made it his mission to account to the board at every twist and turn. When people at the studio had questions about the case, they did not ask Tyler. They asked Kevin.

In fact, Tyler was not sure that in the past two years Kevin had actually done any work at all that was not specifically related to tending to “the case” and feeding it money, like some pet monster that he had been allowed to adopt and keep chained up in the cellar, taking it for long daily excursions from the studio to the law offices of Meyers, Rudolph & Wagg, to the courthouse, and back again where the beast gobbled up bowls of profit and gnashed at its chains and bellowed for attention.  At the request of the board, Kyle Wolzniak, Co-Director of Cinema and Television Projects, had “temporarily” assumed responsibility for all new development projects so that Kevin could stay focused on “the case.”

Tyler had thought this an extreme reaction to what at that time was a new storm cloud on the horizon. He had counseled the board to adopt a business-as-usual-on-the-home-front approach to what would be a long court fight. But Tyler had abstained from the vote as previously agreed and he had bitten his tongue. “The case” was Kevin’s baby. He would be the studio’s point-person for the litigation. The lawyers at Meyers, Rudolph & Wagg had all but adopted him as an honorary associate, or a firm mascot, or whatever honor typically came with a million dollars in fees. They had given him his own office to facilitate document review and ready access to any one of four lawyers actively working the case.

So, in light of all of that, Tyler really saw no reason why it was not perfectly sufficient for Kevin to attend the trial in his stead. Kevin was his son, after all, and he knew all of the facts better than Tyler, even the parts about what Tyler should say and not say, remember and not remember, intended and did not intend. Kevin could tell the story to the jury, strategize around the clock with the lawyers and then report the status to the board of directors and to Tyler, its Chairman. Grace would be there, in the courtroom, looking up at the judge and over to the jury, to defend Tyler’s interests as necessary. Why, then, did he need to be present?

They all had their answers, of course. Kevin had railed at him, face knotted in beet-red anger, that it was Tyler’s company that had been sued and that Tyler personally had been sued, and that Tyler had been the one, stupidly without any witnesses or legal review, to negotiate the agreement that the plaintiffs now asserted never happened in the first place and so – here Kevin had pounded the dashboard of the car with his fist—of course you have to attend the goddamned trial in person!

It was not an unusual tone for Kevin to take with his father. His passion for the case tended to get the better of him and poison his perspective, not unlike other things. After each day of Tyler’s deposition, Kevin had laid into him for failing to remember the key points of his many and intensive prep sessions with Kevin and Grace and the suited savages of Meyers, Rudolph & Wagg.

It’s like you weren’t listening to a fucking thing we were telling you! I mean, do you even fucking care?! About your own company! Your own reputation! Do you understand how much we have already invested in this fucking project? Do I need to show you the numbers again? Do you want to risk a jury telling you that you have no right make this series at all? That it belongs to that bitch Janice Lindstrom? Do you? You want her to own Winchester County? Because if so, dad, then let’s just pull the plug right now and be done with it.