Diary -- February 2, 2019

Diary – February 2, 2019


　

　
First, polar vortex raged with high winds howling through the sclerotic veins of the tree tops – twenty below with wind chills to fifty below. Then, as the wind subsided, the cold air dropped into place and screwed itself down, close to the ground. At dawn: – 25. Julie’s Infiniti choked and died. My car barely started and seemed scarcely mobile. No wind was stirring. School was canceled. In the back yard, the dog moved skittishly, lifting her paws off the ice as if it were a hot griddle burning her. Birds were singing, but with a note of manic hilarity in their calls masking their anxiety. A crow made a jagged sound like someone vomiting.

　

Then, suddenly, it was warm, fifty-five degrees warmer. The ice didn’t melt, but the air was tolerable once more. You could breathe deeply. I attended a retirement party for the Chief of Police held at the Nature Center. Big windows opened views onto the wintry forest clogged with snow. A huge glacial erratic, big as a house, rested in the meadow. A local contractor had dragged that boulder into its place fifty years ago. When my children were little, I climbed up to the top of huge granite boulder. The rock was warm in the sun and, as I lounged there like an iguana, my kids scaled its lower flanks. I should have been happy but, then, there is always something...

　

The contractor who hauled the huge rock to that meadow died a few weeks ago, his wealth tangled up in gory litigation between estranged sons and the woman with whom he had lived during the last twenty years of his life. It occurred to me that his death, perhaps, would chop through the Gordian knot of the litigation. But death, of course, solves nothing.

　

The next day, it was 33 degrees, but not melting yet because snow covered everything in a deep white blanket. At the office, we were emailed a court order. My client had prevailed in an important motion. One of the other attorneys involved in the case called to congratulate me on the victory. This lawyer had been working intensively on the case, but, then, suffered a stroke, almost died, and was now side-lined. I told him that it was good to hear his voice and that I hoped that he was mending. He said that he was feeling better. His voice had an unfamiliar, high-pitched ring. I planned to attend the opera in St. Paul on Saturday and so, on impulse, I said that I would visit him if he felt well enough to see me. He said that he would like to see me and provided his address – it was an apartment in New Brighton, the suburb north of St. Paul where I had lived between first grade and the part of my seventh grade – in the middle of the school year, fall semester, the family moved to Richardson, another suburb but north of Dallas. I wondered why he was living in New Brighton, an odd location I thought.

　

The drive to the Cities was uneventful. It was 35 degree with the sky the color of dull metal, the tone of a shadow cast on snow by a tree or a light-pole. The clouds seemed fizzy with moisture and frost grew like grey mold on windshields and chrome. I stopped at the Northfield rest stop to use the toilet – my guts felt unsettled. I was alone: Julie was visiting with her new granddaughter, Baby Noelle, in Rochester. Neither Jack nor Angelica wanted to attend the opera.

I reached New Brighton forty minutes before my appointed time, exiting from the freeway on County Road E. I thought I should use the toilet again before visiting my colleague. A gas station near the exit from the freeway occupied a hollow between white fuel storage tanks and bleached-looking warehouses. At the gas pumps, two of the four cars pulled under the tin awning had their hoods propped open. The gas station window was obstructed by a blackboard on which daily food specials were printed in stark white letters – pasta was featured on Thursday: what kind of gas station features pasta as one of its specials? The men’s toilet was dialed to the red emblem "in use". The door to the women’s toilet was similarly marked. I bought some diet pop. A Black junkie staggered out of the woman’s toilet, a big guy with zombie-eyes and dreadlocks wearing a slashed-up military-issue coat. A couple of other Black junkies were lurking in the corners of the C-store, staring at the pastries and the coffee dispenser. As soon as the first junkie appeared, one of the others lurched to the women’s toilet and took his place. Then, a white junkie came into the place, a guy with a scraggly red beard and a thousand-yard stare. He giggled slightly and limped up and down the aisles between the bright displays of candy and potato chips. The men’s toilet burst open and another Black junkie fell forward, almost losing his balance on the puddles of melt-water on the tile. One of the other junkies lunged to occupy the toilet. This wasn’t going to work. I went outside to my car. I could see a couple of other big Black junkies stumbling around in the drainage ditch, dark moving scabs against the white snow.

　

I found a toilet at the New Brighton community center. It was winter fun sign-up day and the parking lot was packed with cars and the corridors in the building jammed with small children and their parents. The children smelled bad and the tile floors were half-flooded and the toilet was crammed with burly-looking men with shaved heads belaboring toddlers in Russian, Syrian, and some African dialects. I had to wait in line to use the stall and the big men with the shaved heads and dirty-looking moustaches stared at me sullenly.

　

I drove up to 860 22^nd Ave. NW, the little home with a one-car tuck-under garage where I lived when I was a child. The house was tiny and the crumbling stucco facade was painted a faded green as if the place were camouflaged, trying to melt into the trees growing on the slope in the back yard. I wanted to stop by side of the road, no sidewalks or curbs here, and walk up into the backyard to see if the old retaining wall made from flat, yellow field-stones was still in place. We had a burning barrel that was next to the retaining wall. This wall made a convenient platform to observe the fascinating progress of the flames as they blackened the cardboard and waste–paper, unfurling little orange banners over the trash and leaking a sour twisty black smoke into the air. The back of the house had window-wells and I recall that in the Spring and Summer, these moist spider-haunted cavities were always full of big, sleek salamanders with tiger-spots on their bellies. Next door, Tom Norback lived, my cerebral friend, and, then, frail and sickly Dennis Olson and, then, on the hilltop – but everything now seemed leveled-out and squashed-down to my adult eyes – Scott Anderson with the scarred frenum under his nose where his hare-lip had been corrected. Across the street, the Grabowski’s lived, a large clan – father Grabowski was a line-man and his florid, black-haired wife went by the nickname "Boots." Everything was small, diminished, things still in their proper place but the hills flattened it seemed (if you’re riding a bike , I guess, hills seem bigger and you experience the topography in your calves and thighs) and the distances all compressed together.

　

I took the road down to a subdivision that those of us living on upper hill, under the New Brighton water-tower called "Quality Homes." For some reason, as a child, I had disdained Quality Homes and its inhabitants, but, in fact, I saw now that the houses were much nicer and better built than the jim-crack places up the slope where I had lived. I knew that the frontage road behind the freeway wall led down to Quality Homes and, then, two blocks through the subdivision to the hill road, a more heavily traveled thoroughfare that dropped down from the municipal water-tower to what was, then, the center of the village. Along the way, the road passed over a bridge where there was a small stream braided through a tiny wilderness of sumac and thorns, a watery maze so densely overgrown that you could scarcely penetrate even a foot or two into the thicket. But there was now no trace of the stream and the underbrush – perhaps, the creek had been made to flow underground.

　

The thoroughfare descending the hill passed some apartments built like brick ovens, nasty places full of questionable people, at least as I recalled from my childhood, and, then, there was a little Catholic cemetery with a stucco Jesus stapled to cross made from concrete painted dark brown. At the end of the road, there was a tee. An old two-story building made from dark, turd-colored brick stood at the intersection. The old, dark building was hinged into a flat, nondescript wing bricked in pale yellow stone – a structure that had been new and modern in 1961, when I attended school there. All my life, I have dreamed of this school and the old wing with his wide echoing halls and tile smelling of harsh antiseptic and the principal’s office on the second floor, up stairs that seemed very high and daunting when I was little. In my dream, I climb past the second floor to a marvelous third story – the third story is much larger and, apparently, majestically cantilevered and it is full of strange porticos and recesses in which there are burning barrel fires and strange beasts and it overlooks a wild, mountainous wilderness. As I drove by the real building, now seemingly deserted, I verified what I have also known all my life – notwithstanding my flamboyant dream, the dour old wing of the school has no third floor.

　

I passed a church shaped like a boat and hidden in brush. Once, before my Uncle Dave died in Vietnam, I road in the car with him and my Grandmother. We were going to hamburger place in Roseville. A rendering plant leaked a greenish plume of rancid smoke into the sky. "What kind of church is that?" my Nebraska grandma asked. Dave said: "Must be a Lutheran Church. They have the stupidest-looking dumb-ass churches." I was offended, the grandson of the Lutheran pastor, but I held my tongue.

　

We used to take swimming lessons on a cold beach on Long Lake. The beach is gone now, occupied by an arc of apartments called "The View" presumably because some of the rooms overlook the icy expanse of the lake. When I was a child, Long Lake was just one of the innumerable bodies of water dotting the landscape – except for the beach, accessed by a gravel road, the shore of the water was swampy, shallows staked with tall cattails and gentle wooded hills sloping very gradually away from the bowl-shaped depression occupied by the lake. The place was lonely, forsaken, among the tract housing sprouting on the hillsides above the freeway. No one lived there.

　

But now my poor friend who had suffered a stroke was confined to a room in "The View", the four-story structures one after another interlocked in the hollow where the old beach had been. Apparently, it was an Assisted-Living facility – a phalanx of unused wheelchairs stood along the walls in the lobby and an old man was shambling along next to his wife who was pushing a walker. The old man let me through the security door, remarking that the weather was much finer than a few days before. I agreed with him.

　

I was met at my colleague’s apartment by a young woman, his daughter. She ushered me into a small room. The windows cast white, refined light into the space, part sitting room and part kitchen. Stacks of boxes were stacked along the wall – it looked as if my friend was in the process of moving into the place. He was seated in a cozy-looking upright chair. I shook his good hand. The left side of his body seemed inert and he held his left hand, half-clenched in his lap. I sat on the couch but discovered that my position was not good – my colleague had to turn to see me and couldn’t exactly get his neck and head to move in that direction. So I moved and took up a position on a sort of hassock at the foot of his chair. Next to where he was sitting, a companionable stack of books seemed to totter a little – a fat biography of Ulysses S. Grant, a thinner biography of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, some typed slip-decisions from the Court of Appeals and other books, some of them about recovering from cerebral stroke. The young woman reclined on a nearby couch, reading something on her I-Pad.

　

My friend told me that he had come home from depositions in Wisconsin. He collapsed on the floor and was not found for two-and-a-half days. He had no memory of those two days. His partner, an associate and his secretary found him. He didn’t seem to want to talk about his affliction and changed the subject.

　

We talked about the law. His memory about old cases was exhaustive. He could recall vivid details of cases tried thirty years ago. He still remembered the appellate decisions in which he had taken part. His memory for the past, at least with respect to old litigation, was superb, far better than mine. Indeed, he seemed to take delight in testing my memory. He asked me if I recalled mediating a case with him and another lawyer that we both knew. I had no memory about this mediation at all. He said that he had effected a settlement using the device made famous by my former, and long dead, senior partner Kenny Strom. "Do you know what I am talking about?" he asked. I said that I did not. "Miller-Shugert" he replied. "It was the case that resulted in the ‘Miller-Shugert’ type of release." I knew what a Miller-Scugert release was. In my defense, the reason I hadn’t understood his question was because my other partner, Don R– , had actually written the briefs and argued the appeal in that matter. My friend’s speech was accurate, precise, and detailed with names and places. He seemed to have total recall of all of every lawsuit in which he had been involved as defense counsel. He told me about terrible injuries, peoples’ eyes knocked out of their head when their orbital bones were shattered, massive head injuries, brain damage with cerebrospinal fluid oozing out of the nose or the ears. He seemed calm, utterly lucid, and incapable of any emotion.

　

I think it would be a nightmare to be trapped in a mind occupied only by memories of old lawsuits, forgotten trials, long-ago appeals and legal arguments. But, perhaps, I have never been well-suited to the law.

　

After an hour, I bid him farewell. I gripped his hand hard and looked carefully into his eyes. My colleague seemed old and bird-like, fragile, something like an injured hawk.

It was 3:00 pm and I was hungry. My guts felt sort of twisted and uneasy. I went back to the C-Store by the freeway exit but the toilets were both occupied and there were more Black junkies lurking in the aisles. I decided to go to a McDonald’s. I followed the freeway to the McDonald’s but found it to be inaccessible on the other side of a moat of frozen ditch full of manicured "water features" and on the wrong side of a confusing network of one-way roads. I took the highway past the inaccessible McDonald’s to the first intersection, turned and saw ahead of a me a C-Store near an exit ramp. I parked there and, then, noticed the two cars stalled next to the pumps with their hoods propped open. It was the place with the drug addicts from which I had just come. Several shadowy figures were on stagger-patrol at the edges of the parking lot. I drove back onto the freeway, went the opposite direction and, then, exited where I saw an Arby’s sign. The exit was confusing and I saw the Arby’s briefly, atop a hill like a fort, but I couldn’t figure out how to get there. The road sluiced me back onto the highway and I drove for a mile or so, sighting ahead of me a gas station and convenience store that looked like a reasonable place to stop. I pulled up to the C-store and, inside, saw there a huge black man wearing sweat pants and shirt – he was too enormous to fit into any kind of ordinary clothing – with a tiny white woman with green and yellow stars tattooed all over her face. The enormous Black man and the little disfigured White woman were buying cinnamon rolls. The place looked familiar and, when I went to the toilets, both were turned to red on the door-knobs, occupied, and, then, when I gazed out the window I could see the prowling junkies and the two cars with their hoods propped open next to the pumps and, then, when I went to my car, the blackboard-like sign announcing that the place sold "Pasta" on Thursdays. I drove back to the Community Center, found a spot in the crowded chaotic parking lot, and, then, used the foul-smelling, flooded toilet full of screaming toddlers and young men with shaved, bald heads. I went into the library and found a spot – the last seat open in the whole place – and started reading my book, Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, writing some citations in a spiral notebook. It occurred to me to use my cell-phone to check if the St. Paul fucking winter fucking carnival was underway. I don’t like that celebration – it clogs the streets with drunk morons and makes it impossible to park anywhere near the Ordway where the opera was going to performed. Sometimes, a parade snakes through downtown and makes it literally impossible to cross the street and, of course, all of the one-ways and through streets are barricaded by cop cars and there are party-goers everywhere, the more intoxicated ones comfortably bedded down in the rich stew of slush on the sidewalks and gutters. The phone told me that the St. fucking Paul winter fucking carnival was in full bloom and, indeed, this was the night for the torchlight parade. So I got up, went to my car, deciding that I had to get to St. fucking Paul before the city became impassable.



Grey streets with sidewalks covered with grey slush flushed out of the gutters, police barricades, armies of the walking wounded benumbed by booze shuffling between buildings – St. Paul. Tonight there’s a hockey game, the Minnesota Wild at the Excel Center and, of course, the torchlight parade, various Winter Carnival balls, the opera and the fireworks stockpiled to be shot over Harriet Island, mass confusion and limited parking, although I’m early enough to get a space in the parking lot built against the river bluff, six levels down, twenty bucks a car. But now what? I have four hours until curtain and nothing really to do, nowhere to go.

　

I hike down Kellogg among the spectral crowds, no one high-stepping it because the old cobblestones and the sidewalks and the crossings are all very slippery. My plan is to find a quiet nook in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, four blocks from the Ordway where the opera will be presented – I have several books to read and plan to sit in the bar, perhaps, making notes on Sometimes a Great Notion. As it turns out, lines of people dressed in Winter fucking Carnival regalia are awaiting seats in the bar, the place uproarious and filled to overflowing, and, no fewer than two formal balls are scheduled for this evening, after the torchlight parade and the fireworks. The downtown Intercontinental Hotel is the headquarters for the Vulcans, red-caped men and women with soot smeared all over their faces and forearms. The Vulcans ride fire-trucks with sirens blaring and their office is to assault the Court of King Borealis and his ice-nymphs, set afire the crystal walls of the ice palace, and forcibly make warm what has been frozen. They are less harbingers of Spring then of chaos – fire and melting and flood. But, of course, in actuality, the fearsome Vulcans are merely Jaycees, Junior Chamber members, that is, small retailers, the owners of mom-and-pop C-stores and second-hand clothing emporiums, insurance agents, real estate brokers, assorted shopkeepers, financial advisors, the whole Main Street riffraff liberated by their devilishly red costumes and vast amounts of strong drink to all sorts of mischief. For a time, it was feared that the Vulcans and their merry Krewe would be abolished on account of the rampant sexual harassment that they committed, hurtling about the streets aboard rickety, antique fire engines and dismounting to kiss girls and smear their faces with soot or grab their pussies, as the President of the United States would say, violating women and girls by the dozens until rules and regulations were passed to restrict this sort of activity. The Vulcans are now coed and lady Vulcans were staggering around the lobby dead-drunk, their breasts flopping out of their Vampirella outfits, the girl fire-nymphs leaning on the arms of their red-caped male escorts, all of them sloppily drinking schnaps out of the eight-inch silver flasks. So here I was, sitting in a chair in Vulcan central, next to the door from which the Krewes were departing onto the howling fire-trucks. Two female Vulcans are sprawled across from me on a love-seat, breasts mostly exposed but otherwise bundled up in black and red coats, sashes across their torsos covered in Winter Carnival buttons. They are drinking beer from plastic cups and discussing the provisions in their rooms upstairs – is there going to be enough booze for the night? – and the men with them are guzzling schnaps from not one but four or five silver flasks passed back and forth and, then, a fire truck, sirens wailing, pulls up to the door and its time to go, although due to drunkenness it takes a long time to board the truck, get people organized dangling from the running boards and piled up atop the hook-and-ladder assembly, a mob of people hanging onto the fire-truck by the merest cunt-hair, one might say, and, then, the Vulcan commanders pacing through the people crammed into the lobby, faces corked-up to a foul black, eyes flashing, red capes like bat wings making the men seem just like comic-book super-heroes. And, so it goes, for two-and-a-half hours, my nose pushed into my book, writing notes in a spiral notebook, chaos all around, although once the parade starts, about 5:45 in the blue-grey dusk and ranks of people marching with fire light up the old building facades as if it were the Dresden firestorm, the lobby clears out a little and you can breathe a bit more easily. The Vulcans will return – after they assault King Borealis and his ice-nymphs and burn down his ice-palace, they will be back, all of the blackened and sooty Krewes, for the grand Ball in the grand ballrooms upstairs...

　

The toilet is acrid with vomit. The floor is awash with puke. Out on the streets, the drunks are puking into the grey-brown slush. Vomit is like fire. The Vulcans vomit flame onto King Borealis and the sky goes electric with fireworks.

　

I desperately need a drink. I go into the bar but every single stool and table and chair is occupied. The bar counter is a trough with people crammed elbow-to-elbow, men dressed like drum majorettes or military officers of Ruritanian republics, plumes and feathers, and the women all costumed like Klondike era prostitutes. After making a circuit of the bar, I see that it’s impossible to order a drink and, so, I walk over to the Ordway. Normally, Kellogg Park in the pretty square between the St. Paul Hotel (HQ for King Borealis, the Court of Four Winds, and the ice-nymphs), the Public Library, the old Federal Court Building and the Ordway – possibly the prettiest public space in the whole country – normally, this leafy place with fountains and benches is full of revelers and there are ice sculptures the size of elephants in the park, vendors, and a stage wrapped in a cocoon of plastic where bands are playing. But the park is under renovation, the whole place surrounded by cyclone fences and orange barricades and it seems strangely dark, even, forlorn.

　

An hour before the opera performance, the rehearsal accompanist, an earnest young man (undoubtedly gay) lectures about 100 opera-goers about the opera that is about to be performed, The Italian Straw Hat. The young man hammers out the principal melodies on the piano and some understudies sing a couple numbers and, behind him, the great glass windows on the facade of the Ordway Theater flash violently with fireworks and a rumble like thunder rolls across the manic city.

　

The opera is frivolous and, although it’s supposed to be funny, no one’s laughing, and, like all operas, it goes on too damn long. I’m distracted by weather reports displayed on my cell-phone: drizzle one-hundred miles south where I am going, freezing rain and dangerously dense fog. The temperature is 37 and, so, I don’t know how the drizzle can be freezing but, in fact, if this is the case then I am screwed, royally and thoroughly screwed. My seats are located in a box to the left of the stage on the mezzanine level and there are four chairs in the box in front of me, perhaps, the best seats in the house. These seats were once occupied by the regal Opera Queen, Tom, and his various consorts, all handsome, if surly-looking, young men. Tom was a wealthy surgeon who lived on lake Minnetonka, the scion of some much-decayed but still wealthy Minneapolis milling or grain trading family. When he hosted parties at his manor, music was provided by three-fifths of the Minnesota Orchestra on contract to him, lavish affairs attended by leading politicians and business tycoons. Tom went to operas all over the world and could talk knowledgeably about this year’s season at La Scala or the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, for example, and he didn’t attend one show of an opera, but rather two or three or, even, four if he thought the performances were suitably grand. For, at least, a decade I sat behind Tom, dutifully chatting a little with him at each performance – he was always amusingly catty, snarky one might say, about the divas and whether they were in good voice or not. He applauded by gently tapping the balustrade in front of his seat and, during the obligatory standing ovation, Tom, as an actual aficionado, obstinately remained seated – he knew what quality was and didn’t bestow his praise lightly. But, then, Tom, who was a bit long in the tooth, vanished and his seats, it seemed, were cast open to the merest hoi polloi. So now two couples occupied Tom’s bespoke place in the box, people who seemed to have lost their way from the Minnesota Wild game being played adjacent to the opera house – that is, brutish businessmen with their ignorant wives, sports fans as far as I could see, and they were accompanied by a big elderly gentleman who was placed in the location where wheelchairs are usually deployed on this side of the proscenium, that is, directly next to where I was sitting, but with a better view of the stage. The old fellow smelled of gin and he was not in a wheelchair at all, rather a chair was pulled in from the lobby, a seat too comfortable because he promptly fell asleep as soon as the opera’s first chords sounded – he, then, reclined in his chair, head tilted back and snoring loudly. At intermission, he aroused himself, applauded the orchestra and players, and lumbered out into the lobby for another drink. Music apparently was soporific to him because, again, at the first notes in the second half overture, he again toppled face forward into the arms of Morpheus and remained sleeping until it was time to stand and add his acclamation to the standing ovation. But I was anxious to depart and, so, as the audience was wildly applauding and shouting bravo and bravissimo, I pushed by the narcoleptic old gent and hustled out into the cold and damp.

　

　

Many years ago, I argued a case to the Minnesota Supreme Court. In those days, the Court conducted hearings in the capitol building within an ornate chamber with high, coffered ceilings, marble statuary, and gilded murals. My senior partner was present and, after the proceedings, we went downtown for a drink. St. Paul was more bucolic thirty-five years ago, sweeter and slower paced than Minneapolis and late on a summer afternoon, the town seemed deserted. We parked at a meter next to Kellogg Park and, then, walked across the warm white sidewalk to the Minnesota Club.

Inside, portraits of eminent men loomed over the enameled green of billiard tables and the velvet settees and couches and it was dim and cool, the anteroom to a caverns and crypts. A marble bar counter shimmered like an iceberg in one counter and stylish-looking girls with fashion-model faces and figures were mixing martinis in silver canisters. The club had been founded about the time Minnesota became a State and it was the refuge for senators and judges and captains of industry. Venetian curtains scaling high windows excluded the glare of the day. People spoke in low, confidential whispers. Twenty minutes after we arrived, several of the Justices to whom I had argued the case appeared. They solemnly glided past the billiard tables and sat near the bar. The waitresses knew what they wanted before they ordered.

A few years ago, the Minnesota Club folded – the eminent men who had frequented the place were dead or demented and the culture that they represented was also in tatters. The place had fallen into disrepair. For a while, it was run as an upscale sports bar but the place was across the street from the high alabaster sarcophagus of the public library and, in general, sports fans, even the most elite, don’t like to be anywhere near a library because the thought of books intolerably sours drinks and puts a man in mind of ancient lessons either disdained or failed. So, after the bankruptcy of the sports bar, the old Club was shuttered but available for rental for wedding receptions, corporate retreats, and other gatherings. Sometimes, after the opera, I would walk by the Minnesota Club and hear the throb of disco music inside and, then, look up to those great windows with the Venetian blinds to see the rhythmic flash of a strobe light – outside the front door, a big crowd of Russian immigrants were gathered wearing wild and crazy disco finery, all of them frantically smoking cigarettes and weed before hurrying back into the dance.

After The Italian Straw Hat, I saw a man sprawled on the pavement next to the Minnesota Club. Two women were wailing. "It’s ice, it’s just solid ice," one of them cried. The man was lying stark and unconscious on the stones that had split open his head. Blood was pillowing his hair and shoulders. A few yards away other people were staring at the calamity, pecking at the cell-phones. Other people leaving the opera crossed the street to avoid the glaze of black ice on which the man had slipped.

　

　

Revelers from the Winter fucking Carnival were sashaying along the other side of the street, hurrying from one entertainment to another. The crowd was large and fleet-footed, churning through the inch-deep slush and firecrackers were snapping and rattling in back alleys. The revelers didn’t see the man with the cracked skull lying on the other side of the street or, if they saw him, they were indifferent. This is the nature of a big city – people hastening on errands of pleasure rush blindly past those who have fallen in the same pursuits.

　

A half-block from where the unconscious man was bleeding on the sidewalk, well-dressed people hurrying to their cars were stopped at the intersection on Kellogg Boulevard. A cop wearing a florescent yellow vest was standing out in intersection waving a lantern-like flashlight. A chill was in the air and we stood backed-up behind the red light for a long time. The cop turned to the gathered people, now twenty or so, standing in the cross-walk. "It’s a long light isn’t it?" he remarked. We had been standing there, waiting to cross for seven minutes. "I thought you were controlling the light," a woman said. Down the street, police barricades still blocked part of the boulevard and squad cars with blue spinning lights were guarding the barricades. "I’m not controlling the light," the cop said. "They must be controlling the lights from down there," the woman said, pointing in the direction of the rapidly rotating blue light. "No, we don’t have the capacity to control the lights," the cop in the yellow vest said. He looked over his shoulder: "there’s a button on the light post," he said. "Would someone please push the button?" When the button was pushed, the light changed promptly.

　

Many streets were blocked in the downtown area and it took me several turns in the wrong direction and ten minutes to find my way to the freeway. I drove to Owatonna where I stopped to buy something to eat and put fuel in my car. South of Owatonna, driving became more difficult – it is 33 miles to the intersection between Interstates 35 and 90 and dense fog barred my way. At first, I drove the speed limit, blasting through drifting veils of fog, but, then, the fog became more dense and wrapped around my car closely and I had to slow down. Sometimes, a truck churned past me, driving much too fast for the conditions, but I had to slow and follow the fog-line on my right and the featureless white foam pressing against the windshield played tricks on my eyes – I hallucinated gremlins and deer on the highway. Interstate 90 was worse. I had to slow down to a crawl. The shadows of things looming on the side of the road seemed indefinite and strange to me. It took me a long time to find the exit into Austin. I kept wavering off the edge of the road and, then, finding that the exit was still some inexplicable distance ahead of me. After I found the exit, I climbed the ramp off the freeway and, then, turned to creep slowly through the white clouds swirling around me. I couldn’t see ahead any more and, so, I opened my window and leaned by head out into the wet fog and navigated by sound only: the steady rotary whoosh of my tires on wet asphalt told me when I was on the asphalt; a sound of creaking, crushed snow and ice told me that I had wandered off onto the shoulder. The sound of crashing metal, screams, and yelping dogs told me that I was hitting things hidden in the fog. And so I made my uncertain way forward traveling blindly, as is always the case, through night and fog.

On a Great Man

　

　

1.

The Great Man outlived his infamy. When he died at the ripe old age of 98, very few people remembered him and his deeds had, also, been forgotten. If he had died, ten years earlier, his passing would have warranted an article in the back pages of our newspaper and there would have been some mild controversy about the morality of his public praise. If he had died at 78, the newspaper would have used a headline on its front page to trumpet the report of his demise and fist fights would have erupted between admirers and detractors.

But at 98, the news of The Great Man’s death wasn’t news at all. Most people, one assumes, would have supposed him dead long ago. Indeed, when I emailed condolences to TGM’s nephew, he told me that the family had ceased mourning ten years earlier when the last spark’s of the old man’s mind flickered out. He had been, I am told, a body without intelligence or will for more than a decade. Because he was so preternaturally strong, his heart continued beating and his lungs kept pumping air into his carcass long after he should have been buried in the cold ground.

There was an extended obituary, probably written by his eldest son, in the newspaper. The obit said that TGM was born in 1920. He graduated from the Catholic High School in town and, then, attended the University of Minnesota. It wasn’t clear what he studied: most likely, it didn’t matter because his best efforts were devoted to football. TGM was a lineman for the late thirties Golden Gophers, a legendary team coached by Bernie Bierman – it is said that when TGM played for the Gophers between 1939 and 1942, the football squad was undefeated. (It’s worth mentioning that in 1941, TGM won the heavyweight Golden Gloves boxing championship at the University of Minnesota as well.) After graduating in 1942, TGM played professional football for one season with the Cleveland Rams. World War II was in progress – in 1943, he enlisted in the navy and was stationed on a destroyer cruising the sea amidst the Aleutian Islands. After the war, TGM married, studied law on the GI bill and was admitted to the Minnesota bar in the late forties. He practiced in the family firm in our town for a few years before being appointed to the Bench in 1955. TGM was a Judge of District Court in my rural county in Minnesota for 26 years, retiring in 1981. He returned to the practice of law, unsuccessfully ran for State Office, and continued appearing in Court through the early nineties. By this time, his mind was fading. I last saw him about ten years ago at a meeting of the noon Kiwanis. TGM was seated with his son and a couple of old men at a table set aside from the rest of the group. He was still physically imposing, a big, oblong block of a man, neatly groomed and dressed. I recall that he wore a black beret that seemed comically small for his big, ferocious-looking head. His jaw was a little slack, however, and the habitual disinterest in his eyes had sharpened to something that looked like panic. TGM was still handsome in bland sort of way – he had the good looks of a heavy-set B-movie actor, a big lunk like William Bendix.

In the newspaper obituary in our town, the paper published a photographic portrait of TGM in his judicial robes, smiling in a sinister way against a backdrop of anonymous-looking law books – the picture was famous from a scandal involving an ex-nun. Below the picture of TGM as a judge, there was a photograph of him as a young man wearing a leather football helmet. In that picture, TGM is showing his "war face" – he is grimacing horribly at the camera and his eyes are maniacal. (I am told that pictures of this sort were conventional in the forties, but the image is still frightening – the insane craziness displayed on the young man’s face doesn’t seem feigned.) The two pictures together comprise an eloquent composite image of TGM. There is another old photograph of TGM on his Wikipedia page, a terse note that says nothing other than that he played line one season for the Cleveland Rams. That page is illustrated by a photograph taken when TGM was at the University of Minnesota – TGM has a big face and a protruding nose meant to be broken and there is weird hump in his hair, a sort of ascending cumulo-nimbus formation rising up over his right temple.



2.

I came to town to practice law in 1979. I had taken the Bar exam but not yet received the results. It was a hot July day when the senior partner in my law firm took me in his Cadillac ten blocks from our office downtown to the Courthouse square to meet the District Judge. In those days, lawyers owed fealty to the local judges and it would have been an insult to the Bench to harbor me as a law clerk without making a proper introduction to the sitting judge.

Security didn’t exist in those days. You walked into the Courthouse through any one of three doors, navigated the cool, dim corridor to the judge’s chambers and, then, walked right in – there was a counter raised high enough to be convenient for signing papers and the judge’s court reporter, serving as a kind of secretary, sat at a desk behind the counter, pounding away at a type-writer. TGM served as a District Court judge while also operating a trust and bond company, a pretty overt and egregious conflict of interest – tact required everyone to simply look the other way. The Court reporter, a wizened gnome of a man who wore huge black glasses like aviator’s goggles, was probably typing bonds or trust indentures for the Judge’s financial enterprise. My senior partner greeted the Court Reporter by his first name and asked if the Judge was available to meet me. I recall a huge poster of the King Tutankhamen’s golden death mask looming over us on the wall behind the Court Reporter’s desk. In a glass vitrine, the sort of thing you might see at a museum, there was a withered-looking football, a sort of leather raisin, and a picture of TGM as a young athlete, wearing the armor of his football gear.

TGM was jovial, enormous, with a booming voice and an acrid and cackling laugh. His horny fist crushed my hand. He grinned at me like a carved jack-o-lantern. He told my senior partner that an old lawyer in town, Roger C – , had just concluded a jury trial in his court. In a stage whisper, TGM said: "D’you know what? He forgot to ask for the insurance instruction on voir dire. In a car crash case involving State Farm? Malpractice – Roger shouldn’t be trying cases. It’s malpractice." My senior partner grimaced. "Really?" he said in a non-comittal voice. "It’s malpractice pure and simple," the old Judge said. (Lawyers are forbidden to mention insurance in a civil jury trial arising from a car-crash. An exception is that during voir dire – that is, while picking the jury – a lawyer can ask the Judge to inquire if anyone is a shareholder, employee, officer, or director in the insurance company providing indemnity to the defendant. This is a back-handed way of implying to the jury that the proceeds to compensate the injured person will not be paid by the defendant but by his or her insurer.)

TGM glared at me. "You’re showing me your poker face," the Judge said. "Juries don’t like a lawyer with a poker face." I nodded. "You have to smile," TGM said. "You have to show them your teeth and smile and, then, they will like you."

I nodded again and, even, forced a wan smile across my lips. "There," TGM said, "that’s better."

We went back through the courthouse to the curb where my senior partner had parked his Cadillac.

"There," he said. "You’ve met Judge Bizarro."

"Yes," I said.

"We call him Judge Bizarro," the senior partner told me. "He hates Roger because he used to represent the Hormel Company." Hormel operates a slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in my town. "He hates Hormel with a passion."

The senior partner said: "I’m not so quick to think Roger committed malpractice. Roger is a very experienced lawyer. Everyone today knows that people driving automobiles are insured. That’s just Judge Bizarro casting aspersions."

He sighed: "Well, now you’ve met him."

　

3.

Three months later, a client hired me. He was on probation for a gross misdemeanor and wanted the terms of the sentence relaxed a little. I was skeptical about whether this could be accomplished. But there was a rule and a couple of cases that could be cited in support of this relief. Accordingly, I drafted a petition and filed it with the Court.

The matter was called for a hearing in front of TGM. It was a "cattle call" – the Judge was conducting status conferences with the lawyers involved in about twenty cases. The courtroom and corridor was crowded. The lawyers were pretty tight-knit in those days and they enjoyed status conference Tuesdays. Everyone got to see everyone else and exchange gossip. There was a lot of chatter in the hallway, groups of lawyers laughing and boasting while small, huddled groups of clients stood fearfully against the wall, clustered by the benches outside the big courtroom.

My client and I sat in the back of the courtroom. I didn’t know any of the lawyers well enough to stand around shooting the breeze with them. In fact, even the older lawyers from my law firm ignored me. TGM called my petition and we went to stand before the Bench.

I made about a third of my argument and, then, the Judge brusquely interrupted me. "Did I order your client to serve jail time for this offense?" he asked. "No," I said. "So he’s just on probation?" "That’s my understanding, your honor."

The Judge grinned his Halloween-pumpkin grin. "Well that won’t do," he said. "Mr. Beckmann, I’m denying your motion. Please go to your office and draft an order requiring your client to serve out the remainder of his jail term in the County jail." I stuttered: "But you stayed sentence." The Judge cackled at me: "I’m revoking that stay."

He dismissed me and I went into the hallway full of gossiping lawyers. My client was sobbing. "What have you done? What have you done?" he cried.

We went to my car and drove back to my office. At the office, there was a phone message that I should call the Clerk of Court. I placed the call and the Clerk told me that the Judge was just joking and that I should draft an order simply denying the petition."

"No jail time?" I asked.

"No jail time," the Clerk said. "The Judge was just joking with you."

　

4.

You might want to check on my stories. Perhaps, you will feel an urge to do some independent research. In that case, you will be disappointed.

Transcripts prepared by Judge’s loyal court reporter almost never contained any of TGM’s asides or improper comments. Those remarks were simply not reported. The Judge and his Court Reporter were fellow members of the Knights of Columbus, Fourth Degree, and they had an understanding.

Once, my partner, then, employed as County Attorney, was trying a felony case to the jury in TGM’s court. A young man named Danny H– was called by the defense to provide alibi evidence. In the middle of Danny H–‘s testimony, the Judge leaned forward, casting his shadow on the witness box. "Now, now, Danny," the Judge said. "We all know your not telling the truth. The jury knows and I know and the lawyers, particularly this bird who put you on the stand, know that you’re not telling the truth. You’re just like your daddy – he was also a liar. So I’m telling you now, stop with this lying and tell the truth."

In fact, Danny H– was lying. He clammed-up and answered every other question with the words: "I don’t recall."

When his testimony was concluded, the Judge wagged his long finger at Danny and said: "Now, you be a good boy, Danny, and don’t be telling no more lies."

The State won the case. The defense lawyer asked for a transcript of this proceedings involving the Judge’s comments from the Bench. But the record had been sanitized – it was clean as a hound’s tooth with nothing to show that the Judge had intervened during Danny’s testimony. Enough other evidence existed to convict the Defendant and so no appeal was taken.

A few months later, my partner, later in his career, but then County Attorney, was trying an important homicide case. An African-American drifter was shacked-up in a rotting hotel down by the Milwaukee Road railroad tracks on the East Side of town. The drifter had a floozy in his room. They were both smoking in bed and a cigarette lit the sheets and mattress on fire. Everyone was drunk and a couple of old winos flopping in the hotel were found burned to death in the rubble. There was a hue and cry, mostly for the lynching of the Black man.

During the trial, the County called the floozy to testify. She was a tired-looking blonde woman with a beer belly that made her look pregnant. In the middle of her examination, the Judge put up his hand to stop the testimony. "I’ve got a couple of questions, if you don’t mind, counsel," the Judge said. The lawyers looked quizzically at one another and, then, held their breath. The Judge said: "You like that black stuff don’t you?" He used the witness’ first name. "I know you’ve always liked that black stuff, isn’t that true?" The woman began to cry and the Judge called a recess.

In chamber, the Judge met with the lawyers. The conference was on-the-record. The defense lawyer moved the Court for a mistrial. The Judge nodded gravely and, then, turned to the County Attorney – "I presume you oppose this motion." The County Attorney shook his head. "No, I join in the motion." The Judge growled at both of them: "Well, the motion is denied. I was just trying to establish that the witness is a woman of bad repute and that she isn’t credible." He snarled at the defense lawyer: "You don’t see I was trying to help out your boy?" The defense lawyer said: "I stand by my motion."

TGM said: "I talked to the officer who arrested your man." He paused: "You know your boy came sprinting out of that hotel buck-naked?" "I’m aware of that, your honor," the defense lawyer. "The arresting officer told me that your boy’s cock was a yard-long, that it was hanging down below your boy’s knees." The defense lawyer stammered something.

Of course, the jury convicted the African-American man. An appeal was filed. When the transcripts were printed, there was no record of the colloquy between the witness and the Judge. Similarly, not one word of the motions for mistrial survived. Both the defense lawyer and County Attorney filed affidavits with the Supreme Court attesting to the conversations in chambers and the Judge’s intervention from the Bench. These affidavits put the appellate Court in a difficult position. The Supreme Court ruled that the record was uncertain as to what the Judge had done but that, in light of other evidence, any error that occurred had been harmless and that the conviction for double manslaughter should stand.

　

5.

TGM didn’t forgive my future partner, then, the County Attorney, for the affidavit filed with the Supreme Court. He took his revenge a couple years later.

In our part of the State, elections in the country are managed by the Township Board in the voting precinct. During a nationwide presidential election, one of the local townships determined that inclement weather – there had been an early morning ice storm – had prevented a number of citizens from voting. The Township Board, accordingly, kept the polling place open for a half-hour after it was supposed to be closed at 8:00 pm. There was a tightly contested local race and the losing party filed an affidavit that the polling place had been kept open a half-hour after the statutorily mandated time that the vote should have been closed. The five members of the township board admitted their error but contended that they had all acted in good faith. Nonetheless, the election offense was serious – it is a felony to violate Minnesota’s voting law.

The County Attorney charged all five members of the Township Board with felony voting crimes. All of the Township Board members were well-respected, honest farmers of unimpeachable rectitude. None of them had any sort of criminal record. Their offense was based on ignorance. The County Attorney appeared in Court recommending leniency – he advised the Judge that he had negotiated a plea arrangement with counsel for the Township Board members: each of the defendants would pay $250 as a penalty and the cases would be dismissed with a stay of entry of Judgement. (By this mechanism, the felony charges would not appear on the farmers’ records.) After the County Attorney recommended this plea agreement, the Judge cast back his leonine head and roared at him: "Mr. W—, you seem to think that these willful felonies are trivial matters. Well I disagree. These men tampered with an election. I don’t accept the plea deal. Go out in the hall and get an agreement that includes at least a month jail time for each of these defendants."

The County Attorney withdrew the plea agreement. In the hallway, the farmers were all weeping and shouting and gnashing their teeth. "We’ll have to let this simmer," the County Attorney said. A month later he came back into Court with a plea proposal that each defendant pay a $1500 fine, that jail time be suspended, and that entry of the felony plea also be stayed with records expunged after the penalties were remitted. TGM accepted that plea. A month later, the County Attorney came to my law firm and asked that we hire him – "I’m not going to appear any more in front of that son-of-a-bitch," he told my senior partner. And, indeed, he filed affidavits of prejudice against the Judge during the next year of so on every case over which TGM was assigned to preside.

　

6.

For many years, TGM moonlighted as CEO of a firm that administered trusts and sold bonds of various kinds. That business was located two blocks from the Courthouse in an incongruously big building that had once been a grocery store. Good synergy existed between TGM’s two enterprises: on the Bench, TGM encountered people daily, most of them elderly, who would be well-served by having their assets administered by a reputable trust company. Further, the Court was often called upon to approve the disposition of probate assets or the distribution of funds on wrongful death or for an injured child. Conveniently, the Judge could simply order that those proceeds be responsibly managed by a trust company with a good reputation, that business located within hailing distance of the Courthouse in the old Piggly Wiggly supermarket building. The TGM’s trust company had millions of dollars under management, a substantial business responsibility that required that the Judge spend several hours a day optimizing company investments and responding to customer inquiries. This labor was accomplished by abbreviating the Judge’s time on the Bench – he generally began hearings in his Courtroom at 9:30 am, took a two-hour lunch break, and knocked off for the day around 3:30 pm. Trials in his court were notoriously lengthy because the Judge was on the bench only 4 to 4 and a half hours a day.

For intricate reasons, the leading business in our town, a famous meatpacking concern, was operated as a trust. Family members who owned the business had all decamped to Los Angeles or San Francisco, preferring a Mediterranean climate to our Winter’s icy hell (and equally infernal, mosquito-haunted Summers.) People with lots of money and clever, beautiful friends in Hollywood really don’t want to be associated with an enterprise that slaughters pigs and hacks them apart to make canned pork. Accordingly, after two hardworking generations, the meatpacking family had declined (or, perhaps, one might say evolved) into a clan of socialites wired into the arts, film, and recording industries on the West Coast. The vast wealth produced by the meatpacking business on the icy steppes of Minnesota was managed as a trust for these socialites and invested, as well as disbursed, according to complex bylaws.

Trusts must present their accounts on an annual basis to the probate Court. For several years, TGM approved the accounts of the family trusts operating the company for the benefits of the heirs of the hardworking old Germans who had founded the firm. Researching the law, TGM discovered an anomaly – the law didn’t permit a family trust of this specific sort to own a business or make profits. The trust, accordingly, had been proceeding under false premises. When TGM discovered this defect in the management of the family trust, a scheme occurred to him – something far-reaching, bold, and profitable. What if he could order that the family trust run by the meatpacking company instead be transferred to his own trust and estate company located in the defunct Piggly Wiggly store? TGM always thought that he could run the business more effectively and for greater profits than the feckless executives in the corporate offices and, certainly, there were enormous fees in the offing if the meatpacking firm could be transferred for management to his trust company. Of course, a conflict of interest might arise if TGM issued the order transferring the management of the Fortune 500 meatpacking business to his own Trust Company – someone might ask importunate questions about that transaction. Accordingly, TGM conferred with his fellow judge chambered in the adjacent county. The fellow judge was a huge bombastic fellow, vicious in his own right, the former commander of the American Legion in the State of Minnesota and a famous bully. TGM conspired with this fellow and, ultimately, persuaded him to take the trust accounts of the meatpacking company under his advisement at the annual hearing. This brethren Judge, then, chastised the company’s management for attempting to run a for-profit corporation under trust statutes designed for non-profit enterprises. He ordered that the management of the entire firm be transferred lock, stock and barrel to the trust company occupying the old supermarket building two blocks from the Mower County courthouse.

To say that the meatpacking company responded with alacrity would be an understatement. The afternoon after the probate Court issued its order, motions for injunction were filed by several large law firms in New York City. The corporation has a jet airplane and it ferried a team of lawyers from Manhattan to our small town. Of course, the local judges were all disqualified from hearing the injunctions and writs filed to restore the Fortune 500 company to its proper managers and directors. A Judge from another county was brought into the litigation and an order issued almost instantly enjoining TGM’s trust company from its operation of the meatpacking firm. The injunction was made permanent and, apparently, laws were passed for the purpose of insulating the pork-processing company from this sort of intervention in the future. (Local lawyers representing the company had to testify in Washington before Congress to obtain this special dispensation). To punish TGM for his role in this scheme, the company’s New York lawyers publicized the debacle in newspapers in the Twin City and stirred-up an investigation of the TGM’s business. (From time to time, TGM’s trust business was investigated, generally, with the outcome that the scrutiny was like turning over a flat stone in a backyard garden – all sorts of white writhing things and creepy-crawlies were observed in the muck, cavorting and disporting themselves.) TGM was smeared in the newspapers, rebuked by the professional committee supervising judges, and ordered to divest himself of the trust business to avoid conflicts of interest. He obeyed these orders, albeit contemptuously, appointing his wife, who was a homemaker, to the management of the trust and estate business. Everyone noticed that his wife’s signature on the official documents of the trust company bore a surprising similarity to TGM’s handwriting.

And, so, TGM continued to run the trust company in the old grocery building although covertly, making investments and studying ticker-tape over his two hour noon breaks and during the hours before and after his brief time on the Bench. Although his wife signed all bonds and trust documents, one knew the lion by the mark of his paw.

7.

When he left the Bench, the Bar sponsored a retirement party for the Judge. The affair took place at the Country Club. Everyone attended.

TGM sat next to his brother. TGM’s brother was also a judge albeit of a court of jurisdiction lesser (or, at least, different) from his. TGM’s brother was a studious, courtly man who collected rare books. He was soft-spoken and a little indolent – the lawyers who appeared in his Court loved him without reservation. He was a reasonable man and didn’t put on airs. A photographer had been commissioned to take a picture of the Bench and Bar in our county as gathered for the Judge’s retirement. TGM, plotting a run for public office, didn’t want to be photographed with a cocktail in his hand. He sat in the center of the picture next to his brother. "I’m not gonna be shown in a picture with booze in front of me," he loudly proclaimed. He took his highball and set it next to his brother’s gin and tonic. "There," he said. He smirked at his brother. "You always were a two-fisted drinker," he said. After the party, I stood in the parking lot at the Country Club. I looked at the evergreens screening the tees and greens from view. Someone was standing by me, but this was many years ago and I don’t recall who it was. "I’m going to piss on his grave," I told the person next to me. "You’ll have to stand in line," the other person said.

Alcohol had been the scourge of TGM’s family. My senior partner told me that the Judge acted all high and mighty but that his father had been a reprehensible, stinking drunk, an old man always found in downtown alleys or gutters, passed out in his pissed pants. The Judge’s older brother was avuncular and had married well – his wife was the daughter of the Director of a well-known insurance company located in the Midwest. That company initiated a class-action suit against pharmaceutical companies alleging price-fixing and the TGM’s older brother, who was also a local lawyer, had piece of that action. The price-fixing class action made that man, and his brilliant oldest son (who went on to become a famous class action lawyer in his own right) very wealthy. TGM’s older brother purchased a horse ranch south of town and raised thoroughbreds. He attended all social events hosted by the local bar and was greatly beloved, a rich source for local legal lore and legend. TGM’s younger brother, as we have seen, was also a Judge. When he retired, he opened a bookstore near the Mayo Clinic in Rochester – he was a happy man, buying and selling the rare books that he loved.

One of TGM’s relatives told me that on Christmas day, in his mansion designed by an iconic architect, and, after their turkey dinner, the men all retired to the basement to smoke cigars and drink brandy. TGM had an 8 millimeter film showing the different ways in which animals copulated. He showed the movie and everyone smoked expensive cigars and sipped their expensive cognac and laughed at the animals having sex. It was very comical. The turtles were a particular favorite every year.

8.

After his retirement, TGM’s first order of business was to run for public office. He moved his framed poster of the Pharaoh and the football that was like a shrunken head to the Piggly Wiggly. Of course, he had a few clients, but, initially, his ambition was to secure election to the State legislature. (Who knows what perfidious schemes he had hatched for that post?) The local legislator was DFL, a post-Vietnam progressive, a nondescript middle-aged woman with a big, jovial laugh. She had once been a nun and her sexual preference was a little murky and, as a feminist, she was soft on abortion. The former Judge was a Vietnam hawk, a staunch, if non-observant Catholic, and, of course, pro-life. During the primary, TGM bought several billboards looming over central intersections in our town. On those billboards, TGM posted a barn-sized picture of himself, smooth-faced and bland as William Bendix, an image of the sort that one might imagine chiseled into the heights of Mount Rushmore. TGM smiled serenely at the camera like a cat that’s just eaten a canary, a wall of law books behind him – presumably, he intended the billboard both as an advertisement for his campaign and his new, burgeoning law practice. He was wearing his judicial robes in direct contravention of Minnesota statutory law and rules governing the decorum required with respect to both sitting and retired Judges. His adversary, the progressive feminist immediately pointed this out to the Commission governing the Professional Responsibility of Judges. An order issued that the billboard showing TGM dressed as a Judge be removed.

TGM was nonplussed, that is, unperturbed. He issued this statement: "I am a retired Judge and, therefore, can still be recalled to the Bench, therefore, the picture was correct. My opponent took a vow as a nun. Presumably, she is still a nun and could be recalled to her convent." The statement highlighted his adversaries problematic status as woman who had broken a covenant, perhaps, due to an imperfection in her sexual orientation and who stood ready, willing, and able to slaughter the unborn.

The strategy didn’t work and, after losing the election, TBM returned to the practice of law.

9.

A creek snakes through a wooded ravine fractal with other smaller wooded ravines at the edges of our town. An elite neighborhood, largely occupied by the executives at the local packing plant, was established in the late forties on a relatively level terrace next to the stream. In the old days, before cars were ubiquitous, the executives lived in mansions embedded around Main Street – that is, within walking distance of the plant located on the other side of the 19^th century mill pond. During the twenties, the execs built their homes another ten to twelve blocks to the west where the downtown relaxed into big wooded lawns. Those homes were miniature castles with fairy-tale towers and turrets. The next generation of movers and shakers built on the lots near the creek, a watery, if picturesque, area that was prone to flooding. One of the executives went so far as to commission Frank Lloyd Wright to build his home, a long angular structure with wooden struts and girders painted in the architect’s trademark color, Cherokee Red. The neighborhood was eclectic – there were glass modular houses closer to the river, the sort of thing you might see in New Canaan, Connecticut, perhaps, built as a rebuke to the slumbering monstrosity of the huge FLW edifice a little uphill. The local personal injury lawyer lived in a wood-shake shingled home with, of course, a turquoise swimming pool – other houses in the neighborhood were vast sprawling structures (the company overpays its executives) like the barracks in a Shaker commune as well as little Grimm brothers gingerbread houses, witches cottages with archaic gabled roofs in the tall trees. The whole neighborhood was shady with curving streets and no sidewalks and gutters full of fallen leaves.

TGM hosted a big party in his FLW home. Rumor had it that he had substantially modified the interior lay-out of the house, not content with the famous architect’s design, and, even, probably vandalized the place, although no one knew this for sure. One of my partners was invited to the cocktail party. TGM made a short self-aggrandizing speech promoting his new law practice. Both of his sons were working for him and he had just hired a female attorney, Helen V–. The Judge said: "This will be a trial practice. We’re trial lawyers. None of the other attorneys in town like trial practice. Frankly, they don’t have the guts for it. But I’m comfortable in Court – after all, I was a trial judge for 26 years. We’re gonna take cases to trial. Count on it!"

After this speech, the Judge roamed the crowd shaking hands and boasting about his courtroom prowess. One of my partners was in attendance and he shrunk against the wall as he saw TGM approaching him. The Judge stuck a huge bony finger on my partner’s sternum and pushed hard. "We’re comin’ to get ya," he said. "We’re comin’ to get ya for sure." My partner nodded his head and tried to interpret the assault as a friendly gesture. "Okay, if you say so," my partner replied. "You know," TGM said, "I was a Golden Gloves boxer. Champion. And I never threw a punch in anger without my fist breakin’ the bone. Ya know?" "Oh, I know," my partner stuttered. "Helen..." the Judge said. "She’s like a junkyard dog. She’s meaner ‘n a junk yard dog. She’s gonna get cha." My partner shrugged and grinned and the Judge grinned and, then, sailed off to menace some other poor soul.

About six months later, Helen V– left town in the middle of the night. No one knew where she went. She abandoned the law practice, TGM, and her litigated files, most of them involving frivolous suits. She also abandoned the apartment TGM had rented to her. She left in the middle of the lease and so TGM sued her for the balance of the rent. Helen V– defaulted and TGM took a judgement against her. He also kept her damage deposit because she had pounded some nails in the wall to hang a couple pictures of her dogs and her pony.

10.

I was involved in one of TGM’s first cases after his retirement from the Bench.

An old lady owned a vacant house in our town. She placed an advertisement offering the house for rent. An African-American woman answered the advertisement and demonstrated that she was qualified to rent the property for her small family – she worked as a motel manager and had two little children. The old lady delayed. She wondered what the neighbors, all of whom were White, would say about her renting the home to the Black lady. When the prospective renter put her off a couple times, the African-American woman contacted the Minnesota Department of Human Rights with her suspicions that she was the victim of housing discrimination. The Department sent a fresh-faced and friendly White couple in their early thirties to inquire as to the house. The old lady met them and agreed to lease the property to them for a hundred dollars less a month than her proposal to the Black woman. The Department immediately sued her and she sought the legal advice of the former Judge.

Many old people, particularly those living in rural Minnesota, don’t know anyone who is Black. In my experience, almost everybody is instinctively racist, although these atavistic tendencies can be readily overcome if your imagination is sufficiently flexible and empathetic. But the older you get, the more you’re set in your ways and the less flexible you become with regard to accepting new ideas. These are cliches and truisms and I blush to write them – but the point is that the old White lady was a victim of her own prejudices and, suddenly, found herself named as a defendant in a scary lawsuit. The evidence against the White defendant was clear, convincing, and unequivocal – any competent lawyer would have recognized the case as indefensible and have, immediately, initiated damage control measures, that is admitting liability and working to negotiate a prompt and reasonable settlement. (The Black lady’s actual damages were minimal – she had found another better place to live for less rent.) TGM didn’t take this approach – to the contrary, he exacerbated his client’s exposure by defending both vigorously and ineffectually. (Fees are shifted in civil rights cases – the losing party pays the winner fees and expenses and, so, it is important to promptly evaluate this kind of case and try to resolve it by settlement without incurring significant fees.)

TGM set the Black woman’s deposition. In that proceeding, he belabored her about the Civil War. Q: Do you believe there is discrimination against African-Americans north of the Mason-Dixon line? A: Of course. Q: Do you even know what the Mason-Dixon line is? She did. Q: Do you have any idea how many White boys died for your people, all White boys from north of the Mason-Dixon line? A: That is about the most ignorant question I have ever heard. And you were a Judge? During his colloquy, Assistant AG appearing for the Department was squawking out objections. Things went downhill from that point.

TGM refused to conciliate and demanded a jury trial. He hoped to impanel a White racist jury. But, in those days, Civil Rights lawsuits were not tried to the jury but to the judge. In fact, the Attorney General for the State of Minnesota handled the case on behalf of the African-American lady. There was a short trial and the Court issued judgement in favor of the African-American lady in the sum of about $85,000. (This was a case that could have readily been settled for $10,000 to $15,000.)

TGM counseled his client not to pay the judgement. Instead, he brought a separate lawsuit naming the Black lady as a defendant. The theory of the case was that the African-American woman’s civil rights claim was a malicious abuse of process and that the woman had lied in the proceedings and, therefore, committed perjury. (Perjury is a criminal offense but TGM argued that the plaintiff’s deceit in the litigation involving this discrimination in housing had influenced the outcome of the case.) The complaint served on the Black lady claimed damages in the amount of one million dollars.

The Black lady brought the complaint to me. I was astonished. I immediately filed Motions pursuant to Rule 12 of the Rules of Civil Procedure to dismiss the case as failing to state a cause of action. When I argued the motion, TGM didn’t appear. Instead, he sent his stepson. The Trial Judge looked at the Complaint and my motion for dismissal. He shrugged and, then, glared at the young man appearing in his Courtroom. "May I ask," the Judge inquired, "where is your stepfather?" "He’s ill today, your honor," the young man said. I stood up to make my argument. "I don’t need to hear from you, Mr. Beckmann," the Judge said. I sat down. The Judge said to TGM’s stepson: "What do you have to say?" "Nothing, your honor," the young man said, almost in a whisper. The Judge dismissed the complaint from the Bench and awarded attorney’s fees and damages. There was an Appeal, quashed at an early stage, with an another award of fees and costs.

Later, TGM was publicly reprimanded by the Board of Professional Responsibility. Particularly embarrassing and racist exchanges from the Trial and deposition transcript were printed in the Opinion. The old lady who had made the mistake of retaining TGM as her counsel lost the house to the Black lady – it had to be sold to pay the Judgement. The Black lady affirmed that our community was more racist than the deep South from which she had come. She took her money and returned to Atlanta.

11.

If you want to see TGM depicted with eerie accuracy, I commend to you Orson Welles 1958 film noir,

Touch of Evil. There are many reasons to watch this movie – it is one of Welles’ best pictures and prescient of today’s troubles (both actual and purported) at the Mexican border. Welles plays a fat, vicious, and corrupt sheriff, Hank Quinlan, who rules a border town where there has been a dynamite attack that seems to be a terrorist act. Welles tears into the part with Shakespearean bravado, channeling sometimes Richard the Third, sometimes, Iago, and, even, Lady Macbeth – after his final wicked act, the murderous cop staggers down to a filthy canal full of rotting detritus to wash his bloodstained hands. (There’s an element of King Lear’s arrogant savagery embedded in the part as well.)

Quinlan is a bully who uses his authority to torment others, but his instincts are sure – in fact, he knows who has committed the bombing even though it’s something that he can’t prove. He’s simply willing to bend the rules to reach an outcome that he knows is correct – even though he couldn’t achieve those results by behaving legally or, even, with any scintilla of honor. Corrupt to his very marrow, Quinlan knows that the ends always justify the means because this is, not only, what he believes but the way that he has always acted. He also knows that people will lie and that no one tells the truth except under compulsion – and, not even then if there is some other avenue of escape: this is something that he understands because he is an accomplished and vicious liar himself. Ultimately, Quinlan knows that everyone has a price and all men are corrupt because, of course, he is profoundly corrupt and morally rotten himself.

Quinlan’s mannerisms in hectoring suspects, his intonations, his facial expressions and gestures are all exactly similar to TGM’s demeanor and appearance – it’s as if Orson Welles came to my little town and sat in the courtroom day after day committing to memory the Judge’s conduct on the Bench. Art imitates life, I suppose. No one saw the great film maker in my town, but he must have been there to commit to the screen such an exact, truthful, and damning representation of TGM.

12.

A woman was injured at her place of work. She recovered worker’s compensation benefits. Ultimately, the injured worker was presented with a release to sign with respect to a disputed lump sum payment. She signed the release and received the money. Because she was unable to return to her manual labor job, the employer discharged her. The woman went to TGM and hired him to sue the employer for penalizing the worker for filing a claim for compensation. TGM’s complaint was vivid and malign – it was also completely wrong with respect to all factual allegations and didn’t state a viable cause of action.

I was retained to defend the employer. It was my suspicion that the former Judge had no idea how to present his case-in-chief and would simply call his plaintiff to testify to her vague suspicion that she had been fired for filing the workers compensation claim. We appeared in Court and made brief opening statements – the law required that the case be tried to the Trial Judge without jury. This seemed to baffle TGM – he made several bizarre motions asking that a jury be empanelled. Of course, this was not authorized under the statute and, in any event, you can’t simply materialize a jury by waving a wand – juror’s have to be summoned and oriented, fed coffee and donuts, shown videos as to their civic obligations, in short, trial by jury is a major production and one that the Clerks of Court responsible for orchestrating all of this heartily despise. (Judges like jury trials – they are good advertising for the elections for office for which they have to stand from time to time.) The Trial Judge patiently, but with a hint of malice, explained to TGM that he wasn’t going to be able to perform for a jury. TGM noted an exception, an archaic gesture objecting to the ruling, and, then, gazed wistfully with his big, sad William Bendix eyes at the empty jury box.

When I stood up to argue, a horrible sound vibrated in the air – aaaraggggghhhhhh!!! ending in a wet gulping sound. The Judge had just inhaled a sinus full of mucous into his throat, gargled with the gobs of snot, and, then, swallowed them down. I paused and looked over at TGM. He grinned at me looking quite satisfied with the phlegmy bellow that he had produced. I said a few more words and, then, the Judge produced the wet, rattling roar again. I glared at him. He grinned back at me. He wasn’t poker-faced at all but very pleased at the distraction that he was creating. I continued my opening statement vexed every two or three sentences by this growling, leonine roar of aspirated snot. After my opening, the Judge’s sinuses seems to have been evacuated and he called his first and only witness, the unfortunate female worker. He examined her for an hour or so urging that she testify as to her unwarranted, even, paranoid, suspicions of wrongdoing. When I began to cross-examine, TGM’s sinuses filled with mucous again and that had to be flushed down through his throat into belly again and again.

After my cross-examination, TGM rested his case. Again, he gazed longingly at the empty jury box, the vacant seats, the wooden rail where he wished that he could have gone to loom over those twelve men (here six) tried and true. I moved for a judgment of dismissal. My oral argument was punctuated by volleys of wet, torrential throat-clearing. Again, my opponent’s mucous problems cleared up when he rose to argue. During his pitch, TGM sometimes turned to glare at the non-existent jury. The Trial Judge dismissed his case after he had spoken his piece. He stood up and bawled "exception". Of course, he took an appeal but it failed and his client received nothing except charges for a couple of thousand dollars costs and disbursements owed to the employer.

13.

And, then, there was the sex case. Feelings are still raw about this lawsuit and it’s subject to protective gag orders and so I can’t say much about it. Names, places, circumstances are all changed here, although the gist of this nasty thing (I think) can be disclosed.

An employer, let’s say a school district, had a married worker on its payroll who was involved in a love affair with a woman. This woman provided janitorial services to the employer, albeit as a temp hired through a contractor. The romance dissolved in recriminations and the woman alleged that she had been coerced into sex. And there were video tapes that the couple had made showing their encounters.

TGM represented the woman. He filed a lawsuit on her behalf seeking as damages the sun, the moon, and the stars. During discovery, TGM demanded that he be shown the video tapes documenting the trysts between his client and the School District employee. On the basis of circumstances not here relevant, my law firm had possession of the video tapes and, indeed, kept them locked away in our old safe downstairs. The defendant School District wanted to settle the lawsuit before adverse publicity could arise. Plenty of defenses existed to bar the woman’s claim – but the District didn’t want the accusations filed as a matter of public record at the Courthouse. So, there was a settlement conference at the former Judge’s offices. The District offered a million dollars, two million, ten million – but TGM demanded that we surrender the video tapes to him as a precondition to any negotiated settlement to the case. The lawyers for the District were dismayed. "Why won’t he take the settlement?" one of them asked me. "Because," I said, "he wants to see the video tapes. There is no amount of money that will move him to settle this case until he has enjoyed watching those tapes." "What about his client?" one of the lawyers asked me. "He doesn’t care anything about his client.""But this is crazy," the lawyer said, blinking his eyes hard and fast. "You’re right," I replied.

Later, the Court ordered that we provide TGM with access to the video tapes. By order, he was to view that evidence in our presence. The retired Judge came to our offices and my partner picked out a tape at random and put it in the video machine. A TV was set up against the wall of the conference room. The tapes were all more or less the same – you could look at any moment and it would be like any other moment. Sometimes, the camera angle changed or the lighting was amped-up for more detail or the people on screen made some sounds or whispered words – but the pictures were pretty much just more of the same. TGM took off his coat (it was winter) and settled in to watch the movies. "Do you have popcorn?" he asked my partner. "No," my partner said. "This isn’t supposed to be some sort of entertainment." TGM gazed with delight at the TV. "That’s a hard-working little girl," TGM said. My partner was outraged. "This meeting is over," he said. He shut of the video-player.

TGM rose up to his full height. He began to clench and unclench his mighty fists. Aaaaarrrrrghhhh-harumph! he bellowed, clearing great columns of gunk out of his throat. He raised his fist to mid-torso. Remember, he had never thrown a punch in anger without shattering bone, a complete transection through the marrow and comminuted to boot. His seminal vesicles were miswired and shooting hot jism into his sinuses and esophagus. AAAAARRRRGHHHH- HARUMPH he thundered again. He dropped his fist slack to his side. My partner showed him to the door.

There was ice outside on the sidewalks and it was cold and TGM walked gingerly – he seemed a little bent and crooked: after all, he was an old man.

14.

Shakespeare’s Mark Antony says: "The evil that men do lives after them/ The good is oft interred with their bones". There’s a disgusting coda, as it were, to TGM’s malice.

TGM’s trust company had weathered many storms. Over the years, many complaints had been made against the firm. Heirs found their accounts liquidated. Exorbitant sums were paid for administration. In one celebrated case, a Catholic priest became famous on the air-waves as the "cowboy Padre." Apparently, the priest had a radio show in which he preached, strummed guitar, and sang cowboy songs. For a time, the show was wildly popular and the "cowboy padre"made a fortune. His vow of poverty kept him from enjoying most of his money and, so, it was entrusted to TGM’s management. The priest lived forever and died, like TGM later, ancient and forgotten – no one remembered the once-famous radio show and its eccentric host. TGM apparently determined that the "cowboy padre" had no real heirs, no next-of-kin interested in the small fortune under the trust company’s management and, so, the money, it was alleged, was misappropriated. But there was an heir, a niece twice-removed, and she was appalled to learn that the priest’s money was all gone, ostensibly applied to administration of the trust. She made complaints to the Commerce commissioner and sued – for a few days, headlines blossomed, but the media quickly learned that no one really remembered the "cowboy padre" or his on-air exhortations any longer and that readers met the story with indifference. The Trust company somehow survived the scandal and, presumably, a settlement was negotiated – the outrage, which had been feigned in any event, subsided.

But, then, a few years later, authorities in Colorado discovered that 4000 bail bonds had been improperly executed, apparently signed by officials of the Trust company long in advance of their being used – this is a statutory infraction and, although technical, the sheer scope of the malfeasance was sufficiently egregious to result in the firm being barred from selling bonds in Colorado. A criminal prosecution ensued. TGM’s son was now at the helm of the firm. He was a reasonably honest and virtuous man, but the poison from his father’s innumerable misdeeds tainted the air around him and chopped the soil out from under his feet. The misdeeds committed in Colorado followed the firm to its headquarters in our city. "This was a troubled company," said Commerce Commissioner Mike Rothman when he announced the forced liquidation of the firm. "Given the company’s history, its disregard for state law, and its bad financial condition, the state has no other recourse (but to revoke the firm’s authority)." It should be noted that the president of the company, then TGM’s son, protested but his defenses were unavailing. The company was involuntarily liquidated and, further, its president was suspended for six months from the practice of law. The ancient sign above the old Piggly Wiggly advertising trusts and bonds had to be taken down.

15

When the sun was setting, the wind stirred, kicking up a little snow not ice-bolted down on the hard alabaster drifts. The tree-line was an anguished palisade of bare sticks and twigs and the sun, futile this time of the year, was entangled in that wintry thicket.

I walked through the gate of Calvary cemetery and followed the lane toward the place where a Hobbit-sized Christ was tacked to a cross above two Hobbit-sized mourners. TGM had been buried in January and I wondered where his grave was located. The wind had worked the snow into bony vertebrae and ribs between the polished marble stones. Some ruts where mud had frozen over lateral slashes in the grass filled with black ice led me toward a place where the snow was disturbed. A kind of frozen crater was scooped out in the ice and snow, a brown funnel cut down into the frigid earth. I inspected the crater and, then, had the awful sensation that the hole hadn’t been excavated down into the ground, but rather marked the place where something had emerged, had risen, clawing its way up through the steel-hard clods of dirt. The snow creaked behind me and I slowly turned. The Judge was advancing through the snow drifts, kicking them away with his heavy boots that swung like pendulums below his lurching, unsteady torso. Decay had withered his lips away so his jaw was all gleaming tooth and bone. His big William Bendix face pale as wax shone against the gathering gloom. The corpse was trying to clear its throat and I could see his fists, all dark with black mold, clenched. Those fists had never thrown a punch in anger without smashing a bone to pieces. I was paralyzed with terror, unable to move as he came for me.

16.

When the sun was setting, a few gusts laden with snow that the wind had chiseled off the drifts whirled around me. The sun, cold and futile, was clawing at the horizon, digging down into the underworld. My bladder was unpleasantly full. There were no mourners – just the stucco figure of Christ, three-quarter sized, hanging from the cross. Ice veiled the faces of the two plaster-cast women looking up at the tortured figure.

I didn’t know where the Judge had been buried. The way between the tombstones was uneven with frozen drifts and there were small graves concealed under the snow. After searching for a few minutes, I felt the wind burning on my jaw and face, threatening me with frost bite and, so, I supposed that I had best get about doing my business and, then, fleeing the place.

I was friends with a grave-digger who worked at five or six small rural cemeteries. In the winter, the grave-digger "burned" the grave, by lighting a big bonfire on the place where the shovel and pick-axes were supposed to eke out a hole in the frozen ground. It was convivial. The grave-digger was an Irishman and, with his helpers, they would squat by the fire and pass around a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey. I’m sure that an industrial-size propane torch was deployed in Calvary cemetery to cook through the sod so that TGM could be interred. No one passed a bottle in his memory. But I couldn’t find the disturbance in the snow and ice where the grave had been cut and there was no sign of his monument.

When I thought of TGM, of course, my penis shrunk. This would pose a problem because I would have to root around in my trousers for the tiny, ineffectual thing and, indeed, there was no real warrant to believe that I could find it, or even point it’s tip to spray pee on the earth where the old Judge had been buried. TGM was the kind of manly man who made other men’s genitals shrink until they were so small that, for all practical purposes, they ceased to exist. I put my cold fingers in my open fly and dug around in that cavity but couldn’t find anything. I supposed that I would have to squat like a woman to mark the place where his grave might or might not be and this seemed to me to defeat the whole purpose of the gesture.

I looked around me. The wind wailed and the snow stretched level and undisturbed in all directions.