Hey.”
He dries his eyes with a swipe of his sleeve, then stands. “Guess we’d better let Theresa lock up.”
“Yeah. I’ll walk out with you.”
Side by side, we walk through the front atrium of St. Stephen’s, just as we did thousands of times when we attended this school in the sixties and seventies. A large trophy cabinet stands against the wall to my left. Inside it, behind a wooden Louisville Slugger with thirteen names signed on it in Magic Marker, hangs a large photograph of Drew Elliott during the defining moment of this institution. Just fourteen years old, he is standing at the plate under the lights of Smith-Wills Stadium in Jackson, hitting what would be the winning home run of the 1977 AAAA state baseball championship. No matter how remarkable our academic accomplishments—and they were many—it was this prize that put our tiny “single A” school on the map. In Mississippi, as in the rest of the South, sport overshadows everything else.
“Long time ago,” he says. “Eternity.”
I’m standing on second base in the photo, waiting to sprint for the tying run. “Not so long.”
He gives me a lost look, and then we pass through the entrance and pause under the overhang, prepping for a quick dash through the rain to our cars.
“Kate babysat for you guys, didn’t she?” I comment, trying to get him to focus on the mundane.
“Yeah. The past two summers. Not anymore, though. She graduates—was supposed to graduate—in six weeks. She was too busy for babysitting.”
“She seemed like a great kid.”
Drew nods. “She was. Even these days, when so many students are overachievers, she stood out from the crowd.”
I could point out that it’s often the best and brightest who are taken while the rest of us are left to carry on, but Drew knows that. He’s watched more people die than I ever will.
His Volvo is parked about thirty yards away, behind my Saab. I pat him on the back as I did in high school, then assume a tight end’s stance. “Run for it?”
Instead of playing along with me, he looks me full in the face and speaks in a voice I haven’t heard from him in years. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
The emotion in his eyes is palpable. “Of course.”
“Let’s get in one of the cars.”
“Sure.”
He presses a button on his key chain, and his Volvo’s lights blink. As if triggered by a silent starter pistol, we race through the chilly rain and scramble onto the leather seats of the S80. He slams his door and cranks the engine, then shakes his head with a strange violence.
“I can’t fucking believe it, Penn. It’s literally beyond belief. Did you know her? Did you know Kate at all?”
“We spoke a few times. She asked about my books. But we never got beyond the surface. Mia talked about her a lot.”
His eyes search out mine in the shadows. “You and I haven’t got beneath the surface much either these past five years. It’s more my fault than yours, I know. I keep a lot inside.”
“We all do,” I say awkwardly, wondering where this is going.
“Who really knows anybody, right? Twelve years of school together, best friends when we were kids. You know a lot about me, but on the other hand you know nothing. The front, like everybody else.”
“I hope I see past that, Drew.”
“I don’t mean to insult you. If anyone sees beneath the surface, it’s you. That’s why I’m talking to you now.”
“Well, I’m here. Let’s talk.”
He nods as if confirming a private judgment. “I want to hire you.”
“Hire me?”
“As a lawyer.”
This is the last thing I expected to hear. “You know I don’t practice anymore.”
“You took the Payton case, that old civil rights bombing.”
“That was different. And that was five years ago.”
Drew stares at me in the glow of the dashboard lights. “This is different, too.”
It always is to the client. “I’m sure it is. The thing is, I’m not really a lawyer anymore. I’m a writer. If you need a lawyer, I can recommend several good ones. Is it malpractice?”
Drew blinks in astonishment. “Malpractice? You think I’d waste your time with bullshit like that?”
“Drew … I don’t know what this is about. Why don’t you tell me what the problem is?”
“I want to, but—Penn, what if you were sick? You had HIV, say. And you came to me and said, ‘Drew, please help me. As a friend. I want you to treat me and not tell a soul.’ And what if I said, ‘Penn, I’d like to, but that’s not my specialty. You need to go to a specialist.’”
“Drew, come on—”
“Hear me out. If you said, ‘Drew, as a friend, please do me this favor. Please help me.’ You know what? I wouldn’t think twice. I’d do whatever you wanted. Treat you without records, whatever.”
He would. I can’t deny it. But there’s more than this beneath his words. Drew has left much unsaid. The truth is that without Drew Elliott, I wouldn’t be alive today. When I was fourteen years old, Drew and I hiked away from the Buffalo River in Arkansas and got lost in the Ozark Mountains. Near dark, I fell into a gorge and broke my femur. Drew was only eleven, but he crawled down into that gorge, splinted my leg with a tree limb, then built a makeshift litter and started dragging me through the night. Before he was done, he dragged me four miles through the mountains, breaking his wrist in the process and twice almost breaking his neck. Just after dawn, he managed to get me to a cluster of tents where someone had a CB radio. But has he mentioned any of that? No. It’s my job to remember.
“Why do you want to hire me, Drew?”
“To consult. With the protection of confidentiality.”
“Shit. You don’t have to hire me for that.”
He pulls his wallet from his pants and takes out a twenty-dollar bill, which he pushes at me. “I know that. But if you were questioned on the stand later—as a friend—you’d have to lie to protect me. If you’re my lawyer, our discourse will be shielded by attorney-client privilege.” He’s still pushing the bill at me. “Take it, Penn.”
“This is crazy—”
“Please, man.”
I wad up the note and shove it into my pocket. “Okay, damn it. What’s going on?”
He sags back in his seat and rubs his temples like a man getting a migraine. “I knew Kate a
