Pappy Explains Injustice

Dear Mr. Barkley,

I know, the first thing you may wonder when you get this letter is who I am. There is no reason you should remember me. We met many years ago, when I was very young and just coming up in the world. We met at the law firm where I was working as a secretary. You had a case there with one of the lawyers on our staff. He was rudely late for each of the three meetings you had with him, and you waited in his outer office where I tried to make you comfortable while I tried to keep the other two attorneys I was working for happy. Somehow, you still found time to smile at me when I was feeling the most pressed. You put me at ease when I apologized over and over about the attorney you were seeing being late. We had some casual conversation. You told me about your family, your practice, and all the reasons you became a lawyer.

Time has gone by. We have not seen each other in many, many years but I always remembered you, not only as a kind man and a cheerful man, but a just man. When my boss blamed me for his lateness, blamed me in front of you, you seemed to know right away he was not telling the truth. When you left my office – this was the last time you left and the last time I saw you – you said, "Thank you for all your patience, Patricia, I know how it's been," and you winked at me before you went out the door.

I don't expect you remember any of that, and I know you wonder why I am writing to you now. I need your help. Not legal help, and I don't need a job. What I need is your faith, your belief in justice, and your strength to keep fighting for it. You see, a month ago my brother – the only relative I had left – was lynched. He was mistaken for another man by the locals in the town where he lived blamed for a robbery and murder. He fought and they beat him and they hanged him. They discovered the very next day that he was not the man they had been looking for. That man was caught in an adjoining town and he awaits trial there. In the meantime, the people who lynched my brother have suffered no punishment, and they will suffer none. How can you prosecute an entire town, they say to me, and they shrug and go on. And my brother is dead.

He was all I had, Mr. Barkley, and I have no recourse against these people for what they've done. There are too many of them. The hotel in that town even forced me to leave. No one will pay for the loss of my brother but me.

I find that I have no faith left in anyone anymore. I walk down the street and wonder which of the people I pass would lynch me if they decided to. Even if there were some way I could get some kind of compensation for my brother's loss, it would mean little, because there is no justice for it. There will never be any justice for it.

I guess I'm writing you because I remembered the way you didn't accept my boss's blaming me for his inattention. When you thanked me, when you winked at me, what I saw in your eyes was that you were treating me with justice. You believed in me. That's why I am writing you now.

I've read about you over the years. You have always worked for justice, fought for it at the legislature and the courts. Many times you have failed to get it, and I want to know – no, I need to know – how do you go on? How do you believe enough in people to try again the next time? How do you endure injustice and keep believing in people who won't give justice to you? How do you ever trust anyone again? How do you even want to?

I understand I am asking a lot. I understand that I am a veritable stranger to you. If you don't feel you can respond to my letter, then just don't. Don't write and tell me to talk to a priest if that's all you can say. I've tried that and found no help in "Trust God." It rings too hollow for me now. It's human beings I need to trust again, and I can't.

If you can't tell me how YOU go on, then don't tell me anything. Just throw this letter in the trash. Please accept my thanks, though, even if all you can do is read it.

Sincerely,

Patricia Martinez

Jarrod felt the small hands leaning on his arm as it rested on the arm of the sofa. The voice of his 7-year-old son J.T. asked, "What's the matter, Pappy?"

Jarrod folded the letter, reflexively keeping it out of sight even though there was no way J.T. had the ability to read words like these yet. For a moment he remembered how much J.T. could read – maybe a little more than a 7-year-old should be able to read – and he remembered hauling out the old McGuffey readers he had been taught from to help J.T. get started when he was only 5. It was a sweet memory, but it didn't stay.

What came back to Jarrod was the memory of the townspeople in Baker City lynching three Mexican men he was to meet with, and how they were never brought to justice for it. It burned him to this day. He could understand Miss Martinez's feelings right now, and he understood that hers were bound to be more intense than his had been since it was her brother who had been lynched.

But none of those feelings could help him answer J.T.'s question. How do you talk to a 7-year-old about lynching? "Oh, nothing," Jarrod said. "It's just a letter from somebody I know."

"Why are you mad? Don't you like that person?"

Jarrod was surprised at that question. "I'm not mad, J.T."

"Your eyes say you're mad," J.T. said. "And you had a big frown."

Jarrod shook the frown off, but he knew better than to believe his feelings would leave his eyes. He'd have to put his "rock eyes" on to do that – that's what J.T. called it when his eyes took on that look that blocked people out. Right now, he didn't want his "rock eyes." He wanted to try to explain the letter to his son in a way that J.T. might understand. "Come here," Jarrod said.

J.T. climbed into his father's lap. Jarrod caught a sense of his wife, Elise, looking over his shoulder from a few feet away, listening.

"This is a letter from a lady I used to work with," Jarrod began. "She's upset because her brother was treated very, very badly by some people and she doesn't have any recourse to make things right."

"What's 'recourse'?" J.T. asked.

"It's what you say and what you do when you've been treated unfairly to try to get things made right."

"Why doesn't the lady have any?"

"Well," Jarrod said, "the law is involved, and sometimes the law doesn't know how to handle some situations. This lady can't get the law to help her."

"Why not?"

Jarrod sighed. His mind flew back to the times the law couldn't help him and not just with the Mendoza brothers and Baker City. There was Cass Hyatt, when he was the one fighting justice and nearly killing a man in cold blood, because he himself had been treated unjustly. Justice was so complicated. How do you explain its twists and turns to a 7-year-old? "I've asked myself that question many times, J.T. The law isn't perfect, and sometimes it just doesn't work. This lady knows that I've seen times when the law doesn't work, and now that's it's not working for her, she's very upset. She's lost her faith in the law and in people who say they live by it but don't."

"Can't you fix it so the law will work for her?" J.T. asked.

"In this case, I don't think I can," Jarrod said. "She's not asking me to. She's just asking me how I keep believing in the law and how I keep believing in people when this kind of injustice happens."

"What's 'injustice'?"

"Justice is what you have when people and the law make things right. Injustice is what you have when they don't. And sometimes, for all kinds of reasons, they just don't."

J.T. made a face. The blue eyes he inherited from his father did not block out his confusion – he hadn't yet learned how to make "rock eyes."

Jarrod realized his son didn't even know how to frame the question that was confusing him. Jarrod said, "Yes, I still do believe in the law and I still do believe in people, even when they don't make things right, because most of the time they do. People aren't perfect, J.T. They make mistakes. They do bad things, sometimes because they think other people and the law have done bad things to them."

"Did you ever do that?"

Jarrod remembered. "Yes, I've done that too. Nobody is perfect, J.T. As we grow up, we learn lessons and we try to be better people than we were before we learned them. Most people do try to live that way, son, but people do fail."

Now J.T. was looking distressed. Elise came up closer behind the sofa.

Jarrod tried again. "This lady wants to know how I keep my faith in people and in the law. How I keep believing that people and the law do the right things most of the time. I keep believing that because I've done the wrong things myself and learned my lessons and have done better. And most people do that too. I've seen a lot of people do the wrong thing, and I've seen a lot of injustice, but I've seen a lot of things get fixed and I've seen a lot of people learn lessons and I've seen a lot of injustice turn into justice. You're still a little boy, but you've seen it too, haven't you? Haven't you had arguments with your friends but then you apologized to each other and made up?"

J.T.'s eyes cleared a little. His father had finally hit on a way to describe the problem that J.T. had experienced and could understand. He nodded.

Jarrod said, "Well, do you know what? That's part of learning justice. You'll keep doing that your whole life. I still do it and your mother still does it, and we keep learning all our lives. We make mistakes, but we learn from our mistakes, and I believe the law and the people learn from their mistakes too. And we all learn from each other's mistakes. That's how I keep believing in the law and in people – because I've seen them learn so many times and make wrong things right, even if not every wrong thing gets made right and justice doesn't always get done. Most of the time, it does."

J.T. nodded thoughtfully. "Is that what you're going to say to the lady?"

Jarrod wasn't sure about that. He wasn't sure that was going to be enough for Patricia Martinez – in fact, he was sure it wasn't going to be. He'd have to explain more. He'd have to delve deeper with an adult. But with J.T., he hoped he'd said enough for now. "Yes, I'm going to tell the lady that," Jarrod said. "Do you understand what I've been trying to say?"

"Yes," J.T. said with a nod. "I should learn my lessons when I make mistakes. I should always try to do the right thing and make justice, not in-justice." He struggled with the last word. "I should do that my whole life."

Jarrod smiled and gave him a squeeze. "That's exactly right."

"Okay," J.T. said. "I will."

The End