Disclaimer: I don't own these characters and make no profit from them.
Rated: G
Author's notes: I think I've just about milked the becoming-a-lawyer story arc for all it's worth but, hey, there are always a few more scenes . . .
To Susan and Cheri, faithful betas, my thanks--when the ending's not right, it's not right.
Now I'm going to make a big bowl of popcorn and go watch Rio Bravo.
Hoops
By L. M. Lewis
Hardcastle had thought once the kid got his go-ahead from the bar, things would be better. He thought it was that hearing, looming ahead like one final hurdle, that had drained the humor from McCormick's attitude the past few months. Not that he seemed angry, or even sad, just so damn intense.
Then the hearing came and went; the ruling was handed down. Mark had his positive moral determination, and was cleared to sit for the bar exam, once he finished his final semester of coursework. Hardcastle waited for a whoop of relief, a momentary lapse of good judgment involving tequila, anything. Instead what he got was a quiet, but genuine, 'thank you,' and McCormick withdrawing again into an endless series of late-night study sessions.
Maybe the final straw had been Friday night, when Hardcastle had caught the kid slipping a copy of Ducat's Constitutional Interpretation into his jacket as they headed out the door to see the Lakers.
"Dammit, McCormick, it's a basketball game!"
At least he'd had the good sense to look sheepish when he shrugged and said, "Yeah, Judge, but there's halftime."
"And that's when you're supposed to go get a beer and some nachos, and maybe watch some middle-aged guy try to make a free throw from mid-court. Jeez, McCormick, it's only fifteen minutes."
That had almost gotten a grin out of him, and he did finally put the book down, but it was obviously with a pang of guilty regret. And there was no question in Hardcastle's mind, watching him the rest of that evening, that the kid really was elsewhere. It was almost as if he was going through the motions of having a good time.
At three a.m. that Monday, the judge lay awake. There was a faint tracery of light on the opposite wall, cast, he knew from experience, by the lamp over the desk on the second floor of the gatehouse. He got up and stood by the window for a while, watching the shadows of movement in the room across the way. He's up, the judge thought, or, to be correct, he's still up.
Which meant he'd been up since saying good-night to the judge at about ten, telling him that he was turning in early because he had an 8:30 class. Hardcastle shook his head and then fumbled around in a drawer to find a pair of sweats. He pulled them on and went downstairs. Grabbing a basketball out of the crate in the laundry room, he headed out the door.
The chill winter air cleared the sleep from his head in a moment. He dribbled the ball a couple of times to get the feel of it and then, thunk, one intentionally against the wall of the gatehouse. A couple clean swishes through the hoop, then one off the backboard; it'd been a while--and another well-aimed thunk against the wall. A moment later the door to the gatehouse opened and he saw McCormick's outline in the doorway, arms crossed. Hardcastle smiled to himself.
"Do you mind, Judge? Some of us have to get up in the morning."
The judge gave him a look of puzzled innocence, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."
McCormick looked up at his own window, with the light still on over the desk, then back at the judge. "Well," he hesitated, "I wasn't quite asleep, but two hits to the wall in two minutes, Hardcase?" McCormick shook his head. "That's pitiful. I've seen you put ten in a row straight in, no rim. You're rusty."
Hardcastle grinned. "Me, rusty? Ha, I could spot you ten on a twenty-point game."
McCormick stood there rigidly in the doorway, as if resisting some palpable impulse, then a flicker of a smile appeared, and he quietly replied, "Yeah, you probably could." There was nothing more for a moment, and then he spoke again, slowly and quietly. "Look, Judge, if I crash right now, I can still get four hours, okay?" And then he turned to go back in the gatehouse.
Hardcastle watched the door close behind him. A moment later the light went out in the upstairs window. "Goodnight, kiddo," he said, and he walked back to the main house with the basketball under his arm.
00000
The next morning he sat alone at the breakfast table. McCormick had already been up and out by the time he'd gotten up at seven-thirty. The judge had no doubt that there was a certain amount of avoidance going on.
The problem, he thought, was that he didn't know what the problem was. He was pretty sure that if he did, he could fix it.
He was almost certain McCormick wasn't having second thoughts about his mid-life career-change. If that were the case, he'd buried it so deep that it would take a weekend with a backhoe to uncover the bones of his regret. No, the judge himself had gradually realized over the past couple years, Mark wasn't just a fairly smart guy with a passionate sense of justice; he also had the makings of a first-class legal mind. For him to be anywhere but where he was right now would have been a waste.
If not regret then what? Fear? Hardcastle was well aware of the kid's strange approach to hope--a weird combination of unbridled optimism, and a dead certainty that nothing good should ever be counted on to last. But surely by now he had to be getting the notion that he was pretty good at this stuff.
You were pretty good at it, too.
The judge sat there, hardboiled egg in hand, caught in a moment of absolute frozen clarity of memory. There you are, head down, staring at the minutia of citations and legal terminology, looking for a toehold so you can scramble up this slippery hill of facts that you have to overcome and, finally, one day you get to the top--some guys never do, but it you're lucky, you get there--and you lift your head up and see . . . a whole lot more hills, thousands of them, and beyond them, mountains of stuff fading off into the purple mists.
He's gotten to the top of the hill, the judge thought. Hell, it probably hadn't even been all that difficult; he'd probably absorbed most of the basics over the dinner table the past few years. And now he's seen the mountains.
00000
That evening (it was too late to be decently called 'afternoon'), the judge heard the distinctive sound of the Coyote's engine coming up the drive. He was up and out the door, with basketball, before the kid was parked and out of the car.
McCormick took one look at the ambush and smiled wryly. "Well, at least give me a chance to change shoes."
He emerged from the gatehouse a few moments later, in sneakers, jeans, and a t-shirt that had given its all in the yard-work wars, looking, at least superficially, like a guy the judge used to know. "Twenty? Hardcastle Rules?"
"Now yer cookin', kiddo."
00000
The kid could still take it, and dish it back out, under the hoop, but his timing was off. It was as if he had to think about his moves and, stranger yet, figure out what the judge was going to do next. It wasn't till they were down to the last couple of points, with Hardcastle ahead by four, that some spark seemed to ignite and McCormick fully connected with the game. Then it was down to the line, with an elbow to the ribs and two good two-pointers in a row. But the judge pulled it off, tipping the final basket in after McCormick over-balanced, landing in a sprawl on the pavement.
"Gotcha."
"Ow."
"Aw, come on, it was good for you," Hardcastle reached down to give him a hand up.
"Oh, yeah," McCormick was on his feet, but leaning over with his hands on his knees, still breathing hard. "Just don't ask me to count my pulse right now." He straightened up slowly. "Hey, this wasn't for my last semester's tuition, was it?"
"Nah," Hardcastle replied, "A deal's a deal." But he smiled to himself; leave it to the kid to recognize where he was coming from, and find some way to meet him halfway. He temporarily ignored the opening. "Hey, I made spaghetti."
"Oh, it's the heartburn special tonight, eh?"
"Yeah, that's why you only manage two helpings. Come on, it's ready; just gotta warm it up." He caught McCormick casting a glance over his shoulder at the gatehouse. "Nope," he grabbed him by the arm, "none of that. When somebody invites you to dinner, you're not supposed to bring notes to read while you're eating."
00000
Hardcastle steered the conversation into neutral territory while they ate—the Lakers' chances in the playoffs, a hitch the 'Vette was developing between second and third gears. McCormick did his bit, though from time to time he lapsed into silence with a vaguely distracted look, and the judge would have to gently prod him with a question.
He appeared to take a second helping more out of habit than enthusiasm, but Hardcastle was grateful that he hadn't bolted from the table already. The meal was nearly over, and judge was still trying to frame his opening statement, when the kid took him completely by surprise.
"So just what did you want to talk to me about, Judge?" Mark looked up from his plate and pinned him with an all-too-knowing look. Hardcastle opened his mouth, then closed it again. McCormick smiled, "Yeah, well, let's just say I'd rather get it over with now, than listen to you bouncing that ball off the brickwork again at three in the morning."
"Hmph, don't try to lay that guilt trip on me; you weren't asleep."
"You caught me there, Hardcase, first-degree studying with intent to commit facts to memory." McCormick held his hands up in mock surrender. The judge fought back a smile. McCormick's own smile had shadow of weariness to it. His hands drifted down. "Judge," he said, seriously, "talk to me? You seem . . . I dunno, edgy."
Hardcastle couldn't mask a look of astonishment. "Edgy? Me? This is coming from the guy who tried to take a book on constitutional law to a basket ball game?"
McCormick's eyebrows went up a little; then he looked away from the judge. "I thought . . ." There was a long pause, McCormick fiddling with his napkin. He finally blurted, "This must've all been a lot easier for you. I mean, I've heard you quote precedent; it's all right there for you. There was that one time, what, two years ago? Frank said something about a suspect and you said 'California v. Hotchkiss, '79.' I went and looked it up later on and it was 1879, for God's sake. It was so damn obscure, but damn if it wasn't dead-on right, too . . . jeez." McCormick shook his head. "I will never be able to do that."
Hardcastle sat back. It started that long ago? And then, He remembers a citation you tossed out in conversation two years ago-- he looked it up? Hardcastle frowned, trying to find his footing again. "You know, kid, I've been doing this for over thirty years, hell; I was around when some of those precedents were set . . . well, not Hotchkiss," he added. "You don't start out knowing everything. You don't even wind up knowing everything. It's like an ocean of facts, rules, citations . . . we're all drowning in it, some in six feet, some in 600. Nobody can touch bottom."
"Yeah, well, Judge, if you don't mind, I'd rather not drown in a bathtub." McCormick grimaced.
"Bathtub, hell, you're already way in over your head, kid, sixty feet at least. I'm just saying you can't learn everything. There's a million people out there using the law every day, and every one of them leaves some marks on it, just as much as it affects them."
Mark didn't reply.
"You know you're good at this; I think maybe you're better at this than you were at holding the inside line on a curve, and you were damn good at that." He saw a brief smile and a flash of recognition in McCormick's eyes. A second later the smile was gone, and Hardcastle was looking at something very close to despair.
"It's not like that." McCormick said tightly. "It's not a game."
Ahh . . . yeah, there's that, huh? Part of Hardcastle's head was glad to discover that he hadn't completely lost his ability to figure out what the kid was thinking, the other part plunged straight in, "So, you think there's going to be something you don't know, and that'll be the difference between someone being found not guilty or--"
"That's all I think about these days." Mark interrupted. "I mean, at first it was just a game. I really wanted to win, too, to show all those people they were wrong. But lately, Judge, it's gotten awfully real. It's only a matter of time." He paused, looking across at Hardcastle. "One mistake," his breath caught on the word, "that's all it takes; it can cost somebody years."
Hardcastle was thinking through the many meanings there, but decided to stick to the issue at hand. "Listen," he said dropping his voice down a notch and leaning forward, "yeah, the stakes can be very high, but you got to remember, if they don't have you, they're gonna have some other schmuck who's maybe phoning it in. I know you, Mark; you care. You also know your stuff, but the caring is worth a hundred citations."
He wasn't sure if he was getting through.
"And if you're not sure, I know you; you'll look it up."
McCormick was looking at him now, "Yeah, lots of that."
"And if you still can't find the right precedent, you can always come to me," Hardcastle added expansively, "I got thousands of 'em. All the way back to California v. Hotchkiss."
"Even California v. McCormick?" McCormick smiled.
"Twice," Hardcastle agreed.
"Twice? That second time was nolle prosequi and you know it, Hardcase."
"You know, hotshot, a little Latin is a dangerous thing."
"Thought you'd want to know you're getting your money's worth." McCormick was grinning now.
"Oh, I got that back a long time ago." The judge paused. McCormick hadn't shot back a rejoinder. He was standing now, and starting to clear the dishes from the table, still smiling. "Hey," Hardcastle added quickly, "Rio Bravo's on tonight. You haven't seen that one, have you?"
"Not more than three times." McCormick shook his head. "It's two and a half hours long, Judge."
"Okay, I'll take care of these," Hardcastle gestured at the dishes. "You go grab Ducat. I'll let ya study during the commercials."