BOOKER FOUND THE FORMS SOME-where in the depths of the Shankle firm. He said there was an associate tucked away in the basement who occasionally handled bankruptcies, and he was able to pilfer the necessary paperwork.
They're fairly straightforward. Listing of assets on one page, a quick and easy task in my case. A listing of liabilities on another page. Spaces for employment info, pending litigation, etc. It's what's known as a Chapter 7, straight bankruptcy, where the assets are wiped out to cover the debts, which are also wiped out.
I'm no longer employed at Yogi's. I work, but I now get paid in cash, no records. Nothing to garnish or attach. No obligation to share my meager wages with Texaco. I discussed my predicament with Prince, told him how bad things were, blamed it on tuition and credit cards, and he just loved the idea of paying me in cash and screwing the government. He's a firm disciple of cash-and-no-taxes economics.
Prince offered to make me a loan to bail myself out, but
it wouldn't work. He thinks I'll soon be making big money as a wealthy young lawyer, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I may be with him for a while.
Nor did I tell him how hefty the loan would be. Texaco has sued me for $612.88, a sum which includes court costs and attorneys' fees. My landlord has sued me for $809, ditto on costs and fees. But the real wolves are just getting near. They're writing the dirty letters, just now threatening to send in the lawyers.
I have a MasterCard and a Visa, each issued by different banks here in Memphis. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas of last year, during a blissful little period of time in which I was assured of a good job in a few months, and while I was vainly in love with Sara, I set about to purchase for her a couple of charming gifts for the holidays. I wanted expensive things of enduring quality. With the MasterCard I purchased a gold and diamond tennis bracelet for seventeen hundred dollars, and with the Visa I bought my dearest a set of antique silver earrings. Cost me eleven hundred dollars. The day before she told me she never wanted to see me again, I went to a designer food store and bought a bottle of Dom Perignon, a half pound of foie gras, some caviar, some fine cheeses and a few other goodies for our Christmas feast. Cost me three hundred dollars, but what the hell, life is short.
The insidious banks which issued the cards had inexplicably raised my lines of available credit just weeks before the holiday season. I was suddenly able to spend at will, and with graduation and work only months away, I knew I would be able to plod along making the small, required monthly payments until summertime. So I spent and spent, with dreams of the good life with Sara.
I hate myself for it now, but I actually put pen to paper and calculated everything. It was workable.
The foie gras rotted when I left it on top of the refriger-
ator one night during a nasty bout with cheap beer. For Christmas lunch, I dined alone in my darkened apartment on cheese and champagne. The caviar went untouched. I sat on my unlevel sofa and stared at the jewelry lying on the floor across from me. As I nibbled on large chunks of Brie and sipped the Dom, I looked at the Christmas gifts to my beloved, and wept.
At some unknown point between Christmas and New Year's, I pulled myself together and made arrangements to return the expensive items to the stores from whence they came. I toyed with the idea of throwing them off a bridge, like Billy Joe, or pulling a similar dramatic stunt. Given my current emotional state, though, I knew I'd better stay away from bridges.
It was the day after New Year's. I returned to my apartment after a long walk and jog, and realized that I'd been burglarized. The door had been jimmied. The thieves took my old TV and stereo, a jar of quarters on my dresser and, of course, the jewelry I'd purchased for Sara.
I called the cops and filled out the reports. I showed them the credit card receipts. The sergeant just shook his head and told me to contact my insurance company.
I ate over three thousand dollars in plastic purchases. The time has come to settle up.
I'M SCHEDULED to be evicted tomorrow. The Bankruptcy Code has a marvelous provision which grants an automatic stay in all legal proceedings against a debtor. That's why you see big rich corporations, including my pal Texaco, run into bankruptcy court when they need temporary protection. My landlord can't touch me tomorrow; can't even call me on the phone and give me a tongue lashing.
I step off the elevator and take a deep breath. The hallway is packed with lawyers. There are three full-time
bankruptcy judges and their courtrooms are on this floor. They schedule dozens of hearings each day, and each hearing involves a group of lawyers; one for the debtor, and several for the creditors. It's a zoo. I hear dozens of important conferences as I shuffle along, lawyers haggling over unpaid medical bills and how much the pickup truck is worth. I enter the clerk's office and wait ten minutes while the lawyers in front of me take their time filing their petitions. They know the assistant clerks real well, and there's a lot of flirting and mindless chitchat. Gee, I'd love to be an important bankruptcy lawyer so the gals here would call me Fred or Sonny.
A professor told us last year that bankruptcy was the growth area of the future, what with uncertain economic times and all, job cutbacks, corporate downsizing, he had it all figured out. This was from a man who'd never billed an hour in private practice.
But it sure looks lucrative today. Bankruptcy petitions are being filed left and right. Everybody's going broke.
I hand my paperwork to a harried clerk, a cute girl with a mouthful of gum. She glances at the petition, and studies me carefully. I'm wearing a denim shirt and khakis.
"Are you a lawyer?" she asks rather loudly, and I see people looking at me.
"No."
"Are you the debtor?" she asks, even louder, gum smacking.
"Yes," I answer quickly. A debtor who's not a lawyer can file his own petition, though you'll never see this advertised anywhere.
She nods approvingly and stamps the petition. "Filing fee i�� eighty dollars please."
I hand her four twenties. She takes the cash and looks at it suspiciously. My petition does not list a checking account because I closed it yesterday, effectively eliminat-
ing an asset with a value of $11.84. My other listed assets are: one very used Toyota-$500; miscellaneous furniture and furnishings-$150; CD collection $200; law books- $125; clothing-$150. All of these assets are considered personal and thus exempted from the proceedings I have just commenced. I get to keep them all, but I'm required to continue paying for the Toyota.
"Cash, huh?" she says, then starts to give me a receipt.
"I don't have a bank account," I almost yell at her, for the benefit of those who've been listening and might want the rest of the story.
She glares at me, and I glare at her. She returns to her busywork and within a minute she slides me a copy of the petition along with a receipt. I notice the date, time and courtroom of my initial hearing.
I almost make it to the door before I get stopped. A stout young man with a sweaty face and black beard gently touches my arm. "Excuse me, sir," he says. I stop and look at him. He's sticking a business card in my hand. "Robbie Molk, attorney. Couldn't help but hear you over there. Thought you might need some help with your BK."
BK is cool lawyer jive for bankruptcy.
I look at the card, then at his pockmarked face. I've actually heard of Molk. I've seen his ads in the classified section of the newspaper. He advertises Chapter 7's for a hundred and fifty dollars down, and here he is, hanging around the clerk's office like a vulture, just waiting to pounce on some broke schmuck who might be good for a hundred and fifty bucks.
I politely take his card. "No thanks," I say, trying to be nice. "I can handle it."
"Lots of ways to screw it up," he says rapidly, and I'm sure he's used this line a thousand times. "A seven can be tricky. I do a thousand of them a year. Two hundred
down, and I take the ball and run. Got a full office and staff."
Now it's two hundred dollars. I guess if you get to meet him in person he tacks on another fifty. It would be very easy at this point to rebuke him, but something tells me Molk is the type who cannot be humiliated.
"No thanks," I say, and push by him.
The ride down is slow and painful. The elevator is packed with lawyers, all badly dressed with battered briefcases and scuffed shoes. They're still jabbering about exemptions and what's unsecured and what's not. Impossible lawyer talk. Terribly important discussions. They can't seem to turn it off.
As we're about to stop on the ground floor, it hits me. I have no idea what I'll be doing a year from now, and it's not only probable but very likely that I'll be riding this elevator, engaging in these banal debates with these same people. In all likelihood, I'll be just like them, loose on the streets, trying to squeeze fees out of people who can't pay, hanging around courtrooms looking for business.
I'm dizzy with this terrible thought. The elevator is hot and airless. I think I'll be sick. It stops, and they rush forward into the lobby and scatter, still talking and dealing.
The fresh air clears my head as I stroll along the Mid-America Mall, a pedestrian walkway with a contrived trolley to carry the winos to and fro. Used to be called Main Street, and is still home to a huge number of lawyers. The courthouses are within a few blocks of here. I pass^the tall buildings of downtown, wondering what's happening up there in countless firms: associates scrambling about, working eighteen-hour days because the next guy is working twenty; junior partners conferencing with each other about firm strategy; senior partners holding forth in their
richly decorated corner offices as teams of younger lawyers wait for their instruction.
This is honestly what I wanted when I started law school. I wanted the pressure and power which emanate from working with smart, highly motivated people, all of whom are under stress and strain and deadline. The firm I clerked for last summer was small, only twelve lawyers, but there were lots of secretaries and paralegals and other clerks, and at times I found the chaos exhilarating. I was a very small part of the team, and I longed to one day be the captain.
I buy an ice cream from a street vendor and sit on a bench in Court Square. The pigeons watch me. Looming above is the First Federal Building, the tallest building in Memphis, and home of Trent & Brent. I would kill to work there. It's easy for me and my buddies to cuss Trent & Brent. We cuss them because we're not good enough for them. We hate them because they wouldn't look at us, couldn't be bothered to give us an interview.
I guess there's a Trent & Brent in every city, in every field. I didn't make it and I don't belong, so I'll just go through life hating them.
Speaking of firms. I figure that since I'm downtown, I'll spend a few hours knocking on doors. I have a list of lawyers who either work by themselves or have clustered with one or two other general practitioners. About the only encouraging factor in entering a field so horribly overcrowded is that there are so many doors to knock on. There is hope, I keep telling myself, that at the perfect moment I'll find an office no one has found before, and latch onto some badgered lawyer in dire need of a rookie to do his grunt work. Or her grunt work. I don't care.
I walk a few blocks to the Sterick Building, the first tall building in Memphis, and now the home of hundreds of lawyers. I chat with a few secretaries and hand over my
resumes. I'm amazed at the number of law offices that employ moody and even rude receptionists. Long before we get around to the issue of employment, I'm often treated like a beggar. A couple have snatched my resumes and shoved them in a drawer. I'm tempted to present myself as a potential client, the grieving husband of a young woman who's just been killed by a large truck, a truck covered with lots of insurance. And a drunk driver behind the wheel. An Exxon truck, perhaps. It'd be hilarious to watch these snappy bitches spring from their seats, grinning wildly, rushing to get me some coffee.
I go from office to office, smiling when I'd love to be growling, repeating the same lines to the same women. "Yes, my name is Rudy Baylor, and I'm a third-year law student at Memphis State. I'd like to speak to Mr. Whoever about a job."
"A what?" they often ask. And I continue smiling as I hand over the resume and ask again to see Mr. Bigshot. Mr. Bigshot is always too busy, so they brush me aside with the promise that someone will get back to me.
THE GRANGER SECTION of Memphis is north of downtown. Its rows of cramped brick houses on shaded streets provide irrefutable evidence of a suburb thrown together when the Second War ended and the Boomers began building. They took good jobs in nearby factories. They planted trees in the front lawns and built patios over the rear ones. With time, the mobile Boomers moved east and built nicer homes, and Granger slowly became a mixture of retired pensioners and lower-class whites and blacks.
The home of Dot and Buddy Black looks just like a thousand others. It sits on a flat plot of no more than eighty by a hundred feet. Something has happened to the obligatory shade tree in the front yard. An old Chevrolet
sits in the one-car garage. The grass and shrubs are neatly trimmed.
To the left, the neighbor is in the process of rebuilding a hot rod, parts and tires strewn all the way to the street. To the right, the neighbor has fenced in the entire front yard, chain link with weeds a foot high growing in it. Two Dobermans patrol the dirt path just inside the fence.
I park in their drive behind the Chevrolet, and the Dobermans, not five feet away, snarl at me.
It's mid-afternoon and the temperature is pushing ninety. The windows and doors are open. I peek through the front door, a screen, and tap lightly.
I do not enjoy being here because I have no desire to see Donny Ray Black. I suspect he's just as sick and jiist as emaciated as his mother described, and I have a weak stomach.
She comes to the door, menthol in hand, and glares at me through the screen.
"It's me, Mrs. Black. Rudy Baylor. We met last week at Cypress Gardens."
Door-to-door salesmen must be a nuisance in Granger, because she glares at me with a blank face. She takes a step closer, and sticks the cigarette between her lips.
"Remember? I'm handling your case against Great Benefit."
"I thought you was a Jehovah's Witness."
"Well, I'm not, Mrs. Black."
"Name's Dot. I thought I told you that."
"Okay, Dot."
"Damned people drive us crazy. Them and the Mormons. Get the Boy Scouts on Saturday mornin' sellin' doughnuts before sunrise. What do you want?"
"Well, if you have a minute, I'd like to talk about your case."
"What about it?"
"I'd like to go over a few things."
"Thought we'd already done that."
"We need to talk some more."
She blows smoke through the screen, and slowly unhooks the door. I enter a tiny living room and follow her into the kitchen. The house is humid and sticky, the smell of stale tobacco everywhere.
"Something to drink?" she asks.
"No thanks." I take a seat at the table. Dot pours a generic diet cola over ice and leans with her back to the counter. Buddy is nowhere to be seen. I assume Donny Ray is in a bedroom.
"Where's Buddy?" I ask merrily, as if he's an old friend I sorely miss.
She nods at the window overlooking the rear lawn. "See that old car out there?"
In a corner, overgrown with vines and shrubbery, next to a dilapidated storage shed and under a maple tree, is an old Ford Fairlane. It's white with two doors, both of which are open. A cat is resting on the hood.
"He's sitting in his car," she explains.
The car is surrounded by weeds, and appears to be tireless. Nothing around it has been disturbed in decades.
"Where's he going?" I ask, and she actually smiles.
She sips her cola loudly. "Buddy, he ain't goin' nowhere. We bought that car new in 1964. He sits in it every day, all day, just Buddy and the cats."
There's a certain logic to this. Buddy out there, alone, no cigarette fog clogging his system, no worries about Donny Ray. "Why?" I ask. It's obvious she doesn't mind talking about it.
"Buddy ain't right. I told you that last week."
How could I forget.
"How's Donny Ray?" I ask.
She shrugs and moves to a seat across the flimsy dinette
table from me. "Good days and bad. You wanna meet him?"
"Maybe later."
"He stays in his bed most of the time. But he can walk around a little. Maybe I'll get him up before you leave."
"Yeah. Maybe. Look, I've done a lot of work on your case. I mean, I've spent hours and hours going through all of your records. And I've spent days in the library researching the law, and, well, frankly, I think you folks should sue the hell out of Great Benefit."
"I thought we'd already decided this," she says with a hard stare. Dot has an unforgiving face, no doubt the result of an arduous life with that nut out there in the Fairlane.
"Maybe so, but I needed to research it. It's my advice that you sue, and do so immediately."
"What're you waiting for?"
"But don't expect a quick solution. You're going up against a big corporation. They have lots of lawyers who can stall and delay. It's what they do for a living."
"How long will it take?"
"Could take months, maybe years. We might file suit, and force them to settle quickly. Or they may force us to go to trial, then appeal. There's no way to predict."
"He'll be dead in a few months."
"Can I ask you something?"
She blows and nods in perfect harmony.
"Great Benefit first denied this claim last August, right after Donny Ray was diagnosed. Why'd you wait until now to see a lawyer?" I'm using the term "lawyer" very loosely.
"I ain't proud of it, okay? I thought the insurance company would come through and pay the claim, you know, take care of his bills and treatment. I kept writing them, they kept writing me back. I don't know. Just dumb, I guess. We'd paid the premiums so regular over the years,
never was late on a one. Just figured they'd honor the policy. Plus, I ain't ever used a lawyer, you know. No divorce or anything like that. God knows I should have." She turns sadly and looks through the window, gazing forlornly at the Fairlane and all the sorrow therein. "He drinks a pint of gin in the mornin', and a pint in the afternoon. And I don't really care. It makes him happy, keeps him outta the house, and it ain't like the drinking keeps him from being productive, know what I mean?"
We're both looking at the figure slumped low in the front seat. The overgrowth and maple tree shade the car. "Do you buy it for him?" I ask, as if it matters.
"Oh no. He pays a kid next door to go buy it and sneak it to him. Thinks I don't know."
There's movement in the back of the house. There's no air conditioner to muffle sounds. Someone coughs. I start talking. "Look, Dot, I'd like to handle this case for you. I know I'm just a rookie, a kid almost out of law school, but I've already spent hours on this, and I know it like no one else."
She has a blank, almost hopeless look. One lawyer's as good as the next. She'll trust me as much as she'll trust the next guy, which is not saying much. How strange. With all the money spent by lawyers on cutthroat advertising, the silly low-budget TV ads and sleazy billboards and fire-sale prices in the classifieds, there are still people like Dot Black who don't know a trial stud from a third-year law student.
I'm counting on her naivete. "I'll probably have to associate another lawyer, just to put his name on everything until I pass the bar exam and get admitted, you know."
This doesn't seem to register.
"How much will it cost?" she asks with no small amount of suspicion.
I give her a really warm smile. "Not a dime. I'll take it
on a contingency. I get a third of whatever we recover. No recovery, no fee. Nothing down." Surely she's seen this drill advertised somewhere, but she appears clueless.
"How much?"
"We sue for millions," I say dramatically, and she's hooked. I don't think there's a greedy bone is this broken woman's body. Any dreams she had of the good life vanished so long ago she can't remember them. But she likes the idea of sticking it to Great Benefit and making them suffer.
"And you get a third of it?"
"I don't expect to recover millions, but whatever we get, I take only a third. And that's a third after Donny Ray's medicals are first paid out. You have nothing to lose."
She slaps the table with her left palm. "Then do it. I don't care what you get, just do it. Do it now, okay? Tomorrow."
Folded neatly in my pocket is a contract for legal services, one I found in a form book in the library. I should at this point whip it out and sign her up, but I can't make myself do it. Ethically I cannot sign agreements to represent people until I'm admitted to the bar and have a license to practice. I think Dot will stick to her word.
I start glancing at my watch, just like a real lawyer. "Lemme get to work," I say.
"Don't you want to meet Donny Ray?"
"Maybe next time."
"I don't blame you. Nothin' but skin and bones."
"I'll come back in a few days when I can stay longer. We have lots to talk about, and I'll need to ask him a few questions."
"Just hurry, okay."
We chat a few more minutes, talk about Cypress Gardens and all the festivities there. She and Buddy go once a
week, if she can keep him sober until noon. It's the only time they leave the house together.
She wants to talk, and I want to leave. She follows me outside, examines my dirty and dented Toyota, says bad things about imported products, especially those from Japan, and barks at the Dobermans.
She's standing by the mailbox as I drive away, smoking and watching me disappear.
FOR A FRESH NEW BANKRUPT, I can still spend money foolishly. I pay eight dollars for a potted geranium, and take it to Miss Birdie. She loves flowers, she says, and she's lonely, of course, and I think it's a nice gesture. Just a little sunshine in an old woman's life.
My timing is good. She's on all fours in the flower bed beside the house, next to the driveway that runs to a detached garage in the backyard. The concrete is heavily lined with flowers and shrubs and vines and decorative saplings. The rear lawn is heavily shaded with trees as old as she. There's a brick patio with flower boxes filled with vividly colored bouquets.
She actually hugs me as I present this small gift. She rips off her gardening gloves, drops them in the flowers and leads me to the rear of the house. She has just the spot for the geranium. She'll plant it tomorrow. Would I like coffee?
"Just water," I say. The taste of her diluted instant brew is still fresh in my memory. She makes me sit in an ornamental chair on the deck as she wipes mud and dirt on her apron.
"Ice water?" she asks, plainly thrilled with the prospect of serving me something to drink.
"Sure," I say, and she skips through the door into the kitchen. The backyard has an odd symmetry to its overgrowth. It runs for at least fifty yards before yielding to a
thick hedgerow. I can see a roof beyond, through the trees. There are lively little pockets of organized growth, small beds of assorted flowers that she or someone obviously spends time with. There's a fountain on a brick platform along the fence, but there's no water circulating. There's an old hammock hanging between two trees, its shredded cord and canvas twisting in the breeze. The grass is free of weeds but needs clipping.
The garage catches my attention. It has two closed, retractable doors. There's a storage room to one side with covered windows. Above it, there appears to be a small apartment with a set of wooden stairs twisting around the corner and apparently up the back. There are two large windows facing the house, one with a broken pane. Ivy is consuming the outer walls, and appears to be making its way through the cracked window.
There's a certain quaintness about the place.
Miss Birdie bounces through the double french doors with two tall glasses of ice water. "What do you think of my garden?" she asks, taking the seat nearest me.
"It's beautiful, Miss Birdie. So peaceful."
"This is my life," she says, waving her hands expansively, sloshing her water on my feet without realizing it. "This is what I do with my time. I love it."
"It's very pretty. Do you do all the work?"
"Oh, most of it. I pay a kid to cut the grass once a week, thirty dollars, can you believe it? Used to get it for five." She slurps the water, smacks her lips.
"Is that a little apartment up there?" I ask, pointing above the garage.
"Used to be. One of my grandsons lived here for a while. I fixed it up, put in a bathroom, small kitchen, it was real nice. He was in school in Memphis State."
"How long did he live there?"
"Not long. I really don't want to talk about him."
He must be one of those to be chopped from her will.
When you spend much of your time knocking on law office doors, begging for work and getting stiff-armed by bitchy secretaries, you lose your inhibitions. You develop a thick skin. Rejection comes easy, because you learn quickly that the worst thing that can happen is to hear the word "No."
"Don't suppose you'd be interested in renting it now?" I venture forth with little hesitation and absolutely no fear of being turned down.
Her glass stops in midair, and she stares at the apartment as if she's just discovered it. "To who?" she asks.
"I'd love to live there. It's very charming, and it has to be quiet."
"Deathly."
"Just for a little while, though. You know, until I start work and get on my feet."
"You, Rudy?" she asks in disbelief.
"I love it," I say with a semi-phony smile. "It's perfect for me. I'm single, live very quietly, can't afford to pay much in rent. It's perfect."
"How much can you pay?" she asks crisply, suddenly much like a lawyer grilling a broke client.
This catches me off guard. "Oh, I don't know. You're the landlord. How much is the rent?"
She rolls her head around, looking wildly at the trees. "How about four, no three hundred dollars a month?"
It's obvious Miss Birdie's never been a landlord before. She's pulling numbers out of the air. Lucky she didn't start with eight hundred a month. "I think we should look at it first," I say cautiously.
She's on her feet. "It's kinda junky, you know. Been using it for storage for ten years. But we can clean it up. Plumbing works, I think." She takes my hand and leads me across the grass. "We'll have to get the water turned
on. Not sure about the heating and air. Has some furniture, but not much, old things I've discarded."
She starts up the creaky steps. "Do you need furniture?"
"Not much." The handrail is wobbly and the entire building seems to shake.
