“You were a good teacher,” Mason told him.
“I appreciate that. I enjoyed the career. Now tell me a story or two about your cases. Tell me one where the people in the right were duly rewarded.”
“I know a couple like that,” Mason said. “If you can tolerate my opinion.” Mr. Sturges nodded, and Mason leaned forward and began to talk. The two visitors stayed another twenty minutes until Mr. Sturges’s face began to fade. They said goodbye and stood to leave.
Mason and Kathleen drove down to Oakpine High School. “You want to walk out to where Frank broke his leg?” Mason said. Immediately upon opening the car door, they could hear music across the green.
“I don’t think so.”
“New scoreboard.”
“New track, all weather, and new bleachers, and new gym.” She pointed each out. “A little walk?” she said.
“Walking,” he said. “You pioneers. But yes.”
The two sets of double doors in the new gymnasium were open and lighted, and they could see boys and girls coming and going with streamers and sheets of paper. “The homecoming dance is Saturday.”
“Want to go? I came home.” He quickly pointed to the white cupola of the old gym. “What’s in there?”
“Learning center for second language, dyslexia, computers.” They walked across the corner of the football field and sat on the stone steps of the main building.
“I ate my mother’s sandwiches here two hundred times.”
“Have you really enjoyed the law?”
“I have. I became what I expected, I guess. There’s no surprise in me. Thirty years later, and there’s no surprise in me. What would Matt have been if he’d lived?”
“He’d be dead,” Kathleen said. “He would have played football somewhere, that’s for sure, probably Laramie. He had a scholarship. Then he would have come back here to town and relived the glory days for ten years and passed out under a train.”
“You guys were in love,” Mason said.
“Whatever that means,” she said.
“We know what it means, but let’s talk about something else.”
“No,” Kathleen whispered. She took his arm in both her hands. “It’s nice to talk to somebody. Besides, none of it’s a secret.”
“It is if you want it to be.”
“Matt was killed in an accident, and I went down to Denver that summer and started my career in nursing, I guess, by having an abortion. You knew that.”
“I did and I didn’t. I never heard it spoken of, but I knew you were gone, and your folks acted funny the time I went to see them.”
“They were freaked out. Absolutely. They loved him more than I did. We were married in their eyes.”
“You’ve always been a serious person.”
“It’s a liability,” she said.
Four kids ran out the side door of the new gymnasium calling, four girls in cowboy hats, and behind them came four boys in chase. They were after their hats. Kathleen sat up and let go of Mason’s arm. The girls screamed and ran and separated, laughing, as they’d been caught. One girl threw the big black hat at the boy as he grabbed her, but he ignored it and swept her up in a hug from behind. “Oh, no!” he called. “You’re not getting off like that! You’re getting the Chinese water torture. Brad, come on!” Another of the boys came over to the squirming girl and began tapping her forehead. “Noooo!” she screamed. The other kids came over, the girls tame now, the boys snugging their hats on. “Doo-on’t!” the captured girl laughed. “Don’t. No. Oh no!!” “You better not,” another girl said, “she’ll wet her pants.” At that the boys sprang away from her, shaking their hands as if to throw off water. “Yuck! Darlys, you learn some manners. We’ll tell Chuck about your bladder, and then we’ll see if he still takes you to the damn dance.” “Chuck knows about her bladder,” one girl called. “Shut up!” Darlys cried back. She was still laughing.