CHAPTER ONE

MY DECISION to become a lawyer was irrevocably sealed when I realized my father hated  the legal profession. I was a young teenager, clumsy, embarrassed by my awkwardness,  frustrated with life, horrified of puberty, about to be shipped off to a military school by my father for insubordination. He was an ex-Marine who believed boys should live by  the crack of the whip. I'd developed a quick tongue and an aversion to discipline, and his  solution was simply to send me away. It was years before I forgave him.

He was also an industrial engineer who worked seventy hours a week for a  company that made, among many other items, ladders. Because by their very  nature ladders are dangerous devices, his company became a frequent target of  lawsuits. And because he handled design, my father was the favorite choice to  speak for the company in depositions and trials. I can't say that I blame him  for hating lawyers, but I grew to admire them because they made his life so  miserable. He'd spend eight hours haggling with them, then hit the martinis as  soon as he walked in the door. No hellos. No hugs. No dinner. Just an hour or  so of continuous bitching while he slugged down four martinis then passed out  in his battered recliner. One trial lasted three weeks, and when it ended with  a large verdict against the company my mother called a doctor and they hid him in  a hospital for a month.

The company later went broke, and of course all blame was directed at the lawyers. Not once did I hear any talk that maybe a trace of mismanagement could  in any way have contributed to the bankruptcy.  

Liquor became his life, and he became depressed. He went years without a steady job, which really ticked me off because I was forced to wait tables and deliver pizza so I could claw my way through college. I think I spoke to him twice during the four years of my undergraduate studies. The day after I learned I had been accepted to law school, I proudly returned home with this great news. Mother told me later he stayed in bed for a week.

Two weeks after my triumphant visit, he was changing a lightbulb in the utility room when (I swear this is true) a ladder collapsed and he fell on his head. He lasted a year in a coma in a nursing home before someone mercifully pulled the plug.

Several days after the funeral, I suggested the possibility of a lawsuit, but Mother was just not up to it. Also, I've always suspected he was partially inebriated when he fell. And he was earning nothing, so under our tort system his life had little economic value.

My mother received a grand total of fifty thousand dollars in life insurance, and remarried badly. He's a simple sort, my stepfather, a retired postal clerk from Toledo, and they spend most of their time square dancing and traveling in a Winnebago. I keep my  distance. Mother didn't offer me a dime of the money, said it was all she had  to face the future with, and since I'd proven rather adept at living on  nothing, she felt I didn't need any of it. I had a bright future earning money;  she did not, she reasoned. I'm certain Hank, the new husband, was filling her  ear full of financial advice. Our paths will cross again one day, mine and  Hank's.

I will finish law school in May, a month from now, then I'll sit for the  bar exam in July. I will not graduate with honors, though I'm somewhere in the  top half of my class. The only smart thing...

 

"Great fun to read...The complex plotting is Grisham's major accomplishment."

 

"A taut and terrific page-turner."

 

The Rainmaker by John Grisham
Continue Browsing		View Wish List