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Executive Times |
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2006 Book Reviews |
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Ordinary
Heroes by Scott Turow |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Courage Scott Turow’s novel, Ordinary
Heroes, has a connection to his fictional Here’s
an excerpt, all of Chapter 7, “Stewart: Bear Leach,” pp. 79-86: Northumberland Manor
occupied a large campus in Given everything it had
taken to get to Leach, including passing myself off as a lately orphaned only
child, I sat there with high expectations. Leach, after all, was a longtime
legal hotshot, whose skills had somehow allowed him to erase his trial loss
and persuade General Teedle to revoke my father’s conviction and prison
sentence. Thus, I couldn’t help being disappointed when a nurse’s aide pushed
the old man into the room. Overall, Justice Leach gave the physical
impression of a fallen leaf crisped down to its veins. His spotty bald head
listed, barely rising above the back of his wheelchair, and the hose from an
oxygen tank was holstered in his nose. He had been so whittled by age that
his sturdy Donegal tweed suit, perhaps older than I am, was puddled around
him, and his skin had begun to acquire a whitish translucence which signaled
that even the wrapper was giving out. Yet none of that mattered
once he started talking. Leach’s voice wobbled, lust like his long hands on
which the fingers were knobbed from arthritis, but his mind moved along
quickly. He remained fully connected to this world. To say Barrington Leach
still took great oy in life would be not only hackneyed, but probably
inaccurate. The Justice’s wife and his only child, a daughter, were both dead
of breast cancer. His three adult grandkids lived in But none of this
inhibited his intense curiosity about human beings. He was a gentle wit, and
full of a generous acceptance for people’s foibles as well as reverent wonder
at our triumphs. I come easily to envy, but with Barrington Leach, when I
mused, as I always did, about why I couldn’t be more like him, it was with
pure admiration. He was inspiring. My first order of
business with Leach was to set the record straight, not about my mother and
sister, naturally, but rather about what to call me. He had written to me as
“Mr. Dubin,” but in 1970, I had reverted to the name my grandfather had
brought from “You know, Stewart, I
think you mean to honor your father’s memory, but I would be remiss if I
didn’t issue a caveat. If you go forward, you could very well discover things
that a loyal son might not enloy finding out. I’ve always believed there is
great wisdom in the saying that one must be careful what to wish for.” I assured him I had
reflected about this. After hanging around courtrooms for a couple of
decades, I knew that the odds were that my father had been convicted of a
serious crime for a reason. “Well, that’s a good
start,” Leach said. “But the particulars are always worse than the general
idea. And that assumes you even have a general idea. You may find, Stewart,
you’ve been running headlong with blinders.” I told him I was
resolute. Whatever happened, I wanted to know. “Well, that’s one
problem,” said Leach. “What are the others,
Justice?” “Bear’ is fine.” I was
never sure if the nickname had to do with his physique as a young man—he was
anything but bearlike now—or, more likely, was merely a convenient shortening
of his given name, adopted in an era when being ‘Bare’ would have been too
risque. “I confess that I’ve spent quite a bit of time, Stewart, since you
contacted me, wondering what call I have to tell you any of this. I feel a
good deal of fondness for David, even today. He was a fine young man,
articulate, thoughtful. And it was his wish not to speak about this with
anyone, a wish he apparently maintained throughout his life. Furthermore,
wholly aside from personal loyalties, I was his attorney, bound by law to
keep his secrets. “On the other hand, I
have things of your father’s, Stewart, a document of his, as I’ve mentioned,
that belongs to you as his heir. I have no right to withhold it from you, and
therefore, as to the matters disclosed there, I believe I am free to speak.
That, at any rate, will be my defense when the disbarment proceedings begin.”
He had a prominent cataract in one eye, large enough to be clearly visible,
but it could not obscure the light that always arose there with a joke. “But
you and I must reach an understanding to start. I can’t go beyond the compass
of what’s written. You’ll find me able to answer most of your questions, but
not all. Understood?” I readily agreed. We both
took a breath then before I asked what seemed like the logical first
question, how Leach had been assigned my father’s case. “It was roundabout,” he
answered. “Throughout the war, I had been in the sanctuary of Eisenhower’s
headquarters, first in Bushy Park outside London, and then later in 1944 at
Versailles. These days, I’d be referred to as a ‘policy maker.’ I had been
the District Attorney here in Hartford and certainly knew my way around a
courtroom, but my exposure to court-martials was limited to reviewing a few
trial records that came up to Eisenhower for final decision, hanging cases
most of them. However, your father’s commanding officer, Halley Maples, knew
my older brother at Princeton, and Maples made a personal appeal to my
superiors to appoint me as defense counsel. I had very little choice, not
that I ever regretted it, although your father as a client came with his
share of challenges.” That remark was punctuated with a craggy laugh. At ninety-six, Bear Leach
had been what we call an old man for a long time, at least twenty years, and
he had grown practiced with some of the privileges and demands of age. He had
been asked about his memories of one thing or another so often that, as I
sometimes joked with him, his memoirs were essentially composed in his head.
He spoke in flowing paragraphs. As we grew friendlier over the next several
months, I brought him a tape recorder in the hope he would use it to preserve
prominent stories of his life. But he was too humble to think he’d been much
more than a minor figure, and the project didn’t interest him. He was, as he
always said, a trial lawyer. He preferred a live audience, which I was only
too happy to provide. “It was late April 1945
when I first came to Regensburg, Germany, to meet your father. Officers facing
court-martial were traditionally held under house arrest pending trial, and
your father was in the Regensburg Castle, where the Third Army was now
permanently headquartered. This was a massive Schloss occupied for centuries
by the Thurn und Taxis family, a palace as Americans think of palaces,
occupying several city blocks. Its interior was somewhat baroque, with
pillars of colored marble, Roman arches with lovely inlaid mosaics, and
classical statuary. I walked nearly twenty minutes through the castle before
getting to your father, who was restricted to a suite the size of this
sitting room, perhaps larger, and full of marvelous antiques. In this
splendor your father was going to remain lailed until the Army got around to
shooting him. If you have a taste for irony, you can’t do better than the
United States military, let me tell you that.” Leach smiled then in his way,
a gesture restricted by age and disease, so that his jaw slid to the side. “Your father was an
impeccable man, nearly six feet as I recall, and the very image of an officer
and a gentleman. He had a perfectly trimmed line mustache above his lip, like
the film star William Powell, whom he resembled. From my initial sight of
him, the notion that David Dubin had actually engaged in any willful
disobedience of his orders, as was charged, seemed preposterous. But
establishing that proved one of the most difficult propositions of my
career.” “Because?” “Because the man insisted
on pleading guilty. Nothing unusual in that, of course. There are persons
charged with crimes who understand they’ve done wrong. But your father would
not explain anything beyond that. Any questions about the events leading up
to his apparent decision to release Major Martin were met only with his
declaration that it served no point to elaborate. He was very courteous about
it, but absolutely adamant. It was a bit like representing Bartleby the
Scrivener, except your father said solely ‘I am guilty,’ rather than ‘I would
prefer not to,’ in response to any request for more information. I was forced
to investigate the matter entirely without his cooperation. I learned quite a
bit about your father’s wartime experiences, but next to nothing about what
had gone on between Martin and him. “Eventually, I had an
inspiration and suggested to your father that if what had transpired was so
difficult to speak about, he at least ought to make an effort to write it all
down, while matters were fresh. If he chose not to show the resulting
document to me, so be it, but in the event he changed his mind, I would have
a convenient means of briefing myself. He did not warm to the proposal when I
made it, but, of course, he had little to do with his days. He enjoyed
reading—he soon had me bringing him novels by the armful—but I took it that
he, like many other soldiers, had been an inveterate writer of letters and
that that outlet was no longer very rewarding for him. As I recollect, he had
disappointed his fiancée, and had then horrified his family with the news of
his current predicament. Apparently, producing a written account of what had
led to these charges provided an agreeable substitute, and after his initial
reluctance, he took up the task with ardor. Whenever I visited him in
quarters he was chopping away on a little Remington typewriting machine which
sat on a Louis XIV desk, yet another priceless antique, that wobbled with his
pounding. About a month along, during a visit, I pointed to the sheaf of
pages stacked at his elbow. It was over an inch by now. “That’s getting to be
quite a magnum opus,’ I said. ‘Are you considering showing any of it to me?’
I had been waiting for him to reveal the material in his own time, but with
the hearing coming closer, I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to
assimilate what clearly was turning into an imposing volume, especially if it
opened up new avenues for investigation. “Some days I think yes,
Colonel,’ he said to me, ‘and some days I think no.’ “And why “no”?’ “I don’t believe it’s
going to help me.’ “Because I’d think poorly
of you? Or accept your judgment of your guilt? You know well enough, Dubin,
that nothing would prevent me from making a defense for you.’ “I do. Reading this,
Colonel, might satisfy your curiosity. And it will prove I’m right to plead
guilty. But it won’t change the result. Or make things any easier for you.
More the opposite.’ “In weaker moments, I
sometimes considered sneaking in and stealing the pages, but he was right
that it was his ship to sink. But I kept after him about letting me see it.
Each time he seemed to give full consideration to my points, and then, after
due reflection, rejected them. And so we went to trial. David tendered a plea
of guilty at the start. The trial judge advocate, the prosecutor, had agreed
to drop the most serious charge in exchange, but he still went on to prove
his case, which was commonplace in serious court-martials. This, of course,
was a decided contrast to the usual criminal matter, where a guilty plea
avoids a trial, and I couldn’t quite accommodate myself to the difference. I
cross-examined with a fury, because none of the accounts were consistent in
any way with a soldier who would willfully abandon his duties. Very often, I
retired for the night, thinking how well I had done, only to recall that my
client had already conceded the validity of the charges. “The Manual for
Courts-Martial at that time—and now, for all I know—gave the accused the
right to make an uncross-examined statement to the panel, immediately
preceding closing arguments. The night before the hearing came to an end, I made
my last effort to get your father to share his written account, urging him to
consider submitting his memoir, or portions of it, to the court. My heart
leaped when he came to the proceedings the next morning with what I judged to
be the manuscript under his arm in two portfolios, but he kept them to
himself. He made a brief statement to the court, saying simply that in
releasing Martin he had meant no harm to the United States, whose service
remained the greatest honor of his life. Only when the evidence was closed
did he turn the folders over to me. It was meant as a generosity on his part,
I think, to repay me for my efforts on his behalf, so that I could accept the
result with peace of mind. He told me to read it all, if that was what I
liked, and when I was done to return it to him. He said forthrightly that he
was then going to set fire to the whole thing. “Even at that stage, I
remained hopeful that I’d find something recorded there that I might use to
reopen the case. The court was recessed on Sunday. I spent the whole day
reading, morning to night, and finished only instants before I arrived for
court at eight a.m. on Monday.” “And what did it say?” I
was like a child listening to campfire tales, who wanted only to know what
children always do: the end of the story. Bear gave a dry laugh in
response. “Well, Stewart, there
aren’t many tales worth telling that can be boiled down to a sentence or two,
are there?” “But did you use it?” “Most assuredly not.” “Because?” “Because your father was
right. He was a good lawyer. A very good lawyer. And his judgment was
correct. If the court-martial members knew the whole tale, it would only have
made matters worse. Possibly far worse.” “How so?” “There were many
complications,” he said, “many concerns. As I say, I was fond of your father.
That’s not just prattle. But a trial lawyer learns to be cold-blooded about
the facts. And I looked at this as trial lawyers do, the best case that could
be made and the worst, and I realized that nothing good was going to come from
revealing this to the court. Your father’s cause, in fact, could have been
gravely prejudiced.” “You’re not being very
specific, Justice. What was so bad?” Bear Leach, not often
short of words, took a second to fiddle with his vintage necktie, swinging
like a pendant from the collar of his old shirt, which, these days, gapped a
good two inches from his wattled neck. “When I read your
father’s account, I realized he had been the beneficiary of an assumption
that the trial judge advocate might well regard as ill founded, once the
underlying facts were better known.” I tumbled my hand
forward. “You’re being delicate, Justice.” “Well, it requires
delicacy, Stewart, no doubt of that. I’m speaking to a son about his father.” “So you warned me. I want
to know.” Leach went through the
extended effort it required to reposition the oxygen in his nose. “Stewart, your father was
charged with willfully suffering a prisoner to escape. The evidence, in sum,
was that Robert Martin had last been seen by several troops of the 406th
Armored Cavalry in your father’s custody. Your father admitted he had allowed
Martin to go, freed him from his manacles and leg irons and saw him out of
the bivouac. The escape charge took it for granted that Martin had fled from
there. But what your father had written suggested a far more disturbing
possibility, one whose likelihood was enhanced, at least in my mind, by your
father’s rigorous silence.” “What possibility?” “Now, Stewart, let me
caution that this was merely a thought.” “Please, Bear. What
possibility?” Leach finally brought
himself to a small nod. “That your father,” he said, “had
murdered Robert Martin.” Turow masters the revelation of the
power of inner life on behavior. There’s an intelligence influencing each
page of Ordinary
Heroes that makes this novel a pleasure to read, and rewards the reader
with insights to think about after turning the last page. Steve Hopkins,
June 26, 2006 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the July 2006
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Ordinary
Heroes.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park,
IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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