A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [92]
Even though it’s only a dowdy provincial courthouse it’s enough of a hulking edifice to remind the passerby that inside some men are ruined while others make their fortunes. Around the entrance there are crude bas-reliefs of the common man plowing and forging chains, trying to stand up straight under their burdens. “You know that thing Goethe said about justice that’s carved on the courthouse wall?” I asked Theresa.
“Oh God,” she said, grimacing. “Justice! That place could stand to have a few window boxes, some happy-face decals on the revolving doors.”
I was aware that I was shaking as I made my way to Branch Six. As I said, I had always thought that Racine was a good place, where farm implements are made, where the folks at Johnson Wax decide how best to make the world clean. I’d always imagined Racine at the top of the globe, along with that eagle on my J. I. Case cap. Even in the stairwell, up the six flights, I could hear the clamor. When I reached the sixth floor I stood on the cement landing. I could see through the small window out to the hall. I could see a swarm of mothers, their big heads bubbling up and down as they called to one another.
“They’re not going to let us in!”
“They can’t keep us out!”
“The judge can lock the door if he wants too!”
Suburban rebels, storming the citadel. They were armed with their long, sharp earrings, their heavy necklaces and bracelets, their clean, white canine teeth, their steel-colored helmet hair. I wasn’t sure about Goethe. “In the government of men a great deal may be done by severity. More by love.” So far so good. “But most of all by clear discernment and impartial justice.” Fine. “Which pays no respect to persons.” I wasn’t aware of anything in heaven or earth that more simply determined the outcome of any conflict than the force of personality. Gorbachev dismantled Russia on the strength of his personality. It didn’t hurt him, having the glamorous Risa in tow, a woman who carried a credit card in her pocketbook. Take the personality away from Mrs. Thatcher and you’d have nothing but a woman with a hairdo who went to the shops to buy her husband his dinner. In Branch Six, if Mrs. Mackessy looked like a sleazy broad to the judge, he wasn’t supposed to hold it against her. If Alice came in, gray and battered in her orange suit, he couldn’t allow himself to feel sympathy. If she told her most amusing story he would not laugh. If he asked her what had become of her life she could quote Shakespeare. She would say the line she used when she was looking for something: “I feel it gone but know not how it went.” An elected official, he wasn’t supposed to be moved by the battalions that were presently laying siege at the threshold of Branch Six.
I studied history in college to pay respect to persons. I had always been drawn to generals and their battle plans. I was interested to know what motivated the likes of Bonaparte, Patton, Hannibal, Pickett, Lee, Grant, and Custer. In high school I had learned only dates and battles and treaties. I had a vague idea what the notable characters left in their wakes. I’d known by the age of five that some of us wield power, that the likes of Rickie Kroeger could wheedle cookies out of my mother where Nick O’Brien could not. My mother had informed me that in God’s plan some were weak and others strong.
On that Monday morning in Racine I opened the door and stood facing the backs of the perfumed women. People were jostling into the crowd from the elevator, much as if they were getting on a crowded train. No one registered my presence right away.