On a stormy night in June, 1975, I steered our mus­tard-col­ored Pin­to sta­tion wag­on down the interstate’s off-ramp and head­ed toward an oval-shaped sign atop two tele­phone poles. Neon let­ters shin­ing through streaks of rain. “Dudley’s Motel,” the sec­ond “d” flickering.

I turned off the road, parked in front of a door marked “Office,” and wait­ed for the cats caged in the back of the Pin­to to stop scream­ing. Took them a full minute to go quiet.

The silence of the cats awoke Cindy. She sat up straight, rubbed her eyes, and looked back at the cage. “They okay?”

“They went still because we stopped moving.”

“Where are we?”

“Kansas.”

“What town?”

“No town.”

I got out of the car and went inside. An old woman with thin­ning gray hair sat behind a desk watch­ing The Tonight Show on a lit­tle black-and-white Zenith.

She pushed a guest reg­is­ter across her desk. “Howdy-do.”

I auto­graphed the book and gave her my cred­it card. “Room 3,” she said. “First door to the right.”

I glanced at a No Pets Allowed sign on the wall behind her. “Could we have a room in the back, away from everyone?”

She squint­ed at me, sus­pi­cious­ly. “Why in the back?”

“We’re new­ly­weds,” I lied.

She flashed a wrin­kled smile. “I getcha.” She hand­ed me a key. “Room 20. Back row. Far end. No one will hear you back there.”

I drove the Pin­to around to the back. Cindy went inside and cased the room. We learned a hard les­son the night Lazy Bones slipped into a hole around the plumb­ing under a motel room’s bath­room sink and climbed up inside the wall to the floor above. Took us an hour and a can of tuna to lure him back down.

Cindy gave me the all-clear. I got out of the car and looked around. No one in sight. I opened the Pinto’s rear door and wres­tled two cats out of the cage. Fight­ing off their crazed efforts to rip all the flesh off my arms, I threw them inside the room, returned to the Pin­to, grabbed two more, tossed them inside, then fetched the last cat, Geral­dine, the most vicious of the lot. Despite a head-fake, she raked my jaw. Yet again.

So end­ed Day 4 of our cross-coun­try trip.

We plant­ed the seeds of this ordeal in the sum­mer of 1969 when we rent­ed upstairs rooms in a farm­house in White Hall, Vir­ginia. A barn cat adopt­ed us as her par­ents. We named her Mousey. She had a kit­ten. They both had kit­tens. Then the whole brood had kittens.

When the cat count reached 18, we real­ized we had to cap the geyser or drown in a sea of black and white fur­balls. I gave away as many as Albe­mar­le Coun­ty could absorb, then emp­tied our sav­ings account to spay the five cats no one would take off our hands, leav­ing us with Mousey, Geral­dine, Lazy Bones, Vig­oro, and Marigold-Eater.

We all would have lived hap­pi­ly ever after in the coun­try if I hadn’t done bet­ter than we expect­ed in law school. Nation­al law firms opened their doors to us. At the end of a dizzy­ing recruit­ing process, I accept­ed an offer to join Lath­am and Watkins in Los Angeles.

I was excit­ed about our prospects, except for the cats. Crammed into a small apart­ment in a big city with five cats didn’t seem like an attrac­tive lifestyle to me. It also didn’t fit the typ­i­cal pro­file of a big-shot cor­po­rate attor­ney, which had become my goal.

My reser­va­tions about the cats didn’t mat­ter, though, because I knew where I stood in our fam­i­ly dynam­ic. If I dumped the cats, Cindy would dump me.

I called the Lath­am attor­ney assigned to help me with our tran­si­tion. Blither­ing away ner­vous­ly, I tried to explain how we got stuck with five cats and asked if he could find a place to stash them while we searched for an apart­ment in LA. A real­ly good guy with a sense of humor, he put me in touch with Ida’s Cat Ken­nel, and I made reser­va­tions for our herd.

Then came the daunt­ing chal­lenge of dri­ving the cats to LA. On a trip to Cindy’s home in South Car­oli­na, we learned that cats don’t trav­el well in cars. The scenery out­side fly­ing by in psy­che­del­ic panora­ma freaked them out. Their eyes bulging, they plas­tered them­selves to the plate glass and screamed the whole way, except for occa­sion­al­ly peel­ing them­selves away from the win­dows to pounce on my neck and sink their teeth into my shoulder.

Tran­quil­iz­ers didn’t help, so I opt­ed for com­pul­so­ry con­fine­ment. I built a cage out of two-by-fours and chick­en wire big enough to hold all five of them but small enough to fit in the Pinto.

The day of my law school grad­u­a­tion, we jammed the cats in the cage and head­ed west over Afton Moun­tain. In 1975, motels weren’t pet friend­ly, and the con­cept of “emo­tion­al sup­port ani­mals” hadn’t come along. Our choic­es were to sleep in the car, camp out, or defraud the motel clerks. I defraud­ed the clerks.

By the third morn­ing in a motel room, the cats knew what was com­ing. From there on, just before dawn, they dis­ap­peared behind cur­tains, under fur­ni­ture, and beneath the bed. Every morn­ing, I pried their claws loose from their hid­ing places and wres­tled them into the cage. Every day they screamed all the way through anoth­er twelve-hour bad LSD trip. And every night I dragged them out of the cage and smug­gled them into anoth­er No Pets motel room.

Sev­en con­sec­u­tive days and nights in Hell. For them. And for us.

On Day 8, we drove through down­town LA and on west over a nar­row twist­ing road through the bel­ly of Topan­ga Canyon to pull up in front of Ida’s Cat Kennel.

I would lat­er come to regard Topan­ga Canyon as a trendy, attrac­tive neigh­bor­hood, but in 1975 on his first day in the Land of the Lotus Eaters, the Vir­ginia farm boy per­ceived it as a cross between a nature pre­serve and a full-blown nut­house. Halfway between LA and Mal­ibu, jagged foothills lush with coastal sage and chap­ar­ral rise up steeply from a rip­pling creek. Mul­ti-col­ored hous­es of every shape and size are propped up on stilts, jammed into cliff-sides, crow-barred into rocky crevices, and strand­ed on islands in the creek. In those days, the canyon attract­ed a dis­pro­por­tion­ate share of nature lovers, free spir­its, and out­right loons, like Bob Hite, the vocal­ist of Canned Heat, The Fly­ing Bur­ri­tos, Charles Man­son, and the joy­ous res­i­dents of Ely­si­um Fields, a famous nud­ist colony.

Ida Bolin fit in nice­ly with that crowd. A plump eighty-year-old with a sweet smile and an iron-col­ored pony­tail, she led us into the bed­lam of her back­yard. A hun­dred cats ran amok inside a half-acre ful­ly enclosed in a wire-mesh bub­ble ris­ing twen­ty feet into the sky. Cats flit­ted through trees, climbed giant car­pet­ed posts, dart­ed through sew­er-pipe tun­nels, jumped in and out of card­board box­es, and pawed count­less cat toys of every kind.
No crates to sep­a­rate them. No col­lars. No name tags.

“How do you know which cats belong to the dif­fer­ent board­ers,” Cindy asked.

“Oh, I know them all by sight,” Ida said.

We turned the cats loose in Ida’s back­yard and drove to Bev­er­ly Hills to meet Tanya, the real­tor Lath­am hired to show us rental prop­er­ties. In her late for­ties, tall and slim with shoul­der-length brown hair, she was pro­fes­sion­al and cheer­ful. Over the next sev­er­al days she showed us a series of attrac­tive apart­ments. None of the land­lords allowed pets. I told them all the truth. They all turned us down.

After three days and 30 apart­ments, Tanya stopped being cheer­ful. On the fourth day’s sec­ond turn-down, she hit the wall. “Lis­ten to me,” she said angri­ly. “We’re get­ting nowhere. Don’t tell them about the cats. Just move in and take your chances.”

“They’ll throw us out when they find out.”

“I don’t care! It’s your only shot. Besides, evic­tion pro­ceed­ings take for­ev­er in LA. You’re a lawyer. Fight them off.”

I signed my name to a one-year lease with a No-Pets clause in bold-faced print, and that night we smug­gled the cats into an apart­ment on Gret­na Green Way in Brentwood.

Two weeks lat­er, I ran into the man­ag­er out­side our apart­ment door as I came home from work. I froze. Vig­oro sat in our liv­ing room win­dow fac­ing the court­yard, star­ing at him with her big yel­low eyes.

“You have cats,” he said.

“Yeah, we do,” I said sheepishly.

“More than one?”

I paused. What the hell, I thought. “Five.”

He shook his head and walked away.

For weeks, I lived in fear of being served with evic­tion papers, but mys­te­ri­ous­ly they nev­er came. We lived there to the end of the lease term, moved to Han­cock Park, and defraud­ed anoth­er land­lord, who didn’t throw us out either. After that, we bought a house and nev­er rent­ed again.

The cats lived with us for twen­ty years, mov­ing cross-coun­try three times, once in the Pinto’s cage and twice in the bel­ly of air­planes. See Cats! for more about them.

They were a lot of trou­ble. And a lot of fun. One by one, they passed away in the 80’s and 90’s. Each time, we cried and griev­ed for months. We miss them still.

Ida Bolin died on Cindy’s birth­day in 1983 while rid­ing in a truck that crashed into a tree. She was 87. She fell in love with kit­tens as a lit­tle girl in 1900 grow­ing up in Dead­wood, S.D. She opened Ida’s Cat Ken­nel in 1923 and kept it going for 60 years. By the time of her death, more than 50 cats lived there. All but three of them had been aban­doned by dead­beat board­ers. Liv­ing on noth­ing but her Social Secu­ri­ty check, she often went hun­gry to feed them.

They say Ida was cat crazy.

I’m not so sure. A lot of peo­ple, who claim to be sane, love cats more than they want to admit. I know a few of them. One of them thought he was a big-shot lawyer.

Don­ald and I walked through Maupin’s apple orchard at noon on a hot sun­ny day in 1963.

“I can catch fish with my hands,” I said.

“No one can catch fish with his hands.”

“I can.”

“Bull­crap.”

We were first cousins. Don­ald was 14, short with a spare tire of baby fat he would car­ry through­out his life. Skin­ny and a head taller than Don­ald, I was 16.

We climbed over the orchard fence, walked into the woods, and worked our way down a steep slope to Moorman’s Riv­er. At the Skunk Hole, a fish­ing spot named for an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent involv­ing our fam­i­ly dog, I took off my shirt, shoes, and socks and climbed up on a big rock.

“This is ridicu­lous,” Don­ald scoffed. “Quit fool­ing around.”

From five feet above the water, I can­non-balled into the deep­est part of the Skunk Hole. The cold water braced me. I dove to the river’s floor, grabbed a big bot­tom-feed­er, pushed upward, broke through the sur­face, and waved the wrig­gling fish above my head.

Donald’s eyes bugged out. “Holy Crap!!!”

Show­ing off, I let that fish go, caught anoth­er, released it, and caught a third.

My fam­i­ly had moved to White Hall, Vir­ginia, a cou­ple years ear­li­er. Coun­try boys had taught me a few tricks. One of them was hand-fishing.

Hand-fish­ing requires no skill. Moun­tain streams are bot­tomed with riv­er rocks. The cur­rent wash­es away sand and silt, cre­at­ing lit­tle open spaces between some of them. When you dive in, fish scur­ry to the lit­tle caves to hide from preda­tors. If you place one hand over any exit hole and reach inside with the oth­er, the fish has nowhere to go. You get a good grip and pull it out.

Don­ald was a city boy. My coun­try-boy trick fooled him good. He stared at me wor­ship­ful­ly as we climbed the hill back to the par­son­age. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

I strung him along for about an hour before I clued him in. He was a good sport, and we laughed about it.

When we were lit­tle boys, Donald’s dad, my mom’s big broth­er, Kei­th, drove his fam­i­ly the 600 miles from Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, to Virginia’s tide­wa­ter area every sum­mer to vis­it my fam­i­ly for a few days.

Our way of life must have shocked Don­ald at first. His fam­i­ly lived in a sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood with city water, sewage sys­tems, and paved streets. Their neigh­bors were office work­ers and shop­keep­ers. All the ani­mals in his com­mu­ni­ty were domes­ti­cat­ed pets.

We lived on a sandy road in a clear­ing cut out of a pine for­est. We drew our water from a hand-dug well and did our busi­ness in a wood­en out­house. Our neigh­bor was a guy who lived in a rust­ed-out school bus, its wheel hubs propped up on blocks in a soy­bean field. Deer raid­ed our veg­etable gar­den, and black snakes slith­ered through the grass in our backyard.

Despite our cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences and the short amount of time we spent togeth­er, Don­ald and I became great friends. We climbed trees, swam in the York and James Rivers, caught crabs in tide­pools with hand nets, and, thanks to me, went nuts over baseball.

I was 8 years old when I got hooked on the Boston Red Sox. The Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors were the clos­est team to my area, but they stank. Uncle Kei­th lived near Boston and was crazy about the Red Sox, so I adopt­ed them as my team and Ted Williams as my favorite player.

Mom bought me a cou­ple packs of base­ball cards short­ly after that. This turned out to be a cost­ly mis­take on her part. Obsessed with try­ing to score a Ted Williams card, I forced her to spend $30,000 on 600,000 Topps 5‑cent-bub­blegum packs over the next cou­ple years. It was a hope­less quest. Topps print­ed almost no cards of good play­ers so that kids would blow all their par­ents’ mon­ey chas­ing the superstars.

I’d rip open each pack excit­ed­ly only to be dis­ap­point­ed by yet anoth­er pile of .200 hit­ters and 10.00 ERA pitch­ers, nev­er the good play­ers, and nev­er ever Ted Williams.

Then one hot sum­mer day, Mom bought me five packs at a gas sta­tion in Lee Hall. Rid­ing shot­gun in our Hud­son on the way home, I stuffed all the gum in my kiss­er and flipped through a stack of the usu­al worth­less bums, but when I broke the seal on the last wrap­per, I almost faint­ed. Mick­ey Man­tle, Willy Mays, Hank Aaron, and TWO of TED WILLIAMS! The sadists at the Topps fac­to­ry dumped all the future Hall-of-Famers into one blessed pack, and I hit the lottery!

I swal­lowed my bub­blegum. The fist-sized wad got hung up behind my Adam’s apple. Stran­gling to death, I coughed and gagged while caress­ing the two Ted Williams cards to make sure they were real.

“You all right?” Mom asked.

Clutch­ing my throat and heav­ing for air, I held my twin dream cards up to her and flashed a pur­ple-faced smile. “Teh …Wims,” I croaked.

She fran­ti­cal­ly pulled off the road and pound­ed me on the back until I pro­jec­tile-puked the dead­ly pink gob of gum onto the floor­board. When we got home, she went to the kitchen cab­i­net and downed a half-bot­tle of Dad’s nerve med­i­cine. Obliv­i­ous to my near-death expe­ri­ence, I bliss­ful­ly retreat­ed to my bed­room to pore over Ted Williams’ career stats on the back of my thank-you-Jesus Ted­dy-Ball­game doubles.

Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it the fol­low­ing week. When I laid out my Topps cards on the bed­room floor, it became clear Don­ald didn’t know any­thing about base­ball. I spent all day teach­ing him about the game, the Red Sox, and the Splen­did Splin­ter. I sank the hook deep. By the end of the day, he was a crazed addict.

The next morn­ing, Uncle Kei­th took me aside. “You’ve accom­plished a mir­a­cle,” he said, his voice quiv­er­ing. “I’ve tried every­thing to get Don­ald inter­est­ed in base­ball. Noth­ing worked, but you’ve turned him into a Red Sox fan overnight. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

I knew exact­ly how he could repay me. “Take me to a Red Sox game,” I said.

The fol­low­ing sum­mer Uncle Kei­th insist­ed my fam­i­ly dri­ve to Prov­i­dence for the annu­al vis­it instead of their com­ing to us. He sent me the Red Sox sched­ule and told me to pick a date. Fig­ur­ing I’d nev­er see anoth­er big-league base­ball game dur­ing my child­hood, I chose a dou­ble­head­er against the Wash­ing­ton Sen­a­tors. “I under­stand the dou­ble­head­er,” Uncle Kei­th said, “but why the Sen­a­tors? Don’t you want to see the Red Sox play a good team?”

“No! I want to see the Red Sox win.”

On a hot as hell day in July, Uncle Kei­th, my dad, Don­ald, and I took our seats on the ground lev­el way down the third base line across from deep left field. In the first inning, when Ted Williams trot­ted out to stand in the shad­ow of the Green Mon­ster, Fenway’s tow­er­ing left-field wall, I was struck dumb. Don­ald could still talk, but bare­ly. “Jesus,” he said softly.

If you weren’t a lit­tle kid whacked out of his mind about see­ing your favorite team and play­er, that dou­ble­head­er was a mis­er­able expe­ri­ence. There was no shade over our seats, and it was a mug­gy 95 degrees. At the end of the first game, which the Red Sox won, Dad want­ed to go home. “We’ll get sun­stroke,” he said.

“I don’t care,” I said. Don­ald backed me up. We stayed.

Halfway through the sec­ond game, the Red Sox pulled Ted Williams and subbed in Gene Stephens. Uncle Kei­th begged me and Don­ald to give it up. With my face broiled beet-red and my shirt drenched in sweat, I was on the verge of cav­ing, but Don­ald said no. Uncle Kei­th got angry. He grabbed Donald’s arm and stood. “Come on. Let’s go.”

Eight-year-old Don­ald pulled his arm free and shook his fin­ger at his dad. “This is Kenny’s big day!” he shout­ed. “We’re stay­ing till it’s over!”

Uncle Kei­th looked at me for a long moment, then sat down. Dad almost cried.

In the top of the ninth inning, Jim­my Pier­sall climbed the cen­ter field wall to make the most spec­tac­u­lar catch I would ever wit­ness, rob­bing Roy Siev­ers of a game-win­ning home run and secur­ing my dream of the Red Sox win­ning both ends of the doubleheader.

When we got back to Donald’s house, I gave him one of my two Ted Williams cards. Over­whelmed with emo­tion, he hugged me.

My hand-fish­ing trick went down six years lat­er in 1963. That trip to White Hall was the last time Donald’s fam­i­ly came to vis­it us, and it was the last time Don­ald and I got together.

We grew up, mar­ried, set­tled on oppo­site coasts, and raised our own fam­i­lies. We didn’t keep in touch.

When Uncle Kei­th died in 2004, I called Don­ald. A forty-year estrange­ment, a big­ger wall than Fenway’s Green Mon­ster, stood between us. We had changed too much, and the new guys didn’t know each oth­er. Our con­ver­sa­tion was short and awk­ward. We nev­er spoke again.

Don­ald passed away in 2017.

Cindy and I have three chil­dren, two sons-in-law, a daugh­ter-in-law, and eight grand­chil­dren. Of that crew, about ten of us, includ­ing Cindy and me, have birth­days in June and July. This year we had one big birth­day cel­e­bra­tion last month for the Gemini/Cancer bunch, a cook-out and pool-par­ty at our house.

That Sun­day after­noon, I stood in the shal­low end of our pool, watch­ing four of our grand­chil­dren tak­ing turns can­non-balling off the jacuzzi wall into the deep end, about a five-foot jump. That long-ago day at the Skunk Hole came back to me. I thought about the Red Sox game and all the good times with Don­ald when we were kids.

Char­lotte, Riv­er, Logan, and Wyatt are first cousins. They live close to each oth­er and get togeth­er a lot. They have a spe­cial bond. It’s a great gift, I thought as I watched them. I hope they can keep it. I hope they don’t grow apart.

I got out of the pool and stood at the jacuzzi behind Wyatt. When he fin­ished his dive, I stepped up on the wall.

A 77-year-old loon leap­ing off a high wall into a pool is a shock­ing spec­ta­cle, I guess.

Char­lotte grabbed Riv­er. “Look! Papaw’s gonna jump!”

All eyes were on me.

I can­non-balled into the deep end. When I sur­faced, Char­lotte and the boys were laugh­ing and cheering.

I climbed out, got in line behind them, and wait­ed my turn.

I can­non-balled into the deep end three times. One for my grand­kids. One for me. And one for Donald.

The tele­phone rang. “Law offices. Oder.”

“Ken­ny, it’s Sue Ellen. You ain’t gonna believe what just hap­pened! Fred came to the break­fast table buck nekkid! Lar­ry and Grady were still in bed, thank you, Jesus! It’s a mir­a­cle they didn’t wake up and walk in the kitchen! Can you imag­ine the shock of my lit­tle boys seein’ their dad­dy nekkid as a jaybird?”

In her mid-twen­ties, short and slight with coal-black eyes and stringy brown hair, born-again Chris­t­ian, moth­er of two boys, and the unhap­py wife of a motor­cy­cle enthu­si­ast and ser­i­al sin­ner, Sue Ellen Defibaugh called me every day for three weeks. Each call went on for­ev­er; she rarely paused to take a breath; and I couldn’t jam a word in edgeways.

“Sue Ellen –”

“I told Fred to march right back in the bed­room and get dressed and he just sat at the table with his hands between his nekkid legs and his head hangin’ down and he start­ed cryin’ and he said Sue Ellen you gone crazy with Jesus and I can’t stand it and I want you to go back to the way you was and I said Jesus is my Lord and Sav­ior and you need to get straight with Him because I can’t live with a sin­ner who cuss­es and drinks whiskey and lis­tens to the devil’s music and comes to break­fast nekkid.”

Fred came to break­fast nekkid in the sum­mer of 1972. UVA had accept­ed my appli­ca­tion to law school the pre­vi­ous spring, and I gave notice to Albe­mar­le Coun­ty that I wouldn’t return in the fall for a fourth year of teach­ing high school. The news leaked out to my stu­dents. The father of one of them rec­om­mend­ed me to a Char­lottesville attor­ney, Richard Bell, who was look­ing for a sum­mer clerk. I sched­uled an interview.

Bell had con­vert­ed a two-sto­ry res­i­den­tial home on a tree-lined street near the cour­t­house into law offices. Five-feet-four with a round face, reced­ing chin, and lit­tle pot bel­ly, he sat at his desk in what was once a large par­lor and squint­ed at me through smudged, thick-lensed glasses.

“I haven’t even start­ed law school,” I told him. “I don’t know any­thing about the law.”

“I don’t care,” he said. “Your stu­dents say you’re a peo­ple per­son. I need a peo­ple per­son.” He hired me on the spot.

My first day on the job, Jody Sprouse, Bell’s office man­ag­er, a no-non­sense pit bull in her fifties with a bee-hive of blue hair, led me to a clos­et-sized win­dow­less room and plopped a stack of mani­la file fold­ers on a dusty desk jammed against the back wall. “Your job,” she said, “is to keep these peo­ple away from Mis­ter Bell.”

By the end of the day, I under­stood why Bell need­ed a peo­ple per­son. He made a small for­tune buy­ing run-down homes in dis­tressed neigh­bor­hoods and rent­ing them out to cov­er the mort­gage pay­ments. The bulk of his legal work involved these trans­ac­tions. While his acqui­si­tions cre­at­ed sub­stan­tial net worth, they didn’t gen­er­ate much cash flow, so he took on tra­di­tion­al legal work to pay the bills. And that was the rub. Social­ly inept, tac­i­turn, and sullen, he hat­ed client contact.

Bell’s three law clerks were no help to him on that score. They were each bril­liant UVA law stu­dents with the per­son­al­i­ty of a plas­tic bag. While they were great at legal research and doc­u­ment­ing com­plex trans­ac­tions, he couldn’t put them in a room with a client with­out los­ing the business.

That’s where I came in. The files Jody stacked on my desk spanned the spec­trum of a sole practitioner’s bread and but­ter – wills, trusts, con­tract dis­putes, debt col­lec­tion, divorce peti­tions. Each file con­tained Bell’s cryp­tic notes from an ini­tial client meet­ing and a list of infor­ma­tion he need­ed from them to com­plete their legal project.

My job was to meet with the clients, gath­er facts, fill in the blanks on form doc­u­ments, and hand them off to Bell for final revi­sion and court fil­ings. I made a hit with the clients right off the bat. Angry because they’d been neglect­ed, they imme­di­ate­ly warmed up when I told them their case was my top pri­or­i­ty. I was the peo­ple per­son; Bell was the lawyer; and every­thing went along smoothly.

Until one morn­ing in July. Jody buzzed me. “Sue Ellen Defibaugh on line 2.”

I dug out a thin file labeled Defibaugh v. Defibaugh, con­tain­ing a sin­gle page of pen­cil-scrib­bled phras­es. “Preg­nant at 16. Mar­ried 17. Sec­ond child 18. Hus­band won’t go to church.” Not much to go on, but by then I’d learned to dance with­out music. “Put her through,” I told Jody.

“Be care­ful. This woman’s crazy as a shit­house rat.”

When I intro­duced myself, Sue Ellen cheered. At a revival ser­vice my dad preached in Free Union, she’d answered his altar call to ded­i­cate her life to Christ. “Thank you, Jesus, for sendin’ me Rev­erend Oder’s son in my time of need!” She launched into a full-throat­ed con­dem­na­tion of Fred for pres­sur­ing her to stop play­ing “Jesus records.” The Black­wood Broth­ers, Jim­my Swag­gart, Jim­my Pat­ton, The Inspi­ra­tions. Even Elvis and Aretha Franklin got into the act. “I cry every time that girl sings Amazin’ Grace.” After an hour with­out a pause, she hung up because she had to go to the toilet.

For three weeks, Sue Ellen buried me in an avalanche of phone calls. Fred wouldn’t go to church, drank beer, took the Lord’s name in vain, blas­phemed, looked at dirty mag­a­zines, played pok­er with his bud­dies. Worst of all, he pestered Sue Ellen con­stant­ly about sex, but after my dad’s revival ser­vice, she’d refused to let him touch her. “It’s a sin to lie down with a man who don’t love our Lord and Savior!”

The nekkid break­fast came along in August, and it went bad in a hurry.

“When I told Fred to go back in the bed­room and pull on his pants, he stood up and said Sue Ellen I miss you so much and he just stood there cryin’ with big ole tears streamin’ down his face and he walked back in the bed­room real sad and I called you cause I want Mis­ter Bell to get him outa my life unless he stops his sin­nin’ ways–”

In the back­ground I heard shout­ing and glass breaking.

I sat up straight. “Sue Ellen?!!”

“Sweet Jesus! Fred threw a chair through the win­dow, jumped out, and drove off on his Harley. He ain’t wearin’ no shirt, but at least he put on his pants. I just don’t know what to do.” She broke down, sobbing.

Relieved Sue Ellen hadn’t been hurt, I let out a long breath.

“Oh no!” She gasped. “Lar­ry and Grady is up. Mer­ci­ful Jesus, please give me the brains to know what to tell my sweet babies.” The line clicked.

I placed the phone in its cra­dle and stared at it. Fred’s frus­tra­tion was build­ing. Some­thing bad could hap­pen any day now, and I didn’t know how to stop it.

As Jody and Bell had made abun­dant­ly clear, my job was to keep the clients away from him, espe­cial­ly the aggra­vat­ing ones, and Sue Ellen was among the most aggra­vat­ing clients God and my dad had ever called to the altar. But I was just a glad-hand­ing peo­ple guy. She need­ed a lawyer.

Know­ing I’d like­ly lose my job, I marched past a star­tled Jody into Bell’s office unannounced.

He looked up from a plat map and scowled. “What do you want?”

Jody stormed in behind me. “What do you think you’re doing? You can’t just barge in here—”

“I’m in over my head,” I said. “Sue Ellen Defibaugh’s safe­ty is at risk.” I recapped her 35 phone calls, con­clud­ing with the nekkid break­fast and the smashed-out window.

When I fin­ished, Bell stared at me silent­ly for a long time. I expect­ed the axe to fall at any moment.

Then Bell said, “Her hus­band called in here once. He told me he loved her. He cried. I felt sor­ry for him.” Bell put his hand to his reced­ing chin, looked out the win­dow, then looked at me. “The hus­band is unrep­re­sent­ed. Let’s call them in. I’ll meet with him while you meet with Mrs. Defibaugh. We’ll try to set­tle their differences.”

Her mouth hang­ing open, Jody looked like she might faint. I was shocked, too. The last thing either of us had expect­ed was for Bell to pro­pose meet­ing with a human being unre­lat­ed to his real estate business.

The next morn­ing, Jody led Fred, a tall, mus­cle-bound, skin­head in his 20’s, wear­ing a leather jack­et with a motor­cy­cle hel­met dan­gling from his hand, into Bell’s office.

I met with Sue Ellen in a con­fer­ence room down the hall. “Is there any way you and Fred can stay togeth­er?” I asked her.

Sweaty chest­nut-brown bangs stick­ing to her fore­head, dark cir­cles under her slight­ly crazed black eyes, she nod­ded eager­ly. “All I want is for Fred to give his life to Christ.”

“Sup­pose he won’t do that.”

“Then I want him gone.”

I tried to talk her off that hard line. She wouldn’t give an inch. I inter­rupt­ed Bell’s meet­ing with Fred and told them what she said. Fred asked to speak with Sue Ellen alone. She refused.

Bell met with Fred again while I wait­ed with Sue Ellen. Fred told Bell the nekkid break­fast was his des­per­ate attempt to res­ur­rect the wild sex­pot he’d fall­en in love with, and although it didn’t work, he still loved her. It took Bell more than an hour to con­vince him to let her go.

Fred agreed to move out that day before Sue Ellen got home. Sue Ellen and I watched him from the con­fer­ence room win­dow. Tears stream­ing down his stone-hard face, he put on his hel­met, strad­dled the Harley, and roared out of Bell’s park­ing lot.

“Good rid­dance,” Sue Ellen said, her eyes dry.

Lat­er that after­noon, Jody came to my office. “What did you do to Mis­ter Bell?” she said in a small voice.

“What do you mean?”

“When you were with Sue Ellen, he called me in his office to bring him a box a Kleenex. That big bald-head­ed boy was cryin’ like a baby and Mis­ter Bell was hug­gin’ him.” She took a deep breath. “And he had tears in his eyes. What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do any­thing. I don’t under­stand it either.”

Over the next few weeks, Bell and I worked out a sep­a­ra­tion agree­ment between Sue Ellen and Fred, divid­ing their prop­er­ty and giv­ing him vis­i­ta­tion rights. Their divorce peti­tion was grant­ed the fol­low­ing summer.

I worked for Bell nights and week­ends through­out my law school days. Dur­ing that time, I came to under­stand him bet­ter. We were very dif­fer­ent peo­ple, but like-mind­ed in two ways: 1) after Defibaugh v. Defibaugh, we both vowed nev­er to come with­in a coun­try mile of anoth­er divorce case; and 2) although Bell worked hard to con­ceal it, he was a good peo­ple per­son. When it count­ed most, he lis­tened to his heart.