Law Clerk on Gilligan's Island
Chapter 14- Oral Argument
If a man can write a better book, preach a better
sermon,
or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor,
though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.
-Ralph Waldo Emmerson
O.k., get this . . .
I'm sitting in the courtroom. It's Wednesday, and one of my cases is up for oral argument. My job is to sit there at a table off to the side of the bench, listen to the attorneys argue to the judges, take notes, and be ready to address whatever concerns the judges have at the post-argument conference.
So one of the attorneys finishes up after 20 minutes of blah-blah-blahing about whatever the case was about. I sit back, take a deep breath, lean back in the chair, and cross my legs, pulling my yellow legal pad onto my lap to take notes while the other attorney starts up. Out of the corner of my eye, below the desk I'm sitting at, I catch some small dark shape slide by on the floor near my feet.
Now, this could be any one of a number of things. Spending weekends out on the water, the tropical sun reflecting erratically off the waves, has played havoc with my corneas, and every once in a while, I'll have minor vision disturbances. Nothing serious-- shadows in my peripheral vision that disappear when you turn to look at them straight on, things going momentarily dark as if you stood up from the couch too quickly, that kind of thing. So maybe it's that. Or maybe it's a real shadow, maybe from the administrative clerk sitting next to me, playing with her bracelets. Or whatever.
As I'm entertaining this thought, I become aware of the tiniest sensation just above my ankle-- a little tickle or an itch, or maybe just that strange feeling you get when an errant hair confuses the brain with an unexpected news flash.
Just as I'm reaching down to scratch it, I feel the tickle, whatever it is, move up the back of my calf.
Uh oh. Something is definitely wrong.
Instinctively, I shake my leg a little. Whatever is in there doesn't take kindly to that, but instead of dropping out, it leaps up over the ledge formed behind my knee, landing in the folds of my pant leg just below my thigh. Things start to happen awful quickly now, but I can tell you that in retrospect, it felt fuzzy and had very tiny claws or teeth or something, because I felt it scurry around in there trying to right itself.
How to react when, in the midst of oral argument in front of the nation's highest court, you get a critter in your pants is not something that got covered in any of my classes in law school.
Not that this is any time for reasoned thought. By reflex alone, I uncross my legs, and with an involuntary bleEAah! emerging from my lips, I shake my leg vigorously. Intellectually, my cerebrum is gently scolding my medulla, informing it that, with some creature nestled inside my pant leg inches away from my crotch, spastic movement is not necessary a great idea. But it appears that the medulla had the right idea, because an instant later, I see a small gray mouse tumble out of my pant leg by my cuffs and scamper off around the side of the desk.
I look incredulously at the admin clerk next to me, as if to ask "did you see that?" She stares blankly back at me. All she knows is that the haole next to her just twitched and made a weird noise. "A mouse just ran up my pant leg!" I whisper to her, and she looks down to see what I'm talking about, as if the mouse would still be hanging out by my foot, solely for the purpose of confirming my story--"yes, that's right, I ran up his pant leg." Seeing nothing, she looks back up at me, uncomprehendingly.
I then look up towards the bench, expecting to see three faces in black robes staring disapprovingly down at me, as if I had farted in church or something. But nobody else seems to have seen or heard my little outburst. The other attorney continues on with his own blah-blah-blahing, unaware of the serious case of the willies that has suddenly developed five yards to his left. I try to pay attention to what he's saying, but for the rest of the argument, I'm watching my cuffs vigilantly.
The case adjourns, and the judges leave the bench, walking through a door in the back wall towards chambers. I take a moment to explain what had happened to the admin clerk, asking if she saw a mouse running around the desk during the argument. (She hadn't.) Then I head back to chambers to join the judges for the post-argument conference.
But there's a problem. Whoever designed the courtroom had a very firm belief that judges should make a mysterious, theatrical appearance, as if from out of nowhere. Thus, the door to chambers from the courtroom is indistinguishable from the rest of the rear wall of the courtroom, which consists of horizontal slats of dark hardwood running floor to ceiling. At some point in the wall, the slats actually cover a door, but it sits flush with the wall and reveals no hinges, hardware, or any other hint of its location.
Recalling only vaguely where the judges came out from at the beginning of the argument, I grab one of the slats with my fingertips and tug on it, expecting the door to swing open. It doesn't.
Nonchalantly, I take a step or two to the side, and try the same maneuver. Still nothing happens.
Today is not going well.
Convinced that continuing to move down the wall is going in the wrong direction, and that the judges definitely appeared and disappeared back where I was before, I return to the first spot, and begin methodically feeling along the ridges between the slats for a handle, latch, or some other mechanism that is obviously holding the door closed.
Nothing.
I'm starting to feel like the gullible "volunteer from the audience" at a magic act. I've vouched for the fact that I've inspected the wall in front of me and that it's as hard as stone, and the magician has just gone ahead and walked right through it.
I turn to the courtroom marshall, whose job it is to guard the judges as they enter and leave. I must have a pathetic, helpless look on my face, because he steps up, and placing his hand just above mine, pushes on the wall. A small rectangular section of wall swings open, revealing the inside of the judge's chambers.
I stand there, hoping that the mouse was carrying the plague. Maybe I'll die of that instead of humiliation.
"A mouse ran up my leg during the argument!" I exclaim as I walk into chambers. The judges are taking off their robes and hanging them on hooks just inside the doorway.
"What?" asks the Chief Justice, confused. As the senior member of the Court, the other judges seem to take their cue from him for when it's time to move from small talk to the business of discussing the case. So when I come barging into chambers babbling about a mouse, I'm stepping on his toes a little. But his expression is one of puzzlement, not anger, so I continue.
"A mouse. It ran up inside my pant leg. During the argument." The other two judges, have turned to stare at me incredulously as well. At least I've got a quorum now. "A mouse?" I say again. "Mus musculus? Any of numerous small rodents of the families Muridae and Cricetidae, such as the common house mouse, characteristically having a pointed snout, small, rounded ears, and a long, naked or almost hairless tail?" Okay, I didn't come up with that last part on the spot, but finally, they got what I was talking about.
"That was a pretty restrained reaction," one of them said finally understanding what had happened. "I didn't even notice you. Most people would have reacted a little more obviously." I didn't have the heart to tell him that, had the mouse decided to burrow deeper when my leg started shaking, I was going to become the first ever court clerk to jump up on the bench and drop his pants during an oral argument.
"I saw a mouse in my office about 20 minutes before the argument," said the judge whose courtroom the argument was in. "I tried to shoo it out, but it disappeared."
"Well, now we know where it went," said the Chief Justice, pointing vaguely in the vicinity of "Little Brian."
Still muttering "I can't believe it. A goddamn mouse" under my breath, I sat down and we discussed the case. After we had decided how the opinion should read and who was going to write it, the talk among the judges turned to other matters. Issues about candidates for admission to the bar and other administrative things. Then, just before the conference ended, the Chief Justice announced that the Judiciary had $ 30,000 in its Maintenance budget left to spend, and solicited the judges' suggestions on how to spend the money.
Routine comments about repainting the building. Then silence. Then, after a pause, from one of the judges, "how about an exterminator?"
This Chapter uploaded on 1/25/99.
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