“Fuck you, Otis! I’m not worried about that. I just don’t want to get busted.”

“I told you, all I want to do is watch a few film clips.”

“I don’t see why you’d want to see those flicks anymore after the way they jammed you around.”

“What you don’t understand is that when losing my hand starts to get to me sometimes, it’s because I’m pissed off that the war wasn’t like the movies. But once I watch a few John Wayne pictures I’m all right. All I want is an hour of your time, Mouth. An hour!”

Alice and Pauline were waiting in one of the front rooms with their coats on when I came in.

“You want to stop at Wells’ for some chicken and waffles?” Alice asked.

“That sounds good. Would it be all right if I met you there?”

“Oh, you have something else planned?”

“No, it’s just that Otis is sort of flipped out. He’s going through a thing about his hand. I think I ought to stay with him for a while. I’ll meet you at Wells’ in about an hour.”

“Melvin, if you want to get together some other time, that’s all right with me.”

“Unh, unh! I’ll be at Wells’ in an hour.”

“Would you listen to him?” Pauline said. “Now, ain’t this some shit!”

On the way down to the television station I wondered if it was wise to go with Otis, no matter what he’d said. He seemed coherent, but so had Cecil Pendergrass, a black lawyer I’d gone to see before my case came up for trial. He had an office in the Hotel Theresa on 125th Street, and was known for his handling of political cases.

“Come in!” an annoyed voice yelled when I knocked on the door. The office was a wreck of legal books and papers strewn over chairs, desk, and floor. Pendergrass sat behind the desk, almost an oddity amidst the volumes of bound words. White hair rose from his head in one wild shock. He looked at me with two nail heads that almost eclipsed the whites of his eyes. “Yes, what is it?” he asked.

“I was told you take draft cases.”

“Are you a draft evader?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

“Melvin Ellington.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me who I am?”

“Well, I assume…”

“Never assume, young man. If you are what you purport to be, I trust you didn’t arrive at your conclusions about the armed forces through assumptions. However, in this instance you assumed correctly… and I take it since you came to me you’re not going to leave the country but are staying to face the music? Is that correct?”

“Yes, but that was an assumption on your part, too.”

“That’s what lawyers are trained and paid to do: transform assumptions into unmitigated fact, which is why people such as yourself seek us out. And now if you’re through trying to match wits with me, we can get down to the business at hand.”