Deadly Lessons. David Russell W.

think I’d sleep with a kid—fourteen-year-old kid in Grade Nine! I can’t believe this!”

      “Carl, for God’s sake, would you lower your voice! Just sit down and listen for a minute!” For a brief moment we stared each other down. “Sit down. Now.”

      He dropped back into the chair, his hostility still bubbling at the surface. “I’m sorry, Win. Maybe I shouldn’t have come to you with this. I didn’t know where else to go. But if you think I would do that . . .”

      “Would you just listen to me?” I told him. “I’m just trying to get the facts. Stop getting all indignant. Whether the kid’s in Grade Nine or Twelve it doesn’t really matter. Sleeping with a student is the problem. Not her age.”

      “What? What the hell are you talking about?” He looked genuinely confused.

      “I’m saying that whether or not this relationship has been going on for three years or it just started, the charge is equally serious.”

      “Jesus, Win, you don’t get it. I haven’t been sleeping with her since Grade Nine or since yesterday, for that matter.”

      “What?” It was my turn to be confused by his story.

      He just shook his head. “Don’t you see? That’s why I’m so angry and confused. It’s not true. She’s making it up. That’s why I came to see you. She’s making the whole thing up.”

      “Oh,” I replied somewhat sheepishly. “That sort of changes things.”

       Three

      Suddenly it felt very hot in the classroom. It was November and it was sunny, which in Vancouver is a rarity. Some people—and by people I mean kids—had actually complained during the morning’s classes that it was too bright in the room.

      “What are you, vampires or something?” I had asked. In my Communications class, there were a couple of students who looked like they just might be. “I’ll consider closing the blinds in June, if and only if there has been more than five consecutive days of sunshine.” Did I mention how sensitive I can be?

      Generally, when it’s sunny in November in Vancouver, it’s also cold; that sharp, crisp cold that tingles the senses on your face and makes you want to go skiing. Indoors, however, with the sun shining through a classroom wall full of windows, insulated by heavy layers of dust and dirt on the insides and outsides of the panes, November sun has a way of turning aging classrooms into saunas.

      Carl was eyeing me with a look that wavered between incredulity and genuine hurt. I felt like a shite, a term my dad frequently used when he caught me doing something worthy of punishment, which was often. “I thought you knew me better than that,” he said quietly, finally calming down enough for polite conversational tones.

      “I’m sorry,” I told him. “When you said the student was going to report a sexual relationship, I guess I just assumed the problem was the reporting of the relationship, not that there had ever been one.”

      “Well, you thought wrong.”

      “I know. I’m sorry. Why don’t we start over, and you tell me everything. Right from the beginning.” There was the fourth awkward silence of this lunch period, and I could practically hear Carl trying to decide whether to continue. “I may be all you’ve got,” I told him.

      “Okay,” he finally said. “You’re right. I don’t know what to do.” With a sigh, he stood up and slowly paced the front of the classroom, settling eventually on a spot in the centre of the room with his backside up against the chalkboard ledge to address his class of one. It was a position I had yet to master without covering my pants and the back of my shirt with chalk dust; limited janitorial budgets apparently meant chalk board ledges were never cleaned without enlisting the labour of a student on a detention.

      “Can I tell you the student’s name now?”

      “Yes.”

      “Her name is Tricia Bellamy. Trish, she likes to be called. Like I said, this is the fourth year I’ve had in her my science classes. Sometimes it can be a bad thing having the same teacher throughout a kid’s high school career. I’ve had kids transferred to other classes just because they’ve had me too many times. But I always got along really well with Trish. She’s been a good student, good sense of humour. I’ve never had any problems with her, so I thought it would be fine for her to take Biology with me. Do you know her?”

      “No. She’s not in either of my law classes.”

      “No, I guess she wouldn’t be. I don’t think the humanities are her thing. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been really into sciences. I’m sure she’s told me she wants to go straight into sciences next year at university. Pre-med, I think. And I know she could do it. She’s very, very bright.”

      “Has she gone through anything lately? Did her marks drop or anything?”

      Carl paused to think for a moment. “No. In fact, I’m sure she’s got an ‘A’ average right now. I can’t see what could have happened in class that would send her over the edge.”

      “What about in her personal life? Has she broken up with her boyfriend? Her parents split up or anything?”

      “You know, that’s just it. As much as I’ve taught Trish for over three years now it’s just . . . I mean . . . You know how with some kids you just have a closer relationship than with others, kids that you’re almost friends with?”

      “Are you kidding me? Have you seen the group of kids that just left here?”

      “But you know what I mean?”

      “I think so, yes.”

      “I like Trish. She’s a great kid. But we just don’t have that kind of relationship. I haven’t seen any information from her counsellor to indicate anything is going wrong. She hasn’t seemed any different. I just don’t know.”

      I let this sink in for a moment to allow Carl a moment to collect his thoughts. When a suitable amount of time had passed—the lunch period wasn’t terribly long—I reluctantly stepped into the next, most difficult part of the conversation. “I hate to have to even ask this, but since you’ve taken me on as your legal counsel, we need to be frank with each other. Completely frank, okay?”

      He looked back at me with apprehension. “Okay,” he replied.

      “Carl, is there any truth to Trish’s allegations whatsoever?”

      “Win, I told you . . .”

      “Hold on,” I interrupted. “Hear me out, here.” I paused again. It’s hard to ask your friends if they’re sleeping with teenagers. “Is it possible you’ve done or said something Tricia could have misconstrued as some sort of sexual or romantic advance?”

      I have to admit that watching the expression on Carl’s face spoke volumes to me. I’d found in my vast legal career that people’s faces very often answer a question much better than their words do. Face reading was a handy skill as well as disadvantageous. Sometimes, as legal counsel, especially as defence counsel, knowing the truth about your client isn’t necessarily a good thing.

      Everyone deserves to have his legal interests fairly represented by counsel. And as a Legal Aid defence lawyer, I had to know I would be called upon to defend those who not only were guilty, but those who would not, under any circumstances, admit to their own guilt: not to their lawyer, likely not even to themselves.

      Of course, at least part of the reason I had become disillusioned with the legal profession was the fact that I had to defend guilty people—defend them vigorously, and attempt to obtain their freedom. Somewhere along the way, a really good legal principle had been perverted: even a guilty person should not use the legal system to avoid justice; only to ensure proper legal procedures are followed in apportioning justice to the accused. In eight years, I’d had to subconsciously look the other way many