“A couple,” he says brusquely, “but I don’t know nothing about criminal lawyers. My wife and I own a grocery store near Hughes in St. Francis County. We’ve got four other kids to feed.”

I guess he is telling me he couldn’t afford them. Yet, it occurs to me that there are plenty of lawyers who would be willing to take this case for nothing on the hope that if Dade is acquitted, the attorney would soon have a great shot at the opportunity to negotiate his pro contract. With the kind of money these top players at the skill positions are getting, ten percent would be in the millions. Damn, I wish I had taken two seconds and changed clothes. I look like a beach bum. I cluck sympathetically, “These athletes are sitting ducks for women. Your son probably can’t walk down the street without being harassed by them.”

Cunningham sighs and looks at his knees.

“My wife and I told him a million times to stay away from white girls. They’re guaranteed trouble. I saw him in the jail for a little while yesterday afternoon. He said this girl practically attacked him.”

“Had he been friends with her before this took place?”

I ask. With grainy pouches underneath his eyes blacker than the rest of his visible skin, Cunningham looks as if he hasn’t gotten much sleep in the last twenty-four hours. He probably hasn’t. St. Francis County, only thirty miles west of Memphis, is over a five-hour drive from Fayetteville, which is close to the Oklahoma border in the northwest corner of the state.

“He knew her a little just because she was a cheerleader,” he says, smoothing out a wrinkle in his khaki pants, “but he’d had a speech class with her the previous spring, and he said they had worked together some. But that was all until this semester. They have another class together this fall, but he hadn’t talked to her much until the last couple of weeks.”

“Are you sure he hadn’t had sex with her before this incident?” I ask bluntly, guessing their relationship may have more of a history than the father knows. It sounds like date rape to me. If Dade had been warned to stay away from white girls, he might have a hard time admitting he ignored his father’s advice.