Pub & Sporting News, Volume 3, number 9, October 2001 Drinking with Buildings The line was long and my patience was short, if not as short as that of the little girl who kept bumping into me as she wobbled around her mother and their place in the slow-moving queue of bored folks. Mother apologized; I welcomed the distraction; we got to chatting, and discovered we were both Esteroids, or at least dwellers on the far fringes of the village. She said something like, Lived there long? And I answered, Hoo boy, had to shoo the mammoths off the road when I first got there. Then I launched into one of those proof-of-existence name-dropping tales that we all have in our back pockets. Oh, you know what I mean: I was establishing my place in the important, historically notable local circles; see, lady, I knew the Great Names. All right, I was bragging. "I remember when the Malemute wasn’t just a tourist bar...One night I went in there to meet some people, and the place was jammed but my friends weren’t there yet. So I stood by the bar looking lost, until all of a sudden I felt this tug at my elbow, and there was Ivar Skarland. And he said Hey, come sit with us while you wait. ‘Us’ turned out to be a good group... So I joined him and Otto Geist and Rusty Heurlin, and we drank beer and they told great stories about the old days, the critters coming out of the permafrost, and all that..." Otto and Ivar and Rusty: hereabouts those aren’t merely names, they’re incantations. Or they have been, anyhow. My fellow line-waiter merely nodded, I thought insufficiently impressed, but her little girl looked up at me all big-eyed and said, "How could those buildings fit in the Malemute?" That’s a problem with the important folks who touch your life and slide on past; they can become buildings. The university has the Geist Building for its museum and Skarland Hall for its students. (Well, okay, so Rusty isn’t a building, but the way his paintings dominate the airport’s top floor, they might as well name it after him: Heurlin International. Better an artist than a puffed-up politician, eh?) I remembered that feeling the other day when I was reading some piled-up back issues of the daily newspaper and discovered I’d missed the dedication of the new Jay A. Rabinowitz Courthouse. I’d already missed Justice Rabinowitz’s memorial service. Even his death slipped by me; I found out weeks after he finally lost his long and gallant battle with cancer. It really pissed me off that he died. We needed him, we Alaskans. He leaves behind a full man-sized hole of unique shape and size in our lives, even those of us who—like me—can’t really claim he was a close friend. I’d love to be able to, but no matter how much time I may spend with a person, or what affection I may feel, I can’t claim to be genuinely close to someone who inspires so much awe. Which he did, and I don’t awe easily. He was a fine dark hawk of a human being, a truly good man of great integrity, but those attractive and admirable qualities don’t delimit him nor begin to describe his contribution. It’s not just that Rabinowitz had (and employed) a profound and acute intelligence, though I suspect the average IQ of the entire state dropped two points when he died. Nor was it merely that he was a great scholar of Alaska law and worked hard at applying that scholarship, though I understand he still was scrutinizing legal matters for the state during his final hospital stay. It was the combination of those factors and many others—and especially how he used them. He was a complicated, good-hearted and game person with a passion for justice, and his true calling was to beat on the imperfect and clumsy tool of the law to make it into a weapon fit to battle for that humane ideal. According to Georg Steller, the naturalist who accompanied Bering on his voyages, when their gods did not grant good fortune to the peoples of Kamchatka, the tribes had a fine way of getting even. Instead of prayer and sacrifice to appease the deities, they would tell scurrilous stories about them, poking fun at them, their behavior, their heavenly misfortunes. I like the Kamchadal approach, and wish to apply it to Jay Rabinowitz. Partially, that is: I don’t deify him, though I am outraged at the misfortune his departure signifies, and I won’t have to make up stories about him. I know some genuine ones. Item: Judge Rabinowitz, hearing a criminal case with a woefully bumblebrained defendant, suddenly slams his gavel down in the midst of the man’s testimony. "Counsels to chambers right now," he commands sternly, "and the court reporter too." He sweeps out, robes trailing, and the lawyers and stenographer trot along behind. He closes the room’s thick door behind them—and bursts out laughing, as do the two lawyers and the stenographer. They snort and guffaw helplessly for awhile, free to laugh at the outrageous and hilarious things the prisoner in the dock has been saying without compromising the proceedings. When all are back in control of themselves, he leads them back in, sits, fixes the audience, the jury, and the defendant with another stern look: "Now that that’s straightened out," he says, "we shall proceed." Item: at a party, friend Jay hovers uneasily around the edge of a chattering horde of fellow guests. The worried hostess asks what’s wrong. "I can’t deal with gatherings like this," he explains. "All the interesting things I have to talk about are secrets that I can’t talk about." Item: athlete Rabinowitz agrees to help out a young journalist writing an article on his family of athletes: the skiing and running Rabinowitzes. So he poses for a picture to accompany her article, in his running shorts—with his judicial robe on but open over. He looks like a flasher. His supreme court colleagues are not amused. Everyone else is. Item: former New Yorker Rabinowitz is invited to a gathering in the Big I to meet present New Yorker Norman Mailer. The professors guiding the famous novelist monopolize him, heading off the students and readers slavering for a chance to chat up one of the bigger literary names to reach Fairbanks. All of a sudden Jay finds a dozen things he absolutely must talk about with the intrusive professors—"I’ve been thinking about that question you asked me, and..." Professors have no memory of what they asked, perhaps, but how do you say that to the chief justice of the state supreme court? They talk, they think, they find themselves ever so skillfully guided away from Mailer’s side while the students slide in... There are other items, many others, small and gentle ones suitable for someone who would have made a mischievous god indeed. Fortune once gave me the chance to play a joke on Jay Rabinowitz, and in light of the Kamchadal philosophy, now I’m especially glad I took that chance. This is what happened. When the state supreme court is in session, the justices meet together and hear cases. Between sessions, they retire to their separate towns and prepare the opinions. Each justice gets a few cases to write up, and the other justices review and write comments on those drafts in a round-robin process. I learned this because for a short while I pretended to be a legal secretary and worked for Rabinowitz while his regular, very professional and very skilled secretary was Outside for emergency medical work. (I got the job by bumping into Jay outside the courthouse right after he learned he’d need someone immediately. The interview process consisted of, "Carla! You can type, can’t you? Aren’t you out of a job right now? Great." Hiring procedures have changed somewhat since then.) The work was indeed mostly typing—usually long documents requiring painstaking attention, because in those precomputer days, errors were forever. One of the regular documents, though, was very short. It consisted of a formal acknowledgment of another justice’s draft opinion: "Dear Justice Soandso: I received today your draft in the matter of Smith v. Jones," followed by no more than a sentence or so of additional details. One of the more elderly members of the court in those days was a political appointee of great clout but little legal acumen. Jay, accustomed to the discretion and knowledge of his absent secretary, had been quite candid with me about this particular justice’s shortcomings. When a draft arrived from that distinguished but hollow man, I typed up the receipt form with a short addition: "Dear Justice Soandso: I received today your draft in the matter of Jones v. Smith, and, as usual, it eats shit." Then I slipped the form into the pile of letters and other papers requiring the judge’s signature, and waited. As I was tidying up my desk just before five, a most unjudicial bellow came from the inner office. Jay hurtled through the doorway, receipt form in hand. "I almost signed it!" He was paler than I’d ever seen him before, and almost shouting. I smiled sweetly. "Truth goes with justice, doesn’t it?" He gargled something I’m quite glad I couldn’t understand. "Besides," I went on, "I wouldn’t have sent it if you had signed it. I’d just never have let you live it down." He was still pale and bristling when I left, and he did read everything I sent in to his office very, very carefully after that. But I believe he forgave me. The next time we were both in the Big I at the same time, he bought me a drink. I hope the new courthouse lasts long and wears well. It’s a selfish wish. Someday maybe another child will wonder why I am so proud of drinking with buildings. | ||
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