I had my fight. You should have yours later, not now. Not like this. Ulisses knelt down in front of her the way he had knelt when he was four and she had taught him to tie his shoes.
Grandma, baby, grandma, listen to me. He held her hand in both of his. Great granddaddy didn't fight a railroad in 1952 so I would hand his land to a man like that in a hallway to save myself. He stood three days in that room.
“I can stand five more minutes.” She did not answer with words. She only reached into the breast pocket of his suit, pulled out the small wooden cross her own father had carved, kissed it once, and pressed it back into his palm. Then she folded his fingers around it. He slid it back into his pocket.
Beside Henry Walker's handkerchief. In the empty courtroom behind the closed doors, Judge Harrison Wakefield sat alone behind the bench, rubbing his temples. Bradford Sinclair stood by the tall window with his back to the room. For the first time in six years of practicing in front of this judge, Sinclair loosened his tie before the gavel returned.
Neither of them spoke. Outside in the hallway, Ulisses sat with his grandmother. He did not check his notes. He did not rehearse.
He only watched the second hand of the clock above the bench window. It read 10:18, five minutes from the doors reopening, ten minutes from the end of Bradford Sinclair's career, three months from the end of Harrison Wakefields. And nobody in either room, not the judge, not the lawyer, not the boy, not the grandmother yet knew what was coming. A bell rang somewhere in the building.
The minute hand moved. The doors of courtroom B opened. Eleanor squeezed her grandson's hand once. Ulisses stood up.
“Let's go.” The clock on the wall read 10:23. Ulisses Daniels, thirteen years old, his grandmother's only lawyer, in a navy suit two sizes too big, stood at the lectern, set both hands flat on its edge, and began the ten minutes that would end Bradford Sinclair.