“never abandon an argument.”

Easy Waters, “One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer,” Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice

The argument E nearly left out was the one on which he won.

In “One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer,” E opens his copy of Cicero’s Murder Trials. The book has become a place to keep newspaper clippings, lists of books he has read and wants to read, case citations, and notes. One of those notes says: “never abandon an argument.” E remembers why he kept it. He almost gave up a point that turned out to decide a case in his favor.

I like where the reminder appears. It is tucked among the materials E uses to think. The inside cover and blank pages have become part of his working library. A book from another time holds the names and cases of people he has met in prison. When he opens it, he can return to an argument of Cicero’s or to a question he left for himself.

The story gives us no brief to inspect. We are not told what the point was, why E doubted it, or what persuaded the court. What we have is the distance between his judgment while preparing the case and the judgment he could make after it was decided. Before the ruling, the argument looked expendable. Afterward, he thought it worth leaving himself a reminder.

Anyone who has revised an essay knows a smaller version of that uncertainty. A paragraph seems to interrupt the argument, so we take it out. On rereading, we discover it was the one place we acknowledged a fact the rest of the draft could not explain. The paragraph may need to change. Its troublesome fact still deserves a place.

E’s word “never” is the language of someone who remembers coming close to a mistake. Taken literally, it would leave little room for revision. A claim can lose its footing when we look closely at the evidence; a distinction that once seemed decisive can turn out to do very little. There are good reasons to let an argument go. The note makes me think about how quickly we sometimes decide we have one.

That is especially true when we are reading on behalf of somebody else. A question they keep raising may sound peripheral to the person sorting the file. It may point to a fact that has not yet been accounted for. Before putting it aside, we can go back to the record and see what the question is asking us to notice.

E turns back to Cicero. The clippings, citations, and reading lists remain in the book. So does the note. He has left it where he will see it again, the next time he opens the cover.

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About the Conundrums Quotations Project

CQ-048 reads a line from “One Day in the Life of a Jailhouse Lawyer,” in Easy Waters’s Conundrums: Stories of Law & Justice.

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