The Sweet Hereafter

Mitchell Stephens is a partner in a New York law firm. He focuses on negligence lawsuits. Stephens has been handling disaster negligence suits for twenty-five years. Klara is Stephen’s ex-wife and together they had a daughter named Zoe. He grew up in Illinois and lives in New York City. Stephens says he is driven by anger, not greed, although he understands that it may look like greed from the outside. He describes anger as useful. He wants to “nail [the responsible parties’] pelts to the wall” (90). He says that it’s “anger that drives us and delivers us” (90).Like a hunter, he enjoys the carnage and the “trophy heads” (90-91). 

After the accident, Stephens checks into the Bide-a-Wile Motel and spends the better part of six months in Sam Dent investigating and working on the case. He is contemplating suing the State of New York, the town of Sam Dent, and the School Board for allowing Dolores to service the bus herself. Stephens describes how, in his experience, people making decisions about safety will often select the cheaper option to save money. Stephens says his job is to make the cheaper, less-safe option ultimately more expensive through lawsuits and litigation. Stephens believes there are no accidents. There is, however, always someone to blame, he believes. He says that if he can “nail” whomever is responsible for the accident, which is his “mission,” then maybe he can prevent the same accident from happening again (97).

Every year, Stephens swears he will not take any more cases involving children. He also admits that money won’t help the grieving parents and may only “sharpen their pain by constricting it with legal language and rewarding it with money, that it complicates the guilt they feel and forces them to question the authenticity of their own suffering” (98). The cases and the parents make Stephens feel ashamed, but the cases also punish whomever is responsible.

Stephens also admits that he does the work he does because he, too, has “lost” a child. In Stephens’ case, his daughter, Zoe, is alive, but is a drug addict. Stephens describes American culture as having taken away its children:

In my lifetime something terrible has happened that took our children away from us […] I don’t know which are causes and which are effects; but the children are gone, that I know. So that trying to protect them is little more than an elaborate exercise in denial (99).

Stephens says “[i]t’s too late; they’re gone; we’re what’s left” (99) and that “[r]age, for better or worse, generates a future” (99). Stephens has tried a variety of approaches to try to save Zoe: therapy, dragging her out of drug houses, sending her rehab. Zoe regularly calls and lies in order to get money, including by asking for money for a plane ticket home. For Stephens, despair and helplessness have become anger.

Stephens describes the landscape of Sam Dentas both vast and closed in. He learns that the town is named after one of its citizens, with Dent owning most of the land in the town and also running a hotel. This evokes fear and awe in Stephens. He also describes how the people of Sam Dent are poor, saying it’s a “hard place, hard to live in, hard to romanticize” (94). Stephens takes special note of the gap between him and his cushy lifestyle and the hard life of the people who live in Sam Dent. 

Stephens decides that Nichole Burnell, an all-American teenaged beauty queen disabled by the accident, is the centerpiece of his case. Burnell’s parents were living vicariously through her, so when she was injured, they acted as if their own futures had been harmed as well, and they were angry about it. 

Stephens speaks with Wendell Walker, who appears catatonic with sorrow over the death of his son, Sean, about the case. Wendell has “gone to the other side of life and is no longer even looking back at us” (104). Stephens says that when a man’s child has died “at the moment of the child’s dying, the man follows his child into darkness, as if he’s making a last attempt to save it; then, in panic […] the man turns momentarily back toward us [ … ] for he sees only darkness there too” (104). But then Wendell, who seemed inert, takes action: he stands up and says he needs a lawyer and that he and his wife want to talk to Stephens. Risa and Wendell are very angry about Sean’s death and want revenge. Stephens learns a lot about the accident from them. Stephens says they will go after the “deep pockets” of the insurance companies and not Dolores, who is a dead end. In their conversation, they run through the names of the parents who lost children, and Wendell has something horrible to say about all of them because he has been holding grudges against them for years. In the conversation, Stephens senses that Risa is having an affair with Ansel. The Walkers sign a contingency agreement with Stephens. Stephens says that the Walkers want money in a childish way. He takes the case on a contingency fee basis, meaning he only gets paid if his clients win. If he does win, he takes 1/3 of the settlement. 

Stephens goes to visit Wanda and Hartley Otto, who have lost their son, Bear. Stephens describes Hartley as “gone, I thought, he’s off with his kid” (113). Lucky for Stephens, Wanda is angry, and that is all Stephens needs. Stephens tells Wanda that he is representing the “anger” of the Walkers, not their grief, and that he is a weapon to “give [their] anger a voice” (117). Stephens insists that Bear died because someone did not do their job, and Stephens is going to find out what entity that was. Wanda says she wants the person who is responsible to go to prison for life and die there. She is not interested in money. Stephens says they will sue for the “future,” to prevent another accident from happening (118).

Stephens next describes an important incident that occurred twenty years before, when he and his wife, Klara, and their 2-year-old daughter, Zoe, went for a vacation to the coast of North Carolina. Stephens goes to check on Zoe and finds out she is feverish and her head is swollen. There is no doctor within 40 miles. Zoe’s body continues to swell, though she is not in pain or discomfort. Stephens speaks with a doctor by phone, who says Zoe has been bitten by baby black widow spiders. The doctor directs Stephens to drive Zoe out to where the doctor will be waiting. The doctor adds that Stephens and Kalara need to keep Zoe calm and hope that her throat does not close up. He instructs Stephens that if Zoe’s throat did close up, Stephens will have to use a small knife to give Zoe an emergency tracheotomy, which requires him to cut a hole in her throat and windpipe. On the drive, Stephens has to try to keep Zoe calm while also being ready to cut her throat open with a knife he is holding. Stephens feels a strong link between this incident and the Sam Dent accident:“I felt no ambivalence, did no second-guessing, had no mistrusted motives” (124). When Stephens dreams of Zoe, he sees her as she was that day, when Stephens and Klara drove Zoe to the hospital.

Stephens then goes to visit the accident site. He sees that the guardrail, while properly installed, was completely incapable of stopping a bus. Stephens believes, from the angle of the embankment, that the bus must have been speeding. If Dolores was speeding or otherwise driving dangerously, then Stephens can’t win his case against the town and the state. Therefore, Stephens must prove that Dolores is not at fault. In order to do this, Stephens needs Ansel to testify that Dolores was driving fifty-five miles per hour or less. Stephens also needs Ansel as an impartial witness, so Ansel can’t be Stephens’ client, nor can Ansel sign on with any other lawyer. Stephens decides to try to deter Ansel from signing up with other council.

Stephens goes to visit Ansel one night. He stands outside Ansel’s house and watches him sit at the kitchen table, drinking. Ansel stands up and looks out, but does not appear to see Stephens. Through the window, they are “like mirror images of each other” (132). Stephens becomes afraid of Ansel and leaves to go check out the school bus wreckage. He takes pictures and then gets back in his car. Ansel appears in his truck and gets out to examine the bus. This is the same conversation that Ansel described in his own chapter. Stephens uses the conversation to alienate Ansel and push Ansel even further away from being involved in a lawsuit.

The town reacts to the accident by raising money for the families, having school assemblies, and setting out little crosses, one for each child killed. People across the county send donated items. Stephens learns from Risa that Dolores is attending the funerals, sitting at the back and leaving before the services end.

Zoe calls Stephens at the motel. She calls him “Daddy” (140). Stephens starts to talk about the case, but then asks why Zoe is calling and whether she is high. Stephens wonders, “[w]ho was I talking to? The living or the dead? How should I behave?” (141). Zoe acts insulted, but then the line gets cut off by the operator before Zoe can tell Stephens where she is. Stephens keeps trying to mourn Zoe, but is unable to do so because she is not physically dead, although he describes her as dead.

Stephens finds Dolores and tells her that he knows whether she is guilty or not. Dolores asks how and Stephens asks her to tell him how fast she was driving. She says fifty or fifty-five. Stephens tell her it’s not her fault but the fault of the town and state. Stephens asks to represent Dolores because she herself is a victim. Dolores then says she could have been going 60, or 65. Stephens lies to Dolores by telling her that Ansel said that Dolores was only going 52 miles per hour at the time of the accident. Dolores responds by saying, “I’m not to blame” and begins crying (146). She then asks Stephens to come talk to Abbott, adding that she will do whatever Abbott thinks is right. Abbott says to forget the lawsuit and that it is the people of the town who must judge Dolores, because if Dolores did commit a crime, it was against the people of the town. Abbott seems to see through Stephens and Stephens feels that Abbott is creepy and unnerving. 

Stephens goes back to the motel, gets a message from Zoe, and calls her. Zoe tells Stephens that she went to give blood but was rejected because she tested positive for HIV. Stephens thinks, “I could hear the heavy slam of my heart. I was swimming in blood” (154). Stephens tells Zoe he will do whatever she wants and Zoe says she wants money. Stephens feels suddenly that he is in the car with Zoe, twenty years earlier, holding the knife and ready to cut her throat if necessary. Stephens feels, as he talks to her, like he is singing her songs to keep her calm, just like he did in the car many years earlier. Zoe says all she has is “now” (156). She plans to meet him that night at his apartment. Stephens asks her to bring a copy of the blood test with her. She asks whether he believes her. He says he wants her to get tested a second time, adding, “[l]et me, for Christ’s sake, be your father” (157).At the end of the chapter, Stephens says that he has, in a way, given up on saving Zoe. He also reasserts and accepts his own identity.