The Laws of our Fathers (37 page)

    'What a horrible day,' he said. It occurred to me that he must have been sitting in that spot for hours. I'd always understood that Michael viewed himself as a neutralist. He cared for Nile; he adored physics. I had no doubt he was in love with June. In all of this, he belonged to a higher, more ephemeral realm, one where a simple purity of feeling was acceptable. Now he'd been injected, against his will, into the rough-hewn world of politics. 1 felt, of course, enormous kinship for him, as another soul mauled by love.

    'You want to talk about it?' I asked.

    He shook his head no. Throughout the day, I had pondered how much June was admitting when she told me Michael felt betrayed. I had been sure just a moment before that she was telling me Eddgar and she were blameless. But as I turned over June's spare remarks, trying to collect their logic, I'd seen that as usual there'd been more said than I'd recognized. Near midnight she'd left Eddgar's meeting to be with Michael. That had to have been by design, by prearrangement. And as a result, he was out of the labs, otherwise occupied at the moment of impact. Neither I - nor he - could presume that was accidental. Standing in his bare apartment, I gave him what comfort I could.

    'Look, I mean, thinking about it-' I lowered my voice. 'She protected you, man,' I said. 'She did protect you.'

    He planted the heel of his palm squarely in the middle of his face and began to cry again. The physicist who had been injured was named Patrick Langlois - a Quebecer. He had lost almost all of his right hand. His thumb remained, some ghoulish vestige attached to a fragment of his arm. Even the dry descriptions on the news had been sickening. Michael must have known him well.

    From Lucy's remarks, I took it that Michael spoke to June of love, commitment, life together. Yet in imagining their relations, I doubted June was interested in any of that. She was merely seeking some fugitive reprieve in a region of pure feeling, of silence, beyond the territory of doctrine. And a part of Michael must have accepted those terms, even welcomed them. That was his truest dwelling place anyhow. But now he was left to wonder about motivations. What idle comments of his had been passed back through One Hundred Flowers to the slick commandos who brought their plastique and detonators in the dark? What if he hadn't gotten June's message? What if he'd decided to work late, enjoying, as he often did, the hours when he had the vast laboratory to himself? He had to wonder about Eddgar as well. Was he accomplishing revolution or some blow against his wife's lover? Nonetheless, I could guess what the worst part was for him. That June knew. Knew and had bowed to Eddgar's will. In the most telling, the most graphic way, she had demonstrated to everyone her ultimate loyalties. Whatever hopes June had raised in Michael, she could not have more clearly chosen Eddgar over him. She had spoken advisedly. He felt betrayed.

    'Dinner, or you want to skip it?'

    'Skip it,' he answered.

    'Look, I'm next door if you just want to hang out, man.'

    As it happened, June asked if I'd mind Nile while Eddgar and she took a ride. That meant they would talk in the safety of the car, circling the streets for hours, checking the rearview and hatching plans. Nile and I played War and Crazy 8s most of the night.

    'Where'd the pigs take Eddgar?' Nile asked. 'To the station.' We went over it again and again. 'But they don't arreck children, do they?' 'Absolutely not. Nobody can arrest a child. And Eddgar's fine. Isn't he fine?'

    'He's mad. Cause the judge said he could go. When I'm growed up I'm going to be a police.' 'You are?'

    'Then I can arreck the right people.'

    'Look, Eddgar's okay. He's fine, right? Doesn't he seem fine?'

    ‘I wouldn't arreck Eddgar!' Nile was instantly overcome with tears. The mere thought of Eddgar often seemed to upset Nile. There was never a spanking; Eddgar seldom yelled. But as a father, he could not keep from being himself, always preaching, teaching, always correcting Nile, moving on to the next lesson as soon as the last one was acknowledged.

    At Christmas, I had witnessed an awful scene when Eddgar had attempted to convince Nile to donate one of his few toys, a stuffed pig, to a poor people's collective in East Oakland. The pig was soiled and pilled, not recognizable as much more than an oblong lump the color of your gums, and Nile seldom looked at it now that he had Babu, his handsome stuffed bear, with its pelt of shiny synthetic fur. But when Eddgar explained his plans for the pig, Nile held fast to it, wailing, while Eddgar in his tireless intent way held on too, reasoning implacably with his son about other children who had no toys at all.

    ‘I want it,' Nile replied. 'I want it.' Nile hauled on the pig, and lay back. Finally, with a small pop and a scatter in the sunlight of some dusty filament, the pig suffered the amputation of a leg. Eddgar considered this at length. Eventually, he handed the bigger piece to Nile, then went to the boy's room and removed Babu.

    Eddgar held the bear far overhead, well out of reach, as he headed to the door.

    'This is what the poor children are getting now,' Eddgar announced, his long forehead knotted by a fury that I had seldom witnessed, even when he was inciting on campus. Nile hadn't dared to get back to his feet. He made no sound at all until his father was gone out the door, at which point the boy wailed unbearably. Decimated herself, June fell to her knees and held him in her arms, pieta-like, the two of them crippled by grief.

    Now, with his sudden tears about Eddgar, Nile crawled into my arms. He was usually inconsolable - likely to throw tantrums and shirk a comforting hand. Instead, he accepted my embrace and clung. He would not climb down and fell off to sleep. For reasons beyond explaining, it touched me terribly that amid all my troubles - fears for my future, guilt about Hobie, my heartbreak over Sonny - Nile had found this moment to finally regard me with trust. In the dark, I curled myself about the small body, holding his fingers, rough with grime, while I absorbed the fullness of my desire to protect him and the whispered promise of a young life.

    Women came and went in my dreams, vague figures with whom I became enmeshed, and whose yearnings I somehow could not tell from my own. I was in the midst of some vivid tableau in which one of us was being desperately pursued, but I could not tell who was following whom. I opened my eyes and June Eddgar sat on my bed. Her hand was on my chest, softly circling, prodding.

    'Are you awake?' she whispered. 'Seth?' I knew this was not the first time she had said my name.

    I sat up. I slept nude and I gathered the sheet, aware suddenly of the stiffness below of a urinary erection. Even when I wakened, June remained comfortably beside me.

    I asked where Nile was.

    'Upstairs. I took him up hours ago. I've just been lying awake, pondering something. I have to talk to you, Seth. I want you to hear me out.' She hiked herself up on the bed and came just a smidgen closer. She wore a cotton night shift and the loose weight of her breasts trembled when she moved. 'We need money,' she said. 'Real money.'

    I reached beside the bedside for the lamp, careful to hold the sheet and conscious that I'd probably exposed my backside anyway. June sat, unblinking, her hair loose as it had been the day I saw her at Michael's. Her tongue briefly touched her lips while she waited for me to shield my eyes and let the pain of dilation pass. Somehow it struck me that all the years she - any child - spent looking in a mirror, wondering what she would look like as an adult, at her prime - that was how June looked now. Her pretty face had the substance of maturity, the weight of intelligence and purpose. I looked at her as a human being who, unlike me, had finished the journey to whatever it was she was to become. I had no doubt she shared that judgment.

    'This money is important,' she said. 'Very important. We have to get Cleveland out. Soon.'

    'Is this the bomb?'

    'Seth,' she said severely. It was the same tone that escaped her against her will now and again when she was scolding Nile. She took a moment to counsel with herself. 'There are rumors - you understand, this may all be counter-intelligence by the Damon pigs, everything I'm saying may be, so please bear that in mind - but we've heard rumors that Cleveland is talking. That he's started giving them little things, hoping to get his bond reduced. I don't believe it. But with Eldridge in Algeria there have been a lot of rifts within the Panthers. A lot of internal commotion. And we think it's possible. We've sent his mother to see him. And a lawyer. He's going to have plenty of folks at visitors' hours all weekend. But it's best for all concerned to get him out as soon as possible. Certainly by next week. We have to bail him and get him out of their hands, before he's blabbing his fool head off. Do you hear me?'

    'Okay.'

    'There are many people who have an enormous amount at stake. Not only our people. All right? There are many people, people who haven't really - One of your good friends.'

    My heart constricted again into a tiny knot at the thought of Hobie.

    'Seth, there's no use explaining. No point and no good use of it. But things will work out. I'm sure they will work out. If we can get this money.'

    I asked how much.

    'Thousands. Ten thousand minimum. Fifteen would be better.' She measured my astonishment. 'Now listen.' She sat forward and smoothed her hand again across my chest to subdue me. The confident way she touched me lit, not wholly to my liking, the spark of some unruly thrill. 'Now hear me out. I've been thinking. And it's a question, I suppose - It's two birds with one stone. I wondered if you would possibly reconsider this plan, this idea we discussed.'

    She waited until I was the first to speak the word. 'Kidnapping?' She nodded only once, as if there was a caution against speech. 'Jesus,' I said.

    'It seems to make so much sense from your side.'

    'I know, but-' The thought of scamming my father, from which I naturally recoiled, also seemed, in some moods, to imbue me momentarily with a wild lightheartedness. There was no doubt he deserved as much. Nonetheless, I shook my head. ‘I can't torture them. Especially not my mother.'

    'I think we can work out what concerns you, I truly do. If you felt satisfied that could be avoided -1 know how odd this is,' she said, 'but it seems clear you're going to have to do something drastic. You only have a couple of days.' The fourth of May, when I was scheduled for induction, was Monday. 'If they knew you were safe, Seth, your well-being was assured, but they had to leave you be, let you go, that would be the best for you now, wouldn't it? Am I right about that?'

    I didn't answer, fearful of what I was getting myself into.

    'Will you think about this? Please? But there isn't a lot of time.' 'I understand. I have to get my head around this one.' We looked at each other.

    'I mean,' I said, 'you guys. I mean, Eddgar and you.' I swallowed. 'And Nile. I mean, you're all in trouble now. Right? Real trouble?'

    'Seth-' She stopped. 'If Cleveland-' She stopped again. 'Right,' she said. 'Real trouble.' She looked into my eyes with purpose. I noticed only now that she had gripped me by both shoulders. There were many young men in June Eddgar's life. I knew that then. She might as well have said it. I had no idea what difference it made; nothing was going to happen between us. But some bond was forged nonetheless, if only because a fragment of me was briefly waked to the reality that other women besides Sonny existed. June padded out, barefoot, her shift clinging to her as she departed, having made a moment when, improbably, desire seemed to be the only real thing in the world.

    

    

    
Sonny

    

    Friday morning, before we start, I detain the lawyers to talk about our schedule. The prosecution case will probably take another couple of days. We concluded yesterday with Molto doing a tiresome redirect of Lovinia, reading her snippets of her statements which she claimed not to remember. Following that, Rudy examined Maybelle Downey, an older woman who had witnessed June's shooting from a tenement across from the projects and who confirmed the same outward events Lovinia described. Now Tommy gives me the order of his remaining witnesses. Al Kratzus, the community service officer who told Nile his mother had been murdered will be first today; after him, Hardcore; by Monday we'll reach Eddgar. Following him, the People will rest. The PA's strategy, apparently, is to buttress Hardcore's credibility by showing that his account coincides with that of witnesses - white people - whose version is largely beyond doubt.

    'The defense case, if there is to be one, will start by Wednesday?' I'm informing Hobie, who receives the news impassively. 'And what are your plans, Mr Tuttle? In terms of time? Not committing the defendant to offer evidence, of course, just projecting for my benefit.'

    'Two days.'

    ' So we'll argue at the end of next week perhaps, or the following Monday?'

    The three lawyers before the podium all nod. I will have to decide soon after - a disturbing prospect. The case remains murky. Why did this murder happen? I think suddenly. Frowning, I wave the lawyers away from the bench. Molto repeats the same gesture to Singh, who goes off to summon the next witness.

    Aloysius Kratzus, a corpulent, white-haired, thick-necked police veteran fiddles a bit as he sits on the stand. Kratzus has the mark of a guy who went to Community Relations willingly, one of those coppers who started out to be a hero and ended up as a bureaucrat. No one gets shot in Community Relations. No one works graveyard. You dispense bad news, you visit schools, you read press releases over the phone, you front for the Force at funerals and ribbon cuttings. It's either a dead end or a comfortable retirement, depending on how you view things. Al Kratzus seems to like it just fine.