The Laws of our Fathers (79 page)

    Now fresh from bed, he imagined everything he must do today, how he would be in the world. He recollected meetings, a staff lunch, committee members he needed to persuade, calls to Farmers Alliance members downstate, a constituent requiring help at the U. Tonight he would speak at a dinner in the South End in DuSable at a Legal Aid Center function. Eddgar had gone for years - good folk, Irish, Italians, and Mexicans, organized around one of those parish priests, Father Halloran, still lean and energetic at sixty-four, who'd been there thirty years, full of hope, kindling kindness amid the lives that would stand parched and lonely without him. Halloran kept his parishioners supporting this little clinic where the poor received free advice about overbearing landlords, their sad divorces, the kids in trouble on the street. Eddgar loved these events, finding people, ordinary people, secretaries and shop-floor managers, who cared to see the world made better, whose feelings ran beyond the boundaries of their lives. Their kids came, too, half of them grown, moved off to the far-flung corners of the suburbs, but still drawn back to this, to the flame of their beliefs.

    He would talk about the pure good of this enterprise. No sentiment. But he'd say that good faith and caring are not government responsibilities alone. And they'd ask: 'Senator Eddgar,' they'd ask, 'what else can we do? What can we do?' And for a minute, this hall, a basement room in a K. of C. Hall, a place with cheap paneling and magenta carpeting worn to a number of blackened spots, would be quiet. What can we do? The whole place would throb with the pained life of the poor. He did not know exactly what he'd say, but he savored the moment in prospect. In the statehouse, they could laugh at him all they liked, the staffers and media thugs could be smug, but this was still his work, still where he knew just who he was, when he felt both the torment of people warring all their lives against the dim weight of poverty and scorn, and the furious strength of his dedication to them.

    They never understood, men like Hardcore, men like Huey, they never recognized that it was a thrill to Eddgar to see them - black men, powerful, rigid with anger. It thrilled him to think these men were the heirs, the successors of the beaten, woebegone souls he'd watched chop tobacco during his childhood, men and women who grasped the spiny stems Eddgar could not even touch, migrants, moving listlessly, hopelessly up the dusty roads, carrying with them the odor of the thick aromatic sap. He had loved those people, so cruelly thwarted by the likes of his father, adored them with a mighty, towering, limitless love. He did not love Hardcore or Huey. They did not want his love, which was one reason they frightened Eddgar, much as they frightened everybody else. But he was thrilled, because their strength, their anger equipped them to move forward in the world. Now we must move beyond anger. That is what he would say tonight. We must move on to gratitude, participation, responsibility. Wide awake, at the lee end of the night, he stared toward the ceiling fixture, the textured glass that captured the glaring light of two bulbs, and saw the brightness only as a tangible sign of his own commitments.

    Downstairs, at this hour, past 5 a.m., he heard the ruckus of Nile readying himself for departure. He was gone early on these days to avoid the traffic. It was an hour and a half sometimes from Greenwood into Kindle Probation. He has been getting better, Eddgar thought, knowing he had told himself this nearly Nile's entire life. But it seemed to be true. He was less edgy, more responsive, holding this job, a real job, with which he seemed legitimately involved. Yes, all right, he was still under his father's guidance, still hovered over at moments like a small child. But he was working where there was so much good to be done. Eddgar proceeded downstairs to find his son in a denim shirt and a leather tie, eating cereal and watching the TV.

    'Hey,' said Nile. His son still slept here two or three nights during the work week, if Eddgar was not downstate. Nile's place in town was a lonely closet. Nile also passed the weekends here. The boy, the man Nile had become, six foot one, sloppy with loose flesh, sprawled on the sofa, unshaved, unwashed, drinking name-brand beer in the living room downstairs and watching TV. They did not speak much. He was not sure what Nile wanted. Free food? A place to lounge and be looked after? There were a hundred sarcastic answers. But he welcomed the boy's presence. Eddgar liked to have him here, in sight. They both felt better that way. Eddgar had put on yesterday's shirt and found his notes in the pocket.

    'Dang,' he said. He touched his forehead. 'I keep forgetting. The money. Make sure you tell Ordell I'm going to get it. I just don't know where it's supposed to come from.'

    'He's okay about it,' Nile had offered, fixed on the TV. But the alarm had started faintly clanging. It was experience, nothing else. Eddgar began to pursue him, until Nile said he had given Hardcore some form of help.

    'Wait, wait. Nile. Pay attention. Look at me.' His father was at the kitchen table. 'What are you doing?' How did he know? There was a look Nile had, a sly, shamed, hound-dog look, confronting the fact that the internal realm where he resided did not mesh with the one recognized at large. It was always frightening to observe this, and Eddgar was petrified now. 'I'm just helping out.'

    'Helping what? On probation beefs? Are you throwing files away?'

    'Nothing like that. I do my job.' 'Where? What are you doing?' 'In the jail,' Nile said finally.

    It had come out in pieces. Eddgar, who thought of himself as stoical and strong, had his head down on the table by the time the discussion was through. He wrapped himself in his own arms. He asked Nile many times, many times to say it was a joke. As a boy, a teenager, Eddgar thought every day of Jesus on the cross, as the nails drove through the flesh of His hands first, then His feet. Even as the nerve and bone was crushed He must have welcomed his pain, knowing it would soon bring the world salvation. All his life, Eddgar had tried to welcome pain, but he could not welcome this.

    'It's cool,' said Nile, actually hoping to comfort him.

    'No, it's not cool. It is the most uncool, stupid, dangerous thing you could possibly be doing. It's crazy.'

    'You think someone else wouldn't do this, Eddgar? There's so much shit in there. Just money, for Godsake. They 're not supposed to have a nickel, and I bring out
5,000
bucks a week.'

    'Oh, Nile.' In the rising biliousness, in the sense of delirium taking over the moment, the most sickening thought to Eddgar was that he was going to have to call June. He was going to have to say, "This is the worst yet.' He was going to have to give her news which would only drive her down further. He was going to have to say what they had been saying for years: 'We have a problem. A crisis. You need to come here. We have to straighten this out.' He was going to have to ask her again to rise, memorably, to the occasion, to closet her own suffering and to focus on the desperate task of salvaging Nile.

    'Lord, Nile,' he said. He was sick.

    There was a fantasy Eddgar had, a grisly impossible vision that had come to him once and repeatedly beckoned him back, the cruel Lorelei of the sickest kind of self-punishment. He was eighty-five and terminal. And trying to figure out what to do with Nile, how to protect him from the savagery of the world, much as he tried when Nile was twelve and thirteen to protect him from the insolent, heavy-lidded-looking boys at school who beat Nile and stole from him with utterly no fear of reprisal. Cowering, so desperately in need of his father's protection, Nile could seem precious to Eddgar. But in this fantasy Eddgar realized there was no way to save Nile, he would not grow wiser or stronger. In mercy, Eddgar would have no choice but to kill them both. It was a dream, actually, that was how these thoughts had started, but it had been enough to make him weep, seeing the gun in the dream and waiting, hoping his son would turn his head, because there was no way to do this if he had to face him. Shoot fast, he always thought, when he tried to turn the vision away and could not, shoot fast so you don't have to live for that instant in between.

    'We have to fix this, Nile. We have a chance to make this right before any real damage is done. I want to know how I can get in touch with Hardcore. And your career as a drug courier is over. It's done. Right now.'

    'No,' said Nile. He stood up. He actually seemed horrified by Eddgar's declaration.

    'Right now.'

    'Fuck you,' he answered. He was gone from the house in a few minutes and did not return.

    

    
Hardcore

    

    They was some motherfuckers, some white motherfuckers, who knowed they owned the motherfuckin world. You could tighten up on these motherfuckers, jam them up, put you a strap right in

    they motherfuckin face, and it don't matter none, cause this motherfucker, till the minute he be motherfuckin dead, he still thinkin, Damn, nigger, I am the motherfuckin owner of this motherfuckin world. And what-all you gone do with a motherfucker like that?

    One o 'clock, bright in the daytime, Nile daddy rolled in. Homies get up under him, soon pop his ass as see his face, and he still goin, Where-all Hardcore at, man? Damn, la senator and shit, I want to talk to his ass.

    Core told Bug, 'Bring that fool up here, motherfucker make me laugh.'

    And then he come through the door up at Central on 17, not so much as 't's'up, not so much as How you do, he just rainin on Core how he can't be havin none this shit.

    'I'm sorry you think I've shortchanged you, or misled you somehow, but what Nile is doing for you, that has to stop, that cannot and will not continue, I'm sorry.'

    He sorry. Core just shook his head at the thought.

    'Damn, man, you in my crib.' He pointed to the cement floor, where there was nothing but three telephones and their cords. 'You don't be tellin me where I sit, where I stand, in my crib. Cause it's my crib. This son of you, he a growed-up man, idn't he?'

    'You know Nile.'

    'Yeah, he my PO.' Hardcore could not suppress a minute smile, a moment of pure whimsy at the notion of the state, in its bureaucratic ineptitude, allowing such a pitiful mismatch. 'He can decide for his own self.'

    I've decided. This is done, Ordell. I'm in this now. I know, so I'm implicated. I can't take that chance myself. And I certainly can't take it for Nile.'

    'Damn, man, so what you aimin for me to do here? Just gone say, "Hey, homes, ain gone be no shit this week, you-all just get yo'self strung out and shit, cause Nile daddy say No, cause he complicated?'' That how I s'pose to do all mine? No, motherfuck.

    When I say ' 'Cool,'' then it be motherfuckin cool. And it ain now.'

    Nile's daddy just stood and did him a minute with his eyes. This mother, just some lumpy little white man, but he got him eyes like a spook, goin like, 'It's on, motherfucker, cause ain no nigger gone work on me.'

    'Ordell, if I hear you 're trying to involve him in any more, I'm going with Nile and the best lawyer I can find straight to the PA.'

    Core laughed then. Core came right up in his face.

    'You gone tell the PA what a dope-peddlin fool he been? I don't think so, motherfucker. You gone turn on yo own kin? I don't think so. Damn motherfuck, he may as well plead guilty to murder. Kind of quantities that boy carried? Pounds of that shit. He a damn organizer, don't you know? He a drug kingpin. He gone be on the wall for life, Jack.'

    Nile's daddy, he be shakin his head the whole time Core spoke. 'Not if he talks, Ordell. Not if he gives them you.'

    Core very nearly busted a cap in Eddgar right here. Like to took his own dogs and beat the motherfucker dead. Only he needed time for that. He needed to think.

    'No,' Hardcore said, 'you sure enough right about that. He beef me out, ain gone be life, no parole. Only gone be fifteen, no parole. That all the minimum mandatory. He could kill somebody's ass and get out sooner. Ain you one them mothers thought that shit up? That be the law, man.'

    'Ordell, for Godsake, do you know who I am? If I get on that telephone, the PA himself will be on the other end. You really think I can't work this out? It's not the same for me as it is for you. You know it, Ordell, and I know it. So let's not kid ourselves. Because we're both too intelligent for that.'

    That was it. Too much! He told Bug to get him out. He sighted Eddgar down the length of his finger.

    'Head up, motherfucker: Yo ass here any more, you gone have a dead ass. I ain talkin no shit here. Word up.' Motherfucker come in his crib and do him like that. Be a dead motherfucker now, and he don 't know it. Motherfuckin owner ofthe motherfuckin world!

    

    Core had Bug call Nile at Probation. Took him three whole days to get hisself there, but he come. Hardcore knew he would. He jumped in his shit soon as Nile was out his ride. Ripped him right there on the street.

    'Man, what the fuck you done and done?' he asked. And Nile, this silly Opie motherfucker, with all that greasy hair and shit, hippie motherfucker or somethin, he like he got whooped in the gut, he can't even talk.

    'Core,' he said, 'I just told him, man. I had to.'

    'Had to what? So he kickyo butt? Man, I don't fall to none of this shit. I don't compre-hend it. You know? My daddy, man, he just some fool on the corner, man. I see him, I book. What kind of shit you puttin down here? "Had to tell him. " ' Core worked his mouth around to spit, then did it, a long glob to the dirty, broken walk. This was just some unbelievable shit, Nile and his daddy, like to make him wanna smoke them both. 'That daddy yourn, man, he piss off the Good Humor Man. You hear me? He one of them uptight motherfuckers think he always runnin changes onyou. See? You know, like he be fuckin Charlie Chan or somethin, you know? Number-one son, all that shit. He a cold, deadly motherfucker. Stand right up on me and say he gone snitch me out. Ain't no motherfucker on the street down me like that. I kill they ass soon as look at them.' Core walked a few paces in pure agitation and turned back to Nile. 'So you gone beef me out, motherfucker?'