The Laws of Our Fathers

  The place was cold and empty. The linoleum floor had been picked up in places and was soiled in huge spots, which had lain under built-in units, now removed. Bug piled through the cabinets in the kitchen till she found the balloon. Someone had left it there, hours before. Probably Hardcore. They both stood looking at it in her hand. About half a pound of straight coke in the condom, Nile figured. Ten years, minimum mandatory.

  'Where do I carry it?'

  'Didn't he tell you nothin? You got to put it where they ain gone feel. Them suckers shake you down.' 'Barely.'

  'Yeah, man, you cain't be gettin cracked with this shit.' ‘I know that.' He actually laughed at that point 'Got to put it where they ain gone feel.' 'Which is where, man?'

  Lovinia got shy. Her eyes shot away like fish in water.

  'Oh man,' she said, 'how come I got do everything?' She had the tape and some extra condoms in her pocket. She laid them down on a small wooden table in the kitchen, beside the package. 'This got to go in you little booty. Okay?'

  ‘No.'

  'Uh-huh. Don't you be sayin no. Here.' 'I'll do it. That's okay.'

  'Come on, man. I gone do it. Just that damn Hardcore get me sometime. Okay, boy. Come on.' 'Come on, what?'

  'Leave down you damn pants, man.' 'Jesus.'

  She took the balloon and massaged it. She took it in her two thin hands, working on it with her long fingers, squeezing it out. Just that was enough to get him started.

  'Come on, dude. Get wit' it.'

  He loosened his belt. He worked the pants down his thighs. She got behind him and pulled the elastic on his briefs down herself.

  Wait a minute, he thought. Wait a minute. He remembered then he had told Hardcore he just wanted to see. But there was nothing to say now. Bug had told him that on the way over. Core 'd be ripping her if Nile didn't go ahead.

  'Okay now, bend you over. Thass right. Come on. Put you hands on you cheeks. Okay.' Her fingers were chill and startling, but she started laughing. 'You know, I don't think I ever seed a white one. Like for-real and all.'

  'Really?'

  'Nn-uh. Weird, you know. Man, you pale, man. Be kind of frightnz'n.'

  'Yeah, well, that's nice,' he said.

  'Oh, you know, you okay.' She touched him soothingly. 'Only I ain used to it is all. You seed a black girl?'

  'Yeah.' He wasn't lying. In high school, there was one girl.

  'What her name? Now hold 'em apart. Go right there.' She ran her fingernail along. 'Now it go like that. Now you cain 't put no tape over it, or it tear and burstes itself apart. You get that powder over that interview room, man, that's big-time shit. So you put some threads and we tape over them threads. Okay?' She told him what he would have to do, who he'd be going to see. Core had planned it all. 'So you been gettin busy wit some black chick, huh? You think that's right, huh? Black is best, huh?'

  It hadn't come to that, but he didn't say so now. She had her cool, thin fingers all over. She was playing, he knew it, she did too, and he started getting hard. Shit, he thought, shit. But something told him. He really had no will to stop it. His briefs were still up in front, but he was sure she'd notice.

  'So you was likin that chick, huh?' She rubbed his ass with both hands. He had no idea what she thought she was doing.

  'It was a long time ago.'

  'Cain't barely 'member, huh?'

  'Man, you 're playin me.'

  'You don't seem to mind none.' She said it and he didn't say anything. 'Yeah, you don't seem to mind.' She came around the side, looked down, and then, shy as she was, dared his eyes. 'What you got there? What you hidin?' She poked it, and he flinched. She laughed, laughed. ‘I knowed you be likin me.'

  He didn't move. He didn't say anything either.

  'You think I ain never seen that? You don't wanna know what I seen. I seen that.' She skirted her hand inside his briefs. 'You gettin scared now?' She laughed. She touched him. Just touched and drew her hand back, and laughed some more. 'Ain you got nothin to say?'

  He was up now, stiff as steel.

  'Don't that feel good?' she asked.

  'Yes.'

  They both looked, her hand wrapped all around him.

  She sucked. That had never happened to Nile. That had never happened. She went around him in that cold apartment and took him in her mouth and dug her hands into his backside and pushed him back and forth the first few times. It didn't take long for him to be done. She went to one of the back rooms and spat.

  'Some girls say it make you sick. You think?'

  There was the virus, but he was clean. All county employees got screened each year.

  'I don't think so. I learned something about it. Health class or something. I don't think it makes you sick.'

  Health class. She loved that.

  'Don't say nothin to none of them,' she said when she reached the door. 'God, no.'

  Then she smiled. ‘I knowed you be likin me.'

  After that, it happened each week. He brought the dope in; the second or third time, he started bringing money out. Core handed him half back and Nile returned it. 'Oh, man,' said Core with disgust. He stuffed it into the pockets of Nile's trousers. 'Damn, man. You too much,' he said. Nile kept the money in a carton in his closet. He figured he'd send it to Michael sometime. Or buy something for Bug.

  Sometimes Lovinia and he fucked. There was a mattress there and Bug rode him. She had tiny little pouchy breasts and her ribs showed. She was so thin it was frightening. There never seemed to be much in it for her. She was working. He was a man and this was what men wanted. One thing Bug knew about was the world. She liked it when he said it felt good. She liked it when he said stuff afterwards. There were a hundred things Nile wanted to ask her. Did Hardcore know? But Nile was pretty sure he didn't. Was it because he was white? But that was crude. Was it because he was nice? Which is what she was always saying. Had she ever done it for money? Had she done this for Hardcore?

  'Ain you gone touch me?' she asked him the next time, once they were in the apartment.

  He wanted to ask her a hundred things. But nothing so much as this: What does it mean to you? Do you think about me all the time, the way I think of you? Do you feel your skin surge, do your hips and heart ache? What does it mean to you?

  He never really knew.

  'Dang,' Eddgar said. He stood by the refrigerator, a hand planted on his forehead. This was how Eddgar spoke in the privacy of his home, when Nile was around, as if Nile were still three years old. Imagine a person, a human being, ripping out a 'Dang' like he was Gomer Pyle or something. At moments, his father could do things - sniffle, pick his teeth, scratch - display a sign he was just as fucking dumb as everybody else, and Nile would hate him worse than any other person in his life. Because he couldn't get past him, couldn't get away. Sometimes, Nile felt like some poor yapping mutt, a dog in the yard running this way and that, barking at you, charging in your direction, and never remembering till he was jerked back so powerfully his forepaws left the lawn, never recalling, Hey, I'm tied to this goddamn stake in the ground. That was Nile. That was Eddgar.

  ‘I keep forgetting about this,' Eddgar said. He was holding the wad of notes he carried in his shirt pocket. It was strange to Nile how his father had turned into an old man. He was one of those strange old birds now with everything he had to remember written on a paper in his pocket.

  'What?'

  'The money. Make sure you tell Ordell I'm going to get to it. I just don't know where it's supposed to come from.' 'He's okay about it.' 'You didn't tell him?'

  'No. You mean where it went? No. I just said, you know, it'd be a little longer than we expected. He's cool, though. You know, I've been giving him some help.'

  'Help?'

  'Yeah, you know.' 'What kind of help?' 'Help. H, e, l, p.' 'As his probation officer?' 'Sort of. It's not important.'

  'Wait, wait. Nile. Pay attention. Look at me.' His father was at the kitchen table. 'What are you doing?' 'Eddgar - '

  'Wait. What are you doing,
Nile?'

  Fuck you doing? He stood in thefiery furnace. Fuck you doing? The question of his life.

  Eddgar

  You could never really judge Eddgar without seeing this. That's what he told himself. Those who scorned him - there were many, the reporters, the statehouse guttersnipes, the ugly claque tittering about Loyell Eddgar and his life of endless plotting - they could never really take account of him without seeing him as he lived here, in a three-room apartment carved out of the large house. He'd bought this house for June twenty-five years ago in the most grandiose gesture he could conceive of to reflect personal reform. It never mattered to her. She left anyhow, and over time he cut away the space. He had student roomers during the term, and in the winter a flophouse in the basement for homeless men. But privacy, solitude, remained precious. Those parts of the house where others dwelled were sealed off from the smaller area Eddgar and Nile occupied.

  Eddgar's rooms were spartan. He never bothered with carpets. The hardwood was chilly. He still fell wearily upon the same Danish Modern sofa which had traveled from their place in Damon, its orange cushions covered with Guatemalan prints. There was nothing on the walls, only a single picture in a frame on an old maple coffee table: Nile, June, Eddgar in the late sixties, the boy with flossy curls, a hand upraised in childish jubilance. Bulwarks of books and papers were piled neatly. In his bedroom, the spread was tucked precisely beneath the outline of the pillow, leaving no sign of the man who was here in the middle of the night with the covers in turmoil.

  What did he think then? Did he wake with longing? And for whom? That is what people wanted to know, he realized. But he could not fully say himself. He recalled coming to in that state and instantly feeling somehow thwarted and ashamed, his mind quickly diverted. He spoke then to God, as he had done in moments of utter privacy all his life. For years - the bad years as Eddgar thought of them, when so much seemed beyond his control - in those years he would hide from himself the fact he did this, so that the disarming knowledge that he was still secretly conducting this conversation with Him would come flying at Eddgar out of nowhere, like a levitating object at a seance. He would think, How can it be? But he never stopped. For one reason. He listened. At that age offour or five or six, somewhere far back there, one thick summery Southern night, with the locusts sawing themselves in shrieks of desiccated passion, the intimation came to Eddgar of the vast presence above who heard with welcome Eddgar's inner thoughts. God listened. Not always with patience or admiration. At times, Eddgar grappled with God, as Jacob wrestled the angel. Sometimes in his dreams, Eddgar saw them locked together, tussling, their naked flanks sweat-glistered and etched in shadow. He felt the overheated breath, the ferocious violent embrace of God nearly squeezing life from him, a sort of ecstasy arising amid the pain.

  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 f
inally.

  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.