Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'Get your ass back, Tuflac,' someone says to him. 'We done told you three times already.'

Eddie holds a hand aloft like an amiable host and directs Nile, Hobie, and Seth into a cafeteria which doubles as a visiting area. There are four or five other prisoners meeting with outsiders at various tables spread around the room. One man in a tie is clearly an attorney. The rest are family, girlfriends, making the odd visit on a weekday afternoon.

'Okay, now we need to talk,' says Hobie. He points Seth away. 'Got to be just Nile and me to protect the privilege.'

Inclined to protest, Seth can name no reason, except that he has come halfway across the country from Seattle to facilitate this meeting. He is relegated to one of the small tables bolted to the floor, while Hobie, somewhat triumphantly, directs Nile to the farthest corner. The cafeteria is compact, with glazed brick walls, spotlessly maintained, except for the stains and gang signs tooled into the white laminate tabletops. By terms of the jailhouse, this place is almost cheerful. Daylight, soothing as warm milk, emerges from a bank of barred windows, and three or four vending machines provide a touch of color. At the table nearest Seth, a slick Hispanic man is visiting with his girlfriend or his wife. With teased-up masses of dead-black hair, she has dressed to give him an eyeful – a tight red sleeveless top, cut daringly, and black jeans that make a taut casing for her healthy female bulk. Her eyes are painted so heavily they bring to mind Kabuki. She is up often to get coffee, cigarettes, a Coke. Coming and going, she and her man grab as much of each other as they can, a quick, relentless passing over of hands. They are flouting the rules, but the three or four guards in khaki looking on from their positions of retreat around the room remain impassive. Pleasure, so brief, can be forgiven.

Eddie, with time on his hands too, has approached Seth. 'So what-all is it you write?' he asks.

Seth rolls out his standard patter on the column: syndicated nationally, printed here in the Tribune.

'Oh yeah, yeah,' says Eddie, but it's clear he's never heard of Michael Frain and is mildly disappointed. They both momentarily contemplate this dead end. Casting about for a subject, Seth asks if Nile's encountered any trouble in here.

'Don't seem like. Had him in seg when he come in yesterday, but he asked for general population. Now, if he was over there in Department 2? I call that the Gladiator Wing, y'know, all these cats, nineteen years old, always rumblin and scuffiin. But he's all right here. Seems like he's okay with them BSDs. They won't let nobody kick his ass, take his food.'

'BSDs?'

'Black Saints Disciples, man. We get kind of familiar in here, you know?' Eddie, freely given to hilarity, laughs once more at his own remark, then rolls his toothpick around his fingertips before going on. 'You know, P O, coppers, shit, guards – you can be okay with these birds if they know where you comin from. When I started out, I worked on stateside, down in Rudyard? Lot of those officers, they just got a thing with the inmates. Their women come see 'em, guard like to come up, pinch her butt, smile like he got new teeth, and her man sittin on the other side of the glass can't do shit. Now you get you a shank in the back that way. Me? Take no shit, give no shit, man, that's my motto. I got myself in here, I'd be okay, same as Nile. Some them BSDs or GOs – Gangster Outlaws? – they'd cover me. Them gangs pretty much run the show in here anyway. You hear what I'm sayin?'

Seth shakes his head once. He doesn't want to say a thing to slow Eddie down. Seth's decided that the guard was right to start. A column about Eddie and the jail might be a terrific piece.

'Here,' says Eddie, lifting onto a chair one leg, decorated along the seam with a line of brown piping. He leans over confidentially now that he has found his subject. 'First thing they teach you, first day of training: Institution can only be run with the co-operation of the inmates. These days, we got a problem in here, we find whoever's ranking with the Saints, the Outlaws, we get it straightened out. See? What we want is a peaceful place. You hear? Nobody gettin cut in the shower, no gangbangers making war in the yard, no kind of three inmates waitin to cut off some guard's nuts, like they done down at Rudyard. That's what we want.'

'And what do they want?' A man who asks questions for a living, Seth knows from the way Eddie's perpetual verbal momentum suddenly loiters they have reached the good part.

'Them?' Eddie laughs again, more subdued. 'Now you ain't gonna write this, right?'

Seth lifts both hands to show he has no paper, no pen – as if it is the furthest thought from his mind. Eddie reverses the chair and takes a seat, his long arms crossed over the back. He has a moon face and a fine smile, in spite of a single missing incisor. His hairline, buzzed short, cuts a scalloped frontier across the back half of his head.

'What these gangsters want is not to have nobody all over them gettin their shit in here.'

'Shit?'

'Contraband, let's say. Don't you look at me like that. I'm not sayin anything ain't the truth. Everybody round here will tell you that. See, these gangbangers need that shit. Man, these kids in here, jail, it's like graduation for some of them: this is where the big boys go. Hey, you think I'm kiddin you? I'm not kiddin.' Eddie looks back toward Hobie, as if he has some hopes he might be nearby and able to agree. But Hobie and Nile are still engaged. Hobie's briefcase, a smooth pouch of umber-colored Italian leather, is on the table, and Hobie, as usual, is doing the talking. Beside them, each has a small paper cup of coffee, breathing steam. Eddie goes on.

'So when they on the outside, half these young men already thinkin, What-all this damn gang gonna do for me when I get in there? Gotta be anybody dis you, beat you down, man, gotta be all your gangbanger brothers down for you, kickin ass and shit. Gotta be. Now half these young men, more than half, they in here for narcotics and quite a number come in strung out. Gang's got to provide, see? Some others, you know, they like to get them a little buzz, break up the boredom. Either way, the dope's the gang. Like them ads on TV say: Membership got its privileges. Gives them money. Discipline. Gangs gotta get their shit in here.'

'We were searched pretty thoroughly coming in.'

'Hell yeah, you better bet we gonna search you, cause this here is a penal institution, man, we ain't gonna help nobody break the law. Sheriff's got to run for re-election you know. Mayor do too. But these gangbangers find a way. Shit comes in here, same as the money to pay for it. I mean, that's how it is. Everybody knows that. Kind of works, let's say, to mutual advantage.' Eddie smiles again, but on reflection he seems concerned that he may have shown excessive candor, particularly with a reporter. He jams the toothpick, long held between his fingers, back into his mouth and drifts off to his duties.

Kindle County, Seth thinks. Always something dirty doin. Always amazing him. Will he ever escape this place? No. He's wondered that for thirty years and now he knows the answer: No. This is where his dreams are set. In the gloomy winter light, thick as shellac. In the air of childhood, tinted with the oily-smelling smoke and ash of burnt coal. No escaping. He and Lucy have lived everywhere: Seattle, Pawtucket, Boston, Miami, and Seattle again for the last eleven years. But now that his life is up for grabs, now that this lugubrious mid-life mourning period, too prolonged to be called a crisis, has him thinking of fresh starts, he answered yes when the flight attendant asked, 'Going home?'

About ten minutes later, Hobie and Nile are done. Nile seems more pensive. Hobie says he'll see him tomorrow and Seth embraces Nile quickly, before he's returned to Eddie's custody. The guard waves goodbye, still laughing.