Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'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.