Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'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?'

'Of course not.'

'So what-all gone jump off here then, huh? You hate this motherfucker or what?' 'Eddgar?'

'Fuck yeah. Charlie Chan. You hate him? You gone let him do you like that?'

'No,' Nile said mildly. 'But I mean – ' He got dumb like he do, can't even think to talk or move. 'I mean, what choice do I have?'

On the street, man, standin round chillin, every dude say he a man. Every bro is down for his. But it ain but half strap up. And in the joint, you see the same. All these proud, tough motherfuckers claimin Goobers, whoop them some and they be beggin, 'Don't do me like that, I ain representin no one.' But Nile, man, he was the lamest, the weakest. Like to think he was a punk, but the stiff-dick motherfucker busy now with this skinny little ho, she suck you dick, man, ain no better than she polishin you shoes, but Nile, he like that too.

'Straight down, man. You tell that daddy of yourn this. You tell him, Core say you be here 6:15, tomorrow mornin. Gone meet in the street, man.'

'For what? What are you going to do?'

'Gone tell him the word, man: Ain no foo'. He ain even think, that motherfucker. He think he the owner of the motherfuckin world, man, and he don't even know I got plans of my own. What kind of dumb motherfucker he think I bein? Man, you insurance now. I got you fingerprints and all over all that dope money, man. I been savin that shit up like in the bank. I dime on you, man, PA gone call me 'sir.' Best do like I say. And he be sayin, you gone beef on me? Bullshit. What proof got?'

Nile made a face. 'Don't be an asshole, man. We been cool. You don’t have to dis me like that.'

'I ain dissin. I ain hissin or dissin. I ain fuckin you momma. This just how it be, man. It cold, man. Thass all I'm gone tell yo daddy. Tell him, ' 'Daddy, man, it's too late. Too late. Trust me or bust me, man, and you ain gone bust me.'' Hear?'

Nile looked at him, those lame eyes, skittering like bugs. Hardcore could hardly stand it.

'Listen up, dude. You hate this motherfucker worse than I do. Ain that straight shit, now? Ain nothin gone happen here you wudn't done youself. You do like I'm sayin. Ain nothin for you to do after that. Hear?' Core took Nile's chin. He made him look at him, like he hated to do. 'Listen here,' he said. ‘I be you daddy now.' June

Fear and danger. Well, she'd been here before. Driving, June felt her pulse stirring in unlikely places – above her elbows, in her neck beneath the points of her chin. Anxiety, danger, always had divided her. A fat old woman, cheerful and controlled, gripped the wheel of Eddgar's Nova, careful not to let the needle of the speedometer drift even a mile over the limit. Shrunken down inside her was someone else, ready to sing out in terror. She'd been here before, her hair roots, her nipples, herfingertips juiced with adrenal output. She tuned in Dusty radio for a second, hoping for some great old tune, and then thought, No, no, too much, way too much, and laughing at herself drove on, into DuSable toward Grace Street. The large forms were somehow shocking after the low, soft shapes of the prairie. How could humans live like this, exist at such close quarters, with the sacred, saving earth, from which life sprang, paved over beneath their feet? A kid who looked to have been up all night gunned by in an old jacked-up blue deuce and a quarter, mouthing dirty words in Spanish, the decorative fringe of an old bedspread shimmying in his rear window.

Were those the best years, she wondered suddenly, those years of danger? How could they be? She had been so miserable by the end – frightened of everything, of Eddgar and of herself, of what she had done. She was the one who demanded they look after Michael. She parted from Eddgar to do it, insisting they could not simply leave wreckage in their wake. How could it seem so wonderful now? She asked Eddgar a few years ago, when she was in town, apropos of absolutely nothing, she asked, 'Do you ever think about that time?' He answered, 'No.' Not an instant's hesitation. No. It was gone. It could not be reclaimed. It was gone, like his childhood, like their marriage, like the many events of everyone's past that meant something when they were happening but would never return.

When she looked back to those years, the years with Eddgar -from the start to the end – there was always a universe of stalled feelings inside her. At the planetarium here in the city, you could sit and watch the stars turn about you as the earth moved through a season, a year. Living with Eddgar was like that. It always seemed as if he were the single point around which the whole moving panorama of the sky turned – him, and her because she was beside him. She never spoke to anyone about Eddgar. There was never anyone else who understood. Not now. Not then. Perhaps she did not understand herself. In bed with various men years ago, she sometimes mentioned his problems, as if trying to save somebody's opinion. It was always the same routine, lying there, smoking cigarettes, watching the ceiling, because she did not want to think about who in particular was next to her. And in this mood of celestial detachment, she would remark how Eddgar had been more or less incapable since Nile's birth. Did she want them to know she needed less than they might think? Of course, in those days, she would have laughed at the word 'unfaithful.' Doctrine forbade chattelizing any relationship. She was not Eddgar's possession. It was a piece of regressive patrimony to say that her pleasure was not her own business. But she remembered all of that, sleeping with his colleagues, stretching her body against a dozen men she did not know well, allowing them inside her – she remembered it with shame, because Eddgar was there anyway, and they both knew it.

She had never loved anyone the same way. Not before or since. Thank God. Thank God. He was a divine, beautiful thing when he started out; she loved him in the illusion-haloed manner of a teen, this beautiful young man with incredible eyes who spoke about God with an unnerving intimacy. She'd been raised in a religious home. Her mother passed hours on the veranda, with an iced tea and the Bible on her lap. She died rocking and trying to decipher the same verses she'd read her whole life. Secretly, from childhood forward, June had believed none of it. And yet when Eddgar spoke, she believed she had met the man – there had to be a man – to take her to the greater life out there. It was some variant, she supposed, on the idea of heaven, that there was a better life here on earth, too. He was inspired, on fire with the rage to make that better life. Teach me! she thought. Share it! She was so jealous of his faith, the more so when she realized years on that the only real expression of Eddgar's passion was for the people who were not close to him. He loved the poor like puppets, like dolls, a love that left him in complete control. For Nile, for her – 'impotent' was the right word. But his passion was like the heat of the sun. She always knew it was really the love he wanted to feel for them.