Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'Nothing. I just got some stuff in there.'

Hobie had an uncharacteristic poor-mouth expression and I pushed past his hand to inspect. The car was full of oozing burlap sacks, piled on the front and back seats. Hobie, who'd followed, pointed to the sky and told me it was raining.

'Hobie, don't be a douche bag. What is this, the Magical Mystery Tour? What the hell do you have back here, man?'

'Sandbags.'

'Sandbags?'

'Suckers are heavy, too. Wudn't even sure Nellybelle was gonna make it up the hill on Shattuck.' Nellybelle was his car, named after Roy Rogers's sidekick's jeep.

'You get the lowdown from Noah? Are we havin another flood?'

'It's just a favor, man. That's all. I was rappin with Cleveland a little after Contracts yesterday, and he asked when I was comin this way to hang with you. So he's like, well do I mind any stoppin at an auto-supply place – tells me where a couple are – pick up a can of battery acid and twenty sandbags. Gives me the money and all. Weird, right? Saidjust leave the car unlocked. Somebody'd get it.'

'Eddgar?' Cleveland didn't know anyone else in the building. 'Man, I didn't ask. It's just a favor. Dude does for me. I do for him.'

'Hobie, you better watch your ass.'

He hooted at that, particularly coming from me, Eddgar's admiring employee. 'Come on. Battery acid and sandbags? Gimme a break, Jack. Why should I be gettin uptight about that?'

'Well, what are they doing with it?'

Hobie shrugged. 'Only thing I could figure is like winter travel. You know, Gurney's always topping off his battery and throwing a few sandbags in the trunk around this time of year. But it's gonna be a hell of a climate change for California, if that's what he's getting ready for.'

'Maybe he got an advance forecast from the Weathermen.'

We larked around for a moment with the notion. What a gas if the Weathermen really knew something about the weather. Or, better yet, could change it. Talk about making trouble.

When we came back later, I was careful, at Hobie's instruction, not to pull in next to his car. Instead, I watched him cross the lot. It was still raining. Inside, he turned my way and rolled down the window so I could see him as he mouthed a single word: 'Gone.'

One Wednesday afternoon in January, I walked into Michael Frain's apartment, calling for Nile, and found Michael in bed with June Eddgar. It was around 4 p.m. Down on campus at another Student Mobilization Committee meeting, I'd been pierced by a sudden fear June had forgotten I was off today, and that Nile, as a result, would have no one looking after him. Shouting the little boy's name, I'd rushed through all the places in the building he was likely to be. From the bedroom, I was sure I'd heard Michael answer, 'In here.'

When I pushed open the door, June was sitting up in the bed, with the sheet drawn across her chest and her other hand pinching the bridge of her nose. Lying beside her, Michael was turned away from me. I could see nothing but his skinny shoulders and the pale bald spot among his longish dreadlock curls. But even at that I recognized him. It was, after all, his apartment.

I said exactly one word, 'Whoops,' and turned completely around. 1 ransacked myself for some idea of what to do next and finally, foolishly, called Nile's name again.

'We said, "He's not here," ' June answered behind me. She was in the doorway now, unclothed. She confronted me flatfooted, utterly confident of herself, as I took in what she unflinchingly revealed – limbs of trim strength, the dark female triangle, a tummy barely sloping and withered by childbirth, her daring uncompromising nature. Released from her ponytail, her bronze hair fell to her shoulders. 'Nile's with Eddgar,' she added, clearly aware of the boldness of speaking her husband's name in these circumstances. That said, June closed the door.

June had always seemed elusive to me. Campus legends painted her as a revolutionary drone, fully governed by Eddgar and the requirements of doctrine. There were astounding rumors – that at Eddgar's demand she'd slept with the entire Panther leadership council in Oakland; that she'd taken wild risks smuggling in weapons for the Marin County jail breakout. But to me that picture never seemed quite right. She rarely passed a mirror without a prudent look at the fine figure she saw there, straightening her collar, patting a stray ringlet back into place, still a bit the Southern cotillion queen. June's training at Easton was in theater, although, in the spirit of the cultural revolution, she now worked on the line in a salmon-canning plant in the East Bay. Yet at moments she continued to exude a star's enigmatic domineering air. She was forever laying a hand on my elbow and somehow getting me to do favors – run to the store, throw wash into the dryer – although we both knew these errands weren't part of my job. Even Eddgar, at moments, seemed wary of her. Now and then I saw them in the kitchen, hip to hip, debating in low voices beneath an old console radio playing to foil any wiretap. Eddgar watched her tensely lest something be missed at his expense, his lean jaw set, his focus unblinking.

The dimensions of the Eddgars' relationship, always unclear to me, now seemed unfathomable. But no one else, it turned out, was as shaken by my discovery as I was. Sonny, when I told her later that afternoon, actually laughed.

'You mean this isn't like the shock of the century?' I demanded of her. 'You don't find it perverted? Don't look at me that way. It's weird, man. She's a mother, for crying out loud. She's fifteen years older than him. I mean -' I couldn't find the words.

'God, are you uptight.' I was always unnerved that Sonny's sophistication about sexual matters was so much greater than mine. Most girls I'd grown up with fretted obsessively about their virginity, but Zora was a freethinker and in late adolescence Sonny seemed to have found welcome solace in the attentions of men.

'Uptight?' I asked. ‘I mean, what about Eddgar?'

'What about him? Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he likes it.'

'Eddgar?' There were many disciples of free love in Damon, but it was hard to imagine Eddgar as one of them. 'Think about this. I bet she's the one who convinced Eddgar they can trust Michael. You know. Even though he's hooked into Applied Research and that whole thing? I'll bet she did.'

'So?'

'So, it's like her revolutionary movement is all in the hips.'

I debated for a few days about whether to mention what I'd seen to Hobie and Lucy. He was a menace with secrets, especially when he could use them against someone, like Eddgar, whom he wanted to cut down to size. But the gossip was too sensational to keep to myself and I finally shared it at Doobie Hour. It turned out both of them already knew.

Lucy nodded stoically. 'It's sad for him, really,' she answered. 'For Michael?' Over time, Lucy had succeeded far more than the rest of us in drawing Michael out. No one ever disliked Lucy; she was too passionately sincere. Men, especially, seemed to pour their hearts out to her, stirred by the way her tiny brimming brown eyes, her entire being, seemed given over to whatever they had to say. For Michael, so ill at ease, this avid, unquestioning interest must have been especially welcome. Lucy and he usually cooked together, on the weekends. The rest of us did the scutwork while they toiled happily in the kitchen, murmuring to each other like children. Lucy let cheerful talk pour from herself with the natural forward motion of a fresh running spring. It hadn't occurred to me, until now, that there'd been anything confessional about their discussions.

'He wants her to leave Eddgar,' Lucy explained. 'Leave?' I'd envisioned this relationship as no more than a dalliance.

‘I mean, her thing with Eddgar is a nothing. Nothing,' she repeated, with an emphasis that suggested sex. 'Not since Nile,' she added. The intimacy of this detail threw me for a loop. I suspected at once that June – or Michael – was simply inventing excuses.