Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'I'd like a word with Sonny.'

'Klonsky? Haven't seen her all week, mate. More. The gypsy moth that one. Here and there. Waiting tables down at Robson's. Two shifts. Trying to raise a treasury for her departure. Peace Corps thing seems ready to commence. Going to the Philippines, she is.'

She'd shared the news with me during her last call.

'Colorful locale, I suppose,' said Graeme. 'Whole gambit's a bit unclear to me, I must say. In a dither, really. Beneath the cool exterior. My estimate, at least.'

As much as I hated him, it was consoling to hear a judgment so close to mine. Over time, I'd begun to take Graeme's measure. He played a sort of showboat Brit, more English than the Queen. He made few accommodations to the American vocabulary, and uttered Anglicisms whenever he could, as if he remained convinced that the War of Independence had not been decided on cultural merit. At moments, his voice trilled in his Oxford accent; at other times he sounded like a Cockney chimney sweep. He had more shapes than Caliban, a man for all moments, who placed himself above American culture and who, I see now, would have run for hiding if anyone mentioned returning to his homeland. He savored American freedom, and the transposition he'd made to a realm where no one thought the less of his middle-class accent.

' Step in, Kemosabe. Neighbor-types get their knickers in a knot when I go traipsing about in my johnnies.' He offered me coffee or tiger's milk, but I went no farther than the foyer to drop Sonny's things. Without the exotic party scene, the house was appealing, small but lovely, with marks of money and intellect that reminded me of University Park: simple sofas and large paintings on the walls bristling with emotion, many Mexican artifacts, and rugs thrown down at angles. The tasteful furnishings struck a false note against the sybaritic life Graeme led here. I expected the odor of fucking to linger like traces from a litter box.

He mentioned the bombing, naturally. University people today were speaking of little else. On Campus Boul in the morning, a trio of hippies, lit up on crystal meth, were rambling up and down the walks, crooning that the rev had begun.

‘I heard they like found a can of battery acid at the scene. Any idea, man, what that's about?'

'Battery acid,' repeated Graeme. He hadn't heard that. 'Not too surprising, I'd say. Chemical name sulfuric acid. One of your principal ingredients in nitroglycerine, which every anarchist and revo knows can be mixed with paraffin, guncotton, a few other items to make plastique.' He nodded, satisfied as always with his vast learning.

'What about sandbags?' I asked. 'They wouldn't have anything to do with this, right?' 'Au contraire, laddie. When you've got your high-powered explosive ready to go, you direct it by tamping. Create an aperture for the explosive force. Sandbags the best, apparently. Well-placed sandbag very important to effective bombing, so they say.' Graeme scratched his nose. I could not move now. Hobie, I thought. Oh Jesus, Hobie. Graeme was watching me carefully.

'Any little bugger we hold near and dear involved with this battery acid and sandbags?' he asked. Graeme's revolution was made in the bedroom, where the persons present could become a universe without rules, where their conduct could be as uniquely personal as it is within a dream. Otherwise, he preferred peace. As he'd made clear since I met him, he didn't approve of the Eddgars.

'It was just a story I heard, Graeme.'

'That so, love? Plenty of stories about. Bloody place is fucking rife with rumor, I'd say. Mythopoesy at work. Psychedelic era, what? Hard to tell fantasy from reality all round. Wouldn't give you twopence for most of what people say.' He eyed me coolly – contemptuously. 'Jolly good moment to step forward, I'd think. Sell out or watch out, that'd be my advice. Sides have been chosen, love. Best recognize that.'

I wasn't sure if he was trying to wring information from me or do me a favor. He passed me a penetrating look, clearly meant in warning, and then nodded his whitish pageboy toward the door. He said he'd tell Sonny I'd come by.

By the time I got home from work, near 4:00, Eddgar had been released. As it turned out, the Damon town police had rounded up the usual suspects – every rad they could find from One Hundred Flowers. Kellett, Eddgar, Cleveland Marsh. Six or seven others. Members of Eddgar's organization had stood vigil outside the police station most of the day, shouting slogans; I felt some momentary guilt that I had not joined them. Around 2:00, Eddgar's lawyers had filed a petition in court, and the police, rather than undergo the hearing, had released him and most of the others. They told Eddgar and the reporters that he remained a suspect. The only one who was still in custody was Cleveland. When they'd picked him up, they'd found four pounds of cocaine and more than one thousand cellophane-wrapped hits of LSD in his apartment. He would be charged with felonies. As Eddgar told me about all of this, I had another anxious thought of Hobie. I knew better than to ask Eddgar about Hobie's role, since revolutionary discipline would prohibit acknowledging anything, but I felt sick with the notion of the phone call I might have to make to Gurney Tuttle.

Near dinner, I went next door to see Michael. He was sitting in the dark in an old easy chair. He wore only blue jeans. His long feet and sinewy chest were bare. As June had suggested, he was shattered.

'You okay?'

He lifted a hand to the light. His eyes were red, swimming in sorrow. His head was crushed back in the chair, matted against his own goldish dreadlocks.

'What a horrible day,' he said. It occurred to me that he must have been sitting in that spot for hours. I'd always understood that Michael viewed himself as a neutralist. He cared for Nile; he adored physics. I had no doubt he was in love with June. In all of this, he belonged to a higher, more ephemeral realm, one where a simple purity of feeling was acceptable. Now he'd been injected, against his will, into the rough-hewn world of politics. 1 felt, of course, enormous kinship for him, as another soul mauled by love.

'You want to talk about it?' I asked.

He shook his head no. Throughout the day, I had pondered how much June was admitting when she told me Michael felt betrayed. I had been sure just a moment before that she was telling me Eddgar and she were blameless. But as I turned over June's spare remarks, trying to collect their logic, I'd seen that as usual there'd been more said than I'd recognized. Near midnight she'd left Eddgar's meeting to be with Michael. That had to have been by design, by prearrangement. And as a result, he was out of the labs, otherwise occupied at the moment of impact. Neither I – nor he – could presume that was accidental. Standing in his bare apartment, I gave him what comfort I could.

'Look, I mean, thinking about it-' I lowered my voice. 'She protected you, man,' I said. 'She did protect you.'

He planted the heel of his palm squarely in the middle of his face and began to cry again. The physicist who had been injured was named Patrick Langlois – a Quebecer. He had lost almost all of his right hand. His thumb remained, some ghoulish vestige attached to a fragment of his arm. Even the dry descriptions on the news had been sickening. Michael must have known him well.

From Lucy's remarks, I took it that Michael spoke to June of love, commitment, life together. Yet in imagining their relations, I doubted June was interested in any of that. She was merely seeking some fugitive reprieve in a region of pure feeling, of silence, beyond the territory of doctrine. And a part of Michael must have accepted those terms, even welcomed them. That was his truest dwelling place anyhow. But now he was left to wonder about motivations. What idle comments of his had been passed back through One Hundred Flowers to the slick commandos who brought their plastique and detonators in the dark? What if he hadn't gotten June's message? What if he'd decided to work late, enjoying, as he often did, the hours when he had the vast laboratory to himself? He had to wonder about Eddgar as well. Was he accomplishing revolution or some blow against his wife's lover? Nonetheless, I could guess what the worst part was for him. That June knew. Knew and had bowed to Eddgar's will. In the most telling, the most graphic way, she had demonstrated to everyone her ultimate loyalties. Whatever hopes June had raised in Michael, she could not have more clearly chosen Eddgar over him. She had spoken advisedly. He felt betrayed.