Scott Turow - The Laws of our Fathers

'Look. You've got to leave it behind. We both do. All of it. Hobie. Everything else. Everything is changing, every-thing. It's like what we wanted and now we're getting it, and it's happened, and whether it's good or bad, we have to go with it. We just have to go with it.' I gripped her shoulders, much as June had gripped mine, and peered into Lucy's small, bright eyes, hoping to see there some sign, some spark, so that I would know I'd persuaded her and, therefore, myself.

I called my father at work. He was there six days a week, reliably. Although it was Saturday, he never departed before 5:00.

'Dad, you haven't gotten any goofy calls or anything, have you, from some guys out here?'

I heard him calculating, drumming. A symphony soughed faintly from a small console radio he kept behind his desk.

'Calls? You refer to what, Seth?'

'There are some guys here. Nuts. I've seen them around the building. I don't know who they are or what they are. Somebody says they're witches.'

'Vitches!' Back in Kindle County, my father was astounded by such a thing.

'I don't know. Satanists. They call themselves the Dark Revolution. You can't believe the goofballs out here, Dad. Jesus. One of these guys has got an Afro that's literally dyed the colors of the spectrum. I'm not kidding. Red hair, blue hair, purple hair. For-real.'

My father grunted in disbelief.

'Anyway, a guy I know pretty well, he came to me yesterday, strictly on the q.t., and he says these guys, the Dark Revolution guys, have been talking about holding me for ransom because I'm Bernard Weissman's son.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' said my father. Fur Gott sake. 'For God's sake. Have you explained?'

'Sure, I explained. "Not that Weissman. No relation of any kind." I said it all. But I'm not sure this other guy believed me. I just wondered. He said they'd had this plan for like a long time, you know? And they got nervous or something because they heard I'm about to leave? I thought maybe they were going to do something. I don't know.'

'Have you contacted the police?'

'The police? What'll they do?'

'The police will do what the police do. Investigate. Look into matters.'

'Pa, Jesus – if they investigated every person in Damon, California, who said weird things, they'd work from dawn to dusk and never finish going down Campus Boul. That's all I have to do is piss these guys off. The thing for me is just to collect my crap and get out of the country.'

After a pause, my father said, 'That is no solution.'

June sat watching me, near the phone. She was close enough to whisper. She held a notepad and a pen, but she had not added a word yet. Instead, she was faintly smiling. I was well past the dialogue we'd rehearsed, flying free, and feeling a distinct glee in secretly holding the upper hand on my father.

'Look, let's not fight about this. I'll call you in a couple of days.'

'Seth, I want your word that we will have a further discussion before you take any ultimate steps. I expect such a promise.'

'Yeah, I promise. But something has to happen by Monday. Look, Pa. Don't say anything to Mama, okay?'

He snorted. Of course not. In her state. Ransom demands. That is the last thing she needs to hear. 'It would be straight to the asylum,' he said.

'That was great,' said June, as she took the phone. 'What?'

My father's last remark about the asylum was like a stab wound.

'We've talked about this,' June said. 'Your safety will never be in doubt. They'll know you're safe at every moment. It will simply be a question of your release.'

The insanity of this, the debased frantic nature of everything, inside me and elsewhere, swam over me. Eddgar came down to my apartment in a few minutes. It was just as everyone said: he was never present when anything of consequence occurred. June related all the plans. Eddgar sat beside her, brittle as glass, the muscles popping up along his jaw. Occasionally, when something required discussion, the two of them left the room.

'Everything's all right,' June said. He nodded remotely, so that even now you could not say for certain he knew what she was talking about.

Out on the landing, there were footsteps, a heavy thump, before a piffling knock on the door. Eddgar had wheeled with alarm, but when he threw the door back, Lucy was there, whipping her hair out of her eyes and sniffling. She wore her backpack. A huge green duffel, stuffed oozingly, slumped over the threshold. Her pillow was beneath her arm. She considered the three of us, seeming to hold her ground.

'I'm coming to Canada,' she told me.

'we have your son,' the note read. As in the movies, the message was a collage of letters clipped out of the newspaper and pasted on the page. The words had been surprisingly easy to find. A Sears ad in the Chronicle proclaimed, 'we have your size! Sale on Friday.' June had stood over the opened pages. She said, 'Fate.'

It was Saturday night. Lucy was downstairs with Nile; Eddgar, of course, was nowhere to be seen. Assembling the package, June wore yellow rubber gloves. She and Eddgar were deadly earnest about precautions, even though I continued to explain that my parents would never contact the authorities.

'Control the random element,' she said. When June finished, she headed off for Railway Express. Sent by air, the package, a small white gift box, would be delivered to my father's office on Monday before noon. Within, he'd find the note and the mezuzah I had received from our congregation at my bar mitzvah. It was a tiny silver cylinder, emblazoned with a Star of David, containing a parchment scroll on which were written the words Deuteronomy required all Jews to speak each day. I wore it mindlessly, regarding it as an implement of fashion, a Jewish equalizer, so that in gym I would have neckwear like the gentile guys who wore St Christopher's medals and crosses. Yet it didn't seem strange that my parents would recognize this as emblematic of me. That thought, unexpected, was the only tweaking of genuine feelings I experienced. I handed the mezuzah to June with the disembodied emotions that had accompanied much of what I'd done lately. Once again, I was undergoing something momentous, but time just passed, things just happened. Traumhaft. When the word came to mind, I suddenly beamed. June looked at me oddly, but did not wait to ask if I was having second thoughts.

'So he comes back yesterday,' Lucy explained to Michael at dinner on Sunday night, 'and he just starts packing. I mean, Jesus. "Where's my dashiki? Where's my pic." He's running all over. That's all he's saying. And I'm like, "Hobie, what's going on here, talk to me, honey," and it's like I'm not even there. I'm following him around -' She couldn't bear more. She started crying. It was nothing to notice by now. She had been crying constantly for twenty-four hours.

'He said, "You better get out of here, too. The shit's coming down now and it ain't too funky." '

'What did that mean?' I'd heard the story too many times, but in each telling there was something new. 'Cops?'

She had no idea. 'He was in this like for-real sweat? He kept running to the window? And I'm trying to ask him about, you know, us – Honestly. He looked at me! Like I was flipped out completely. Like, who could bother. And I'm like, "Jesus, Hobie, where am I supposed to go, what am I supposed to do?" And it's -' Weeping, she couldn't find words to relay his indifference.

'Where is he?' Michael asked. 'Does he know where you are?' She flapped both arms uselessly. Michael, for his part, was somewhat better. He still looked desolate and bleary, but he appeared more contained.

'I don't know. Sort of. I told him, "I think I'll help Seth get up to Canada." ' She looked at me. 'Do you think he'll call?'

'No,' I said. ‘I don't.' I was well past the point of humoring her. It would be some drive north – honking geese and a blubbering hippie. Not that I wouldn't have welcomed the chance to see