Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

He was the son of his son — he was here, he was left behind.

Little things got to him. The mitzvah of maakeh. Build a fence around your roof lest someone should fall from it. He questioned why he had bought the toy soldiers all those years ago. He fretted over the fact that he’d made Joshua learn “The Star-Spangled Banner” on the piano. He wondered if, when he taught the boy to play chess, he had somehow instilled a battle mentality? Attack along the diagonals, son. Never allow a back-rank mate. There must have been somewhere that he’d hard-wired the boy. Still, the war had been just, proper, right. Solomon understood it in all its utility. It protected the very cornerstones of freedom. It was fought for the very ideals that were under assault in his court every day. It was quite simply the way in which America protected itself. A time to kill and a time to heal. And yet sometimes he wanted to agree with Claire that war was just an endless factory of death; it made other men rich, and their son had been dispatched to open the gates, a rich boy himself. Still, it was not something he could afford to think of. He had to be solid, firm, a pillar. He seldom talked about Joshua, even to Claire. If there was anyone to talk to, it would be Harry, who knew a thing or two about longing and belonging, but it wasn’t something to talk about right now. He was careful, Soderberg, always careful. Maybe too careful, he thought. He sometimes wished he could let it all out: I’m the son of my son, Harry, and my son’s dead.

He lifted the glass to his face, sniffed the wine, the deep, earthy aroma. A moment of levity — that’s what he wanted. A good, quiet moment. Something gentle and without noise. While away a few hours with his good pal. Or perhaps even call in sick for the rest of the day, go home, spend an afternoon with Claire, one of those afternoons when they could just sit together and read, one of those pure moments he and his wife shared increasingly as their marriage went along. He was happy, give or take. He was lucky, give or take. He didn’t have everything he wanted, but he had enough. Yes, that’s what he wanted: just a quiet afternoon of nothingness. Thirty-odd years of marriage hadn’t made a stone out of him, no.

A little bit of silence. A gesture toward home. A hand on Harry’s wrist and a word or two in his ear: My son. It was all he needed to say, but why complicate it now?

He lifted the glass and clinked with Harry.

— Cheers.

— To not falling, said Harry.

— To being able to get back up.

Soderberg was beginning to swing away from wanting the tightrope walker in his courtroom now: it would be too much of a headache, surely. He would have preferred to just fritter the day away at the long bar, with his dear friend, toasting the gods and letting the light fall.

— CRIMINAL COURT ARRAIGNMENT Part One-A, now in session. All rise.

The court officer had a voice that reminded him of seagulls. A peculiar caw to her, the tail end of her words swerving away. But the words demanded an immediate silence and the buzz in the rear of the court died.

— Quiet, please. The Honorable Judge Soderberg presiding.

He knew immediately he had the case. He could see the reporters in the pews of the spectator section. They had that jowly, destroyed look to them. They wore open-neck shirts and oversize slacks. Unshaven, whiskied. The more obvious giveaways were the notebooks with yellow covers jutting out of their jacket pockets. They were craning their necks to see who might emerge from the door behind him. A few extra detectives sat on the front bench for the show. Some off-duty clerks. Some businessmen, possibly even Port Authority honchos. A few others, maybe a security man or two. He could even see a tall, red-headed sketch artist. And that meant only one thing: the television cameras would be outside.

He could feel the wine at his toes. He wasn’t drunk — nowhere near it — but he could still feel it swishing at the edges of his body.

— Order in the court. Silence. The court is now in session.

The doors creaked open behind him and in slouched a line of nine defendants toward the benches along the side wall. The usual riffraff, a couple of con men, a man with his eyebrow sliced open, two clapped-out hookers, and, walking at the rear of them all, a grin stretched from ear to ear, a slight bounce in his step, was a young white man, strangely clad: it could only be the tightrope walker.

In the gallery there was a stir. The reporters reached for their pencils. A slap of noise, as if a liquid had suddenly splashed through them.

The funambulist was even smaller than Soderberg had imagined. Impish. Dark shirt and tights. Strange, thin ballet slippers on his feet. There was something even washed-out about him. He was blond, in his mid-twenties, the sort of man you might see as a waiter in the theater district. And yet there was a confidence that rolled off him, a swagger that Soderberg liked. He looked like a small, squashed-down version of Joshua, as if some brilliance had been deposited in his body, programmed in like one of Joshua’s hacks, and the only way out for him was through performance.

It was obvious that the tightrope walker had never been arraigned before. The first-timers were always dazed. They came in, huge-eyed, stunned by it all.

The walker stopped and looked from one side of the courtroom to the other. Momentarily frightened and bemused. As if there was way too much language in this place. He was thin, lithe, a quality of the leonine to him. He had quick eyes: the glance ended up on the bench.

Soderberg made a split second of eye contact. Broke his own rule, but so what? The walker understood and half nodded. There was something gleeful and playful there in the walker’s eyes. What could Soderberg do with him? How could he manipulate it? After all, it was reckless endangerment, at the very least, and that could end upstairs, a felony, with the possibility of seven years. What about disorderly conduct? Soderberg knew deep down that it’d never go in that direction. It’d be kept a minor misdemeanor and he’d have to work it out with the D.A. He’d play it smart. Pull something unusual from the hat. Besides, the reporters were there, watching. The sketch artist. The TV cameras, outside the courtroom.

He called his bridge over and whispered in her ear: Who’s on first? It was their little joke, their judicial Abbott and Costello. She showed him the calendar and he skimmed down quickly over the cases, flicked a quick look at the sin bin, sighed. He didn’t have to do them in order, he could juggle things around, but he tapped his pencil against the first pending case.

The bridge stepped away and cleared her throat.

— Docket ending six-eight-seven, she said. The People versus Tillie Henderson and Jazzlyn Henderson. Step up, please.

The assistant D.A., Paul Concrombie, shook out the creases in his jacket. Opposite him, the Legal Aid attorney brushed back his long hair and came forward, spreading the file out on the shelf. In the back of the court, one of the reporters let out an audible groan as the women stood up from the bench. The younger hooker was milky-skinned and tall, wearing yellow stilettos, a neon swimsuit under a loose black shirt, a baubled necklace. The older one wore a one-piece swimsuit and high silver heels, her face a playground of mascara. Absurd, he thought. Sunbathing in the Tombs. She looked as if she had been around awhile, that she’d done her share of circling the track.

— Aggravated robbery in the second degree. Produced on an outstanding warrant from November 19, 1973.

The older hooker blew a kiss over her shoulder. A white man in the gallery blushed and lowered his head.

— This isn’t a nightclub, young lady.