Nathan Hill - The Nix

“Shall we sit?” the lawyer said, and together they joined Faye at the table, a rectangular table made of weathered wooden planks that probably had seen another life as a fence or barn. Three water glasses sat sweating onto cork coasters. The lawyer sat and adjusted his tie, which was mahogany-colored, as opposed to his more cocoa pants. He placed both his hands on his briefcase and smiled. Faye kept staring in her neutral, detached, indifferent way. She looked as austere and unfussy and bleak as the apartment itself — a single long space with a bank of windows facing north toward the tall buildings of downtown Chicago. The walls were white and bare. There was no television. There was no computer. The furniture was simple and restrained. Samuel noted the total lack of things that needed to be plugged in. It was as though she had ejected all unnecessary things from her life.

Samuel sat across from her and nodded like he might nod to a stranger on the street: slight downward tilt of the chin.

“Thank you for coming,” she said.

Another nod.

“How have you been?” she asked.

He did not answer her immediately, but instead glared at her with an expression he hoped projected steely resolve and coldness. “Fine,” he finally said. “Just fine.”

“Good,” she said. “And your father?”

“He’s great. ”

“Well okay then!” the lawyer said. “Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way.” He laughed nervously. “Why don’t we go ahead and begin?” Small beads of sweat were now manifesting on his forehead. He picked involuntarily at his shirt, which was not exactly white, but that gray-white of something that’s been washed many times, with definite yellow discoloring at the armpits.

“Now, Professor Anderson, sir, this would be an ideal moment to ask your question regarding our primary interest today.” The lawyer reached across the table and pressed a button on the microphone that sat between Samuel and his mother. A small diode on the microphone glowed a placid blue.

“And what question would that be?” Samuel said.

“Regarding your mother’s heroic protest against tyranny, sir.”

“Right.” Samuel looked at her. Up close like this, he found it difficult to reconcile this new person with the woman he used to know. She seemed to have lost all the softness of her former self — her long soft hair and soft arms and soft skin. A new, harder body had replaced all that. Samuel could see the outline of her jaw muscles just below the skin. The ripple her collarbone made across her chest. The swell of her biceps. Her arms were like ropes that ships use to dock with.

“Okay, fine,” Samuel said. “Why did you do it? Why did you throw rocks at Governor Packer?”

His mother looked at the lawyer, who popped open his briefcase and fished out a single sheet of paper, dense with text on one side, which he handed to Faye and which she read verbatim.

“Regarding my actions toward Republican presidential candidate and former Wyoming governor Sheldon Packer, hereinafter referred to simply as ‘the governor,’ ” she said, and she cleared her throat, “I do hereby attest, maintain, swear, certify, and solemnly affirm that my throwing gravel in the direction of the governor should in no way be construed as an attempt to hurt, assault, injure, batter, maim, cripple, deform, mangle, or otherwise create a reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact with the governor nor anyone the gravel may have had inadvertent physical exposure with, nor was it my intention to inflict emotional distress, pain, suffering, misery, anguish, or trauma to anyone who witnessed or was otherwise affected by my purely political and symbolic actions. My actions were a necessary and essential and knee-jerk response to the governor’s fascist politics and therefore, having no alternative with regards to the time, place, or manner of my response, not volitional, the governor’s extreme right-wing, pro-gun, pro-war, pro-violence rhetoric having put me under unusual and substantial duress to such a degree as to constitute a reasonable belief on my behalf of bodily harm to my person. I also believed that the governor’s relentless and fetishistic law-and-order pro-violence stance implied consent to engage in violent roughhousing-type behavior in much the same way people who engage in sadomasochism for sexual gratification consent to being struck without criminal or civil liability. I chose gravel as the vehicle of my symbolic protest because my unathletic and crime-free background in which I was never trained in a ball-throwing sport meant that the danger posed by my casting tiny stones represented de minimis harm and therefore the gravel was definitely not a dangerous, deadly, or aggravated weapon that I in no way used to purposely, knowingly, negligently, menacingly, recklessly, or with indifference to the value of human life cause bodily injury. My purpose instead was solely, entirely, wholly, and altogether in every respect political, to communicate a political speech act that was neither inciting nor provocative nor offensive nor presenting clear danger, a symbolic speech similar to protestors legally exercising their free speech rights by desecrating the flag or mutilating a draft card, et cetera.”

Faye laid the paper on the table, carefully and deliberately, like it was something fragile.

“Excellent!” said the lawyer. His face had grown red, a subtle but noticeable change from his previous pallor, which Samuel would describe as plastic-baby creamy yellow. Blobs of sweat now clung to his forehead, like the way paint on exterior walls can bubble on a very hot day. “Now that we’re all clear on that front, let’s take a little break.” The lawyer switched off the microphone. “Excuse me,” he said, and headed to the bathroom.

“He does that,” Faye said, watching him go. “He apparently needs to use the bathroom every five to ten minutes. That’s just his deal.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Samuel said.

“I’m guessing he goes to the bathroom to towel off the sweat. He’s a very moist man. But he also does something in there involving quite a lot of toilet paper, I’m not sure what.”

“Seriously,” Samuel said, grabbing the paper and looking at it, “I have no idea what any of this means.”

“He also has the tiniest feet. Have you noticed?”

“Faye, listen, ” he said, and they both flinched at the use of her name. It was the first time he’d ever done that. “What is going on?”

“Okay. Fine. Here’s what I understand. My case is a seriously complicated one. Many charges of assault and several other charges of battery. Aggravated. First degree. I guess I scared a bunch of people in the park — those are the assaults — but the rocks only struck a few of them — those are the batteries. Plus also charges of, let’s see”—she ticked these off on her fingers one by one—“disturbing the peace, public lewdness, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest. The prosecutor is being unusually aggressive, egged on by the judge, we believe.”

“Judge Charles Brown.”

“That’s him! The sentence for aggravated battery, by the way, is somewhere in between three hundred hours of community service and twenty-five years in prison.”

“That’s a pretty wide range.”

“The judge has a lot of discretion in sentencing. So you know that letter you’re writing to him?”

“Yeah.”

“It better be pretty damn good.”

A whoosh of plumbing now, and the bathroom door opened and the lawyer returned, smiling, wiping his hands on his pants. Faye was right: He had the smallest feet Samuel had ever seen on an adult male.

“Fantastic!” the lawyer said. “This is going really well.” How could he keep steady with those broad shoulders and those tiny feet? He was like a pyramid balancing upside down.