The Laws of our Fathers

SEPTEMBER 14, 1995

Seth

When the electronic bolt is disengaged admitting them to the guard desk at the Kindle County Jail, Seth Weissman finds that Hobie Turtle and he are not the sole civilians. A delivery man from Domino's, a skinny guy everyone calls Kirk, is also there with lunch.

' Yo,' he tells the three correctional officers and shoves off, counting his tip. The bolt is shot again, a potent sound of slamming metal, stark as a rifle shot, and Kirk departs. On the door a sheet of bulletproof glass has been mounted, but it is the bars beneath which occupy Seth's attention. They are squared off and thick with rust-resistant paint, a depleted shade of beige which is the color of everything here – the walls, the floor, even the reinforced-steel guard desk.

'Warden's got to clear any press interviews, man.' A guard waves his fingers, tainted with pizza grease, over the form Hobie has been filling out.

'Nobody doin any interviews, man,' says Hobie.

'Says right here,' 'Michael Frain. Profession: Journalist." ' The guard looks from the form to Seth twice, as if to assess whether the description fits.

'No, no, here's what I'm sayin now,' says Hobie. 'This young fella, your inmate, Nile Eddgar, he asked Mr Frain here to help him find counsel and he chose me. Okay? So he's part of the attorney visit.'

After another go-round the captain is summoned, an erect black man who looks longingly at the pizza but shows the discipline to first finish his business with them. Hobie holds forth with characteristic bluster, and the captain, wary of messing with the press or simply hungry, lets them go. They pass from one brick guardhouse to another. Their wallets are checked in a small tin locker, and another solemn correctional officer pats them down.

Then they are inside, enclosed in a small admitting area. The barred door with its lock, thick as a book, clangs home irrevocably behind them. Hobie takes in the sick look on Seth's face.

'Number 47 said to Number 3,' he quips, amused. He is quoting 'Jailhouse Rock.' Number 47/said to Number 3/You 're the cutest jailbird/I ever did see. On the way over from the airport, Hobie did a complete head-trip. 'If we get on those catwalks, man, stay on the rail, don't go near the cells, those mean dudes will grab your tie, man, just for a hoot, they'll knot it around the bars and watch you strangle yourself screamin "Help!" You'll keep 'em laughin for a week.' He roared at the thought. Although they are 1,000 miles from Hobie's home in DC, this is still his world.

Another guard points them along a path through the yard. The jail hulks about them, seven red-brick structures, remnants of the institutional era in American architecture. These buildings could be factories or, these days, schools, especially with the heavy chain-link that cages each window. They are set down amid acres of asphalt, the sole greenery the weeds and lichens worn but still persisting in the gaps between the path's paving bricks. At the perimeter, stout walls with freshened mortar joints are topped by nasty whorls of razor wire.

'You think he's okay in here?' Seth asks.

'Might be. Might not be. We're gone know in a minute.'

'Oh my,' says Seth, 'aren't you the hard case? You know, it won't dent your armor, Hobie, if you show just a little concern about your client.'

'Lookee here,' Hobie says, repeating one of his father's favorite expressions. After twenty-five years in which Hobie, a native mimic, has, at times, taken on the speech patterns of everybody from Timothy Leary to Louis Farrakhan, he now most often sounds like his father, Gurney Turtle. He has stopped dead, his large briefcase swinging by his side. 'Here. You call me up in DC – you happen to interrupt my personal life at a truly crucial moment -'

'I.e., watching reruns of Dallas.''

'Hey, you wanna play the Dozens, or you gonna listen up? I'm tellin you how this was. I was with a really excellent lady, and you hype me up, man. I felt like I was being licked by a goddamn puppy. "Black brother, you gotta do this, you gotta help this little old Mouseketeer, remember Nile? You're the best I know and so you gotta do it for me." I mean, am I accurate, so far?'

'Close enough.'

'Okay. So I'm here.' Bearded, Hobie, in his elegant suit, lectures Seth with a finger raised. 'But I follow the lady's advice. You remember Colette? "Who said you should be happy? Do your work." That's me, man. I work. I get paid. I don't fall in love with them. Some go out the courtroom door, some don't. I accept all collect calls from the penitentiary. But that's the end of my sympathy gig. Now, you've gone and made it your lifetime hobby to feel sorry for this young man, that's your thing. But don't be layin that on me.'

'Hey, he's not my hobby. I've stayed in touch with him, that's all. He's always needed a little help. And besides, how would you feel? Guy reaches me from a pay phone. His mother's dead, the cops are hunting him for something he didn't do, and he can't call his own father for help, since he happens to be one of the twentieth century's leading assholes. That's pretty rugged.'

'Hey, brother.' Hobie sweeps his hand. 'There eight million stories in the naked city. You've had it rugged. Lucy's had it rugged. You-all I feel sorry for. Folks in this place – most times it turns out they made their own trouble.'

A guard, sent across to escort them to Department 7, where Nile is housed, has been watching their approach along the mottled bricks.

'Which one of you's the reporter?' he asks. 'Come to interview me, man? Shit, somebody ought to. I'm not kidding. I been doing this twenty-three years, going on twenty-four. I seen some unbelievable shit.'

The guard, a lanky man, laughs robustly at himself and falls in with them. He seems far too affable for the job. He is chewing a toothpick, which comes out of his mouth at the starting point of each stream of declarations. In the meantime, whooping voices tumble toward them from the fenced area of the jail play yard, where the inmates, hundreds of them, in their blue jumpsuits and slip-ons are shooting hoops or jiving with one another in milling clusters. There are three different courts, games at each net. In two side areas, a number of men are spotting around the weight benches. Seth surveys the population. They are long and short; some are fat; some bristle with prison muscles. A few of the inmates are staring with sullen contempt, while others hang on the chain links and call after them. 'Hey, lawyer, lawyer, man, you gotta take my case, man, man, I'm innocent, man, I didn't do nothin.' One thing: they are black. At a far remove, beneath one net, the Latinos are at play, and after some searching, Seth finally takes note of a covey of white guys, most of them with shaved scalps and visible tattoos. But here in Kindle County Municipal Jail, decades after the great Southern migrations, the sad facts speak for themselves.

It is easy therefore to spot Nile, at the far side of the yard. He looks fatter than when Seth saw him last, three years ago. On someone of his age, Nile's potbelly seems a confession of weakness. His dun hair is long and matted, and he is smoking a cigarette. He rocks on his soles as he talks with three or four young black men. As always, nothing in Nile's aspect is as you might expect. Where is the grim, broken mood that would be natural, whether he was wrongly accused or enduring the internal upheaval that would follow arranging the murder of his own mother? The tall young man looks, if anything, at home. But that is Nile. Mr Inappropriate. And besides, as Seth himself knows, of all the great emotions, the least predictable in its effects is grief.

The guard, Eddie, has to call Nile twice. One of the khaki-suited officers opens the locked gate to allow him to emerge.

'Hey,' Nile says. He is awkward. He prepares to throw an arm around Seth, then thinks better of it. Seth reintroduces him to Hobie. It's been decades. 'Great,' Nile says. 'Great.' He rattles Hobie's hand with ungainly enthusiasm. Even for Seth, it is hard to know where to start. Condolences? Outrage over the circumstances?

'So how are you?' Seth asks. 'You handling all of this? How's this been?'

'Hey, he's havin a great time,' Eddie answers, 'this here is Fun City,' and laughs with continuing appreciation for his own humor.

Descriptions appear beyond Nile. Up close, he looks himself, painfully uncertain. Behind his eyes, his spirit always seemed to be skittering about on the ice of suppressed terror. Now he shrugs.

'I worked in here,' he says. ‘I meet most of my clients here the first time. I know the drill.'

Eddie has walked them into Department 7. The cinder-block walls and staircases are painted thickly in red gloss. Here the steel doors open with a key, admitting them to the barred foyer, where a number of guards are congregated, two of them women. Beyond a wall of bars lie the tiers, the catwalks, the region of steel where the men are housed. There are dour scents of steamed food and disinfectant. A radio plays; a cell door bangs far above and the metal floors overhead resound with movement. A single window at the far end, half a block away, is the niggardly source of the little natural light. Seth, from here, can see the nearest cells, strung with clotheslines. Postcards and family photos are taped inside the bars, above the little shelves they call the bunks. On one a man with smooth dark limbs lies in his briefs, immobilized by the sorrow of confinement.

As they enter, a prisoner, whose jumpsuit is tied about his waist, revealing an imposing physique, comes to the bars, remonstrating with the guards in an intense ghetto squeal. Seth does not understand much. The man's hair is grown wild, uncombed, untreated, rising up in nubby spears, flecked with nits of lint.

'Get your ass back, Tuflac,' someone says to him. 'We done told you three times already.'

Eddie holds a hand aloft like an amiable host and directs Nile, Hobie, and Seth into a cafeteria which doubles as a visiting area. There are four or five other prisoners meeting with outsiders at various tables spread around the room. One man in a tie is clearly an attorney. The rest are family, girlfriends, making the odd visit on a weekday afternoon.

'Okay, now we need to talk,' says Hobie. He points Seth away. 'Got to be just Nile and me to protect the privilege.'

Inclined to protest, Seth can name no reason, except that he has come halfway across the country from Seattle to facilitate this meeting. He is relegated to one of the small tables bolted to the floor, while Hobie, somewhat triumphantly, directs Nile to the farthest corner. The cafeteria is compact, with glazed brick walls, spotlessly maintained, except for the stains and gang signs tooled into the white laminate tabletops. By terms of the jailhouse, this place is almost cheerful. Daylight, soothing as warm milk, emerges from a bank of barred windows, and three or four vending machines provide a touch of color. At the table nearest Seth, a slick Hispanic man is visiting with his girlfriend or his wife. With teased-up masses of dead-black hair, she has dressed to give him an eyeful – a tight red sleeveless top, cut daringly, and black jeans that make a taut casing for her healthy female bulk. Her eyes are painted so heavily they bring to mind Kabuki. She is up often to get coffee, cigarettes, a Coke. Coming and going, she and her man grab as much of each other as they can, a quick, relentless passing over of hands. They are flouting the rules, but the three or four guards in khaki looking on from their positions of retreat around the room remain impassive. Pleasure, so brief, can be forgiven.

Eddie, with time on his hands too, has approached Seth. 'So what-all is it you write?' he asks.

Seth rolls out his standard patter on the column: syndicated nationally, printed here in the Tribune.

'Oh yeah, yeah,' says Eddie, but it's clear he's never heard of Michael Frain and is mildly disappointed. They both momentarily contemplate this dead end. Casting about for a subject, Seth asks if Nile's encountered any trouble in here.

'Don't seem like. Had him in seg when he come in yesterday, but he asked for general population. Now, if he was over there in Department 2? I call that the Gladiator Wing, y'know, all these cats, nineteen years old, always rumblin and scuffiin. But he's all right here. Seems like he's okay with them BSDs. They won't let nobody kick his ass, take his food.'

'BSDs?'

'Black Saints Disciples, man. We get kind of familiar in here, you know?' Eddie, freely given to hilarity, laughs once more at his own remark, then rolls his toothpick around his fingertips before going on. 'You know, P O, coppers, shit, guards – you can be okay with these birds if they know where you comin from. When I started out, I worked on stateside, down in Rudyard? Lot of those officers, they just got a thing with the inmates. Their women come see 'em, guard like to come up, pinch her butt, smile like he got new teeth, and her man sittin on the other side of the glass can't do shit. Now you get you a shank in the back that way. Me? Take no shit, give no shit, man, that's my motto. I got myself in here, I'd be okay, same as Nile. Some them BSDs or GOs – Gangster Outlaws? – they'd cover me. Them gangs pretty much run the show in here anyway. You hear what I'm sayin?'

Seth shakes his head once. He doesn't want to say a thing to slow Eddie down. Seth's decided that the guard was right to start. A column about Eddie and the jail might be a terrific piece.

'Here,' says Eddie, lifting onto a chair one leg, decorated along the seam with a line of brown piping. He leans over confidentially now that he has found his subject. 'First thing they teach you, first day of training: Institution can only be run with the co-operation of the inmates. These days, we got a problem in here, we find whoever's ranking with the Saints, the Outlaws, we get it straightened out. See? What we want is a peaceful place. You hear? Nobody gettin cut in the shower, no gangbangers making war in the yard, no kind of three inmates waitin to cut off some guard's nuts, like they done down at Rudyard. That's what we want.'

'And what do they want?' A man who asks questions for a living, Seth knows from the way Eddie's perpetual verbal momentum suddenly loiters they have reached the good part.

'Them?' Eddie laughs again, more subdued. 'Now you ain't gonna write this, right?'

Seth lifts both hands to show he has no paper, no pen – as if it is the furthest thought from his mind. Eddie reverses the chair and takes a seat, his long arms crossed over the back. He has a moon face and a fine smile, in spite of a single missing incisor. His hairline, buzzed short, cuts a scalloped frontier across the back half of his head.

'What these gangsters want is not to have nobody all over them gettin their shit in here.'

'Shit?'

'Contraband, let's say. Don't you look at me like that. I'm not sayin anything ain't the truth. Everybody round here will tell you that. See, these gangbangers need that shit. Man, these kids in here, jail, it's like graduation for some of them: this is where the big boys go. Hey, you think I'm kiddin you? I'm not kiddin.' Eddie looks back toward Hobie, as if he has some hopes he might be nearby and able to agree. But Hobie and Nile are still engaged. Hobie's briefcase, a smooth pouch of umber-colored Italian leather, is on the table, and Hobie, as usual, is doing the talking. Beside them, each has a small paper cup of coffee, breathing steam. Eddie goes on.

'So when they on the outside, half these young men already thinkin, What-all this damn gang gonna do for me when I get in there? Gotta be anybody dis you, beat you down, man, gotta be all your gangbanger brothers down for you, kickin ass and shit. Gotta be. Now half these young men, more than half, they in here for narcotics and quite a number come in strung out. Gang's got to provide, see? Some others, you know, they like to get them a little buzz, break up the boredom. Either way, the dope's the gang. Like them ads on TV say: Membership got its privileges. Gives them money. Discipline. Gangs gotta get their shit in here.'

'We were searched pretty thoroughly coming in.'

'Hell yeah, you better bet we gonna search you, cause this here is a penal institution, man, we ain't gonna help nobody break the law. Sheriff's got to run for re-election you know. Mayor do too. But these gangbangers find a way. Shit comes in here, same as the money to pay for it. I mean, that's how it is. Everybody knows that. Kind of works, let's say, to mutual advantage.' Eddie smiles again, but on reflection he seems concerned that he may have shown excessive candor, particularly with a reporter. He jams the toothpick, long held between his fingers, back into his mouth and drifts off to his duties.

Kindle County, Seth thinks. Always something dirty doin. Always amazing him. Will he ever escape this place? No. He's wondered that for thirty years and now he knows the answer: No. This is where his dreams are set. In the gloomy winter light, thick as shellac. In the air of childhood, tinted with the oily-smelling smoke and ash of burnt coal. No escaping. He and Lucy have lived everywhere: Seattle, Pawtucket, Boston, Miami, and Seattle again for the last eleven years. But now that his life is up for grabs, now that this lugubrious mid-life mourning period, too prolonged to be called a crisis, has him thinking of fresh starts, he answered yes when the flight attendant asked, 'Going home?'

About ten minutes later, Hobie and Nile are done. Nile seems more pensive. Hobie says he'll see him tomorrow and Seth embraces Nile quickly, before he's returned to Eddie's custody. The guard waves goodbye, still laughing.

'Okay, Froggy,' says Hobie. 'Pluck your magic twanger. Let's blow.'

'So?' asks Seth, as soon as they are on their way back across the yard.

'"So," what?'

'So what do you think? You going to get him off?' 'Wouldn't really know. I left my crystal ball at home.' 'Yeah, but how does the case look?' 'Beats me. I didn't talk to him about it.' 'Christ, what the hell did you talk about then for forty minutes? O.J.?'

'What I talked to this young fellow, my client, about is none of your business. But what I discuss with every client first time I meet em is my fee.'

'Your fee!'

'Hell yes, my fee. I asked you, first thing – didn't I ask you, "Can he afford a lawyer?" And you told me, "No problem." Hell yeah, I talked to him about my fee. I pay alimony to three mean women.'

'How much?'

'That's none of your goddamn business, either. I told him what I get, which is one hell of a lot, and he says he can handle it. That's jazz to me. I don't ask em where-all it's coming from. Long as he ain't stickin up my mother. All I care is check comes upfront and clears.'

'Jesus,' says Seth. 'What are you doing out of your coffin in daylight?'

'You wanna hear stories about gettin beat? I'll tell you stories. I had one sumbitch handcuffed his woman to the radiator, just to prove he'd be back with the money soon as we finished in court. And you know what I ended up with? Bill for the fuckin hacksaw.'

Seth laughs out loud. Hobie's bullshit is still the best. Reality so seldom intrudes.

'Upfront,' Hobie repeats. 'In hand. Period. You find him another lawyer that won't do him like that, that lawyer isn't worth having, because he doesn't know shit.'

'Nobody said anything about another lawyer. I told you, he wants somebody who isn't from around here, so he's sure they won't be beholden to Eddgar. I promised him he can be damn certain of that with you.'

Hobie pauses for reflection, a huge pile of a person, the color of dark oak. As he has grown older, little dark flecks of melanin have appeared around the deep wells of his eyes, and his hairline, while not as sadly reduced as Seth's own, has undergone a mature retreat. Softly styled and salted with errant kinks of grey, his hair combines with the beard and the fine suit to lend a subdued edge to his volatile persona.

'See now, this is what I don't savvy,' Hobie says. 'Eddgar's no kind of pissed with Nile. He says Nile bolted right after the shooting and is refusing to talk to him.'

'Where do you get that? Dubinsky?'

'Eddgar. Called me in DC last night. The warden told him I was counsel.'

'Jesus Christ. Why didn't you say you talked to Eddgar?'

'Listen here,' says Hobie. He stops again in the midst of his rumbling forward movement. 'You know, you have got the wrong picture. You got the wrong idea. You know what you are here? You're like the matchmaker. What's that word? The shotgun?'

'In Yiddish? The shadkin?’

'That's it. You're the shadkin. Now, the shadkin don't get in bed with the bride and the groom. You want me to represent this young man? Okay, I'm gonna do it. But I can't be discussin every detail with you. I got privileges to protect. You better get straight on that right now. This isn't high school. So don't keep askin me what my client's told me. And don't you talk to Nile about this case anymore either. This is a trial,' he says, 'this is war. You gotta think four steps ahead. Fourteen. Those prosecutors lay a subpoena on you, I don't want you to have squat you can testify about. This is murder, man. Serious shit.' Hobie loves this, Seth knows, the superior knowledge, the strutting around, the gravity of his mission. At least it isn't murder one. The state charged conspiracy to commit second degree. No death penalty. Seth checked himself.

'Well, what did Eddgar want anyhow?'

'Listen to you,' says Hobie. 'What did I just carry on about?' Yard time is over and the place has regained a sullen air. The inmates are all locked down for the afternoon count, but one or two still call after them from windows high above. 'Hey, slick. You lookin good.'

'Eddgar's gonna throw Nile's bail,' Hobie says finally. 'That's what he called about. Says he's willing to put up the family manse – $300,000 worth. I gotta go see him this afternoon. How's that hit you?'

It doesn't sound like Eddgar is what Seth thinks. 'Confused me, too,' admits Hobie. 'Even Nile was pretty much astounded.'

'Maybe Eddgar's developed a conscience. Maybe he's bugged by the ironies of the situation. I mean, have you thought about this? Nile's in jail for murder and Eddgar's been walking the streets for twenty-five years. It's incredible.'

'Could be it runs in the blood,' says Hobie.

'Oh, that's cute,' says Seth. 'You're the one who's supposed to think Nile's innocent.'

'No, man, no way is that my job. My job is to get him off. Period. I don't know what happened. And if I can avoid it, I don't ask, either. They gotta unburden themselves, or spin a tale, well bless them, then I have to listen. But the game here, man, is can the state prove them guilty? That's all. Whether they did it, or some dude named Maurice did it, you know, I don't worry my little mind.'

'He's innocent.'

'No, he told you he's innocent. There's a whole world of difference.'

Half a continent away, Nile, on the pay phone, had issued a nasal denial. 'It's bullshit. They say I paid this guy $10,000 to set this up and it's bullshit, all of it, the $10,000, all of it, it never happened.' The fierce desperation of this declaration had been too daunting for Seth to probe, unsure if Nile – or, Seth's darkest fear, the denials – might fall apart. He encourages Hobie now, much as he has bolstered himself in the last few days.

'He's too feckless, Hobie. He's never had the first clue.'

'Listen, Jack, you better take yourself a reality pill. No decent prosecutor's gonna go puttin on a piece-of-shit gangbanger to call a white boy a killer without plenty of corroboration. Not even considering that Nile's daddy's a politician in the same damn party as the PA, somebody they'd want to cut any break they could. Get yourself ready, man, cause the state's gonna bring some evidence to that courtroom.'

Seth is listening. This is the first he's heard of how Hobie really looks at it. When they were cruising in from the airport, it was old times and new times, the state of the world with Lucy, the latest on Hobie's kids. Now that they're here in the scariest place on earth, Hobie is giving him the logic: Nile's guilty. That's what he's saying. The prosecutors wouldn't have brought the case if they had a choice.

'Well, he's gotta have a chance, doesn't he?'

'Seth, man.' Hobie stops to face him, his dark eyes bloodshot and direct. It is the rare moment between them, fully sincere. 'I'm gonna go full-out. Okay?'

'What about Sonny? Doesn't it help to have a judge who knows him? And you?'

‘I don't know her anymore. You don't even know her anymore.

And I don't know what she thinks about Nile and whether that's any good for him a'tall. Besides,' Hobie mutters, 'she may damn well take herself off this case.'

'You mean she might not be the judge?'

'Maybe not. And even if she decides to keep it, could be I make a motion to disqualify her.'

'No,' says Seth. 'Really?'

'Whoa,' says Hobie. 'Look at you. Damn, I knew you were gonna be like psychotic, waitin till you see that lady up on the bench. Tell me that ain't so. You're transparent, man. You musta been a store window in a prior life.'

Seth laughs. A strange coincidence, he says. Life is full of them.

'All the fucked-up luck,' says Hobie. 'Honestly,' he says, and after further reflection adds, 'Shit.' He fishes his mouth around as if he might spit. 'See, man, you never change. You're still like cr-azy with that whole California scene we went through. Nile. Sonny. Eddgar. You won't ever let go of it. You gotta write about it. You gotta think about it. Then you gotta write about it some more. I oughta call you Proust. Honest and truly.'

'Everybody's got a youth, Hobie.'

'Yeah, well listen here, Proust. You stay away from her till I get this all scoped out. I don't care what damn curiosity you got. I don't want to be decidin it's best for Nile that she preside and have you spook her off this case, cause she sees she's gone be holdin class reunion in her courtroom. Time being, you do like me, man, just lay low, till I can figure out what a good lawyer's supposed to.'

'Which is what?'

'How the hell to take advantage of the situation.'

They have come close to the admitting area, where they started. The bolts are disengaged and they progress toward the uncloistered light. The lieutenant makes it a point to greet Hobie on the way back through. The black thing. There's a handshake and a riff about the pizza. Then Hobie and Seth are outside, moving toward the last guard shack and the iron gates, meant, apparently, to repel motorized invasion.

'Proust,' says Hobie again, archly shaking his head to rub it in a little more. 'I'm gone go find you some tea cakes, I swear to God. Help you hold on to all this shit you can't forget.'

'Hey, I held on to you, too, so just lighten up.' It took some doing. They both know that.

'Oh, yes you did!' says Hobie emphatically, and in his grand comical way grabs Seth suddenly and kisses him on the forehead. Then Hobie throws a burly arm about him and pulls Seth along the walk, celebrating the relief of the free air outside the jailhouse. He laughs hugely and repeats himself. 'Oh, yes you did.'