Books: The Laws of Our Fathers

Excerpt from Part One:

September 14, 1995

S E T H

When the electronic bolt is disengaged admitting them to the guard desk at the Kindle County Jail, Seth Weissman finds that Hobie Tuttle 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 1000 miles from Hobie's home in D.C., 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 Tuttle. He has stopped dead, his large briefcase swinging by his side. "Here. You call me up in D.C. — 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 Seatle 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.