The Laws of our Fathers (2 page)

    Setup, he thinks, as he often thinks. Bug - as Lovinia is known - damn Bug be settin him up. Kan-el, T-Roc, one them, maybe them Goobers - as the Saints call the Gangster Outlaws - one them switched her somehow. He ponders Kan-el and T-Roc, Commandant and Vice-Lord of B S D. They on top, man, but they all the time trippin and shit, worryin is Hardcore on this power thang, man, he gone bust his whole set right out the gang or what? And him running eight zones into the jail every week, so BSD down for theirs, catch his black booty he be gone for-ever. Set him up. 'Mmm.' He grunts aloud at the thought of it.

    But he's on his way. He has a 9-millimeter pistol stored behind the iron grating of the air return and he tucks it in his belt and lets his black silk shirt hang out of his trousers. In the elevator he continues rumbling with his angry thoughts, speaking to himself and wondering if he should have shouted out for Honcho, some of them. Scared, he thinks, scared is what he is and old enough to know it. All them youngsters always puttin down that shit, 'Cain't no nigger fade me,' shit like that, make him laugh. You always scared. Get used to it is all. Gotta be is gotta be.

    He has three sons. Dormane - Hardball he called - got two kids of his own, he inside, doing fifteen no-parole on some fool buy-bust, and Rakleed is on these streets, too, and the little one. Del, still too young to know too much of nothing. They mommas, each of them, behind Ordell's back, told those boys the same. 'Don't you be no dope peddler now, don't you be slangin and hangin and bangin, I'll be whompin you backside, you ain never gone be too big for me do you like that.' That's what they sayin. In his own time, Ordell gave each of these boys his answer: 'You got to be somebody. They's bad shit here. With them bad coppers - bad motherfuckers everywhere here. But, man,' he said, 'man, this here what you-all's - you with the people here, you giving them what these poor niggers need, some nickel's worth of happiness white folks and all don't want them havin.'

    Walking from the IV Tower, the first stirrings of the day, music and voices, from some windows, wondering is he really gone get himself gauged, Hardcore thinks, as he often does, about his sons. He walks past one of the newer buildings, where the concrete corner has parted, revealing a cheap core of pink foam. In a nearby play area, only one seesaw remains, and on that both seats were long ago shattered by some teen in a random outbreak of destructive will. A milky-eyed drunk is teetering down the block, slept it off somewhere and now looking for home. He has a tatty overcoat and his hat askew, a face of white whiskers, and when he sees Hardcore, he wants to move, get
out
the way, man, and his legs can't let him. Funny. Hardcore calls him 'Man' as he passes by.

    They got they needs, he thinks, wishing he'd told his boys that, too. 'Everybody on these streets, man, these motherfuckers out here is just completely crazy with what they need. This gal she need her check, and this momma be needin to hold her baby, and that old cat need his fix.' Needing. He sometimes thinks he doesn't walk on pavement - he is just moving on top of what everybody needs.

    He crosses the boulevard, Grace Street, and starts down Lawrence, a block of ruined three-story apartment buildings, stout as battlements, with flat tarred roofs and limestone blocks placed decoratively amid the dark bricks and as a border above the doorways and at the cornices. The windows are gone in some, boarded up. A raised garden area of railroad ties sits under the windows of 338, the dirt desert dry, even the weeds struggling to survive.

    'Yo,' Lovinia calls, emerging like a cat from one of her hiding places. This Lovinia, he thinks. God, look-it here at this scrawny bitch, motherfucker are you gone believe it? With this fuzzball stocking cap dragged down over her whole damn head and this grey coat and twill pants. Don't want nobody comin up on her to know she a bitch is what it is, figure they'll shoot her ass or molest her ass or somethin. They better not try neither, she ain't strapped - armed - she know better than that for when Tic-Tac come by, but you bet she got it near here, under the mailbox, or in a hole in one them trees, you mess with her, she gone smoke you ass. Word up. T-Roc, he think Hardcore stone crazy using Bug, but she sharp. She strut up to the cars, she change her whole routine now, she sort of swingin it a lot. 'What you like, man?' Make them say. Anybody she take for Tic-Tac, narco, when they say 'Dope,' she just go, 'Oh, man, I ain sellin
dope,
man, I got somethin sweeter 'n that, man,
^’
like she thinkin they was here to bone.

    Now she points to the white Nova at the curb, a hundred feet away. ‘I done told her, "Lady, you in the wrong place." ' 'Lady? What kind of motherfuckin lady?'

    Tol' you now, ten-two. He ain come. She come. She be lookin for Or Dell.' Bug smiles then, toward the walk. Lovinia, just a kid and all - fifteen - she love to play.

    'Lady,' Hardcore repeats a few more times. Damn. He advances on the car. 'Lady, this the wrong place for you.' Leaning into the darkness of the car, he catches some of her soapy smell and the humid sour scent of his own overheated breath. 'You best get out here fast.'

    'Mr Trent? I'm June Eddgar.' She extends her hand, and then laboriously leaves the car to stand in the bluish morning light. Old. She be fat, too, big and fat. Some kind of hippie or farmer or some such, and her thighs all mashed together in her jeans. She have a plain face and some long lightish brown kinda hair going to grey, kind of lopsided and knit together like it ain't really combed. 'I thought we could talk a minute.'

    'Lady, they ain nothin for you and me to talk about.'

    'Well, I thought - I'm Nile's mother.'

    'Told him get hisself here. Didn't tell him send nobody's momma.'

    'I thought it was better if I came.'

    'You better go. Thass all. They's some powerful shit may go down here. Word, now. Go on.' He steps away, flitting his hand.

    'Look, I know them both. I think there's a misunderstanding.'

    'Only misunderstandin is you stayin here stead of leavin out when I say go. Thass the only misunderstanding we got.'

    ‘I really think -'

    'Lady, you gone get fucked up bad, you hear? Now jump in you rusty-ass ride.' He throws a hand again in disgust and walks away. Lovinia has stepped toward the street, waving.

    'Gorgo,' she calls, signaling overhead.

    'Aw, fuck me, motherfuck,' Hardcore says. From the alley across the way, Gorgo has emerged, tearing out on a sturdy black-framed mountain bike. He has a mask on, a blue handkerchief across his face like he some cowboy motherfucker, but looks otherwise like he just goin home to momma, blue pack fixed on his back, red satin jacket, hat turned behind his ear, just a kid, if you don't notice the gat - the gun - held low by his side. A 9. Got his Tec-9. The semiautomatic weapon, from its sheer weight, seems to drag behind as Gorgo rides. Bug keeps on waving, calling out as Gorgo rushes on, but he doesn't see her. He never will, Hardcore knows. You can see Gorgo's eyes at sixty feet now, popped out like some pipehead's, only with him all it is panic. I gotta do this, Gorgo's thinking, got to do this, man. Hardcore knows. His whole self is shrunken down to a little pea of violent will, so there's no room for anything to tell him no. The gun is up, straight this way, and for one second Ordell sees nothing of it but the small silver
o
and the frightening black space within it, at the end of the muzzle.

    'Gorgo!' she calls again, and Hardcore, who has already dropped to the pavement, catches the hem of her coat and drags at it.

    'Get yo fool self down,' he says, and she comes to him, easy as a leaf falling from a tree, just as the first shots bolt the air. Damn guns always be louder than you expect. The reports come at once, five or six volleys, a rampage of sound. Just that quick. Afterwards, it is the same as always, a moment of awful, cowering stillness - the birds gone from the trees, radios knocked silent, folks in the adjoining buildings stretched out flat along the cold floors, desperate not to stir. Caught up, the pointed scent of gunpowder embitters a sudden breath of wind. A block off, in some silly act of jubilation and relief, Gorgo cries out shrilly and his voice trails down the distance like a ribbon.

    Breathe, Ordell thinks, breathe now, nigger. He's amped: his heart is hard with panic. You okay. He talks to himself. You not hurt, stay cool, stay movin. Then he sees the blood spread darkly on the sidewalk.

    He has been shot twice before, once when he was sixteen, that was some serious shit, sort of giving face to some dude, and the mother pulled out a.38 and boom, just like it was but a little more downtalk. Now he cool. He's checked his body twice, felt everything. He damn well knowed he was gone get hisself popped

    and he didn't. But Lovinia has hold of her knee, and she is moaning.

    'Happenin, Bug?'

    She's crying. Tears well across her smooth face and curl in silvery traces about her mouth.

    'It hurt, Hardcore. Man, it hurt
real
bad.'

    'We gone help you, girlfriend.' He crawls closer to her. She is lying on her side, with her knee drawn up halfway. Her hands are covered with blood and it has turned most of the right leg of her twills brown; this close, he can detect the strange animal smell of it. He isn't going to get her to move, he can see that. How'd she go get shot in the damn leg of all places? Ricochet, or some such. Dudes shot in the leg died, too. He'd seen that. Severed femoral artery. Leg might be broke. There was no use shoutin out for any of his people, tiny gangsters or them. Soon as the guns rang out, they sprung.

    'That Gorgo. I'm gone fuck that motherfucker up bad.' Gorgo is long gone - between the buildings, up an alley, down one more gangway. Somewhere along, the Tec-9 went into the backpack. Now he's just some skinny kid out on his ride. Up above, somewhere, a window screams as it's opened.

    'I hope all you goddamn gangbangers be dead, what I hope.' The woman's voice carries clearly in the thin morning. ‘I hope you dead. Look at what you all done.'

    'Call the 'mergency, bitch,' he shouts.

    'I already done that. Police comin. They gone take yo sorry ass down to the jail where it belong, Hardcore.'

    At his name, he wheels and the window is slammed to, that fast, before he can see. Lovinia is still moaning.

    'Gone help you, homegirl,' he repeats. The white lady, he sees now, Nile's momma, she layin there, too. They's just blood, blood, all over her head. Half her brownish hair gone and she ain't moving none. Smoked, he thinks. He's seen dead before and knows it for sure.

    Bug is all gone to pieces. Some is like that. Them po-lices,

    Tic-Tacs, they done her like they do, took her, handcuffed her arm over her head all day, walk by her smacking them nightsticks in they palms, she be tight, like it don't bother her none. But now she cryin like a baby, she like something what got broke. She wasn't gonna hold. Nile neither. Specially Nile. His daddy gone be goin on now,
in
his shit. When them Tic-Tacs start in with questions, wasn't nobody gone ride this beef. Gone be
all
fucked up.

    'Po-lice comin,' he tells Bug. He's going to have to figure something. That damn woman know his name. Tic-Tac be knocking on his door. Call the attorney. Call Attorney Aires, he thinks. Gone have to look after hisself. How it always be.

    He stands. The white Nova is messed up. The windows, except the one which was open, are shot through, jagged pieces gone and the remainder a map of silver crazes; the tires on the side that faced Gorgo's onslaught are flattened, causing the car to list. Through one of the steel window supports, there is a single bullet hole, the white paint burned grey about it. Damn him anyway, Hardcore thinks. Damn Nile, fuck everything up.

    'Best gimme that shit, girlfriend. You got trouble enough.'

    She opens her mouth, but cries out as she turns herself to reach.

    'Here?' he asks and slips his finger quickly between her tooth and gum to pull out the little foil packet. Goddamn, what he gone catch from her mouth anyway? 'This here just some damn drive-by,' he tells her. 'You hear? Outlaws ridin down. Po-lice gone be askin. Thass what you say. Same as we done said. Just Goobers ridin down on you.' He touches her cheek. She wasn't never gone stand up to Tic-Tac. 'Posse out,' he says. Bye-bye.

    'P.O.,' she repeats.

    He hates it most when he has to run.

    

    

    
Sonny

    Her Honor, Judge Sonia Klonsky, enters her chambers, burdened with packages and the teeming, solitary feelings of the lunch hour, and finds two police officers in the outer office usually occupied by her minute clerk, Marietta Raines. Both large men, the cops linger over a yellow legal pad, drafting an affidavit to support an arrest warrant. The white one, Lubitsch, is a self-conscious prototype, a body builder who has turned himself into a human landscape, with mountainous shoulders and a neck like a tree stump. He has removed his sport jacket and seated himself at Marietta's desk. As he writes, his partner, Wells, makes sounds over Lubitsch's shoulder to show whether or not he agrees.

    Passing by, the judge glances at the face sheet of the warrant which they have already completed for her approval. From the two brown paper sacks she carries, the aromas of a household arise, bread and produce and cardboard, items gathered as she

    rushed store to store among the little Italian shops that persist on these depleted streets near the Kindle County Central Courthouse. Lunch is the most important hour of the day for Sonny, the only time she is without direct responsibilities to others. She must retrieve Nikki from day care by 5:00, and then begins the hours of feeding, bathing, talking, mothering - her truest labor, in Sonny's mind. Now, with the bags still in her arms, she remains vaguely conscious of six summer nectarines she picked by hand whose cool flawless skin and sensuous cleft woke her unpredictably - comically - to some semblance of longing.