The Laws of our Fathers Read Free Page A

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