The Laws of our Fathers Read Free Page B

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.
        
SEPTEMBER 12, 1995
        
         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.
        The warrant is for one DeLeel Love, residing at Apartment 9G, 5327 Grace Street, DuSable. On Saturday, September 10, according to the warrant, 'Defendant did commit the offense of deviate sexual assault against one Zunita Collins, aged twelve, a minor, in that he engaged in the unconsented and offensive touching of said Zunita Collins's breasts, buttocks, and vagina.' Wells points to the defendant's name.
        'Guess he's just love all the time,' he says. A stout man, Wells smiles too broadly. He has dark, venous gums and snaggle teeth. Lubitsch continues writing, which means he has heard