Allegiance (12 page)

It makes no sense. For a moment I just stand there, blinking. I rub at the letters with the heel of my hand, then a wet washcloth. My face emerges from the clouds. I don't look too bad, all things considered. Not nearly as bad as I feel, anyway. Coffee is still unavailable, but I'm not sure my stomach could handle it even if I had some. I make a cup of tea and eat a piece of dry toast. I am going to be late to work.

Downstairs, the doorman looks at me skeptically. “Sure you should be out of bed, sir?”

My face isn't that bad. “Did you see me last night?”

He nods. “Your friends brought you in. Soused, if you'll forgive me. They said you got in a fight.”

I feel my jaw. “I did. With them. Do you remember what they looked like?”

“Not like they'd been in a fight.” His tone is apologetic. “I'm afraid you got the worst of it.”

“Yeah, I'd actually figured that out already. I mean, can you describe them?”

He shrugs. “Suits. Seemed nice enough. Said you weren't usually like this.”

“Oh, that was decent of them.”

He nods seriously. Perhaps the fat lip is muffling my tone. “They seemed worried about you.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”

Outside I give a quick look about, but no one is there. There is no chance of making it to the Court at my usual time, so I stop by the local precinct house. The desk sergeant looks at me with the same expression as the doorman. “Ah, Mr. Harrison,” he says when I introduce myself. “I believe I've seen your name before.”

“What?”

“In last night's report.” He shakes his head. “Tsk tsk, Mr. Harrison. A fellow has to know his limits.”

“I was attacked,” I say. “By a group of men who've been following me for weeks.”

He smiles. “Oh, were you?” He slaps his papers, smile gone. “That's not what it says here.”

“What does it say?”

“Drunk and disorderly. Started a row.”

“No, they started it.” A small part of me concedes that technically this may not be true, but overall I am surely in the right. “I want you to find the men who did this.”

He shakes his head. “It happens, my friend. No need to make up stories to excuse it. You'll not be charged.”

“I'm not making up stories. I don't know what you have in your reports, but writing something down doesn't make it true.”

The sergeant leans across the counter. “Let me tell you something,” he says, “one man to another. You won't get any better until you accept responsibility for your actions.” I can smell whiskey on his breath. Or maybe that's still me.

At the Court, the marshals look at me a touch longer than usual. I decide not to engage them in conversation. Instead, I go to my office, sit down at my desk, and groan. The light is paler now, but the view is the same as when I started: a pile of cert petitions, a set of memos to write. Six-by-eight boulders to push up the hill. But work is the least of my worries. Who can I turn to?

Judge Skinner is the one I really want to call. He'd believe me; he could help me. I imagine him leaning back in his chair and putting his feet up, the craggy face splitting in a smile. I get as far as picking up the phone, but then I stop. I can't tell him what's going on. He'd be worried; he'd insist I come back immediately. I can't call him unless I'm going to give up. And despite all that's happened, I'm not ready for that quite yet.

Then there is Phil Haynes, with his seaside tan. He couldn't tell me I was imagining things anymore. But as I told Gene Gressman, we know the same people. Word would get to Philadelphia, and again they'd want to pull me back.

It leaves me with Gene. And as I sit there wondering whether I can make it down the hall to Murphy's chambers to see him, he appears in the doorway, rapping his knuckles on the frame. “Hello,” he says. “We're visiting everyone in this neighborhood with an important message. No doubt you are a busy person, so I'll be brief. Perhaps you would like an informative pamphlet?”

I stare at him blankly.

“Jehovah's Witnesses,” he says. “They've got two cases coming up. You might want to take a look at the briefs in between your parties.”

“Come in. We've got to talk.”

He takes a seat on the corner of my desk. The gesture is an odd echo of Black. They are nothing alike in most ways, but they have the same sort of easy intimacy. “Worried about how your boss is going to vote?” He smiles. “I've got him in my pocket on these.” Then his face changes. “Hey, you look terrible. What happened?” He leans in for a closer look. “You don't smell so good, either.”

“Those guys attacked me.”

“With a Manhattan?”

“It was Scotch. At the end, at least. But no, they attacked me with their fists. And maybe their feet. I can't remember everything.”

“That would be the Scotch,” Gene says helpfully.

“I suppose. But what am I going to do? I thought they were economists.”

“They are,” says Gene. He is silent for a moment. “Bet you never saw the punch coming.”

“No, I didn't. Why?”

“Because it was the invisible hand.”

Again I look at him blankly. “What the hell, Gene? I just got beaten up. They could have killed me.”

“Exactly. But they didn't.”

“So?”

“So they're not going to. Still, they were upset enough about something to punch you out. Maybe just because you socked one of them. But I think it's because we're on the right track.”

I move my jaw from side to side, testing the soreness. “Doesn't feel that right to me.”

“Trust me,” says Gene. “They're worried because we're getting closer.”

“How are we getting closer?”

He pauses. “Well, we know they're economists.”

“Oh, good.” Something about his irrational optimism seems familiar. “Have you been drinking?”

“That's yourself that you're smelling.”

“I don't smell of coffee.”

Gene stands up from the desk. “I actually have a little more work to do with these Witness cases. You ought to take a look at them. Don't worry about the economists. I'm on that too.”

“Your energy is miraculous.”

He looks down for a second. “Seriously, I think this is good news for us.”

“Sure. Gospel. Next time I hope they share it with you instead of me.”

“As long as it's informative pamphlets,” he says, pausing at the door. Then
he gives me what looks like a Nazi salute and is gone before I can ask for an explanation.

I turn my attention back to the desk, first to lay my head down for a few minutes, then to read the cases that are coming. One is about door-to-door leafleting by the Jehovah's Witnesses; another is about their children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school. But there are many more. They have snuck up on me while I was distracted, an insidious paper army. There is the case about the farmer who grew too much wheat, which I recommended the Court should hear. There are cases about the meaning of federal statutes; there are disputes between corporations, the boring cases the clerks hate. And as I get toward the bottom of the pile, I can see that Gene was right when he said the Japanese were coming. There are suits to challenge the evacuation of the coast, the detention in camps. I wonder if I will make it through the year. My empty coffee mug sits forlorn on the desk. I wonder if I will make it through the next hour.

“There you are, Cash,” says Black, emerging from his chambers. I start upright, then regret the movement. I hadn't even known he was in. “Thought for a second there you were ducking me. Come on, what do you say?”

The drive over is bad, but the tennis is worse. I can't move fast enough to get to Black's shots, and when I do, I can't hit them. Pain in my hand makes it impossible to maintain a proper grip on the racquet. Black wins the first set 6–0 and calls a halt midway through the second. At the net he looks at me with concern. “Have an adventure last night?”

“A little too much to drink,” I say. There is nothing Black can do for me, no point in getting him involved.

He nods. “One thing I used to do when I was a kid,” he says. “Carry a roll of pennies in your hand. Gives your punch more weight.”

I just look at him.

“Someone hit you, Cash,” he says. “Which tells me you didn't hit him hard enough first.”

“I guess not.”

“Course you're still going to hurt your hand that way. You want to play
tennis the next day, probably better to give 'em your elbow.” He demonstrates a roundhouse strike. It looks like a chicken wing flapping.

“Thanks, Judge.”

“Not really anything you can do about the hangover,” he continues. “Except not drink so much.”

“Yes, Judge.”

He grills the steaks outside, as usual, but Josephine and I watch from the kitchen. Like the rest of the house it is small, modest, not what I would have expected from a Supreme Court Justice. Four wooden chairs with wicker seats circle a cherry table. Yellowed recipes are tacked to a corkboard on the wall, spotted with the evidence of attempts at their execution. Black needs no paper for the steaks, though; he has that routine down by heart. He meddles enthusiastically, opening the grill again and again, no doubt thinking he's making things better.

Josephine looks out the window over the sink. It is warm enough inside the house, and she's wearing a light sweater, but still she clutches her shoulders against a chill. “I'm not used to the winters,” she says. “I get these feelings in the fall. When it starts getting dark early and the cold comes on. Do you feel that way? That something is ending and you won't be warm again for a long time?”

“I feel like something's beginning,” I say. I hope this might make things look brighter for her, but it's also true. Fall is when the school year starts.

“The Court starts up,” says Josephine. Her tone displays no enthusiasm for the idea. “He wasn't sure he wanted the job, you know. I encouraged him to take it. I thought he'd be home more. The Senate was a prison.”

“He does try to leave early,” I say. “I see how hard he works, to be able to come home.”

“To come home and play tennis with you. Oh, he's always worked hard. I made my peace with that. You get used to most things. We start out tender, but we get better at protecting ourselves. We understand what the world has given us, and what it won't. And you get to a point where no matter what happens, you can accept it. I felt that way, I really did.”

“But you don't now?”

She turns to me, and in her eyes I see it again, the plea that rose there
when she saw me in Sterling's tennis whites. “When you have children it's all different,” she says. “The tender part of you, that you've spent so many years learning to protect, it's out there all alone and there's nothing you can do.” She wraps her hands around her shoulders, one body she can hold.

I am silent a moment. “It's getting better,” I say. “Already things are getting better.”

“I'm sure you're right,” Josephine says. “But I get these feelings in the fall. That it's still a long night ahead, and lots of things left to happen before the dawn.”

When Black returns with the steaks, I do my best to distract her. I mug over each bite as much as I dare; I try to steer the conversation to innocuous subjects. But Josephine's eyes keep going to the empty chair at my right.

Black notices. “With Cash here, we've got one boy, anyway.”

It is a disastrous intervention. Josephine's mouth goes tight and her face pales. The idea of having only one boy is worse than the fact of two being away. The single empty chair takes on a dread significance. She stands up, blinking fast.

“I didn't . . .” Black begins. But she is out of the room before he can finish. There are two empty chairs now. Black's eyes flit from one to the other; his tongue darts over his lips. “I don't suppose I ever told you about my first love,” he says to me.

I open my mouth, unsure of what I am going to say. I am thinking of the dinners at my own house, two chairs that might as well have been empty. My father and my brother, two silent men named Charles. I sat there with my mother while they nodded at each other and signaled James with a raised eyebrow. And I can do that for Black, I can be his companion among the empty chairs, but he is not the one who needs my help. It is Josephine, and I can do nothing for her but remind her of the boys she can't bring home.

“An Orthodox girl, if you can believe it,” Black is saying. “Well, she was too different in the end. Now, Josephine's family was different too. Fancier.”

“You have to go to her.”

He shakes his head. “Don't worry yourself.” His face is casual. I can see why he was such a good trial lawyer; the expression is almost convincing. But when I place a hand on his arm the muscles are rigid, and he pulls back. “My
doctor told me no man should play singles in his forties,” he says. I've heard the joke before, but I don't let on. It is the least mercy I can show. “So I waited till I was fifty.” His laugh is threadbare.

“I should leave.”

“No.” Now it is his hand on my arm. “There's nothing to be done.”

“Do what you can.”

He clears his throat. “Well. Maybe I can save some of this for lunch tomorrow.”

I look at the steak on his plate. “That's a fine idea.” When he has left, I push back my chair and bury my own steak deep in the garbage bin. Then I stand where Josephine did and look out the window into the dark. There is a yearning pull within my chest, as though something calls to me from the night. I strain my eyes, trying to make out a shape, but all is formless black.

“Daddy?”

I turn my head. JoJo is at the kitchen door in her nightgown. “Hi there,” I say.

She looks around briefly to verify that no better option is available, then turns back to me. “I'm scared.”