A Father's Law

by Richard Wright

  “Oh!”

  “It’s the telephone, Ruddy!”

  “I’ll get it, I’ll get it,” he mumbled, blinking his sleep-drugged eyes in the dark and fumbling with the bedcovers.

  He sat half up and sleep rushed over him in a wave, seeking to reclaim him. “This rush-hour traffic . . .” He sighed, his voice trailing off.

  “Hunh? Ruddy, are you awake?”

  “Hunh?”

  “Darling, the tele phone!”

  Wreeeeeiiiiiii . . .

  In one stride of consciousness, he conquered his sleep and pushed his feet to the floor, reached out to the bedside table and lifted the receiver. He cleared his throat and spoke profes-sionally: “Captain Rudolph Turner, speaking.”

  A woman’s sharp, crisp voice sang over the wire: “Ruddy, Mary Jane . . . Mary Jane Woodford.”

  “Yeah, Mary Jane. What is it? What’s up?”

  “Who is that, Ruddy?”

  “Wait, Agnes. I’m trying to talk. Switch on the light.”

  “What was that?”

  “I was talking to my wife, Mary Jane. Spill it. What’s the trouble?”

  “A message for you. The commissioner wants to see you at two o’clock,” Mary Jane informed him. “So hustle up here. And don’t wear your uniform.”

  “Two o’clock? Tonight?”

  “Naw. This morning. It’s past midnight now. And it’s urgent.”

  “But what about?”

  “I’m not the commissioner, Ruddy. You understood what I’ve said?”

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  “I got it.”

  “You sound like you were dead to the world.”

  “I was sleeping like a log. I was dreaming. I was coaching a rookie to direct traffi c.”

  “Traffic? I bet it was flowing north and south! Ha, ha!”

  “You dirty-minded gal!”

  “Ha, ha! See you, Ruddy!”

  Click!

  He hung up and stared into space, vaguely aware that his wife had flooded the room with light.

  “Who was that, Ruddy?”

  “Mary Jane. The commissioner’s secretary.”

  “Why in God’s name is she calling you at this hour?”

  “It’s her duty, honey. I got to go in at the commissioner’s at two . . .”

  “Tonight?”

  “It’s morning, darling. It’s urgent, she said.”

  “She shouldn’t call you like that.”

  “She’s doing what she’s told.”

  “But she never called you before at this hour.”

  “I know. Don’t know what this can mean.”

  “Didn’t you ask her?”

  “Yeah. I did. But she won’t tell.”

  “Well, I never. You’re a captain. They shouldn’t rouse you out of your sleep like that.”

  “Something’s up,” he said, idly scratching his chest, vaguely sensing the vivid dream he had had fading from his mind. Was it the Maybrick case? No—that was settled. And don’t wear your uniform! “She said I was not to come in in uniform.”

  “Why? ”

  “The commissioner’s order, she said.”

  “That sounds fishy to me.”

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  He turned and looked down at his wife’s dimpled, peach-colored face, the deep brown eyes clouded and heavy with sleep.

  “Now, Agnes, don’t you be a little kitten and start scratching at Mary Jane. She’s not trying to lure me out of the house for her sake . . .”

  “I didn’t say that,” Agnes mumbled sulkily.

  He glanced at his wristwatch; it was twenty minutes past midnight. He leaned over to his wife and lifted her head with his left palm and kissed her. Gently, he eased her face from him.

  “You go right back to sleep. I’ll get dressed.”

  “When will you get back?”

  “I really don’t know, honey. Something’s up. It’s been years since I got a midnight call to come in . . . say, what’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That noise? Jesus . . . Tommy’s typing. And at this hour.

  Doesn’t he ever sleep?”

  “He’s studying for his exams, Ruddy.”

  “Goddammit, he’s overdoing it. A boy his age ought to be sleeping.”

  “He sleeps enough. You’ll call me as soon as you know?”

  “Sure thing, kitten.”

  “And no uniform? Maybe they’ve got a plainclothes assign-ment for you and—”

  “Naw. Those guys are a dime a dozen.”

  “Maybe you’re being assigned to guard some bigwig?”

  “Could be. But they’ve got hundreds of guys to do that stuff. And I’m the man who assigns ’em. Couldn’t be that.” He rose, yawned, and stretched. “I won’t wear my uniform, but I sure will take my gat.”

  “You do that,” Agnes said

  “I’ll shower,” he said, turning as a knock came on the door.

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  “Dad.”

  “Yeah, Tommy. What is it?”

  “Come on, Tommy,” Agnes called.

  The door swung in and a tall, slender brown youth of eigh -

  teen poked his head and half of his body around the door-jamb.

  “I heard the phone and heard you two talking,” Tommy began.

  “I’m summoned to headquarters,” Ruddy said lightly, poking his feet into his house shoes. “You still up?”

  “Cramming,” Tommy said, twisting his lips in a self-effacing smile.

  “You ought to get your sleep, son,” Ruddy said. “When I was your age, I was either playing baseball or chasing gals.”

  “He knows what he wants to do,” Agnes said.

  “A big crime case coming up, Dad?” Tommy asked. He now showed his right hand, which held a smoldering cigarette. He lifted it to his lips and drew smoke deep into his lungs.

  “Don’t know, son. Got to report at two. Say, you look damned tired,” Ruddy scolded softly.

  “Oh, I’m all right,” Tommy mumbled with a jocular kind of lofty indifference. “See you.” He went out and closed the door.

  Ruddy stared dreamily before him, not speaking. Agnes kept her eyes upon the flowery patterns of the quilt.

  “I wish I knew what was going on in that boy,” Ruddy said.

  “He’s studying for his exams,” Agnes said. “I told you.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “Darling, kids are not now what they were when you grew up,” Agnes reminded him.

  “It’s not that,” Ruddy said with tense lips.

  “You seem worried. Tommy’s all right.”

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  “I hope so.”

  “Ruddy, what do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Just old-fashioned, I guess. Gee, I got to bathe, dress, and get out of here. . . . See you in a sec.”

  He hurried to the bathroom and turned on the shower, test-ing the temperature of the water with his hand until it was right, hearing all the while the sharp tapping of his son’s typewriter.

  “What’s wrong with that boy?” he asked himself out loud. For example, that way in which he had said: “Oh, I’m all right.” It had had a strange ring; it had reminded Ruddy of some of the queer characters he had had to handle at the city jail. Why wasn’t Tommy more straightforward? Agnes could not see anything about Tommy. She was the boy’s mother and defended him each step of the way. He paused, stripped off his pajamas, realizing that his condemnation of his son was far severer than any objective evidence warranted. “I’m just nervous for ’im, I guess,”

  he said, edging his body under the needle-sharp strings of tepid water and seizing the bar of soap. He washed leisurely, lathering his huge, bronzed body, mulling over his son, his own childhood, trying to still a deep and secret worry gnawing at his vitals.

  Ruddy was intelligent enough to realize that there was something in him that was clouding his vi
sion of his son, and that no matter how hard he had tried, he had never been able to erect the kind of healthy father-and-son relationship he had always dreamed of and wanted. “Goddamn, everything else in my life is straight, except that,” he grumbled. And there was no doubt that there slumbered deep in Tommy a resentment of him. “But why?” he whispered despairingly through the beating waves of water. “I’ve given ’im every damned thing he ever asked for.” Yet that was not it. In fact, Tommy always accepted what was given to him with a slight attitude of mockery that robbed the gift of its intention. And Ruddy was as sure as he

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  was of anything on earth that there was some secret behind that smiling irony of his son. “But why doesn’t he tell me everything?” he asked himself.

  He stepped from the shower, cut off the water, and began drying himself with a towel, feeling that his thoughts and feelings were muddled. How much of what he felt he knew of his son was he misinterpreting? But what worried Ruddy was that he could not help but regard his son somewhat in the same light that he held the criminals he questioned each day. He paused, staring. Goddamn, that’s a hell of a thing to feel about one’s own son. Yes, but it was true. There was that withholding of something vital from the outside world that Tommy shared with the lawbreakers Ruddy dealt with day in and day out.

  “Oh, hell, I’m just a stupid, middle-aged father,” he chided himself. “Tommy hasn’t ever done anything wrong.” But that very assurance bothered him. That was just it. Tommy had not ever done anything wrong. He remembered hearing the fellow officers at the city jail complain of their sons:

  “Here I am catching hoodlums everyday and my own son seems to be turning into one.”

  Indeed, on one occasion, James Hill, his closest friend on the force, had had to talk with his son in jail and watch him being tried in court for car stealing. It had all turned out for the good in the end; the boy had been paroled to the father, who had promised the judge: “If that boy ever touches a car that doesn’t belong to him, he won’t get as far as this jail, Your Honor. I’ll take care of ’im.”

  And Jim Hill had. But that episode had been the talk of the department for months.

  “You see, even a cop’s son can go wrong.”

  “Hell, a cop’s boy is human like everybody else.”

  “Who the hell says that an officer’s son won’t steal, when

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  officers themselves steal,” Commissioner King had observed one day.

  Well, maybe that was true. But he, Captain Rudolph Turner, had never broken the law in any form or fashion in his life. So there was no earthly reason for Tommy to get into trouble. He stared unseeingly at his underwear. Here I am thinking of the boy as though I knew that he was guilty of something. . . . “I’m crazy,” he said, stung with guilt. I mustn’t treat that boy in a way that will make him go wrong. He realized that there was a danger in that direction. I don’t want to treat that boy in a way that will make him act exactly in a manner that I don’t want.

  He understood that kind of thing well enough. In his early days on the force he had once been assigned to a juvenile bureau and he had seen how stern action on children would make them rise to the challenge, make them turn brutal, make them defi -

  ant. But, hell, nothing remotely like that had ever happened between him and Tommy. Guess I’m worrying about nothing, he tried to soothe himself, hearing the nervous tapping of his son’s typewriter. And after all, he had once had a long talk with Father Joyce about his confused feelings for his son; time after time the good Father had questioned him about Tommy’s behavior and he had not been able to say a concrete thing against the boy, and the Father had counseled him to let the boy be.

  How ashamed he had been over that.

  “Don’t you love that boy?” Father Joyce had asked.

  Tears had come to Ruddy’s eyes, and he looked reproach-fully into the old priest’s eyes. He had not been able to answer.

  He could still remember with gratitude Father Joyce’s reassur-ing pat on his shoulder as he left the church.

  “Have faith, son,” Father Joyce had advised. “And remember that more than you or I watches over our sons. God loves us all.”

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  After that, he had kept his worries to himself. Only to Agnes had he allowed them to become articulate, and now he was finding it hard even to talk to her. Yeah, maybe I’m dumb, he thought, trying to smile, pulling on a shirt. How light and un-dressed he felt without that heavy uniform! And it was more than just the weight of that blue woolen cloth that gave him a sense of protection; it was the sight and symbol of it that mattered. His function in society was marked out by it, and even the bronze tint of his skin was redeemed by it. When he had donned his gray suit, he was clothed but felt naked still, somehow, some way. Only the presence of his service revolver on his hip served to act as an anchor to his threatened personality.

  Dressed, he went to the door of the bedroom, which now stood ajar. The light had been turned out. He hesitated, then called in a whisper: “Agnes.”

  There was no sound. As he pulled the door to, he heard her give a sigh.

  “Agnes,” he called again, softly.

  She still made no reply. He eased the door shut and passed down the hallway, the sound of Tommy’s typing coming louder as he neared the stairway. He paused, glanced at his watch. He had plenty of time. In any case, he might be able to flag down a squad car heading toward headquarters. Then the sheer intensity of the typewriter keys pounding upon paper gripped him.

  It gave him a strange sensation to know that the man concentrated in thought and feeling behind those flying keys was his son. But what was he studying so furiously? Then it struck him that maybe that was what was wrong; he had no way to get into the secret center of his son’s life! Maybe I’m just jealous. . . . Naturally, the boy would have a life of his own, be preoccupied with ideas of another world and another generation. I’ve got to accept that, he told himself with a pang of contrite guilt. Yes, he’d

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  give the boy a glad hand. He knocked against the shut door and the sound of the racing keys grew still.

  “That you, Dad?”

  “Yeah, Tommy.”

  “Come on in, Dad.”

  He entered the smoke-filled room and found Tommy turned smilingly toward him, his fingers lifted just above the level of the typewriter keys.

  “Headquarters bound, hunh?” Tommy asked, the cigarette dangling from his lips flopping as he talked.

  “Yeah.”

  That was what he did not like. Tommy always seemed to anticipate what he would say, always defined the relations between them before he could. There was no doubt that the lad was sharp, too sharp almost. But who am I too judge?

  “Mama sleeping?”

  “Oh, yeah. Say, this place is smoky. You’re a regular chimney.”

  “Ha, ha. I smoke like that when I’m on the homestretch for an exam,” Tommy said, rising now from the machine. “Kind of odd, their calling you like this.”

  “Yeah. Something’s up. Something always is. What’s the exam about?”

  “Sociology.”

  “Oh. Like it?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s all about this South Side of Chicago.”

  Tommy seemed suddenly effusive, open. Class stratifi cation, poverty, color consciousness, family disorganization . . .”

  “Tommy, that’s deep stuff,” Ruddy said with heartfelt admiration.

  “No. Not really. Once you get into it, it’s really simple, almost obvious. People who have no family get lost and go bad.

  People who make money develop airs and manners of other

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  people and become strangers to their own. It’s the women in the setup who catch hell.”

  “If that stuff is so easy, why do you grind so
hard at it?” he asked Tommy in spite of himself.

  “I’ve got only another hour’s work here and I’m through,”

  Tommy defended himself. “I can sleep until noon.”

  “Yeah. Guess so. But you ought to knock around a bit, kid.

  Relax some. You’ve got plenty of time. You’re ahead in school now. Don’t work too hard.”

  “Dad, it’s not work to me,” Tommy said with an offhanded laugh.

  There was silence, Ruddy felt offended. This was the core of the difference between them. Tommy had judged him. Had spoken from a core of meaning beyond the scope of Ruddy’s life. And that which was beyond the core of Ruddy’s life was either superior to it or inferior to it. And since he could not imagine that his son could be in some way his superior, he felt that he was, well, not exactly inferior but different, something like those tough young men who were picked up pimping or housebreaking.

  “Say, Dad, I’ve been so busy—and so have you—that I’ve not had a chance to ask you about the execution of Thompson,”

  Tommy said.

  “Thompson? Which one was that?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, that one. He went last month.”

  “Remember what I predicted about him, Dad?”

  Ruddy frowned. Somehow, for a reason he could not express, he resented Tommy’s keen interest in crime.

  “Can’t say I do, son.”

  “I said he wouldn’t confess,” Tommy reminded him.

  “Yes. I remember. In fact, he didn’t.”

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  “He didn’t do that job, Dad,” Tommy said.

  “Oh, hell, Tommy. There you go. You’re pitting yourself against the police and the courts and—”

  “Oh, no. It’s not that, Dad. Look, you and I both agree that a guilty man usually confesses when he’s facing that chair.

  Hunh?”

  “Yeah. There’s no use in holding back then. It’s over for him. And they usually confess. But that Thompson didn’t.”

  “And you know why, Dad?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Tommy.”

  “Because he didn’t do it, Dad. He wasn’t guilty.”

  “Oh, Tommy. You’re off, boy. They had the goods on ’im.”

  “But he didn’t confess.”

  “That’s right. You get hard ones sometimes.”

  “But he wasn’t hard. . . . Dad, do you want to know why he didn’t confess?”