There were also the qualifications. The psychological evaluations meant to weed out the biased, those with either an overabundance of empathy, or a signal lack thereof. There was the hope that hope could be bled out.
“You’re the first. I won’t bullshit you, Tank, one day it won’t matter who brings in assholes like this. Today? It does. We’ll laugh about this shit, but right now we don’t have the talking stick. They do. We play by their rules, for now. So, yeah, one of the reasons we need you is the press looks a hell of a lot better than if we went with Judge John Manifest Destiny Smith to take down Diet Black Revolutionary, but also you’re a Judge, and that’s what the public really needs to see.”
Truth, for any Judge, felt more a fiction than something to waste the man hours searching for. It was so dependent on the other; on some shitty, shifting negation of survival.
“You practise that?” Ezekiel finally answered, grinning at his old not-quite-friend.
“Go eat a dick, Tank.” Pellegrino looked at the last folder, the one gripped tightly in her hand as if to lose it meant napalm and worse. She sighed and handed it over to him.
“You won’t be alone. Judge Poet will be working beside you. He has some background with The Brotherhood, though if I’m being honest not much more than you.”
Ezekiel leafed through the dossier. Judge Poet, one of the first class. Though, as the same was true of Judge Fox and Judge Stein, Ezekiel didn’t count that for much.
What did count, though, was his list of accreditations, of apprehensions, of other small-print, all amounting to a record that made Ezekiel wonder how he’d never heard of the man. It wasn’t his place—or any Judge’s—to know, though. Hell, the woman who’d handed him the document was the very embodiment of secrets. It was a Judge’s place to understand, and obey. Looking through the file, Judge Jones understood that even Fargo, for all his proclamations about the truths we hide from one another, knew there was something to be said for the dark.
“He was selected… no way, he was handpicked by Fargo? I mean, I figured he’d approved most of us in the end, but this write-up was done by the Chief Judge himself?” Judge Jones looked back to Marisa, seeing the crooked brow, the crooked everything, and knew he’d sounded more pained than he’d meant.
“If I’m not mistaken, Judge Jones, you’re jealous?” she said, enjoying it more than a fistful of Ump Chocolates. She picked up her coat while Ezekiel continued to thumb through, staring at him until he returned to the world of the living again.
“No, not jealous,” he finally managed. “Just a bit… lacking, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t. I think you’ll complement each other well, he’s been working out of this precinct for about two weeks now. Just… be careful, Tank.”
“Careful?” Ezekiel asked, following Marisa out of the chief’s office. The pink, puffy-cheeked man grew even riper and stormed back into his office.
“Well, files aren’t everything, you know? I’m not trying to be coy or anything; it’s just I don’t really know how to prepare you, except to say that Judge Poet is… an interesting Judge.” She was picking her words carefully.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll be fine… I’ve had my share of problematic co-workers in the past.” He saw something pass behind her eyes, but she let it drift off before saying it. She held a hand out, and he took it to shake, leaving in the same way they had the last time he’d seen her, a year and a half ago when he was still at the Academy.
“Oh… fuck me,” Marisa said, hand still latched to Ezekiel’s, though her eyes were locked onto something behind him. She looked like a scared child. Then, she didn’t. She gripped tightly, and smiled even tighter, looking back to Ezekiel.
“Sooo… I may have forgot to mention—or, okay, that’s bullshit. I might have waited until the last minute to also let you know that your old, um, bunkmate Ocasio happens to work here and is currently approaching us now but anyway make sure to call me if you need anything, okay? Okay, buh-bye!” She snatched her hand back and darted as fast as she could from the building.
There was a moment when Ezekiel saw his former bunkmate, and something scraped across the lining of his stomach.
It was common that some cadets had slipped up, caught a case of the cold that drove them to a touch from someone near. Ezekiel had assumed he was above it, silly schoolboy shit that only detracted from the mission, robbing time better suited for studies.
Ocasio hadn’t planned on it either. When he’d met Ezekiel, he hadn’t initiated some master plan set to seduce his grumpy bunkmate that didn’t know how to keep his side of the room clean. Maybe it was the way Ocasio talked about what he was trying to gain from the Judges program, to finally have the means to bring change in his community. Maybe it was the way, after Ezekiel shared it with him, that Ocasio hadn’t offered condolences for the body in the street, the nothing that came after it, and instead discussed how he saw in Fargo’s vision a solution to the infinite fuckery of the system.
Maybe it was something like light and something like dark and something like the moments they could find each other in between.
Maybe it was a weakness that Ezekiel thought he’d bled out with the rest after that body bled out in the street. Ezekiel had never been any good with men—women either, for that matter—but with Ocasio, if he’d have taken a moment to track him down after the accident, it may have, just that once, ended with beginnings. It was all the more reason to stay away; the world had a way of giving and giving until the punchline sank in.
“You look well, Officer Ocasio,” Ezekiel finally said. Ocasio rolled his eyes and took Judge Jones’s hand.
“You working out of this precinct? Bit of a coincidence, or maybe…”
“It is. A coincidence, I mean, that I’m here, it’s just a—”
“A coincidence, got it,” Officer Ocasio said with a chuckle. Ezekiel did the same, noting that he still could. Ocasio pulled Ezekiel in for a hug that lasted a moment past comfortable and platonic, but when they stopped, they became shields all over again.
“So I’m guessing you’re here about The Brotherhood? Honestly, I’m glad to have a Judge with some sense in your damn head.” Ocasio nearly whispered it.
Judge Poet, Judge Jones thought.
“I’ll be working with Judge Poet to subdue the leader of The Brotherhood. Will he be back soon? I tried to radio him, but he hasn’t responded.”
Ocasio grinned slyly. “Yeah, he wouldn’t. A report came in about an hour ago, bank robbery downtown on State Street. Six armed, seventeen hostages.”
“How many men were you able to send with him?”
“Yeah… that’s not a thing, not for that dude. He said some weird shit like ‘A Judge doesn’t do for the people with the people,’ or something.”
Judge Jones nodded, starting out the door. He couldn’t find a fault with Judge Poet’s assessment, and as a Judge himself he couldn’t ignore the call of duty.
…In no way whatsoever could it possibly have had anything to do with escaping awkward encounters with the man he never texted back.
Judge Jones distracted himself with the information he’d requested on the robbery in progress screeching over his helmet’s radio. Judge Poet’s file indicated he’d interacted with the public rarely since arriving in Chicago, though had full autonomy to do so under the Judges program. Ezekiel found it reassuring. He found the company of heroes more tiresome than anything the Academy could throw at him. The press had tried to paint him as a hero on more than one occasion; they just couldn’t see what the Judges had strived to create. Heroes fail. Heroes would have tried to go above and beyond the mission, their mission. The Brotherhood.
They didn’t understand.
When he arrived and climbed off his Lawranger, he’d half expected a police cruiser or two defying Judge Poet’s command. But there was silence: there were half-hung doors and there was the sight of the robed white dude crawling out from the bank and down the cement landing. The man had been cursing the he
avens, the sky, the earth, anything that would perhaps alleviate the new reality that was having two legs that pointed to the same side. The shiver of pain that rattled up through his body, from his unsocketed knee and shattered ankle, persuaded Judge Jones to investigate further.
Another Judge stood by the ramp as though waiting. His hair was dirty, blond and blood-splattered, but most importantly, Judge Jones could see it. He wasn’t a huge fan of the bulky helmets himself, but rules were rules. Too many punks and thugs had filled their heads with first-person-shooter games and the promise they held of headshots. The helmet, silly as it fit, mattered. It was the line between the law and the last thing most of them would ever see.
“Judge Poet?” Ezekiel called out, but it stopped nothing.
The other man in the diorama was a wall of muscle, and a face of hate. He kept pacing back and forth, back and forth, except now, with another Judge on his ass, the corner tightened, and his fists clenched at his sides. Ezekiel drew his left-holstered weapon up, training it over the pacing criminal, and finally Judge Poet took as much as a breath to acknowledge his new partner’s existence.
“Judge, respectfully, I must insist you lower your weapon, and stop interrupting.”
“Respectfully, he’s going to kick your ass,” Judge Jones said, his hand loose over his weapon to easily follow the pacing cultist, who’d not turned his gaze from Poet even after Jones had walked in with a pistol.
“Hah, maybe, but maybe that would be justice? In the scope of this building, this patch of nothing we find ourselves in—you, he and I—who is to say what is the most good for the most people right now? I’ve successfully evacuated the building, not a casualty on the side of the innocent. I’ve enforced my power of lethal execution across our friend—I’m sorry, Frost Dog was it? Right—I’ve taken out all of Frost Dog’s accomplices. Now? Just the two of us here. No offense intended there, Judge... Jones? …but you don’t really factor into this experiment. So! Where was I? Ah, most good, most people…” Judge Poet finally stopped his rambling to pull out a firearm. Well, at least he’s not doing anything—nope, no he really is, he’s doing something completely stupid. That was his gun, and now it’s across the room. Shit...
“…Dumb fuck… Goanna kill me a fuckin’ Rambo today… you think you getting out of here al—”
“Shhhh, now, Frost Dog, I don’t remember giving up the talking stick. As I was saying, Jones, I don’t know if it serves the most good to execute this overgrown cock goblet. I don’t see any immediate threat he poses, but he did blow one of his own men’s heads off about fifteen minutes ago…”
“I was aiming at you, if you wouldn’t have got out the fuckin way I—”
“Would have killed me, yes, Frost Dog, remember the talking stick? Do I need to have a literal stick for you to get that concept? So, we have a murderer, an admission of guilt to attempted murder on a Judge, also armed robbery. That was all in the past, though, all stuff of the dust. What can I say about the you of the now, this stalled fucking trolley in front of me? I mean, don’t get me wrong here, kiddo, you’ve done some very, very heinous shit, your ass is mine. But who does your death serve in the here and now? Care to weigh in?”
“I don’t think that now is the time to—”
“Judge Jones, less respectfully, still not speaking to you here. Frost Dog? Your answer?”
Frost Dog, or Theodore Groggins, wasn’t a man of words. This isn’t to say he didn’t have them; he just learned, at an early age, a lack of concern for the ones he knew. He learned that his body was more often than not the thing people cared about, and decided that he’d give them a hell of a body to deal with.
He used his body, his monstrous form, to spear into Poet, taking him down in a single tackle. Ezekiel sucked at his teeth; he may have been a good shot, but no one would take the chance of killing a fellow Judge.
Frost Dog snickered as he struggled with Poet, although he fought, to Ezekiel’s eyes, like he was stalling. Presumably he’d worked out that if he just snapped the Judge’s neck, Ezekiel would most definitely cap him.
In his caution, he’d perhaps overlooked something more important: Judge Poet, while smaller than Frost Dog, wasn’t a pushover. He found a vice grip of Groggins’ testicles, twisting them until the man winced, before latching his teeth over the criminal’s face, tearing off half his cheek. Ezekiel couldn’t ignore the sharp huff of laughter.
There was blood. There was the gasping, broken chain of a breath unhinged, there was Poet’s hand snatching at Frost Dog’s neck, there was everything but what they lied to themselves that their badge promised to protect.
When Frost Dog had finally faded away into the black, Judge Poet rolled him off, panting as he climbed to his feet. He twisted his body, driving a closed fist with everything that he could muster into Frost Dog’s chest, startling him back to the living with a few coughs. Before the behemoth could come too much to life, however, Judge Poet used the same hand to club Frost Dog on the chin and back to a between-place.
He cuffed the man and rolled to his feet before making his way to Judge Jones.
Judge Jones watched, not aware himself that he’d never lowered the weapon, even as the blood-drenched Judge hobbled his way over to him, hand outstretched, smiling ear to ear. Judge Jones felt a fire in his fingers. He wondered in that moment how Pellegrino thought—could think—matching him with this Judge Poet, this death machine, could make sense.
“As we’ve established, I am Judge Poet. Looks like we’ll be working together. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Judge Jones.”
AALIYAH
ALL THE BEAUTIFUL things that I’ve been a burden for came to me in a storm.
Elijah came to us two weeks early. His tiny bones and tiny hands and tiny worth in this tiny, tiny world bore a kind of magic, that somehow turned into something massive in that same breath.
The Uber driver drove us through the rain in his PT Cruiser with the bald tires that was one of three things filled with reckless abandon on the road that night. God, we were so fucking young. Young in that way that believed there was a kind of terminality to our mistakes, if only we could escape our twenties alive, if only with a few broken teeth, if only with bruised bone. The downpour was thick, clat-clatting on the car so heavily that the voice recognition app on the driver’s phone kept chirping to life with I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.
I didn’t understand it either, none of the shit that brought me there with him that night, a week or so after he’d made his choice, and I’d told him to get the hell out of our lives. Colin was like that, maybe it was some macho shit, chasing things that didn’t want to be found all the harder. Maybe it was hope, that thing Momma said shows its head in the dark, that four-letter word we must carry but can never say aloud or give form or do anything but swallow into our bellies to flutter and lay in wait. Or maybe it was just that part of him that I always wondered was there until I couldn’t do anything but see it in rusted smiles.
We made it to the hospital. We rushed through the storm, me swatting away Colin’s hand as he tried to carry us into the hospital, as he tried to force me into a wheelchair, as he tried to take control of the situation he would later abandon, of my Elijah.
He cried, and for a moment I thought he was terrified, angry that we were so selfish to bring him into a world that would take him from us one day.
I cried too. Not so poetically, more from pushing eight pounds of just us from my vag.
Colin leaned into my ear and whispered that no matter what, no matter the cost, he would always be there with us.
There isn’t much beyond that. You were born, no twists or turns, just the story of the only thing that will ever matter to me in this eroding, cursed earth that I need to force somewhere here.
You were named Elijah, because mom loved her Bible. Because even as a heathen academic, I do too. Because we give you what armour we can. I always wanted you to go your own way, though, because what’s the point of a god without faith? What’s
the point of a church you are dragged to kicking and screaming?
Regardless where you find your belief in this life, Elijah was a pretty badass dude, so you’re welcome. He was a prophet, a real one, who opposed a king, who knew what it was like to lose and to give up, who wasn’t allowed to. That… may set a pretty high bar for you, so, sorry about that.
He was blessed, and he was made a miracle worker. He went to the dead son of a widow, he brought him back to a life he’d left too soon. He did all those things we wish we could do.
I mostly just want to say here, Eli, that if this ever gets to you, I’m sorry I didn’t get to tell you these things myself.
CHAPTER FIVE
“SO, HAVE YOU ever seen rot, Judge Jones? True human rot, that is, not the shit you see in the movies—toilet paper and latex, usually.”
Judge Poet was… an interesting man.
Judge Jones stared blankly for a moment, content that the darkness of the visor would keep his thoughts to himself. “I—are you okay, Judge Poet?” he finally asked, with more concern than he’d expected.
“Are you? We’re going to be working closely, Judge Jones; who knows how long this will take, how many shots will get fired at our asses? I’d like to know who it is I’ll be working with. I mean, I read your file, I’m sure you read mine, but did it tell you about the time I stole Ginny Rumple’s chocolate milk in kindergarten? No? Well, point Poet,” the Judge said, smug about a contest no one else was competing in.
Judge Jones knew what he’d needed. He knew that Judge Poet dominated any given conversation. He knew that, since they’d met, there hadn’t been a moment’s hesitation, from one bloody hand to the next. He knew the Judge was nothing like he’d been expecting from his report.
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