“History is most similar to a feud,” he said. “There are sides. One family says that it was started by the murder of an uncle or the theft of some property. The other clan identifies an earlier insult; and so on. Natural law, morality and God himself seem to take sides in the conflict. From this come decades, sometimes centuries, of bloodshed and animosity, misinformation and the steady deterioration of truth.
“The historian has to choose sides. He, or she, makes a choice as to what sequence of events and intentions to highlight. Even while affecting objectivity the historian has secretly, maybe even unconsciously, taken sides. This is the human condition and, whatever else we might achieve, we cannot abandon it.”
John kept on talking even though his mind wandered from the lecture. He was thinking of his gone-again mother and Marte’s warning. He wondered if Carlinda would see the comparison between technique and nature and if knowledge, like Buddha said and Socrates said, was often the enemy of awareness.
He did not see the three men, led by Officer Hernandez of the Granville police, go around Talia Friendly as they approached the stage.
When they came near, John wondered why. Had they found some proof concerning the Trash Can Lecture?
Maybe this part of the story is over, he thought.
“Cornelius Jones,” Hernandez said, “I am arresting you until such time that your case with the state of New York has been resolved. Please turn around, sir.”
Part Three
The Trial
21
After photographs and fingerprints John was put into a holding cell in Maricopa County Jail. There he had seven cellmates: two white, the others various shades of brown.
Two of the darker men, a maybe-Mexican and a man the color of John’s father, wore fancy but disheveled suits and seemed to be sick. They sat side by side on the floor next to a small cot lolled upon by a very large dark brown man.
A friendly American Indian asked, “What they got you on, brother?”
“Suspicion of murder,” John said. “In New York.”
“Andrew.”
“John.”
Andrew looked to be somewhere in his forties with ruddy red-brown skin that had been much in the sun. His dark eyes seemed to be searching for something — on the floor, in John’s eyes, outside the cell bars.
“I took three sheep from a dude,” he said, “but they called it armed robbery just because I had a knife.”
“You had the knife in your hand?”
Andrew smiled and offered John his hand.
Andrew said, “No. It was in a sheath on my belt. I always carry a knife like that. Not a weapon, it’s a tool.”
Christopher Minor, one of the white prisoners, was introduced by Andrew to John. Minor was in his twenties with long brown hair that was severely matted. Minor was a known drug smuggler. His crime was that there were traces of marijuana in the trunk of his car; that and one drop of blood.
“Fuckin’ cops said that they’re gonna test that DNA against ever’ open case of assault and murder in Arizona,” Christopher said. “I told ’em okay but the first blood they should test is mine.”
With that the young white man laughed and laughed as if the best joke ever told had just escaped his lips.
“So you Hopi?” John asked his new friend Andrew.
“Navajo,” the nonviolent thief replied. “Largest reservation in the U.S. What you do?”
“I’m a history professor. At least I used to be. I guess after my arrest they’ll be letting me go.”
“How does a college teacher get mixed up with murder? Was it a woman?”
“Suspicion of murder,” John corrected. “It happened seventeen years ago.”
“Seventeen? You don’t look no more than twenty-five.”
“I was sixteen when the crime they say happened.”
“‘Crime they say,’” Andrew quoted. “You sound more like a jailbird than a teacher, unless you teach law.”
“John Woman,” a voice from outside the cell called.
“That’s me,” John said, rising from the floor where he and Andrew leaned against the flattened, crisscrossed bars of the holding cell.
“Come with me.”
Three jailhouse guards brought John to a small room where they made him put his hands behind his back. After his wrists were cuffed one of the men led John to a subterranean hallway lined with lime green metal doors. Using a key from a huge ring hanging from his belt the black-uniformed, pimply-faced young white man unlocked a door halfway toward the end of the dead-end corridor.
“Get in.”
“What about these manacles?”
“When the door is locked turn your back to it. I’ll open the slot to take them off.”
The cell was a fraction the size of the one he’d come from. There was a cot, a tiny sink, and an aluminum commode. The ceiling was low and the walls pale gray.
The guard took off the handcuffs and then slammed the slot closed leaving John alone, missing the society of his cellmates.
The cell was virtually soundproof. No phone, computer, TV, radio or sounds through the wall. There wasn’t even paper and pencil to jot or doodle with. John had never imagined a life bereft of pencils and paper or even a knob on the door.
Sitting on the cot John tried to remember what life had been before he came to that cell. His last lecture was interrupted, now lost. His mother was gone — again. There were no lovers, children or friends who would seek him out.
This solitary jail cell, John suddenly realized, was the distilled metaphor of his life, like a living art installation. This was the shell he carried like a hermit crab taking on a discarded tin can for a home.
The first time he’d ever been in a true colony of his kind was in the holding cell. There he could admit his crime if he wanted, say the name Chapman Lorraine. He could be Cornelius Jones, son of Herman and Lucia, heir to hard-bitten mobsters and deep libraries.
He lay down on the cot and masturbated as he used to do in the secret closet of the projectionist’s booth. The orgasm was powerful and he cried out behind it. For a moment he was embarrassed but then he remembered that no sound penetrated his shell. He masturbated again, experiencing an even more intense climax. After this he turned on his side and sleep fell like a chain-link blanket.
Sometime later, he had no idea how long, John awoke with the glare of the paneled ceiling light in his eyes. On the floor at the bottom of the metal door was a cardboard tray arranged with a sandwich of white bread and processed American cheese, a flimsy plastic tub of green Jell-O and six wilted leaves of lettuce. No fork or spoon, no napkin. John ate then masturbated then slept.
“Hey... you... Woman,” someone said.
John awoke with the paneled ceiling light in his eyes.
“What?”
“If you want breakfast then pass me your tray.”
The cardboard food tray was on the floor beside the cot. He took it to the door where an open square panel revealed the man talking to him.
There was a smaller slot at the floor.
He could see a young black man peering through the square panel.
John tried to push the tray across to him but the face backed away.
“Through the bottom,” the guard said. “You have to pass it under the bottom. That’s the rules.”
John went down on a knee and slid the tray out. Immediately a new tray was passed in. On this cardboard platter there was a slug-like, white-flour burrito.
“Breakfast is the best in here,” the guard said. “Scrambled eggs and turkey bacon. Not too dry or nuthin’.”