Joy

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Folding Star (1994)

  We egged each other on into a language world of our own. It was Graves who located and nourished my vein of pedantry, and together, like mad academicians, we established a complex of unwritten rules and forfeits, making even our Latinist house-master uneasy about entering our study. The discovery of French Classical drama was a major step: after a term with our A-level texts we were recycling alexandrines and spoke with a marked sense of the caesura. Graves was very taken with the précieux, plonkingly translated into English: anyone who offended him was said to have "soiled his glory", and it was rare for him to refer to his feet as anything but his "poor sufferers". This fitted well with our pained avoidance of monosyllables and abhorrence of abbreviations. In a school where a typical notice might read "All RHJ report to BOC at 3 for TP" we held out for old-fashioned queenery and unnecessary effort. One year for the whole of Lent there were fines for using the first person singular: at weekends I would run up on to the common shouting "I, I, I, I, I" like a madman with a terrible stammer. And we wrote. Graves had abandoned his plans for the stage and was at work on an experimental novel, a completely new tack, the characters not only having no titles, but also no names: the men were identified by numbers, and the women by the various voiceless additional characters on the typewriter, such as # and [. He typed it at immense speed, with music on in the background, the carriage-return bell sometimes fitting in felicitously. I remained loyal to poetry, and alternated masked vers libre fantasies about the prefects with Wordsworthian sonnet-sequences on the seasons, the months, the w e e k s . . . I even started a sequence on the days of the year, each poem to be written on the day in question, but had dried up by early February. "The Months" was printed in the school magazine, and received Graves's most particular criticism. Aunt Tina read it there and worked up a mood of acclamation at home, suggesting, for some reason that seemed cogent at the time, that I should go and see Perry Dawlish, who was a friend of hers, and find out what he had to say. Dawlish would have been about seventy then, and was considered locally to be a famous author. If ever he showed up at a fete or sale of work he would be photographed for the Knowledge; and his rare appearances on TV programmes about writers of the twenties and thirties were also flagged in the local press: " 'I knew Merrifield well', Sir Perry says, and goes on to recall his three marriages and his lively sense of humour, which he claims some people could find disconcerting!" Dawlish was a baronet, but this didn't discourage a general supposition that he had been knighted for his services to literature.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I was awed by the book and its associations, and wondered why its author was known as the Old Rogue. I imagined him like Toad of Toad Hall, with goggles and a cigar, motoring recklessly from one Sussex alehouse to another. I kept peeping towards the window, trying to read Dawlish's reactions. He was in profile, and partly canopied by a broad-leaved plant that sprawled across the glass above him. He seemed to be paying each sonnet the very closest attention. Or had he perhaps fallen into a quiet doze? It occurred to me that he might have died. No—another page was shuffled under. I wondered which month he'd reached. I was aware that some months were stronger than others, which was why the sequence began with September, like a school year. I thought it unlikely that he would be very critical of them, but I would have to be sensible and take his criticism with eagerness and resolution when it came. One time I glanced up and found he was looking at me and slowly nodding, pausing to find the most tactful opening. "Marvellous," he said. "Simply marvellous, you've really got it. Really. I do congratulate you. You understand the sonnet, as few nowadays do. And every one of them has some memorable effect. 'When all is frozen to the rover's call' is a splendid line." And he said it again, to bring out what he heard as the "wintry echo" of all and call. I thought it was the best line of the lot myself, and saw it gaining something like proverbial status with Dawlish's endorsement. "There's absolutely no doubt about it, Edward," he said, with those gestures of regret that sometimes heighten the effect of praise; "You are a writer. A born writer, I would say. I see a very bright future for you indeed."

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  I was at the bar, settling and ordering, relishing the management's sullen refusal of all festive crap, before I heard a toot of recorders, like a pert echo of long-ago end-of-term concerts. I turned, and there in the corner was a group of hairy mutants, bodies in jeans and sloppy jerseys topped with heads of crumpled felt and black bristle, with holes for eyes, as if a finger had punched through bone. One, with an ambiguous long jaw and flopping ears, gave me a wave, that was followed by muffled giggles from the rest. I nodded back, hoping that would be it. A certain silly terror of masks. Of course I knew it was Gerard, I knew his wide hips as he came over, and the blond fuzz on the back of his hands. "I'd forgotten you were a donkey," I said. If there was sarcasm in his look it was entirely absorbed by his grotesque proboscis. "I'm a hare." He had two mouths: his real mouth and chin were left uncovered beneath the contraption, so that he could play, whereas the mouths of the bear and the monkey more troublingly coincided. "So when's your concert?" "It's tonight—aren't you coming? In the old Council Chamber." "Of course, I'd love to. Can you still get tickets?" "Totally sold out." I winced regretfully. "But I can probably get you in. Come early"—and he started on an account of how and where. It was obviously Kindness To Me day. I thought back, to rid myself of all this, to when we'd first met, just here—how I wanted to kiss him, how he dodged me but stayed with me, warm and breathy and avoiding. I thought he couldn't kiss anyone as he was. There was a ghastly moment as the others crowded round, like clumsy chimeras, their own embarrassments hidden under fur and whisker. The bear with the recorder, playing the thing he would normally be goaded to dance to, gave a few further tootlings. I stared them out with an unconvincing grin. Then they shambled away, plucking their heads off like fencers and showing their flushed young faces beneath. The door shut behind them and I turned with an apologetic grimace to the barman, dear little Ivo, who had helped me at moments before, who kept his ears and eyes open—there was a horrifying noise from outside, a cracked re-echoing whoop, and another, and then another. It was like the never before-heard siren of a sinking ship. Gerard had let loose with his bombard at last. Ivo made a camp gesture of alarm, and clutched his tea-towel to his heart. A moment later, "I'm glad they've gone. They got on my nerves!" "Mine too." He paused by me, and stared at the counter, as if trying to pick up the thread of an interrupted conversation, then shook his head. "Staying in town for Christmas?" "I'm going back home in a couple of days." "Back to London, yeah?" "Well, a bit south of London."

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  There were corners of the club, removed from the dance floor, dead-ends of cellars, cryptlike areas, dimly lit, faintly damp, with a limey dampness quite distinguishable from the tropical humidity the weather and the dancers made. We ran into John and Jimmy, a sweet black and white couple who had been together for years, John a cuddly blond, Jimmy handsome to tears, with lingering, ironical eyes. We stood and shouted some banter, Jimmy as usual hugging his friend from behind: they would shuffle around for hours like that, coupled and domestic and yet giggling, party-going. They might have been the beginning of a conga, ready to sweep everyone away in silliness and fun, but their devotion to each other made them at the same time inaccessible. I knew they had something which I had never had. They felt Phil a bit, oohing as he looked bashful but knew he couldn’t object, and Jimmy lifted up his hand as if he’d won a fight and made him flex his biceps and triceps, and then in a little showery cadenza of laughs and nonsense they were on their way. We went into the section beyond the fishtank, with a comfy bench running along the walls, very low, with knee-high tables crowded with beer glasses. From where we sprawled the fishtank formed an unreliable window onto the dance floor, its water threaded by bubbles up one side, and the tiny fish, neurotically it seemed, twitching from one direction to another as the music shook the thick glass. The floor of the aquarium was at eye level, and laid out like a miniature landscape, with picturesque rocks tilting up out of the pinky-brown sand, and a little pink house like a French country railway station with gaping doors and windows which the fish never deigned to swim into. The subdued lighting made the surface gleam when one looked up to it, and gave the water an unnaturally thick appearance, like a liqueur. Through this entranced, slowing medium the dancers could be seen spinning, rocking and bouncing, freakishly fast and disconnected. ‘All right, darling?’ Phil nodded. ‘Bloody hot,’ he said, running his hand over his chest and stomach and then looking at it admiringly. It was one of those occasions when I couldn’t think of much to say to him: we lolled stickily together and slurped our lager. They kept the lager so chilled that the glasses were slippery with their own cold sweat. When Phil slid his hand through the slit side of my vest I gasped at the shock—like cold water thrown in horseplay in the showers, or the touch of hands under clothing in winter out of doors. A short way off I made out a couple talking about us in a way meant to be noticed, heads together, with long glances and point-weighing smiles and nods.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I tested him gently by saying how muscly he was, & he flexed his arms & had me punch him in the stomach—at the same time saying how I shd see so-and-so in his regiment, who evidently has the biggest muscles imaginable. I discovered he likes to box, & wished for a moment I was twenty years younger & cd have taken him on. In the showers he was all I cd have hoped for, flawed only by a little appendicitis scar; but he was selfconscious—not, I realised, about nudity, but about showering with whites. He was like other American negro servicemen I’ve seen in the Corry, used to segregation & despite their often transcendent beauty & presence somehow cowed or fearful of rejection. The regulars, however, were impressed, & Fox was very pointedly doing his ‘Get a bunk on last night, Charlie?’ patter, while young Andrews lathered his conversation with my Lord this and my Lord that—which of course impressed Roy in turn. I took him back to Brook St & opened a bottle of champagne. Taha looked at me very knowingly before going off to see his uncle, & then, having the place to myself, I more or less did what I wanted. There was a statutory preamble of remarks about girlfriends and what-have-you, but that out of the way we started kissing & stroking each other pretty uninhibitedly, & stripped off & had it away on the sofa & then on the floor three or four times. I must say he was absolute bliss, with that kind of innocence that so appeals to me, & very manly & friendly—nothing affected or girly about it. I’ve never known anyone ejaculate such quantities. Even the last time, when I brought him off by hand, it shot right up into his face. September 27: In a moment of foolishness I’d given Roy my telephone number. I was out most of the morning & didn’t return home until 5 or so, when I asked Taha if there had been any calls & he said ‘No Sir’ with a noticeably self-satisfied air. It wd have been wonderful to have had Roy again, but I found I was glad not to, & decided that if he shd get in touch I wd not see him. Any repetition wd lack the spontaneity & beauty of yesterday, & I wd rather remember it as one of those rare & wonderful days when two strangers come together in deliberate ignorance of each other for their mutual pleasure. September 28: A fairly terrible day, which seemed to have been designed as the counterpart to Tuesday, all choking catastrophe instead of the sentimental camaraderie & avoided intimacy of that brief afternoon.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “Six years, six years gone.” He looked away with a pained expression. “These six years feel like fifty. Six years, just gone. I’ve been so worried they were going to kill me, I haven’t even thought about the time I’ve lost.” His troubled look sobered me, too. “I know, Walter, and we’re not clear yet,” I said. “The ruling only gives you a new trial. Given what the ABI has said, I can’t believe they would try to prosecute you again, but with this crowd reasonable conduct is never guaranteed. I’m going to try and get you home as soon as humanly possible.” With thoughts of home, his mood lightened and we started talking about things we’d been too afraid to discuss since we’d met. He said, “I want to meet everybody who has helped me in Montgomery. And I want to go around with you and tell the world what they did to me. There are other people here who are as innocent as I am.” He paused and started smiling again. “Man, I want some good food, too. I ain’t had no real good food in so long that I can’t even remember what it tastes like.” “Whatever you want, it will be my treat,” I said proudly. “From what I hear, you might not be able to afford the kind of meal I want,” he teased. “I want steak, chicken, pork, maybe some good cooked coon.” “Coon?” “Oh, don’t pretend. You know you like grilled raccoon. Please don’t sit there and tell me you ain’t never had no good coon when I know you grew up in the country just like I did. There has been many a time when me and my cousin would be driving, and a coon would run cross the road and he’d say, ‘Stop the car, stop the car!’ And I’d stop the car and he’d jump out and go running into the woods and come back minutes later with a raccoon he done caught. We would take it home, skin it, and fry or barbecue that meat. Maaaan…what you talking about? That would be some good eatin’.” “You’ve got to be joking. I grew up in the country, but I never chased any kind of wild animal into the woods to take home and eat.” We relaxed and laughed a lot. We had laughed before today—Walter’s sense of humor hadn’t failed him despite his six years on death row. And this case had given him lots of fodder. We would often talk about situations and people connected to the case that, for all the damage they had caused, had still made us laugh at their absurdity. But the laughter today felt very different. It was the laughter of liberation.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Beside the pillow, trapped under a slumberous arm, was Tom Jones —the fat, squashy Penguin redolent of O levels and essays on virtue. I could hardly bear to look at him any longer, and shook him roughly to wake him up, falling on him before he knew what was happening and bothering him with kisses. I hadn’t made love like I did then since I was a schoolboy. It was extraordinarily innocent, fervent and complete. By the time Phil had to get to work it had begun to rain, and after he had gone I lay in the dark with the window open and listened to it pattering on the leads. Falling asleep I slid briefly through a zone of luminous happiness, a vision as clear as summer—not the ominous clarity of Hampshire or Yorkshire summer but a kind of desert radiance where rocks and water and scrawny shade, lying by chance together, seemed divinely disposed and glowed in their changelessness. I more or less forced Phil, who did it with a certain comical reluctance, to take the following night off in exchange with Celso. Celso, it transpired, was anxious to have Friday off to treat his wife on her birthday—a musical and dinner and then, one assumed, some especially Spanish and honourable congress. I’d hoped for a high noon of sunbathing, back on the roof, but it was one of those close dark days when one can never get dry and longs for a thunderstorm that never comes. We went back to my flat and lounged about and I came on rather fierce about wanting sex several times, at which Phil showed at first a demure disbelief though clearly, when it came to it, he wanted it just as much himself. Later we went up to the Corry, which was unmomentous, no one seeming to have noticed that I had been away and the virulent strains of exercise going on much as normal. It was wonderful though, additionally hot from weights, to plunge into the sombre coldness of the pool.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The holding cells for prisoners were in the basement of the courthouse, and after meeting with Walter, I made my way upstairs to get ready for court to begin. When I walked into the courtroom, I was shocked by what I saw. Dozens of people from the community—mostly black and poor—had packed the viewing area. On both sides of the hearing room, people from Walter’s family, people who had attended the fish fry on the day of the crime, people we’d interviewed over the past several months, people who knew Walter from working with him, even Sam Crook and his posse, were crammed into the courtroom. Minnie and Armelia smiled as I walked into court. Tom Chapman then walked in with Don Valeska, and they both scanned the room. I could tell from the looks on their faces that they were unhappy about the crowd. Tate, Larry Ikner, and Benson—the law enforcement team primarily responsible for Walter’s prosecution—piled in behind the prosecutors and sat down in the courtroom as well. A deputy sheriff escorted the parents of Ronda Morrison to the front of the court just before the hearing began. When the judge took the bench, the crowd of black faces noisily rose as one and sat back down. Many of the black community members looked dressed for church. The men were in suits, and some of the women wore hats. It took them a few seconds to settle into silence, which seemed to annoy Judge Norton. But I was energized by their presence and happy for Walter that so many people had come out to support him. Judge Norton was a balding white man in his fifties. He wasn’t a tall man, but the elevated bench made him as imposing as any judge. He had managed some of our earlier preliminary hearings in a suit, but today he was in his robe, gavel firmly in hand. “Gentlemen, are we ready to proceed?” Judge Norton asked. “We are, Your Honor,” I replied. “But we intend to call several of the law enforcement officers present in the courtroom, and I would like to invoke the rule of sequestration.” In criminal cases, witnesses who will be testifying are required to sit outside the courtroom so they can’t alter their testimony based on what other witnesses say. Valeska was on his feet immediately. “No, Judge. That’s not going to happen. These are the investigators who figured out this heinous crime, and we need them in court to present our case.” I stayed on my feet. “The State doesn’t bear the burden of presenting a case in these proceedings, Your Honor; we do. This isn’t a criminal trial but a postconviction evidentiary hearing.” “Judge, they’re the ones that are trying to retry this case and we need our people inside,” Valeska countered.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  As you know, I’ve been in solitary confinement approx. 14.5 years. It’s like the system has buried me alive and I’m dead to the outside world. Those photos mean so very much to me right now. All I have is $1.75 in my inmate account right now. If I send you $1.00 of that, how many of the photos will that purchase me? In my elation at the photo shoot today, I forgot to mention that today June 19th was my deceased mom’s birthday. I know it’s not a big significance, but reflecting on it afterward it seemed symbolic and special that the photo shoot took place on my mother’s birthday! I don’t know how to make you feel the emotion and importance of those photos, but to be real, I want to show the world I’m alive! I want to look at those photos and feel alive! It would really help with my pain. I felt joyful today during the photo shoot. I wanted it to never end. Every time you all visit and leave, I feel saddened. But I capture and cherish those moments in time, replaying them in my mind’s eye, feeling grateful for human interaction and contact. But today, just the simple handshakes we shared was a welcome addition to my sensory deprived life. Please tell me how many photos I can get? I want those photos of myself, almost as bad as I want my freedom. Thank you for making a lot of the positive occurrences that are happening in my life possible. I don’t know exactly how the law led you to me, but I thank God it did. I appreciate everything you and EJI are doing for me. Please send me some photos, okay? Chapter Nine [image file=image_rsrc32U.jpg] I’m HereFinally, the date for Walter McMillian’s hearing had arrived. We would now have an opportunity to present Ralph Myers’s new testimony and all the exculpatory evidence we’d discovered in police records that had never been disclosed. Michael and I had gone over the case a dozen times, thinking through the best way to present the evidence of Walter’s innocence. Our biggest concern was Myers, mostly because we knew he would feel incredible pressure once he was brought back to the county courthouse, and he’d broken under pressure before. We were consoled by the fact that so much of our evidence was documentary and could be admitted without the complications and unpredictability that Myers’s testimony might introduce. We now had a paralegal on staff, so we brought her into the case. Brenda Lewis was a former Montgomery police officer who joined us after seeing more abuses of power than she could tolerate at the police department. An African American woman, she was adept even in environments where her gender or race made her an outsider. We had asked her to touch base with our witnesses before the hearing to go over last-minute details and calm their nerves.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  We got things resolved so that the Court could grant our motion and resentence Mr. Caston so that he would immediately be released from prison. The State usually wouldn’t bring inmates from Angola to New Orleans for hearings but instead had them view proceedings on a video hookup at the prison. After I made our arguments in the noisy, frenetic courtroom, the judge granted our motion. She recited the facts about the date of Mr. Caston’s conviction, and then something quite unexpected happened. As the judge spoke about Mr. Caston’s decades in prison, the courtroom, for the first time in my multiple trips there, became completely silent. The lawyers stopped conferring, the prosecutors awaiting other cases paid attention, and family members ceased their chatter. Even the handcuffed inmates awaiting their cases had stopped talking and were listening intently. The judge detailed Mr. Caston’s forty-five years at Angola for a non-homicide crime when he was sixteen. She noted that Caston had been sent to Angola in the 1960s. Then the judge pronounced a new sentence that meant Mr. Caston would immediately be released from prison. I looked at Carol and smiled. Then the people in the silent courtroom did something I’d never seen before: They erupted in applause. The defense lawyers, prosecutors, family members, and deputy sheriffs applauded. Even the inmates applauded in their handcuffs. Carol was wiping tears from her eyes. Even the judge, who usually tolerated no disruptions, seemed to embrace the drama of the moment. A number of my former students now worked with the public defender’s office in New Orleans, and they, too, had come to court and were cheering. I had to speak with Mr. Caston by phone and explain what had happened, since he couldn’t see everything from the video monitor. He was overjoyed. He became the first person to be released as a result of the Supreme Court’s ban on death-in-prison sentences for juvenile lifers. We went down the hall to Mr. Carter’s courtroom and had another success, winning a new sentence that meant that he, too, would be released immediately. Mr. Carter’s family was ecstatic. There were hugs and promises of home-cooked meals for me and the staff of EJI. Carol and I busily began making arrangements for Mr. Caston’s and Mr. Carter’s releases, which would take place that evening. The protocol at Angola was to release prisoners at midnight and give them bus fare to New Orleans or a city of their choice in Louisiana. We dispatched staff to Angola, which was several hours away, to meet the men when they were released, sparing them the midnight bus trip. Exhausted, I wandered the halls of the courthouse while we waited for one more piece of paper to be faxed and approved to clear the way for the release of Mr. Caston and Mr. Carter. An older black woman sat on the marble steps in the massive courthouse hallway.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  He looked at me unblinkingly and I said, "Yes, I'm sorry about that"—then he gave an enchanting smile and a little giggle, at which I felt a sudden and unexpected intimacy had been reached. I had a warm glow, half a shiver, a tear in my eyelashes, not enough to fall. I had seen the Corley-Cripps Museum years before with my gay uncle Wilfred, prospecting in the Newhaven area on some unexplained business of his own, and still vividly remembered the huge 1890s villa, with its green cupola and cars in a shed at the side that were almost as old as the house itself. We were admitted by a reluctant old woman in an overcoat, whom a pre-war photograph in one of the rooms enabled us to identify as Madeleine Corley-Cripps, daughter-in-law of the builder of the house. I might well have looked for a moment or two at a mystic panel by Orst, as I did certainly at the three Burne-Jones ladies and at blackened allegories by G. F. Watts. But their mysteries were dim beside the captivating dereliction of their surroundings—the click of loose tiles underfoot, the enormous moribund plants, the cases of damp-damaged memorabilia, the linings of the curtains tattered and brown and trailing on the floor, the view from the windows on to the garden, its statuary blistered and tarnished by the salt air. He had only called it mad, but I hoped that my host, who must be a practised poker-around in odd and not always welcoming places, shared my love for this one—and love, in the sudden flush of enthusiasm, is what it was revealed to be. I wasn't sure if the joke was already over. I wanted to say something about the cars, and how my uncle and I, once Madeleine Corley-Cripps had closed the front door behind us, slackened our pace down the drive, halted, and without a word turned back and crossed to the garages, with hasty glances over our shoulders and at a disreputable near-run. All old Corley-Cripps's automobiles were there, three abreast and three deep: a sports Delage, an intensely rare Napier 90, a green Bentley, a long-nosed Isotta-Fraschini, a raffish little wasp-backed Bugatti—the other passion of that manufacturer of once world-famous pumps. And in what a dream light they lay, with the brambles straggling over the glass roof. "The thing I recall even more than the Burne-Jones 'Beatrice' there," said Paul Echevin, "was an eight-litre Bentley of 1931 (I think), the first saloon to exceed 100 miles per hour. It must have been untouched for a quarter of a century. One dared not lay a finger on it for fear that it might fall into a heap of dust."

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  No discipline made me feel more free, or contained me and delighted me within its own element so much as swimming. Even so, when Phil came down the spiral stairs—displaying (some well-judged vanity of his own) new trunks cut high on the hips, black behind and gold in front—I was happy to do things I normally deplore, getting in people’s way, doing handstands or swimming between his splayed and sturdy legs. For a while we gloomed Cousteau-like in the depths of the deep end, swivelling our goggled heads from side to side, searching for our locker keys which we had thrown in and left to settle, buffeted and wandering in the choppy water. Where the end wall met the floor of the bath Phil pointed out to me with slowed, speechless gestures the melancholy aperture where the water escaped, and, gathered round it, dozens of sticking-plasters, bleached clean by their long immersion and waving over the filter like albino, submarine plants. Then I saw him give out his breath, the bubbles crowding from his mouth, flooding around his head and up towards the light with baroque exuberance. He himself shot up then and I followed a second or two later. We hung on our elbows to regain our breath. The plan was to go later to the Shaft and dance and get drunk and have a wonderful time. Phil had never been there with me: our funny routine isolated us from the normal gay world, and what with one thing and another I had not been there myself for a couple of months—though for a year or more before that I was impelled towards it, without any power to resist, every Monday and Friday night. I had been an addict of the Shaft. If I was out to dinner I would grow restless towards eleven o’clock, particularly if I was away in the western districts and had several miles to travel. I would go to the opera very inappropriately got up, and had more than once exploited the privacy of the Covent Garden box to slip off during the last act as the anticipation of sex welled up inside me, rapidly distancing and denaturing the carry-on on stage into irksome nonsense. The Shaft itself I hardly ever left alone, and I had made countless taxi-journeys down the glaring, garbage-stacked wasteland of Oxford Street and along the great still darkness of the Park, a black kid, drunk, chilled in his sweat, lying against me, or secretly touching me. I took home boys from far out—from Leyton, Leytonstone, Dagenham, New Cross—who like me made their pilgrimage to this airless, electrifying cellar in the West End, but had no way, if they failed to score, at three or four a.m., of getting home. Phil took a practical attitude to his initiation, and we walked from the Corry through dusky, cooling Bloomsbury to have supper at the hotel. In Russell Square, under the planes, there was at last a perceptible breeze.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  We stepped back together and he kissed me with closed lips, as if shyly soliciting an answer in his turn. It was the gentlest thing I'd ever known from another boy, blasphemous and unhidden. I reached down again and rubbed him through his pants and he just let me. "We'd better go under the trees," he said, and went to pick up his bike. "Don't want to lose that." I thought to myself, "But that's where the queers go", imagining some nice distinction between what they did there and whatever we were going to do. I felt the minute of physical separation keenly, skirting the pond, Dawn walking the bike between us, the proficient idling of its wheels; I wanted things to start again, and then, as we stepped under the nighttime of the wood's edge, was quite afraid, too. This was the "dim woods" of poetry for real. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet. The forest's ferny floor. I'd threaded the paths there often by day, but now it was mazily different, the underbrush of August was thick and tangled across. Dawn had stopped to lodge his bike against a tree, and whispered loudly, "Hey, Manners. . . don't go too far." Perhaps I was trying to lead the way, as if I often did this. I came back towards him and we bumped into each other. I just couldn't see at first, and then began to make out tree-trunks and bushes against the relative brightness of the open common beyond. We hugged for a kind of confirmation, and I passed my hand shyly over his face (he kissed it!) and through his short curls. My mouth was open and sour with need when his lips nudged over it and his fat shocking tongue pressed in. When we came out of the wood I knew I was late, and must hurry down. The towering anvil of cloud had become a ruffled palm-tree of darkness against the other darkness of the sky. I longed to be alone, longed for it to happen again. Dawn sat astride his bike and leant on my shoulder to steady himself. It was a firm, slightly painful grip, through which all his weight and balance seemed to communicate themselves, as if we were an acrobatic act. Then he circled swiftly across the turf. I ran up to the trig-point and watched the rushing field of his front light and the red glow of his back light as he jolted and swung down the hillside and was suddenly out of view.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  After all the speeches, they carried him back down the steps of the platform and the crowd started clapping and now he felt more embarrassed than ever. He didn’t deserve this, he didn’t want this shit. All he could think of was getting out of there and going back home. He just wanted to get out of this place and go back right away. But now someone in the crowd was calling his name. “Ronnie! Ronnie!” Over and over again he heard someone shouting. And finally he saw who it was. It was little Tommy Law, who had grown up on Hamilton Avenue with all the rest of the guys. He used to hit home runs over Tommy’s hedge. Tommy had been one of his best friends like Richie and Bobby Zimmer. He hadn’t seen him for years, not since high school. Tommy had joined the marines too, and he’d heard something about him being wounded in a rocket attack in the DMZ. No one had told him he was back from the war. And now Tommy was hugging him and they were crying, both of them at the bottom of the stage, hugging each other and crying in front of all of them that day. He wanted to pull away in embarrassment and hold back his feelings that seemed to be pouring out of him, but he could not and he cried even harder now, hugging his friend until he felt his arms go numb. It was so wonderful, so good, to see Tommy again. He seemed to bring back something wonderfully happy in his past and he didn’t want to let go. They held on to each other for a long time. And when Tommy finally pulled away, his face was bright red and covered with tears and pain. Tommy held his head with his hands still shaking, looking at him sitting there in disbelief. He looked up at Tommy’s face and he could see that he was very sad. The crowd had gathered now watching the two friends almost with curiosity. He tried wiping the tears from his eyes, still trying to laugh and make Tommy and himself and all the others feel more at ease, but Tommy would not smile and he kept holding his head. Still crying, he shook his head back and forth. And now, looking up at Tommy’s face, he could see the thin scar that ran along his hairline, the same kind of scar he’d seen on the heads of the vegetables who had had their brains blown out, where plates had been put in to replace part of the skull. But Tommy didn’t want to talk about what had happened to him. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He grabbed the back handles of the chair and began pushing him through the crowd. He pushed him through the town past the Long Island Railroad station to the American Legion hall.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Chapter Sixteen [image file=image_rsrc331.jpg] The Stonecatchers’ Song of SorrowOn May 17, 2010, I was sitting in my office waiting anxiously when the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision: Life imprisonment without parole sentences imposed on children convicted of non-homicide crimes is cruel and unusual punishment and constitutionally impermissible. My staff and I jumped up and down in celebration. Moments later we were inundated with a flood of calls from media, clients, families, and children’s rights advocates. It was the first time the Court had issued a categorical ban on a punishment other than the death penalty. Joe Sullivan was entitled to relief. Scores of people, including Antonio Nuñez and Ian Manuel, were entitled to reduced sentences that would give them a “meaningful opportunity for release.” Two years later, in June 2012, we won a constitutional ban on mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed on children convicted of homicides. The Supreme Court had agreed to review Evan Miller’s case and the case of our client from Arkansas, Kuntrell Jackson. I argued both cases in March of that year and waited anxiously until we won a favorable ruling. The Court’s decision meant that no child accused of any crime could ever again be automatically sentenced to die in prison. Over two thousand condemned people sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for crimes when they were children were now potentially eligible for relief and reduced sentences. Some states changed their statutes to create more hopeful sentences for child offenders. Prosecutors in many places resisted retroactive application of the Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama, but everyone now had new hope, including Ashley Jones and Trina Garnett. We continued our work on issues involving children by pursuing more cases. I believe there should be a total ban on housing children under the age of eighteen with adults in jails or prisons. We filed cases seeking to stop the practice. I am also convinced that very young children should never be tried in adult court. They’re vulnerable to all sorts of problems that increase the risk of a wrongful conviction. No child of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen can defend him- or herself in the adult criminal justice system. Wrongful convictions and illegal trials involving young children are very common. A few years earlier, we won the release of Phillip Shaw, who was fourteen when he was improperly convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in Missouri. His jury was illegally selected, excluding African Americans. I argued two cases at the Mississippi Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the convictions and sentences of young children were illegal. Demarious Banyard was a thirteen-year-old who had been bullied into participating in a robbery that resulted in a fatal shooting in Jackson, Mississippi. He was given a mandatory death-in-prison sentence after his jury was illegally told that he had to prove his innocence beyond a reasonable doubt and the State introduced impermissible evidence. He was resentenced to a finite term of years and now has hope for release.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  Hadn't we walked down Fore Street arm in arm and even loitered on occasion in Cricketfield Lane in a lovely sexless parody of boys with girls—daydreaming, nattering, full of camp confidences? I wanted to know more, but dreaded hearing him say what I didn't want, above all, to hear said. "Let's talk about food!" I suggested. "Okay," he said with a shrug, but then settled forward as if after all this might be quite fun. "I will name fifteen kinds offish." When the slightly fast clock in the adjacent sitting-room softly bonged twelve we had ransacked the slippery markets of St Andrew's Quay for a whole catalogue of eels, mussels, monkfish, dace and bream, and were growing almost hilarious as we hauled up odder and more doubtful species from neglected buckets and murky tanks. Luc's fish vocabulary was so comprehensive that I found myself learning from him; it was all good St Narcissus drill, of course, drummed in by some insanely thorough master, and I saw that though Luc notched up rarities like chad and wrasse to his credit he had no very clear idea what they looked or tasted like. Still, while the game lasted, we were suddenly closer, our awkwardnesses forgotten. The chase became a race. "I'm surprised you should have overlooked graying," I said censoriously; and he slapped the table and said, "Yes, and what about mullet, Edward, what about mullet!" so that I grinned and my heart sprinted at this first real naming, the first time I had become a person, my own name burning my face like some heartfelt endearment. I expected his mother to come in and round things off, and got up and stretched and looked out of the window into the strip of garden with its tubbed shrubs and little pointed-roofed gazebo. Beyond was the canal, in whose sullen undredged depths fish undreamt of by Luc or me must live. I asked him if he knew my other pupil Marcel, and turned in one of the passing dazzles of sunshine to watch him answer, my shadow firm for a moment across the carpet towards him, its head in his lap. "Only by sight," he said, "from school. I think he is a very kind young man and not a happy one. Sibylle . . . " I waited. "Sibylle is a friend of his. I don't really know him." He gathered up his notebook, in which he was yet to write a word, and clutched together the coloured pens. His mother came in. He rose and after a few exchanges did his duty of showing me to the door, but as if it were something he hoped he wouldn't always have to do. Chapter 7 Matt lived in a servant's flat draughtily tacked on to a large shabby house on the western side of the town.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is true that it was they who had begun the struggle of which he was now the symbol and the leader; it is true that it had taken all of their insistence to overcome in him a grave reluctance to stand where he now stood. But it is also true, and it docs not happen often, that once he had accepted the place they had prepared for him, their struggle became absolutely in distinguishable fr om his own, and took over and controlled his life. He suffered with them and, thus, he helped them to 6 ++ OTHER ESSAYS suffer. The joy which filled this church, therefore, was the joy achieved by people who have ceased to delude themselves about an intolerable situation, who have found their prayers for a leader miraculously answered, and who now know that they can change their situation, if they will. And, surely, very few people had ever spoken to them as King spoke. King is a great speaker. The secret of his greatness does not lie in his voice or his presence or his manner, though it has something to do with all these; nor docs it lie in his verbal range or felicity, which are not striking; nor does he have any capacity for those stunning, demagogic flights of the imagination which bring an audience cheering to its feet. The secret lies, I think, in his intimate knowledge of the people he is addressing, be they black or white, and in the forthrightness with which he speaks of those things which hurt and baffle them. He docs not offer any easy comfort and this keeps his hearers absolutely tense. He allows them their self-respect indeed, he insists on it. "We know," he told them, "that there are many things wrong in the white world. But there arc many things wrong in the black world, too. We can't keep on blaming the white man. There arc many things we must do for ourselves." He suggested what some of these were: "I know none of you make enough money-but save some of it. And there arc some things we've got to face. I know the situation is responsible for a lot of it, but do you know that Negroes are 10 per cent of the population of St. Louis and arc responsible for 5 8 per cent of its crimes? We've got to face that. And we have to do something about our moral stan dards. And we've got to stop lying to the white man. Every time you let the white man think you think segregation is right, you arc co-operating with him in doing evil. "The next time," he said, "the white man asks you what you think of segregation, you tell him, Mr. Charlie, I think it's wrong and I wish you'd do something about it by nine o'clock tomorrow morning!"

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  I stepped back, tugged off my shoes (shabby old suede laceups which were never unlaced, a lazy affectation which I believed to be overtly sexy), unbuttoned and flung off my white cotton shirt, and with a hint of suspense, undid my fly and yanked off my trousers. Phil’s eyes were mesmerised by mine, and seemed reluctant to go down on my nodding dick. Then he too suddenly got undressed, and stood away from the window, his head bowed under the sloping ceiling. His body looked fantastic, highly developed, everywhere convex, hard and innocent. His whiteness was broken only by the red blotch of an insect bite in the tender, creased skin at his waistband. I was much more gentle with him now, stroking, kissing and nibbling—smiling, too, and making small pleasurable noises. And he began to respond, imitating me at first, but then making it up himself. Several times, though, it simply came to a stop, we stood back for a moment, seeing each other as we most often had before, in the showers or the changing room, naked and restrained. Perhaps the fact that the restraints of the public space had been taken away made us feel unnatural, inept at using our freedom. The small bed was like being at school or university. It wouldn’t encourage changes of position, but was all right for any simple sex act. When Phil and I rolled about our legs or our shoulders were hanging over the edge, increasing the precariousness of the situation: there was a strangely constricting need to cling together. Then he was on the point of falling on to the floor, his stomach muscles ridged to hold himself horizontal as I hauled him back by the waist, his head lurched upwards and our skulls cracked together quite painfully. The next day I had a perceptible bruise. Things were not working out with the instinctive ease I’d imagined. But I felt it was important to get on with it, and after a while and some laughter to relax him (though it also brought back an inhibiting normality) I turned him over and started to nose around his bum. It was deeply beautiful, creamily smooth when slack and when he clenched his buttocks almost cubic with built muscle. There was still the dust of Trouble for Men on the hairs in his crack, which I oiled back with my tongue, and sniffed through the dry smell of the talc to his own rectal smell—a soft stench like stale flower-water. His asshole was a clean pale purple, and shone with my saliva.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  We were leaving fast, the engine was shouting, the wind tore over the windshield and whipped the hair about on top of my head. I wanted to be back where we'd come from, late in bed or strolling out for a pre-pre-lunch beer. We overtook lorries and family cars with luggage on the roof, new from the ferry. Here was all the rest of the world, and my old world too, the Brits still cautious on the blind side of the road, looming ahead and then for a few seconds alongside, the roped tarpaulins jabbering loose, the drivers anxiously alert to the flashy blast of the jeep. But I was a Continental by now, and looked on them with pity and dismay as they fell behind. There was a certain brown obscurity in the sky ahead, like rain falling out to sea. Matt was wearing bottle-green dark glasses and frowned as he drove. A few miles later it lifted and dissolved; and the further we went the more radiant and old-masterly the air became, so that the whole mad, worrying escapade began already to feel out of time, steeped in a dream-ether of its own. When we crossed into France, and Matt turned off and pulled over in a country road to check the map, my goose-flesh smoothed and the October sun was almost hot on my forearms. We went on the last four miles more stealthily, my left hand tucked for childish comfort under Matt's thigh. Then we dropped to a wide view of current-silvered sea, with several big ships standing off; and a sharp turn of the road presented us all at once with a straggle of houses, a massive, squat church with a spire, and the sign—St Ernest-aux-Sablonnières. We dawdled along the street, me slunk down in my seat with one of Matt's baseball caps not disguising me much, dreading to be seen or for us even to be noticed, and the jeep farting uproariously at each touch on the accelerator. There was a grocer's, a bar, a novelty shop, a few old stone houses and at either end new brick ones with steel security blinds and unmade gardens just as the builders might have left them. Between them you saw the sea, and other houses lower down, and when we turned and came back we took a narrow lane to the left and emerged on a sand-blown track that I knew was where we had to be. A string of modest villas, bungalows with lawns running down to the dunes. An air of mild neglect—scabbing stucco, rusted house names, woody buddleia breaking through the garden fences.

• From The Folding Star (1994)

  To my slight surprise, it was almost dark inside the fog, but I soon hit the path, and the land was so familiar . . . I turned up my coat collar and found it misted with little drops. I was exhausted but hated the idea of going back to my room with my thoughts. The path steepened, and then suddenly the fog ended. I came up out of it into a different night of glittering air and a strong enough moon to throw long shadows in front of trees and bushes. I loped on up to the top with a shiver of exhilaration. The fog circled the hill, and lay thick away to the east—the Flats were submerged, beyond them only the leafless crowns of the tallest trees showed vaguely in its surface. To the south other hills rose out of the pale floe like inaccessible friends, who none the less shared the sense of occasion, the hour or two of local sublimity. I pictured the silent foreign streets I was going back to, under the same moonlight. It came to me that it must be tomorrow—no, later today—that Helene was to be married. Surely she couldn't sleep. I wandered along the ridge almost expecting to be able to see the city's towers. When I got to the bench I found I wasn't alone. It gave me a moment's gooseflesh, as if the person sitting there had abruptly materialised. I wondered if I'd been talking to myself aloud. He turned his head a fraction, but not so as to look right at me, and the moon glinted on round glasses. He was a black kid—by the generous extension I gave to that term year by year—perhaps in his early twenties; he was perched on the bench's back with his feet on the seat; I made out a woolly hat rolled down and a puffy waistcoat over other dark clothes. We stayed as we were for a while, sharing the unusual view and its mood of stillness and oblivion. "Amazing night, isn't it?" I said lightly, just for form. "Yeah," he said; and hopped down from the bench as though about to clear off, because I'd spoilt it for him. "Nippy." Was it? I'd drunk too much to notice—but, yes, our breath made smoke. He'd probably been up here for ages, too; thinking something through. It took me a while to realise he was holding out a hand towards me. "Feel that," he said indignantly. I clutched it, it was cold and felt chapped; held it for a queer moment longer, only now seeing the point, and he squeezed my fingers back. He let out a sigh and pulled himself towards me in a kind of dance-step, and then we were hugging—he smelt nice, some ordinary girl's fragrance. We kissed sulkily, with a minor clash of spectacles.