“We didn’t know about the knife till later at the station.”

“Do you think that a blow from the cane by itself could kill you?”

“Object!” said the detective. But again his voice was low.

“Jivetime Uncle Tom motherfucker!” someone said from the back of the room. “Shave that Afro off your head!”

The Judge’s eyes moved quickly over the men in the rear, surveying their faces and catching what was in all their eyes. But he did not say anything.

“The prosecution rests,” the black detective said. He sounded very tired.

“The defense calls the defendant, Irving Williams,” said the black lawyer.

Williams took the stand and waited, head high, eyes cool, mouth tight, militarily, for the Clerk to swear him in. He looked always toward the back of the room.

“Now, Mr. Williams,” his lawyer began, “tell this court in your own words the events of the night of July twenty-seventh of this year.”

“I had been to a costume party.” Williams’s voice was slow and deliberate and resonant. The entire courtroom was tense and quiet. The old men stared, stiff and erect, at Irving Williams from their second-row benches. Philomena Brown settled her flesh down next to her lawyer, who tried to edge away from touching her fat arm with his own. The tight-lipped Judge Bloom had reassumed the pacing behind his bench.

“I was on leave from the base,” Williams went on, “and I was coming from the party when I saw this group of kids throwing rocks. Being in the military and being just out of Vietnam, I tried to stop them. One of the kids had that cane and I took it from him. The shield belongs to me. I got it in Taiwan last year on R and R. I was trying to break up the crowd with my shield when this honkie cop begins to beat me over the head with his club. Police brutality. I tried to tell . . .”

“That’s enough,” the Judge said. “That’s all I want to hear.” He eyed the black men in the back of the room. “This case isn’t for my court. Take it upstairs.”

“If Your Honor pleases,” the black lawyer began.

“I don’t,” said the Judge. “I’ve heard enough. Mr. Clerk, make out the papers. Send it upstairs to Cabot.”

“This court has jurisdiction to hear this case,” the lawyer said. He was very close to being angry. “This man is in the service. He has to ship out in a few weeks. We want a hearing today.”

“Not in my court you don’t get it. Upstairs, and that’s it!”

Now the blacks in the back of the room began to berate the detective. “Jivetime cat! Handkerchief-head flunky! Uncle Tom motherfucker!” they called. “We’ll get you, baby!”

“Get them out of here,” the Judge told the policeman named Bergin. “Get them the hell out!” Bergin did not move. “Get them the hell out!”