“It’s just a goose.”

“No counsel, then?”

Simon shakes his head, but stops when the pain in his nose becomes too great.

“You killed a goose by Lake Calhoun.”

Simon doesn’t say anything.

“You killed a goose.”

Simon squints through the court light and picks a leaf from his jacket cuff and puts it in his pocket.

“Well. Don’t you have anything to say?”

“You’re doin all the talkin,” says Simon.

“Don’t get smart. It’s eight-thirty in the morning.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well? How do you plead? Guilty or not guilty?”

“Yeah, I killed a goose.”

“So you’re pleading guilty.”

“I suppose.”

The lights seem to pulse. Simon hears the other people waiting to be called sniffling and fidgeting on the benches behind him. The judge sighs and looks down at some papers in front of him. He takes off his glasses, pauses, and puts them on again. He looks at Simon.

“You been in jail before.”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you’ve been in prison.”

“You’re sending me to prison over a goose?”

“Your parole has been revoked.” He looks down again at the papers in front of him. “You’ve been out a year and a half, but you’re still on parole, remember?”

Simon is silent. He tries to speak, but looks at the judge, sitting high up in the cruel light and he averts his eyes and stares down at his bloody boots.

“Oh,” he whispers.

The judge taps his hand with a pen. He looks at the paper in front of him again and back at Simon.

“Wasn’t ten years enough for you?”

“Yes sir,” says Simon, his voice cracking. “Yeah it was enough.”

The judge sighs. “Ninety days,” he says to no one in particular.

Simon hears the ruffle of papers and a new name being called off the docket by the bailiff.

A police officer comes up to Simon’s side and touches him gently on the elbow. Simon pivots as if he and the officer are part of some graceful dance and the officer leads him out of the courtroom.

PART THREE

20

Simon took the bus. He’d walked from Hennepin County Jail to the Curtis where he stuffed his clothes in a Hefty sack and okayed being gone with Dougan, who just nodded and offered him two skin magazines for the road. He was on the bus within two hours of being released. He felt that if he stopped, if he stood still for too long he would root, send down taps through the concrete into the rubble of previous versions of the city, that he would never move and that eventually trouble would find him again and he would not be able to escape.