The Nix

In 2011, Faye awaits her arraignment. The judge, Circuit Judge Charlie Brown, confined to a wheelchair, decides to put off retirement to preside over Faye’s domestic terrorism trial. The national attention the trial is receiving as part of the ongoing presidential campaign pleases the Judge, but he sees a far more personal agenda: He blames Faye for being in a wheelchair. Going out his front door on his way to court, the Judge is accosted by a young man who does not identify himself. The young man advises the Judge to drop all the charges against Faye, indicating that he knows their mutual history and that back in Chicago the woman had done nothing to him, that she had not ruined his clandestine affair with Alice. Unimpressed, the Judge angrily responds, “I’m going to see her hang” (558). The young man is, of course, Samuel. After his unsuccessful confrontation with the Judge, he visits his mother, who, out on bail, shares with her son during a looping walk along Lake Michigan the story of her years in the 1990s when she worked with Chicago arts groups before going into teaching. When the two return to Faye’s apartment, they see that the police have ransacked it.