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battleship or a submarine. It too was painted green. I felt as
     if we were far below ground even though we’d only gone one floorbelow the surface of the court building. There was another door. Kavenaugh knocked on this one, and someone did answer.
    “Captain?” the unseen sentry said.
    “Kavenaugh,” Kavenaugh replied.
    The door came open and we were in a large, sun-filled room, not in the bowels of the Earth. I was disoriented by the sunlight
     and high ceilings. The man who opened the door wore a dark blue uniform complete with a pistol in a leather holster. He was
     white, hatless, twenty, and pitifully acned. His only duty seemed to be waiting at that door. It was all very odd.
    Kavenaugh pointed across the room and said, “There you are.” He took a sheaf of papers from his leather satchel and handed
     it to Milo.
    “Good luck,” Kavenaugh said. And with that he turned to go back the way we had come.
    On the other side of this room was a long wooden table behind which sat two uniformed men. Behind the guards was a cage that
     contained about a dozen men of all races and ages. Some smoked, a few hunkered down on their haunches, resting against the
     flat and black iron bars. There wasn’t much fraternizing among these men. They were a footstep away from freedom and had no
     time for small talk.
    “Paris!” someone shouted. I saw him then, Fearless Jones, his hands reaching out to me, his smile cut in half by a metal slat.
     The guard said something to him, but that didn’t stop him from reaching and smiling.
    When we arrived at the table Milo produced a long sheet of paper from the sheaf Kavenaugh had given him. It was covered on
     both sides in tiny print. There were red and black seals on thedocument, making it look official. He placed the paper down between the guards and said, “Tristan Jones.”
    One of the guards, a man with a red and chapped face, picked up the sheet and pretended to read. His partner, a handsome rake
     with black hair and a pencil-thin mustache, stared hard at me.
    “We had to chain him hand and foot just to get him down here,” the red-faced man said.
    Milo did not reply.
    “Waste’a money to pay his fine,” Red Face continued. “He’ll just be back in a week.”
    Milo lifted his chin an inch but gave no more recognition to the man’s advice.
    “Niggers always come back,” the guard said in one final attempt to get a rise out of us.
    Milo was quiet and so was I. For some reason these men didn’t want to let Fearless go. He’d done something. Not something
     bad enough to be held over for, but something. If they could get Milo to blow his cool or Fearless to start ranting in his
     cage, then they could make a case to refuse release.
    Seeing Fearless reminded me of a dozen times I’d seen him hard pressed and unbowed. In a Filmore District flophouse, bleeding
     and in terrible pain from the cop-inflicted knife wound, he said, “It’s okay, man. Just gimme a few hours to sleep and I’ll
     be fine.”
    I saw him face down three men who had gotten it into their heads to disfigure a pretty boy who had taken away a girl they
     all wanted. The men threatened to cut Fearless too. “Maybe you will,” he said to them, “and then again, maybe you won’t.”
    Fearless was more free in that iron cage than I was, or would ever be, on the outside.
    I met Fearless in San Francisco after the war. His dress uniform was covered with medals. Around him were three young ladies,
     each one hoping to be his friend that night. I bought him a drink, saying that it was because I respected a soldier when really
     I just wanted to sit down at the table with those girls. But Fearless didn’t care. He appreciated my generosity and gave me
     a lifetime of friendship for a single shot of scotch.
    “Fuckin’ four-F flat-footed fools,” a snaggletoothed white man was saying to me through the bars. “They get mad when a black
     man’s a hero ’cause they ain’t shit.”
    The rake gave the