Born a Crime

I tried to help him out a bit. I
told him my trick of putting off
your bail hearing to get your
defense together, so he stayed in
the cell, too, biding his time, and we
hit it off and hung out for a few
days, having a good time, getting to
know each other. No one else in the
cell knew what to make of us, the
ruthless colored gangster and his
menacing, Hulk-like friend. He told
me his story, a South African story
that was all too familiar to me: The
man grows up under apartheid,
working on a farm, part of what’s
essentially a slave labor force. It’s a
living hell but it’s at least