The Last Juror

Chapter 1

After decades of patient mismanagement and loving neglect, The Ford County Times went bankrupt in 1970. The owner and publisher, Miss Emma Caudle, was ninety-three years old and strapped to a bed in a nursing home in Tupelo. The editor, her son Wilson Caudle, was in his seventies and had a plate in his head from the First War. A perfect circle of dark grafted skin covered the plate at the top of his long, sloping forehead, and throughout his adult life he had endured the nickname of Spot. Spot did this. Spot did that. Here, Spot. There, Spot.

In his younger years, he covered town meetings, football games, elections, trials, church socials, all sorts of activities in Ford County. He was a good reporter, thorough and intuitive. Evidently, the head wound did not affect his ability to write. But sometime after the Second War the plate apparently shifted, and Mr. Caudle stopped writing everything but the obituaries. He loved obituaries. He spent hours on them. He filled paragraphs of eloquent prose detailing the lives of even the humblest of Ford Countians. And the death of a wealthy or prominent citizen was front page news, with Mr. Caudle seizing the moment. He never missed a wake or a funeral, never wrote anything bad about anyone. All received glory in the end. Ford County was a wonderful place to die. And Spot was a very popular man, even though he was crazy.

The only real crisis of his journalistic career happened in 1967, about the time the civil rights movement finally made it to Ford County. The paper had never shown the slightest hint of racial tolerance. No black faces appeared in its pages, except those belonging to known or suspected criminals. No black wedding announcements. No black honor students or baseball teams. But in 1967, Mr. Caudle made a startling discovery. He awoke one morning to the realization that black people were dying in Ford County, and their deaths were not being properly reported. There was a whole, new, fertile world of obituaries waiting out there, and Mr. Caudle set sail in dangerous and uncharted waters. On Wednesday, March 8, 1967, the Times became the first white-owned weekly in Mississippi to run the obituary of a Negro. For the most part, it went unnoticed.

The following week, he ran three black obituaries, and people were beginning to talk. By the fourth week, a regular boycott was under way, with subscriptions being canceled and advertisers holding their money. Mr. Caudle knew what was happening, but he was too impressed with his new status as an integrationist to worry about such trivial matters as sales and profits. Six weeks after the historic obituary, he announced, on the front page and in bold print, his new policy. He explained to the public that he would publish whatever he damned well pleased, and if the white folks didn’t like it, then he would simply cut back on their obituaries.

Now, dying properly is an important part of living in Mississippi, for whites and blacks, and the thought of being laid to rest without the benefit of one of Spot’s glorious send-offs was more than most whites could stand. And they knew he was crazy enough to carry out his threat.

The next edition was filled with all sorts of obituaries, blacks and whites, all neatly alphabetized and desegregated. It sold out, and a brief period of prosperity followed.

The bankruptcy was called involuntary, as if others had eager volunteers. The pack was led by a print supplier from Memphis that was owed $60,000. Several creditors had not been paid in six months. The old Security Bank was calling in a loan.

I was new, but I’d heard the rumors. I was sitting on a desk in the front room of the Times’s offices reading a magazine, when a midget in a pair of pointed toes strutted in the front door and asked for Wilson Caudle.

“He’s at the funeral home,” I said.

He was a cocky midget. I could see a gun on his hip under a wrinkled navy blazer, a gun worn in such a manner so that folks would see it. He probably had a permit, but in Ford County one was not really needed, not in 1970. In fact, permits were frowned upon. “I need to serve these papers on him,” he said, waving an envelope.

I was not about to be helpful, but it’s difficult being rude to a midget. Even one with a gun. “He’s at the funeral home,” I repeated.

“Then I’ll just leave them with you,” he declared.

Although I’d been around for less than two months, and though I’d gone to college up North, I had learned a few things. I knew that good papers were not served on people. They were mailed or shipped or hand-delivered, but never served. The papers were trouble, and I wanted no part of them.

“I’m not taking the papers,” I said, looking down.

The laws of nature require midgets to be docile, noncombative people, and this little fella was no exception. The gun was a ruse. He glanced around the front office with a smirk, but he knew the situation was hopeless. With a flair for the dramatic, he stuffed the envelope back into his pocket and demanded, “Where’s the funeral home?”

I pointed this way and that, and he left. An hour later, Spot stumbled through the door, waving the papers and bawling hysterically. “It’s over! It’s over!” he kept wailing as I held the Petition for Involuntary Bankruptcy. Margaret Wright, the secretary, and Hardy, the pressman, came from the back and tried to console him. He sat in a chair, face in hands, elbows on knees, sobbing pitifully. I read the petition aloud for the benefit of the others.

It said Mr. Caudle had to appear in court in a week over in Oxford to meet with the creditors and the Judge, and that a decision would be made as to whether the paper would continue to operate while a trustee sorted things out. I could tell Margaret and Hardy were more concerned about their jobs than about Mr. Caudle and his breakdown, but they gamely stood next to him and patted his shoulders.

When the crying stopped, he suddenly stood, bit his lip, and announced, “I’ve got to tell Mother.”

The three of us looked at each other. Miss Emma Caudle had departed this life years earlier, but her feeble heart continued to work just barely enough to postpone a funeral. She neither knew nor cared what color Jell-O they were feeding her, and she certainly cared nothing about Ford County and its newspaper. She was blind and deaf and weighed less than eighty pounds, and now Spot was about to discuss involuntary bankruptcy with her. At that point, I realized that he, too, was no longer with us.

He started crying again and left. Six months later I would write his obituary.

Because I had attended college, and because I was holding the papers, Hardy and Margaret looked hopefully at me for advice. I was a journalist, not a lawyer, but I said that I would take the papers to the Caudle family lawyer. We would follow his advice. They smiled weakly and returned to work.

At noon, I bought a six-pack at Quincy’s One Stop in Lowtown, the black section of Clanton, and went for a long drive in my Spitfire. It was late in February, unseasonably warm, so I put the top down and headed for the lake, wondering, not for the first time, just exactly what I was doing in Ford County, Mississippi.

I grew up in Memphis and studied journalism at Syracuse for five years before my grandmother got tired of paying for what was becoming an extended education. My grades were unremarkable, and I was a year away from a degree. Maybe a year and a half. She, BeeBee, had plenty of money, hated to spend it, and after five years she figured my opportunity had been sufficiently funded. When she cut me off I was very disappointed, but I did not complain, to her anyway. I was her only grandchild and her estate would be a delight.

I studied journalism with a hangover. In the early days at Syracuse, I aspired to be an investigative reporter with the New York Times or the Washington Post. I wanted to save the world by uncovering corruption and environmental abuse and government waste and the injustice suffered by the weak and oppressed. Pulitzers were waiting for me. After a year or so of such lofty dreams, I saw a movie about a foreign correspondent who dashed around the world looking for wars, seducing beautiful women, and somehow finding the time to write award-winning stories. He spoke eight languages, wore a beard, combat boots, starched khakis that never wrinkled. So I decided I would become such a journalist. I grew a beard, bought some boots and khakis, tried to learn German, tried to score with prettier girls. During my junior year, when my grades began their steady decline to the bottom of the class, I became captivated by the idea of working for a small-town newspaper. I cannot explain this attraction, except that it was at about this time that I met and befriended Nick Diener. He was from rural Indiana, and for decades his family had owned a rather prosperous county newspaper. He drove a fancy little Alfa Romeo and always had plenty of cash. We became close friends.

Nick was a bright student who could have handled medicine, law, or engineering. His only goal, however, was to return to Indiana and run the family business. This baffled me until we got drunk one night and he told me how much his father cleared each year off their small weekly — circulation six thousand. It was a gold mine, he said. Just local news, wedding announcements, church socials, honor rolls, sports coverage, pictures of basketball teams, a few recipes, a few obituaries, and pages of advertising. Maybe a little politics, but stay away from controversy. And count your money. His father was a millionaire. It was laid-back, low-pressure journalism with money growing on trees, according to Nick.

This appealed to me. After my fourth year, which should’ve been my last but wasn’t close, I spent the summer interning at a small weekly in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. The pay was peanuts but BeeBee was impressed because I was employed. Each week I mailed her the paper, at least half of which was written by me. The owner/editor/publisher was a wonderful old gentleman who was delighted to have a reporter who wanted to write. He was quite wealthy.

After five years at Syracuse my grades were irreparable, and the well ran dry. I returned to Memphis, visited BeeBee, thanked her for her efforts, and told her I loved her. She told me to find a job.

At the time, Wilson Caudle’s sister lived in Memphis, and through the course of things this lady met BeeBee at one of those hot tea drinkers’ parties. After a few phone calls back and forth, I was packed and headed to Clanton, Mississippi, where Spot was eagerly waiting. After an hour of orientation, he turned me loose on Ford County.

In the next edition he ran a sweet little story with a photo of me announcing my “internship” at the Times. It made the front page. News was slow in those days.

The announcement contained two horrendous errors that would haunt me for years. The first and less serious was the fact that Syracuse had now joined the Ivy League, at least according to Spot. He informed his dwindling readership that I had received my Ivy League education at Syracuse. It was a month before anyone mentioned this to me. I was beginning to believe that no one read the paper, or, worse, those who did were complete idiots.

The second misstatement changed my life. I was born Joyner William Traynor. Until I was twelve I hammered my parents with inquiries about why two supposedly intelligent people would stick Joyner on a newborn. The story finally leaked that one of my parents, both of whom denied responsibility, had insisted on Joyner as an olive branch to some feuding relative who allegedly had money. I never met the man, my namesake. He died broke as far as I was concerned, but I nonetheless had Joyner for a lifetime. When I enrolled at Syracuse I was J. William, a rather imposing name for an eighteen-year-old. But Vietnam and the riots and all the rebellion and social upheaval convinced me that J. William sounded too corporate, too establishment. I became Will.

Spot at various times called me Will, William, Bill, or even Billy, and since I would answer to all of them I never knew what was next. In the announcement, under my smiling face, was my new name. Willie Traynor. I was horrified. I had never dreamed of anyone calling me Willie. I went to a prep school in Memphis and then to college in New York, and I had never met a person named Willie. I wasn’t a good ole boy. I drove a Triumph Spitfire and had long hair.

What would I tell my fraternity brothers at Syracuse? What would I tell BeeBee?

After hiding in my apartment for two days, I mustered the courage to confront Spot and demand he do something. I wasn’t sure what, but he’d made the mistake and he could damned well fix it. I marched into the Times office and bumped into Davey Bigmouth Bass, the sports editor of the paper. “Hey, cool name,” he said. I followed him into his office, seeking advice.

“My name’s not Willie,” I said.

“It is now.”

“My name’s Will.”

“They’ll love you around here. A smart-ass from up North with long hair and a little imported sports car. Hell, folks’ll think you’re pretty cool with a name like Willie. Think of Joe Willie.”

“Who’s Joe Willie?”

“Joe Willie Namath.”

“Oh him.”

“Yeah, he’s a Yankee like you, from Pennsylvania or some place, but when he got to Alabama he went from Joseph William to Joe Willie. The girls chased him all over the place.”

I began to feel better. In 1970, Joe Namath was probably the most famous athlete in the country. I went for a drive and kept repeating “Willie.” Within a couple of weeks the name was beginning to stick. Everybody called me Willie and seemed to feel more comfortable because I had such a down-to-earth name.

I told BeeBee it was just a temporary pseudonym.

The Times was a very thin paper, and I knew immediately that it was in trouble. Heavy on the obits, light on news and advertising. The employees were disgruntled, but quiet and loyal. Jobs were scarce in Ford County in 1970. After a week it was obvious even to my novice eyes that the paper was operating at a loss. Obits are free — ads are not. Spot spent most of his time in his cluttered office, napping periodically and calling the funeral home. Sometimes they called him. Sometimes the families would stop just hours after Uncle Wilber’s last breath and hand over a long, flowery, handwritten narrative that Spot would seize and carry delicately to his desk. Behind a locked door, he would write, edit, research, and rewrite until it was perfect.

He told me the entire county was mine to cover. The paper had one other general reporter, Baggy Suggs, a pickled old goat who spent his hours hanging around the courthouse across the street sniffing for gossip and drinking bourbon with a small club of washed-up lawyers too old and too drunk to practice anymore. As I would soon learn, Baggy was too lazy to check sources and dig for anything interesting, and it was not unusual for his front page story to be some dull account of a boundary dispute or a wife beating.

Margaret, the secretary, was a fine Christian lady who ran the place, though she was smart enough to allow Spot to think he was the boss. She was in her early fifties and had worked there for twenty years. She was the rock, the anchor, and everything at the Times revolved around her. Margaret was soft-spoken, almost shy, and from day one was completely intimidated by me because I was from Memphis and had gone to school up North for five years. I was careful not to wear my Ivy Leagueness on my shoulder, but at the same time I wanted these rural Mississippians to know that I had been superbly educated.

She and I became gossiping pals, and after a week she confirmed what I already suspected — that Mr. Caudle was indeed crazy, and that the newspaper was indeed in dire financial straits. But, she said, the Caudles have family money!

It would be years before I understood this mystery.

In Mississippi, family money was not to be confused with wealth. It had nothing to do with cash or other assets. Family money was a status, obtained by someone who was white, somewhat educated beyond high school, born in a large home with a front porch — preferably one surrounded by cotton or soybean fields, although this was not mandatory — and partially reared by a beloved black maid named Bessie or Pearl, partially reared by doting grandparents who once owned the ancestors of Bessie or Pearl, and lectured from birth on the stringent social graces of a privileged people. Acreage and trust funds helped somewhat, but Mississippi was full of insolvent blue bloods who inherited the status of family money. It could not be earned. It had to be handed down at birth.

When I talked to the Caudle family lawyer, he explained, rather succinctly, the real value of their family money. “They’re as poor as Job’s turkey,” he said as I sat deep in a worn leather chair and looked up at him across his wide and ancient mahogany desk. His name was Walter Sullivan, of the prestigious Sullivan & O’Hara firm. Prestigious for Ford County — seven lawyers. He studied the bankruptcy petition and rambled on about the Caudles and the money they used to have and how foolish they’d been in running a once profitable paper into the ground. He’d represented them for thirty years, and back when Miss Emma ran things the Times had five thousand subscribers and pages filled with advertisements. She kept a $500,000 certificate of deposit at Security Bank, just for a rainy day.

Then her husband died, and she remarried a local alcoholic twenty years her junior. When sober, he was semiliterate and fancied himself as a tortured poet and essayist. Miss Emma loved him dearly and installed him as coeditor, a position he used to write long editorials blasting everything that moved in Ford County. It was the beginning of the end. Spot hated his new stepfather, the feelings were mutual, and their relationship finally climaxed with one of the more colorful fistfights in the history of downtown Clanton. It took place on the sidewalk in front of the Times office, on the downtown square, in front of a large and stunned crowd. The locals believed that Spot’s brain, already fragile, took additional damage that day. Shortly thereafter, he began writing nothing but those damned obituaries.

The stepfather ran off with her money, and Miss Emma, heartbroken, became a recluse.

“It was once a fine paper,” Mr. Sullivan said. “But look at it now. Less than twelve hundred subscriptions, heavily in debt. Bankrupt.”

“What will the court do?” I asked.

“Try and find a buyer.”

“A buyer?”

“Yes, someone will buy. The county has to have a newspaper.”

I immediately thought of two people — Nick Diener and BeeBee. Nick’s family had become rich off their county weekly. BeeBee was already loaded and she had only one beloved grandchild. My heart began pounding as I smelled opportunity.

Mr. Sullivan watched me intently, and it was obvious he knew what I was thinking. “It could be bought for a song,” he said.

“How much?” I asked with all the confidence of a twenty-three-year-old cub reporter whose grandmother was as stout as lye soap.

“Probably fifty thousand. Twenty-five for the paper, twenty-five to operate. Most of the debts can be bankrupted, then renegotiated with the creditors you need.” He paused and leaned forward, elbows on his desk, thick grayish eyebrows twitching as if his brain was working overtime. “It could be a real gold mine, you know.”

BeeBee had never invested in a gold mine, but after three days of priming the pump I left Memphis with a check for $50,000. I gave it to Mr. Sullivan, who put it in a trust account and petitioned the court for the sale of the paper. The Judge, a relic who belonged in the bed next to Miss Emma, nodded benignly and scrawled his name on an order that made me the new owner of The Ford County Times.

It takes at least three generations to be accepted in Ford County. Regardless of money or breeding, one cannot simply move there and be trusted. A dark cloud of suspicion hangs over any newcomer, and I was no exception. The people there are exceedingly warm and gracious and polite, almost to the point of being nosy with their friendliness. They nod and speak to everyone on the downtown streets. They ask about your health, the weather, and they invite you to church. They rush to help strangers.

But they don’t really trust you unless they trusted your grandfather.

Once word spread that I, a young green alien from Memphis, had bought the paper for fifty, or maybe a hundred, or perhaps even two hundred thousand dollars, a great wave of gossip shook the community. Margaret gave me the updates. Because I was single, there was a chance I was a homosexual. Because I went to Syracuse, wherever that was, then I was probably a Communist. Or worse, a liberal. Because I was from Memphis, I was a subversive intent on embarrassing Ford County.

Just the same, as they all conceded quietly among themselves, I now controlled the obituaries! I was somebody!

The new Times debuted on March 18, 1970, only three weeks after the midget arrived with his papers. It was almost an inch thick and loaded with more photos than had ever been published in a county weekly. Cub Scout troops, Brownies, junior high basketball teams, garden clubs, book clubs, tea clubs, Bible study groups, adult softball teams, civic clubs. Dozens of photos. I tried to include every living soul in the county. And the dead ones were exalted like never before. The obits were embarrassingly long. I’m sure Spot was proud, but I never heard from him.

The news was light and breezy. Absolutely no editorials. People love to read about crime, so on the bottom left-hand corner of the front page I launched the Crime Notes Section. Thankfully, two pickups had been stolen the week before, and I covered these heists as if Fort Knox had been looted.

In the center of the front page there was a rather large group shot of the new regime — Margaret, Hardy, Baggy Suggs, me, our photographer, Wiley Meek, Davey Bigmouth Bass, and Melanie Dogan, a high school student and part-time employee. I was proud of my staff. We had worked around the clock for ten days, and our first edition was a great success. We printed five thousand copies and sold them all. I sent a box of them to BeeBee, and she was most impressed.

For the next month, the new Times slowly took shape as I struggled to determine what I wanted it to become. Change is painful in rural Mississippi, so I decided to do it gradually. The old paper was bankrupt, but it had changed little in fifty years. I wrote more news, sold more ads, included more and more pictures of groups of endless varieties. And I worked hard on the obituaries.

I had never been attracted to long hours, but since I was the owner I forgot about the clock. I was too young and too busy to be scared. I was twenty-three, and through luck and timing and a rich grandmother, I was suddenly the owner of a weekly newspaper. If I had hesitated and studied the situation, and sought advice from bankers and accountants, I’m sure someone would have talked some sense into me. But when you’re twenty-three, you’re fearless. You have nothing, so there’s nothing to lose.

I figured it would take a year to become profitable. And, at first, revenue increased slowly. Then Rhoda Kassellaw was murdered. I guess it’s the nature of the business to sell more papers after a brutal crime when people want details. We sold twenty-four hundred papers the week before her death, and almost four thousand the week after.

It was no ordinary murder.

Ford County was a peaceful place, filled with people who were either Christians or claimed to be. Fistfights were common, but they were usually the work of the lower classes who hung around beer joints and such. Once a month a redneck would take a shot at a neighbor or perhaps his own wife, and each weekend had at least one stabbing in the black tonks. Death rarely followed these episodes.

I owned the paper for ten years, from 1970 to 1980, and we reported very few murders in Ford County. None was as brutal as Rhoda Kassellaw’s; none was as premeditated. Thirty years later, I still think about it every day.

Chapter 2

Rhoda Kassellaw lived in the Beech Hill community, twelve miles north of Clanton, in a modest gray brick house on a narrow, paved country road. The flower beds along the front of the house were weedless and received daily care, and between them and the road the long wide lawn was thick and well cut. The driveway was crushed white rock. Scattered down both sides of it was a collection of scooters and balls and bikes. Her two small children were always outdoors, playing hard, sometimes stopping to watch a passing car.

It was a pleasant little country house, a stone’s throw from Mr. and Mrs. Deece next door. The young man who bought it was killed in a trucking accident somewhere in Texas, and, at the age of twenty-eight, Rhoda became a widow. The insurance on his life paid off the house and the car. The balance was invested to provide a modest monthly income that allowed her to remain home and dote on the children. She spent hours outside, tending her vegetable garden, potting flowers, pulling weeds, mulching the beds along the front of the house.

She kept to herself. The old ladies in Beech Hill considered her a model widow, staying home, looking sad, limiting her social appearances to an occasional visit to church. She should attend more regularly, they whispered.

Shortly after the death of her husband, Rhoda planned to return to her family in Missouri. She was not from Ford County, nor was her husband. A job took them there. But the house was paid for, the kids were happy, the neighbors were nice, and her family was much too concerned about how much life insurance she’d collected. So she stayed, always thinking of leaving but never doing so.

Rhoda Kassellaw was a beautiful woman when she wanted to be, which was not very often. Her shapely, thin figure was usually camouflaged under a loose cotton drip-dry dress, or a bulky chambray workshirt, which she preferred when gardening. She wore little makeup and kept her long flaxen-colored hair pulled back and stuck together on top of her head. Most of what she ate came from her organic garden, and her skin had a soft healthy glow to it. Such an attractive young widow would normally have been a hot property in the county, but she kept to herself.

After three years of mourning, however, Rhoda became restless. She was not getting younger; the years were slipping by. She was too young and too pretty to sit at home every Saturday and read bedtime stories. There had to be some action out there, though there was certainly none in Beech Hill.

She hired a young black girl from down the road to baby-sit, and Rhoda drove north for an hour to the Tennessee line, where she’d heard there were some respectable lounges and dance clubs. Maybe no one would know her there. She enjoyed the dancing and the flirting, but she never drank and always came home early. It became a routine, two or three times a month.

Then the jeans got tighter, the dancing faster, the hours longer and longer. She was getting noticed and talked about in the bars and clubs along the state line.

He followed her home twice before he killed her. It was March, and a warm front had brought a premature hope of spring. It was a dark night, with no moon. Bear, the family mutt, sniffed him first as he crept behind a tree in the backyard. Bear was primed to growl and bark when he was forever silenced.

Rhoda’s son Michael was five and her daughter Teresa was three. They wore matching Disney cartoon pajamas, neatly pressed, and watched their mother’s glowing eyes as she read them the story of Jonah and the whale. She tucked them in and kissed them good night, and when Rhoda turned off the light to their bedroom, he was already in the house.

An hour later she turned off the television, locked the doors, and waited for Bear, who did not appear. That was no surprise because he often chased rabbits and squirrels into the woods and came home late. Bear would sleep on the back porch and wake her howling at dawn. In her bedroom, she slipped out of her light cotton dress and opened the closet door. He was waiting in there, in the dark.

He snatched her from behind, covered her mouth with a thick and sweaty hand, and said, “I have a knife. I’ll cut you and your kids.” With the other hand he held up a shiny blade and waved it before her eyes.

“Understand?” he hissed into her ear.

She trembled and managed to shake her head. She couldn’t see what he looked like. He threw her to the floor of the cluttered closet, facedown, and yanked her hands behind her. He took a brown wool scarf an old aunt had given her and wrapped it roughly around her face. “Not one sound,” he kept growling at her. “Or I’ll cut your kids.” When the blindfold was finished he grabbed her hair, snatched her to her feet, and dragged her to her bed. He poked the tip of the blade into her chin and said, “Don’t fight me. The knife’s right here.” He cut off her panties and the rape began.

He wanted to see her eyes, those beautiful eyes he’d seen in the clubs. And the long hair. He’d bought her drinks and danced with her twice, and when he’d finally made a move she had stiff-armed him. Try these moves, baby, he mumbled just loud enough for her to hear.

He and the Jack Daniel’s had been building courage for three hours, and now the whiskey numbed him. He moved slowly above her, not rushing things, enjoying every second of it. He mumbled in the self-satisfying grunts of a real man taking and getting what he wanted.

The smell of the whiskey and his sweat nauseated her, but she was too frightened to throw up. It might anger him, cause him to use the knife. As she started to accept the horror of the moment, she began to think. Keep it quiet. Don’t wake up the kids. And what will he do with the knife when he’s finished?

His movements were faster, he was mumbling louder. “Quiet, baby,” he hissed again and again. “I’ll use the knife.” The wrought-iron bed was squeaking; didn’t get used enough, he told himself. Too much noise, but he didn’t care.

The rattling of the bed woke Michael, who then got Teresa up. They eased from their room and crept down the dark hall to see what was happening. Michael opened the door to his mother’s bedroom, saw the strange man on top of her, and said, “Mommy!” For a second the man stopped and jerked his head toward the children.

The sound of the boy’s voice horrified Rhoda, who bolted upward and thrust both hands at her assailant, grabbing whatever she could. One small fist caught him in the left eye, a solid shot that stunned him. Then she yanked off her blindfold while kicking with both legs. He slapped her and tried to pin her down again. “Danny Padgitt!” she shouted, still clawing. He hit her once more.

“Mommy!” Michael cried.

“Run, kids!” Rhoda tried to scream, but she was struck dumb by her assailant’s blows.

“Shut up!” Padgitt yelled.

“Run!” Rhoda shouted again, and the children backed away, then darted down the hallway, into the kitchen, and outside to safety.

In the split second after she shouted his name, Padgitt realized he had no choice but to silence her. He took the knife and hacked twice, then scrambled from the bed and grabbed his clothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Deece were watching late television from Memphis when they heard Michael’s voice calling and getting closer. Mr. Deece met the boy at the front door. His pajamas were soaked with sweat and dew and his teeth were chattering so violently he had trouble speaking. “He hurt my mommy!” he kept saying. “He hurt my mommy!”

Through the darkness between the two houses, Mr. Deece saw Teresa running after her brother. She was almost running in place, as if she wanted to get to one place without leaving the other. When Mrs. Deece finally got to her by the Deece garage, she was sucking her thumb and unable to speak.

Mr. Deece raced into his den and grabbed two shotguns, one for him, one for his wife. The children were in the kitchen, shocked to the point of being paralyzed. “He hurt Mommy,” Michael kept saying. Mrs. Deece cuddled them, told them everything would be fine. She looked at her shotgun when her husband laid it on the table. “Stay here,” he said as he rushed out of the house.

He did not go far. Rhoda almost made it to the Deece home before she collapsed in the wet grass. She was completely naked, and from the neck down covered in blood. He picked her up and carried her to the front porch, then shouted at his wife to move the children toward the back of the house and lock them in a bedroom. He could not allow them to see their mother in her last moments.

As he placed her in the swing, Rhoda whispered, “Danny Padgitt. It was Danny Padgitt.”

He covered her with a quilt, then called an ambulance.

Danny Padgitt kept his pickup in the center of the road and drove ninety miles an hour. He was half-drunk and scared as hell but unwilling to admit it. He’d be home in ten minutes, secure in the family’s little kingdom known as Padgitt Island.

Those little faces had ruined everything. He’d think about it tomorrow. He took a long pull on the fifth of Jack Daniel’s and felt better.

It was a rabbit or a small dog or some varmint, and when it darted from the shoulder he caught a glimpse of it and reacted badly. He instinctively hit the brake pedal, just for a split second because he really didn’t care what he hit and rather enjoyed the sport of roadkilling, but he’d punched too hard. The rear tires locked and the pickup fishtailed. Before he realized it Danny was in serious trouble. He jerked the wheel one way, the wrong way, and the truck hit the gravel shoulder where it began to spin like a stock car on the backstretch. It slid into the ditch, flipped twice, then crashed into a row of pine trees. If he’d been sober he would’ve been killed, but drunks walk away.

He crawled out through a shattered window, and for a long while leaned on the truck, counting his cuts and scratches and considering his options. A leg was suddenly stiff, and as he climbed up the bank to the road he realized he could not walk far. Not that he would need to.

The blue lights were on him before he realized it. The deputy was out of the car, surveying the scene with a long black flashlight. More flashing lights appeared down the road.

The deputy saw the blood, smelled the whiskey, and reached for the handcuffs.

Chapter 3

The Big Brown River drops nonchalantly south from Tennessee and runs as straight as a hand-dug channel for thirty miles through the center of Tyler County, Mississippi. Two miles above the Ford County line it begins twisting and looping, and by the time it leaves Tyler County it looks like a scared snake, curling desperately and going nowhere. Its water is thick and heavy, muddy and slow, shallow in most places. The Big Brown is not known for its beauty. Sand, silt, and gravel bars line its innumerable bends and curves. A hundred sloughs and creeks feed it with an inexhaustible supply of slow-moving water.

Its journey through Ford County is brief. It dips and forms a wide circle around two thousand acres in the northeasternmost corner of the county, then leaves and heads back toward Tennessee. The circle is almost perfect and an island is almost formed, but at the last moment the Big Brown turns away from itself and leaves a narrow strip of land between its banks.

The circle is known as Padgitt Island, a deep, dense woodland covered in pine, gum, elm, oak, and a myriad of swamps and bayous and sloughs, some connected but most isolated. Little of the rich soil had ever been cleared. Nothing was harvested on the island except timber and lots of corn — for illegal whiskey. And marijuana, but that was a later story.

On the thin strip of land between the banks of the Big Brown a paved road entered and left, came and went, always with someone watching. The road was built long ago by the county, but very few taxpayers ever dared to use it.

The entire island had been in the Padgitt family since Reconstruction, when Rudolph Padgitt, a carpetbagger from the North, arrived a bit late after the War and found all the prime land taken. He searched in vain, found nothing attractive, then somehow stumbled upon the snake-infested island. On the map, it looked promising. He put together a band of newly freed slaves and, with guns and machetes, fought his way onto the island. No one else wanted it.

Rudolph married a local whore and began cutting timber. Since timber was in great demand after the War, he became prosperous. The local proved to be quite fertile and soon there was a horde of little Padgitts on the island. One of his ex-slaves had learned the art of distillery. Rudolph became a corn farmer who neither ate nor sold his crop, but instead used it to produce what was soon known as one of the finest whiskeys in the Deep South.

For thirty years Rudolph made moonshine until he died of cirrhosis in 1902. By then an entire clan of Padgitts inhabited the island, and were quite proficient at milling timber and producing illegal whiskey. Scattered about the island were half a dozen distilleries, all well protected and concealed, all operating with state-of-the-art machinery.

The Padgitts were famous for their whiskey, though fame was not something they sought. They were secretive and clannish, fiercely private and deathly afraid that someone might infiltrate their little kingdom and disrupt their considerable profits. They said they were loggers, and it was well known that they produced timber and were prosperous at it. The Padgitt Lumber Company was very visible on the main highway near the river. They claimed to be legitimate people, taxpayers and such, with their children in the public schools.

During the 1920s and 1930s, when alcohol was illegal and the nation was thirsty, Padgitt whiskey could not be distilled fast enough. It was shipped in oak barrels across the Big Brown and hauled by trucks up North, as far away as Chicago. The patriarch, president, and director of production and marketing was a tight-fisted old warrior named Clovis Padgitt, eldest son of Rudolph and the local. Clovis had been taught at an early age that the best profits were those from which no taxes were extracted. That was lesson number one. Number two preached the marvelous message of dealing strictly in cash. Clovis was a hard-nosed cash and no-taxes man, and the Padgitts were rumored to have more money than the Mississippi state treasury.

In 1938, three revenue agents sneaked across the Big Brown in a rented flatboat in search of the source of Old Padgitt. Their covert invasion of the island was flawed in many ways, the obvious being the original idea itself. But for some reason they chose midnight as their hour to cross the river. They were dismembered and buried in deep graves.

In 1943, a strange event occurred in Ford County — an honest man was elected Sheriff. Or High Sheriff, as he is commonly known. His name was Koonce Lantrip, and he wasn’t really that honest but certainly sounded good on the stump. He vowed to end corruption, to clean up county government, to put the bootleggers and moonshiners, even the Padgitts, out of business. It made for a nice speech and Lantrip won by eight votes.

His supporters waited and waited, and, finally, six months after taking office he organized his deputies and crossed the Big Brown on the only bridge, an ancient wooden structure that had been built by the county in 1915 at the insistence of Clovis. The Padgitts sometimes used it in the springtime when the river was high. No one else was allowed to cross it.

Two of the deputies were shot in the head, and Lantrip’s body was never found. It was carefully laid to rest on the banks of a swamp by three Padgitt Negroes. Buford, the eldest son of Clovis, supervised the burial.

The massacre was hot news in Mississippi for weeks, and the Governor threatened to send in the National Guard. But the Second War was raging, and D-Day soon captured the attention of the country. There wasn’t much left of the National Guard anyway, and those who were able to fight had little interest in attacking Padgitt Island. The beaches of Normandy would be more inviting.

With the noble experiment of an honest Sheriff behind them, the good people of Ford County elected one from the old school. His name was Mackey Don Coley and his father had been the High Sheriff back in the twenties when Clovis was in charge of Padgitt Island. Clovis and the senior Coley had been rather close, and it was widely known that the Sheriff was a rich man because Old Padgitt was allowed to move so freely out of the county. When Mackey Don announced his candidacy, Buford sent him $50,000 in cash. Mackey Don won in a landslide. His opponent claimed to be honest.

There was a widely held but unprofessed belief in Mississippi that a good Sheriff must be a little crooked to ensure law and order. Whiskey, whoring, and gambling were simply facts of life, and a good Sheriff must be knowledgeable in these affairs to properly regulate them and protect the Christians. Those vices could not be eliminated, so the High Sheriff must be able to coordinate them and synchronize the orderly flow of sin. For his coordinating efforts, he was to be paid a little extra from the purveyors of such wickedness. He expected it. Most of the voters expected it. No honest man could live on such a humble salary. No honest man could move quietly through the shadows of the underworld.

For the better part of a hundred years following the Civil War, the Padgitts owned the Sheriffs of Ford County. They bought them outright with sacks of cash. Mackey Don Coley received a hundred thousand a year (it was rumored), and during election years he got whatever he needed. And they were generous with other politicians. They quietly bought and kept influence. They asked little; they just wanted to be left alone on their island.

After the Second War, the demand for moonshine began a steady decline. Since generations of Padgitts had been schooled to operate outside the law, Buford and the family began to diversify into other forms of illicit commerce. Selling only timber was dull, and subject to too many market factors, and, most important, did not generate the piles of cash the family expected. They ran guns, stole cars, counterfeited, bought and burned buildings to collect insurance. For twenty years they operated a highly successful brothel on the county line, until it mysteriously burned in 1966.

They were creative and energetic people, always scheming and searching for opportunity, always waiting for someone to rob. There were rumors, quite significant at times, that the Padgitts were members of the Dixie Mafia, a loose-knit gang of redneck thieves who ran rampant through the Deep South in the sixties. These rumors were never verified and were in fact discounted by many because the Padgitts were simply too secretive to share their business with anyone. Nonetheless, the rumors persisted for years, and the Padgitts were the source of endless gossip in the cafés and coffee shops around the square in Clanton. They were never considered local heroes, but certainly legends.

In 1967, a younger Padgitt fled to Canada to avoid the draft. He drifted to California where he tried marijuana and realized he had a taste for it. After a few months as a peacenik, he got homesick and sneaked back to Padgitt Island. He brought with him four pounds of pot, which he shared with all his cousins, and they, too, were quite taken with it. He explained that the rest of the country, and primarily California, was toking like crazy. As usual, Mississippi was at least five years behind the trend.

The stuff could be grown cheaply, then hauled to the cities where there was demand. His father, Gill Padgitt, grandson of Clovis, saw the opportunity, and soon many of the old cornfields were converted to cannabis. A two-thousand-foot strip of land was cleared for a runway and the Padgitts bought themselves an airplane. Within a year there were daily flights to the outskirts of Memphis and Atlanta, where the Padgitts had established their network. To their delight and with their help, marijuana finally became popular in the Deep South.

The moonshining slowed considerably. The brothel was gone. The Padgitts had contacts in Miami and Mexico and the cash was coming in by the truckloads. For years, no one in Ford County had a hint that the Padgitts were trafficking in drugs. And they never got caught. No Padgitt was ever indicted for a drug-related offense.

In fact, not a single Padgitt had ever been arrested. A hundred years of moonshining, stealing, gunrunning, gambling, counterfeiting, whoring, bribing, even killing, and eventually drug manufacturing, and not a single arrest. They were smart people, careful, deliberate, patient with their schemes.

Then Danny Padgitt, Gill’s youngest son, was arrested for the rape and murder of Rhoda Kassellaw.

Chapter 4

Mr. Deece told me the next day that when he was certain Rhoda was dead he finally left her in the swing on the front porch. He went to his bathroom, where he stripped and showered and saw her blood spin down the drain. He changed into work clothes and waited for the police and the ambulance. He watched her house while holding a loaded shotgun, anxious to blast anything that moved. But there was no movement, no sound. In the distance he could barely hear a siren.

His wife kept the children locked in the back bedroom, where she huddled with them in the bed, under a blanket. Michael kept asking about his mother, and who was that man? But Teresa was too traumatized to speak. She managed only a low groaning sound as she sucked her fingers and shook as if she were freezing.

Before long Benning Road was alive with red and blue flashing lights. Rhoda’s body was photographed at length before it was taken away. Her home was cordoned off by a squad of deputies, led by Sheriff Coley himself. Mr. Deece, still holding his shotgun, gave his statement to an investigator, then to the Sheriff.

Shortly after 2 A.M., a deputy arrived with the news that a doctor in town had been notified and had suggested that the children be brought in for a look. They rode in the backseat of a patrol car, Michael clutching Mr. Deece, and Teresa in the lap of his wife. At the hospital, they were given a mild sedative and placed together in a semiprivate room where the nurses brought them cookies and milk until they finally went to sleep. Later in the day an aunt arrived from Missouri and took them away.

My phone rang seconds before midnight. It was Wiley Meek, the paper’s photographer. He’d picked up the story on the police scanner and was already hanging around the jail waiting to ambush the suspect. Cops were everywhere, he said, his excitement barely under control. Hurry, he urged me. This could be the big one.

At the time I lived above an old garage next to a decaying but still grand Victorian mansion known as the Hocutt House. It was filled with elderly Hocutts, three sisters and a brother, and they took turns being my landlord. Their five-acre estate was a few blocks from the Clanton square and had been built a century earlier with family money. It was covered with trees, overgrown flower beds, thick patches of mature weeds, and enough animals to stock a game preserve. Rabbits, squirrels, skunks, possums, raccoons, a million birds, a frightening assortment of green and black snakes — all non-poisonous I was reassured — and dozens of cats. But no dogs. The Hocutts hated dogs. Each cat had a name, and a major clause in my verbal lease was that I would respect the cats.

Respect them I did. The four-room loft apartment was spacious and clean and cost me the ridiculous sum of $50 a month. If they wanted their cats respected at that price, fine with me.

Their father, Miles Hocutt, had been an eccentric doctor in Clanton for decades. Their mother died during childbirth, and, according to local legend, Dr. Hocutt became very possessive of the children after her death. To protect them from the world, he concocted one of the biggest lies ever told in Ford County. He explained to his children that insanity ran deeply in the family, and thus they should never marry lest they produce some hideous strain of idiot offspring. His children worshiped him, believed him, and were probably already exposed to some measure of unbalance. They never married. The son, Max Hocutt, was eighty-one when he leased me the apartment. The twins, Wilma and Gilma, were seventy-seven, and Melberta, the baby, was seventy-three and completely out of her mind.

It was Gilma, I think, who was peeking from the kitchen window as I descended the wooden stairway at midnight. A cat was asleep on the bottom step, directly in my path, but I respectfully stepped over it. I wanted to kick it into the street.

Two cars were parked in the garage. One was my Spitfire, top up to keep the cats out, and the other was a long, shiny black Mercedes with red-and-white butcher knives painted on the doors. Under the knives were phone numbers in green paint. Someone had once told Mr. Max Hocutt that he could completely write off the cost of a new car, any car, if he used it for business and some sort of logo was painted on the doors. He bought a new Mercedes and became a knife sharpener. He said his tools were in the trunk.

The car was ten years old and had been driven less than eight thousand miles. Their father had also preached to them the sinfulness of women driving, so Mr. Max was the chauffeur.

I eased the Spitfire down the gravel drive and waved at Gilma peeking from behind the curtain. She jerked her head away and disappeared. The jail was six blocks away. I had slept for about thirty minutes.

Danny Padgitt was being fingerprinted when I arrived. The Sheriff’s office was in the front section of the jail, and it was packed with deputies and reserves and volunteer firemen and everybody with access to a uniform and a police scanner. Wiley Meek met me on the front sidewalk.

“It’s Danny Padgitt!” he said with great excitement.

I stopped for a second and tried to think. “Who?”

“Danny Padgitt, from the island.”

I’d been in Ford County less than three months and had yet to meet a single Padgitt. They, as always, kept to themselves. But I’d heard various installments of their legend, with much more to follow. Telling Padgitt stories was a common form of entertainment in Ford County.

Wiley gushed on, “I got some great shots just as they got him out of the car. Had blood all over him. Great pictures! The girl’s dead!”

“What girl?”

“The one he killed. Raped her too, at least that’s the rumor.”

Danny Padgitt, I mumbled to myself as the sensational story began to sink in. I had my first glimpse of the headline, no doubt the boldest one the Times had run in many years. Poor old Spot had shied away from the jolting stories. Poor old Spot had gone bankrupt. I had other plans.

We pushed our way inside and looked around for Sheriff Coley. I’d met him twice during my brief stint with the Times and I had been impressed with his polite and warm nature. He called me mister and said sir and ma’am to everyone, always with a smile. He’d been the Sheriff since the massacre in 1943, so he was pushing seventy years of age. He was tall and gaunt without the obligatory thick stomach required of most Southern sheriffs. On the surface he was a gentleman, and both times I’d met him I’d later wondered how such a nice man could be so corrupt. He emerged from a back room with a deputy, and I, practicing my assertiveness, rushed to him.

“Sheriff, just a couple of questions,” I said sternly. There were no other reporters present. His boys — the real deputies, the part-timers, the wannabes, the jackleg constables with homemade uniforms — they all got quiet and gave me their sneers. I was still very much the brash new rich boy who’d somehow wrangled control of their newspaper. I was a foreigner, with no right to barge in at a time like this and start asking questions.

Sheriff Coley smiled as usual, as if these encounters happened all the time around midnight. “Yes sir, Mr. Traynor.” He had a slow rich drawl that was very soothing. This man couldn’t tell a lie, could he?

“What can you tell us about the murder?”

With his arms folded across his chest, he gave a few of the basics in copspeak. “White female, age thirty-one, was attacked in her home on Benning Road. Raped, stabbed, murdered. Can’t give you her name until we talk to her kinfolks.”

“And you’ve made an arrest?”

“Yes sir, but no details now. Just give us a couple of hours. We’re investigatin’. That’s all, Mr. Traynor.”

“Rumor has it that you have Danny Padgitt in custody.”

“I don’t deal in rumors, Mr. Traynor. Not in my profession. Yours neither.”

Wiley and I drove to the hospital, sniffed around for an hour, heard nothing we could print, then drove to the scene on Benning Road. The cops had cordoned off the house and a few of the neighbors were huddled quietly behind a strand of yellow police ribbon near the mailbox. We eased next to them, listening intently, hearing almost nothing. They seemed too stunned to talk. After a few minutes of gawking at the house, we crept away.

Wiley had a nephew who was a part-time deputy, and we found him guarding the Deece home where they were still inspecting the front porch and the swing where Rhoda took her last breath. We pulled him off to the side, behind a row of Mr. Deece’s crepe myrtles, and he told us everything. All off the record, of course, as if the gory details would somehow be kept quiet in Ford County.

There were three small cafés around the square in Clanton, two for the whites, one for the blacks. Wiley suggested we get an early table and just listen.

I do not eat breakfast, and I’m usually not awake during the hours in which it is served. I don’t mind working until midnight, but I prefer to sleep until the sun is overhead and in full view. As I quickly realized, one of the advantages of owning a small weekly was that I could work late and sleep late. The stories could be written anytime, as long as the deadlines were met. Spot himself was known to drift in not long before noon, after, of course, dropping by the funeral home. I liked his hours.

The second day I lived in my apartment above the Hocutt garage, Gilma banged on my door at nine-thirty in the morning. And banged and banged. I finally staggered through my small kitchen in my underwear and saw her squinting through the blinds. She announced that she was just about to call the police. The other Hocutts were down below, wandering around the garage, looking at my car, certain that a crime had been committed.

She asked what I was doing. I said that I had been sleeping until I heard somebody banging on the damned door. She asked me why I was still asleep at nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning. I rubbed my eyes and tried to think of an appropriate response. I was suddenly aware that I was almost nude and standing in the presence of a seventy-seven-year-old virgin. She kept looking at my thighs.

They’d been up since five, she explained. Nobody sleeps till nine-thirty in Clanton. Was I drunk? They were just concerned, that’s all. As I closed the door I told her I was sober, still sleepy, thanks for being concerned but I would often be in bed past 9 A.M.

I’d been to the Tea Shoppe a couple of times for late morning coffee and once for lunch. As the owner of the paper, I felt it necessary to circulate and be seen, at a reasonable hour. I was keenly aware that I would be writing about Ford County, its people and places and happenings, for years to come.

Wiley said the cafés would be crowded early. “Always after football games and car wrecks,” he said.

“What about murders?” I asked.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

He was right, the place was packed when we walked in, just after 6 A.M. He offered some hellos, shook some hands, exchanged a couple of insults. He was from Ford County and knew everyone. I nodded and smiled and caught the odd looks. It would take years. The people were friendly, but also wary of outsiders.

We found two seats at the counter and I asked for coffee. Nothing else. The waitress did not approve of this. She warmed to Wiley, though, when he reconsidered and ordered scrambled eggs, country ham, biscuits, grits, and a side of hash browns, enough cholesterol to choke a mule.

The talk was of the rape and murder and nothing else. If the weather could cause arguments, imagine what such a heinous crime could stir up. The Padgitts had had the run of the county for a hundred years; it was time to send ’em all to jail. Surround the island with the National Guard if necessary. Mackey Don had to go; he’d been in their pockets for too long. Let a bunch of crooks run free and they think they’re above the law. Now this.

Not much was said about Rhoda because little was known. Someone knew she’d been hanging around the lounges on the state line. Someone said she’d been sleeping with a local lawyer. Didn’t know his name. Just a rumor.

The rumors roared around the Tea Shoppe. A couple of the loudmouths took turns holding court, and I was surprised at how reckless they were with their versions of the truth. Too bad I couldn’t print all the wonderful gossip we heard.

Chapter 5

We did, however, print a lot. The headline proclaimed that Rhoda Kassellaw had been raped and murdered, and that Danny Padgitt had been arrested for it. The headline could’ve been read from twenty yards down any sidewalk around the courthouse square.

Under it were two photos; one of Rhoda as a senior in high school, and one of Padgitt as he was led into the jail in handcuffs. Wiley had ambushed him all right. It was a perfect shot, with Padgitt sneering at the camera. There was blood on his forehead from the wreck, and blood on his shirt from the attack. He looked nasty, mean, insolent, drunk, and guilty as hell, and I knew the photo would cause a sensation. Wiley thought we’d better avoid it, but I was twenty-three years old and too young to be restrained. I wanted my readers to see and know the ugly truth. I wanted to sell newspapers.

The photo of Rhoda had been obtained from a sister in Missouri. The first time I talked to her, by phone, she had had almost nothing to say and quickly hung up. The second time she thawed just a little, said the children were being seen by a doctor, that the funeral would take place Tuesday afternoon in a small town near Springfield, and, as far as the family was concerned, the entire state of Mississippi could burn in hell.

I told her that I understood completely, that I was from Syracuse, that I was one of the good guys. She finally agreed to send me a photo.

Using a host of unnamed sources, I described in detail what happened the previous Saturday night on Benning Road. When I was sure of a fact, I drove it home. When I wasn’t so sure, I nibbled around the edges with enough innuendo to convey what I thought happened. Baggy Suggs sobered up long enough to reread and edit the stories. He probably kept us from getting sued or shot.

On page two there was a map of the crime scene and a large photo of Rhoda’s home, one taken the morning after the crime, complete with cop cars and yellow police ribbon everywhere. The photo also included the bikes and toys of Michael and Teresa scattered around the front yard. In many ways, the photo was more ominous than one of the corpse itself, which I didn’t have but tried to get. The photo stated plainly that children lived there, and that children were involved in a crime so brutal that most Ford Countians were still trying to believe it really happened.

How much did the children see? That was the burning question.

I didn’t answer it in the Times, but I got as close as possible. I described the house and its interior layout. Using an unnamed source, I estimated that the children’s beds were about thirty feet from their mother’s. The children fled the house before Rhoda, they were in shock by the time they got next door, they were seen by a doctor in Clanton and were undergoing therapy of some nature back home in Missouri. They saw a lot.

Would they testify at a trial? Baggy said there was no way; they were simply too young. But I pulled the question out of the air and posed it anyway, to give the readers something else to argue and fret over. After exploring the possibility of parading the children into a courtroom, I concluded that “experts” agreed that such a scenario was unlikely. Baggy enjoyed being considered an expert.

Rhoda’s obituary was as long as I could possibly make it, which, given the tradition of the Times, was not unusual.

We went to press about 10 P.M. on Tuesday night; the paper was in the racks around the Clanton square by 7 A.M. on Wednesday. The circulation had dropped to fewer than twelve hundred at the time of the bankruptcy, but after a month of my fearless leadership we had close to twenty-five hundred subscribers — five thousand was a realistic goal.

For the Rhoda Kassellaw murder we printed eight thousand copies and put them everywhere — by the doors of the cafés around the square, in the halls of the courthouse, on the desks of every county employee, in the lobbies of the banks. We mailed three thousand free copies to potential subscribers, as part of a sudden, onetime special promotion effort.

According to Wiley, it was the first murder in eight years. It was a Padgitt! It was a wonderfully sensational story and I saw it as my golden moment. Sure I went for the shock, for the sensational, for the bloodstains. Sure it was yellow journalism, but what did I care?

I had no idea the response would be so quick and unpleasant.

At 9 A.M., Thursday morning, the main courtroom on the second floor of the Ford County Courthouse was full. It was the domain of the Honorable Reed Loopus, an aging Circuit Court Judge from Tyler County, who passed through Clanton eight times a year to dispense justice. He was a legendary old warrior who ruled with an iron fist and, according to Baggy — who spent most of his working life hanging around the courthouse either picking up gossip or creating it — was a thoroughly honest Judge who had somehow managed to avoid the tentacles of the Padgitt money. Perhaps because he was from another county, Judge Loopus believed criminals should serve long sentences, preferably at hard labor, though he could no longer order such.

The Monday after the murder, the Padgitt lawyers had scrambled around trying to get Danny out of jail. Judge Loopus was preoccupied with a trial in another county — his district covered six of them — and he refused to be pushed into a quick bail hearing. Instead, he set the matter for 9 A.M. Thursday, thus allowing the town several days to ponder and speculate.

Because I was a member of the press, indeed the owner of the local paper, I felt it was my duty to arrive early and get a good seat. Yes, I was a bit smug. The other spectators were there out of curiosity. I, however, had very important work to do. Baggy and I were sitting in the second row when the crowd began to assemble.

Danny Padgitt’s principal lawyer was a character named Lucien Wilbanks, a man I would quickly learn to hate. He was what was left of a once prominent clan of lawyers and bankers and such. The Wilbanks family had worked long and hard to build Clanton, then Lucien came along and had pretty much ruined a fine family name. He fancied himself as a radical lawyer, which, for that part of the world in 1970, was quite rare. He wore a beard, swore like a sailor, drank heavily, and preferred clients who were rapists and murderers and child molesters. He was the only white member of the NAACP in Ford County, which alone was enough to get you shot there. He didn’t care.

Lucien Wilbanks was abrasive and fearless and downright mean, and he waited until everyone was settled in the courtroom — just before Judge Loopus entered — to walk slowly over to me. He was holding a copy of the latest Times, which he began waving as he started swearing. “You little son of a bitch!” he said, quite loudly, and the courtroom became perfectly still. “Who in hell do you think you are?”

I was too mortified to attempt an answer. I felt Baggy inch away. Every single person in the courtroom was staring at me, and I knew I had to say something. “Just telling the truth,” I managed to say with as much conviction as I could muster.

“It’s yellow journalism!” he roared. “Sensational tabloid garbage!” The paper was just a few inches from my nose.

“Thank you,” I said, like a real wise guy. There were at least five deputies in the courtroom, none of whom were showing any interest in breaking this up.

“We’ll file suit tomorrow!” he said, his eyes glowing. “A million dollars in damages!”

“I got lawyers,” I said, suddenly terrified that I was about to be as bankrupt as the Caudle family. Lucien tossed the paper into my lap, then turned and went back to his table. I was finally able to exhale; my heart was pounding. I could feel my cheeks burning from embarrassment and fear.

But I managed to keep a stupid grin on my face. I couldn’t show the locals that I, the editor/publisher of their paper, was afraid of anything. But a million dollars in damages! I immediately thought of my grandmother in Memphis. That would be a difficult conversation.

There was a commotion up behind the bench and a bailiff opened a door. “Everyone rise,” he announced. Judge Loopus crept through it and shuffled to his seat, his faded black robe trailing behind him. Once situated, he surveyed the crowd, and said, “Good morning. A rather nice turnout for a bail hearing.” Such routine matters generally attracted no one, except for the accused, his lawyer, and perhaps his mother. There were three hundred people watching this one.

It wasn’t just a bail hearing. It was round one of a rape/murder trial, and few people in Clanton wanted to miss it. As I was keenly aware, most folks would not be able to attend the proceedings. They would rely on the Times, and I was determined to give them the details.

Every time I looked at Lucien Wilbanks, I thought about the lawsuit for a million dollars. Surely he wasn’t going to sue my paper, was he? For what? There had been no libel, no defamation.

Judge Loopus nodded at another bailiff and a side door opened. Danny Padgitt was escorted in, his hands cuffed at his waist. He was wearing a neatly pressed white shirt, khaki pants, and loafers. His face was clean shaven and free of any apparent injuries. He was twenty-four, a year older than me, but he looked much younger. He was clean cut, handsome, and I couldn’t help but think he ought to be in college somewhere. He managed a slow strut, then the sneer as the bailiff removed the handcuffs. He looked around at the crowd, and for a moment seemed to enjoy the attention. He showed all the confidence of someone whose family had unlimited cash, which it would use to get him out of his little jam.

Seated directly in back of him, behind the bar in the first row, were his parents and various other Padgitts. His father Gill, grandson of the infamous Clovis Padgitt, had a college degree and was rumored to be the chief money launderer in the gang. His mother was well dressed and somewhat attractive, which I found unusual for someone dimwitted enough to marry into the Padgitt clan and spend the rest of her life secluded on the island.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Baggy whispered to me.

“How often have you seen Gill?” I asked.

“Maybe twice, in the last twenty years.”

The State was represented by the county prosecutor, a part-timer named Rocky Childers. Judge Loopus addressed him: “Mr. Childers, I assume the State is opposed to bail.”

Childers stood and said, “Yes sir.”

“On what grounds?”

“The horrific nature of the crimes, Your Honor. A vicious rape, in the victim’s own bed, in front of her small children. A simultaneous murder caused by at least two knife wounds. The attempted flight of the accused, Mr. Padgitt.” Childers’s words cut through the hushed courtroom. “The great likelihood that if Mr. Padgitt leaves jail we will never see him again.”

Lucien Wilbanks couldn’t wait to stand up and start bickering. He was on his feet immediately. “We object to that, Your Honor. My client has no criminal record whatsoever, never been arrested before.”

Judge Loopus looked calmly over his reading glasses and said, “Mr. Wilbanks, I do hope that is the first and last time you interrupt anyone in this proceeding. I suggest you sit down, and when the Court is ready to hear from you, then you will be so advised.” His words were icy, almost bitter, and I wondered how many times these two had tangled in this very courtroom.

Nothing bothered Lucien Wilbanks; his skin was as thick as rawhide.

Childers then gave us a bit of history. Eleven years earlier, in 1959, a certain Gerald Padgitt had been indicted for stealing cars over in Tupelo. It took a year to find a couple of deputies willing to enter Padgitt Island to serve a warrant, and though they survived, they were unsuccessful. Gerald Padgitt either fled the country or secluded himself somewhere on the island. “Wherever he is,” Childers said, “he’s never been arrested, never been found.”

“You ever hear of Gerald Padgitt?” I whispered to Baggy.

“Nope.”

“If this defendant is released on bail, Your Honor, we’ll never see him again. It’s that simple.” Childers sat down.

“Mr. Wilbanks,” His Honor said.

Lucien stood slowly and waved a hand at Childers. “As usual, the prosecutor is confused,” he began pleasantly. “Gerald Padgitt is not charged with these crimes. I don’t represent him and really don’t give a damn what happened to him.”

“Watch your language,” Loopus said.

“He’s not on trial here. This is about Danny Padgitt, a young man with no criminal record whatsoever.”

“Does your client own real estate in this county?” Loopus asked.

“No, he does not. He’s only twenty-four.”

“Let’s get to the bottom line, Mr. Wilbanks. I know his family owns considerable acreage. The only way I’ll grant bail is if it’s all pledged to secure his appearance for trial.”

“That’s outrageous,” Lucien growled.

“So are his alleged crimes.”

Lucien flung his legal pad onto the table. “Give me a minute to consult with the family.”

This caused quite a stir among the Padgitts. They huddled behind the defense table with Wilbanks and there was disagreement from the very start. It was almost funny watching these very wealthy crooks shake their heads and get mad at each other. Family fights are quick and bitter, especially when money is at stake, and every Padgitt present seemed to have a different opinion about which course to take. One could only imagine what it was like when they were dividing their loot.

Lucien sensed that an agreement was unlikely, and to avoid embarrassment he turned and addressed the Court. “That’s impossible, Your Honor,” he announced. “The Padgitt land is owned by at least forty people, most of them absent from this courtroom. What the Court is requiring is arbitrary and overly burdensome.”

“I’ll give you a few days to put it together,” Loopus said, obviously enjoying the discomfort he was causing.

“No sir. It’s just not fair. My client is entitled to a reasonable bail, same as any other defendant.”

“Then bail is denied until the preliminary hearing.”

“We waive the preliminary.”

“As you wish,” Loopus said, taking notes.

“And we request that the case be presented to the grand jury as soon as possible.”

“In due course, Mr. Wilbanks, same as all other cases.”

“Because we will move for a change of venue as soon as possible.” Lucien said this boldly, as if an important proclamation was needed.

“It’s a bit early for that, don’t you think?” Loopus said.

“It will be impossible for my client to get a fair trial in this county.” Wilbanks was gazing around the courtroom as he continued, almost ignoring the Judge, who, for the moment, seemed curious.

“An effort is already under way to indict, try, and convict my client before he has the chance to defend himself, and I think the Court should intervene immediately with a gag order.”

Lucien Wilbanks was the only one who needed gagging.

“Where are you going with this, Mr. Wilbanks?” Loopus asked.

“Have you seen the local paper, Your Honor?”

“Not lately.”

All eyes seemed to settle upon me, and once again my heart stopped dead still.

Wilbanks glared at me as he continued. “Front page stories, bloody photographs, unnamed sources, enough half-truths and innuendos to convict any innocent man!”

Baggy was inching away again, and I was very much alone.

Lucien stomped across the courtroom and tossed a copy up to the bench. “Take a look at this,” he growled. Loopus adjusted his reading glasses, pulled the Times up high, and sank back into his fine leather chair. He began reading, apparently in no particular hurry.

He was a slow reader. At some point my heart began functioning again, returning with the fury of a jack-hammer. And I noticed my collar was wet where it rested on the back of my neck. Loopus finished the front page and slowly opened it up. The courtroom was silent. Would he toss me into jail right there? Nod to a bailiff to slap handcuffs on me and drag me away? I wasn’t a lawyer. I’d just been threatened with a million-dollar lawsuit, by a man who’d certainly filed many, and now the Judge was reading my rather lurid accounts while the entire town waited for his verdict.

A lot of hard glances were coming my way, so I found it easier to scribble on my reporter’s pad, though I couldn’t read anything I was writing. I worked hard at keeping a straight face. What I really wanted to do was bolt from the courtroom and race back to Memphis.

Pages rattled, and His Honor was finally finished. He leaned slightly forward to the microphone and uttered words that would instantly make my career. He said, “It’s very well written. Engaging, perhaps a bit macabre, but certainly nothing out of line.”

I kept scribbling, as if I hadn’t heard this. In a sudden, unforeseen, and rather harrowing skirmish, I had just prevailed over the Padgitts and Lucien Wilbanks. “Congratulations,” Baggy whispered.

Loopus refolded the newspaper and laid it down. He allowed Wilbanks to rant and rave for a few minutes about leaks from the cops, leaks from the prosecutor’s office, potential leaks from the grand jury room, all of them somehow coordinated by a conspiracy of unnamed people determined to treat his client unfairly. What he was really doing was performing for the Padgitts. He had lost his attempt to get bail, so he had to impress them with his zealousness.

Loopus bought none of it.

As we would soon learn, Lucien’s act had been nothing but a smokescreen. He had no intention of moving the case from Ford County.

Chapter 6

When I bought the Times, its prehistoric building came with the deal. It had very little value. It was on the south side of the Clanton square, one of four decaying structures built wall to wall by someone in a hurry; long and narrow, three levels, with a basement that all employees feared and shied away from. There were several offices in the front, all with stained and threadbare carpet, peeling walls, the smell of last century’s pipe smoke forever fused to the ceilings.

In the rear, as far away as possible, was the printing press. Every Tuesday night, Hardy, our pressman, somehow coaxed the old letterpress to life and managed to produce yet another edition of our paper. His space was rank with the sharp odor of printer’s ink.

The room on the first floor was lined with bookshelves sagging under the weight of dusty tomes that had not been opened in decades; collections of history and Shakespeare and Irish poetry and rows of badly outdated British encyclopedias. Spot thought such books would impress anyone who ventured in.

Standing in the front window, and looking through dingy panes of glass, across which someone had long ago painted the word “TIMES,” one could see the Ford County Courthouse and the bronze Confederate sentry guarding it. A plaque below his feet listed the names of the sixty-one county boys who died in the Great War, most at Shiloh.

The sentry could also be seen from my office, which was on the second floor. It, too, was lined with bookshelves holding Spot’s personal library, an eclectic collection that appeared to have been as neglected as the one downstairs. It would be years before I moved any of his books.

The office was spacious, cluttered, filled with useless artifacts and worthless files and adorned with fake portraits of Confederate generals. I loved the place. When Spot left he took nothing, and after a few months no one seemed to want any of his junk. So it remained where it was, neglected as always, virtually untouched by me, and slowly becoming my property. I boxed up his personal things — letters, bank statements, notes, postcards — and stored them in one of the many unused rooms down the hall where they continued to gather dust and slowly rot.

My office had two sets of French doors that opened to a small porch with a wrought-iron railing, and there was enough room out there for four people to sit in wicker chairs and watch the square. Not that there was much to see, but it was a pleasant way to pass the time, especially with a drink.

Baggy was always ready for a drink. He brought a bottle of bourbon after dinner, and we assumed our positions in the rockers. The town was still buzzing over the bail hearing. It had been widely assumed that Danny Padgitt would be sprung as soon as Lucien Wilbanks and Mackey Don Coley could get matters arranged. Promises would be made, money would change hands, Sheriff Coley would somehow personally guarantee the boy’s appearance at trial. But Judge Loopus had other plans.

Baggy’s wife was a nurse. She worked the night shift in the emergency room at the hospital. He worked days, if his rather languid observations of the town could be considered labor. They rarely saw each other, which was evidently a good thing because they fought constantly. Their adult children had fled, leaving the two of them to wage their own little war. After a couple of drinks, Baggy always began the cutting remarks about his wife. He was fifty-two, looked at least seventy, and I suspected that the booze was the principal reason he was aging badly and fighting at home.

“We kicked their butts,” he said proudly. “Never before has a newspaper story been so clearly exonerated. Right there in open court.”

“What’s a gag order?” I asked. I was an ill-informed rookie, and everybody knew it. No sense in pretending I knew something when I didn’t.

“I’ve never seen one. I’ve heard of them, and I think they’re used by judges to shut up the lawyers and the litigants.”

“So they don’t apply to newspapers?”

“Never. Wilbanks was grandstanding, that’s all. The guy is a member of the ACLU, only one in Ford County. He understands the First Amendment. There’s no way a court can tell a newspaper not to print something. He was having a bad day, it was apparent his client was staying in jail, so he had to showboat. Typical maneuver by lawyers. They teach it in law school.”

“So you don’t think we’ll get sued?”

“Hell no. Look, first of all, there’s no lawsuit. We didn’t libel or defame anyone. Sure we got kinda loose with some of the facts, but it was all small stuff, and it was probably true anyway. Second, if Wilbanks had a lawsuit he would have to file it here, in Ford County. Same courthouse, same courtroom, same Judge. The Honorable Reed Loopus, who, this morning, read our stories and declared them to be just fine. The lawsuit was shot down before Wilbanks typed the first word. Brilliant.”

I certainly didn’t feel brilliant. I’d been worrying about the million dollars in damages and wondering where I might find such a sum. The bourbon was finally settling in and I relaxed. It was Thursday night in Clanton and few people were out. Every shop and store and office around the square was locked tight.

Baggy, as usual, had been relaxed for a long time. Margaret had whispered to me that he often had bourbon for breakfast. He and a one-legged lawyer called Major liked to have a nip with their coffee. They would meet on the balcony outside Major’s office across the square and smoke and drink and argue law and politics while the courthouse came to life. Major lost a leg at Guadalcanal, according to his version of the Second War. His law practice was specialized to the point that he did nothing but type wills for the elderly. He typed them himself — had no need for a secretary. He worked about as hard as Baggy, and the two were often seen in the courtroom, half-soused, watching yet another trial.

“I guess Mackey Don’s got the boy in the suite,” Baggy said, his words starting to slur.

“The suite?” I asked.

“Yeah — have you seen the jail?”

“No.”

“It’s not fit for animals. No heat, no air, plumbing works about half the time. Filthy conditions. Rotten food. And that’s for the whites. The blacks are at the other end, all in one long cell. Their only toilet is a hole in the floor.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“It’s an embarrassment to the county, but, sadly, it’s the same in most places around here. Anyway, there’s one little cell with air conditioning and carpet on the floor, one clean bed, color television, good food. It’s called the suite and Mackey Don puts his favorites there.”

I was mentally taking notes. To Baggy, it was business as usual. To me, a recent college attendee and sometime journalism student, a real muckraking story was in the works. “You think Padgitt’s in the suite?”

“Probably. He came to court in his own clothes.”

“As opposed to?”

“Those orange jail coveralls everybody else wears. You haven’t seen them?”

Yes, I had seen them. I had been in court one time, a month or so earlier, and I suddenly recalled seeing two or three defendants sitting in the courtroom, waiting for a judge, all wearing different shades of faded orange coveralls. “Ford County Jail” was printed across the front and back of the shirts.

Baggy took a sip and expounded. “You see, for the preliminary hearings and such, the defendants, if they’re still in jail, always come to court dressed like prisoners. In the old days, Mackey Don would make them wear the coveralls even during their trials. Lucien Wilbanks got a guilty verdict reversed on the grounds that the jury was predisposed to convict since his client certainly looked guilty as hell in his orange jail suit. And he was right. Kinda hard to convince a jury you’re not guilty when you’re dressed like an inmate and wearing rubber shower shoes.”

I marveled once again at the backwardness of Mississippi. I could see a criminal defendant, especially a black one, facing a jury and expecting a fair trial, wearing jail garb designed to be spotted from half a mile away. “Still fightin’ the War,” was a slogan I’d heard several times in Ford County. There was a frustrating resistance to change, especially where crime and punishment were concerned.

Around noon the following day I walked to the jail looking for Sheriff Coley. Under the pretext of asking him questions about the Kassellaw investigation, I planned to see as many of the inmates as possible. His secretary informed me, rather rudely, that he was in a meeting, and that was fine with me.

Two prisoners were cleaning the front offices. Outside, two more were pulling weeds from a flower bed. I walked around the block and behind the jail I saw a small open area with a basketball goal. Six prisoners were loitering under the shade of a small oak tree. On the east side of the jail I saw three prisoners standing in a window, behind bars, gazing down at me.

Thirteen inmates in all. Thirteen orange suits.

Wiley’s nephew was consulted about things around the jail. At first he was reluctant to talk, but he had a deep hatred of Sheriff Coley, and he thought he could trust me. He confirmed what Baggy had suspected — Danny Padgitt was living the good life in an air-conditioned cell and eating whatever he wanted. He dressed as he wished, played checkers with the Sheriff himself, and made phone calls all day long.

The next edition of the Times did much to solidify my reputation as a hard-charging, fearless, twenty-three-year-old fool. On the front page was a huge photo of Danny Padgitt being led into the courthouse for his bail hearing. He was handcuffed and wore street clothes. He was also giving the camera one of his patented go-to-hell looks. Just above it was the massive headline: BAIL DENIED FOR DANNY PADGITT. The story was lengthy and detailed.

Alongside was another story, almost as long and much more scandalous. Quoting unnamed sources, I described at length the conditions of Mr. Padgitt’s incarceration. I mentioned every possible perk he was getting, including personal time with Sheriff Coley over the checkerboard. I talked about his food and diet, color television, unlimited phone use. Everything I could possibly verify. Then I compared this with how the other twenty-one inmates were living.

On page two, I ran an old black-and-white file photo of four defendants being led into the courthouse. Each, of course, was wearing the coveralls. Each had handcuffs and unruly hair. I blacked out their faces so, whoever they were, they would not suffer any more embarrassment. Their cases had long since been closed.

I’d placed another picture of Danny Padgitt as he was led into the courthouse next to the file photo. Except for the handcuffs, he could’ve been on his way to a party. The contrast was startling. The boy was being pampered by Sheriff Coley, who, so far, had refused to discuss the matter with me. Big mistake.

In the story, I detailed my efforts to chat with the Sheriff. My phone calls had not been returned. I’d gone to the jail twice and he wouldn’t meet with me. I’d left a list of questions for him, which he chose to ignore. I painted the picture of an aggressive young reporter desperately searching for the truth and being stiff-armed by an elected official.

Since Lucien Wilbanks was one of the least popular men in Clanton, I included him in the fray. Using the phone, which I was quickly learning was a great equalizer, I called his office four times before he called me back. At first he had no comment about his client or the charges, but when I persisted with questions about his treatment at the jail he erupted. “I don’t run the damned jail, son!” he growled, and I could almost see his red eyes glowing at me. I quoted him on that.

“Have you interviewed your client at the jail?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Don’t you have better things to report?”

“No sir. What was he wearing?”

“Well, he wasn’t naked.”

That was too good a quote to pass up, so I put it in bold print in a sidebar.

With a rapist/murderer, a corrupt Sheriff, and a radical lawyer on one side, and me standing alone on the other, I knew I couldn’t lose the fight. The response to the story was astounding. Baggy and Wiley reported that the cafés were buzzing with admiration for the fearless young editor of the paper. The Padgitts and Lucien had been despised for a long time. Now it was time to get rid of Coley.

Margaret said we were swamped with phone calls from readers incensed with the soft treatment Danny was receiving. Wiley’s nephew reported that the jail was in chaos and Mackey Don was at war with his deputies. He was coddling a murderer — 1971 was an election year. Folks were angry out there and they might all lose their jobs.

Those two weeks at the Times were crucial to its survival. The readers were hungry for details, and, through timing, dumb luck, and some guts, I gave them just what they wanted. The paper was suddenly alive; it was a force. It was trusted. The people wanted it to report with detail and without fear.

Baggy and Margaret told me that Spot would have never used the bloody pictures and challenged the Sheriff. But they were still quite timid. I can’t say that my brashness had in any way emboldened my staff. The Times was, and would be, a one-man show with a rather weak supporting staff.

Little did I care. I was telling the truth and damning the consequences. I was a local hero. Subscriptions jumped to almost three thousand. Ad revenue doubled. Not only was I shining a new light into the county, I was making money at the same time.

Chapter 7

The bomb was a rather basic incendiary device that, if detonated, would have quickly engulfed our printing room. There the fire would have been energized by various chemicals and no less than 110 gallons of printer’s ink, and would have raced quickly through the front offices. After a few minutes, with no sprinkler system and no alarms, who knows how much of the upper two floors could have been saved. Probably not much. It was very likely that the fire, if properly detonated in the early hours of Thursday morning, would’ve burned most of the four buildings in our row.

It was discovered sitting ominously, still intact, next to a pile of old papers in the printing room, by the village idiot. Or, I should say, one of the village idiots. Clanton had more than its share.

His name was Piston, and he, like the building and the ancient press and the untouched libraries upstairs and down, came with the deal. Piston was not an official employee of the Times, but he nonetheless showed up every Friday to collect his $50 in cash. No checks. For this fee he sometimes swept the floors and occasionally rearranged the dirt on the front windows, and he hauled out the trash when someone complained. He kept no hours, came and went as he pleased, didn’t believe in knocking on doors when meetings were in progress, liked to use our phones and drink our coffee, and though he at first looked rather sinister — eyes wide apart and covered with thick glasses, oversized trucker’s cap pulled down low, scraggly beard, hideous buck teeth — he was harmless. He provided his janitorial services for several businesses around the square, and somehow survived. No one knew where he lived, or with whom, or how he got about town. The less we knew about Piston, the better.

Piston was in early Thursday morning — he’d had a key for decades — and said that he first heard something ticking. Upon closer examination he noticed three five-gallon plastic cans laced together with a wooden box sitting on the floor next to them. The ticking sound came from the box. Piston had been around the printing room for many years and occasionally helped Hardy on Tuesday nights when he ran the paper.

For most folks, panic would quickly follow curiosity, but for Piston it took a while. After poking around the cans to make sure that they were in fact filled with gasoline, and after determining that a series of dangerous-looking wires tied everything together, he walked to Margaret’s office and called Hardy. He said the ticking was getting louder.

Hardy called the police, and around 9 A.M. I was awakened with the news.

Most of downtown was evacuated by the time I arrived. Piston was sitting on the hood of a car, by then thoroughly distraught at having survived such a close call. He was being attended by some acquaintances and an ambulance driver, and he seemed to be enjoying the attention.

Wiley Meek had photographed the bomb before the police removed the gasoline cans and placed them safely in the alley behind our building. “Woulda blown up half of downtown,” was Wiley’s uneducated evaluation of the bomb. He nervously darted around the scene, recording the excitement for future use.

The chief of police explained to me that the area was off limits because the wooden box had not been opened and whatever was in there was still ticking. “It might explode,” he said gravely, as if he was the first one smart enough to realize the danger. I doubted if he had much experience with bombs, but I went along. An official from the state crime lab was being rushed in. It was decided that the four buildings in our row would remain unoccupied until this expert finished his business.

A bomb in downtown Clanton! The news spread faster than the fire would have, and all work stopped. The county offices emptied, as well as the banks and stores and cafés, and before long large groups of spectators were crowded across the street, under the huge oaks on the south side of the courthouse, a safe distance away. They gawked at our little building, obviously concerned and frightened but also waiting for some excitement. They’d never seen a bomb blast before.

The Clanton city police had been joined by the Sheriff’s deputies, and every uniform in the county was soon present, milling about on the sidewalks, doing absolutely nothing. Sheriff Coley and the police chief huddled and conferred and watched the throng across the street, then barked some orders here and there, but if any of their orders were followed it wasn’t noticeable. It was obvious to all that the city and county had no bomb drills.

Baggy needed a drink. It was too early for me. I followed him into the rear of the courthouse, up a narrow flight of stairs I’d not seen before, through a cramped hallway, then up another twenty steps to a small dirty room with a low ceiling. “Used to be the old jury room,” he said. “Then it was the law library.”

“What is it now?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“The Bar Room. Get it? Bar? Lawyers? Booze?”

“Got it.” There was a card table with folding legs and a beaten look that indicated years of use. Around it were half a dozen mismatched chairs, all county hand-me-downs that had been passed from one county office to another and finally ditched in this dingy little room.

In one corner there was a small refrigerator with a padlock. Baggy, of course, had a key, and inside he found a bottle of bourbon. He poured a generous shot into a paper cup and said, “Grab a chair.” We pulled two of them up to the window, and below was the scene we had just left. “Not a bad view, huh?” he said proudly.

“How often you come here?”

“Twice a week, maybe, sometimes more. We play poker every Tuesday and Thursday at noon.”

“Who’s in the club?”

“It’s a secret society.” He took a sip and smacked his lips as if he’d been in the desert for a month. A spider made its way down a thick web along the window. Dust was half an inch thick on the sills.

“I guess they’re losin’ their touch,” he said, gazing down at the excitement.

“They?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“The Padgitts.” He said this with a certain smugness, then allowed it to hang in the air for my benefit.

“You’re sure it’s the Padgitts?” I asked.

Baggy thought he knew everything, and he was right about half the time. He smirked and grunted, took another sip, then said, “They’ve been burnin’ buildings forever. It’s one of their scams — insurance fraud. They’ve made a bloody fortune off insurance companies.” A quick sip. “Odd, though, that they would use gasoline. Your more talented arsonists stay away from gasoline because it’s easily detected. You know that?”

“No.”

“True. A good fire marshal can smell gasoline within minutes after the blaze is out. Gasoline means arson. Arson means no insurance payoffs.” A sip. “Of course, in this case, they probably wanted you to know it’s arson. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Nothing made sense at that moment. I was too confused to say much.

Baggy was content to do the talking. “Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason it wasn’t detonated. They wanted you to see it. If it went off, then the county wouldn’t have the Times, which might upset some folks. Might make some other folks happy.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, that explains it better. It was a subtle act of intimidation.”

“Subtle?”

“Yes, compared to what could’ve been. Believe me, those guys know how to burn buildings. You were lucky.”

I noticed how he had quickly disassociated himself from the paper. It was “I” who was lucky, not “we.”

The bourbon had found its way to the brain and was loosening the tongue. “About three years ago, maybe four, there was a large fire at one of their lumber mills, the one on Highway 401, just off the island. They never burn anything on the island because they don’t want the authorities snoopin’ around. Anyway, the insurance company smelled a rat, refused to pay, so Lucien Wilbanks filed this big lawsuit. It came to trial, in front of the Honorable Reed Loopus. I heard ever’ word of it.” A long, satisfying drink.

“Who won?”

He ignored me completely because the story was not yet properly laid out. “It was a big fire. The boys from Clanton took off with all their trucks. The volunteers from Karaway took off, ever’ yokel with a siren went screamin’ off toward Padgitt Island. Nothin’ like a good fire around here to get the boys worked up. That and a bomb, I guess, but I can’t remember the last bomb.”

“And so...”

“Highway 401 runs through some lowland near Padgitt Island, real swampy. There’s a bridge over Massey’s Creek, and when the fire trucks came flyin’ up to the bridge they found a pickup layin’ on its side, like it had rolled over. The road was completely blocked; couldn’t go around because there was nothin’ but swamps and ditches.” He smacked his lips and poured more from the bottle. It was time for me to say something, but whatever I said would be completely ignored anyway. This was the way Baggy preferred to be prompted.

“Whose pickup was it?” I asked, the words barely out of my mouth before he was shaking his head as if the question was completely off the mark.

“The fire was ragin’ like hell. Fire trucks backed up all along 401 because some clown had flipped his pickup. Never found him. No sign of a driver. No sign of an owner because there was no registration. No tags. The vehicle ID had been sanded off. The truck was never claimed. Wasn’t damaged much either. All this came out at trial. Ever’body knew the Padgitts set the fire, flipped one of their stolen trucks to block the road, but the insurance company couldn’t prove it.”

Down below Sheriff Coley had found his bullhorn. He was asking the people to please stay off the street in front of our office. His shrieking voice added urgency to the situation.

“So the insurance company won?” I said, anxious to get to the end.

“Helluva trial. Went on for three days. Wilbanks can usually cut a deal with one or two people on the jury. Been doin’ it for years and never gets caught. Plus he knows ever’body in the county. The insurance boys were up from Jackson, and they didn’t have a clue. The jury stayed out for two hours, came back with a verdict for the claim, a hundred grand, and for good measure, tacked on a million in punitive damages.”

“One point one million!” I said.

“You got it. The first million-dollar verdict in Ford County. Lasted about a year until the Supreme Court took an ax to it and cut out the punitive.”

The notion of Lucien Wilbanks having such sway over jurors was not comforting. Baggy neglected his bourbon for a moment and gazed at something below. “This is a bad sign, son,” he finally said. “Really bad.”

I was his boss and didn’t like to be referred to as “son,” but I let it slide. I had more pressing matters at hand. “The intimidation?” I said.

“Yep. The Padgitts rarely leave the island. The fact that they’ve brought their little show on the road means they’re ready for war. If they can intimidate the newspaper, then they’ll try it with the jury. They already own the Sheriff.”

“But Wilbanks said he wants a change of venue.”

He snorted and rediscovered his drink. “Don’t bet on it, son.”

“Please call me Willie.” Odd how I was now clinging to that name.

“Don’t bet on it, Willie. The boy’s guilty; his only chance is to have a jury that can be bought or scared. Ten to one odds the trial takes place right here, in this building.”

After two hours of waiting in vain for the ground to shake, the town was ready for lunch. The crowd broke up and drifted away. The expert from the state crime lab finally arrived and went to work in the printing room. I wasn’t allowed in the building, which was fine with me.

Margaret, Wiley, and I had a sandwich in the gazebo on the courthouse lawn. We ate quietly, chatted briefly, the three of us keeping an eye on our office across the street. Occasionally someone would see us and stop for an awkward word or two. What do you say to bombing victims when the bomb doesn’t go off? Fortunately, the townsfolk had had little practice in that area. We collected some sympathy and a few offers of help.

Sheriff Coley ambled over and gave a preliminary report on our bomb. The clock was of the wind-up alarm variety, available in stores everywhere. At first glance the expert thought there was a problem with the wiring. Very amateurish, he said.

“How will you investigate this?” I asked with an edge.

“We’ll check for prints, see if we can find any witnesses. The usual.”

“Will you talk to the Padgitts?” I asked, even edgier. I was, after all, in the presence of my employees. And though I was scared to death, I wanted to impress them with how utterly fearless I was.

“You know somethin’ I don’t?” he shot back.

“They’re suspects, aren’t they?”

“Are you the Sheriff now?”

“They’re the most experienced arsonists in the county, been burning buildings for years with impunity. Their lawyer threatened me in court last week. We’ve had Danny Padgitt on the front page twice. If they’re not suspects, then who is?”

“Just go ahead and write the story, son. Call ’em by name. You seem determined to get sued anyway.”

“I’ll take care of the paper,” I said. “You catch the criminals.”

He tipped his hat to Margaret and walked away.

“Next year’s reelection year,” Wiley said as we watched Coley stop and chat with two ladies near a drinking fountain. “I hope he has an opponent.”

The intimidation continued, at Wiley’s expense. He lived a mile from town on a five-acre hobby farm, where his wife raised ducks and watermelons. That night as he parked in his drive and was getting out of his car, two goons jumped from the shrubs and assaulted him. The larger man knocked him down and kicked him in the face, while the other one rummaged through his backseat and pulled out two cameras. Wiley was fifty-eight years old and an ex-Marine, and at some point in the melee he managed to land a kick that sent the larger assailant to the ground. There they exchanged blows and as Wiley was gaining the upper hand the other thug banged him over the head with one of his cameras. Wiley said he didn’t remember much after that.

His wife eventually heard the ruckus. She found Wiley on the ground, semiconscious, with both cameras shattered. In the house, she put ice packs on his face and determined that there were no broken bones. The ex-Marine did not want to go to the hospital.

A deputy arrived and made a report. Wiley had caught only a glimpse of his attackers and he’d certainly never seen them before. “They’re back on the island by now,” he said. “You won’t find them.”

His wife prevailed, and an hour later they called me from the hospital. I saw him between X rays. His face was a mess, but he managed to smile. He grabbed my hand and pulled me close. “Next week, front page,” he said through cut lips and swollen jaws.

A few hours later I left the hospital and went for a long drive through the countryside. I kept glancing at my mirror, half-expecting another load of Padgitts to come roaring up, guns blazing.

It was not a lawless county, where organized criminals ran roughshod over the law-abiding people. It was just the opposite — crime was rare. Corruption was generally frowned upon. I was right and they were wrong, and I decided I’d be damned before I knuckled under. I’d buy myself a gun; hell, everybody else in the county carried two or three. And if necessary I’d hire a guard of some sort. My paper would grow even bolder as the murder trial approached.

Chapter 8

Prior to the bankruptcy, and my unlikely rise in prominence in Ford County, I had heard a fascinating story about a local family. Spot never pursued it because it would’ve required some light research and a trip across the railroad tracks.

Now that the paper was mine, I decided it was too good to pass up.

Over in Lowtown, the colored section, there lived an extraordinary couple — Calia and Esau Ruffin. They had been married for over forty years and had raised eight children, seven of whom had earned PhD’s and were now college professors. Details on the remaining one were sketchy, though, according to Margaret, his name was Sam and he was hiding from the law.

I called the house and Mrs. Ruffin answered the phone. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and she seemed to know everything about me. She said she’d been reading the Times for fifty years, front to back, everything including the obits and the want ads, and after a moment or two offered the opinion that the paper was in much better hands now. Longer stories. Fewer mistakes. More news. She spoke slowly, clearly, with precise diction I had not heard since I left Syracuse.

When I finally had an opening, I thanked her and said I’d like to meet and talk about her remarkable family. She was flattered and insisted that I come over for lunch.

Thus began an unusual friendship that opened my eyes to many things, not the least of which was Southern cuisine.

My mother died when I was thirteen. She was anorexic; there were only four pallbearers. She weighed less than a hundred pounds and looked like a ghost. Anorexia was only one of her many problems.

Because she did not eat, she did not cook. I cannot remember a single hot meal she prepared for me. Breakfast was a bowl of Cheerios, lunch a cold sandwich, dinner some frozen mess I usually ate in front of the television, alone. I was an only child and my father was never at home, which was a relief because his presence caused friction between them. He preferred to eat, she did not. They feuded over everything.

I never went hungry; the pantry was always full of peanut butter and cereal and such. I occasionally ate with a friend and I always marveled at how real families cooked and spent so much time at the table. Food was simply not important around our house.

As a teenager I existed on frozen dinners. At Syracuse it was beer and pizza. For the first twenty-three years of my life, I ate only when I was hungry. This was wrong, I soon learned in Clanton. In the South, eating has little to do with hunger.

The Ruffin home was in a nicer section of Lowtown, in a row of neatly preserved and painted shotgun houses. The street addresses were on the mailboxes, and when I rolled to a stop I was smiling at the white picket fence and flowers — peonies and irises — that lined the sidewalk. It was early April, I had the top down on my Spitfire, and as I turned off the ignition I smelled something delicious. Pork chops!

Calia Ruffin met me at the low swing-gate that opened into her immaculate front lawn. She was a stout woman, thick in the shoulders and trunk, with a handshake that was firm and felt like a man’s. She had gray hair and was showing the effects of raising so many children, but when she smiled, which was constantly, she lit up the world with two rows of brilliant, perfect teeth. I had never seen such teeth.

“I’m so glad you came,” she said, halfway up the brick walkway. I was so glad too. It was about noon. Typically, I had yet to eat a bite, and the aromas wafting from the porch were making me dizzy.

“A lovely house,” I said, gazing at the front of it. It was clapboard, painted a sparkling white, and gave the impression that someone was usually hanging around with a brush and bucket. A green tin-roofed porch ran across the entire front.

“Why, thank you. We’ve owned it for thirty years.”

I knew that most of the dwellings in Lowtown were owned by white slumlords across the tracks. To own a home was an unusual accomplishment for blacks in 1970.

“Who’s your gardener?” I asked as I stopped to smell a yellow rose. There were flowers everywhere — edging the walkway, along the porch, down both sides of their property line. “That would be me,” she said with a laugh, teeth gleaming in the sunlight.

Up three steps and onto the porch, and there it was — the spread! A small table next to the railing was prepared for two people — white cotton cloth, white napkins, flowers in a small vase, a large pitcher of iced tea, and at least four covered dishes.

“Who’s coming?” I asked.

“Oh, just the two of us. Esau might drop by later.”

“There’s enough food for an army.” I inhaled as deeply as possible and my stomach ached in anticipation.

“Let’s eat now,” she said, “before it gets cold.”

I restrained myself, walked casually to the table, and pulled back a chair for her. She was delighted that I was such a gentleman. I sat across from her and was ready to yank off the lids and dive headfirst into whatever I found when she took both my hands and lowered her head. She began to pray.

It would be a lengthy prayer. She thanked the Lord for everything good, including me, “her new friend.” She prayed for those who were sick and those who might become so. She prayed for rain and sun and health and humility and patience, and though I began to worry about the food getting cold I was mesmerized by her voice. Her cadence was slow, with thought given to each word. Her diction was perfect, every consonant treated equally, every comma and period honored. I had to peek to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I had never heard such speech from a Southern black, or a Southern white for that matter.

I peeked again. She was talking to her Lord, and her face was perfectly content. For a few seconds, I actually forgot about the food. She squeezed my hands as she petitioned the Almighty with eloquence that came only from years of practice. She quoted Scripture, the King James Version for sure, and it was a bit odd to hear her use words like “thou” and “thine” and “whither” and “goest.” But she knew precisely what she was doing. In the clutches of this very holy woman, I had never felt closer to God.

I couldn’t imagine such a lengthy devotional over a table crowded with eight children. Something told me, though, that when Calia Ruffin prayed everybody got still.

Finally, she ended with a flourish, a long burst in which she managed to appeal for the forgiveness of her sins, which I presumed were few and far between, and for my own, which, well, if she only knew.

She released me and began removing lids from bowls. The first contained a pile of pork chops smothered in a sauce that included, among many ingredients, onions and peppers. More steam hit my face and I wanted to eat with my fingers. In the second there was a mound of yellow corn, sprinkled with green peppers, still hot from the stove. There was boiled okra, which, she explained as she prepared to serve, she preferred over the fried variety because she worried about too much grease in her diet. She was taught to batter and fry everything, from tomatoes to pickles, and she had come to realize that this was not altogether healthy. There were butter beans, likewise unbattered and unfried, but rather cooked with ham hocks and bacon. There was a platter of small red tomatoes covered with pepper and olive oil. She was one of the very few cooks in town who used olive oil, she said as she continued her narrative. I was hanging on every word as my large plate was being tended to.

A son in Milwaukee shipped her good olive oil because such was unheard of in Clanton.

She apologized because the tomatoes were store bought; hers were still on the vine and wouldn’t be ready until summertime. The corn, okra, and butter beans had been canned from her garden last August. In fact, the only real “fresh” vegetables were the collard greens, or “spring greens” as she called them.

A large black skillet was hidden in the center of the table, and when she pulled the napkin off it there were at least four pounds of hot corn bread. She removed a huge wedge, placed it in the center of my plate, and said, “There. That will get you started.” I had never had so much food placed in front of me. The feast began.

I tried to eat slowly, but it was impossible. I had arrived with an empty stomach, and somewhere in the midst of the competing aromas and the beauty of the table and the rather long-winded blessing and the careful description of each dish, I had become thoroughly famished. I packed it in, and she seemed content to do the talking.

Her garden had produced most of the meal. She and Esau grew four types of tomatoes, butter beans, string beans, black-eyed peas, crowder peas, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, collards, mustard greens, turnips, vidalia onions, yellow onions, green onions, cabbage, okra, new red potatoes, russet potatoes, carrots, beets, corn, green peppers, cantaloupes, two varieties of watermelon, and a few other things she couldn’t recall at the moment. The pork chops were provided by her brother, who still lived on the old family place out in the country. He killed two hogs for them every winter and they stuffed their freezer. In return, they kept him in fresh vegetables.

“We don’t use chemicals,” she said, watching me gorge myself. “Everything is natural.”

It certainly tasted like it.

“But it’s all put-up, you know, from the winter. It’ll taste better in the summertime when we pick and eat it just a few hours later. Will you come back then, Mr. Traynor?”

I grunted and nodded and somehow managed to convey the message that I would return any time she wanted.

“Would you like to see my garden?” she asked.

I nodded again, both jaws filled to capacity.

“Good. It’s out back. I’ll pick you some lettuce and greens. They’re coming in nicely.”

“Wonderful,” I managed to utter.

“I figure a single man like you needs all the help he can get.”

“How’d you know I was single?” I took a gulp of tea. It could have served as dessert — there was so much sugar in it.

“Folks are talking about you. Word gets around. There are not too many secrets in Clanton, on both sides of the tracks.”

“What else have you heard?”

“Let’s see. You rent from the Hocutts. You come from up North.”

“Memphis.”

“That far?”

“It’s an hour away.”

“Just joking. One of my daughters went to college there.”

I had many questions about her children, but I was not ready to take notes. Both hands were busy eating. At some point I called her Miss Calia, instead of Miss Ruffin.

“It’s Callie,” she said. “Miss Callie will do just fine.” One of the first habits I picked up in Clanton was referring to the ladies, regardless of age, by sticking the word “Miss” in front of their names. Miss Brown, Miss Webster, for new acquaintances who had a few years on them. Miss Martha, Miss Sara, for the younger ones. It was a sign of chivalry and good breeding, and since I had neither it was important to seize as many local customs as possible.

“Where did Calia come from?” I asked.

“It’s Italian,” she said, as if that would explain everything. She ate some butter beans. I carved up a pork chop. Then I said, “Italian?”

“Yes, that was my first language. It’s a long story, one of many. Did they really try to burn down the paper?”

“Yes, they did,” I said, wondering if I’d heard this black lady in rural Mississippi just say that her first language was Italian.

“And they assaulted Mr. Meek?”

“They did.”

“Who is they?”

“We don’t know yet. Sheriff Coley is investigating.” I was anxious to get her impression of our Sheriff. While I waited, I went after another wedge of corn bread. Soon there was butter dripping from my chin.

“He’s been the Sheriff for a long time, hasn’t he?” she said.

I’m sure she knew the exact year in which Mackey Don Coley had first bought himself into office. “What do you think of him?” I asked.

She drank some tea and contemplated. Miss Callie did not rush her answers, especially when talking about others. “On this side of the tracks, a good Sheriff is one who keeps the gamblers and the bootleggers and the whoremongers away from the rest of us. In that regard, Mr. Coley has done a proper job.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Certainly. You’re a reporter.”

“Your speech is unusually articulate and precise. How much education did you receive?” It was a sensitive question in a society where, for many decades, education had not been stressed. It was 1970, and Mississippi still had no public kindergartens and no mandatory school attendance laws.

She laughed, giving me the full benefit of those teeth. “I finished the ninth grade, Mr. Traynor.”

“The ninth grade?”

“Yes, but my situation was unusual. I had a wonderful tutor. It’s another long story.”

I began to realize that these wonderful stories Miss Callie was promising would take months, maybe years to develop. Perhaps they would evolve on the porch, over a weekly banquet.

“Let’s save it for later,” she said. “How is Mr. Caudle?”

“Not well. He will not come out of his house.”

“A fine man. He will always be close to the heart of the black community. He had such courage.”

I thought Spot’s “courage” had more to do with widening the range of his obituaries than with a commitment to the fair treatment of all. But I had learned how important dying was to black folks — the ritual of the wake, often lasting a week; the marathon memorial services, with open caskets and much wailing; the mile-long funeral processions; and, lastly, the final graveside farewells fraught with emotion. When Spot had so radically opened his obituary page to blacks he had become a hero in Lowtown.

“A fine man,” I said, reaching for my third pork chop. I was beginning to ache a bit, but there was so much food left on the table!

“You’re doing him proud with your obituaries,” she said with a warm smile.

“Thank you. I’m still learning.”

“You have courage too, Mr. Traynor.”

“Could you call me Willie? I’m only twenty-three.”

“I prefer Mr. Traynor.” And that issue was settled. It would take four years before she could break down and use my first name. “You have no fear of the Padgitt family,” she announced.

That was news to me. “It’s just part of my job,” I said.

“Do you expect the intimidation to continue?”

“Probably so. They are accustomed to getting whatever they want. They are violent, ruthless people, but a free press must endure.” Who was I kidding? One more bomb or assault and I’d be back in Memphis before sunrise.

She stopped eating and her eyes turned toward the street, where she looked at nothing in particular. She was deep in thought. I, of course, kept stuffing my face.

Finally, she said, “Those poor little children. Seeing their mother like that.”

That image finally caused my fork to stop. I wiped my mouth, took a long breath, and let the food settle for a moment. The horror of the crime was left to everyone’s imagination, and for days Clanton had whispered about little else. As always happens, the whispers and rumors got amplified, different versions were spun off and repeated, and enlarged yet again. I was curious as to how the stories were playing in Lowtown.

“You told me on the phone you’ve been reading the Times for fifty years,” I said, almost belching.

“Indeed I have.”

“Can you remember a more brutal crime?”

She paused for a second as she reviewed five decades, then slowly shook her head. “No, I cannot.”

“Have you ever met a Padgitt?”

“No. They stay on the island, and always have. Even their Negroes stay out there, making whiskey, doing their voodoo, all sorts of foolishness.”

“Voodoo?”

“Yes, it’s common knowledge on this side of the tracks. Nobody here messes with the Padgitt Negroes, never have.”

“Do people on this side of the tracks believe Danny Padgitt raped and killed her?”

“The ones who read your newspaper certainly do.”

That stung more than she would ever know. “We just report the facts,” I said smugly. “The boy was arrested. He’s been charged. He’s in jail awaiting trial.”

“Isn’t there a presumption of innocence?”

Another squirm on my side of the table. “Of course.”

“Do you think it was fair to use a photograph of him handcuffed, with blood on his shirt?” I was struck by her sense of fairness. Why would she, or any other black in Ford County, care if Danny Padgitt was treated fairly? Few people had ever worried about black defendants getting decent treatment by the police or the press.

“He had blood on his shirt when he arrived at the jail. We didn’t put it there.” Neither one of us was enjoying this little debate. I took a sip of tea and found it difficult to swallow. I was stuffed all the way down.

She looked at me with one of those smiles and had the nerve to say, “What about some dessert? I baked a banana pudding.”

I could not say no. Nor could I hold another bite. A compromise was called for. “Let’s wait a while, give things a chance to settle.”

“Then have some more tea,” she said, already refilling my glass. Breathing was difficult, so I reclined as much as possible in my chair and decided to act like a journalist. Miss Callie, who’d eaten far less than I, was finishing a serving of okra.

According to Baggy, Sam Ruffin had been the first black student to enroll in the white schools in Clanton. It happened in 1964 when Sam was a seventh grader, age twelve, and the experience had been difficult for everyone. Especially Sam. Baggy warned me that Miss Callie might not talk about her youngest child. There was a warrant for his arrest and he had fled the area.

She was reluctant at first. In 1963, the courts ruled that a white school district could not deny admission to a black student. Forced integration was still years in the future. Sam was her youngest, and when she and Esau made the decision to take him to the white school they hoped they would be joined by other black families. They were not, and for two years Sam was the only black student at Clanton Junior High School. He was tormented and beaten, but he quickly learned to handle his fists and with time was left alone. He begged his parents to take him back to the Negro school, but they held their ground, even after he moved to the senior high. Relief was coming, they kept telling themselves. The desegregation fight was raging across the South and blacks were continually promised that the mandate of Brown versus Board of Education would be carried out.

“It is hard to believe that it is now 1970, and the schools here are still segregated,” she said. Federal lawsuits and appellate decisions were pummeling white resistance throughout the South, but, typically, Mississippi was fighting to the bitter end. Most white folks I knew in Clanton were convinced that their schools would never be integrated. I, a Northerner from Memphis, could see the obvious.

“Do you regret sending Sam to the white school?”

“Yes and no. Someone had to be courageous. It was painful knowing he was very unhappy, but we had taken a stand. We were not going to retreat.”

“How is he today?”

“Sam is another story, Mr. Traynor, one I might talk about later, or not. Would you like to see my garden?”

It was more of a command than an invitation. I followed her through the house, down a narrow hallway lined with dozens of framed photographs of children and grandchildren. The inside was as meticulous as the outside. The kitchen opened to the back porch and from there the Garden of Eden stretched to the rear fence. Not a single square foot was wasted.

It was a postcard of beautiful colors, neat rows of plants and vines, narrow dirt footpaths so that Callie and Esau could tend to their spectacular bounty.

“What do you do with all this food?” I asked in amazement.

“We eat some, sell a little, give most away. No one goes hungry around here.” At that moment my stomach was aching like never before. Hunger was a notion I couldn’t comprehend. I followed her into the garden, moving slowly along the footpaths as she pointed out the herb patch and melons and all the other delicious fruits and vegetables she and Esau tended to with great care. She commented on every plant, including an occasional weed, which she snatched almost with anger and flung back into some vines. It was impossible for her to walk through the garden and ignore the details. She looked for insects, killed a nasty green worm on a tomato vine, searched for weeds, made mental notes about future chores for Esau. The leisurely stroll was doing wonders for my digestive system.

So this is where food comes from, I thought to my ignorant self. What did I expect? I was a city kid. I’d never been in a vegetable garden before. I had many questions, all banal, so I held my tongue.

She examined a stalk of corn and was not pleased with whatever she saw. She tore off a snap bean, broke it in two, analyzed it like a scientist, and offered the guarded opinion that they needed much more sun. She saw a patch of weeds and informed me Esau would be sent to pull them as soon as he got home. I did not envy Esau.

After three hours, I left the Ruffin home stuffed yet again with banana pudding. I also left with a sack of “spring greens,” which I had no idea what to do with, and precious few notes on which to write a story. I also had an invitation to return the following Thursday for another lunch. Lastly, I had Miss Callie’s handwritten list of all the errors she’d found in that week’s edition of the Times. Almost all were typographical errors and misspelled words — twelve in all. Under Spot, the average had been about twenty. Now it was down to around ten. It was a lifelong habit of hers. “Some folks like crossword puzzles,” she said. “I like to look for mistakes.”

It was hard not to take this personally. She certainly didn’t intend to criticize anyone. I vowed to proofread the copy with much more enthusiasm.

I also left with the feeling that I had entered a new and rewarding friendship.

Chapter 9

We ran another large photo on the front page. It was Wiley’s shot of the bomb before the police dismantled it. The headline above it screamed: BOMB PLANTED IN TIMES OFFICE.

My story began with Piston and his unlikely discovery. It included every detail I could substantiate, and a few I could not. No comment from the chief of police, a few meaningless sentences from Sheriff Coley. It ended with a summary of the findings by the state crime lab, and a prediction that, if detonated, the bomb would have caused “massive” damage to the buildings on the south side of the square.

Wiley would not allow me to use a photo of his badly bruised face, though I pleaded desperately with him to do so. On the bottom half of the front page I ran the headline TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER ASSAULTED AT HOME. Again, my story spared no detail, though Wiley insisted he be allowed to edit it.

In both stories, and with no effort at being subtle, I linked the crimes and implied rather strongly that little was being done by the authorities, especially Sheriff Coley, to prevent further intimidation. I never named the Padgitts. I didn’t have to. Everyone in the county knew they were bullying me and my newspaper.

Spot had been too lazy for editorials. He’d written only one during my stint as an employee. A congressman from Oregon had filed some nutty bill that would somehow affect the cutting of redwood trees — more cutting or maybe less, it really wasn’t clear. This had upset Spot. For two weeks he labored over an editorial and finally ran a two-thousand-word tirade. It was obvious to anyone with a high school education that he wrote with a pen in one hand and a dictionary in the other. The first paragraph was filled with more six-syllable words than anyone had ever seen and was virtually unreadable. Spot was shocked when there was no response from the community. He expected a flood of sympathetic letters. Few of his readers could have survived the flood from Webster’s.

Finally, three weeks later, a hand-scrawled note was slid under the front door of the office. It read:

It was unsigned, but Spot ran it anyway. He was relieved that someone out there was paying attention. Baggy told me later that the note was written by one of his drinking buddies in the courthouse.

My editorial began, “A free and uninhibited press is crucial to sound democratic government.” Without being windy or preachy, I went on for four paragraphs extolling the importance of an energetic and inquisitive newspaper, not only for the country but for every small community as well. I vowed that the Times would not be frightened away from reporting local crimes, whether they were rapes and murders or corrupt acts by public officials.

It was bold, gutsy, and downright brilliant. The townsfolk were on my side. It was, after all, the Times versus the Padgitts and their Sheriff. We were taking a mighty stand against bad people, and though they were dangerous they were evidently not intimidating me. I kept telling myself to act brave, and I really had no choice. What was my paper supposed to do — ignore the Kassellaw murder? Take it easy on Danny Padgitt?

My staff was elated with the editorial. Margaret said it made her proud to work for the Times. Wiley, still nursing his wounds, was now carrying a gun and looking for a fight. “Give ’em hell, rookie,” he said.

Only Baggy was skeptical. “You’re gonna get yourself hurt,” he said.

And Miss Callie once again described me as courageous. Lunch the following Thursday lasted for only two hours and included Esau. I actually began taking notes about her family. More important, she’d found only three errors in that week’s edition.

I was alone in my office early Friday afternoon when someone made a noisy entrance downstairs, then came clamoring up. He shoved my door open without so much as a “Hello” and stuck both hands in his pants pockets. He looked vaguely familiar; we’d met somewhere around the square.

“You got one of these, boy?” he growled, yanking his right hand out and momentarily freezing my heart and lungs. He slid a shiny pistol across my desk as if it were a set of keys. It spun wildly for a few seconds before resting directly before me, the barrel mercifully pointing toward the windows.

He lunged across the desk, thrust out a massive hand, and said, “Harry Rex Vonner, a pleasure.” I was too stunned to speak or move, but eventually honored him with an embarrassingly weak handshake. I was still watching the gun.

“It’s a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, six-shooter, damned fine firearm. You carry one?”

I shook my head no. The name alone sent chills to my feet.

Harry Rex kept a nasty black cigar tucked into the left side of his mouth. It gave the impression of having spent most of the day there, slowly disintegrating like a plug of chewing tobacco. No smoke because it wasn’t lit. He dropped his massive body into a leather chair as if he might stay for a couple of hours.

“You a crazy sumbitch, you know that?” He didn’t speak as much as he growled. Then I caught the name. He was a local lawyer, once described by Baggy as the meanest divorce attorney in the county. He had a large fleshy face with short hair that shot in all directions like windblown straw. His ancient khaki suit was wrinkled and stained and said to the world that Harry Rex didn’t give a damn about anything.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked, pointing at the gun.

“First you load it, I’ll give you some bullets, then you stick it in your pocket and carry it with you everywhere you go, and when one of them Padgitt thugs jumps out from behind the bushes you blast him right between the eyes.” To help convey his message, he moved his index finger through the air like a bullet and poked himself between the eyes.

“It’s not loaded?”

“Hell no. Don’t you know anything about guns?”

“Afraid not.”

“Well, you’d better learn, boy, at the rate you’re goin’.”

“That bad, huh?”

“I did a divorce one time, ten years ago I guess, for a man whose young wife liked to sneak over to the brothel and make a few bucks. The guy worked offshore, stayed gone all the time, had no idea what she was up to. He finally found out. The Padgitts owned the whorehouse and one of them had taken a shine to the young lady.” Somehow the cigar stayed in place, bobbing up and down with the narrative. “My client was heartbroken and he wanted blood. He got it. They caught him out one night and beat him senseless.”

“They?”

“The Padgitts I’m sure, or some of their operatives.”

“Operatives?”

“Yeah, they got all sorts of thugs who work for them. Leg breakers, bomb throwers, car stealers, hit men.”

He allowed the “hit men” to hang in the air while he watched me flinch. He gave the impression of one who could tell stories forever without being unduly burdened by veracity. Harry Rex had a nasty grin and a twinkle in his eyes, and I strongly suspected some embellishment was under way.

“And of course they were never caught,” I said.

“Padgitts never get caught.”

“What happened to your client?”

“He spent a few months in the hospital. The brain damage was pretty severe. In and out of institutions, really sad. Broke his family. He drifted to the Gulf Coast where they elected him to the state senate.”

I smiled and nodded at what I hoped was a lie, but I didn’t pursue it. Without touching the cigar with his hands, he flicked his tongue somehow and cocked his head, and it slid to the right side of his mouth.

“You ever eat goat?” he asked.

“Say what?”

“Goat?”

“No. I didn’t know it was edible.”

“We’re roastin’ one this afternoon. The first Friday of each month I throw a goat party at my cabin in the woods. Some music, cold beer, fun and games, about fifty folks, all carefully selected by me, the cream of society. No doctors, no bankers, no country club assholes. A classy bunch. Why don’t you stop by? I got a firin’ range out behind the pond. I’ll take the pistol and we’ll figure out how to use the damned thing.”

Harry Rex’s ten-minute drive into the country took almost half an hour, and that was on the paved county road. When I crossed the “third creek past Heck’s old Union 76 station,” I left the asphalt and turned onto gravel. For a while it was a nice gravel road with mailboxes indicating some hope of civilization, but after three miles the mail route stopped and so did the gravel. When I saw a “rusted-out Massey Ferguson tractor with no tires,” I turned left onto a dirt road. His crude map referred to it as a pig trail, though I had never seen one of those. After the pig trail disappeared into a dense forest, I gave serious thought to turning back. My Spitfire wasn’t designed for the terrain. By the time I saw the roof of his cabin, I’d been driving for forty-five minutes.

There was a barbed-wire fence with an open metal gate, and I stopped there because the young man with the shotgun wanted me to. He kept it on his shoulder as he looked scornfully at my car. “What kind is it?” he grunted.

“Triumph Spitfire. It’s British.” I was smiling, trying not to offend him. Why did a goat party need armed security? He had the rustic look of someone who’d never seen a car made in another country.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Willie Traynor.”

I think the “Willie” made him feel better, so he nodded at the gate. “Nice car,” he said as I drove through.

The pickup trucks outnumbered the cars. Parking was haphazard in a field in front of the cabin. Merle Haggard was wailing from two speakers placed in the windows. One group of guests huddled over a pit where smoke was rising and the goat was roasting. Another group was tossing horseshoes beside the cabin. Three well-dressed ladies were on the porch, sipping something that was certainly not beer. Harry Rex appeared and greetly me warmly.

“Who’s the boy with the shotgun?” I asked.

“Oh him. That’s Duffy, my first wife’s nephew.”

“Why is he out there?” If the goat party included something illegal, I at least wanted some notice.

“Don’t worry. Duffy ain’t all there, and the gun ain’t loaded. He’s been guardin’ nothin’ for years.”

I smiled as if this made perfect sense. He guided me to the pit where I saw my first goat, dead or alive. With the exception of head and hide, it appeared to be intact. I was introduced to the many chefs. With each name I got an occupation — a lawyer, a bail bondsman, a car dealer, a farmer. As I watched the goat spin slowly on a spit, I soon learned that there were many competing theories on how to properly barbecue one. Harry Rex handed me a beer and we moved on to the cabin, speaking to anyone we bumped into. A secretary, a “crooked real estate agent,” the current wife of Harry Rex. Each seemed pleased to meet the new owner of the Times.

The cabin sat on the edge of a muddy pond, the kind snakes find attractive. A deck protruded over the water, and there we worked the crowd. Harry Rex took great delight in introducing me to his friends. “He’s a good boy, not your typical Ivy League asshole,” he said more than once. I didn’t like to be referred to as a “boy,” but then I was getting used to it.

I settled into a small group that included two ladies who looked as though they’d spent years in the local honky-tonks. Heavy eye makeup, teased hair, tight clothing, and they immediately took an interest in me. The conversation began with the bomb and the assault on Wiley Meek and the prevailing cloud of fear the Padgitts had spread over the county. I acted as if it was just another routine episode in my long and colorful career in journalism. They drilled me with questions and I did more talking than I wanted to.

Harry Rex rejoined us and handed me a suspicious-looking jar of clear liquid. “Sip it slowly,” he said, much like a father.

“What is it?” I asked. I noticed that others were watching.

“Peach brandy.”

“Why is it in a fruit jar?” I asked.

“That’s the way they make it,” he said.

“It’s moonshine,” one of the painted ladies said. The voice of experience.

Not often would these rural folks see an “Ivy Leaguer” take his first drink of moonshine, so the crowd drew closer. I was certain I had consumed more alcohol in the prior five years at Syracuse than anyone else present, so I threw caution to the wind. I lifted the jar, said, “Cheers,” and took a very small sip. I smacked my lips, said, “Not bad.” And tried to smile like a freshman at a fraternity party.

The burning began at the lips, the point of initial contact, and spread rapidly across the tongue and gums and by the time it hit the back of my throat I thought I was on fire. Everyone was watching. Harry Rex took a sip from his jar.

“Where does it come from?” I asked, as nonchalantly as possible, flames escaping through my teeth.

“Not far from here,” someone said.

Scorched and numb, I took another sip, quite anxious for the crowd to ignore me for a while. Oddly enough, the third sip revealed a hint of peach flavoring, as if the taste buds had to be shocked before they could work. When it was apparent that I was not going to breathe fire, vomit, or scream, the conversation resumed. Harry Rex, ever anxious to speed along my education, thrust forward a plate of fried something. “Have one of these,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked, suspicious.

Both of my painted ladies curled up their noses and turned away, as if the smell might make them ill. “Chitlins,” one of them said.

“What’s that?”

Harry Rex popped one in his mouth to prove they weren’t poison, then shoved the plate closer to me. “Go ahead,” he said, chomping away at this delicacy.

Folks were watching again, so I picked out the smallest piece and put it in my mouth. The texture was rubbery, the taste was acrid and foul. The smell had a barnyard essence. I chewed as hard as possible, choked it down, then followed with a gulp of moonshine. And for a few seconds I thought I might faint.

“Hog guts, boy,” Harry Rex said, slapping me on the back. He threw another one in his large mouth and offered me the plate. “Where’s the goat?” I managed to ask. Anything would be an improvement.

Whatever happened to beer and pizza? Why would these people eat and drink such disagreeable things?

Harry Rex walked away, the putrid smell of the chitlins following him like smoke. I placed the fruit jar on the railing, hoping it would tumble and disappear. I watched others pass around their moonshine, one jar usually good for an entire group. There was absolutely no concern over germs and such. No bacteria could’ve survived within three feet of the vile brew.

I excused myself from the deck, said I needed to find a restroom. Harry Rex emerged from the back door of the cabin holding two pistols and a box of ammo. “We’d better take a few shots before it gets dark,” he said. “Follow me.”

We stopped at the goat spit where a cowboy named Rafe joined us. “Rafe’s my runner,” Harry Rex said as the three of us headed for the woods.

“What’s a runner?” I asked.

“Runs cases.”

“I’m the ambulance chaser,” Rafe said helpfully. “Although usually the ambulance is behind me.”

I had so much to learn, though I was making some real progress. Chitlins and moonshine in one day were no small feat. We walked a hundred yards or so down an old field road, through some woods, then came to a clearing. Between two magnificent oaks Harry Rex had constructed a semicircle wall of hay bales twenty feet high. In the center was a white bedsheet, and in the middle of it was the crude outline of a man. An attacker. The enemy. The target.

Not surprisingly, Rafe whipped out his own handgun. Harry Rex was handling mine. “Here’s the deal,” he said, beginning the lesson. “This is a double action revolver with six cartridges. Press here and the cylinder pops out.” Rafe reached over and deftly loaded six bullets, something he had obviously done many, many times. “Snap it back like this, and you’re ready to fire.”

We were about fifty feet from the target. I could still hear the music from the cabin. What would the other guests think when they heard gunfire? Nothing. It happened all the time.

Rafe took my handgun and faced the target. “For starters, spread your legs to shoulders’ width, bend the knees slightly, use both hands like this, and squeeze the trigger with your right index finger.” He demonstrated as he spoke, and, of course, everything looked easy. I was standing less than five feet away when the gun fired, and the sharp crack jolted my nerves. Why did it have to be so loud?

I had never heard live gunfire.

The second shot hit the target square in the chest, and the next four landed around the midsection. He turned to me, opened the cylinder, spun out the empty cartridges, and said, “Now you do it.”

My hands were shaking as I took the gun. It was warm and the smell of gunpowder hung heavy around us. I managed to shove in the six cartridges and snap the cylinder shut without hurting anyone. I faced the target, lifted the gun with both hands, crouched like someone in a bad movie, closed my eyes, and pulled the trigger. It felt and sounded like a small bomb of some sort.

“You gotta keep your eyes open, dammit,” Harry Rex growled.

“What did I hit?”

“That hill beyond the oak trees.”

“Try it again,” Rafe said.

I tried to look down the gunsight but it was shaking too badly to be of any use. I squeezed the trigger again, this time with my eyes open, waiting to see where my bullet hit. I noticed no entry wound anywhere near the target.

“He missed the sheet,” Rafe mumbled behind me.

“Fire again,” Harry Rex said.

I did, and again couldn’t see where the bullet landed. Rafe gently took my left arm and eased me forward another ten feet. “You’re doin’ fine,” he said. “We got plenty of ammo.”

I missed the hay on the fourth shot, and Harry Rex said, “I guess the Padgitts are safe after all.”

“It’s the moonshine,” I said.

“It just takes practice,” Rafe said, moving me forward yet again. My hands were sweating, my heart was galloping away, my ears were ringing.

On number five I hit the sheet, barely, in the top right-hand corner, at least six feet from the target. On number six I missed everything again and heard the bullet hit a branch up in one of the oaks.

“Nice shot,” Harry Rex said. “You almost hit a squirrel.”

“Shut up,” I said.

“Relax,” Rafe said. “You’re too tense.” He helped me reload, and this time he squeezed my hands around the gun. “Breathe deeply,” he said over my shoulder. “Exhale right before you pull the trigger.” He steadied the gun as I looked down the sight, and when it fired the target took a hit in the groin.

“Now we’re in business,” Harry Rex said.

Rafe released me, and, like a gunslinger at high noon, I unloaded the next five shots. All hit the sheet, one would’ve taken off the target’s ear. Rafe approved and we loaded up again.

Harry Rex had a 9-millimeter Glock automatic from his vast collection, and as the sun slowly disappeared we took turns blasting away. He was good and had no trouble drilling ten straight shots into the upper torso from fifty feet. After four rounds, I began to relax and enjoy the sport of it. Rafe was an excellent teacher, and as I progressed he passed on tips here and there. “It just takes practice,” he kept saying.

When we finished, Harry Rex said, “The gun’s a gift. You can come out here anytime for target practice.”

“Thanks,” I said. I stuck the gun in my pocket like a real redneck. I was delighted that the ritual was over, that I had accomplished something that every other male in the county had experienced by his twelfth birthday. I didn’t feel any safer. Any Padgitt who jumped from the bushes would have the advantage of surprise, and the benefit of years of target practice. I could almost envision myself grappling with my own gun in the darkness and finally unloading a bullet that would more likely hit me than any assailant.

As we were walking back through the woods, Harry Rex said from behind me, “That bleached blonde you met, Carleen.”

“Yeah,” I said, suddenly nervous.

“She likes you.”

Carleen had lived at least forty very hard years. I could think of nothing to say.

“She’s always good for a hop in the sack.”

I doubted if Carleen had missed too many sacks in Ford County. “No thanks,” I said. “I got a girl in Memphis.”

“So?”

“Good call,” Rafe said under his breath.

“A girl here, a girl there. What’s the big difference?”

“I gotta deal for you, Harry Rex,” I said. “If I need your help picking up women, I’ll let you know.”

“Just a roll in the hay,” he mumbled.

I did not have a girl in Memphis, but I knew several. I’d rather make the drive than stoop to the likes of Carleen.

The goat had a distinctive taste; not good, but, after the chitlins, not nearly as bad as I had feared. It was tough and smothered in sticky barbeque sauce, which, I suspected, was applied in generous layers to counter the taste of the meat. I toyed with a slice of it and washed it down with beer. We were on the deck again with Loretta Lynn in the background. The moonshine had made the rounds for a while and some of the guests were dancing above the pond. Carleen had disappeared earlier with someone else, so I felt safe. Harry Rex sat nearby, telling everyone how effective I’d been shooting squirrels and rabbits. His talent for storytelling was remarkable.

I was an oddity but every effort was made to include me. Driving the dark roads home, I asked myself the same question I posed every day. What was I doing in Ford County, Mississippi?

Chapter 10

The gun was too big for my pocket. For a few hours I tried walking around with it, but I was terrified the thing would discharge down there very near my privates. So I decided to carry it in a ragged leather briefcase my father had given me. For three days the briefcase went everywhere, even to lunch, then I grew weary of that too. After a week I left the pistol under the seat of my car, and after three weeks I had pretty much forgotten about it. I did not go to the cabin for more target practice, though I did attend a few other goat parties in which I avoided chitlins, moonshine, and an increasingly aggressive Carleen.

The county was quiet, a lull before the frenzy of the trial. The Times said nothing about the case because nothing was happening. The Padgitts were still refusing to pledge their land for Danny’s bail, so he remained a guest in Sheriff Coley’s special cell, watching television, playing cards or checkers, getting plenty of rest, and eating better food than the common inmates.

The first week in May, Judge Loopus was back in town, and my thoughts returned to my trusty Smith & Wesson.

Lucien Wilbanks had filed a motion requesting a change of venue, and the Judge set it for a hearing at 9 A.M. on a Monday morning. Half the county was there, it seemed. Certainly most of the regulars from around the square. Baggy and I got to the courtroom early and secured good seats.

The defendant’s presence was not required, but evidently Sheriff Coley wanted to show him off. They brought him in, handcuffed and wearing new orange coveralls. Everyone looked at me. The power of the press had brought about change.

“It’s a setup,” Baggy whispered.

“What?”

“They’re baitin’ us into runnin’ a picture of Danny in his cute little jail outfit. Then Wilbanks can run back to the Judge and claim the jury pool has been poisoned yet again. Don’t fall for it.”

My naïveté shocked me again. Wiley had been positioned outside the jail in another effort to ambush Padgitt when they loaded him up for court. I could see a large front page photo of him in his orange coveralls.

Lucien Wilbanks entered the courtroom from behind the bench. As usual, he seemed angry and perturbed, as if he’d just lost an argument with the Judge. He walked to the defense table, tossed down his legal pad, and scanned the crowd. His eyes locked onto me. They narrowed and his jaws clenched, and I thought he might hop over the bar and attack. His client turned around and began looking too. Someone pointed, and Mr. Danny Padgitt himself commenced glaring at me as if I might be his next victim. I was having trouble breathing, but I tried to keep calm. Baggy inched away.

In the front row behind the defense crowd were several Padgitts, all older than Danny. They, too, joined the staring, and I had never felt so vulnerable. These were violent men who knew nothing but crime, intimidation, leg breaking, killing, and there I was in the same room with them while they dreamed of ways to cut my throat.

A bailiff called us to order and everybody stood to acknowledge the entrance of His Honor. “Please be seated,” he said.

Loopus scanned the papers while we waited, then he adjusted his reading glasses and said, “This is a motion to change venue, filed by the defense. Mr. Wilbanks, how many witnesses do you have?”

“Half a dozen, give or take. We’ll see how things go.”

“And the State?”

A short round man with no hair and a black suit bounced to his feet and said, “About the same.” His name was Ernie Gaddis, the longtime, part-time District Attorney from up in Tyler County.

“I don’t want to be here all day,” Loopus mumbled, as if he had an afternoon golf game. “Call your first witness, Mr. Wilbanks.”

“Mr. Walter Pickard.”

The name was unknown to me, which was expected, but Baggy had never heard of him either. During the preliminary questions it was established that he had lived in Karaway for over twenty years, went to church every Sunday and the Rotary Club every Thursday. For a living he owned a small furniture factory.

“Must buy lumber from the Padgitts,” Baggy whispered.

His wife was a schoolteacher. He had coached Little League baseball and worked with the Boy Scouts. Lucien pressed on and did a masterful job of laying the groundwork that Mr. Pickard knew his community well.

Karaway was a smaller town eighteen miles west of Clanton. Spot had always neglected the place and we sold very few papers there. And even fewer ads. In my youthful eagerness, I was already contemplating the expansion of my empire. A small weekly in Karaway would sell a thousand copies, I thought.

“When did you first hear that Miss Kassellaw had been murdered?” Wilbanks asked.

“Couple of days after it happened,” Mr. Pickard said. “News is sometimes slow getting to Karaway.”

“Who told you?”

“One of my employees came in with the story. She has a brother who lives around Beech Hill, where it happened.”

“Did you hear that someone had been arrested for the murder?” Lucien asked. He prowled around the courtroom like a bored cat. Just going through the motions, yet missing nothing.

“Yes, the rumor was that one of the young Padgitts had been arrested.”

“Did you later confirm this?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“I saw the story in The Ford County Times. There was a large photo of Danny Padgitt on the front page, right next to a large photo of Rhoda Kassellaw”

“Did you read the reports in the Times?”

“I did.”

“And did you form an opinion about Mr. Padgitt’s guilt or innocence?”

“He looked guilty to me. In the photo he had blood all over his shirt. His face was placed right next to that of the victim’s, you know, side by side. The headline was huge and said something like, DANNY PADGITT ARRESTED FOR MURDER.”

“So you assumed he was guilty?”

“It was impossible not to.”

“What’s been the reaction to the murder in Karaway?”

“Shock and outrage. This is a peaceful county. Serious crimes are rare.”

“In your opinion, do folks over there generally believe Danny Padgitt raped and murdered Rhoda Kassellaw?”

“Yes, especially after the way the newspaper has treated the story.”

I could feel stares from all directions, but I kept telling myself that we had done nothing wrong. People suspected Danny Padgitt because the rotten sonofabitch had committed the crimes.

“In your opinion, can Mr. Padgitt receive a fair trial in Ford County?”

“No.”

“Upon what do you base this opinion?”

“He’s already been tried and convicted by the newspaper.”

“Do you think your opinion is shared by most of your friends and neighbors over in Karaway?”

“I do.”

“Thank you.”

Mr. Ernie Gaddis was on his feet, holding a legal pad as if it were a weapon. “Say you’re in the furniture business, Mr. Pickard?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“You buy lumber locally?”

“We do.”

“From whom?”

Pickard readjusted his weight and pondered the question. “Gates Brothers, Henderson, Tiffee, Voyles and Sons, maybe one or two others.”

Baggy whispered, “Padgitt owns Voyles.”

“You buy any lumber from the Padgitts?” Gaddis asked.

“No sir.”

“Now or at any time in the past?”

“No sir.”

“Any of these lumberyards owned by the Padgitts?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

The truth was that no one really knew what the Padgitts owned. For decades they’d had their tentacles in so many businesses, legitimate or otherwise. Mr. Pickard may not have been well known in Clanton, but, at that moment, he was suspected of having some relationship with the Padgitts. Why would he voluntarily testify on Danny’s behalf?

Gaddis shifted gears. “Now, you said that the bloody photograph had much to do with your assumption that the boy is guilty, that right?”

“It made him look very suspicious.”

“Did you read the entire story?”

“I believe so.”

“Did you read where it says that Mr. Danny Padgitt was involved in an auto accident, that he was injured, and that he was also charged with drunk driving?”

“I believe I read that, yes.”

“Would you like for me to show it to you?”

“No, I remember it.”

“Good, then why were you so quick to assume the blood came from the victim and not from Mr. Padgitt himself?”

Pickard shifted again and looked frustrated. “I simply said that the photos and the stories, when taken together, make him look guilty.”

“You ever serve on a jury, Mr. Pickard?”

“No sir.”

“Do you understand what’s meant by the presumption of innocence?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that the State of Mississippi must prove Mr. Padgitt guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe everyone accused of a crime is entitled to a fair trial?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. Let’s say you got a summons for jury service in this case. You’ve read the newspaper reports, listened to all the gossip, all the rumors, all that mess, and you arrive in this very courtroom for the trial. You’ve already testified that you believe Mr. Padgitt to be guilty. Let’s say you’re selected for the jury. Let’s say that Mr. Wilbanks, a very skilled and experienced lawyer, attacks the State’s case and raises serious doubts about our proof. Let’s say there’s doubt in your mind, Mr. Pickard. Could you at that point vote not guilty?”

He nodded as he followed along, then said, “Yes, under those circumstances.”

“So, regardless of how you now feel about guilt or innocence, you would be willing to listen to the evidence and weigh it fairly before you decide the case?”

The answer was so obvious that Mr. Pickard had no choice but to say “Yes.”

“Of course,” Gaddis agreed. “And what about your wife? You mentioned her. She’s a schoolteacher, right? She would be as open-minded as you, wouldn’t she?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“And what about those Rotarians over there in Karaway. Are they as fair as you?”

“I suppose so.”

“And your employees, Mr. Pickard. Surely you hire honest, fair-minded people. They’d be able to ignore what they’ve read and heard and try this boy justly, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

Mr. Pickard hustled off the witness stand and hurried from the courtroom. Lucien Wilbanks stood and said, rather loudly, “Your Honor, the defense calls Mr. Willie Traynor.”

A brick to the nose could not have hit Mr. Willie Traynor with more force. I gasped for air and heard Baggy say, too loudly, “Oh shit.”

Harry Rex was sitting in the jury box with some other lawyers, taking in the festivities. As I wobbled to my feet, I looked at him desperately for help. He was rising too.

“Your Honor,” he said. “I represent Mr. Traynor, and this young man has not been notified that he would be a witness.” Go Harry Rex! Do something!

The Judge shrugged and said, “So? He’s here. What’s the difference?” There was not a trace of concern in his voice, and I knew I was nailed.

“Preparation for one thing. A witness has a right to be prepped.”

“I believe he’s the newspaper editor, is he not?”

“He is.”

Lucien Wilbanks was walking toward the jury box as if he might take a swing at Harry Rex. He said, “Your Honor, he’s not a litigant, and he will not be a witness at trial. He wrote the stories. Let’s hear from him.”

“It’s an ambush, Judge,” Harry Rex said.

“Sit down, Mr. Vonner,” His Honor said, and I took a seat in the witness chair. I fired a look at Harry Rex as if to say, “Nice work, lawyer.”

A bailiff stood in front of me and said, “Are you armed?”

“What?” I was beyond nervous and nothing made sense.

“A gun. Do you have a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Can I have it, please?”

“Uh, it’s in the car.” Most of the spectators thought this was funny. Evidently, in Mississippi, one cannot properly testify if one is armed. Another silly rule. Moments later the rule made perfect sense. If I’d had a gun, I would’ve begun firing in the direction of Lucien Wilbanks.

The bailiff then swore me to tell the truth, and I watched as Wilbanks began pacing. The crowd behind him looked even larger. He began pleasantly enough with some preliminary inquiries about me and my purchase of the paper. I managed the correct answers, though I was extremely suspicious of every question. He was going somewhere; I had no idea where.

The crowd seemed to enjoy this. My sudden takeover of the Times was still the source of interest and speculation, and, suddenly, there I was, in plain view of everyone, chatting about it under oath and on the record.

After a few minutes of niceties, Mr. Gaddis, who I assumed was on my side since Lucien certainly was not, stood and said, “Your Honor, this is all very informative. Where, exactly, is it going?”

“Good question. Mr. Wilbanks?”

“Hang on, Judge.”

Lucien then produced copies of the Times and passed them to me, Gaddis, and Loopus. He looked at me and said, “Just for the record, Mr. Traynor, how many subscribers does the Times have now?”

“About forty-two hundred,” I answered with a little pride. When the bankruptcy hit, Spot had squandered all but twelve hundred or so.

“And how many copies are sold at the newsstand?”

“Roughly a thousand.”

Roughly twelve months earlier I had been living on the third floor of a fraternity house in Syracuse, New York, attending class occasionally, working hard to be a good soldier in the sexual revolution, drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol, smoking pot, sleeping until noon anytime I felt like it, and for exercise I’d hustle over to the next antiwar rally and scream at the police. I thought I had problems. How I’d gone from there to a witness chair in the Ford County courtroom was suddenly very unclear to me.

However, at that crucial moment in my new career, I had several hundred of my fellow citizens, and subscribers, staring at me. It was not the time to appear vulnerable.

“What percentage of your newspapers are sold in Ford County, Mr. Traynor?” he asked, as casually as if we were talking business over coffee.

“Virtually all. I don’t have the exact numbers.”

“Well, do you have any newsstands outside of Ford County?”

“No.”

Mr. Gaddis attempted another lame rescue. He stood and said, “Your Honor, please, where is this going?”

Wilbanks suddenly raised his voice and lifted a finger toward the ceiling. “I will argue, Your Honor, that potential jurors in this county have been poisoned by the sensational coverage thrust upon us by The Ford County Times. Mercifully, and justifiably, this newspaper has not been seen or read in other parts of the state. A change of venue is not only fair, but mandatory.”

The word “poisoned” changed the tone of the proceedings dramatically. It stung me and frightened me, and once again I asked myself if I had done something wrong. I looked at Baggy for consolation, but he was ducking behind the lady in front of him.

“I’ll decide what’s fair and mandatory, Mr. Wilbanks. Proceed,” Judge Loopus said sharply.

Mr. Wilbanks held up the paper and pointed to the front page. “I refer to the photograph of my client,” he said. “Who took this photograph?”

“Mr. Wiley Meek, our photographer.”

“And who made the decision to put it on the front page?”

“I did.”

“And the size? Who determined that?”

“I did.”

“Did it occur to you that this might be considered sensational?”

Damned right. Sensational was what I was after. “No,” I replied coolly. “It happened to be the only photo we had of Danny Padgitt at the moment. He happened to be the only person arrested for the crime. We ran it. I’d run it again.”

My haughtiness surprised me. I glanced at Harry Rex and saw one of his nasty grins. He was nodding. Go get ’em, boy.

“So in your opinion it was fair to run this photo?”

“I don’t think it was unfair.”

“Answer my question. In your opinion, was it fair?”

“Yes, it was fair, and it was accurate.”

Wilbanks seemed to record this, then filed it away for future use. “Your report has a rather detailed description of the interior of the home of Rhoda Kassellaw. When did you inspect the home?”

“I have not.”

“When did you enter the home?”

“I have not.”

“You’ve never seen the interior of the house?”

“That’s correct.”

He flipped open the newspaper, scanned it for a moment, then said, “You report that the bedroom of Miss Kassellaw’s two small children was down a short hallway, approximately fifteen feet from her bedroom door, and you estimate that their beds were about thirty feet from hers. How do you know this?”

“I have a source.”

“A source. Has your source been in the house?”

“Yes.”

“Is your source a police officer or a deputy?”

“He will remain confidential.”

“How many confidential sources did you use for these stories?”

“Several.”

From my journalism studies I vaguely remembered the case of a reporter who, in a similar situation, relied on sources and then refused to reveal their identity. This had somehow upset the Judge, who ordered the reporter to divulge his sources. When he refused again, the Judge held him in contempt and the cops hauled him away to jail where he spent many weeks hiding the identity of his informants. I couldn’t remember the ending, but the reporter was eventually let go and the free press endured.

In a flash, I saw myself being handcuffed by Sheriff Coley and dragged away, screaming for Harry Rex, then thrown into the jail where I’d be stripped and handed a pair of those orange coveralls.

It would certainly be a bonanza for the Times. Boy, the stories I could write from in there.

Wilbanks continued, “You report that the children were in shock. How do you know this?”

“I spoke with Mr. Deece, the next-door neighbor.”

“Did he use the word ‘shock’?”

“He did.”

“You report that the children were examined by a doctor here in Clanton on the night of the crime. How did you know this?”

“I had a source, and later I confirmed this with the doctor.”

“And you report that the children are now undergoing some type of therapy back home in Missouri. Who told you that?”

“I talked to their aunt.”

He tossed the newspaper on the table and took a few steps in my direction. His bloodshot eyes narrowed and glared at me. Here, the pistol would’ve been useful.

“The truth is, Mr. Traynor, you tried to paint the unmistakable picture that these two little innocent children saw their mother get raped and murdered in her own bed, isn’t that right?”

I took a deep breath and weighed my response. The courtroom was silent, waiting. “I have reported the facts as accurately as possible,” I said, staring straight at Baggy, who, though he was peeking around the lady in front of him, at least was nodding at me.

“In an effort to sell newspapers, you relied on unnamed sources and half-truths and gossip and wild speculation, all in an effort to sensationalize this story.”

“I have reported the facts as accurately as possible,” I said again, trying to remain calm.

He snorted and said, “Is that so?” He grabbed the newspaper again and said, “I quote: ‘Will the children testify at trial?’ Did you write that, Mr. Traynor?”

I couldn’t deny it. I kicked myself for writing it. It was the last section of the reports that Baggy and I had haggled over. We’d both been a little squeamish, and, with hindsight, we should have followed our instincts.

Denial was not possible. “Yes,” I said.

“Upon what accurate facts did you base that question?”

“It was a question I heard asked many times after the crime,” I said.

He flung the newspaper back on his table as if it were pure filth. He shook his head in mock bewilderment. “There are two children, right, Mr. Traynor?”

“Yes. A boy and a girl.”

“How old is the little boy?”

“Five.”

“And how old is the little girl?”

“Three.”

“And how old are you, Mr. Traynor?”

“Twenty-three.”

“And in your twenty-three years, how many trials have you covered as a reporter?”

“None.”

“How many trials have you seen, period?”

“None.”

“Since you are so ignorant about trials, what type of legal research did you do in order to accurately prepare yourself for these stories?”

At this point I would have probably turned the gun on myself.

“Legal research?” I repeated, as if he were speaking another language.

“Yes, Mr. Traynor. How many cases did you find where children age five or younger were allowed to testify in a criminal trial?”

I glanced in the direction of Baggy, who, evidently was now under the wooden bench. “None,” I said.

“Perfect answer, Mr. Traynor. None. In the history of this state, no child under the age of eleven has ever testified in a criminal trial. Please write that down somewhere, and remember it the next time you attempt to inflame your readers with yellow journalism.”

“Enough, Mr. Wilbanks,” Judge Loopus said, a little too gently for my liking. I think he and the other lawyers, probably including Harry Rex, were enjoying this quick butchering of someone who’d meddled in legal affairs and gotten it all wrong. Even Mr. Gaddis seemed content to let me bleed.

Lucien was wise enough to stop when the blood was flowing. He growled something like, “I’m through with him.” Mr. Gaddis had no questions. The bailiff motioned for me to step down, off the witness chair, and I tried desperately to walk upright back to the bench where Baggy was still hunkering down, like a stray dog in a hailstorm.

I scribbled notes through the rest of the hearing, but it was a failing effort to look busy and important. I could feel the stares. I was humiliated and wanted to lock myself in my office for a few days.

Wilbanks ended things with an impassioned plea to move the case somewhere far away, maybe even the Gulf Coast, where perhaps a few folks had heard of the crime but no one had been “poisoned” by the Times’s coverage of it. He railed against me and my newspaper, and he went overboard. Mr. Gaddis, in his closing remarks, reminded the Judge of the old saying, “Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.”

I wrote that down. Then I hustled out of the courtroom as if I had an important deadline.

Chapter 11

Baggy rushed into my office late the following morning with the hot news that Lucien Wilbanks had just withdrawn his motion to change venue. As usual, he was full of analysis.

His first windy opinion was that the Padgitts didn’t want the trial moved to another county. They knew Danny was dead guilty and that he would almost certainly be convicted by a properly selected jury anywhere. Their sole chance was to get a jury they could either buy or intimidate. Since all guilty verdicts must be unanimous, they needed only a single vote in Danny’s favor. Just one vote and the jury would hang itself; the Judge would be required by law to declare a mistrial. It would certainly be retried, but with the same result. After three or four attempts, the State would give up.

I was sure Baggy had been at the courthouse all morning, replaying with his little club the venue hearing and borrowing the conclusions of the lawyers. He explained gravely that the hearing the day before had been staged by Lucien Wilbanks, for two reasons. First, Lucien was baiting the Times into running another large photo of Danny, this one in jailhouse garb. Second, Wilbanks wanted to get me on the witness stand to peel off some skin. “He damned sure did that,” Baggy said.

“Thanks, Baggy,” I said.

Wilbanks was setting the stage for the trial, one that he knew all along would take place in Clanton, and he wanted the Times to tone down its coverage.

The third, or fourth, reason was that Lucien Wilbanks never missed an opportunity to grandstand in front of a crowd. Baggy had seen it many times and he shared a few stories.

I’m not sure I followed all of his expansive thinking, but at that moment nothing else made sense. It seemed such a waste of time and effort to put on a two-hour hearing, knowing full well it was all a show. I figured worse things have happened in courtrooms.

The third feast was a pot roast, and we ate on the porch as it rained steadily.

As usual, I confessed that I’d never had a pot roast, so Miss Callie described the recipe and the preparation in detail. She lifted the lid off a large iron pot in the center of the table and closed her eyes as the thick aroma wafted upward. I had only been awake for an hour, and at that moment I could’ve eaten the tablecloth.

It was her simplest dish, she said. Take a beef rump roast, leave the fat on it, place it in the bottom of the pot, then cover it with new potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, and beets; add some salt, pepper, and water, put it in the oven on slow bake, and wait five hours. She filled my plate with beef and vegetables, then covered it all with a thick sauce. “The beets give it all a purple tint,” she explained.

She asked me if I wanted to say the blessing, and I declined. Praying was not something I had done in a long time. She was far more gifted. She took my hands and we closed our eyes. As she spoke to heaven the rain tapped the tin roof above our heads.

“Where’s Esau?” I asked after my first three large bites.

“At work. Sometimes he can get free for lunch, often he cannot.” She was preoccupied with something and finally said, “Can I ask you a question that’s somewhat personal?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Are you a Christian child?”

“I’m sure I am. My mother used to take me to church on Easter.”

That was not satisfactory. Whatever she was looking for, that wasn’t it. “What kind of church?”

“Episcopalian. St. Luke’s in Memphis.”

“I’m not sure we have one of those in Clanton.”

“I haven’t seen one.” Not that I’d been searching diligently for a house of worship. “What kind of church do you attend?” I asked.

“Church of God in Christ,” she answered quickly and her entire face had a serene glow. “My pastor is the Reverend Thurston Small, a fine man of God. A powerful preacher too. You should come hear him.”

I’d heard stories about how blacks worship, how the entire Sabbath was spent at church, how services ran late into the night and broke up only when the spirit was finally exhausted. I had vivid memories of suffering through Episcopal Easter services that, by law, could run no longer than sixty minutes.

“Do white people worship with you?” I asked.

“Only during the election years. Some of the politicians come sniffing around like dogs. They make a bunch of promises.”

“Do they stay for the entire service?”

“Oh no. They’re always too busy for that.”

“So it’s possible to come and go?”

“For you, Mr. Traynor, yes. We’ll make an exception.” She launched into a long story about her church, which was within walking distance of her home, and a fire that destroyed it not too many years earlier. The fire department, which of course was on the white side of town, was never in a hurry when responding to calls in Lowtown. They lost their church, but it was a blessing! Reverend Small rallied the congregation. For nearly three years they met in a warehouse loaned to them by Mr. Virgil Mabry, a fine Christian man. The building was one block off Main Street and many white folks didn’t like the idea of Negroes worshiping on their side of town. But Mr. Mabry held firm. Reverend Small raised the money, and three years after the fire they cut the ribbon on a new sanctuary, one twice as big as the old. Now it was full every Sunday.

I loved it when she talked. It allowed me to eat nonstop, which was a priority. But I was still captivated by her precise diction, her cadence, and her vocabulary, which had to be college level.

When she finished with the new sanctuary, she asked, “Do you read the Bible often?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head and chewing on a hot turnip.

“Never?”

Lying never crossed my mind. “Never.”

That disappointed her again. “How often do you pray?”

I paused for a second and said, “Once a week, right here.”

She slowly placed her knife and fork beside her plate and frowned at me as if something profound was about to be said. “Mr. Traynor, if you don’t go to church, don’t read your Bible, and don’t pray, I’m not so sure you’re really a Christian child.”

I wasn’t so sure either. I kept chewing so I wouldn’t have to speak and defend myself. She continued, “Jesus said, ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.’ It’s not my place to pass judgment on anyone’s soul, but I must confess that I’m worried about yours.”

I was worried too, but not to the point of disrupting lunch.

“Do you know what happens to those who live outside the will of God?” she asked.

Nothing good, I knew that much. But I was too hungry and too frightened to answer. She was preaching now, not eating, and I was not enjoying myself.

“Paul wrote in Romans, ‘The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ Do you know what that means, Mr. Traynor?”

I had a hunch. I nodded and took a mouthful of beef. Had she memorized the entire Bible? Was I about to hear it all?

“Death is always physical, but a spiritual death means eternity away from our Lord Jesus. Death means an eternity in hell, Mr. Traynor. Do you understand this?”

She was making things very clear. “Can we change the subject?” I said.

Miss Callie suddenly smiled and said, “Of course. You’re my guest and it’s my job to make sure you feel welcome.” She took up her fork again and for a long time we ate and listened to the rain.

“It’s been a very wet spring,” she said. “Good for beans but my tomatoes and melons need some sunshine.”

I was comforted to know she was planning future meals. My story about Miss Callie and Esau and their remarkable children was almost complete. I was dragging out the research in hopes of spending a few more Thursday lunches on her porch. At first I had felt guilty for having so much food prepared just for me; we ate only a fraction of it. But she assured me that nothing was thrown out. She and Esau and perhaps some friends would make sure the leftovers were properly put away. “Nowadays, I only cook three times a week,” she admitted with a hint of shame.

Dessert was peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream. We agreed to wait an hour so we could pace ourselves. She brought two cups of strong black coffee and we moved to the rocking chairs where we did our work. I pulled out my reporter’s pad and pen and began making up questions. Miss Callie loved it when I wrote down things she said.

Her first seven children had Italian names — Alberto (Al), Leonardo (Leon), Massimo (Max), Roberto (Bobby), Gloria, Carlota, and Mario. Only Sam, the youngest and the one rumored to be on the lam, had an American name. During my second visit she had explained that she had been raised in an Italian home, right there in Ford County, but it was a very long story and she was saving it for later.

The first seven had all been valedictorians of their classes at Burley Street High, the colored school. Each had earned a PhD and now taught in college. The biographical details filled pages, and Miss Callie, rightly so, could talk about her children for hours.

And so she talked. I scribbled notes, rocked gently in my chair, listened to the rain, and finally fell asleep.

Chapter 12

Baggy had some reservations about the Ruffin story. “It’s really not news,” he said as he read it. I’m sure Hardy had alerted him that I was considering a large, front page story about a family of Negroes. “This stuff is usually on page five,” he said.

Absent a murder, Baggy’s notion of front page news was a hot property line dispute being waged in the courtroom with no jurors, a handful of half-asleep lawyers, and a ninety-year-old Judge brought back from the grave to referee such matters.

In 1967, Mr. Caudle had shown guts in running black obituaries, but in the three years since then the Times had taken little interest in anything on the other side of the railroad tracks. Wiley Meek was reluctant to go over with me and photograph Callie and Esau in front of their home. I managed to schedule the picture taking on a Thursday, at midday. Fried catfish, hush puppies, and coleslaw. Wiley ate until he had trouble breathing.

Margaret was also skittish about the story, but, as always, she deferred to the boss. In fact, the entire office was cool to the idea. I didn’t care. I was doing what I thought was right; plus there was a big trial around the corner.

And so, on Wednesday, May 20, 1970, during a week in which there was absolutely nothing to print about the Kassellaw murder, the Times devoted more than half of its front page to the Ruffin family. It began with a large headline — RUFFIN FAMILY BOASTS SEVEN COLLEGE PROFESSORS. Under it was a large photo of Callie and Esau sitting on their front steps, smiling proudly at the camera. Below them were the senior portraits of all eight children — Al through Sam. My story began:

In 1970, Dr. Alberto Ruffin was a professor of sociology at the University of Iowa. Dr. Leonardo Ruffin was a professor of biology at Purdue. Dr. Massimo Ruffin was a professor of economics at the University of Toledo. Dr. Roberto Ruffin was a professor of history at Marquette. Dr. Gloria Ruffin Sanderford taught Italian at Duke. Dr. Carlota Ruffin was a professor of urban studies at UCLA. Dr. Mario Ruffin had just completed his PhD in medieval literature and was a professor teaching at Grinnell College in Iowa. I mentioned Sam but didn’t dwell on him.

By phone I had talked to all seven of the professors, and I quoted liberally from them in my story. The themes were common — love, sacrifice, discipline, hard work, encouragement, faith in God, faith in family, ambition, perseverance; no tolerance for laziness or failure. Each of the seven had a success story that could have filled an entire edition of the Times. Each had worked at least one full-time job while struggling through college and grad school. Most had worked two jobs. The older ones helped the younger ones. Mario told me he received five or six small checks each month from his siblings and parents.

The five older ones had been so tenacious in their studies that they had postponed marriage until in their late twenties and early thirties. Carlota and Mario were still single. Likewise, the next generation was being carefully planned. Leon had the oldest grandchild, age five. There were a total of five. Max and his wife were expecting their second.

There was so much material on the Ruffins that I ran only Part One that week. When I went to Lowtown for lunch the next day, Miss Callie met me with tears in her eyes. Esau met me too, with a firm handshake and a stiff, awkward, manly hug. We devoured a lamb stew and compared notes on how the story was being received. Needless to say, it was the talk of Lowtown, with neighbors stopping by all Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning with extra copies. I had mailed a half dozen or so to each of the professors.

Over coffee and fried apple pies, their preacher, Reverend Thurston Small, parked in the street and made his way to the porch. I was introduced, and he seemed pleased to meet me. He quickly accepted a dessert and began a lengthy summary of how important the Ruffin story was to the black community of Clanton. Obituaries were fine, and in most Southern towns dead black folks were still ignored. Thanks to Mr. Caudle, progress was being made on one front. But to run such a grand and dignified profile of an outstanding black family on the front page was a giant step for racial tolerance in the town. I didn’t see it that way. It was just a good human interest story about Miss Callie Ruffin and her extraordinary family.

The reverend enjoyed food and he also had a knack for embellishment. On his second pie, he became monotonous in his praise for the story. He gave no indication of leaving anytime that afternoon, so I finally excused myself.

Other than being the unofficial and somewhat unreliable janitor for several businesses around the square, Piston had another job. He had an unlicensed courier service. Every hour or so he would appear inside the front doors of his clients — primarily law offices, but also the three banks, some Realtors, insurance agents, and the Times — and he would stand there for a few moments waiting for something to deliver. A simple shake of the head by a secretary would send him on his way to his next stop. If a letter or small package needed to be delivered, the secretaries would wait for Piston to pop in. He would grab whatever it was and jog it over to its destination. If it weighed over ten pounds, forget it. Since he was on foot, his service was limited to the square and maybe one or two blocks around it. At almost any hour of the working day Piston could be seen downtown — walking, if he had no package, and jogging if he did.

The bulk of his traffic was letters between law offices. Piston was much faster than the mail, and much cheaper. He charged nothing. He said it was his service to his community, though at Christmas he fully expected a ham or a cake.

He darted in late Friday morning with a hand-addressed letter from Lucien Wilbanks. I was almost afraid to open it. Could it be the million-dollar lawsuit he’d promised? It read:

I detested the man, but who wouldn’t have appreciated the note? He enjoyed his reputation as a wild-eyed radical liberal who embraced unpopular causes. As such, his support at that moment gave limited comfort. And I knew it was only temporary.

There were no other letters. No anonymous phone calls. No threats. School was out and the weather was hot. The ominous and much-dreaded winds of desegregation were gathering strength. The good folks of Ford County had more important matters to worry about.

After a decade of strife and tension over civil rights, many white Mississippians were fearful that the end was near. If the federal courts could integrate the schools, could churches and housing be next?

The following day, Baggy went to a public meeting in the basement of a church. The organizers were trying to measure the support for a private, all-white school in Clanton. The crowd was large, frightened, angry, and determined to protect the children. A lawyer summarized the status of various federal appeals and delivered the distressing opinion that the final mandate would come that summer. He predicted that black kids in grades ten through twelve would be sent to Clanton High School and that white kids in grades seven through nine would be sent to Burley Street in Lowtown. This caused men to shake their heads and women to cry. The thought of white kids being shipped across the tracks was simply unacceptable.

A new school was organized. We were asked not to report the story, at least not then. The organizers wanted to gain some financial commitments before going public. We complied with their requests. I was anxious to avoid controversy.

A federal judge in Memphis ordered a massive busing plan that ripped the city apart. Inner-city black kids would be hauled to the white suburbs, and along the way they would pass the white kids going in the other direction. Tension was even greater there, and I found myself trying to avoid the city for a while.

It would be a long, hot summer. It seemed as if we were waiting for things to explode.

I skipped a week, then ran the second part of Miss Callie’s story. On the bottom of the front page I lined up current photos of the seven Ruffin professors. My story dealt with where they were now and what they were doing. Without exception they professed great love for Clanton and Mississippi, though none planned to ever return permanently. They refused to judge a place that had kept them in inferior schools, kept them on one side of the tracks, kept them from voting and eating in most restaurants and drinking water from the fountain on the courthouse lawn. They refused to dwell on anything negative. Instead, they thanked God for his goodness, for health, for family, for their parents, and for their opportunities.

I marveled at their humility and kindness. Each of the seven promised to meet me during the Christmas vacation when we would sit on Miss Callie’s porch and eat pecan pie and tell stories.

I finished my lengthy profile with an intriguing detail about the family. From the day each Ruffin child left home, he or she was instructed by Esau to write at least one letter a week to their mother. This they did, and the letters never stopped. At some point, Esau decided that Callie should receive a letter a day. Seven professors. Seven days in a week. So Alberto wrote his letter on Sunday, and mailed it. Leonardo wrote his on Monday, and mailed it. And so on. Some days Callie received two or three letters, some days none. But the short walk to the mailbox was always exciting.

And she kept every letter. In a closet in the front bedroom, she showed me a stack of cardboard boxes, all filled with hundreds of letters from her children.

“I’ll let you read them sometime,” she said, but for some reason I didn’t believe her. Nor did I want to read them. They would be far too personal.

Chapter 13

Ernie Gaddis, the District Attorney, filed a motion to enlarge the jury pool. According to Baggy, who was becoming more of an expert each day, in the typical criminal trial the Circuit Court clerk summoned about forty people for jury duty. About thirty-five would show up and at least five of those would be too old or too sick to be qualified. Gaddis argued in his motion that the increased notoriety of the Kassellaw murder would make it more difficult to find impartial jurors. He asked the Court to summon at least a hundred prospective jurors.

What he didn’t say in writing, but what everybody knew, was that the Padgitts would have a harder time intimidating one hundred than forty. Lucien Wilbanks objected strenuously and demanded a hearing. Judge Loopus said one was not necessary and ordered a larger jury pool. He also took the unusual step of sealing the list of prospective jurors. Baggy and his drinking buddies, and everyone else around the courthouse, were shocked by this. It had never been done. The lawyers and litigants always got a complete list of the jury pool two weeks before trial.

The order was generally viewed as a major setback to the Padgitts. If they didn’t know who was in the pool, then how could they bribe or frighten them?

Gaddis then asked the Court to have the jury summons mailed, not personally served by the Sheriff’s office. Loopus liked this idea too. Evidently he was well aware of the cozy relationship between the Padgitts and our Sheriff. Not surprisingly, Lucien Wilbanks screamed over this plan. In his rather frantic responses he made the point that Judge Loopus was treating his client differently and unfairly. Reading his filings, I was amazed at how he could rant so clearly for so many pages.

It was becoming obvious that Judge Loopus was determined to preside over a secure and unbiased trial. He had been the District Attorney back in the 1950s before ascending to the bench, and he was known for his pro-prosecution leanings. He certainly appeared to have little concern for the Padgitts and their legacy of corruption. Plus, on paper (and certainly in my paper), the case against Danny Padgitt appeared to be airtight.

On Monday, June 15, amid great secrecy, the Circuit Court clerk mailed a hundred summonses for jury duty to registered voters all over Ford County. One arrived in the rather busy mailbox of Miss Callie Ruffin, and when I arrived for lunch on Thursday she showed it to me.

In 1970, Ford County was 26 percent black, 74 percent white, with no fractions for Others or those who weren’t certain. Six years after the tumultuous summer of 1964 and its massive push to register blacks, and five years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965, few bothered to sign up in Ford County. In the statewide elections of 1967, almost 70 percent of the eligible whites in the county had voted, while only 12 percent of the blacks did so. Registration drives in Lowtown were met with general indifference. One reason was that the county was so white that no black could ever be elected to a local office. So why bother?

Another reason was the historical abuse at the point of enrolling. For a hundred years whites had used a variety of tricks to deny blacks proper registration. Poll taxes, literacy exams, the list was long and miserable.

Yet another reason was the hesitancy by most blacks to be registered in any manner by white authorities. Registration could mean more taxes, more supervision, more surveillance, more intrusions. Registration could mean serving on juries.

According to Harry Rex, who was a slightly more reliable courthouse source than Baggy, there had never been a black juror in Ford County. Since potential jurors were selected from the voter registration rolls and nowhere else, few showed up in a jury pool. Those who survived the early rounds of questioning were routinely excused before the final twelve were empaneled. In criminal cases, the prosecution routinely challenged blacks under the belief that they would be too sympathetic to the accused. In civil cases, the defense challenged them because they were feared as too liberal with the money of others.

However, these theories had never been tested in Ford County.

Callie and Esau Ruffin registered to vote in 1951. Together, they marched into the office of the Circuit Court clerk and asked to be added to the voter rolls. The deputy clerk, as she was trained to do, handed them a laminated card with the words “Declaration of Independence” across the top. The text was written in German.

The clerk, assuming that Mr. and Mrs. Ruffin were as illiterate as most blacks in Ford County, said, “Can you read this?”

“This is not English,” Callie said. “It’s German.”

“Can you read it?” the clerk asked, realizing that she might have her hands full with this couple.

“I can read as much of it as you can,” Callie said politely.

The clerk withdrew the card and handed over another. “Can you read this?” she asked.

“I can,” Callie said. “It’s the Bill of Rights.”

“What does number eight say?”

Callie read it slowly, then said, “The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive fines and cruel punishments.”

At about this time, depending on whose version was being described, Esau leaned in and said, “We are property owners.” He placed the deed to their home on the counter and the deputy clerk examined it. Property ownership was not a prerequisite to voting, but it was a huge asset if you were black. Not knowing what else to do, she said, “Fair enough. The poll tax will be two dollars each.” Esau handed over the money, and with that they joined the voter rolls with thirty-one other blacks, none of whom were women.

They never missed an election. Miss Callie had always worried because so few of her friends bothered to register and vote, but she was too busy raising eight children to do much about it. Ford County was spared the racial unrest that was common throughout most of the state, so there was never an organized drive to register blacks.

At first I couldn’t tell if she was anxious or excited. I’m not sure she knew either. The first black female voter might now become the first black juror. She had never backed away from a challenge, but she had grave moral concerns about judging another person. “ ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged,’ ” she said more than once, quoting Jesus.

“But if everyone followed that verse of Scripture, our entire judicial system would fail, wouldn’t it?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, gazing away. I had never seen Miss Callie so preoccupied.

We were eating fried chicken with mashed potatos and gravy. Esau had not made it home for lunch.

“How can I judge a man I know to be guilty?” she asked.

“First, you listen to the evidence,” I said. “You have an open mind. It won’t be difficult.”

“But you know he killed her. You all but said so in your paper.” Her brutal honesty hit hard every time.

“We just reported the facts, Miss Callie. If the facts make him look guilty, then so be it.”

The gaps of silence were long and many that day. She was deep in thought and ate little.

“What about the death penalty?” she asked. “Will they want to put that boy in the gas chamber?”

“Yes ma’am. It’s a capital murder case.”

“Who decides whether he is put to death?”

“The jury.”

“Oh my.”

She was unable to eat after that. She said her blood pressure had been up since she received the jury summons. She had already been to the doctor. I helped her to the sofa in the den and took her a glass of ice water. She insisted that I finish my lunch, which I happily did in silence. Later, she rallied a bit and we sat on the porch in the rockers, talking about anything but Danny Padgitt and his trial.

I finally hit paydirt when I asked her about the Italian influence in her life. Over our first lunch she had told me that she learned Italian before she learned English. Seven of her eight children had Italian names.

She needed to tell me a long story. I had absolutely nothing else to do.

In the 1890s, the price of cotton rose dramatically as demand increased around the world. The fertile regions of the South were under pressure to produce more. The large plantation owners in the Mississippi Delta desperately needed to increase their crops, but they faced a severe labor shortage. Many of the blacks who were physically able had fled the land their ancestors toiled as slaves for better jobs and certainly better lives up North. Those left behind were, understandably, less than enthusiastic about chopping and picking cotton for brutally low wages.

The landowners hit upon a scheme to import industrious and hardworking European immigrants to raise cotton. Through contacts with Italian labor agents in New York and New Orleans, connections were made, promises swapped, lies told, contracts forged, and in 1895 the first boatload of families arrived in the Delta. They were from northern Italy, from the region of Emilia-Romagna, near Verona. For the most part they were poorly educated and spoke little English, though in any language they quickly realized they were on the bad end of a huge scam. They were given miserable living accommodations, in a subtropical climate, and while battling malaria and mosquitoes and snakes and rotten drinking water they were told to raise cotton for wages no one could live on. They were forced to borrow money at scandalous rates from the landowners. Their food and supplies came from the company store, at steep prices.

Because the Italians worked hard the landowners wanted more of them. They dressed up their operations, made more promises to more Italian labor agents, and the immigrants kept coming. A system of peonage was fine-tuned, and the Italians were treated worse than most black farmworkers.

Over time some efforts were made to divide profits and transfer ownership of land, but the cotton markets fluctuated so wildly that the arrangements could never be stabilized. After twenty years of abuse, the Italians finally scattered and the experiment became history.

Those who remained in the Delta were considered second-class citizens for decades. They were excluded from schools, and because they were Catholic they were not welcome in churches. The country clubs were off limits. They were “dagos” and shoved to the bottom of the social ladder. But because they worked hard and saved their money, they slowly accumulated land.

The Rossetti family landed near Leland, Mississippi, in 1902. They were from a village near Bologna, and had the misfortune of listening to the wrong labor agent in that city. Mr. and Mrs. Rossetti brought with them four daughters, the oldest of which was Nicola, age twelve. Though they often went hungry the first year, they managed to avoid outright starvation. Penniless when they arrived, after three years of peonage the family had racked up $6,000 in debts to the plantation with no possible way of paying them off. They fled the Delta in the middle of the night and rode a boxcar to Memphis, where a distant relative took them in.

At the age of fifteen, Nicola was stunningly beautiful. Long dark hair, brown eyes — a classic Italian beauty. She looked older than her years and managed to get a job in a clothing store by telling the owner she was eighteen. After three days, the owner offered her a marriage proposal. He was willing to divorce his wife of twenty years and say good-bye to his children if Nicola would run away with him. She said no. He offered Mr. Rossetti $5,000 as an incentive. Mr. Rossetti said no.

In those days, the wealthy farming families in northern Mississippi did their shopping and socializing in Memphis, usually within walking distance of the Peabody Hotel. It was there that Mr. Zachary DeJarnette of Clanton had the blind luck of bumping into Nicola Rossetti. Two weeks later they were married.

He was thirty-one, a widower with no children and in the midst of a serious search for a wife. He was also the largest landowner in Ford County, where the soil was not as rich as in the Delta, but still quite profitable if you owned enough of it. Mr. DeJarnette had inherited over four thousand acres from his family. His grandfather had once owned the grandfather of Calia Harris Ruffin.

The marriage was a package deal. Nicola was wise beyond her years, and she was also desperate to protect her family. They had suffered so much. She saw an opportunity and took full advantage of it. Before she agreed to marriage, Mr. DeJarnette promised to not only employ her father as a farm supervisor but to provide his family with very comfortable housing. He agreed to educate her three younger sisters. He agreed to pay off the peonage debts from the Delta. So smitten was Mr. DeJarnette that he would’ve agreed to anything.

The first Italians in Ford County arrived not in a broken ox cart, but rather by first-class passage on the Illinois Central Rail Line. A welcoming party unloaded their brand-new luggage and helped them into two 1904 Ford Model T’s. The Rossettis were treated like royalty as they followed Mr. DeJarnette from party to party in Clanton. The town was instantly abuzz with descriptions of how beautiful the bride was. There was talk of a formal wedding ceremony, to sort of buttress the quickie service in Memphis, but since there was no Catholic church in Clanton the idea was scrapped. The bride and groom had yet to address the sticky issue of religious preference. At that time, if Nicola had asked Mr. DeJarnette to convert to Hinduism he would have quickly done so.

They finally made it to the main house at the edge of town. When the Rossettis turned into the long front drive and glimpsed the stately antebellum mansion built by the first Mr. DeJarnette, they all broke into tears.

It was decided that they would live there until an overseer’s house could be renovated and made suitable. Nicola assumed her duties as the lady of the manor and tried her best to get pregnant. Her younger sisters were provided with private tutors, and within weeks were speaking good English. Mr. Rossetti spent each day with his son-in-law, who was only three years his junior, and learned how to run the plantation.

And Mrs. Rossetti went to the kitchen where she met Callie’s mother, India.

“My grandmother cooked for the DeJarnettes, so did my mother,” Miss Callie was saying. “I thought I would too, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“Did Zack and Nicola have children?” I asked. I was on my third or fourth glass of tea. It was hot and the ice had melted. Miss Callie had been talking for two hours, and she had forgotten about the jury summons and the murder trial.

“No. It was very sad because they wanted children so badly. When I was born in 1911, Nicola practically took me away from my mother. She insisted I have an Italian name. She kept me in the big house with her. My mother didn’t mind — she had plenty of other children, plus she was in the house all day long.”

“What did your father do?” I asked.

“Worked on the farm. It was a good place to work, and to live. We were very lucky because the DeJarnettes took care of us. They were good, fair people. Always. It wasn’t that way for a lot of Negro folk. Back then your life was controlled by the white man who owned your house. If he was mean and abusive, then your life was miserable. The DeJarnettes were wonderful people. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather worked their land, and they were never mistreated.”

“And Nicola?”

She smiled for the first time in an hour. “God blessed me. I had two mothers. She dressed me in clothes she bought in Memphis. When I was a toddler she taught me to speak Italian while I was learning English. She taught me to read when I was three years old.”

“You still speak Italian?”

“No. It was a long time ago. She loved to tell me stories of being a little girl in Italy, and she promised me that one day she would take me there, to see the canals in Venice and the Vatican in Rome and the tower in Pisa. She loved to sing and she taught me about the opera.”

“Was she educated?”

“Her mother had some education, Mr. Rossetti did not, and she had made sure Nicola and her sisters could read and write. She promised me I would go to college somewhere up North, or maybe even in Europe where folks were more tolerant. The notion of a black woman going to college in the 1920s was downright crazy.”

The story was running in many directions. I wanted to record some of it but I had not brought a notepad. The image of a young black girl living in an antebellum home speaking Italian and listening to the opera in Mississippi fifty years earlier had to be unique.

“Did you work in the house?” I asked.

“Oh yes, when I got older. I was a housekeeper, but I never had to work as hard as the others. Nicola wanted me close by. At least an hour every day we would sit in her parlor and practice speaking. She was determined to lose her Italian accent, and she was just as determined that I would have perfect diction. There was a retired schoolteacher from town, a Miss Tucker, an old maid, I’ll never forget her, and Nicola would send a car for her every morning. Over hot tea we would read a lesson and Miss Tucker would correct even the slightest mispronunciation. We studied grammar. We memorized vocabulary. Nicola drilled herself until she spoke perfect English.”

“What happened to college?”

She was suddenly exhausted and story time was over. “Ah, Mr. Traynor, it was very sad. Mr. DeJarnette lost everything back in the 1920s. He’d invested heavily in railroads and ships and stocks and such stuff, and went broke almost overnight. He shot himself, but that’s another story.”

“What happened to Nicola?”

“She managed to hold on to the big house until the Second War, then she moved back to Memphis with Mr. and Mrs. Rossetti. We swapped letters every week for years. I still have them. She died four years ago, at the age of seventy-six. I cried for a month. I still cry when I think of her. How I loved that woman.” Her words trailed off and I knew from experience that she was ready for a nap.

Late that night I buried myself in the Times archives. On September 12, 1930, there was a front page story about the suicide of Zachary DeJarnette. Despondent over the collapse of his businesses, he had left a new will and a farewell note for his wife, Nicola, then, to make things easier for everyone, he had driven to the funeral home in Clanton. He walked in the rear door with a double-barreled shotgun, found the embalming room, took a seat, took off a shoe, put the gun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger with a big toe.

Chapter 14

On Monday, June 22, all but eight of the hundred jurors arrived for the trial of Danny Padgitt. As we soon found out, four were dead and four had simply vanished. For the most part, the rest looked very anxious. Baggy said that usually jurors have no idea what kind of case they might be selected to decide when they arrive. Not so with the Padgitt trial. Every breathing soul in Ford County knew that the big day had finally come.

Few things draw a crowd in a small town like a good murder trial, and the courtroom was full long before 9 A.M. The prospective jurors filled one side, spectators the other. The old balcony practically sagged above us. The walls were lined with people. As a show of strength, Sheriff Coley had every available uniformed body milling around, looking important, doing nothing productive. What a perfect time to pull a bank heist, I thought.

Baggy and I were in the front row. He had convinced the Circuit Court clerk that we were entitled to press credentials, thus special seating. Next to me was a reporter from the newspaper in Tupelo, a pleasant gentleman who reeked of cheap pipe tobacco. I filled him in on the details of the murder, off the record. He seemed impressed with my knowledge.

The Padgitts were there in full force. They sat in chairs pulled close to the defense table and huddled around Danny and Lucien Wilbanks like the den of thieves they really were. They were arrogant and sinister and I couldn’t help but hate every one of them. I didn’t know them by name; few people did. But as I watched them I wondered which one had been the incompetent arsonist who’d sneaked into our printing room with gallons of gasoline. I had my pistol in my briefcase. I’m sure they had theirs close by. A false move here or there and an old-fashioned gunfight would erupt. Throw in Sheriff Coley and his poorly trained but trigger-happy boys, and half the town would get wiped out.

I caught a few stares from the Padgitts, but they were much more worried about the jurors than me. They watched them closely as they filed into the courtroom and took their instructions from the clerk. The Padgitts and their lawyers looked at lists that they had found somewhere. They compared notes.

Danny was nicely but casually dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt and a pair of starched khakis. As instructed by Wilbanks, he was smiling a lot, as if he were really a nice kid whose innocence was about to be revealed.

Across the aisle, Ernie Gaddis and his smaller crew were likewise observing the prospective jurors. Gaddis had two assistants, one a paralegal and one a part-time prosecutor named Hank Hooten. The paralegal carried the files and briefcases. Hooten seemed to do little but just be there so Ernie would have someone to confer with.

Baggy leaned over as if it was time to whisper. “That guy there, brown suit,” he said, nodding at Hooten. “He was screwin’ Rhoda Kassellaw”

I was shocked and my face showed it. I jerked to the right and looked at Baggy. He nodded smugly and said what he always said when he had the scoop on something really nasty. “That’s what I’m tellin’ you,” he whispered. This meant that he had no doubts. Baggy was often wrong but never in doubt.

Hooten appeared to be about forty with prematurely gray hair, nicely dressed, somewhat handsome. “Where’s he from?” I whispered. The courtroom was noisy as we waited for Judge Loopus.

“Here. He does some real estate law, low-pressure stuff. A real jerk. Been divorced a couple of times, always on the prowl.”

“Does Gaddis know his assistant was seeing the victim?”

“Hell no. Ernie would pull him from the case.”

“You think Wilbanks knows?”

“Nobody knows,” Baggy said with even greater smugness. It was as if he had personally caught them in bed, then kept it to himself until that very moment in the courtroom. I wasn’t sure I believed him.

Miss Callie arrived a few minutes before nine. Esau escorted her into the courtroom, then had to leave when he couldn’t find a seat. She checked in with the clerk and was placed in the third row; she was given a questionnaire to fill out. She looked around for me but there were too many people between us. I counted four other blacks in the pool.

A bailiff bellowed for us to rise, and it sounded like a stampede. Judge Loopus told us to sit, and the floor shook. He went straight to work and appeared to be in good spirits. He had a courtroom full of voters and he was up for reelection in two years, though he had never had an opponent. Six jurors were excused because they were over the age of sixty-five. Five were excused for medical reasons. The morning began to drag. I couldn’t take my eyes off Hank Hooten. He certainly had the look of a ladies’ man.

When the preliminary questions were over, the panel was down to seventy-nine duly qualified jurors. Miss Callie was now in the second row, not a good sign if she wanted to avoid jury service. Judge Loopus yielded the floor to Ernie Gaddis, who introduced himself to the panel again and explained in great length that he was there on behalf of the State of Mississippi, the taxpayers, the citizens who had elected him to prosecute those who commit crimes. He was the people’s lawyer.

He was there to prosecute Mr. Danny Padgitt, who had been indicted by a grand jury, made up of their fellow citizens, for the rape and murder of Rhoda Kassellaw. He asked if it was possible that anyone had not heard something about the murder. Not a single hand went up.

Ernie had been talking to juries for thirty years. He was friendly and smooth and gave the impression that you could discuss almost anything with him, even in open court. He moved slowly into the area of intimidation. Has anyone outside your family contacted you about this case? A stranger? Has a friend tried to influence your opinion? Your summons was mailed to you; the jury list is locked under seal. No one is supposed to know that you’re a potential juror. Has anyone mentioned it to you? Anyone threatened you? Anyone offered you anything? The courtroom was very quiet as Ernie led them through these questions.

No one raised a hand; none was expected. But Ernie was successful in conveying the message that these people, the Padgitts, had been moving through the shadows of Ford County. He hung an even darker cloud above them, and he left the impression that he, as the District Attorney and the people’s lawyer, knew the truth.

He began his finish with a question that cut through the air like a rifle shot. “Do all of you folks understand that jury tampering is a crime?”

They seemed to understand.

“And that I, as the prosecutor, will pursue, indict, bring to trial, and do my utmost to convict any person involved with jury tampering. Do you understand this?”

When Ernie finished we all felt as though we’d been tampered with. Anyone who’d talked about the case, which of course was every person in the county, seemed in danger of being indicted by Ernie and hounded to the grave.

“He’s effective,” whispered the reporter from Tupelo.

Lucien Wilbanks began with a lengthy and quite dull lecture about the presumption of innocence and how it is the foundation of American jurisprudence. Regardless of what they’d read in the local newspaper, and here he managed a scornful glance in my general direction, his client, sitting right there at the moment, was an innocent man. And if anyone felt otherwise, then he or she was duty bound to raise a hand and say so.

No hands. “Good. Then by your silence you’re telling the Court that you, all of you, can look at Danny Padgitt right now and say he is innocent. Can you do that?” He hammered them on this for far too long, then shifted to the burden of proof with another lecture on the State’s monumental challenge to prove his client guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

These two sacred protections — the presumption of innocence and proof beyond a reasonable doubt — were granted to all of us, including the jurors, by the very wise men who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

We were approaching noon and everybody was anxious for a break. Wilbanks seemed to miss this and he kept rattling on. When he sat down at twelve-fifteen, Judge Loopus announced that he was starving. We would recess until two o’clock.

Baggy and I had a sandwich upstairs in the Bar Room with several of his cronies, three aging washed-up lawyers who hadn’t missed a trial in years. Baggy really wanted a glass of whiskey, but for some odd reason felt the call of duty. His pals did not. The clerk had given us a list of jurors as they were currently seated. Miss Callie was number twenty-two, the first black and the third female.

It was the general feeling that the defense would not challenge her because she was black, and blacks, according to the prevailing theory, were sympathetic to those accused of crimes. I wasn’t sure how a black person could be sympathetic to a white thug like Danny Padgitt, but the lawyers were unshakable in their belief that Lucien Wilbanks would gladly take her.

Under the same theory, the prosecution would exercise one of its arbitrary, peremptory challenges and strike her from the panel. Not so, said Chick Elliot, the oldest and drunkest of the gang. “I’d take her if I were prosecuting,” he argued, then knocked back a potent shot of bourbon.

“Why?” Baggy asked.

“Because we know her so well now, thanks to the Times. She came across as a sensible, God-fearing, Bible-quoting patriot, who raised all those kids with a heavy hand and a swift kick in the ass if they screwed up.”

“I agree,” said Tackett, the youngest of the three. Tackett, though, had a tendency to agree with whatever the prevailing theory happened to be. “She’d make an ideal juror for the prosecution. Plus, she’s a woman. It’s a rape case. I’d take all the women I could get.”

They argued for an hour. It was my first session with them, and I suddenly understood how Baggy collected so many differing opinions about so many issues. Though I tried not to show it, I was deeply concerned that my long and generous stories about Miss Callie would somehow come back to haunt her.

After lunch, Judge Loopus moved into the most serious phase of questioning — the death penalty. He explained the nature of a capital offense and the procedures that would be followed, then he yielded again to Ernie Gaddis.

Juror number eleven was a member of some obscure church and he made it very clear that he could never vote to send a person to the gas chamber. Juror number thirty-four was a veteran of two wars and he felt rather strongly that the death penalty wasn’t used often enough. This, of course, delighted Ernie, who singled out individual jurors and politely asked them questions about judging others and imposing the death sentence. He eventually made it to Miss Callie. “Now, Mrs. Ruffin, I’ve read about you, and you seem to be a very religious woman. Is this correct?”

“I do love the Lord, yes sir,” she answered, as clear as always.

“Are you hesitant to sit in judgment of another human?”

“I am, yes sir.”

“Do you want to be excused?”

“No sir. It’s my duty as a citizen to be here, same as all these other folks.”

“And if you’re on the jury, and the jury finds Mr. Padgitt guilty of these crimes, can you vote to put him to death?”

“I certainly wouldn’t want to.”

“My question was, ‘Can you?’ ”

“I can follow the law, same as these other folks. If the law says that we should consider the death penalty, then I can follow the law.”

Four hours later, Calia H. Ruffin became the last juror chosen — the first black to serve on a trial jury in Ford County. The drunks up in the Bar Room had been right. The defense wanted her because she was black. The State wanted her because they knew her so well. Plus, Ernie Gaddis had to save his jury strikes for less-appealing characters.

Late that night I sat alone in my office working on a story about the opening day and jury selection. I heard a familiar noise downstairs. Harry Rex had a way of shoving open the front door and stomping on the wooden floors so that everybody at the Times, regardless of the time of day, knew he had arrived. “Willie boy!” he yelled from below.

“Up here,” I yelled back.

He rumbled up the stairs and fell into his favorite chair. “Whatta you think of the jury?” he said. He appeared to be completely sober.

“I only know one of them,” I said. “How many do you know?”

“Seven.”

“You think they picked Miss Callie because of my stories?”

“Yep,” he said, brutally honest as always. “Everybody’s been talkin’ about her. Both sides felt like they knew her. It’s 1970 and we’ve never had a black juror. She looked as good as any. Does that worry you?”

“I guess it does.”

“Why? What’s wrong with servin’ on a jury? It’s about time we had blacks doin’ it. She and her husband have always been anxious to break down barriers. Ain’t like it’s dangerous. Well, normally it ain’t dangerous.”

I hadn’t talked to Miss Callie and I would not be able to do so until after the trial. Judge Loopus had ordered the jurors sequestered for the week. By then they were hiding in a motel in another town.

“Any suspicious characters on the jury?” I asked.

“Maybe. Everybody’s worried about that crippled boy from out near Dumas. Fargarson. Hurt his back in a sawmill owned by his uncle. The uncle sold timber to the Padgitts many years ago. The boy has some attitude. Gaddis wanted to bump him but he ran out of challenges.”

The crippled boy walked with a cane and was at least twenty-five years old. Harry Rex referred to anyone younger than himself, and especially me, as “boy.”

“But with the Padgitts you never know,” he continued. “Hell, they could own half the jury by now.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Naw, but a hung jury wouldn’t surprise me either. It might take two or three shots at this boy before Ernie gets him.”

“But he will go to prison, won’t he?” The thought of Danny Padgitt escaping punishment frightened me. I had invested myself in the town of Clanton, and if its justice was so corruptible then I didn’t want to stay.

“They’ll hang his ass.”

“Good. The death penalty?”

“I’d bet on it, eventually. This is the buckle of the Bible Belt, Willie. An eye for an eye, all that crap. Loopus’ll do everything he can to help Ernie get a death verdict.”

I then made the mistake of asking him why he was working so late. A divorce client had left town on business, then sneaked back to catch his wife with her boyfriend. The client and Harry Rex had spent the last two hours in a borrowed pickup behind a hot-sheets motel north of town. As it turned out, the wife had two boyfriends. The story took half an hour to tell.

Chapter 15

Tuesday morning, almost two hours were wasted as the lawyers wrangled over some hotly contested motions back in the Judge’s chambers. “Probably the photographs,” Baggy kept saying. “They always fight over the photographs.” Since we were not privy to their little war, we waited impatiently in the courtroom, holding our seats. I wrote pages of useless notes in a chicken-scratch handwriting that any veteran reporter would admire. The scribbling kept me busy and it kept my eyes away from the ever-present stares of the Padgitts. With the jury out of the room they turned their attention to the spectators, especially me.

The jurors were locked away in the deliberation room, with deputies at the door as if someone might gain something by attacking them. The room was on the second floor, with large windows that looked upon the east side of the courthouse lawn. At the bottom of one window was a noisy air-conditioning unit that could be heard from any point on the square when it was at full throttle. I thought of Miss Callie and her blood pressure. I knew she was reading the Bible and maybe this was calming her. I had called Esau early that morning. He was very upset that she had been sequestered and hauled away.

Esau was in the back row, waiting with the rest of us.

When Judge Loopus and the lawyers finally appeared they looked as though they had all been fistfighting The Judge nodded at the bailiff and the jurors were led in. He welcomed them, thanked them, asked about their accommodations, apologized for the inconvenience, apologized for the delay that morning, then promised that things would move forward.

Ernie Gaddis assumed a position behind the podium and began his opening statement to the jury. He had a yellow legal pad, but he didn’t look at it. With great efficiency, he rattled off the necessary elements the State would prove against Danny Padgitt. When all the exhibits were in, and all the witnesses were finished, and the lawyers were quiet, and the Judge had spoken, it would be left to the jury to serve justice. There was no doubt in his mind that they would find Danny Padgitt guilty of rape and murder. He didn’t waste a word, and every word found its mark. He was mercifully brief. His confident tone and concise remarks conveyed the clear message that he had the facts, the case, and he would get his verdict. He did not need long, emotional arguments to convince the jury.

Baggy loved to say, “When lawyers have a weak case they do a lot more talking.”

Oddly, Lucien Wilbanks deferred his opening remarks until the defense put on its case, an option rarely exercised. “He’s up to something,” Baggy mumbled as if he and Lucien were thinking together. “No surprise there.”

The first witness for the State was Sheriff Coley himself. Part of his job was testifying in criminal cases, but it was doubtful he’d ever dreamed of doing so against a Padgitt. In a few months he would be up for re-election. It was important for him to look good before the voters.

With Ernie’s meticulous planning and prodding, they walked through the crime. There were large diagrams of the Kassellaw home, the Deece home, the roads around Beech Hill, the exact spot where Danny Padgitt was arrested. There were photographs of the area. Then, there were photographs of Rhoda’s corpse, a series of eight by ten’s that were handed to the jurors and passed around. Their reactions were amazing. Every face was shocked. Some winced. A few mouths flew open. Miss Callie closed her eyes and appeared to pray. Another lady on the jury, Mrs. Barbara Baldwin, gasped at first sight and turned away. Then she looked at Danny Padgitt as if she could shoot him at point-blank range. “Oh my God,” one of the men mumbled. Another covered his mouth as if he might throw up.

The jurors sat in padded swivel chairs that rocked slightly. As the gruesome photos were passed around, not a single chair was still. The pictures were inflammatory, highly prejudicial, yet always admissible, and as they caused a commotion in the jury box I thought Danny Padgitt was as good as dead. Judge Loopus allowed only six as exhibits. One would have sufficed.

It was just after 1 P.M., and everyone needed a break. I doubted that the jurors had much of an appetite.

The State’s second witness was one of Rhoda’s sisters from Missouri. Her name was Ginger McClure, and I had talked to her several times after the murder. When she realized I had gone to school at Syracuse and was not a native of Ford County, she had thawed somewhat. She had reluctantly sent me a photo for the obituary. Later, she had called and asked if I could send her copies of the Times when it mentioned Rhoda’s case. She expressed frustration in getting details from the District Attorney’s office.

Ginger was a slim redhead, very attractive and well dressed, and when she settled into the witness chair she had everyone’s attention.

According to Baggy, someone from the victim’s family always testified. Death became real when the loved ones took the stand and looked at the jurors.

Ernie wanted Ginger to be viewed by the jury and arouse their sympathy. He also wanted to remind the jury that the mother of two small children had been taken from them in a premeditated murder. Her testimony was brief. Wisely, Lucien Wilbanks had no questions on cross-examination. When she was excused, she walked to a reserved chair behind the bar, near the seat of Ernie Gaddis, and assumed the position as representative of the family. Her every move was watched until the next witness was called.

Then it was back to the gore. A forensic pathologist from the state crime lab was called to discuss the autopsy. Though he had plenty of photos, none were used. None were needed. In layman’s terms, her cause of death was obvious — a loss of blood. There was a four-inch gash beginning just below her left ear and running almost straight down. It was almost two inches deep, and, in his opinion, and he’d seen many knife wounds, it was caused by a rapid and powerful thrust from a blade that was approximately six inches long and an inch wide. The person using the knife was, more than likely, right-handed. The gash cut completely through the left jugular vein, and at that point the victim had only a few minutes to live. A second gash was six-and-a-half inches long, one inch deep, and ran from the tip of the chin to the right ear, which it almost sliced in two. This wound by itself probably would not have resulted in death.

The pathologist described these wounds as if he were talking about a tick bite. No big deal. Nothing unusual. In his business he saw this carnage every day and talked about it with juries. But for everyone else in the courtroom, the details were unsettling. At some point during his testimony, every single juror looked at Danny Padgitt and silently voted “Guilty.”

Lucien Wilbanks began his cross pleasantly enough. The two had hooked up before in trials. He made the pathologist admit that some of his opinions might possibly be wrong, such as the size of the murder weapon and whether the assailant was right-handed. “I stated that these were probabilities,” the doctor said patiently. I got the impression that he’d been grilled so many times nothing rattled him. Wilbanks poked and probed a bit, but he was careful not to revisit the damning evidence. The jury had heard enough of the cuts and gashes; it would be foolish to cover this ground again.

A second pathologist followed. Concurrent with the autopsy, he had made a thorough examination of the body and found several clues as to the identity of the killer. In the vaginal area, he found semen that matched perfectly with Danny Padgitt’s blood. Under the nail of Rhoda’s right index finger he had found a tiny piece of human skin. It too matched the defendant’s blood type.

On cross-examination, Lucien Wilbanks asked him if he had personally examined Mr. Padgitt. No, he had not. Where on his body was Mr. Padgitt scraped or scratched or clawed in such a way?

“I did not examine him,” the pathologist said.

“Did you examine photographs of him?”

“I did not.”

“So if he lost some skin, you can’t tell the jury where it came from, can you?”

“I’m afraid not.”

After four hours of graphic testimony, everybody in the courtroom was exhausted. Judge Loopus sent the jury away with stern warnings about avoiding outside contact. It seemed overkill in light of the fact that they were being hidden in another town and guarded by police.

Baggy and I raced back to the office and typed frantically until almost ten. It was Tuesday, and Hardy liked to have the presses running no later than 11 P.M. On those rare weeks when there were no mechanical problems, he could run five thousand copies in less than three hours.

Hardy set the type as quickly as possible. There was no time for editing and proofreading, but I wasn’t too concerned about that edition because Miss Callie was on the jury and wouldn’t be able to catch our mistakes. Baggy was hitting the sauce as we finished up and couldn’t wait to leave. I was about to head for my apartment when Ginger McClure strolled in the front door and said hello as if we were old friends. She was wearing tight jeans and a red blouse. She asked if I had anything to drink. Not at the office, but that wouldn’t stop us.

We left the square in my Spitfire and drove to Quincy’s, where I bought a six-pack of Schlitz. She wanted to see Rhoda’s house one last time, from the road, not too close. As we headed that way I cautiously inquired about the two children. The report was mixed. Both were living with another sister — Ginger was quick to tell me she was recently divorced — and both were undergoing intense counseling. The little boy appeared to be almost normal, though he sometimes drifted off into prolonged periods of silence. The little girl was much worse. She had constant nightmares about her mother and had lost the ability to control her bladder. She was often found curled in a fetal position, sucking her fingers and groaning pitifully. The doctors were experimenting with various drugs.

Neither child would tell the family or the doctors how much they saw that night. “They saw their mother get raped and stabbed,” she said, killing off the first beer. Mine was still half full.

The Deece home looked as if Mr. and Mrs. Deece had been asleep for days. We turned into the gravel driveway of what was once the happy little Kassellaw home. It was empty, dark, and had an abandoned look to it. There was a FOR SALE sign in the yard. The house was the only significant asset in Rhoda’s small estate. The proceeds would all go to the children.

At Ginger’s request, I cut the lights and turned off the engine. It was not a good idea because the neighbors were understandably jumpy. Plus, my Triumph Spitfire was the only one of its kind in Ford County and as such was naturally a suspicious vehicle.

She gently placed her hand on mine and said, “How did he get in the house?”

“They found some footprints at the patio door. It was probably unlocked.” And during a long silence both of us replayed the attack, the rape, the knife, the children fleeing through the darkness, yelling for Mr. Deece to come save their mother.

“Were you close to her?” I asked, then I heard the distant approach of a vehicle.

“When we were kids, but not recently. She left home ten years ago.”

“How often did you visit here?”

“Twice. I moved away too, to California. We sort of lost touch. After her husband died, we begged her to come back to Springfield, but she said she liked it here. Truth was, she and my mother never got along.”

A pickup truck slowed on the road just behind us. I tried to act unconcerned, but I knew how dangerous things could be in such a dark part of the county. Ginger was staring at the house, lost in some horrible image, and seemed not to hear. Thankfully, the truck did not stop.

“Let’s go,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I’m scared.”

When we drove away, I saw Mr. Deece crouching in the shadows of his garage, holding a shotgun. He was scheduled to be the last witness called by the State.

Ginger was staying at a local motel, but she did not want to go there. It was after midnight, our options were thin, so we drove to the Hocutt place, where I led her up the stairs, over the cats, and into my apartment.

“Don’t get any ideas,” she said as she kicked off her shoes and sat on the sofa. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Neither am I,” I lied.

Her tone was almost flippant, as though her mood might change real soon and when it did then we could have a go at it. I was perfectly happy to wait.

I found colder beer in the kitchen and we settled into our places as if we might talk until sunrise. “Tell me about your family,” she said.

It was not my best subject, but, for this lady, I could talk. “I’m an only child. My mother died when I was thirteen. My father lives in Memphis, in an old family house that he never leaves because both he and the house have a few loose boards. He has an office in the attic, and he stays there all day and night trading stocks and bonds. I don’t know how well he trades, but I have a hunch he loses more than he gains. We speak by phone once a month.”

“Are you wealthy?”

“No, my grandmother is wealthy. My mother’s mother, BeeBee. She loaned me the money to buy the paper.”

She thought about this as she sipped her beer. “There were three of us girls, two now. We were pretty wild growing up. My father went out for milk and eggs one night and never came home. My mother has tried twice more since then, can’t seem to get it right. I’m divorced. My older sister is divorced. Rhoda is dead.” She reached across with the bottle and tapped mine. “Here’s to a couple of screwed-up families.”

We drank to that.

Divorced, childless, wild, and very cute. I could spend time with Ginger.

She wanted to know about Ford County and its characters — Lucien Wilbanks, the Padgitts, Sheriff Coley, and so on. I talked and talked and kept waiting for her mood to change.

It did not. Sometime after 2 A.M. she stretched out on the sofa, and I went to bed alone.

Chapter 16

Three of the Hocutts — Max, Wilma, and Gilma — were loitering around the garage under my apartment when Ginger and I made our exit a few hours later. I guess they wanted to meet her. They looked at her scornfully as I made cheerful introductions. I half-expected Max to say something ridiculous like, “We did not contemplate illicit sex when we leased this place to you.” But nothing offensive was said, and we quickly drove to the office. She jumped in her car and disappeared.

The latest edition was stacked floor to ceiling in the front room. I grabbed a copy for a quick perusal. The headline was fairly restrained — DANNY PADGITT TRIAL BEGINS: JURY SEQUESTERED. There were no photos of the defendant. We had used enough of those already, and I wanted to save a big one for the following week when, hopefully, we could nail the little thug leaving the courthouse after receiving his death sentence. Baggy and I had filled the columns with the things we’d seen and heard during the first two days, and I was quite proud of our reporting. It was straightforward, factual, detailed, well written, and not the least bit lurid. The trial itself was big enough to carry the moment. And, truthfully, I had already learned my lesson about trying to sensationalize things. By 8 A.M. the courthouse and the square were blanketed with complimentary copies of the Times.

There were no preliminary skirmishes on Wednesday morning. At precisely 9 A.M. the jurors were led in and Ernie Gaddis called his next witness. His name was Chub Brooner, the longtime investigator for the Sheriff’s department. According to both Baggy and Harry Rex, Brooner was famous for his incompetence.

To wake up the jury and captivate the rest of us, Gaddis produced the bloody white shirt Danny Padgitt was wearing the night he was arrested. It had not been washed; the splotches of blood were dark brown. Ernie gently waved it around the courtroom for all to see as he chatted with Brooner. It had been removed from the body of Danny Padgitt by a deputy named Grice, in the presence of Brooner and Sheriff Coley. Tests had revealed two types of blood — O Positive and B Positive. Further tests by the state crime lab matched the B Positive with the blood of Rhoda Kassellaw.

I watched Ginger as she looked at the shirt. After a few minutes she looked away and began writing something. Not surprisingly, she looked even better her second day in the courtroom. I was very concerned about her moods.

The shirt was ripped across the front. Danny had cut himself when he crawled out of his wrecked truck and had received twelve stitches. Brooner did a passable job of explaining this to the jury. Ernie then pulled out an easel and placed on it two enlarged photographs of the footprints found on the patio of Rhoda’s home. On the exhibit table he picked up the shoes Padgitt was wearing when he arrived at the jail. Brooner stumbled through testimony that should have been much easier, but the point was made that everything matched.

Brooner was terrified of Lucien Wilbanks and began stuttering at the first question. Lucien wisely ignored the fact that Rhoda’s blood was found on Danny’s shirt, and chose instead to hammer Brooner on the art and science of matching up footprints. The investigator’s training had not been comprehensive, he finally admitted. Lucien zeroed in on a series of ridges on the heel of the right shoe, and Brooner couldn’t locate them in the print. Because of weight and motion, a heel usually leaves a better print than the rest of the sole, according to Brooner’s testimony on direct. Lucien harangued him to the point of confusing everyone, and I had to admit that I was skeptical of the footprints. Not that it mattered. There was plenty of other evidence.

“Was Mr. Padgitt wearing gloves when he was arrested?” Lucien asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t arrest him.”

“Well, you boys took his shirt and his shoes. Did you take any gloves?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“You’ve reviewed the entire evidence file, right, Mr. Brooner?”

“I have.”

“In fact, as chief investigator, you’re very familiar with every aspect of this case, aren’t you?”

“Yes sir.”

“Have you seen any reference to any gloves worn by or taken from Mr. Padgitt?”

“No.”

“Good. Did you dust the crime scene for fingerprints?”

“Yes.”

“Routine, isn’t it?”

“Yes, always.”

“And of course you fingerprinted Mr. Padgitt when he was arrested, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. How many of Mr. Padgitt’s fingerprints did you find at the crime scene?”

“None.”

“Not a single one, did you?”

“None.”

With that, Lucien picked a good moment to sit down. It was difficult to believe that the murderer could enter the house, hide there for a while, rape and murder his victim, then escape without leaving behind fingerprints. But Chub Brooner did not inspire a lot of confidence. With him in charge of the investigation, there seemed an excellent chance that dozens of fingerprints could have been missed.

Judge Loopus called for the morning recess, and as the jurors stood to leave I made eye contact with Miss Callie. Her face exploded into one huge grin. She nodded, as if to say, “Don’t worry about me.”

We stretched our legs and whispered about what we had just heard. I was delighted to see so many people in the courtroom reading the Times. I walked to the bar and leaned down to speak to Ginger. “You doin’ okay?” I asked.

“I just want to go home,” she said softly.

“How about lunch?”

“You got it.”

The State’s last witness was Mr. Aaron Deece. He walked to the stand shortly before 11 A.M., and we braced for his recollection of that night. Ernie Gaddis led him through a series of questions designed to personalize Rhoda and her two children. They had lived next door for seven years, perfect neighbors, wonderful people. He missed them greatly, couldn’t believe they were gone. At one point Mr. Deece wiped a tear from his eye.

This was completely irrelevant to the issues at hand, and Lucien gamely allowed it for a few minutes. Then he stood and politely said, “Your Honor, this is very touching, but it’s really not admissible.”

“Move along, Mr. Gaddis,” Judge Loopus said.

Mr. Deece described the night, the time, the temperature, the weather. He heard the panicked voice of little Michael, age five, calling his name, crying for help. He found the children outside, in their pajamas, wet with dew, in shock from fear. He took them inside where his wife put blankets on them. He got his shoes and his guns and was flying out of the house when he saw Rhoda, stumbling toward him. She was naked and, except for her face, she was completely covered in blood. He picked her up, carried her to the porch, placed her on a swing.

Lucien was on his feet, waiting.

“Did she say anything?” Ernie asked.

“Your Honor, I object to this witness testifying to anything the victim said. It’s clearly heresay.”

“Your motion is on file, Mr. Wilbanks. We’ve had our debate in chambers, and it is on the record. You may answer the question, Mr. Deece.”

Mr. Deece swallowed hard, inhaled and exhaled, and looked at the jurors. “Two or three times, she said, ‘It was Danny Padgitt. It was Danny Padgitt.’ “

For dramatic effect, Ernie let those bullets crack through the air, then ricochet around the courtroom while he pretended to look at some notes. “You ever met Danny Padgitt, Mr. Deece?”

“No sir.”

“Had you ever heard his name before that night?”

“No sir.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“The last thing she said was, ‘Take care of my babies.’ “

Ginger was touching her eyes with a tissue. Miss Callie was praying. Several of the jurors were looking at their feet.

He finished his story — he called the Sheriff’s department; his wife had the children in a bedroom behind a locked door; he took a shower because he was covered with blood; the deputies showed up, did their investigating; the ambulance came and took away the body; he and his wife stayed with the children until around two in the morning, then rode with them to the hospital in Clanton. They stayed with them there until a relative arrived from Missouri.

There was nothing in his testimony that could be challenged or impeached, so Lucien Wilbanks declined a cross-examination. The State rested, and we broke for lunch. I drove Ginger to Karaway, to the only Mexican place I knew, and we ate enchiladas under an oak tree and talked about everything but the trial. She was subdued and wanted to leave Ford County forever.

I really wanted her to stay.

Lucien Wilbanks began his defense with a little pep talk about what a nice young man Danny Padgitt really was. He had finished high school with good grades, he worked long hours in the family’s timber business, he dreamed of one day running his own company. He had no police record whatsoever. His only brush with the law had been one, just one, speeding ticket when he was sixteen years old.

Lucien’s persuasive skills were reasonably well honed, but he was collapsing under the weight of the effort. It was impossible to make a Padgitt appear warm and cuddly. There was quite a bit of squirming in the courtroom, some smirks here and there. But we weren’t the ones deciding the case. Lucien was talking to the jurors, looking them in the eyes, and no one knew if he and his client had already locked up a vote or two.

However, Danny was not a saint. Like most handsome young men he had discovered he enjoyed the company of ladies. He had met the wrong one, though, a woman who happened to be married to someone else. Danny was with her the night Rhoda Kassellaw was murdered.

“Listen to me!” he bellowed at the jurors. “My client did not kill Miss Kassellaw! At the time of this horrible murder, he was with another woman, in her home not far from the Kassellaw place. He has an airtight alibi.”

This announcement sucked the air out of the courtroom, and for a long minute we waited for the next surprise. Lucien played the drama perfectly. “This woman, his lover, will be our first witness,” he said.

They brought her in moments after Lucien finished his opening remarks. Her name was Lydia Vince. I whispered to Baggy and he said he’d never heard of her; didn’t know any Vinces from out in Beech Hill. There were a lot of whispers in the courtroom as folks tried to place her, and gauging from the frowns and puzzled looks and head shakes it appeared as though the woman was a complete unknown. Lucien’s preliminary questions revealed that she was living in a rented house on Hurt Road back in March but was now living in Tupelo, that she and her husband were going through a divorce, that she had one child, that she grew up in Tyler County, and that she was currently unemployed. She was about thirty years old, somewhat attractive in a cheap way — short skirt, tight blouse over a big chest, bottle-blond hair — and she was utterly terrified of the proceedings.

She and Danny had been having an adulterous affair for about a year. I glanced at Miss Callie and was not surprised to see this was not sitting well.

On the night Rhoda was murdered, Danny was at her house. Malcolm Vince, her husband, was supposedly in Memphis, doing something with the boys, she really didn’t know what. He was gone a lot in those days. She and Danny had sex twice and sometime around midnight he was preparing to leave when her husband’s truck turned into the driveway. Danny sneaked out the rear door and disappeared.

The shock of a married woman admitting in open court that she had committed adultery was designed to convince the jury that she had to be telling the truth. No one, respectable or otherwise, would admit this. It would damage her reputation, if she cared about such things. It would certainly impact her divorce, perhaps jeopardize custody of her child. It might even allow her husband to sue Danny Padgitt for alienation of affection, though it was doubtful the jurors were thinking that far ahead.

Her answers to Lucien’s questions were brief and very well rehearsed. She refused to look at the jurors or at her alleged former lover. Instead, she kept her eyes down and appeared to be looking at Lucien’s shoes. Both the lawyer and the witness were careful not to venture outside the script. “She’s lyin’,” Baggy whispered loudly, and I agreed.

When the direct examination was over, Ernie Gaddis stood and walked deliberately to the podium, staring with great suspicion at this self-confessed adulteress. He kept his reading glasses on the tip of his nose, and looked above them with wrinkled brow and narrow eyes. Very much the professor who’d just caught a bad student cheating.

“Miss Vince, this house on Hurt Road. Who owned it?”

“Jack Hagel.”

“How long did you live there?”

“About a year.”

“Did you sign a lease?”

She hesitated for a split second too long, then said, “Maybe my husband did. I really don’t remember.”

“How much was the rent each month?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

Ernie wrote down each answer with great effort, as though each detail was about to be diligently investigated and lies would be revealed.

“When did you leave this house?”

“I don’t know, about two months ago.”

“So how long did you live in Ford County?”

“I don’t know, a couple of years.”

“Did you ever register to vote in Ford County?”

“No.”

“Did your husband?”

“No.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Malcolm Vince.”

“Where does he live now?”

“I’m not sure. He moves around a lot. Last I heard he was somewhere around Tupelo.”

“And y’all are getting a divorce now, right?”

“Yes.”

“When did you file for divorce?”

Her eyes lifted quickly and she glanced at Lucien, who was listening hard but refusing to watch her. “We haven’t actually filed papers yet,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I thought you said you were going through a divorce.”

“We’ve split, and we’ve both hired lawyers.”

“And who is your attorney?”

“Mr. Wilbanks.”

Lucien flinched, as if this was news to him. Ernie let it settle in, then continued, “Who is your husband’s lawyer?”

“I can’t remember his name.”

“Is he suing you for divorce, or is it the other way around?”

“It’s a mutual thing.”

“How many other men were you sleeping with?”

“Just Danny.”

“I see. And you live in Tupelo, right?”

“Right.”

“You say you’re unemployed, right?”

“For now.”

“And you’ve separated from your husband?”

“I just said we’ve split.”

“Where do you live over in Tupelo?”

“An apartment.”

“How much is the rent?”

“Two hundred a month.”

“And you live there with your child?”

“Yes.”

“Does the child work?”

“The child is five years old.”

“So how do you pay the rent and utilities?”

“I get by.” No one could have possibly believed her answer.

“What kind of car do you drive?”

She hesitated again. It was the kind of question that required an answer that could be verified with a few phone calls. “A ’68 Mustang.”

“That’s a nice car. When did you get it?”

Again, there was a paper trail here, and even Lydia, who wasn’t bright, could see the trap. “Coupla months ago,” she said, defiantly.

“Is the car titled in your name?”

“It is.”

“Is the apartment lease in your name?”

“It is.”

Paperwork, paperwork. She couldn’t lie about it, and she certainly couldn’t afford it. Ernie took some notes from Hank Hooten and studied them suspiciously.

“How long did you sleep with Danny Padgitt?”

“Fifteen minutes, usually.”

In a tense courtroom, the answer provided scattered laughter. Ernie removed his glasses, rubbed them with the end of his tie, gave her a nasty grin, and rephrased the question. “Your affair with Danny Padgitt, how long did it last?”

“Almost a year.”

“Where did you first meet him?”

“At the clubs, up at the state line.”

“Did someone introduce the two of you?”

“I really don’t remember. He was there, I was there, we had a dance. One thing led to another.”

There was no doubt that Lydia Vince had spent many nights in many honky-tonks, and she’d never run from a new dance partner. Ernie needed just a few more lies that he could nail down.

He asked a series of questions about her background and her husband’s — birth, education, marriage, employment, family. Names and dates and events that could be verified as true or false. She was for sale. The Padgitts had found a witness they could buy.

As we left the courtroom late that afternoon, I was confused and uneasy. I had been convinced for many months that Danny Padgitt killed Rhoda Kassellaw, and I still had no doubts. But the jury suddenly had something to hang itself with. A sworn witness had committed a dreadful act of perjury, but it was possible that a juror could have a reasonable doubt.

Ginger was more depressed than me, so we decided to get drunk. We bought burgers and fries and a case of beer and went to her small motel room where we ate and then drowned our fears and hatred of a corrupt judicial system. She said more than once that her family, fractured as it was, could not hold up if Danny Padgitt were let go. Her mother was not stable anyway, and a not-guilty verdict would push her over the cliff. What would they tell Rhoda’s children one day?

We tried watching television, but nothing held our interest. We grew weary of worrying about the trial. As I was about to fall asleep, Ginger walked out of the bathroom naked, and the night took a turn for the better. We made love off and on until the alcohol prevailed and we fell asleep.

Chapter 17

Unknown to me — and there was no reason it should have been known to me because I was such a newcomer to the community and certainly not involved in judicial affairs, and besides I literally had my hands full of Ginger and for a few wonderful hours we lost interest in the trial — a secret meeting took place shortly after adjournment on Wednesday. Ernie Gaddis went to Harry Rex’s office for a post-trial drink and both admitted they were sick over Lydia’s testimony. They began making phone calls, and within an hour they had rounded up a group of lawyers they could trust, and a couple of politicians as well.

The opinion was unanimous that the Padgitts were in the process of wiggling out of what appeared to be a solid case against them. They had managed to find a witness they could bribe. Lydia had obviously been paid to concoct her story, and she was either too broke or too stupid to understand the risks of perjury. Regardless, she had given the jury a reason, albeit a weak one, to second-guess the prosecution.

An acquittal in such an open-and-shut case would infuriate the town and mock the court system. A hung jury would send a similar message — justice could be bought in Ford County. Ernie, Harry Rex, and the other lawyers worked hard every day manipulating the system on behalf of their clients, but the rules were applied fairly. The system worked because the judges and jurors were impartial and unbiased. To allow Lucien Wilbanks and the Padgitts to corrupt the process would cause irreparable damage.

There was a consensus that a hung jury was entirely possible. As a believable witness, Lydia Vince left much to be desired, but the jurors were not as savvy about fabricated testimony and crooked clients. The lawyers agreed that Fargarson, “the crippled boy,” appeared hostile to the prosecution. After two full days and almost fifteen hours of watching the jurors, the lawyers felt they could read them.

Mr. John Deere also had them worried. His real name was Mo Teale and he’d been a mechanic down at the tractor place for over twenty years. He was a simple man with a limited wardrobe. Late Monday afternoon when the jury was finally selected and Judge Loopus sent them home to hurriedly pack for the bus, Mo had simply loaded up his week’s supply of work uniforms. Each morning he marched into the jury box wearing a bright yellow shirt with green trim and green pants with yellow trim, as if he was ready for another vigorous day of pulling wrenches.

Mo sat with his arms crossed and frowned whenever Ernie Gaddis was on his feet. His body language terrified the prosecution.

Harry Rex thought it was important to find Lydia’s estranged husband. If they were in fact going through a divorce, it was more than likely not an amicable one. It was difficult to believe she was having an affair with Danny Padgitt, but at the same time it seemed likely that the woman was no stranger to extramarital activity. The husband might have testimony that could severely discredit Lydia’s.

Ernie wanted to dig into her private life. He wanted to create doubt about her finances so he could yell at the jury, “How can she live so comfortably when she’s unemployed and going through a divorce?”

“Because she got twenty-five thousand dollars from the Padgitts,” one of the lawyers said. Speculation about the amount of the bribe became a running debate as the night wore on.

The search for Malcolm Vince began with Harry Rex and two others calling every lawyer within five counties. Around 10 P.M. they found a lawyer in Corinth, two hours away, who said he had met with a Malcolm Vince once about a divorce, but had not been retained. Mr. Vince was living in a trailer somewhere out in the boondocks near the Tishomingo County line. He could not remember where he worked, but he was sure he had written it down in his file at the office. The District Attorney himself got on the phone and coaxed the lawyer back to the office.

At eight o’clock the next morning, about the time I was leaving Ginger at the motel, Judge Loopus readily agreed to order a subpoena for Malcolm Vince. Twenty minutes later, a Corinth city policeman stopped a fork-lift in a warehouse and informed its operator that a subpoena had just been issued for his appearance in a murder trial over in Ford County.

“What the hell for?” Mr. Vince demanded.

“I’m just following orders,” the policeman said.

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You got two choices, pal,” explained the cop. “Stay here with me till they come get you, or we can leave now and get it over with.” Malcolm’s boss told him to leave and hurry back.

After a ninety-minute delay, the jury was brought in. Mr. John Deere was as spiffy as ever, but the rest were beginning to look tired. It seemed like the trial had been going on for a month.

Miss Callie searched me out and gave me a restrained grin, not one of her spectacular day-brighteners. She was still clutching a small New Testament.

Ernie rose and informed the court that he had no further questions for Lydia Vince. Lucien said he was through with her too. Ernie said he had a rebuttal witness he would like to call out of order. Lucien Wilbanks objected and they haggled over it at the bench. When Lucien learned who the witness was, he became visibly upset. A good sign.

Evidently Judge Loopus was concerned about a bad verdict as well. He ruled against the defense, and a thoroughly bewildered Malcolm Vince was called into the packed courtroom to testify. Ernie had spent less than ten minutes with him in a back room, so he was as unprepared as he was confused.

Ernie started slow, with the basics — name, address, employment, recent family history. Malcolm somewhat reluctantly admitted being married to Lydia and shared her desire to escape from the union. He said he had seen neither his wife nor his child in about a month. His recent employment history was spotty at best, but he tried to send her $50 a week to support the child.

He knew she was unemployed but living in a nice apartment. “You’re not paying for her apartment?” Ernie asked with great suspicion, glancing warily at the jury.

“No sir, I am not.”

“Is her family paying for her apartment?”

“Her family couldn’t pay for one night in a motel,” Malcolm said with no small amount of satisfaction.

Once excused, Lydia had left the courtroom and was probably in the process of fleeing the country. Her act was complete, her performance over, her fee collected. She would never again set foot in Ford County. It’s doubtful her presence would have inhibited Malcolm’s testimony, but her absence gave him free rein to take all the cheap shots he wanted.

“You’re not close to her family?” Ernie asked, a throwaway question.

“Most of them are in jail.”

“I see. She testified yesterday that a couple of months ago she bought a 1968 Ford Mustang. Did you help her with this purchase?”

“I did not.”

“Any idea how this unemployed woman could make this purchase?” Ernie asked, glancing at Danny Padgitt.

“No.”

“Do you know if she’s made any other unusual purchases lately?”

Malcolm looked at the jury, saw some friendly faces, and said, “Yeah, she bought a new color television for herself and a new motorcycle for her brother.”

It appeared as if everyone at the defense table had stopped breathing. The strategy over there had been to sneak Lydia in quietly, let her tell her lies, verify the alibi, get her off the stand, then push the case to a verdict before she could be discredited. She had known very few people in the county and now lived an hour away.

The strategy was unraveling with disastrous results, and the entire courtroom could see and feel the tension between Lucien and his client.

“Do you know a man by the name of Danny Padgitt?” Ernie asked.

“Never heard of him,” Malcolm said.

“Your wife testified yesterday that she had been having an affair with him for almost a year.”

It’s rare to see an unsuspecting husband confronted with such news in such a public manner, but Malcolm seemed to handle it well. “That so?” he said.

“Yes sir. She testified the affair ended about two months ago.”

“Well, sir, I’ll tell you — that’s kinda hard to believe.”

“And why is that?”

Malcolm was squirming, suddenly interested in his feet. “Well, it’s really kinda personal, you know,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Vince, I’m sure it is. But sometimes personal matters have to be discussed in open court. A man is on trial here, charged with murder. This is serious business, and we need to know the truth.”

Malcolm swung his left leg over his right knee and scratched his chin for a few seconds. “Well, sir, it’s like this. We stopped havin’ sex about two years ago. That’s why we’re gettin’ a divorce, you know.”

“Any particular reason you stopped having sex?” Ernie asked as he held his breath.

“Yes sir. She told me she hated sex with me, said it made her sick to her stomach. Said she preferred sex with, you know, other ladies.”

Though he knew what answer was coming, Ernie managed to appear sufficiently shocked. Along with everyone else. He backed away from the podium and huddled with Hank Hooten, just a brief break to allow the jurors to fully absorb the blow. Finally, he said, “No further questions, Your Honor.”

Lucien approached Malcolm Vince as if he were staring at a loaded gun. He picked around the edges for a few minutes. According to Baggy, a good trial lawyer never asks a question unless he knows the answer, especially with a witness as dangerous as Malcolm Vince. Lucien was a good lawyer, and he had no idea what Malcolm might blurt out.

He admitted he had no affection for Lydia, that he couldn’t wait to get through with the divorce, that the last few years with her had not been pleasant, and so on. Typical divorce chatter. He remembered hearing of the Kassellaw murder the next morning. He’d been out the night before and returned home very late. Lucien scored a very weak point by proving that Lydia was indeed alone that night, as she had testified.

But it mattered little. The jurors and the rest of us were still struggling with the enormity of Lydia’s sins.

After a long recess, Lucien rose slowly and addressed the Court. “Your Honor, the defense has no other witnesses. However, my client wishes to testify. I want it stated clearly in the record that he will testify against my advice.”

“Duly noted,” Loopus said.

“A very stupid mistake. Unbelievable,” Baggy whispered loud enough for half the courtroom to hear.

Danny Padgitt jumped up and strutted to the witness stand. His attempt at smiling came across as nothing but a smirk. His attempt at confidence came across as cockiness. He was sworn to tell the truth, but no one expected to hear it.

“Why do you insist on testifying?” was Lucien’s first question, and the courtroom was still and silent.

“Because I want these good people to hear what really happened,” he answered, looking at the jurors.

“Then tell them,” Lucien said, waving his hand at the jury.

His version of events was wonderfully creative because there was no one to rebut him. Lydia was gone, Rhoda was dead. He began by saying that he had spent a few hours with his girlfriend, Lydia Vince, who lived less than half a mile from Rhoda Kassellaw. He knew exactly where Rhoda lived because he had visited her on several occasions. She wanted a serious romance but he’d been too occupied with Lydia. Yes, he and Rhoda had had intimate relations on two occasions. They’d met at the clubs at the state line and spent many hours drinking and dancing. She was hot and loose and known to sleep around.

As insult was added to injury, Ginger lowered her head and covered her ears. It was not missed by the jury.

He didn’t believe Lydia’s husband’s garbage about her homosexual tendencies; the woman enjoyed the intimacy of men. Malcolm was lying so he could win custody of their child.

Padgitt was not a bad witness, but then he was testifying for his life. Every answer was quick, there were too many fake smiles toward the jury box, his narrative was clean and neat and fit too nicely together. I listened to him and watched the jurors and I didn’t see much sympathy. Fargarson, the crippled boy, appeared just as skeptical as he had with every other witness. Mr. John Deere still sat with his arms wrapped across his chest, frowning. Miss Callie had no use for Padgitt, but then she would probably send him to prison for the adultery as quickly as for the murder.

Lucien kept it brief. His client had plenty of rope with which to hang himself, no sense making it easier for the State. When Lucien sat down he glared at the elder Padgitts as if he truly hated them. Then he braced himself for what was about to come.

Cross-examining such a guilty criminal is a prosecutor’s dream. Ernie deliberately walked to the exhibit table and lifted Danny’s bloody shirt. “Exhibit number eight,” he said to the court reporter, holding it up for the jury to see again.

“Where’d you buy this shirt, Mr. Padgitt?”

Danny froze, uncertain as to whether he should deny it was his, or admit ownership, or try and recall where he bought the damned thing.

“You didn’t steal it, did you?” Ernie roared at him.

“I did not.”

“Then answer my question, and please try to remember you’re under oath. Where did you buy this shirt?” As Ernie talked he held the shirt in front of him with his fingertips, as if the blood was still wet and might spot his suit.

“Over in Tupelo, I think. I really don’t remember. It’s just a shirt.”

“How long have you owned it?”

Another pause. How many men can remember when they bought a particular shirt?

“A year or so, maybe. I don’t keep notes on clothes.”

“Neither do I,” Ernie said. “When you were in bed with Lydia that night, had you removed this shirt?”

A very cautious, “Yes.”

“Where was it while the two of you were, uh, having relations?”

“On the floor, I guess.”

Now that it was firmly established that the shirt was his, Ernie was free to slaughter the witness. He pulled out the report from the state crime lab, read it to Danny, and asked him how his own blood came to be stained on the shirt. This led to a discussion about his driving abilities, his tendency to speed, the type of vehicle, and the fact that he was legally drunk when he flipped his truck. With Ernie pounding away, I doubt if a case of driving under the influence had ever sounded so deadly. Not surprisingly, Danny had a thin skin and began to bristle at Ernie’s pointed and sardonic questioning.

On to Rhoda’s bloodstains. If he was in bed with Lydia, with the shirt on the floor, how in the world did Rhoda’s blood find its way from her bedroom to Lydia’s, a half mile away?

It was a conspiracy, Danny said, advancing a new theory and digging a hole he would never get out of. Too much time alone in a jail cell can be dangerous for a guilty criminal. Well, he tried to explain, someone either stained his shirt with Rhoda’s blood, a theory that lightened up the crowd considerably, or, it was more likely that some mysterious person who examined the shirt was simply lying, all in an effort to convict him. Ernie had a field day with both scenarios, but he landed his heaviest blows with a series of brutal questions about why Danny, who certainly had the money to hire the best lawyers around, didn’t hire his own expert to come to court and explain the tainted blood exams to the jury.

Perhaps no expert was found because no expert could reach the ridiculous conclusions Padgitt wanted.

Same for the semen. If Danny had been producing it over at Lydia’s, how could it arrive at Rhoda’s? No problem — it was part of a broad conspiracy to nail him for the crime. The lab reports were fabricated; the police work was faulty. Ernie hammered him until we were all exhausted.

At twelve-thirty, Lucien stood and suggested a break for lunch. “I’m not done!” Ernie yelled across the courtroom. He wanted to finish the annihilation before Lucien could get his hands on his client and try to rehabilitate him, a task that seemed impossible. Padgitt was on the ropes, battered and gasping for air, and Ernie was not going to a neutral corner.

“Continue,” Judge Loopus said, and Ernie suddenly shouted at Padgitt, “What did you do with the knife?”

The question startled everyone, especially the witness, who jerked backward and quickly said, “I, uh—” then went silent.

“You what! Come on, Mr. Padgitt, tell us what you did with the knife, the murder weapon.”

Danny shook his head fiercely and looked too scared to speak. “What knife?” he managed to say. He could not have looked guiltier if the knife had dropped out of his pocket onto the floor.

“The knife you used on Rhoda Kassellaw.”

“It wasn’t me.”

Like a slow and cruel executioner, Ernie took a long pause and huddled with Hank Hooten again. He then picked up the autopsy report and asked Danny if he remembered the testimony of the first pathologist. Was his report also a part of this conspiracy? Danny wasn’t sure how to answer. All of the evidence was being used against him, so, yes, he figured it must be bogus as well.

And the piece of his skin found under her fingernail, that was part of the conspiracy? And his own semen? And on and on; Ernie hammered away. Occasionally, Lucien would glance over his shoulder at Danny’s father with a look that said, “I told you so.”

Danny’s presence on the stand allowed Ernie to once more trot out all the evidence, and the impact was devastating. His weak protests that everything was tainted by a conspiracy sounded ridiculous, even laughable. Watching him get thoroughly decimated before the jury was quite gratifying. The good guys were winning. The jury seemed primed to pull out rifles and form a firing squad.

Ernie tossed his legal pad on his table and appeared ready for lunch, finally. He jammed both hands into his front pockets, glared at the witness, and said, “Under oath, you’re telling this jury you didn’t rape and murder Rhoda Kassellaw?”

“I didn’t do it.”

“You didn’t follow her home from the state line that Saturday night?”

“No.”

“You didn’t sneak in her patio door?”

“No.”

“And hide in her closet until she put her children to bed?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t attack her when she came in to put on her night clothes?”

“No.”

Lucien stood and said angrily, “Objection, Your Honor, Mr. Gaddis is testifying here.”

“Overruled!” Loopus snapped at the defense table. The Judge wanted a fair trial. To counteract all the lying done by the defense, the prosecution was being allowed considerable freedom in describing the murder scene.

“You didn’t blindfold her with a scarf?”

Padgitt was continually shaking his head as the narrative approached its climax.

“And cut off her panties with your knife?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t rape her in her own bed, with her two little children asleep not far away?”

“I did not.”

“And you didn’t wake them with your noise?”

“No.”

Ernie walked as close to the witness chair as the Judge would allow, and he looked sadly at his jury. Then he turned to Danny and said, “Michael and Teresa ran to check on their mother, didn’t they, Mr. Padgitt?”

“I don’t know.”

“And they found you on top of her, didn’t they?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“Rhoda heard their voices, didn’t she? Did they yell at you, beg you to get off?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“And Rhoda did what any mother would do — she yelled for them to run, didn’t she, Mr. Padgitt?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t there!” Ernie bellowed, and the walls seemed to shake. “Your shirt was there, your footprints were there, you left your semen there! You think this jury is stupid, Mr. Padgitt?”

The witness kept shaking his head. Ernie walked slowly to his chair and pulled it from under the table. As he was about to sit, he said, “You’re a rapist. You’re a murderer. And you’re a liar, aren’t you, Mr. Padgitt?”

Lucien was up and yelling. “Objection, Your Honor. This is enough.”

“Sustained. Any further questions, Mr. Gaddis?”

“No, Your Honor, the State is finished with this witness.”

“Any redirect, Mr. Wilbanks?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“The witness may step down.” Danny slowly got to his feet. Long gone was the smirk, the swagger. His face was red with anger and wet with sweat.

As he was about to step out of the witness box and return to the defense table, he suddenly turned to the jury and said something that stunned the courtroom. His face wrinkled into pure hatred, and he jabbed his right index finger into the air. “You convict me,” he said, “and I’ll get every damned one of you.”

“Bailiff!” Judge Loopus said as he grabbed for his gavel. “That’s enough, Mr. Padgitt.”

“Every damned one of you!” Danny repeated, louder. Ernie jumped to his feet, but could think of nothing to say. And why should he? The defendant was strangling himself. Lucien was on his feet, equally uncertain about what to do. Two deputies raced forward and shoved Padgitt toward the defense table. As he walked away he glared at the jurors as if he might just throw a grenade right then.

When things settled, I realized my heart was pounding with excitement. Even Baggy was too stunned to speak.

“Let’s break for lunch,” His Honor said, and we fled the courtroom. I was no longer hungry. I felt like racing to my apartment and taking a shower.

Chapter 18

The trial resumed at 3 P.M. All the jurors were present; the Padgitts hadn’t knocked one off during lunch. Miss Callie gave me a grin, but her heart was not in it.

Judge Loopus explained to the jury that it was now time for the closing arguments, after which he would read to them his formal instructions, and they should have the case to decide in a couple of hours or so. They listened carefully, but I’m sure they were still reeling from the shock of being so flagrantly intimidated. The entire town was reeling. The jurors were a sampling of us, the rest of the community, and to threaten them was to do the same to everyone.

Ernie went first, and within minutes the bloody shirt was back in play. He was careful, though, not to overdo it. The jurors understood. They knew the evidence well.

The District Attorney was thorough but surprisingly brief. As he made his last appeal for a verdict of guilty, we watched the faces of the jurors. I saw no sympathy for the defendant. Fargarson, the crippled boy, was actually nodding as he followed along with Ernie. Mr. John Deere had uncrossed his arms and was listening to every word.

Lucien was even briefer, but then he had far less to work with. He began by addressing his client’s final words to the jury. He apologized for his behavior. He blamed it on the pressure of the moment. Imagine, he asked the jurors, being twenty-four years old and facing either life in prison or, worse, the gas chamber. The stress on his young client — he always referred to him as “Danny” as if he was an innocent little boy — was so enormous that he was concerned about his mental stability.

Since he could not pursue the goofy conspiracy theory advanced by his client, and since he knew better than to dwell on the evidence, he spent half an hour or so praising the heroes who’d written our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The way Lucien interpreted the presumption of innocence and the requirement that the State prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt made me wonder how any criminal ever got convicted.

The State had the chance for a rebuttal; the defense did not. So Ernie got the last word. He ignored the evidence and did not mention the defendant, but chose instead to talk about Rhoda. Her youth and beauty, her simple life out in Beech Hill, the death of her husband, and the challenge of raising two small children alone.

This was very effective, and the jurors were absorbing every word. “Let’s not forget about her,” was Ernie’s refrain. A polished orator, he saved the best for last.

“And let’s not forget about her children,” he said as he looked into the eyes of the jurors. “They were there when she died. What they saw was so horrible that they will be forever scarred. They have a voice here in this courtroom, and their voice belongs to you.”

Judge Loopus read his instructions to the jury, then sent them back to begin their deliberations. It was after 5 P.M., a time when the shops around the square were closed and the merchants and their customers were long gone. Traffic was normally light, parking was easy.

But not when a jury is out!

Much of the crowd lingered on the courthouse lawn, smoking, gossiping, predicting how long a verdict would take. Others crowded into the cafés for a late coffee or an early dinner. Ginger followed me to my office where we sat on the balcony and watched the activity around the courthouse. She was emotionally wasted and wanted to do nothing but get out of Ford County.

“How well do you know Hank Hooten?” she asked at one point.

“Never met him. Why?”

“He caught me during lunch, said he knew Rhoda well, said he knew for a fact that she was not sleeping around, especially not with Danny Padgitt. I told him I did not believe for an instant that she was seeing that scumbag.”

“Did he say he dated her?” I asked.

“He wouldn’t say, but I got the impression he did. When we were going through her things, a week or so after the funeral, I found his name and phone number in her address book.”

“You’ve met Baggy,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Well, Baggy’s been around forever, thinks he knows it all. He told me Monday when the trial started that Rhoda and Hank were seeing each other. He said Hank’s been through a couple of wives, likes to be known as a ladies’ man.”

“So he’s not married?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll ask Baggy.”

“I guess I should feel better knowing my sister was sleeping with a lawyer.”

“Why would that make you feel better?”

“I don’t know.”

She’d kicked off her heels and her short skirt was even higher up her thighs. I began to rub them, and my thoughts drifted away from the trial.

But only for a moment. There was a commotion around the front door of the courthouse, and I heard someone yell something about a “verdict.”

After deliberating for less than one hour, the jury was ready. When the lawyers and spectators were in place, Judge Loopus told a bailiff, “Bring ’em in.”

“Guilty as hell,” Baggy whispered to me as the door opened and Fargarson came limping out first. “Quick verdicts are always guilty.”

For the record, Baggy had predicted a hung jury, but I didn’t remind him of that, not then anyway.

The foreman handed a folded sheet of paper to the bailiff, who then gave it to the Judge. Loopus examined it for a long time, then leaned down close to his microphone. “Would the defendant please rise,” he said. Both Padgitt and Lucien stood, slowly and awkwardly, as if the firing squad was taking aim.

Judge Loopus read, “As to count one, the charge of rape, we the jury find the defendant, Danny Padgitt, guilty. As to count two, the charge of capital murder, we the jury find the defendant, Danny Padgitt, guilty.”

Lucien didn’t flinch and Padgitt tried not to. He looked at the jurors with as much venom as he could convey, but he was getting more of it in return.

“You may be seated,” His Honor said, then turned to the jury. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your service so far. This completes the guilt-or-innocence phase of the trial. Now we move to the capital phase in which you will be asked to decide whether this defendant gets a death sentence or life in prison. You will now return to your hotel, and we will recess until nine in the morning. Thank you and good night.”

It was over so quickly that most of the spectators didn’t move for a moment. They led Padgitt out, in handcuffs this time, and his family seemed completely bewildered. Lucien had no time to chat with them.

Baggy and I went to the office where he began typing with a fury. The deadline was days away, but we wanted to capture the moment. Typically, though, he faded after half an hour when the sour mash called. It was almost dark when Ginger returned, in tight jeans, tight shirt, hair down, a look that said “Take me somewhere.”

We stopped at Quincy’s again, where I bought another six-pack for the road, and with the top down and the warm muggy air blowing by us, we headed for Memphis, ninety minutes away.

She said little, and I didn’t poke around. She had been forced by her family to attend the trial. She hadn’t asked for this nightmare. Luckily, she’d found me for a little fun.

I’ll never forget that night. Racing the dark empty backroads, drinking a cold beer, holding hands with a beautiful lady who’d come looking for me, one I’d already slept with and was sure to do so again.

Our sweet little romance had but a few hours left. I could almost count them. Baggy thought the penalty phase would take less than a day, so the trial would end tomorrow, Friday. Ginger couldn’t wait to leave Clanton and shake the dust off her shoes, and of course there was no way I could leave with her. I’d checked an atlas — Springfield, Missouri, was far away, at least a six-hour drive. Commuting would be difficult, though I’d certainly try if she wanted me to.

But something told me Ginger would vanish from my life as quickly as she had appeared. I was sure she had a boyfriend or two back home, so I wouldn’t be welcome. And if she saw me in Springfield she would be reminded of Ford County and its horrible memories.

I squeezed her hand and vowed to make the most of those last few hours.

In Memphis, we headed for the tall buildings by the river. The most famous restaurant in town was a rib place called the Rendezvous, a landmark owned by a family of Greeks. Almost all of the good food in Memphis was cooked by either Greeks or Italians.

Downtown Memphis in 1970 was not a safe place. I parked in a garage and we hustled across an alley to the door of the Rendezvous. Smoke from its pits boiled from vents and hung like thick fog among the buildings. It was the most delicious smell I had ever encountered, and I, like most other patrons, was famished by the time we walked down a flight of stairs and entered the restaurant.

Thursdays were slow. We waited five minutes, and when they called my name we followed a waiter as he zigzagged around tables, through smaller rooms, deeper into the caverns. He winked at me and gave us a table for two in a dark corner. We ordered ribs and beer and groped each other while we waited.

The guilty verdict was a huge relief. Anything else would’ve been a civic disaster, and Ginger would’ve fled town and never looked back. She would flee tomorrow, but I had her for the moment. We drank to the verdict. For Ginger it meant justice had indeed prevailed. For me, it meant that too, but it also gave us another night together.

She ate little, which allowed me to finish my slab of ribs and go to work on hers. I told her about Miss Callie and the lunches on her porch, about her remarkable children, and her background. Ginger said she adored Miss Callie, same as she adored the other eleven.

Such admiration would not last long.

As I had expected, my father was holed up in the attic, which is what he had always called his office. It was really the top floor of a Victorian tower at the front corner of our shabby and ill-maintained home in midtown Memphis. Ginger wanted to see it, and in the darkness it looked much more imposing than in daylight. It was in a wonderful, shady old neighborhood filled with declining homes owned by declining families surviving gamely in genteel poverty.

“What does he do up there?” she asked. We were sitting in my car, with the engine off, at the curb. Mrs. Duckworth’s ancient schnauzer was barking at us four doors down.

“I told you already. He trades stocks and bonds.”

“At night?”

“He’s doing market research. He never comes out.”

“And he loses money?”

“He certainly doesn’t make any.”

“Are we going to say hello?”

“No. It’ll just piss him off.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Three, four months ago.” Visiting with my father was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment. I was consumed with lust and anxious to get started. We drove out of the city, into the suburbs, and found a Holiday Inn next to the interstate.

Chapter 19

Friday morning, in the hallway outside the courtroom, Esau Ruffin found me and had a pleasant surprise. Three of his sons, Al, Max, and Bobby (Alberto, Massimo, and Roberto), were with him, anxious to say hello to me. I had spoken to all three a month earlier when I was doing the feature on Miss Callie and her children. We shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. They politely thanked me for my friendship with their mother, and for the kind words I’d written about their family. They were as soft-spoken, pleasant, and as articulate as Miss Callie.

They had arrived late the night before to give her moral support. Esau had talked to her once all week — each juror had been given one phone call — and she was holding up well but worried about her blood pressure.

We chatted for a moment as the crowd pushed toward the courtroom and walked in together. They sat directly behind me. A few moments later when Miss Callie took her seat, she looked at me and saw her three sons. The smile was like a bolt of lightning. The fatigue around her eyes vanished immediately.

During the trial, I had seen in her face a certain amount of pride. She was sitting where no black person had ever sat, shoulder to shoulder with fellow citizens, judging a white person for the first time in Ford County. I’d also had hints of the anxiety that comes with venturing into untested waters.

Now that her sons were there to watch, pride filled her face, and there was no evidence of fear. She sat a bit straighter, and though she’d missed nothing in the courtroom so far, her eyes darted everywhere, anxious to capture what was coming and finish her task.

Judge Loopus explained to the jurors that in the penalty phase the State would offer evidence of aggravating circumstances in support of its request for the death penalty. The defense would offer mitigating proof. He did not expect it to take long. It was Friday; the trial had already lasted forever; the jurors and everybody else in Clanton wanted Padgitt shipped off so life could return to normal.

Ernie Gaddis correctly gauged the mood in the courtroom. He thanked the jurors for their proper verdict of guilty and confessed that he felt no further testimony was necessary. The crime was so heinous that nothing more aggravating could be added to it. He asked the jurors to remember the graphic photos of Rhoda in the swing on Mr. Deece’s front porch, and the pathologist’s testimony about her vicious wounds and how she died. And her children, please don’t forget her children.

As if anybody could.

He delivered an impassioned plea for the death penalty. He gave a brief history of why we, as good solid Americans, believed so strongly in it. He explained why it was a deterrent and a punishment. He quoted Scripture.

In almost thirty years of prosecuting crimes in six counties, he had never seen a case that so mightily begged for the death penalty. Watching the faces of the jurors, I was convinced he was about to get what he asked for.

He wrapped it up by reminding the jurors that each had been selected on Monday after promising that they could follow the law. He read them the law enacting the death penalty. “The State of Mississippi has proven its case,” he said, closing the thick green law book. “You have found Danny Padgitt guilty of rape and murder. The law now calls for the death penalty. You are duty bound to deliver it.”

Ernie’s spellbinding performance lasted for fifty-one minutes — I was trying to record everything — and when he finished I knew the jury would hang Padgitt not once but twice.

According to Baggy, in a capital case the defendant, after protesting his innocence throughout the trial and being nailed by the jury, usually took the stand and said he was very sorry for whatever crime he’d been denying all week. “They beg and cry,” Baggy had said. “It’s quite a show.”

But Padgitt’s disaster the day before precluded him from getting near the jury. Lucien called to the witness stand his mother, Lettie Padgitt. She was a fiftyish woman with pleasant features and short graying hair, and she wore a black dress as if she was already mourning the death of her son. Led by Lucien, she unsteadily began testimony that seemed scripted down to every pause in her cadence. There was Danny the little boy, fishing every day after school, breaking his leg falling from a tree house, and winning the spelling bee in the fourth grade. He was never any trouble in those days, none at all. In fact, Danny had caused no trouble at all growing up, a real joy. His two older brothers were always into something, but not Danny.

The testimony was so silly and self-serving that it bordered on ridiculous. But there were three mothers on the jury — Miss Callie, Mrs. Barbara Baldwin, and Maxine Root — and Lucien was aiming for one of them. He needed just one.

Not surprisingly, Mrs. Padgitt was soon in tears. She would never believe that her son had committed such a terrible crime, but if the jury felt so, then she would try and accept it. But why take him away? Why kill her little boy? What would the world gain if he were put to death?

Her pain was real. Her emotions were raw and difficult to watch, to sit through. Any human being would feel sympathy for a mother about to lose a child. She finally collapsed and Lucien left her sobbing on the witness stand. What began as a stilted performance ended in a gut-wrenching plea that forced most of the jurors to lower their eyes and study the floor.

Lucien said he had no other witnesses. He and Ernie made brief final summations, and by 11 A.M. the jury once again had the case.

Ginger disappeared into the crowd. I went to the office and waited, and when she didn’t show I walked across the square to Harry Rex’s office. He sent his secretary out for sandwiches and we ate in his cluttered conference room. Like most lawyers in Clanton, he’d spent the entire week in the courtroom watching a case that meant nothing to him financially.

“Is your gal gonna stick?” he asked with a mouth full of turkey and Swiss.

“Miss Callie?” I asked.

“Yeah. She okay with the gas chamber?”

“I have no idea. We haven’t discussed it.”

“She’s got us worried, along with that damned crippled boy.”

Harry Rex had quietly involved himself in the case in such a way that one would think he was working for Ernie Gaddis and the State. But he wasn’t the only lawyer in town secretly abetting the prosecution.

“It took them less than sixty minutes to find him guilty,” I said. “Isn’t that a good sign?”

“Maybe, but jurors do strange things when it’s time to sign a death warrant.”

“So? Then he’ll get life. From what I hear about Parchman, life there would be worse than the gas chamber.”

“Life ain’t life, Willie,” he said, wiping his face with a paper towel.

I put my sandwich down while he took another bite.

“What is life?” I asked.

“Ten years, maybe less.”

I tried to understand this. “You mean a life sentence in Mississippi is ten years?”

“You got it. After ten years, less with good time, a murderer sent to prison for life is eligible for parole. Insane, don’t you think?”

“But why—”

“Don’t try and understand it, Willie, it’s just the law. Been on the books for fifty years. And what’s worse is the jury doesn’t know it. Can’t tell ’em. Want some coleslaw?”

I shook my head.

“Our distinguished Supreme Court has said that the jury, if it knows how light a life sentence really is, might be more inclined to give the death penalty. Thus, it’s unfair to the defendant.”

“Life is ten years,” I mumbled to myself. In Mississippi, the liquor stores are locked up on Election Day, as if the voters would otherwise get drunk and elect the wrong people. Another unbelievable law.

“You got it,” Harry Rex said, then finished his sandwich with one huge bite. He pulled an envelope off a shelf, opened it, then slid a large black-and-white photo across to me. “Busted, buddy,” he said with a laugh.

It was a photo of me, making my quick exit from Ginger’s room at the motel on Thursday morning. I looked tired, hungover, guilty of something, but also oddly satisfied.

“Who took this?” I asked.

“One of my boys. He was working on a divorce case, saw your little Communist car pull in that night, decided to have some fun.”

“He wasn’t the only one.”

“She’s a hot one. He tried to shoot through the curtains, but couldn’t get an angle.”

“Shall I autograph it for you?”

“Just keep it.”

After three hours of deliberation, the jury slipped a note to Judge Loopus. They were deadlocked and making little progress. He called things to order, and we raced across the street.

If the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict for the death penalty, then, by law, the judge imposed a life sentence.

Fear pervaded the crowd as we waited for the jurors. Something was going wrong back there. Had the Padgitts finally found their mark?

Miss Callie was stonefaced, a look I’d never seen. Mrs. Barbara Baldwin had obviously been crying. Several of the men gave the impression that their fistfight had just been broken up, and that they were anxious to resume the brawl.

The foreman stood and very nervously explained to His Honor that the jury was divided and had made absolutely no progress in the last hour. He was not optimistic about a unanimous verdict, and all were ready to go home.

Judge Loopus then asked each juror if he or she thought a unanimous verdict could be reached. They unanimously said no.

I could feel the anger rise among the crowd. People were fidgeting and whispering, and this certainly didn’t help the jurors.

Judge Loopus then delivered what Baggy later described as the “dynamite charge,” an off-the-cuff lecture about following the law and keeping promises made during jury selection. It was a stern and lengthy admonishment, loaded with no small measure of desperation.

It didn’t work. Two hours later, a stunned courtroom listened as Judge Loopus quizzed the jurors again, with the same result. He grudgingly thanked them and sent them home.

When they were gone, he called Danny Padgitt forward, and on the record, gave him a tongue lashing that made my skin crawl. He called him a rapist, murderer, coward, liar, and worst of all a thief for having taken from two small children the only parent they had. It was a scalding, withering assault. I tried to write it word for word, but it was so compelling I had to stop and listen. A rabid street preacher could not have heaped such abuse upon sin.

If he had the power, he would sentence him to death, and a rapid and painful one at that.

But the law was the law, and he had to follow it. He sentenced him to life and ordered Sheriff Coley to immediately transport him to the state penitentiary at Parchman. Coley slapped handcuffs on him and he was gone.

Loopus banged his gavel and bolted from the courtroom. A fight erupted in the back of the courtroom when one of Danny’s uncles bumped into Doc Crull, a local barber and noted hothead. It quickly drew a crowd and several others cursed the Padgitts and told them to get back to their island. “Go back to your swamp!” someone kept yelling. Deputies broke it up, and the Padgitts left the courtroom.

The crowd lingered for a while, as if the trial weren’t finished, as if justice had not been completely served. There was anger and cursing, and I got a whiff of how lynch mobs got organized.

Ginger didn’t show. She said she would stop by the office after she checked out and say good-bye, but she obviously changed her mind. I could see her speeding through the night, crying and cursing and counting the miles until she was out of Mississippi. Who could blame her?

Our three-day fling came to an abrupt end the way both of us expected but neither had admitted. I could not imagine our paths ever crossing again, and if they did it would be another round or two in the sack before we got distracted with life and moved on. She would go through many men before she found one who would last. I sat on the porch outside my office and waited for her to park below, knowing she was probably in Arkansas by then. We’d started the day in bed together, anxious to return to court to watch her sister’s murderer get his death sentence.

In the heat of the moment, I began writing an editorial about the verdict. It would be a scathing attack on the criminal laws of the State. It would be honest and heartfelt, and it would also play well with the audience.

Esau called and interrupted me. He was at the hospital with Miss Callie and asked me to hurry down.

She had fainted as she was getting into the car outside the courthouse. Esau and the three sons had rushed her in, and wisely so. Her blood pressure was dangerously high, and the doctor was worried about a stroke. After a couple of hours, though, she had stabilized and her outlook was better. I held her hand briefly, told her I was very proud of her, and so on. What I really wanted was the inside story on what happened back in the jury room.

It was a story I would never get.

I drank coffee with Al, Max, Bobby, and Esau until midnight in the hospital canteen. She had not said a word about the jury’s deliberations.

We talked about them and their brothers and sisters, and their children and careers and life growing up in Clanton. The stories poured forth, and I almost pulled out a pen and notepad.

Chapter 20

For the first six months I lived in Clanton, I usually fled the place on weekends. There was so little to do. Other than an occasional goat roasting at Harry Rex’s, and one dreadful cocktail party, which I left twenty minutes after I arrived, there had been no socializing. Virtually all the young people my age were married, and their idea of a blowout was an ice cream “supper” on Saturday night at one of the innumerable churches in town. Most of those who went away to college never came back.

Out of boredom, I occasionally spent the weekends in Memphis, usually at the apartment of a friend, almost never at home. I made several trips to New Orleans where an old girlfriend from high school was living and enjoying the party life. But the Times was mine for the near future anyway. I was a resident of Clanton. I had to come to grips with life in a small town, dull weekends and all. The office became my refuge.

I went there on Saturday after the verdict, around noon. I had several stories about the trial I wanted to write, plus my editorial was far from finished. There were seven letters lying on the floor, just inside the front door. This had been a tradition at the Times for many years. On those rare occasions when Spot wrote something that prompted a reaction from a reader, more often than not the letter to the editor was hand-delivered and slid under the front door.

Four were signed, three were anonymous. Two were typed, the rest handwritten, one I could hardly read. All seven expressed outrage that Danny Padgitt had escaped with his life. I was not surprised by the town’s thirst for blood. I was also dismayed that six of the seven made some reference to Miss Callie. The first one was typed and unsigned. It read:

Mrs. Edith Caravelle from Beech Hill, in a beautiful hand, wrote:

Another anonymous author wrote, on perfumed pink stationery with flowers around the border:

As the editor (and owner and publisher) I had complete control over what was printed in the Times. I could edit the letters, ignore them, pick and choose the ones I wanted to print. On controversial issues and events, letters to the editor stoked the fires and got folks upset. And they sold newspapers, because that’s the only place they could be printed. They were absolutely free and allowed anyone the forum to sound off.

As I read the first wave, I decided that I would print nothing that would harm Miss Callie. And I became angry that people were assuming she had somehow hung the jury and prevented a death sentence.

Why was the town so anxious to blame an unpopular verdict on the only black on the jury? And with no proof whatsover? I vowed to find out what really happened in the jury room, and I immediately thought of Harry Rex. Baggy, of course, would stumble in Monday morning with his customary hangover and pretend to know exactly how the jury split. Odds were he’d be wrong. If anyone could get to the truth, it would be Harry Rex.

Wiley Meek stopped by with the town gossip. Folks were hot in the coffee shops. Padgitt was a dirty word. Lucien Wilbanks was despised, but that was nothing new. Sheriff Coley might as well retire; he wouldn’t get fifty votes. Two opponents were already making noise and the election was half a year away.

One story had eleven voting for the gas chamber and one holding out. “Probably the nigger,” someone had said, echoing the prevailing sentiment at the Tea Shoppe around seven that morning. A deputy guarding the jury room allegedly whispered to someone somebody knew that it was a six-six split, but this was widely discounted around nine o’clock at the coffee shops. There were two primary theories roaring around the square that morning: first, Miss Callie had screwed things up simply because she was black; second, the Padgitts had dropped some cash on two or three of the jurors, same as they had done on that “lyin’ bitch,” Lydia Vince.

Wiley thought the second had more supporters than the first, though many seemed perfectly willing to believe anything. I was learning that coffee shop gossip was useless.

Late Saturday afternoon, I crossed the tracks and drove slowly through Lowtown. The streets were alive with kids on bikes, pickup basketball games, crowded porches, music from the open doors of the honky-tonks, laughter from the men in front of the stores. Everyone was outside, sort of limbering up for the rigors of Saturday night. People waved and stared, more amused at my little car than my pale skin.

There was a crowd on Miss Callie’s porch. Al, Max, and Bobby were there along with Reverend Thurston Small and another well-dressed deacon from the church. Esau was in the house tending to his wife. She had been discharged that morning with strict instructions to stay in bed for three days and not lift a finger. Max led me back to her bedroom.

She was sitting in bed, propped up with pillows, reading the Bible. She flashed a smile when she saw me, and said, “Mr. Traynor, so nice of you to come. Please sit. Esau, fetch Mr. Traynor some tea.” Esau, as always, jumped when she gave orders.

I sat in a stiff wooden chair close to her bed. She did not appear to be the least bit ill to me. “I’m really concerned about lunch next Thursday,” I began, and we laughed.

“I’m cooking,” she said.

“No you’re not. I have a better idea. I’ll bring the food.”

“Why does that worry me?”

“I’ll buy it somewhere. Something a bit lighter, like a sandwich.”

“A sandwich will be fine,” she said, patting my knee. “My tomatoes will be ready shortly.”

She stopped patting and smiling and looked away for a moment. “We didn’t do a good job, did we, Mr. Traynor?” Her words were filled with both sadness and frustration.

“It’s not a popular verdict,” I said.

“It’s not what I wanted,” she said.

And that was as close to the deliberations as she would get for many years. Esau told me later that the other eleven jurors had sworn on a Bible not to talk about their decision. Miss Callie wouldn’t swear on the Bible, but she gave them her word that she would guard their secrets.

I left her there to rest and went to the porch, where I spent several hours listening to her sons and their guests talk about life. I sat in a corner, sipping tea, trying to keep myself out of their conversations. At times I would drift away and absorb the sounds of Lowtown on a Saturday night.

The reverend and the deacon left, leaving only Ruffins on the porch. The talk eventually came around to the trial, and the verdict, and how was it playing on the other side of the tracks?

“Did he really threaten the jury?” Max asked me. I told the story, with Esau adding emphasis when needed. They were as shocked as those of us who’d seen it.

“Thank God he’s locked up for life,” Bobby said, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them the truth. They were extremely proud of their mother, as they had been forever.

I was tired of the trial. I left around nine, drove slowly and aimlessly back through Lowtown, alone and missing Ginger.

Clanton seethed over the verdict for days. We received eighteen letters to the editor, six of which I ran in the next edition. Half of it was devoted to the trial, and this of course stirred things up even worse.

As the summer dragged on, I was beginning to think the town would never stop talking about Danny Padgitt and Rhoda Kassellaw.

Then suddenly, the two became history. Instantly, in the blink of an eye, literally in less than twenty-four hours, the trial was forgotten.

Clanton, both sides of the tracks, had something much more important to fret over.