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 cafes, 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 cither. 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 clown 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:
 
   Dear Editor:
   I’m sorry you’re so worked up over the redwoods, which we don’t have in Mississippi. If Congress starts messing with pulpwood, would you please let us know?
 
   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 greeted 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. Ho 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. Gould 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 pecking 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. Hut 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:

   When Calia Harris was forced to drop out of school in the tenth grade, she promised herself her children would be able to finish not only high school but college as well. The year was 1926, and Calia, or Callie as she prefers to be called, was, at the age of fifteen, the oldest of four children. Education became a luxury when her father died of tuberculosis. Callie worked for the DeFarnette family until 1929, when she married Esau Ruffin, a carpenter and part-time preacher. They rented a small duplex in Lowtown for $15 a month and began saving every penny. They would need all they could save.
   In 1931, Alberto was born.

   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:


   Dear Mr. Traynor:
   I enjoyed your profile on the Ruffin family, a most remarkable clan. I had heard of their achievements, but your story provided great insight. I admire your courage.
   I hope you continue in this more positive vein.
   Sincerely,

Lucien Wilbanks

   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 potatoes 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 goodbye 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 reelection. 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 and 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 tided 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.