Chapter 27

   At noon on the Fourth of July the temperature was 101 degrees and the humidity felt even higher. The parade was led by the Mayor, even though he was not yet running for anything. State and local elections were in 1971. The presidential race was in 1972. Judicial elections were in 1973. Municipal elections were in 1974. Mississippians loved voting almost as much as football.
   The Mayor sat on the rear seat of a 1962 Corvette and threw candy to the children packed along the sidewalks around the square. Behind him were two high school bands, Clanton’s and Karaway’s, the Boy Scouts, Shriners on mini-bikes, a new fire truck, a dozen floats, a posse on horseback, veterans from every war that century, a collection of shiny new cars from the Ford dealer, and three restored John Deere tractors. Juror number eight, Mr. Mo Teale, drove one. The rear was protected by a string of city and county police cars, all polished to perfection.
   I watched the parade from the third-floor balcony of the Security Bank. Stan Atcavage threw an annual party up there. Since I now owed the bank a sizable sum, I was invited to sip lemonade and watch the festivities.
   For a reason no one could remember, the Rotarians were in charge of the speeches. They had parked a long flatbed trailer next to the Confederate sentry and decorated it with bales of hay and red, white, and blue bunting. When the parade was over, the throng moved tightly around the trailer and waited anxiously. An old-fashioned courthouse hanging couldn’t have drawn a more expectant audience.
   Mr. Mervin Beets, president of the Rotary club, stepped to the microphone and welcomed everyone. Prayer was required for any public event in Clanton, and in the new spirit of desegregation he had invited the Reverand Thurston Small, Miss Callie’s minister, to properly get things going. According to Stan, there were noticeably more blacks downtown that year.
   With such a crowd, Reverend Small could not be brief. He asked the Lord to bless everyone and everything at least twice. Loudspeakers were hanging from poles all around the courthouse, and his voice echoed throughout downtown.
   The first candidate was Timmy Joe Bullock, a terrified young man from Beat Four who wanted to serve as a constable. He walked across the flatbed trailer as if it were a gangplank, and when he stood behind the mike and looked at the crowd he almost fainted. He managed to utter his name, then reached into a pocket where he found his speech. He was not much of a reader, but in ten very long minutes managed to comment on the rise in crime, the recent murder trial, and the sniper. He didn’t like murderers and he was especially opposed to snipers. He would work to protect us from both.
   Applause was light when he finished. But at least he showed up. There were twenty-two candidates for constable in the five districts, but only seven had the courage to face the crowd. When we finally finished with the constables and the Justices of the Peace, Woody Gates and the Country Boys played a few bluegrass tunes and the crowd appreciated the break.
   At various places on the courthouse lawn, food and refreshments were being served. The Lions Club was giving away slices of cold watermelon. The ladies of the garden club were selling homemade ice cream. The Jaycees were barbecuing ribs. The crowd huddled under the ancient oak trees and hid from the sun.
   Mackey Don Coley had entered the race for Sheriff in late May. He had three opponents, the most popular of whom was a Clanton city policeman named T. R. Meredith. When Mr. Beets announced that it was time for the Sheriff candidates, the voters left the shade and swarmed around the trailer.
   Freck Oswald was running for the fourth time. In the prior three he had finished dead last; he appeared headed for the bottom again but seemed to enjoy the fun of it. He didn’t like President Nixon and said harsh things about his foreign policy, especially relations with China. The crowd listened but appeared to be a bit confused.
   Tryce McNatt was running for the second time. He began his remarks by saying, “I really don’t give a damn about China.” This was humorous but also stupid. Swearing in public, in the presence of ladies, would cost him many votes. Tryce was upset at the way criminals were being coddled by the system. He was opposed to any effort to build a new jail in Ford County—a waste of taxpayer money! He wanted harsh sentences and more prisons, even chain gangs and forced labor.
   I had heard nothing about a new jail.
   Because of the Kassellaw murder and the Hank Hooten rampage, violent crime was now out of control in Ford County, according to Tryce. We needed a new Sheriff, one who chased criminals, not befriended them. “Let’s clean up the county!” was his refrain. The crowd was with him.
   T. R. Meredith was a thirty-year veteran of law enforcement. He was an awful speaker but he was related to half the county, according to Stan. Stan knew about such things; he was related to the other half. “Meredith’ll win by a thousand votes in the runoff,” he predicted. This caused quite an argument among the other guests.
   Mackey Don went last. He had been the Sheriff since 1943, and wanted just one more term. “He’s been saying that for twenty years,” Stan said. Coley rambled on about his experience, his knowledge of the county and its people. When he finished, the applause was polite but certainly not encouraging.
   Two gentlemen were running for the office of tax collector, no doubt the least popular position in the county. As they spoke, the crowd drifted away again and headed for the ice cream and watermelons. I walked down to Harry Rex’s office, where another party was in progress on the sidewalk.
   The speeches continued throughout the afternoon. It was the summer of 1971, and by then at least fifty thousand young Americans had been killed in Vietnam. A similar gathering of people in any other part of the country would have turned into a virulent antiwar rally. The politicians would have been heckled off the stage. Flags and draft cards would’ve been burned.
   But Vietnam was never mentioned that Fourth of July.
   I’d had great fun at Syracuse demonstrating on campus and marching in the streets, but such activity was unheard of in the Deep South. It was a war; therefore real patriots were supportive. We were stopping Communism; the hippies and radicals and peaceniks up North and in California were simply afraid to fight.
   I bought a dish of strawberry ice cream from the garden ladies, and as I strolled around the courthouse I heard a commotion. From the third-floor window of the Bar Room, a prankster had dropped down an effigy of Baggy. The stuffed figure was hanging with its hands above its head—just like the real Baggy—and across its chest was a sign that said “SUGGS.” And to make sure everyone recognized the butt of the joke, an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s protruded from each pants pocket.
   I had not seen Baggy that day, nor would I. Later, he claimed to know nothing about the incident. Not surprisingly, Wiley managed to take numerous photos of the effigy.
   “Theo’s here!” someone yelled, and this excited the crowd. Theo Morton was our longtime state senator. His district covered parts of four counties, and though he lived in Baldwin his wife was from Clanton. He owned two nursing homes and a cemetery, and he had the distinction of having survived three airplane crashes. He was no longer a pilot. Theo was colorful—blunt, sarcastic, hilarious, completely unpredictable on the stump. His opponent was a young man who’d just finished law school and was rumored to be grooming himself for Governor. Warren was his name, and Warren made the mistake of attacking Theo over some suspicious legislation that had been “sneaked through” the last session and increased the state’s support for nursing home patients.
   It was a bristling assault. I was standing in the crowd, watching Warren blast away, and just over his left shoulder I could see “SUGGS” hanging from the window.
   Theo began by introducing his wife, Rex Ella, a Mabry from right here in Clanton. He talked about her parents and her grandparents, and her aunts and uncles, and before long Theo had mentioned half the crowd. Clanton was his second home, his district, his people, the constituents he worked so hard to serve down in Jackson.
   It was smooth, fluid, off-the-cuff. I was listening to a master on the stump.
   He was chairman of the Highways Committee in the state senate, and for a few minutes he bragged about all the new roads he’d built in north Mississippi. His committee handled four hundred separate pieces of legislation each session. Four hundred! Four hundred bills, or laws. As chairman, he was responsible for writing laws. That’s what state senators did. They wrote good laws and killed bad laws.
   His young opponent had just finished law school, a notable accomplishment. He, Theo, didn’t get the chance to go to college because he was off fighting the Japs in World War II. But anyway, his young opponent had evidently neglected his study of the law. Otherwise, he would’ve passed the bar exam on the first try.
   Instead, “he flunked the bar exam, ladies and gentlemen!”
   With perfect timing, someone standing just behind young Warren yelled out, “That’s a damned lie!” The crowd looked at Warren as if he’d lost his mind. Theo turned to the voice and said incredulously, “A lie?”
   He reached into his pocket and whipped out a folded sheet of paper. “I’ve got the proof right here!” He pinched a corner of the paper and began waving it about. Without reading a single word of whatever was printed on it, he said, “How can we trust a man to write our laws when he can’t even pass the bar exam? Mr. Warren and I stand on equal footing—neither of us has ever passed the bar exam. Problem is, he had three years of law school to help him flunk it.”
   Theo’s supporters were yelping with laughter. Young Warren held his ground but wanted to bolt.
   Theo hammered away. “Maybe if he’d gone to law school in Mississippi instead of Tennessee then he’d understand our laws!”
   He was famous for such public butcherings. He’d once humiliated an opponent who’d left the pulpit under a cloud. Pulling an “affidavit” from his pocket, Theo claimed he had proof that the “ex-reverend” had an affair with a deacon’s wife. The affidavit was never read.
   The ten-minute limit meant nothing to Theo. He blew through it with a series of promises to cut taxes and waste and do something to make sure murderers got the death penalty more often. When he finally wound down, he thanked the crowd for twenty years of faithful support. He reminded us that in the last two elections the good folks of Ford County had given him, and Rex Ella, almost 80 percent of their votes.
   The applause was loud and long, and at some point Warren disappeared. So did I. I was tired of speeches and politics.


* * *

   Four weeks later, around dusk on the first Tuesday in August, much of the same crowd gathered around the courthouse for the vote counting. It had cooled off considerably; the temperature was only ninety-two with 98 percent humidity.
   The final days of the election had been a reporter’s dream. There was a fistfight between two Justice of the Peace candidates outside a black church. There were two lawsuits, both of which accused the other side of libel and slander and distributing phony sample ballots. One man was arrested when he was caught in the act of spray painting obscenities on one of Theo’s billboards. (As it turned out, after the election, the man had been hired by one of Theo’s henchmen to defile the senator’s signs. Young Warren still got the blame. “A common trick,” according to Baggy.) The state’s Attorney General was asked to investigate the high number of absentee ballots. “Typical election,” was Baggy’s summary. Things came to a peak on that Tuesday, and the entire county stopped to vote and enjoy the sport of a rural election.
   The polls closed at six, and an hour later the square was alive and wired with anticipation. People piled in from the county. They formed little groups around their candidate and even used campaign signs to stake off their territory. Many brought food and drink and most had folding lawn chairs as if they were there to watch a baseball game. Two enormous black chalkboards were placed side by side near the front door of the courthouse, and there the returns were tallied.
   “We have the results from North Karaway,” the clerk announced into a microphone so loud it could’ve been heard five miles away. The festive mood was immediately serious.
   “North Karaway’s always first,” Baggy said. It was almost eight-thirty, almost dark. We were sitting on the porch outside my office, waiting for the news. We planned to delay press time for twenty-four hours and publish our “Election Special” on Thursday. It took some time for the clerk to read the vote totals for every candidate for every office. Halfway through she said, “And in the Sheriff’s race.” Several thousand people held their breath.
   “Mackey Don Coley, eighty-four. Tryce McNatt, twenty-one. T. R. Meredith, sixty-two, and Freck Oswald, eleven.” A loud cheer went up on the far side of the lawn where Coley’s supporters were camped.
   “Coley’s always tough in Karaway,” Baggy said. “But he’s beat.”
   “He’s beat?” I asked. The first of twenty-eight precincts were in, and Baggy was already predicting winners.
   “Yep. For T.R. to run strong in a place where he has no base shows folks are fed up with Mackey Don. Wait’ll you see the Clanton boxes.”
   Slowly, the returns dribbled in, from places I’d never heard of: Pleasant Hill, Shady Grove, Klebie, Three Corners, Clover Hill, Green Alley, Possum Ridge, Massey Mill, Calico Ridge. Woody Gates and the Country Boys, who seemed to always be available, filled in the gaps with some bluegrass.
   The Padgitts voted at a tiny precinct called Dancing Creek. When the clerk announced the votes from there, and Coley got 31 votes and the other three got 8 combined, there was a refreshing round of boos from the crowd. Clanton East followed, the largest precinct and the one I voted in. Coley got 285 votes, Tryce 47, and when T.R.’s total of 644 was announced, the place went wild.
   Baggy grabbed me and we celebrated with the rest of the town. Coley was going down without a runoff.
   As the losers slowly learned their fate, they and their supporters packed up and went home. Around eleven, the crowd was noticeably thinner. After midnight, I left the office and strolled around the square, taking in the sounds and images of this wonderful tradition.
   I was quite proud of the town. In the aftermath of a brutal murder and its baffling verdict, we had rallied, fought back, and spoken clearly that we would not tolerate corruption. The strong vote against Coley was our way of hitting at the Padgitts. For the second time in a hundred years, they would not own the Sheriff.
   T. R. Meredith got 61 percent of the vote, a stunning landslide. Theo got 82 percent, an old-fashioned shellacking. We printed eight thousand copies of our “Election Edition” and sold every one of them. I became a staunch believer in voting every year. Democracy at its finest.

Chapter 28

   A week before Thanksgiving in 1971, Clanton was rocked by the news that one of its sons had been killed in Vietnam. Pete Mooney, a nineteen-year-old staff sergeant, was captured in an ambush near Hue, in central Vietnam. A few hours later his body was found.
   I didn’t know the Mooneys, but Margaret certainly did. She called me with the news and said she needed a few days off. Her family had lived down the street from the Mooneys for many years. Her son and Pete had been close friends since childhood.
   I spent some time in the archives and found the 1966 story of Marvin Lee Walker, a black kid who’d been the county’s first death in Vietnam. That had been before Mr. Caudle cared about such things, and the Times coverage of the event was shamefully sparse. Nothing on the front page. A hundred-word story on page three with no photo. At the time, Clanton had no idea where Vietnam was.
   So a young man who couldn’t go to the better schools, probably couldn’t vote, and more than likely was too afraid to drink from the public water fountain at the courthouse, had been killed in a country few people in his hometown could find on a map. And his death was the right and proper thing. Communists had to be fought wherever they might be found.
   Margaret quietly passed along the details I needed for a story. Pete had graduated from Clanton High School in 1970. He had played varsity football and baseball, lettering in both for three years. He was an honor student who had planned to work for two years, save his money, then go to college. He was unlucky enough to have a high draft number, and in December 1970 he got his notice.
   According to Margaret, and this was something I could not print, Pete had been very reluctant to report for basic training. He and his father had fought for weeks over the war. The son wanted to go to Canada and avoid the whole mess. The father was horrified that his son would be labeled a draft dodger. The family name would be ruined, etc. He called the kid a coward. Mr. Mooney had served in Korea and had zero patience for the antiwar movement. Mrs. Mooney tried the role of peacemaker, but in her heart, she too was reluctant to send her son off to such an unpopular war. Pete finally relented, and now he was coming home in a box.
   The funeral was at the First Baptist Church, where the Mooneys had been active for many years. Pete had been baptized there at the age of eleven, and this was of great comfort to his family and friends. He was now with the Lord, though still much too young to be called home.
   I sat with Margaret and her husband. It was my first and last funeral for a nineteen-year-old soldier. By concentrating on the casket, I could almost avoid the sobbing and, at times, wailing around me. His high school football coach gave a eulogy that drained every eye in the church, mine included.
   I could barely see the back of Mr. Mooney, in the front row. What unspeakable grief that poor man was suffering.
   After an hour, we escaped and made our way to the Clanton cemetery, where Pete was laid to rest with full military pomp and ceremony. When the lone bugler played “Taps,” the gut-wrenching cry of Pete’s mother made me shudder. She clung to the casket until they began to lower it. His father finally collapsed and was tended to by several deacons.
   What a waste, I said over and over as I walked the streets alone, headed generally back to the office. That night, still alone, I cursed myself for being so silent, so cowardly. I was the editor of the newspaper, dammit! Whether I felt entitled to the position or not, I was the only one in town. If I felt strongly about an issue, then I certainly had the power and position to editorialize.


* * *

   Pete Mooney was preceded in death by more than fifty thousand of his fellow countrymen, although the military did a rotten job of reporting an accurate count.
   In 1969, President Nixon and his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, made the decision that the war in Vietnam could not be won, or, rather, that the United States would no longer try and win it. They kept this to themselves. They did not stop the draft. Instead, they pursued the cynical strategy of appearing to be confident of a successful outcome.
   From the time this decision was made until the end of the war in 1973, approximately eighteen thousand more men were killed, including Pete Mooney.
   I ran my editorial on the front page, bottom half, under a large photo of Pete in his Army uniform. It read:

   The death of Pete Mooney should make us ask the glaring question–Whatthe hell are we doing in Vietnam? A gifted student, talented athlete, school leader, future community leader, one of our best and brightest, gunned down at the edge of a river we’ve never heard of in a county we care little about.
   The official reason, one that goes back twenty years, is that we are there fighting Communism. If we see it spreading, then, in the words of ex-President Lyndon Johnson, we are to take “…all necessary measures to prevent farther aggression.”
   Korea, Vietnam. We now have troops in Laos and Cambodia, though President Nixon denies it. Where to next? Are we expected to send our sons anywhere and everywhere in the world tomeddle in the civil wars of others?
   Vietnamwas divided into two countries when the French were defeated there in 1954. North Vietnam is a poor country run by a Communist named Ho Chi Minh. South Vietnam is a poor country that was run by a brutal dictator named Ngo Dinh Diem until he was murdered in a coup in 1963. Since then the county has been run by the military.
   Vietnam has been in a state of war since 1946 when the French began their fateful attempt to keep out the Communists. Their failure was spectacular, so we rushed in to show how wars are supposed to be run. Our failure has been even grander than that of the French, and we’re not finished yet.
   How many more Pete Mooneys will die before our government decides to leave Vietnam to its own course?
   And how many other places around the world will we send our troops to fight Communism?
   What the hell are we doing in Vietnam? Right now we’re burying young soldiers while the politicians who are running the war contemplate getting out.

   Using bad language would be good for a few slaps on the wrist, but what did I care? Strong language was needed to give light to the blind patriots of Ford County. Before the flood of calls and letters, though, I made a friend.
   When I returned from Thursday lunch with Miss Callie (lamb stew indoors by the fire), Bubba Crockett was waiting in my office. He wore jeans, boots, a flannel shirt, long hair, and after he introduced himself he thanked me for the editorial. He had some things he wanted to get off his chest, and since I was as stuffed as a Christmas turkey, I placed my feet on my desk and listened for a long time.
   He’d grown up in Clanton, finished school here in 1966. His father owned the nursery two miles south of town; they were landscapers. He got his draft notice in 1967 and gave no thought to doing anything other than racing off to fight Communists. His unit landed in the south, just in time for the Tet Offensive. Two days on the ground, and he had lost three of his closest friends.
   The horror of fighting could not accurately be described, though Bubba was descriptive enough for me. Men burning, screaming for help, tripping over body parts, dragging bodies off the battlefield, hours with no sleep, no food, running out of ammo, seeing the enemy crawl toward you at night. His battalion lost a hundred men in the first five days. “After a week I knew I was going to die,” he said with wet eyes. “At that point, I became a pretty good soldier. You gotta reach that point to survive.”
   He was wounded twice, slight wounds that were treatable in field hospitals. Nothing that would get him home. He talked of the frustration of fighting a war that the government would not allow them to win. “We were better soldiers,” he said. “And our equipment was vastly superior. Our commanders were superb, but the fools in Washington wouldn’t let them fight a war.”
   Bubba knew the Mooney family and had begged Pete not to go. He had watched the burial service from a distance, and he cursed everybody he could see and many he could not.
   “These idiots around here still support the war, can you believe that?” he said. “More than fifty thousand dead and now we’re pulling out, and these people will argue with you on the streets of Clanton that it was a great cause.”
   “They don’t argue with you,” I said.
   “They do not. I’ve punched a couple of them. You play poker?”
   I did not, but I’d heard many colorful stories about various poker games around town. Quickly, I thought this might be interesting. “A little,” I said, figuring I could either find a rule book or get Baggy to teach me.
   “We play on Thursday nights, in a shed at the nursery. Several guys who fought over there. You might enjoy it.”
   “Tonight?”
   “Yeah, around eight. It’s a small game, some beer, some pot, some war stories. My buddies want to meet you.”
   “I’ll be there,” I said, wondering where I could find Baggy.


* * *

   Four letters were slid under the door that afternoon, all four scathing in their criticism of me and my criticism of the war. Mr. E. L. Green, a veteran of two wars, and a longtime subscriber to the Times, though that might soon change, said, among other things:

   If we don’t stop Communism it will spread to every corner of the world. One day it will be at our doorstep, and our children and grandchildren will ask us why we didn’t have the courage to stop it before it spread.

   Mr. Herbert Gillenwater’s brother was killed in the Korean conflict. He wrote:

   His death was a tragedy I still struggle with each day. But he was a soldier, a hero, a proud American, and his death helped stop the North Koreans and their allies, the Red Chinese and the Russians. When we are too afraid to fight, then we will ourselves be conquered.

   Mr. Felix Toliver from down in Shady Grove suggested that perhaps I’d spent too much time up North where folks were notoriously gun-shy. He said the military had always been dominated by brave young men from the South, and if I didn’t believe it then I should do some more research. There were a disproportionate number of Southern casualties in Korea and Vietnam. He concluded, rather eloquently:

   Our freedom was bought at the terrible price of the lives of countless brave soldiers. But what if we had been too afraid to fight? Hitler and the Japanese would still be in power. Much of the civilized world would be in ruins. We would be isolated and eventually destroyed.

   I planned to run every single letter to the editor, but I hoped there might be one or two in support of my editorial. The criticism didn’t bother me at all. I felt strongly that I was right. And I was developing a rather thick skin, a fine asset for an editor.


* * *

   After Baggy’s quick tutelage, I lost $100 playing poker with Bubba and the boys. They invited me back.
   There were five of us around the table, all in our mid-twenties. Three had served in Vietnam—Bubba, Darrell Radke, whose family owned the propane company, and Cedric Young, a black guy with a severe leg injury. The fifth player was Bubba’s older brother David, who had been rejected by the draft because of his eyesight, and who, I think, was there just for the marijuana.
   We talked a lot about drugs. None of the three veterans had seen or heard of pot or anything else prior to joining the Army. They laughed at the idea of drugs on the streets of Clanton in the 1960s. In Vietnam, drug use was rampant. Pot was smoked when they were bored and homesick, and it was smoked to calm their nerves in battle. The field hospitals loaded up the injured with the strongest painkillers available, and Cedric got hooked on morphine two weeks after being wounded.
   At their urging, I told a few drug stories from college, but I was an amateur among professionals. I don’t think they were exaggerating. No wonder we lost the war—everybody was stoned.
   They expressed great admiration for my editorial and great bitterness for having been sent over there. Each of the three had been scarred in some way; Cedric’s was obvious. Bubba’s and Darrel’s was more of a smoldering anger, a barely contained rage and desire to lash out, but at whom?
   Late in the game, they began swapping stories of gruesome battlefield scenes. I had heard that many soldiers refused to talk about their war experiences. Those three didn’t mind at all. It was therapeutic.
   They played poker almost every Thursday night, and I was always welcome. When I left them at midnight, they were still drinking, still smoking pot, still talking about Vietnam. I’d had enough of the war for one day.

Chapter 29

   The following week I devoted an entire page to the war controversy I had created. It was covered with letters to the editor, seventeen in all, only two of which were even somewhat supportive of my antiwar feelings. I was called a Communist, a liberal, a traitor, a carpetbagger, and, the worst, a coward because I had not worn the uniform. Every letter was proudly signed, no anonymous mail that week; these folks were fired-up patriots who disliked me and wanted the county to know it.
   I didn’t care. I had stirred up a hornet’s nest and the town was at least debating the war. Most of the debates were one-sided, but I had aroused strong feelings.
   The response to those seventeen letters was astounding. A group of high school students came to my rescue with a hand-delivered batch of their own. They were passionately against the war, had no plans to go fight in it, and, furthermore, found it odd that most of the letters the prior week were from folks too old for the armed forces. “It’s our blood, not yours,” was my favorite line.
   Many of the students singled out particular letters I’d printed and went after them with a hatchet. Becky Jenkins was offended by Mr. Robert Earl Huff’s statement that “…our nation was built by the blood of our soldiers. Wars will always be with us.”
   She responded: “Wars will be with us as long as ignorant and greedy men try to impose their will on others.”
   Kirk Wallace took exception to Mrs. Mattie Louise Ferguson’s rather exhaustive description of me. In his final paragraph he wrote, “Sadly, Mrs. Ferguson would not know a Communist, a liberal, a traitor, or a carpetbagger if she met one. Life out in Possum Ridge protects her from such people.”
   The following week, I devoted yet another full page to the thirty-one letters from the students. There were also three late arrivals from the warmongering crowd, and I printed them too. The response was another flood of letters, all of which I printed.
   Through the pages of the Times, we fought the war until Christmas when everyone suddenly called a truce and settled in for the holidays.


* * *

   Mr. Max Hocutt died on New Year’s Day 1972. Gilma knocked on my apartment window early that morning and eventually got me to the door. I’d been asleep for less than five hours, and I needed a full day of hard sleep. Maybe two.
   I followed her into the old mansion, my first visit inside in many months, and I was shocked at how badly it was deteriorating. But there were more urgent matters. We walked to the main stairway in the front foyer where Wilma joined us. She pointed a crooked and wrinkled finger upward and said, “He’s up there. First door on the right. We’ve already been up once this morning.”
   Once a day up the stairs was their limit. They now were in their late seventies, and not far behind Mr. Max.
   He was lying in a large bed with a dirty white sheet pulled up to his neck. His skin was the color of the sheet. I stood beside him for a moment to make sure he wasn’t breathing. I had never been called upon to pronounce someone dead, but this was not a close call—Mr. Max looked as though he’d been dead for a month.
   I walked back down the stairs where Wilma and Gilma were waiting right where I’d left them. They looked at me as if I might have a different diagnosis.
   “I’m afraid he’s dead,” I said.
   “We know that,” Gilma said.
   “Tell us what to do,” Wilma said.
   This was the first corpse I’d been called upon to process, but the next step seemed pretty obvious. “Well, perhaps we should call Mr. Magargel down at the funeral home.”
   “I told you so,” Wilma said to Gilma.
   They didn’t move, so I went to the phone and called Mr. Magargel. “It’s New Year’s Day,” he said. It was apparent my call had awakened him.
   “He’s still dead,” I said.
   ‘Are you sure?”
   “Yes, I’m sure. I just saw him.”
   “Where is he?”
   “In bed. He went peacefully.”
   “Sometimes these old geezers are just sleeping soundly, you know.”
   I turned away from the twins so they wouldn’t hear me argue about whether their brother was really dead. “He’s not sleeping, Mr. Magargel. He’s dead.”
   “I’ll be there in an hour.”
   “Is there anything else we should do?” I asked.
   “Like what?”
   “I don’t know. Notify the police, something like that?”
   “Was he murdered?”
   “No.”
   “Why would you want to call the police?”
   “Sorry I asked.”
   They invited me into the kitchen for a cup of instant coffee. On the counter was a box of Cream of Wheat, and beside it a large bowl of the cereal, mixed and ready to eat. Evidently, Wilma or Gilma had prepared breakfast for their brother, and when he didn’t come down they went after him.
   The coffee was undrinkable until I poured in sugar. They sat across the narrow prep table, watching me curiously. Their eyes were red, but they were not crying.
   “We can’t live here,” Wilma said, with the finality that came from years of discussion.
   “We want you to buy the place,” Gilma added. One barely finished a sentence before the other started another one.
   “We sell it to you…”
   “For a hundred thousand…”
   “We take the money…”
   “And move to Florida…”
   “Florida?” I asked.
   “We have a cousin there…”
   “She lives in a retirement village…”
   “It’s very lovely…”
   “And they take such good care of you…”
   “And Melberta is nearby.”
   Melberta? I thought she was still around the house somewhere, sneaking through the shadows. They explained that they had placed her in a “home” a few months back. The “home” was somewhere north of Tampa. That’s where they wanted to go and spend the rest of their days. Their beloved mansion was simply too much for them to maintain. They had bad hips, bad knees, bad eyes. They climbed the stairs once a day—“twenty-four steps” Gilma informed me—and were terrified of falling down and killing themselves. There wasn’t enough money to make it safe, and what money they had they didn’t want to waste on housekeepers, grass-cutters, and, now, a driver.
   “We want you to buy the Mercedes too…”
   “We don’t drive, you know…”
   “Max always took us…”
   Once in a while, just for fun, I would sneak a glance at the odometer of Max’s Mercedes. He was averaging less than a thousand miles per year. Unlike the house, the car was in mint condition.
   The house had six bedrooms, four floors and a basement, four or five bathrooms, living and dining rooms, library, kitchen, wide sweeping porches that were falling in, and an attic that I felt certain was crammed with family treasures buried there centuries ago. It would take months just to clean it before the remodelers moved in. A hundred thousand dollars was a low price for such a mansion, but there were not enough newspapers sold in the entire state to renovate the place.
   And what about all those animals? Cats, birds, rabbits, squirrels, goldfish, the place was a regular zoo.
   I had been looking at real estate, but, frankly, I’d been so spoiled by paying them $50 a month that I found it hard to leave. I was twenty-four years old, very single, and I was having a grand time watching the money accumulate in the bank. Why would I risk financial ruin by buying that money pit?
   I bought it two days after the funeral.


* * *

   On a cold, wet Thursday in February, I pulled to a stop in front of the Ruffin residence in Lowtown. Esau was waiting on the porch. “You trade cars?” he asked, looking at the street.
   “No, I still have the little one,” I said. “That was Mr. Hocutt’s.”
   “Thought it was black.” There were very few Mercedes in Ford County and it was not difficult keeping track of them.
   “It needed painting,” I said. It was now a dark maroon. I had to cover the knives Mr. Hocutt had painted on both front doors, and so while it was in the shop I decided to go with a different color altogether.
   Word was out that I had somehow swindled the Hocutts out of their Mercedes. In fact, I had paid blue-book value for it—$9,500. The purchase was approved by Judge Reuben V. Atlee, the longtime chancellor in Ford County. He also approved my purchase of the house for $100,000, an apparently low figure that looked much better after two court-appointed appraisers gave their estimates at $75,000 and $85,000. One reported that any renovation of the Hocutt House would “…involve extensive and unforeseen expenditures.”
   Harry Rex, my lawyer, made sure I saw this language.
   Esau was subdued, and things did not improve inside. The house, as always, simmered in the sauce of some delicious beast she was roasting in the oven. Today it would be rabbit.
   I hugged Miss Callie and knew something was terribly wrong. Esau picked up an envelope and said, “This is a draft notice. For Sam.” He tossed it on the table for me to see, then left the kitchen.
   Talk was slow over lunch. They were subdued, preoccupied, and very confused. Esau at times felt the proper thing to do was for Sam to honor whatever commitment his country required. Miss Callie felt like she had already lost Sam once. The thought of losing him again was unbearable.
   That night I called Sam and gave him the bad news. He was in Toledo spending a few days with Max. We talked for over an hour, and I was relentless in my conviction that he had no business going to Vietnam. Fortunately, Max felt the same way.
   Over the course of the next week, I spent hours on the phone with Sam, Bobby, Al, Leon, Max, and Mario, as we shared our views about what Sam should do. Neither he nor any of his brothers believed the war was just, but Mario and Al felt strongly that it was wrong to break the law. I was by far the biggest dove in the bunch, with Bobby and Leon somewhere in the middle. Sam seemed to twist in the wind and change daily. It was a gut-wrenching decision, but as the days dragged on he appeared to spend more time talking to me. The fact that he had been on the run for two years helped immensely.
   After two weeks of soul-searching, Sam slipped into the underground and surfaced in Ontario. He called collect one night and asked me to tell his parents he was okay. Early the next morning, I drove to Lowtown and delivered the news to Esau and Miss Callie that their youngest son had just made the smartest decision of his life.
   To them, Canada seemed like a million miles away. Not nearly as far as Vietnam, I told them.

Chapter 30

   The second contractor I hired to transform the Hocutt House was Mr. Lester Klump from out in Shady Grove. He had been highly recommended by Baggy, who, of course, knew exactly how to restore a mansion. Stan Atcavage at the bank also recommended Mr. Klump, and since Stan held the mortgage for $100,000 I listened to him.
   The first contractor had failed to show, and when I called after waiting for three days his phone had been disconnected. An ominous sign.
   Mr. Klump and his son, Lester Junior, spent days going over the house. They were terrified of the project, and knew it would be a regular nightmare if anybody got in a hurry, especially me. They were slow and methodical, even talked slower than most folks in Ford County, and I soon realized that everything they did was in second gear. I probably didn’t help matters by explaining that I was already living in very comfortable quarters on the premises; thus I wasn’t going to be homeless if they didn’t hurry up.
   Their reputation was that they were sober and generally finished on time. This put them at the top of the heap in the world of remodeling.
   After a few days of scratching our heads and kicking at the gravel, we agreed on a plan whereby they would bill me weekly for their labor and supplies, and I would add 10 percent for their “overhead,” which I hoped meant profit. It took a week of cursing to get Harry Rex to draft a contract reflecting this. At first he refused and called me all sorts of colorful names.
   The Klumps would begin with the cleanup and demolition, then do the roof and porches. When that was over, we’d sit down and plan the next phase. In April 1972 the project began.
   At least one of the Klumps appeared every day with a crew. They spent the first month scattering all the varmints and wildlife that had made the property home for decades.


* * *

   A carload of high school seniors was stopped by a state trooper a few hours after their graduation. The car was full of beer, and the trooper, a rookie fresh from school where they had alerted them to such things, smelled something odd. Drugs had finally made it to Ford County.
   There was marijuana in the car. All six students were charged with felony possession and every other crime the cops could possibly throw at them. The town was shocked—how could our innocent little community get infiltrated with drugs? How could we stop it? I low-keyed the story in the paper; no sense beating up on six good kids who’d made a mistake. Sheriff Meredith was quoted as saying that his office would act decisively to “remove this scourge” from our community. “This ain’t California,” he said.
   Typically, everybody in Clanton was suddenly on the lookout for drug dealers, though no one was quite sure what they looked like.
   Because the cops were on high alert, and would love nothing more than another drug bust, poker the next Thursday was moved to a different location, one deep in the country. Bubba Crockett and Darrell Radke lived in a dilapidated old cabin with a nonpoker-playing veteran named Ollie Hinds. They called their place the Foxhole. It was hidden in a heavily wooded ravine at the end of a dirt road that you couldn’t find in broad daylight.
   Ollie Hinds was suffering from every manner of postwar trauma and probably several prewar ones as well. He was from Minnesota and had served with Bubba and survived their horrible nightmares. He had been shot, burned, captured briefly, escaped, and finally sent home when an Army shrink said he was in need of serious help. Apparently he never got it. When I met him he was shirtless, revealing scars and tattoos, and glassy-eyed, which, I would soon learn, was his usual condition.
   I was grateful he was not playing poker. A couple of bad hands, and you got the impression he might pull an M-16 and even the score.
   The drug bust, and the town’s reaction to it, was the source of much humor and ridicule. Folks were acting as though the six teenagers were the very first drug users, and since they’d been caught then the county was on top of the crisis. With some vigilance and tough talk, the plague of illegal drugs could be diverted to another part of the country.
   Nixon had mined the harbor at Haiphong and was bombing Hanoi with a fury. I brought this up to get a reaction, but there was little interest in the war that night.
   Darrell had heard a rumor that some black kid from Clanton had been drafted and fled to Canada. I said nothing.
   “Smart boy,” Bubba said. “Smart boy.”
   The conversation soon returned to drugs. At one point Bubba admired his marijuana cigarette and said, “Man, this is really smooth. Didn’t come from the Padgitts.”
   “Came from Memphis,” Darrell said. “Mexican.”
   Since I knew zero about the local drug supply routes, I listened intently for a few seconds then, when it was evident no one would pursue the conversation, said, “I thought the Padgitts produced pretty good stuff.”
   “They should stick to moonshine,” Bubba said.
   “It’s okay,” Darrell said, “if you can’t get anything else. They struck it rich a few years back. They started growin’ long before anybody else around here. Now they got competition.”
   “I hear they’re cuttin’ back, goin’ back to whiskey and stealin’ cars,” Bubba said.
   “Why?” I asked.
   “A lot more narcs now. State, federal, local. They got helicopters and surveillance stuff. Ain’t like Mexico where nobody gives a shit what you grow.”
   Gunfire erupted outside, not too far away. The others were not fazed by it. “What might that be?” I asked.
   “It’s Ollie,” Darrell said. “After a possum. He puts on night-vision goggles, takes his M-16, goes lookin’ for varmints and such. Calls it gook huntin’.”
   I luckily lost three hands in a row and found the perfect moment to say good night.


* * *

   After much delay, the Supreme Court of Mississippi finally affirmed the conviction of Danny Padgitt. Four months earlier it had ruled, by a majority of six to three, that the conviction would stand. Lucien Wilbanks filed a petition for rehearing, which was granted. Harry Rex thought that might signal trouble.
   The appeal was reheard, and almost two years after his trial the court finally settled the matter. The vote to affirm the conviction was five to four.
   The dissent bought into Lucien’s rather vociferous argument that Ernie Gaddis had been given too much freedom in abusing Danny Padgitt on cross-examination. With his leading questions about the presence of Rhoda’s children in the bedroom, watching the rape, Ernie had effectively been allowed to place before the jury highly prejudicial facts that simply were not in evidence.
   Harry Rex had read all the briefs and monitored the appeal for me, and he was concerned that Wilbanks had a legitimate argument. If five justices believed it, then the case would be sent back to Clanton for another trial. On the one hand another trial would be good for the newspaper. On the other, I didn’t want the Padgitts off their island and running around Clanton causing trouble.
   In the end, though, only four justices dissented, and the case was over. I plastered the good news across the front of the Times and hoped I would never again hear the name of Danny Padgitt.

Part Three

Chapter 31

   Five years and two months after Lester Klump, Sr… and Lester Klump, Jr… first set foot in the Hocutt House, they finished the renovation. The ordeal was over, and the results were splendid.
   Once I accepted their languid pace, I settled in for the long haul and worked hard selling ad copy. Twice, during the last year of the project, I had unwisely attempted to live in the house and somehow exist in the midst of the debris. In doing so I had little trouble with the dust, the paint fumes, the blocked hallways, the erratic electricity and hot water, and the absence of heating and air conditioning, but I could never adapt to the early morning hammers and handsaws. They were not early birds, which, as I learned, was unusual for contractors, but they did start in earnest each morning by eight-thirty. I really enjoyed sleeping until ten. The arrangement didn’t work, and after each attempt to live in the big house I sneaked back across the gravel drive and returned to the apartment, where things were somewhat quieter.
   Only once in five years was I unable to pay the Klumps on time. I refused to borrow money for the project, though Stan Atcavage was always ready to loan it. After work each Friday I would sit down with Lester Senior, usually on a makeshift plywood table in a hallway, and over a cold beer we would tally up the labor and materials for the week, add 10 percent, and I would write him a check. I filed his records away, and for the first two years kept a running total of the cost of the renovation. After two years, though, I stopped adding the weekly to the cumulative. I didn’t want to know what it was costing.
   I was broke but I didn’t care. The money pit had been sealed off; I had teetered on the brink of insolvency, dodged it, and now I could begin stashing it away again.
   And I had something magnificent to show for the time, effort, and investment. The house had been built around 1900 by Dr. Miles Hocutt. It had a distinctive Victorian style, with two high gabled roofs in the front, a turret that ran up four levels, and wide covered porches that swept around the house on both sides. Over the years the Hocutts had painted the house blue and yellow, and Mr. Klump, Sr… had even found an area of bright red under three coats of newer paint. I played it safe and stayed with white and beige and light brown trim. The roof was copper. Outside it was a rather plain Victorian, but I would have years to jazz it up.
   Inside, the heart-pine floors on all three levels had been restored to their original beauty. Walls had been removed, rooms and hallways opened up. The Klumps had finally been forced to remove the entire kitchen and build another from the basement up. The fireplace in the living room had actually collapsed under the pressure of relentless jack-hammering. I turned the library into a den and knocked out more walls so that upon entering the front foyer you could see through the den to the kitchen in the distance. I added windows everywhere; the house had originally been built like a cave.
   Mr. Klump admitted he had never tasted champagne, but he happily chugged it down as we completed our little ceremony on a side porch. I handed him what I hoped would be his last check, we shook hands, posed for a photograph by Wiley Meek, then popped the cork.
   Many of the rooms were bare; it would take years to properly decorate the place, and it would require the assistance of someone with far more knowledge and taste than I possessed. Half-empty, though, the house was still spectacular. It needed a party!
   I borrowed $2,000 from Stan and ordered wine and champagne from Memphis. I found a suitable caterer from Tupelo. (The only one in Clanton specialized in ribs and catfish and I wanted something a bit classier.)
   The official invitation list of three hundred included everybody I knew in town, and a few I did not. The unofficial list was comprised of those who’d heard me say, “We’ll have a huge party when it’s finished.” I invited BeeBee and three of her friends from Memphis. I invited my father but he was too worried about inflation and the bond market. I invited Miss Callie and Esau, Reverend Thurston Small, Claude, three clerks from the courthouse, two schoolteachers, an assistant basketball coach, a teller at the bank, and the newest lawyer in town. That made a total of twelve blacks, and I would’ve invited more if I had known more. I was determined to have the first integrated party in Clanton.
   Harry Rex brought moonshine and a large platter of chitlins that almost broke up the festivities. Bubba Crockett and the Foxhole gang arrived stoned and ready to party. Mr. Mitlo wore the only tuxedo. Piston made an appearance, and was seen leaving through the back door with a carry-out bag filled with rather expensive finger food. Woody Gates and the Country Boys played for hours on a side porch. The Klumps were there with all their laborers; it was a fine moment for them and I made sure they got all the credit. Lucien Wilbanks arrived late and was soon in a heated argument about politics with Senator Theo Morton, whose wife, Rex Ella, told me it was the grandest party she’d seen in Clanton in twenty years. Our new Sheriff, Tryce McNatt, dropped by with several of his uniformed deputies. (T. R. Meredith had died of colon cancer the year before.) One of my favorites, Judge Reuben V Atlee, held court in the den with colorful stories about Dr. Miles Hocutt. Reverend Millard Stark of the First Baptist Church stayed only ten minutes and left quietly when he realized alcohol was being served. Reverend Cargrove of the First Presbyterian Church was seen drinking champagne, and appeared to have a taste for it. Baggy passed out in a second-floor bedroom, where I found him the next afternoon. The Stukes twins, who owned the hardware store, showed up in brand-new, matching overalls. They were seventy years old, lived together, never married, and wore matching overalls every day. There was no dress requirement; the invitation said, “Open Attire.”
   The front lawn was covered with two large white tents, and at times the crowd spilled from under them. The party began at 1 P.M… Saturday afternoon, and would’ve gone past midnight if the wine and food had lasted. By ten, Woody Gates and his band were exhausted, there was nothing left to drink but a few warm beers, nothing to eat but a few tortilla chips, and nothing left to see. The house had been thoroughly seen and enjoyed.
   Late the next morning, I scrambled eggs for BeeBee and her friends. We sat on the front porch and drank coffee and admired the mess made just hours before. It took me a week to clean up.


* * *

   Through the years in Clanton I’d heard plenty of horror stories of imprisonment at the state penitentiary at Parchman. It was in sprawling farmland in the Delta, the richest farming region in the state, two hours west of Clanton. Living conditions were wretched—cramped barracks that were suffocating in the summer and frigid in the winter, ghastly food, scant medical care, a slave system, brutal sex. Forced labor, sadistic guards, the list was endless and pathetic.
   When I thought of Danny Padgitt, which I did often, I was always comforted by the belief that he was at Parchman getting what he deserved. He was lucky he hadn’t been strapped to a chair in a gas chamber.
   My assumption was wrong.
   In the late sixties, in an effort to ease the overcrowding at Parchman, the state had built two satellite prisons, or “camps” as they were known. The plan had been to place a thousand nonviolent offenders in more civilized confinement. They would obtain job training, even qualify for work release. One such satellite was near the small town of Broom-field, three hours south of Clanton.
   Judge Loopus died in 1972. During the Padgitt trial, his stenographer had been a homely young woman named Darla Clabo. She worked for Loopus for a few years, and after his death left the area. When she walked into my office late one afternoon in the summer of 1977, I knew I had seen her somewhere in the distant past.
   Darla introduced herself and I quickly remembered where I’d seen her. For five straight days during the Padgitt trial she had sat below the bench, next to the exhibit table, taking down every word. She was now living in Alabama, and had driven five hours to tell me something. First, she swore me to absolute secrecy.
   Her hometown was Broomfield. Two weeks earlier she had been visiting her mother when she saw a familiar face walking down the sidewalk around lunchtime. It was Danny Padgitt, strolling along with a buddy. She was so startled she tripped on the edge of a curb and almost fell into the street.
   They walked into a local diner and sat down for lunch. Darla saw them through a window, and decided not to go in. There was a chance Padgitt might recognize her, though she wasn’t sure why that frightened her.
   The man with him wore the uniform that was common in Broom-field—navy slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt with the words “Broomfield Correctional Facility” in very small letters over the pocket. He also wore black cowboy boots and no gun whatsoever. She explained that some of the guards who handled the prisoners on work release had the option of carrying a weapon. It was hard to imagine a white man in Mississippi voluntarily declining to carry a gun if given the option, but she suspected that perhaps Danny didn’t want his own personal guard to be armed.
   Danny was wearing white dungarees and a white shirt, possibly issued by the camp. The two enjoyed a long lunch and appeared to be good friends. From her car, Darla watched them leave the diner. She followed from a distance as they took a leisurely stroll for a few blocks until Danny entered a building that housed the regional office of the Mississippi Highway Department. The guard got into a camp vehicle and drove away.
   The following morning, Darla’s mother entered the building under the pretext of filing a complaint about a road in need of repair. She was rudely informed that no such procedure existed, and in the ensuing brouhaha managed to catch a glimpse of the young man Dark had carefully described. He was holding a clipboard and appeared to be just another useless pencil pusher.
   Darla’s mother had a friend whose son worked as a clerk at the Broomfield camp. He confirmed that Danny Padgitt had been moved there in the summer of 1974.
   When she finished with the story, she said, “Are you going to expose him?”
   I was reeling, but I could already see the story. “I will investigate,” I said. “Depends on what I find.”
   “Please do. This ain’t right.”
   “It’s unbelievable.”
   “That little punk should be on death row.”
   “I agree.”
   “I did eight murder trials for Judge Loopus, and that one really sticks with me.”
   “Me too.”
   She swore me to secrecy again, and left her address. She wanted a copy of the paper if we did the story.


* * *

   At six the next morning I had no trouble jumping out of bed. Wiley and I drove to Broomfield. Since both the Spitfire and the Mercedes were likely to draw attention in any small town in Mississippi, we took his Ford pickup. We easily found the camp, three miles out of town. We found the highway department office building. At noon we took our positions along Main Street. Since Padgitt would certainly recognize either one of us, we faced the challenge of trying to hide on a busy street in a strange town without acting suspicious. Wiley sat low in his truck, camera loaded and ready. I hid behind a newspaper on a bench.
   There was no sign of him the first day. We drove back to Clanton, then early the next morning left again for Broomfield. At eleven-thirty, a prison vehicle stopped in front of the office building. The guard went inside, collected his prisoner, and they walked to lunch.


* * *

   On July 17, 1977, our front page had four large photos—one of Danny walking along the sidewalk sharing a laugh with the guard, one of them as they entered the City Grill, one of the office building, one of the gate to the Broomfield camp. My headline howled: NO PRISON FOR PADGITT—HE’S OFF AT CAMP.
   My report began:

   Four years after being convicted of the brutal rape and murder of Rhoda Kassellaw, and being sentenced to life in the state penitentiary at Parchman, Danny Padgitt was moved to the state’s new satellite camp at Broomfield. After three years there, he enjoys all the perks of a well-connected inmate–an office job with the state highway department, his own personal guard, and long lunches (cheeseburgers and milk shakes) in local cafes where the other patrons have never heard of him or his crimes.

   The story was as venomous and slanted as I could possibly make it. I bullied the waitress at the City Grill into telling me that he had just eaten a cheeseburger with french fries, that he ate there three times a week, and that he always picked up the check. I made a dozen phone calls to the highway department until I found a supervisor who knew something about Padgitt. The supervisor refused to answer questions, and I made him sound like a criminal himself. Penetrating Broomfield camp was just as frustrating. I detailed my efforts and tilted the story so it sounded as though all the bureaucrats were covering up for Padgitt. No one at Parchman knew a damned thing, or if they did they were unwilling to talk about it. I called the highway commissioner (an elected official), the warden at Parchman (thankfully an appointed position), the Attorney General, the Lieutenant Governor, and finally the Governor himself. They were all too busy, of course, so I chatted with their bootlickers and made them sound like morons.
   Senator Theo Morton appeared to be shocked. He promised to get right to the bottom of it and call me back. At press time, I was still waiting.
   The reaction in Clanton was mixed. Many of those who called or stopped me on the street were angry and wanted something done. They truly believed that when Padgitt had been sentenced to life and led away in handcuffs, that he would spend the rest of his days in hell at Parchman. A few seemed indifferent and wanted to forget Padgitt altogether. He was old news.
   And among some there was the frustrating, almost cynical lack of surprise. They figured the Padgitts had worked their magic once more, found the right pockets, pulled the right strings. Harry Rex was in this camp. “What’s the big fuss, boy? They’ve bought Governors before.”
   The photo of Danny walking down the street, free as a bird, frightened Miss Callie considerably. “She didn’t sleep last night,” Esau mumbled to me when I arrived for lunch that Thursday. “I wish you hadn’t found him.”


* * *

   Fortunately, the Memphis and Jackson newspapers picked up the story, and it took on a life of its own. They turned up the heat to a point where the politicians had to get involved. The Governor and the Attorney General, along with Senator Morton, were soon jockeying to lead the parade to get the boy sent back to Parchman.
   Two weeks after I broke the story, Danny Padgitt was “reassigned” to the state penitentiary.
   The next day, I received two phone calls, one at the office, one at home while I was asleep. Different voices, but with the same message. I was a dead man.
   I notified the FBI in Oxford, and two agents visited me in Clanton. I leaked this to a reporter in Memphis, and soon the town knew that I had been threatened, and that the FBI was investigating. For a month, Sheriff McNatt kept a patrol car in front of my office around the clock. Another one sat in my driveway during the night.
   After a seven-year hiatus, I was carrying a gun again.

Chapter 32

   There was no immediate bloodshed. The threats were not forgotten, but as time passed they became less ominous. I never stopped carrying a gun—it was always within reach—but I lost interest in it. I found it hard to believe that the Padgitts would risk the severe backlash that would come if they knocked off the editor of the local paper. Even if the town was not entirely enamored of me, as opposed to someone as beloved as Mr. Caudle, the uproar would create more pressure than the Padgitts were willing to risk.
   They kept to themselves like never before. After the defeat of Mackey Don Coley in 1971, they once again proved quite adept at changing tactics. Danny had given them enough unwanted attention; they were determined to avoid anymore. They retrenched even deeper into Padgitt Island. They increased security in the wasted belief that the next sheriff, T. R. Meredith, or his successor, Tryce McNatt, might come after them. They grew their crops and smuggled them off the island in planes, boats, pickups, and flatbed trucks ostensibly loaded with timber.
   With typical Padgitt shrewdness, and sensing that the marijuana business might become too risky, they began pumping money into legitimate enterprises. They bought a highway contracting company and quickly turned it into a reliable bidder for government projects. They bought an asphalt plant, a Redi-Mix concrete plant, and gravel pits around the northern part of the state. Highway construction was a notably corrupt business in Mississippi, and the Padgitts knew how to play the game.
   I watched these activities as closely as possible. This was before the Freedom of Information Act and open-meetings laws. I knew the names of some of the companies the Padgitts had bought, but it was virtually impossible to keep up with them. There was nothing I could print, no story, because on the surface it was all legitimate.
   I waited, but for what I wasn’t certain. Danny Padgitt would return one day, and when he did he might simply disappear into the island and never be seen again. Or he might do otherwise.


* * *

   Few people in Clanton did not attend church. Those who did seemed to know exactly which ones did not, and there was a common invitation to “come worship with us.” The farewell, “See you on Sunday,” was almost as common as “Y’all come see us.”
   I got hammered with these invitations during my first years in town. Once it was known that the owner and editor of the Times did not go to church, I became the most famous derelict in town. I decided to do something about it.
   Each week Margaret put together our Religion page, which included a rather extensive menu of churches arranged by denominations. There were also a few ads by the more affluent congregations. And notices for revivals, reunions, potluck suppers, and countless other activities.
   Working from this page, and from the phonebook, I made a list of all the churches in Ford County. The total was eighty-eight, but it was a moving target since congregations were always splitting, folding here and popping up over there. My goal was to visit each one of them, something I was sure had never been done, and a feat that would put me in a class by myself among churchgoers.
   The denominations were varied and baffling how could Protestants, all of whom claimed to follow the same basic tenets, get themselves so divided? They agreed basically that (l)Jesus was the only son of God; (2) he was born of a virgin; (3) lived a perfect life; (4) was persecuted by the Jews, arrested and crucified by the Romans; (5) that he arose on the third day and later ascended into heaven; (6) and some believed—though there were many variations—that one must follow Jesus in baptism and faith to make it to heaven.
   The doctrine was fairly straightforward, but the devil was in the details.
   There were no Catholics, Episcopalians, or Mormons. The county was heavily Baptist, but they were a fractured bunch. The Pentecostals were in second place, and evidently they had fought with themselves as much as the Baptists.
   In 1974, I’d begun my epic adventure to visit every church in Ford County. The first had been the Calvary Full Gospel, a rowdy Pentecostal assemblage on a gravel road two miles out of town. As advertised, the service began at ten-thirty, and I found a spot on the back pew, as far away from the action as I could get. I was greeted warmly and word spread that a bona-fide visitor was present. I did not recognize anyone there. Preacher Bob wore a white suit, navy shirt, white tie, and his thick black hair was wound around and plastered tightly at the base of his skull. People started hollering when he was giving the announcements. They waved their hands and shouted during a solo. When the sermon finally began an hour later, I was ready to leave. It lasted for fifty-five minutes, and left me confused and exhausted. At times the building shook with folks stomping the floor. Windows rattled as they were overcome with the spirit and yelled upward. Preacher Bob “laid hands” on three sick folks suffering vague diseases, and they claimed to be healed. At one point a deacon stood and in an astounding display began uttering something in a tongue I had never heard. He clenched his fists, closed his eyes tightly, and let loose with a steady, fluent flow of words. It was not an act; he wasn’t faking. After a few minutes, a young girl in the choir stood and began translating into English. It was a vision God was sending through the deacon. There were those present with unforgiven sins.
   “Repent!” Preacher Bob shouted, and heads ducked.
   What if the deacon was talking about me? I glanced around and noticed that the door was locked and guarded by two more deacons.
   Things finally ran out of gas, and two hours after I sat down I bolted from the building. I needed a drink.
   I wrote a pleasant little report about my visit to Calvary Full Gospel and ran it on the Religion page. I commented on the warm atmosphere of the church, the lovely solo by Miss Helen Hatcher, the powerful sermon by Preacher Bob, and so on.
   Needless to say, this proved to be very popular.
   At least twice a month, I went to church. I sat with Miss Callie and Esau and listened to the Reverend Thurston Small preach for two hours and twelve minutes (I timed every sermon). The briefest was delivered by Pastor Phil Bish at the United Methodist Church of Karaway—seventeen minutes. That church also got the award for being the coldest. The furnace was broken, it was January, and that may have helped shorten the sermon. I sat with Margaret at the First Baptist Church in Clanton and listened to Reverend Millard Stark give his annual sermon on the sins of alcohol. With bad timing, I had a hangover that morning and Stark kept looking at me.
   I found the Harvest Tabernacle in the back room of an abandoned service station in Beech Hill, and I sat with six others as a wild-eyed doomsayer named Peter the Prophet yelled at us for almost an hour. My column that week was quite brief.
   The Clanton Church of Christ had no musical instruments. The ban was based on Scripture, it was later explained to me. There was a beautiful solo, which I wrote about at length. There was also no emotion whatsoever in the service. For a contrast, I went to the Mount Pisgah Chapel in Lowtown, where the pulpit was surrounded by drums, guitars, horns, and amplifiers. As a warmup for the sermon, a full-blown concert was given with the congregation singing and dancing. Miss Callie referred to Mount Pisgah as a “lower church.”
   On my list, number sixty-four was the Calico Ridge Independent Church, located deep in the hills in the northeastern part of the county. According to the Times archives, at this church in 1965 a Mr. Randy Bovee was bitten twice by a rattlesnake during a late Sunday night worship service. Mr. Bovee survived, and for a while the snakes were put away. The legend, however, flourished, and as my Church Notes column gained popularity, I was asked several times if I intended to visit Calico Ridge.
   “I plan to visit every church,” was my standard reply.
   “They don’t like visitors,” Baggy warned me.
   I had been greeted so warmly in each church—black or white, large or small, town or country—that I could not imagine Christian folks being rude to a guest.
   And they weren’t rude at Calico Ridge, but they weren’t too happy to see me either. I wanted to see the snakes, but from the safety of the back row. I went on a Sunday night, primarily because legend held that they did not “take up the serpents” during daylight hours. I searched the Bible in vain for this restriction.
   There was no sign of any serpents. There were a few fits and convulsions below the pulpit as the preacher exhorted us to “come forth and moan and groan in sin!” The choir chanted and hummed to the beat of an electric guitar and a drum, and the meeting took on the spookiness of an ancient tribal dance. I wanted to leave, especially since there were no snakes.
   Late in the service, I caught a glimpse of a face I’d seen before. It was a very different face—thin, pale, gaunt, topped with grayish hair. I couldn’t place it, but I knew it was familiar. The man was seated in the second row from the front, on the other side of the small sanctuary, and he seemed out of touch with the chaos of the worship service. At times he appeared to be praying, then he would sit while everyone else was standing. Those around him seemed to accept him and ignore him at the same time.
   He turned once and looked directly at me. It was Hank Hooten, the ex-lawyer who’d shot up the town in 1971! He’d been taken in a straitjacket to the state mental hospital, and a few years later there’d been a rumor that he had been released. No one had seen him, though.
   For two days after that, I tried to track down Hank Hooten. My calls to the state mental hospital went nowhere. Hank had a brother in Shady Grove, but he refused to talk. I snooped around Calico Ridge, but, typically, no one there would utter a word to a stranger like me.

Chapter 33

   Many of those who worshiped diligently on Sunday mornings became less faithful on Sunday nights. During my tour of churches, I heard many preachers chide their followers to return in a few hours to properly complete the observance of the Sabbath. I never counted heads, but as a general rule about half of them did so. I tried a few Sunday night services, usually in an effort to catch some colorful ritual such as snake handling or disease healing or, on one occasion, a “church conclave” in which a wayward brother was to be put on trial and certainly convicted for fancying another brother’s wife. My presence rattled them that night and the wayward brother got a reprieve.
   For the most part, I limited my study of comparative religions to the daylight hours.
   Others had different Sunday-night rituals. Harry Rex helped a Mexican named Pepe lease a building and open a restaurant one block off the square. Pepe’s became moderately successful during the 1970s with decent food that was always on the spicy side. Pepe couldn’t resist the peppers, regardless of how they scalded the throats of his gringo customers.
   On Sundays all alcohol was banned in Ford County. It could not be sold at retail or in restaurants. Pepe had a back room with a long table and a door that would lock. He allowed Harry Rex and his guests to use the room and eat and drink all we wanted. His margaritas were especially tasty. We enjoyed many colorful meals with spicy dishes, all washed down with strong margaritas. There were usually a dozen of us, all male, all young, about half currently married. Harry Rex threatened our lives if we told anyone about Pepe’s back room.
   The Clanton city police raided us once, but Pepe suddenly couldn’t speak a word of English. The door to the back room was locked, and partially hidden too. Pepe turned off the lights, and for twenty minutes we waited in the dark, still drinking, and listened to the cops try to communicate with Pepe. I don’t know why we were worried. The city Judge was a lawyer named Harold Finkley, who was at the end of the table slogging down his fourth or fifth margarita.
   Those Sunday nights at Pepe’s were often long and rowdy, and afterward we were in no condition to drive. I would walk to my office and sleep on the sofa. I was there snoring off the tequila when the phone rang after midnight. It was a reporter I knew from the big daily in Memphis.
   “Are you covering the parole hearing tomorrow?” he asked. Tomorrow? In my toxic fog I had no idea what day it was.
   “Tomorrow?” I mumbled.
   “Monday, September the eighteenth,” he said slowly.
   I was reasonably certain the year was 1978.
   “What parole hearing?” I asked, trying desperately to wake myself up and put two thoughts together.
   “Danny Padgitt’s. You don’t know about it?”
   “Hell no!”
   “It’s scheduled for ten A.M. at Parchman.”
   “You gotta be kidding!”
   “Nope. I just found out. Evidently, they don’t advertise these.”
   I sat in the darkness for a long time, cursing once again the backwardness of a state that conducted such important matters in such ridiculous ways. How could parole even be considered for Danny Padgitt? Eight years had passed since the murder and his conviction. He had received two life sentences of at least ten years each. We assumed that meant a minimum of twenty years.
   I drove home around 3 A.M… slept fitfully for two hours, then woke up Harry Rex, who was in no condition to be dealt with. I picked up sausage biscuits and strong coffee and we met at his office around seven. We were both ill-tempered, and as we plowed through his law books there were sharp words and foul language, not aimed at each other, but at the blurry and toothless parole system passed by the legislature thirty years earlier. Guidelines were only vaguely defined, leaving ample wiggle room for the politicians and their appointees to do as they wished.
   Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislature. And since most of the state’s prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors.
   Somewhere between the judicial system, the penal system, and the parole system, Danny Padgitt’s two “consecutive” life terms had been changed to two “concurrent” sentences. They ran side by side, Harry Rex tried to explain.
   “What good is that?” I asked.
   “It’s used in cases where a defendant has multiple charges. Consecutive might give him eighty years in jail, but a fair sentence is ten. So they run ‘em side by side.”
   I shook my head in disapproval again, and this irritated him.
   I finally got Sheriff Tryce McNatt to answer the phone. He sounded as hung over as we were, though he was a strict teetotaler. McNatt knew nothing about the parole hearing. I asked him if he planned to attend, but his day was already filled with important meetings.
   I would have called Judge Loopus, but he’d been dead for six years. Ernie Gaddis had retired and was fishing in the Smoky Mountains. His successor, Rufus Buckley, lived in Tyler County and his phone number was unlisted.
   At eight o’clock, I jumped in my car with a biscuit and a cup of cold coffee.


* * *

   An hour west of Ford County the land flattened dramatically and the Delta began. It was a region rich in farming and poor in living conditions, but I was in no mood to take in the sights and offer social commentary. I was too nervous about crashing a clandestine parole hearing.
   I was also nervous about setting foot inside Parchman, a legendary hellhole.
   After two hours, I saw fences next to fields, then razor wire. Soon there was a sign, and I turned into the main gate. I informed a guard in the booth that I was a reporter, there for a parole hearing. “Straight ahead, left at the second building,” he said helpfully as he wrote down my name.
   There was a cluster of buildings close to the highway, and a row of white-frame houses that would fit on any Maple Street in Mississippi. I chose the Admin A building and sprinted inside, looking for the first secretary. I found her, and she sent me to the next building, second floor. It was just about ten.
   There were people at the end of the hallway, loitering outside a room. One was a prison guard, one was a state trooper, one wore a wrinkled suit.
   “I’m here for a parole hearing,” I announced.
   “In there,” the guard said, pointing. Without knocking, I yanked open the door, as any intrepid reporter would, and stepped inside. Things had just been called to order, and my presence there was certainly not anticipated.
   There were five members of the Parole Board, and they were seated behind a slightly elevated table with their name plates in front of them. Along one wall another table held the Padgitt crowd—Danny, his father, his mother, an uncle, and Lucien Wilbanks. Opposite them, behind another table, were various clerks and functionaries of the Board and the prison.
   Everyone stared at me as I stormed in. My eyes locked onto Danny Padgitt’s, and for a second both of us managed to convey the contempt we felt for the other.
   “Can I help you?” a large, badly dressed ole boy growled from the center of the Board. His name was Barrett Ray Jeter, the chairman. Like the other four, he’d been appointed by the Governor as a reward for vote-gathering.
   “I’m here for the Padgitt hearing,” I said.
   “He’s a reporter!” Lucien practically yelled as he was standing. For a second I thought I might get arrested on the spot and be carried deeper into the prison for a life sentence.
   “For who?” Jeter demanded.
   “The Ford County Times,” I said.
   “Your name?”
   “Willie Traynor.” I was glaring at Lucien and he was scowling at me.
   “This is a closed hearing, Mr. Traynor,” Jeter said. The statute wasn’t clear as to whether it was open or closed, so it had traditionally been kept quiet.
   “Who has the right to attend?” I asked.
   “The Parole Board, the parolee, his family, his witnesses, his lawyer, and any witnesses for the other side.” The “other side” meant the victim’s family, which in this setting sounded like the bad guys.
   “What about the Sheriff from our county?” I asked.
   “He’s invited too,” Jeter said.
   “Our Sheriff wasn’t notified. I talked to him three hours ago. In fact, nobody in Ford County knew of this hearing until after twelve last night.” This caused considerable head-scratching up and down the Parole Board. The Padgitts huddled with Lucien.
   By process of elimination, I quickly deduced that I had to become a witness if I wanted to watch the show. I said, as loudly and clearly as possible, “Well, since there’s no one else here from Ford County in opposition, I’m a witness.”
   “You can’t be a reporter and a witness,” Jeter said.
   “Where is that written in the Mississippi Code?” I asked, waving my copies from Harry Rex’s law books.
   Jeter nodded at a young man in a dark suit. “I’m the attorney for the Parole Board,” he said politely. “You can testify in this hearing, Mr. Traynor, but you cannot report it.”
   I planned to fully report every detail of the hearing, then hide behind the First Amendment. “So be it,” I said. “You guys make the rules.” In less than one minute the lines had been drawn; I was on one side, everybody else was on the other.
   “Let’s proceed,” Jeter said, and I took a seat with a handful of other spectators.
   The attorney for the Parole Board passed out a report. He recited the basics of the Padgitt sentence, and was careful not to use the words “consecutive” or “concurrent.” Based on the inmate’s “exemplary” record during his incarceration, he had qualified for “good time,” a vague concept created by the parole system and not by the state legislature. Subtracting the time the inmate spent in the county jail awaiting trial, he was now eligible for parole.
   Danny’s caseworker plowed through a lengthy narrative of her relationship with the inmate. She concluded with the gratuitous opinion that he was “fully remorseful,” “fully rehabilitated,” “no threat whatsoever to society,” even ready to become a “most productive citizen.”
   How much did all this cost? I couldn’t help but ponder that question. How much? And how long had it taken for the Padgitts to find the right pockets?
   Lucien went next. With no one—Gaddis, Sheriff McNatt—not even poor Hank Hooten—to contradict or possibly throttle him, he launched into a fictional recounting of the facts of the crimes, and in particular the testimony of an “airtight” alibi witness, Lydia Vince. His reconstructed version of the trial had the jury wavering on a verdict of not guilty. I was tempted to throw something at him and start screaming. Maybe that would at least keep him somewhat honest.
   I wanted to shout, “How can he be remorseful if he’s so innocent?”
   Lucien carped on about the trial and how unfair it had been. He nobly took the blame for not pushing hard for a change of venue, to another part of the state where folks were unbiased and more enlightened. When he finally shut up two of the board members appeared to be asleep.
   Mrs. Padgitt testified next and talked about the letters she and her son had exchanged these past eight, very long years. Through his letters, she had seen him mature, seen his faith strengthen, seen him long for his freedom so he could serve his fellow man.
   Serve them a stronger blend of pot? Or perhaps a cleaner corn whiskey?
   Since tears were expected she gave us some tears. It was part of the show and appeared to have little sway over the Board. In fact, as I watched their faces I got the impression that their decision had been made a long time ago.
   Danny went last and did a good job of walking the fine line between denying his crimes and showing remorse for them. “I have learned from my mistakes,” he said, as if rape and murder were simple indiscretions where no one really got hurt. “I have grown from them.”
   In prison he had been a veritable whirlwind of positive energy—volunteering in the library, singing in the choral group, helping with the Parchman rodeo, organizing teams to go into schools and scare kids away from crime.
   Two Board members were listening. One was still asleep. The other two sat in trancelike meditation, apparently brain dead.
   Danny shed no tears, but closed with an impassioned plea for his release.
   “How many witnesses in opposition?” Jeter announced. I stood, looked around me, saw no one else from Ford County, then said, “I guess it’s just me.”
   “Proceed, Mr. Traynor.”
   I had no idea what to say, nor did I know what was permissible or objectionable in such a forum. But based on what I had just sat through, I figured I could say anything I damned well pleased. Fat Jeter would no doubt call me down if I ventured into forbidden territory.
   I looked up at the Board members, tried my best to ignore the daggers from the Padgitts, and jumped into an extremely graphic description of the rape and the murder. I unloaded everything I could possibly remember, and I put special emphasis on the fact that the two children witnessed some or all of the attack.
   I kept waiting for Lucien to object, but there was nothing but silence in their camp. The formerly comatose Board members were suddenly alive, all watching me closely, absorbing the gruesome details of the murder. I described the wounds. I painted the heartbreaking scene of Rhoda dying in the arms of Mr. Deece, and saying, “It was Danny Padgitt. It was Danny Padgitt.”
   I called Lucien a liar and mocked his memory of the trial. It took the jury less than an hour to find the defendant guilty, I explained.
   And with a recollection that surprised even me, I recounted Danny’s pathetic performance on the witness stand: his lying to cover up his lies; his total lack of truthfulness. “He should’ve been indicted for perjury,” I told the Board.
   “And when he had finished testifying, instead of returning to his seat, he walked to the jury box, shook his finger in the faces of the jurors, and said, ‘You convict me, and I’ll get every damned one of you.’ “
   A Board member named Mr. Horace Adler jerked upright in his seat and blurted toward the Padgitts, “Is that true?”
   “It’s in the record,” I said quickly before Lucien had the chance to lie again. He was slowly getting to his feet.
   “Is that true, Mr. Wilbanks?” Adler insisted.
   “He threatened the jury?” asked another board member.
   “I have the transcript,” I said. “I’ll be happy to send it to you.”
   “Is that true?” Adler asked for the third time.
   “There were three hundred people in the courtroom,” I said, staring at Lucien and saying with my eyes, Don’t do it. Don’t lie about it.
   “Shut up, Mr. Traynor,” a Board member said.
   “It’s in the record,” I said again.
   “That’s enough!” Jeter shouted.
   Lucien was standing and trying to think of a response. Everyone was waiting. Finally, “I don’t remember everything that was said,” he began, and I snorted as loudly as possible. “Perhaps my client did say something to that effect, but it was an emotional moment, and in the heat of the battle, something like that might have been said. But taken in context—”
   “Context my ass!” I yelled at Lucien and took a step toward him as if I might throw a punch. A guard stepped toward me and I stopped. “It’s in black-and-white in the trial transcript!” I said angrily. Then I turned to the Board and said, “How can you folks sit there and let them lie like this? Don’t you want to hear the truth?”
   “Anything else, Mr. Traynor?” Jeter asked.
   “Yes! I hope this Board will not make a mockery out of our system and let this man go free after eight years. He’s lucky to be sitting here instead of on death row, where he belongs. And I hope that the next time you have a hearing on his parole, if there is a next time, you will invite some of the good folks from Ford County. Perhaps the Sheriff, perhaps the prosecutor. And could you notify members of the victim’s family? They have the right to be here so you can see their faces when you turn this murderer loose.”
   I sat down and fumed. I glared at Lucien Wilbanks and decided that I would work diligently to hate him for the rest of either his life or mine, whichever ended first. Jeter announced a brief recess, and I assumed they needed time to regroup in a back room and count their money. Perhaps Mr. Padgitt could be summoned to provide some extra cash for a Board member or two. To irritate the Board attorney, I scribbled pages of notes for the report he’d prohibited me from writing.
   We waited thirty minutes before they filed back in, everyone looking guilty of something. Jeter called for a vote. Two voted in favor of parole, two against, one abstained. “Parole is denied at this time,” Jeter announced, and Mrs. Padgitt burst into tears. She hugged Danny before they took him away.
   Lucien and the Padgitts walked by, very close to me as they left the room. I ignored them and just stared at the floor, exhausted, hungover, shocked at the denial.
   “Next we have Charles D. Bowie,” Jeter announced, and there was movement around the tables as the next hopeful was brought in. I caught something about a sex offender, but I was too drained to care. I eventually left the room and walked down the hallway, half-expecting to be confronted by the Padgitts, and that was fine too because I preferred to get it over with.
   But they had scattered; there was no sign of them as I left the building and drove through the main gate and back to Clanton.

Chapter 34

   The parole hearing was front page news in The Ford County Times. I loaded the report with every detail I could remember, and on page five let loose with a blistering editorial about the process. I sent a copy to each member of the Parole Board and to its attorney, and, because I was so worked up, every member of the state legislature, the Attorney General, the Lieutenant Governor, and the Governor received a complimentary copy. Most ignored it, but the attorney for the Parole Board did not.
   He wrote me a lengthy letter in which he said he was deeply concerned about my “willful violation of Parole Board procedures.” He was pondering a session with the Attorney General in which they would “evaluate the gravity of my actions” and possibly pursue action that would lead to “far-reaching consequences.”
   My lawyer, Harry Rex, had assured me the Parole Board’s policy of secret meetings was patently unconstitutional, in clear violation of the First Amendment, and he would happily defend me in federal court. For a reduced hourly rate, of course.
   I swapped heated letters with the Board’s lawyer for a month before he seemed to lose interest in pursuing me.
   Rafe, Harry Rex’s chief ambulance chaser, had a sidekick named Buster, a large thick-chested cowboy with a gun in every pocket. I hired Buster for $100 a week to pretend he was my own personal legbreaker. For a few hours a day he would hang around the front of the office, or sit in my driveway or on one of my porches, any place where he might be seen so folks would know that Willie Traynor was important enough to have a bodyguard. If the Padgitts got close enough to take a shot, they would at least get something in return.


* * *

   After years of steadily gaining weight and ignoring the warnings of her doctors, Miss Callie finally relented. After a particularly bad visit to her clinic, she announced to Esau that she was going on a diet—1,500 calories a day, except, mercifully, Thursday. A month passed and I couldn’t discern any loss of weight. But the day after the Times story on the parole hearing, she suddenly looked as though she’d lost fifty pounds.
   Instead of frying a chicken, she baked one. Instead of whipping mashed potatoes with butter and thick cream and covering them with gravy, she boiled them. It was still delicious, but my system had become accustomed to its weekly dose of heavy grease.
   After the prayer, I handed her two letters from Sam. As always, she read them immediately while I jumped into the lunch. And as always, she smiled and laughed and then finally wiped a tear. “He’s doing fine,” she said, and he was.
   With typical Ruffin tenacity, Sam had completed his first college degree, in economics, and was saving his money for law school. He was terribly homesick, and weary of the weather. To boil it all down, he missed his momma. And her cooking.
   President Carter had pardoned the draft dodgers, and Sam was wrestling with the decision to stay in Canada, or come home. Many of his expatriate friends up there were vowing to stay and pursue Canadian citizenship, and he was heavily influenced by them. There was also a woman involved, though he had not told his parents.
   Sometimes we began with the news, but often it was the obituaries or even the classifieds. Since she read every word, Miss Callie knew who was selling a new litter of beagles and who wanted to buy a good used riding mower. And since she read every word every week, she knew how long a certain small farm or a mobile home had been on the market. She knew prices and values. A car would pass on the street during lunch. She would ask, “Now, what model is that?”
   “A 71 Plymouth Duster,” I would answer.
   She would hesitate for a second, then say, “If it’s real clean, it’s in the twenty-five-hundred-dollar range.”
   Stan Atcavage once needed to sell a twenty-four-foot fishing boat he’d repossessed. I called Miss Callie. She said, “Yes, a gentleman from Karaway was looking for one three weeks ago.” I checked an old section of the classifieds and found the ad. Stan sold him the boat the next day.
   She loved the legal notices, one of the most lucrative sections of the paper. Deeds, foreclosures, divorce filings, probate matters, bankruptcy announcements, annexation hearings, dozens of legal notices were required by law to be published in the county paper. We got them all, and we charged a healthy rate.
   “I see where Mr. Everett Wainwright’s estate is being probated,” she said.
   “I vaguely remember his obituary,” I said with a mouthful. “When did he die?”
   “Five, maybe six months ago. Wasn’t much of an obituary.”
   “I have to work with whatever the family gives me. Did you know him?”
   “He owned a grocery store near the tracks for many years.” I could tell by the inflection in her voice that she did not care for Mr. Everett Wainwright.
   “Good guy or bad buy?”
   “He had two sets of prices, one for the whites, a higher one for Negroes. His goods were never marked in any way, and he was the only cashier. A white customer would call out, ‘Say, Mr. Wainwright, how much is this can of condensed milk?’ and he’d holler back, ‘Thirty-eight cents.’ A minute later I would say, ‘Pardon me, Mr. Wainwright, but how much is this can of condensed milk?’ And he’d snap, ‘Fifty-four cents.’ He was very open about it. He didn’t care.”
   For almost nine years I’d heard stories of the old days. At times I thought I’d heard them all, but Miss Callie’s collection was endless.
   “Why did you shop there?”
   “It was the only store where we could shop. Mr. Monty Griffin ran a nicer store behind the old moviehouse, but we couldn’t shop there until twenty years ago.”
   “Who stopped you?”
   “Mr. Monty Griffin. He didn’t care if you had money, he didn’t want any Negroes in his store.”
   “And Mr. Wainwright didn’t care?”
   “He cared all right. He didn’t want us, but he would take our money.”
   She told the story of a Negro boy who loitered around the store until Mr. Wainwright struck him with a broom and sent him away. For revenge, the boy broke into the store once or twice a year for a long time and was never caught. He stole cigarettes and candy, and he also splintered all the broom handles.
   “Is it true he left all his money to the Methodist church?” she asked.
   “That’s the rumor.”
   “How much?”
   “Around a hundred thousand dollars.”
   “Folks say he was trying to buy his way into heaven,” she said. I had long since ceased to be amazed at the gossip Miss Callie heard from the other side of the tracks. Many of her friends worked as housekeepers over there. The maids knew everything.
   She had once again nudged the conversation to the topic of the afterlife. Miss Callie was deeply concerned about my soul. She was worried that I had not properly become a Christian; that I had not been “born again” or “saved.” My infant baptism, which I could not remember, was thoroughly insufficient in her view. Once a person reaches a certain age, the “age of accountability,” then, in order to be “saved” from everlasting damnation in hell, that person must walk down the aisle of a church (the right church was the subject of eternal debate) and make a public profession of faith in Jesus Christ.
   Miss Callie carried a heavy burden because I had not done this.
   And, after having visited seventy-seven different churches, I had to admit that the vast majority of the people in Ford County shared her beliefs. There were some variations. A powerful sect was the Church of Christ. They clung to the odd notion that they, and only they, were destined for heaven. Every other church was preaching “sectarian doctrine.” They also believed, as did many congregations, that once a person obtained salvation then it could be lost by bad behavior. The Baptists, the most popular denomination, held firm in “once saved always saved.”
   This was apparently very comforting for several backslidden Baptists I knew in town.
   However, there was hope for me. Miss Callie was thrilled that I was attending church and absorbing the gospel. She was convinced, and she prayed about me continually, that one day soon the Lord would reach down and touch my heart. I would decide to follow him, and she and I would spend eternity together.
   Miss Callie was truly living for the day when she “went Home to glory.”
   “Reverend Small will preside over the Lord’s supper this Sunday,” she said. It was her weekly invitation to sit with her in church. Reverend Small and his long sermons were more than I could bear.
   “Thank you, but I’m doing research again this Sunday,” I said.
   “God bless you. Where?”
   “The Maranatha Primitive Baptist Church.”
   “Never heard of it.”
   “It’s in the phone book.”
   “Where is it?”
   “Somewhere down in Dumas, I think.”
   “Black or white?”
   “I’m not sure.”


* * *

   Number seventy-eight on my list, the Maranatha Primitive Baptist Church, was a little jewel at the foot of a hill, next to a creek, under a cluster of pin oaks that were at least two hundred years old. It was a small white-frame building, narrow and long, with a high-pitched tin roof and a red steeple that was so tall it got lost in the oaks. The front doors were open wide, beckoning any and all to come worship. A cornerstone gave the date as 1813.
   I eased into the back pew, my usual place, and sat next to a well-dressed gentleman who’d been around for as long as the church. I counted fifty-six other worshipers that morning. The windows were wide open, and outside a gentle breeze rushed through the trees and soothed the rough edges of a hectic morning. For a century and a half people had gathered there, sat on the same pews, looked through the same windows at the same trees, and worshiped the same God. The choir—all eight—sang a gentle hymn and I drifted back to another century.
   The pastor was a jovial man named J. B. Cooper. I’d met him twice over the years while scrambling around trying to put together obituaries. One side benefit to my tour of county churches was the introduction to all the ministers. This really helped spice up my obits.
   Pastor Cooper gazed upon his flock and realized I was the only visitor. He called my name, welcomed me, and made some harmless crack about getting favorable coverage in the Times. After four years of touring, and seventy-seven rather generous and colorful Church Notes, it was impossible for me to sneak into a service without getting noticed.
   I never knew what to expect in these rural churches. More often than not the sermons were loud and long, and many times I wondered how such good people could drag themselves in week after week for a tongue-lashing. Some preachers were almost sadistic in their condemnation of whatever their followers might have done that week. Everything was a sin in rural Mississippi, and not just the basics as set forth in the Ten Commandments. I heard scathing rebukes of television, movies, cardplaying, popular magazines, sports events, cheerleader uniforms, desegregation, mixed-race churches, Disney—because it came on Sunday nights—dancing, social drinking, postmarital sex, everything.
   But Pastor Cooper was at peace. His sermon—twenty-eight minutes—was about tolerance and love. Love was Christ’s principal message. The one thing Christ wanted us to do was to love one another. For the altar call we sang three verses of “Just As I Am,” but no one moved. These folks had been down the aisle many times.
   As always, I hung around afterward for a few minutes to speak with Pastor Cooper. I told him how much I enjoyed the service, something I did whether I meant it or not, and I collected the names of the choir members for my column. Church folk were naturally warm and friendly, but at this stage of my tour they wanted to chat forever and pass along little gems that might end up in print. “My grandfather put the roof on this building in 1902.” “The tornado of ‘38 skipped right over us during the summer revival.”
   As I was leaving the building, I saw a man in a wheelchair being pushed down the handicap ramp. It was a face I’d seen before, and I walked over to say hello. Lenny Fargarson, the crippled boy, juror number seven or eight, had evidently taken a turn for the worse. During the trial in 1970 he had been able to walk, though it was not a pretty thing to behold. Now he was in a chair. His father introduced himself. His mother was in a cluster of ladies finishing up one last round of goodbyes.
   “Got a minute?” Fargarson asked. In Mississippi, that question really meant “We need to talk and it might take a while.” I sat on a bench under one of the oaks. His father rolled him over, then left us to talk.
   “I see your paper every week,” he said. “You think Padgitt will get out?”
   “Sure. It’s just a question of when. He can apply for parole once a year, every year.”
   “Will he come back here, to Ford County?”
   I shrugged because I had no idea. “Probably. The Padgitts slick close to their land.”
   He considered this for some time. He was gaunt and hunched over like an old man. If my memory was correct, he was about twenty-five at the time of the trial. We were roughly about the same age, though he looked twice as old. I had heard the story of his affliction—some injury in a sawmill.
   “Does that frighten you?” I asked.
   He smiled and said, “Nothing frightens me, Mr. Traynor. The Lord is my shepherd.”
   “Yes he is,” I said, still warm from the sermon. Because of his physical condition and his wheelchair, Lenny was a difficult person to read. He had endured so much. His faith was strong, but I thought for a second that I caught a hint of apprehension.
   Mrs. Fargarson was walking toward us.
   “Will you be there when he’s released?” Lenny asked.
   “I’d like to be, but I’m not sure how it’s done.”
   “Will you call me when you know he’s out?”
   “Of course.”
   Mrs. Fargarson had a pot roast in the oven for Sunday lunch, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was suddenly hungry, and there was, as usual, nothing remotely tasty in the Hocutt House. Sunday lunch was typically a cold sandwich and a glass of wine on a side porch, followed by a long siesta.
   Lenny lived with his parents on a gravel road two miles from the church. His father was a rural mail carrier, his mother a schoolteacher. An older sister was in Tupelo. Over roast and potatoes and tea almost as sweet as Miss Callie’s, we relived the Kassellaw trial and Padgitt’s first parole hearing. Lenny may have been unconcerned about Danny’s possible release, but his parents were deeply worried.

Chapter 35

   Big news hit Clanton in the spring of 1978, Bargain City was coming! Along with McDonald’s and the fast-food joints that followed it around the country, Bargain City was a national chain rapidly marching through the small towns of the South. Most of the town rejoiced. Some of us, though, felt it was the beginning of the end.
   The company was taking over the world with its “big box” discount warehouses that offered everything at very low prices. The stores were spacious and clean and included cafes, pharmacies, banks, even optometrists and travel agents. A small town without a Bargain City store was irrelevant and insignificant.
   They optioned fifty acres on Market Street, about a mile from the Clanton square. Some of the neighbors protested, and the city council held a public hearing on whether to allow the store to be built. Bargain City had met opposition before, and it had a well-oiled and highly effective strategy.
   The council room was packed with people holding red-and-white Bargain City signs—BARGAIN CITY—A GOOD NEIGHBOR and WE WANT JOBS. Engineers, architects, lawyers, and contractors were there, with their secretaries and wives and children. Their mouthpiece painted a rosy picture of economic growth, sales tax revenues, 150 jobs for the locals, and the best products at the lowest prices.
   Mrs. Dorothy Hockett spoke in opposition. Her property was adjacent to the site and she did not want the invasion of noise and lights. The city council seemed sympathetic, but the vote had long since been decided. When no one else would speak against Bargain City, I stood and walked to the podium.
   I was driven by a belief that to preserve the downtown area of Clanton we had to protect the stores and shops, cafes and offices around the square. Once we began sprawling, there would be no end to it. The town would spread in a dozen directions, each one siphoning off its own little slice of old Clanton.
   Most of the jobs they were promising would be at minimum wage. The increase in sales tax revenues to the city would be at the expense of the merchants Bargain City would quickly drive out of business. The people of Ford County were not going to wake up one day and suddenly start buying more bicycles and refrigerators simply because Bargain City had such dazzling displays.
   I mentioned the town of Titus, about an hour south of Clanton. Two years earlier, Bargain City opened there. Since then, fourteen retail stores and one cafe had closed. Main Street was almost deserted.
   I mentioned the town of Marshall, over in the Delta. In the three years since Bargain City opened, the mom-and-pop merchants of Marshall had closed two pharmacies, two small department stores, the feed store, the hardware store, a ladies’ boutique, a gift shop, a small bookstore, and two cafes. I’d had lunch in the remaining cafe and the waitress, who’d worked there for thirty years, told me their business was less than half of what it used to be. The square in Marshall was similar to Clan-ton’s, except that most of the parking spaces were empty. There were very few folks walking the sidewalks.
   I mentioned the town of Tackerville, with the same population as Clanton. One year after Bargain City opened there, the town was forced to spend $1.2 million on road improvements to handle the traffic around the development.
   I handed the Mayor and councilmen copies of a study by an economics professor at the University of Georgia. He had tracked Bargain City across the South for the previous six years and evaluated the financial and social impact the company had on towns of less than ten thousand. Sales tax revenues remained roughly the same; the sales were simply shifted from the old merchants to Bargain City. Employment was roughly the same; the clerks in the old stores downtown were replaced by the new ones at Bargain City. The company made no substantial investment in the community, other than its land and building. In fact, it would not even allow its money to sit in local banks. At midnight, every night, the day’s receipts were wired to the home office in Gainesville, Florida.
   The study concluded that expansion was obviously wise for the shareholders of Bargain City, but it was economically devastating for most small towns. And the real damage was cultural. With boarded-up stores and empty sidewalks, the rich town life of main streets and courthouse squares was quickly dying.
   A petition in support of Bargain City had 480 names. Our petition in opposition had 12. The council voted unanimously, 5-0, to approve it.
   I wrote a harsh editorial and for a month read nasty letters addressed to me. For the first time, I was called a “tree-hugger.”
   Within a month, the bulldozers had completely razed fifty acres. The curbs and gutters were in, and a grand opening was announced for December 1, just in time for Christmas. With money committed, Bargain City wasted no time in building its warehouse. The company had a reputation for shrewd and decisive management.
   The store and its parking lot covered about twenty acres. The outparcels were quickly sold to other chains, and before long the city had approved a sixteen-pump self-serve gas station, a convenience store, three fast-food restaurants, a discount shoe store, a discount furniture store, and a large grocery store.
   I could not deny advertising to Bargain City. I didn’t need their money, but since the Times was the only countywide paper, they had to advertise in it. (In response to a zoning flap I stirred up in 1977, a small right-wing rag called the Clanton Chronicle was up and running but struggling mightily.)
   In mid-November, I met with a representative of the company and we laid out a series of rather expensive ads for the opening. I charged them as much as possible; they never complained.
   On December 1, the Mayor, Senator Morton, and other dignitaries cut the ribbon. A rowdy mob burst through the doors and began shopping as if the hungry had found food. Traffic backed up on the highways leading into town.
   I refused to give it front page coverage. I buried a rather small story on page seven, and this angered the Mayor and Senator Morton and the other dignitaries. They expected their ribbon cutting to be front and center.
   The Christmas season was brutal for the downtown merchants. Three days after Christmas, the first casualty was reported when the old Western Auto store announced it was closing. It had occupied the same building for forty years, selling bicycles and appliances and televisions. Mr. Hollis Barr, the owner, told me that a certain Zenith color TV cost him $438, and he, after several price cuts, was trying to sell it for $510. The identical model was for sale at Bargain City for $399.
   The closing of Western Auto was, of course, front page news.
   It was followed in January by the closing of Swain’s pharmacy next to the Tea Shoppe, and then Maggie’s Gifts, next door to Mr. Mitlo’s haberdashery. I treated each closing as if it were a death, and my stories had the air of obituaries.
   I spent one afternoon with the Stukes twins in their hardware store. It was a wonderful old building, with dusty wooden floors, saggy shelves that held a million items, a wood-burning stove in the back where serious things got debated when business was slow. You couldn’t find anything in the store, and you weren’t supposed to. The routine was to ask one of the twins about “the little flat gizmo that screws into the washer at the tip of that rod thing that fits into the gadget that makes the toilet flush.” One of the Stukes would disappear into the slightly organized piles of debris and emerge in a few minutes with whatever it took to make the toilet flush. Such a question could not be asked at Bargain City.
   We sat by the stove on a cold winter day and listened to the rantings of one Cecil Clyde Poole, a retired Army major, who, if put in charge of national policy, would nuke everyone but the Canadians. He would also nuke Bargain City, and in some of the roughest, most colorful language I’d ever heard he ripped and blasted the company with great gusto. We had plenty of time to talk because there were almost no customers. One of the Stukes told me their business was down 70 percent.
   The following month they closed the doors to the store their father had opened in 1922. On the front page, I ran a photo of the founder sitting behind a counter in 1938. I also fired off another editorial, sort of a wise-ass “I-told-you-so” reminder to whoever was out there still reading my little tirades.
   “You’re preachin’ too much,” Harry Rex warned me over and over. “And nobody’s listenin’.”


* * *

   The front office of the Times was seldom attended. There were some tables with copies of the current edition strewn about. There was a counter that Margaret sometimes used to lay out ads. The bell on the front door rang all day long as people came and went. About once a week a stranger would venture upstairs where my office door was usually open. More often than not it was some grieving relative there to discuss an upcoming obituary.
   I looked up one afternoon in March 1979 and there was a gentleman in a nice suit standing at my office door. Unlike Harry Rex, whose entrance began on the street and was heard by everyone in the building, this guy had climbed the stairs without making a sound.
   His name was Gary McGrew, a consultant from Nashville, whose area of expertise was small-town newspapers. As I fixed a pot of coffee, he explained that a rather well-financed client of his was planning to buy several newspapers in Mississippi during 1979. Because I had seven thousand subscribers, no debt, an offset press, and because we now ran the printing for six smaller weeklies, plus our own shoppers’ guides, his client was very interested in buying The FordCounty Times.
   “How interested?” I asked.
   “Extremely. If we could look at the books, we could value your company.”
   He left and I made a few phone calls to verify his credibility. He checked out fine, and I collected my current financials. Three days later we met again, this time at night. I did not want Wiley or Baggy or anyone else hanging around. News that the Times was changing hands would be such hot gossip that they’d open the coffee shops at 3 A.M. instead of 5.
   McGrew crunched the numbers like a seasoned analyst. I waited, oddly nervous, as if the verdict might drastically change my life.
   “You’re clearing a hundred grand after taxes, plus you’re taking a salary of fifty grand. Depreciation is another twenty, no interest because you have no debt. That’s one-seventy in cash flow, times the standard multiple of six, comes to one million twenty thousand.”
   “And the building?” I asked.
   He glanced around as if the ceiling might collapse any moment. “These places typically don’t sell for much.”
   “A hundred thousand,” I said.
   “Okay. And a hundred thousand for the offset press and other equipment. The total value is somewhere in the neighborhood of one-point-two million.”
   “Is that an offer?” I asked, even more anxious.
   “It might be. I’ll have to discuss it with my client.”
   I had no intention of selling the Times. I had stumbled into the business, gotten a few lucky breaks, worked hard writing stories and obituaries and selling pages of ads, and now, nine years later, my little company was worth over a million dollars.
   I was young, still single though I was tired of being lonely and living alone in a mansion with three leftover Hocutt cats that refused to die. I had accepted the reality that I would not find a bride in Ford County. All the good ones were snatched up by their twentieth birthday, and I was too old to compete at that level. I dated all the young divorcees, most of whom were quick to hop in the sack and wake up in my fine home, and dream about spending all the money I was rumored to be making. The only one I really liked, and dated off and on for a year, was saddled with three small children.
   But it’s funny what a million bucks will do to you. Once it was in play, it was never far from my thoughts. The job became more tedious. I grew to resent the ridiculous obituaries and the endless pressure of the deadlines. I told myself at least once a day that I no longer had to hustle the street selling ads. I could quit the editorials. No more nasty letters to the editor.
   A week later, I told Gary McGrew that the Times was not for sale. He said his client had decided to buy three papers by the end of the year, so I had time to think about it.
   Remarkably, word of our discussions never leaked.

Chapter 36

   On a Thursday afternoon in early May, I received a phone call from the attorney for the Parole Board. The next Padgitt hearing would take place the following Monday.
   “Convenient timing,” I said.
   “Why’s that?” he asked.
   “We publish every Wednesday, so I don’t have time to run a story before the hearing.”
   “We don’t monitor your paper, Mr. Traynor,” he said.
   “I don’t believe that,” I snapped.
   “What you believe is irrelevant. The Board has decided that you will not be permitted to attend the hearing. You violated our rules last time by reporting on what happened.”
   “I’m banned?”
   “That’s correct.”
   “I’ll be there anyway.”
   I hung up and called Sheriff McNatt. He, too, had been notified of the hearing, but wasn’t sure if he could attend. He was hot on the trail of a missing child (from Wisconsin), and it was obvious he had little interest in getting mixed up with the Padgitts.
   Our District Attorney, Rufus Buckley, had an armed robbery trial scheduled for Monday in Van Buren County. He promised to send a letter opposing the parole, but the letter never made it. Circuit Judge Omar Noose was presiding over the same trial, so he was off the hook. I began to think that no one would be there to speak in opposition to Padgitt’s release.
   For fun I asked Baggy to go. He gasped, then quickly let loose with an impressive list of excuses.
   I walked over to Harry Rex’s with the news. He had an ugly divorce trial starting Monday in Tupelo; otherwise he might have gone with me to Parchman. “The boy’s gonna be released, Willie,” he said.
   “We stopped it last year,” I said.
   “Once the parole hearings start, it’s just a matter of time.”
   “But somebody has to fight it.”
   “Why bother? He’s gettin’ out eventually. Why piss off the Padgitts? You won’t get any volunteers.”
   Volunteers were indeed hard to find as the entire town ducked for cover. I had envisioned an angry mob packing into the parole board hearing and disrupting the meeting.
   My angry mob consisted of three people.
   Wiley Meek agreed to ride over with me, though he had no interest in speaking. If they were serious about banning me from the room, Wiley would sit through it and give me the details. Sheriff McNatt surprised us with his presence.
   Security was tight in the hall outside the hearing room. When the Board attorney saw me he became angry and we exchanged words. Guards in uniforms surrounded me. I was outnumbered and unarmed. I was escorted from the building and placed in my car, then watched by two thick-necked ruffians with low IQs.
   According to Wiley, the hearing went like clockwork. Lucien was there with various Padgitts. The Board attorney read a staff report that made Danny sound like an Eagle Scout. His caseworker seconded the nomination. Lucien spoke for ten minutes, the usual lawyerly bullshit. Danny’s father spoke last and pleaded emotionally for his son’s release. He was desperately needed back home, where the family had interests in timber, gravel, asphalt, trucking, contracting, and freight. He would have so many jobs and work so many hours each week that he couldn’t possibly get into more trouble.
   Sheriff McNatt gamely stood up for the people of Ford County. He was nervous and not a good speaker, but did a credible job of replaying the crime. Remarkably, he neglected to remind the Board members that a jury drawn from the same pool of people who elected him had been threatened by Danny Padgitt.
   By a vote of 4—1, Danny Padgitt was paroled from prison.


* * *

   Clanton was quietly disappointed. During the trial, the town had a real thirst for blood and was bitter when the jury didn’t deliver the death penalty. But nine years had passed, and since the parole hearing it had been accepted that Danny Padgitt would eventually get out. No one expected it so soon, but after the hearing we were over the shock.
   His release was influenced by two unusual factors. The first was that Rhoda Kassellaw had no family in the area. There were no grieving parents to arouse sympathy and demand justice. There were no angry siblings to keep the case alive. Her children were gone and forgotten. She had lived a lonely life and left no close friends who were willing to press a grudge against her murderer.
   The second was that the Padgitts lived in another world. They were so rarely seen in public, it was not difficult to convince ourselves that Danny would simply go to the island and never be seen again. What difference did it make to the people of Ford County? Prison or Padgitt Island? If we never saw him, we wouldn’t be reminded of his crimes. In the nine years since his trial, I had not seen a single Padgitt in Clanton. In my rather harsh editorial about his release, I said “a cold-blooded killer is once more among us.” But that wasn’t really true.
   The front page story and the editorial drew not a single letter from the public. Folks talked about the release, but not for long and not very loudly.
   Baggy eased into my office late one morning a week after Padgitt’s release, and closed the door, always a good sign. He’d picked up some gossip so juicy that it had to be delivered with the door shut.
   On a typical day I arrived for work around 11 A.M. And on a typical day he began hitting the sauce around noon, so we usually had about an hour to discuss stories and monitor rumors.
   He glanced around as if the walls were bugged, then said, “It cost the Padgitts a hundred grand to spring the boy.”
   The amount did not shock me, nor did the bribe itself, but I was surprised that Baggy had dug up this information.
   “No,” I said. This always spurred him to tell more.
   “That’s what I’m tellin’ you,” he said smugly, his usual response when he had the scoop.
   “Who got the money?”
   “That’s the good part. You won’t believe it.”
   “Who?”
   “You’ll be shocked.”
   “Who?”
   Slowly, he went through his extended ritual of lighting a cigarette. In the early years, I would hang in the air as he delayed whatever dramatic news he had picked up, but with experience I had learned that this only slowed down the story. So I resumed my scribbling.
   “It shouldn’t come as a surprise, I guess,” he said, puffing and pondering. “Didn’t surprise me at all.”
   “Are you gonna tell me or not?”
   “Theo.”
   “Senator Morton?”
   “That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”
   I was sufficiently shocked, and I had to give the impression of being so or the story would lose steam. “Theo?” I asked.
   “He’s vice chairman of the Corrections Committee in the Senate. Been there forever, knows how to pull the strings. He wanted a hundred grand, the Padgitts wanted to pay it, they cut a deal, the boy walks. Just like that.”
   “I thought Theo was above taking bribes,” I said, and I was serious. This drew an exaggerated snort.
   “Don’t be so naive,” he said. Again, he knew everything.
   “Where did you hear it?”
   “Can’t say.” There was a chance that his poker gang had cooked up the rumor to see how fast it would race around the square before it got back to them. But there was an equally good chance Baggy was on to something. It really didn’t matter, though. Cash couldn’t be traced.


* * *

   Just when I had stopped dreaming of an early retirement, of cashing in, walking away, jetting off to Europe, and backpacking across Australia, just when I had resettled into my routine of covering stories and writing obits and hawking ads to every merchant in town, Mr. Gary McGrew reentered my life. And he brought his client with him.
   Ray Noble was one of three principals in a company that already owned thirty weekly newspapers in the Deep South and wanted to add more. Like my college friend Nick Diener, he had been raised in the family newspaper business and could talk the talk. He swore me to secrecy, then laid out his plan. His company wanted to buy the Times, along with the papers in Tyler and Van Buren Counties. They would sell off the equipment in the other two and do all the printing in Clanton because we had a better press. They would consolidate the accounting and much of the ad sales. Their offer of $1.2 million had been at the high end of the appraisal.
   Now they were offering $1.3 million. Cash.
   “After capital gains, you’ll walk away with a cool million,” Noble said.
   “I can do the math,” I said, as if I closed such deals on a weekly basis. The words “cool million” were rumbling through my entire body.
   They pressed a little. Offers were on the table for the other two papers, and I got the impression that the deal wasn’t exactly coming together as they wished. The key element was the Times. We had better equipment and a slightly larger circulation.
   I declined again and they left; all three of us knew it was not our last conversation.


* * *

   Eleven years after he fled Ford County, Sam Ruffin returned in much the same manner as he left—on a bus in the middle of the night. He’d been home for two days before I knew it. I arrived for my Thursday lunch and there sat Sam, rocking on the porch, with a smile as wide as his mother’s. Miss Callie looked and acted ten years younger now that he was safely back home. She fried a chicken and cooked every vegetable in her garden. Esau joined us and we feasted for three hours.
   Sam now had one college degree under his belt and was planning on law school. He had almost married a Canadian woman but things blew up over her family’s heated opposition to the union. Miss Callie was quite relieved to hear of the breakup. Sam had not mentioned the romance in letters to his mother.
   He planned to stay in Clanton for a few days, very close to home, venturing out of Lowtown only at night. I promised to talk to Harry Rex, to fish around and see what I could learn about Trooper Durant and his sons. From the legal notices we printed, I knew that Durant had remarried, then divorced for the second time.
   He wanted to see the town, so late that afternoon I picked him up in my Spitfire. Hiding under a Detroit Tigers baseball cap, he took in the sights of the small town he still called home. I showed him my office, my house, Bargain City, and the sprawl west of town. We circled the courthouse and I told him the story of the sniper and Baggy’s dramatic escape. Much of this he’d heard in letters from Miss Callie.
   As I dropped him off in front of the Ruffin home, he said, “Is Padgitt really out of prison?”
   “No one’s seen him,” I said. “But I’m sure he’s back home.”
   “Do you expect trouble?”
   “No, not really.”
   “Neither do I. But I can’t convince Momma.”
   “Nothing will happen, Sam.”