A Time to Kill

"Nor in Ford County," added Harry Rex.

"I hope you have a soul-stirring final summation up your sleeve," Sheldon said.

"He doesn’t have any sleeves," said Harry Rex.

"They’ve all been burned. Along with his pants and underwear."

"Why don’t you come over tomorrow and watch?" Jake asked. "I’ll introduce you to the judge and ask that you have privileges of chambers."

"He wouldn’t do that for me," Harry Rex said.

"I can understand why," Sheldon said with a smile. "I might just do that. I had planned to stay until Tuesday anyway. Is it safe over there?"

"Not really."

Woody Mackenvale’s wife sat on a plastic bench in the hall next to his room and cried quietly while trying to be brave for her two small sons seated next to her. Each boy squeezed a well-used wad of Kleenexes, occasionally wiping their cheeks and blowing their noses. Jake knelt before her and listened intently as she described what the doctors had said. The bullet had lodged in the spine-the paralysis was severe and permanent. He was a foreman at a plant in Booneville. Good job. Good life. She didn’t work, at least until now. They would make it somehow, but she wasn’t sure how. He coached his sons’ Little League team. He was very active.

She cried louder and the boys wiped their cheeks.

"He saved my life," Jake said to her, and looked at the boys.

She closed her eyes and nodded. "He was doing his jotx. We’ll make it."

Jake took a Kleenex from the box on the bench and wiped his eyes. A group of relatives stood nearby and watched. Harry Rex paced nervously at the end of the hall.

Jake hugged her and patted the boys on the head. He gave her his phone number-office-and told her to call if he could do anything. He promised to visit Woody when the trial was over.

The beer stores opened at noon on Sunday, as if the church folks needed it then and would stop on the way home from the Lord’s house to pick up a couple of six-packs, then on to Grandmother’s for Sunday dinner and an afternoon of hell-

raising. Oddly, they would close again at six in the afternoon, as if the same folks should then be denied beer as they returned to church for the Sunday night services. On the other six days beer was sold from six in the morning until midnight. But on Sunday, the selling was curtailed in honor of the Almighty.

Jake bought a six-pack at Bates Grocery and directed his chauffeur toward the lake. Harry Rex’s antique Bronco carried three inches of dried mud across the doors and fenders. The tires were imperceptible. The windshield was cracked and dangerous, with thousands of splattered insects caked around the edges. The inspection sticker was four years old and unseen from the outside. Dozens of empty beer cans and broken bottles littered the floorboard. The air conditioner had not worked in six years. Jake had suggested use of the Saab. Harry Rex had cursed him for his stupidity. The red Saab was an easy target for snipers. No one would suspect the Bronco.

They drove slowly in the general direction of the lake, to no place in particular. Willie Nelson wailed from the cassette. Harry Rex tapped the steering wheel and sang along. His normal speaking voice was coarse and unrefined. With song, it was heinous. Jake sipped his beer and searched for daylight through the windshield.

The heat wave was about to be broken. Dark clouds loomed to the southwest, and when they passed Huey’s Lounge the rains fell and showered the parched earth. It cleansed and removed the dust from the kudzu that lined the roadbeds and hung like Spanish moss from the trees. It cooled the scorched pavement and created a sticky fog that rose three feet above the highway. The red baked gullies absorbed the water, and when full began to carry tiny streams downward to the larger field drains and road ditches. The rains drenched the cotton and soybeans, and pounded the crop rows until small puddles formed between the stalks.

Remarkably, the windshield wipers worked. They slapped back and forth furiously and removed the mud and insect collection. The storm grew. Harry Rex increased the volume of the stereo.

The blacks with their cane poles and straw hats camped

under the bridges and waited for the storm to blow over. Below them, the still creeks came to life. Muddy water from the fields and gullies rushed downward and stirred the small streams and brooks. The water rose and moved forward. The blacks ate bologna and crackers and told fishing stories.

Harry Rex was hungry. He stopped at Treadway’s Grocery near the lake, and bought more beer, two catfish dinners, and a large bag of Cajiin-spiced red-hot barbecue pork skins. He threw them at Jake.

They crossed the dam in a blinding downpour. Harry Rex parked next to a small pavilion over a picnic area. They sat on the concrete table and watched the rain batter Lake Chatulla. Jake drank beer while Harry Rex ate the catfish dinners.

"When you gonna tell Carla?" he asked, slurping beer.

The tin roof roared above. "About what?"

"The house."

"I’m not gonna tell her. I think I can have it rebuilt before she gets back."

"You mean by the end of the week?"

"Yeah."

"You’re cracking up, Jake. You’re drinking too much, and you’re losing your mind."

"I deserve it. I’ve earned it. I’m two weeks away from bankruptcy. I’m about to lose the biggest case of my career, for which I have been paid nine hundred dollars. My beautiful home that everyone took pictures of and the old ladies from the Garden Club tried to get written up in Southern Living has been reduced to rubble. My wife has left me, and when she hears about the house, she’ll divorce me. No question about that. So I’ll lose my wife. And once my daughter learns that her damned dog died in the fire, she’ll hate me forever. There’s a contract on my head. I’ve got Klan goons looking for me. Snipers shooting at me. There’s a soldier lying up in the hospital with my bullet in his spine. He’ll be a vegetable, and I’ll think about him every hour of every day for the rest of my life. My secretary’s husband was killed because of me. My last employee is in the hospital with a punk haircut and a concussion because she worked for me. The jury thinks I’m a lying crook because of my expert witness. My client wants to fire me. When he’s convicted, every-

body will blame me. He’ll hire another lawyer for the appeal, one of those ACLU types, and they’ll sue me claiming ineffective trial counsel. And they’ll be right. So I’ll get my ass sued for malpractice. I’ll have no wife, no daughter, no house, no practice, no clients, no money, nothing."

"You need psychiatric help, Jake. I think you should make an appointment with Dr. Bass. Here, have a beer."

"I guess I’ll move in with Lucien and sit on the porch all day."

"Can I have your office?"

"Do you think she’ll divorce me?"

"Probably so. I’ve had four divorces, and they’ll file for damned near anything."

"Not Carla. I worship the ground she walks on, and she knows it."

"She’ll be sleeping on the ground when she gets back to Clanton."

"Naw, we’ll get a nice, cozy little double-wide trailer. It’ll do us fine until the bankruptcy is over. Then we’ll find another old house and start over."

"You’ll probably find you another wife and start over. Why would she leave a swanky cottage on the beach and return to a house trailer in Clanton?"

"Because I’ll be in the house trailer."

"That’s not good enough, Jake. You’ll be a drunk, bankrupt, disbarred lawyer, living in a house trailer. You will be publicly disgraced. All of your friends, except me and Lucien, will forget about you. She’ll never come back. It’s over, Jake. As your friend and divorce lawyer, I advise you to file first. Do it now, tomorrow, so she’ll never know what hit her."