John Grisham

"Yes. I’m very familiar with your case, Donny Ray."

"Good," he says, relieved. We watch Dot shoo away the cats. Claws, perched on top of the car, pretends to be asleep. Claws wants no part of Dot Black. The doors are open, and Dot sticks the contract inside. We can hear her penetrating voice.

"I know you think they’re crazy," he says, reading my mind. "But they’re good people who’ve had some bad breaks. Be patient with them."

"They’re nice folks."

"I’m eighty percent gone, okay. Eighty percent. If I’d received the transplant, hell even six months ago, then I would’ve had a ninety percent chance of being cured. Ninety percent. Funny how doctors use numbers to tell us we’ll live or die. Now it’s too late." He suddenly gasps for breath, clenching his fists and shuddering all over. His face turns a light shade of pink as he desperately sucks in air, and for a second I feel as if I need to help. He beats his chest with both fists, and I’m afraid his whole body is about to cave in.

He catches his breath finally, and snorts rapidly through his nose. It is precisely at this moment that I begin to hate Great Benefit Life Insurance Company.

I’m not ashamed to look at him anymore. He’s my client, and he’s counting on me. I’ll take him, warts and all.

His breathing is as normal as possible, and his eyes are red and moist. I can’t tell if he’s crying or just recovering from the seizure. "I’m sorry," he whispers.

Claws hisses loud enough for us to hear, and we look just in time to see her flying through the air and landing in the weeds. Evidently, the watchcat was a bit too interested in my contract, and Dot knocked the hell out of her. Dot is saying something ugly to her husband, who’s hunkered even lower behind the wheel. She reaches in, snatches the paperwork, then storms toward us, cats diving for cover in all directions.

"Eighty percent gone, okay?" Donny Ray says hoarsely. "So I won’t be around much longer. Whatever you get out of this case, please take care of them with it. They’ve had a hard life."

I’m touched by this to the point of being unable to respond.

Dot opens the door and slides the contract across the table. The first page is ripped slightly at the bottom and the second has a smudge on it. I hope it’s not cat poop. "There," she says. Mission accomplished. Buddy has indeed signed it, a signature that’s absolutely illegible.

I point here and there. Donny Ray and his mother sign, and the deal is sealed. We chat a few minutes as I start glancing at my watch.

When I leave them, Dot is seated next to Donny Ray, gently stroking his arm and telling him that things will get better.

Chapter Thirteen

I HAD BEEN PREPARED TO EXPLAIN TO Barry X. that I wouldn’t be able to work on Saturday, what with more pressing demands around the house and all. And I had been prepared to suggest a few hours on Sunday afternoon, if he needed me. But I worried for nothing. Barry is leaving town for the weekend, and since I wouldn’t dare try to enter the office without his assistance, the issue quickly became moot.

For some reason, Miss Birdie does not rattle my door before sunrise, choosing instead to busy herself in front of the garage, below my window, with all manner of tool preparation. She drops rakes and shovels. She chips crud off the inside of the wheelbarrow with an unwieldly pickax. She sharpens two flat hoes, singing and yodeling all the while. I finally come down just after seven, and she acts surprised to see me. "Why good morning, Rudy. And how are you?"

"Fine, Miss Birdie. You?"

"Wonderful, just wonderful. Isn’t it a lovely day?"

The day has hardly begun, and it’s still too early to

measure its loveliness. It is, if anything, rather sticky for such an early hour. The insufferable heat qf the Memphis summer cannot be far away.

She allows me one cup of instant coffee and a piece of toast before she starts rumbling about the mulch. I spring into action, much to her delight. Under her guidance, I manhandle the first hundred-pound bag into the wheelbarrow and follow her around the house and down the drive and across the front lawn to a scrawny little flower bed near the street. She holds her coffee in gloved hands and points to the precise spot where the mulch should go. I am quite winded by the trek, especially the last leg across the damp grass, but I rip the bag open with gusto and begin moving mulch with a pitchfork.

My tee shirt is soaked when I finish the first bag fifteen minutes later. She follows me and the wheelbarrow back to the edge of the patio, where we reload. She actually points to the exact bag she wants next, and we haul it to a spot near the mailbox.

We spread five bags in the first hour. Five hundred pounds of mulch. And I am suffering. The temperature hits eighty at nine o’clock. I talk her into a water break at nine-thirty, and find it difficult to stand after sitting for ten minutes. A legitimate backache seizes me sometime thereafter, but I bite my tongue and allow myself only a fair amount of grimacing. She doesn’t notice.

I’m not a lazy person, and at one point during college, not too long ago, I was in excellent physical condition. I jogged and played intramural sports, but then law school happened and I’ve had little time for such activities during the past three years. I feel like a soft little wirnp after a few hours of hard labor.

For lunch she feeds me two of her tasteless turkey sandwiches and an apple. I eat very slowly on the patio,

under the fan. My back aches, my legs are numb, my hands actually shake as I nibble like a rabbit.

As I wait for her to finish in the kitchen, I stare across the small green patch of lawn, around the monument of mulch, to my apartment sitting innocently above the garage. I’d been so proud of myself when I negotiated the paltry sum of one hundred and fifty dollars per month as rent, but how clever had I really been? Who got the best end of this deal? I remember feeling slightly ashamed of myself for taking advantage of this sweet little woman. Now I’d like to stuff her in an empty mulch bag.

According to an ancient thermometer nailed to the garage, the temperature at 1 P.M. is ninety-three degrees. At two, my back finally locks up, and I explain to Miss Birdie that I have to rest. She looks at me sadly, then slowly turns and studies the undiminished heap of white bags. We’ve barely made a dent. "Well, I guess. If you must."

"Just an hour," I plead.

She relents, but by three-thirty I am once again pushing the wheelbarrow with Miss Birdie at my heels.

After eight hours of harsh labor, I have disposed of exactly seventy-nine bags of mulch, less than a third of the shipment she’d ordered.

Shortly after lunch, I dropped the first hint that I was expected at Yogi’s by six. This was a lie, of course. I am scheduled to tend bar from eight to closing. But she’d never know the difference, and I am determined to liberate myself from the mulch before dark. At five, I simply quit. I tell her I’ve had enough, my back is aching, I have to go to work and I pull myself up the stairs as she watches sadly from below. She can evict me, for all I care.

THE MAJESTIC SOUND of rolling thunder wakes me late Sunday morning, and I lie stiffly on the sheets as a heavy rain pounds my roof. My head is in fine shape-I

stopped drinking last night when I went on duty. But the rest of my body is fixed in concrete, unable to move. The slightest shift causes excruciating pain. It hurts to breathe.

At some point during yesterday’s arduous ordeal, Miss Birdie asked me if I’d like to worship with her this morning. Church attendance was not a condition in my lease, but why not, I thought. If this lonely old lady wants me to go to church with her, it’s the least I can do. I certainly couldn’t be harmed by it.