A time to kill

"I think Jake has done a good job. It's a lousy set of facts to begin with. Hailey committed the murders, planned them carefully, and is relying on a rather weak plea of insanity. Juries in Boston would not be too sympathetic."

"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.