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Both boys said they did. Jack’s heart was beating so fast he thought he might throw up the remains of his hot dog into the McHenry, which would be proof positive of his perjury.
Jack had not slept a wink that night, convinced that God would strike him deaf, dumb, and perhaps dead for committing the sin of lying to a lawman to protect colored boys with hot dogs stolen from white people.
The river held another, far more pleasant memory for him. When he and Jeff were in high school, their daddy would bring home truck tire inner tubes as big as a table when inflated. Father and sons would spend lazy summer weekends floating in them down the McHenry when the water level wasn’t too low. They would push off the huge boulders that sat in the water like submerged hippos. The gentle current and soft eddies, which nibbled at the underbellies of the boulders like blue gills on toes, combined to propel one downriver at a pace that was good for daydreaming or dozing. And his father would always bring along a six-pack of Pabst, and Jack and his brother would have a bottle apiece and keep the secret from their mother, who remained on the shore downriver with Lucy preparing the simple feast that would follow.
Later, they would lie in the sun and dry off and eat sandwiches filled with Smithfield ham and fat tomato slices, and chew bread-and-butter pickles and devour homemade potato salad with thick slices of onion. The cold lemonade would soothe the parching of their throats caused by the summer sun. They would lift up Lucy and take her to the McHenry and dip her feet in the water until she became more scared than amused. The ride home would have the exhausted children dead asleep in the back, and the mother in the front seat the same, while Frank Lee thoughtfully puffed on his Camels and watched the summer sun smolder into the vast cradle of the western horizon.
Those were fine times, Jack knew, that had now drifted away like a tide that had no intention of ever returning.
He made up his mind. Someone else would have to represent Jerome, although he doubted there was a white lawyer within a hundred miles that would touch it.
He heard the phone ringing from his downstairs office. He checked his watch. At this late hour it was most likely his parents, and that was not good. He took the steps two at a time and snatched up the receiver.
“Hello?”
The screech he heard on the other end of the line momentarily deafened him.
“Who the hell is this?” he yelled into the phone, his ear still smarting.
He heard the two words, drawn out and ugly.
He put the receiver down, went over to his file cabinet, and took out the .32 Colt revolver he kept there. It didn’t have a lot of power, but if Jack shot someone, they would know it. And Jack was an excellent marksman, having been taught by his late grandfather and then his veteran father. And he and his brother had fired hundreds of rounds over the years working on their aim, especially after Jeff Lee had joined the Army.
He went back upstairs and stared out the window.
N——Lover.
Those had been the two spoken words on the phone. Drawn out so long that the caller had run out of breath and coughed with the effort. It had to be one of the prison guards, he figured. Maybe the one with the mermaid tattoo, who thought the Randolphs were Southern royalty.
During Jack’s childhood, when bullies had come after him and his brother they had absorbed a beating, afraid to hit back. Or else run like rabbits while the older boys laughed their guts out. The reason for the bullying had been Lucy Lee. The boys had called her names, cruel, awful names, and Jack’s father had hollered at them and complained to their parents. These boys had subsequently decided to exact their revenge on the man’s sons.
One day Hilly Lee had intervened in one of these tense encounters and told her oldest son exactly what he needed to do to break the grip of such an adversary. So while his mother silently watched, Jack had marched right up to the biggest of the bullies and punched him as hard as he could right in the nose. It had nearly broken his hand, but blood had burst from both of the boy’s nostrils like the violent discharge from a double barrel. And they had never been bothered again, as word had spread that Jack Lee did not take shit from anyone, and would break your damn face if you messed with him or his brother.
Jack breathed in the moist, humid air that had collected all around him. And that was when he decided that bullies over the phone were worse than the variety that stood in front of you. They tried to scare and intimidate from a perch of anonymity with no guts and no accountability. He was ready to break another nose and watch the blood gush.
Jerome Washington needed a legal advocate more than anyone he knew.
I guess it might as well be me. And after thirty-three years plus around five hours it’s probably about damn time.
CHAPTER 11
THE NEXT DAY JACK WALKED over to the Mathias W. Bedford Courthouse, which had been built around 1800 and originally named for a judge from that era. In 1880 it had been renamed for Bedford, a major general who had fought in the Civil War. He had not worn Union blue.
On the other side of the courthouse stood the bronze statue of a solitary Confederate soldier resolutely facing due south. Jack had always been told this was because the silent sentry did not want to miss the Confederacy rising again.
“Mornin’, Jack,” said Sally Reeves. She was the clerk of the court for Freeman County. In her early forties, Reeves wore her brunette hair long, letting the row of curls drape her shoulders. Her face was pleasantly angular, and the cheeks rode high on it. Her black glasses were settled right at the center of her slender nose. She was always polite and professional and, as an assistant clerk, had been helpful to Jack when he was just starting out and learning the ropes. Back then she knew far more about the legal process than he had. Maybe she still did, he thought.
“Morning, Sally.”
She shuffled some papers on her desk and slid her gaze down her official ledger. “Don’t see you on the court docket today.”
“Just filing an appearance. And here to pick up some documents.”
He handed her the legal form in triplicate that he had typed up earlier.
She read down it. “Jerome Washington?”
“Yes. I also need a copy of his arraignment. It seems no bail request was made. And I need to think about asking for a preliminary hearing as well, of course. Don’t want to waive that by not timely raising it.”
