"I'm sorry," he said. "About the hearing. I thought the judge would understand."

This was the custody hearing: the child she had named Stephen after her own son and which she had raised for three months as Edie languished, and which she had held and comforted and loved when Edie had then died, was to be given to the Pyes. They named it Lamar and took it from her and drove off in a beaten-up old truck, a gaggle of tough-as-nails men and gristly women.

"The state paints with a broad brush," she said. "It believes in family and in kin. I agree with that just as broadly. Occasionally, however, it makes a mistake. Oh well. If they love him, he'll be fine, I suppose."

Sam didn't see much love in that brood, but he didn't say anything. The bus pulled in. Miss Connie, of course, was rich; she didn't have to take a damn bus. But she was also without airs, and if the bus was good enough to the poor white and black people she had loved and loved her, she would take it.

She smiled brokenly and climbed aboard while the driver loaded her considerable luggage into the compartment. He watched her as she found a seat. The bus shivered as the driver put it in gear and just as it lurched into motion, Connie turned and their eyes met and Sam made a little twitch of a smile and she smiled and disappeared forever. He always wondered: suppose he'd yelled, Connie, don't leave, goddammit, stay with me. Connie, I love you, don't go, please, we will work it out.

But he hadn't and knew he'd done the right thing. He was married with three children and a pregnant wife; what could be done about that? Nothing. So Connie drove away on the bus and that was all there was to it.

Where her house had been there were now fifty houses and the tasteful sign before them, where once the Longacre mailbox had hung, read LONGACRE MEADOWS, A SUBSIDIARY OF THE BAMA GROUP LONGACRE MEADOWS, A SUBSIDIARY OF THE BAMA GROUP, and the houses were white and looked spacious and well lived in, though they were spread with such rigid orthodoxy on the gridwork of new streets that nothing seemed spontaneous or alive, quite.

Sam turned in, watching damned Duane Peck turn in behind him, but soon forgot about the deputy as he tried to negotiate the dazzle of cutely named streets. It was almost more than he could handle: he felt sucked into a vortex of houses that looked exactly alike exactly alike. When did this happen? he wondered. But by a religious miracle, the only one he'd ever witnessed in his eighty-six years, he happened upon Barefoot Boy Garth, as the street was preposterously called, and soon enough came upon a house hardly different from any other with the address 10567. How on earth could there be ten thousand other houses on this little lane? Anyway, he pulled into the driveway and sat for a second.

Now, when perhaps he needed it most, a blessed wave of clarity washed across him. He felt focused, alive, intense; he knew exactly why he was here and what he had to find out. He got out and went and knocked on the door. A young black woman answered, her eyes hooded in hostility.

"Yes?" she said.

He was a little nonplussed: most people in these parts called him "sir" axiomatically, possibly because they recognized him and possibly out of respect for his age.

"Ah, I'm looking for Lucille Parker."

"What for?"

"It's old business. About a letter she wrote me."

"You're not some cracker segregationist Bible thumper here to tell her the Lord took her other daughter."

"Ma'am, I'm a graduate of Yale Law School and Princeton University. Though I respect the Bible, I'd never thump it. It is about Shirelle, yes, but I don't believe God had anything to do with it."

"You're Mr. Sam, then. Go on back," said the woman. "We heard you'd come around. Mama's waiting for you."

She led him through the neat house-Sam was amazed that Negroes lived so nicely; when had this happened?-and out back where the old lady sat on a lawn chair, under a scrubby little tree. The chair was a frail, almost gossamer thing, possibly bowed in strain; she was immense, serene and queenly in her bulk, sitting in her best purple clothes, sagacious and calm.

"Mrs. Parker," he said, "I am Sam Vincent."

"Mr. Sam," she said. "I remember you from the trial."

"Yes, ma'am. I remember you too."

"No, you don't," she said. "You never once looked at us or cared about us colored folks at all. You never talked to us or anything. Nobody ever visited us; we got us a phone call from someone at the Coroner's telling us Shirelle's body could be picked up. That's all we ever got from anybody."

"Ma'am, I ain't going to lie to you. In them days, we hardly thought of colored people as human beings. It's the way it was. I was the man I was and now I'm the man I am. But if I say I remembered you, I did: You wore a black dress because you were in mourning still. You wore a white hat with a camellia atop it and a veil. Your husband wore a dark suit; he wore horn-rim glasses and walked with a limp, I believe from a combat wound in North Africa. I came about this."

He handed her the letter.

"Yes."

"I can't ever remember seeing it. I think a secretary must have put it in the file."

"Because it wasn't important."

"Ma'am, if I'd have seen it, I'd have probably put it in the file too. It doesn't have any evidence in it."

"Only one white person ever told me the truth," said Mrs. Parker. "That was Earl Swagger. He was a fair man. The day that man got killed was a sad day for this whole county. But Mr. Earl said he'd find out what happened to my baby. And I know if he'd a lived, he would have, fair and square, no matter what or who."

Sam tried to be gentle.

"Ma'am, we found out what happened to Shirelle. Reggie Fuller killed her. And he paid for it. It's a closed account. Nowadays, accounts don't get closed so fairly. But we closed that one."

"No sir," the old lady said. "I know know that boy didn't do it, just like I said in the letter." that boy didn't do it, just like I said in the letter."

Sam looked at the letter. She was quoting herself almost verbatim all these years later: "Mr. Sam, I know that boy couldn't have killed my Shirelle," she had written in 1957, a week before the execution.

"Mrs. Parker, everything scientific matched. I swear to you. I may not be no civil rights Holy Roller, but neither am I the kind of man who would railroad evidence."

"I don't care what the evidence said. That boy Reggie was over to my house when my Shirelle disappeared. He was in the house. He talked to me about her. He looked me in the eye. God would not let him look me in the eye and say he missed Shirelle if the night before he had killed her."

"Mrs. Parker, I have been around murderers my whole life. Black or white, they are wired different. They can look you in the eye and tell you that they love you and make you believe it, and when you turn your back, they hit you over the head with a claw hammer and take your watch and drink your blood and forget about it in the next second. They ain't normal normal, like you and me. A lie don't carry no weight with them at all."

"That may be true, sir, but Reggie wasn't like that. Don't you understand?"

"Ma'am, facts is facts."

"Mr. Sam, Mr. Earl said the detectives would come talk to us. No detectives never did. What you call it when you solve a crime? What Columbo does."

"Columbo is a made-up man. Investigation. You call it investigation."

"You never did no investigation. You found your shirt, you found your blood and you electrocuted your nigger boy."

"He was guilty. Who would go to so much trouble to frame a boy like that?"

"The man what killed my baby Shirelle and has been walking around laughing about it all these years."

"Madam: think about what you're saying. A man would have to find Reggie, break into his house, get his shirt, take it to the site of the murder, dip it in your daughter's blood, rip the pocket off, plant the pocket in your daughter's dead hand, return to Reggie's house, break in again, hide the shirt under the mattress. Now, who would do such a damned crazy thing? If he does nothing nothing, we only find the body and there ain't no other evidence to point to a suspect. Without that damned pocket and that bloody shirt, there ain't no evidence, ain't no case, ain't no nothing. There's only a dead girl."

She didn't blink or look away but faced him square.

"I knows knows all that. But ... he did have the time. It ain't like there's some limit on the time he had, like a single night. He had four full days between the time he killed my girl and Mr. Earl found the body. It could have been done." all that. But ... he did have the time. It ain't like there's some limit on the time he had, like a single night. He had four full days between the time he killed my girl and Mr. Earl found the body. It could have been done."

It was the damn TV! Everybody thought they was Columbo or Matlock or some such and when people's loved ones got killed, there always had to be some meaning meaning in it. Sam looked into Mrs. Parker's crazed old eyes: she'd been fulminating on this over the decades. She'd invented a goddamned in it. Sam looked into Mrs. Parker's crazed old eyes: she'd been fulminating on this over the decades. She'd invented a goddamned conspiracy conspiracy about her daughter's death. No one wanted to face the squalid, simple, irrational truth, as here: a colored boy lost control and smashed her poor little daughter to death with a rock. about her daughter's death. No one wanted to face the squalid, simple, irrational truth, as here: a colored boy lost control and smashed her poor little daughter to death with a rock.

"Mrs. Parker, it don't never happen that way. It just don't."

"Mr. Sam, I see in your eyes what you thinking. You thinking, crazy old colored woman, she be blaming a white white person. Every last thing, it's all the person. Every last thing, it's all the white white man's fault. It's man's fault. It's race race, like all the colored, that's all they think about. That's what you thinking, right?"

She regarded him with fierce, brilliant eyes.

"Sister, I-"

"You is, isn't you? Tell me!"

He sighed.

"I suppose I am. There are some things I cannot overcome. Some suspicions about y'all. I haven't grown as I should have."

"Then let me tell you something surprise you. I don't don't think a white man done it. I think a colored man did." think a white man done it. I think a colored man did."

This threw Sam. It was the last thing he expected. The old woman had him foxed something powerful.

"What you mean, there, sister?"

"In them days, the one thing we told our girls, and I must have said it a hundred times to Shirelle: you don't never never get in no car with a white boy. White boy only wants one thing from you and you don't want to give it to him. He may be friendly, he may be nice, he may be handsome, he may have the devil's ways to him. But he only want get in no car with a white boy. White boy only wants one thing from you and you don't want to give it to him. He may be friendly, he may be nice, he may be handsome, he may have the devil's ways to him. But he only want one one thing, girl, and if you give it to him, he hate you and all the black boys find out and thing, girl, and if you give it to him, he hate you and all the black boys find out and they they hate you, but they goin' try and git the same off of you and really be angry if you don't give it. So I hate you, but they goin' try and git the same off of you and really be angry if you don't give it. So I know know she don't get in no car with no white man. Some colored man done this to her." she don't get in no car with no white man. Some colored man done this to her."

Sam blinked, confounded. The old lady was smart smart. Not white smart, fancy sentences smart, but somehow she knew things: she had seen into the center of it. He'd known many a detective sergeant who wasn't as sly as this.

"Mr. Sam, you the smartest man in this county. You smarter even than old Ray Bama or Harry Etheridge and his son, you smarter than Mr. Earl. You got his boy, Bob Lee, off when the whole U.S. govmint say he was a killer. You got Jed Posey to spend his black evil days in prison. Now you a old man and I a old woman. We both be gone soon. Cain't you please just look at that case again? Just so's when you goes you knows you done your job as hard at the end as you done it through the middle."

"Well-"

He thought about it. His was a life of certitude. He was an absolute believer. He hated revisionism, hindsight, detached examination, the whole spirit of equivocation and ironic ambivalence which had become the American style in the nineties. He hated hated it. Goddamn Nigra woman wanted him to become what he hated. it. Goddamn Nigra woman wanted him to become what he hated.

But ... there was time. She was right. It was not technically impossible. Why anyone would do such a thing was beyond his imagining, but it was, in the technical sense, by the laws of the physical world, possible. And the bit about the black man being the one who did it-that was so interesting.

As pure mystery, as pure problem of the intellect, it goaded him powerfully.

"My mind ain't what it once was. It gits foggy. It clouds up with anger. I can't find my socks. Seems like people hide things on me. But if I git another clear day like today, I will look at the case records again, or what of them remain. I will look, but don't you expect nothing. I can't have you expecting nothing, Mrs. Parker."

"God bless you, sir."

"Now, don't call me sir. Call me Sam. Everybody else does."

23.

It was the football dream, a late variant. Lamar Pye and Russ's father, Bud, were at his football game. It was 1981 and Russ was eight; he was not a very good football player. In fact he'd only played that one year.

Lamar said, "I think that damn boy's got too much gal in him."

"He ain't no athlete, that's for sure," agreed Bud. "You should see his younger brother. That little sucker's a studpuppy. You can't hardly git him to quit."

"I like that in a man and in a boy. When they don't quit. Old Russ here," Lamar explained, "not only do he got too much quit, he don't even got no start."

The two old boys laughed raucously on the sideline, and it seemed that everybody there was staring at poor little Russ, waiting for him to screw up.

It didn't take long. Because he was too small to play the line and not fast enough to play the backfield, he'd been stuck at a position called linebacker. It involved a lot of football knowledge for which he just had no gift and the coaches were always yelling at him for being out of place or slow to react. He was never, ever comfortable. When he charged the line, inevitably a pass zinged to the exact place he'd just abandoned; when he stayed put against a pass, someone blasted through the line and veered through the hole he was supposed to plug. It was a terrible season and he yearned to quit because he wasn't born with that cool-headed instinct his younger brother possessed in spades, but was, in truth, a spaz.

"Come on, Russ, stop 'em," yelled his dad.

"Come on, Russ, you can do it," yelled big old Lamar, ponytailed, charm, charisma, big white teeth, big sickle in his hands which he was sharpening with an Arkansas stone, running it with goose-pimply grinding sounds up and down the wickedly curving blade.

Russ was so intent on them that he missed the start of the play and when he finally snapped to-the coaches were yelling his name-it seemed that a big black kid on the other team had juked to the left then broken outside and was already beyond the line of scrimmage with no one near him but poor Russ in his weak-side linebacker's slot.

Willing himself to run, Russ found a surprisingly good angle on the running back and zoomed toward him. But as he approached he saw how big the boy was, how fierce with energy and determination, how his legs beat like pistons against the ground, and in some way Russ's ardor was dampened. Though everyone was yelling "Hit him low" he hit him high. Briefly, they grappled and Russ had the sense of bright lights, stars maybe, the wind rustling and then blankness.

When he blinked he was on the ground, his face mask having grown a fungus of turf, his whole body constricted in pain and as he turned, he could see through the ache behind his eyes the runner continue his scamper down the sidelines, borne by cheers from the crowd, until he crossed the goal line to be festooned with garlands and ribbons.

He tried to get up but Dad and Lamar stood over him.

"Russ, hit him low low," his dad said with contempt.

Lamar lifted the sickle. Its blade picked up a movielike highlight from the sun. He was Jason, Freddy Krueger, the guy in Halloween Halloween all combined into one. He laughed loudly. all combined into one. He laughed loudly.

"Sorry, boy," he said, "but you shoulda listened to your daddy. Nut-cuttin' time!"

Whoooshhhh! The blade descended. The blade descended.

Russ awoke in a cheesy hotel room in Oklahoma City, his mind filled with shards of glass, pieces of gravel and infinite regrets. Someone was was hacking at him, but no, it was the door, being pounded. hacking at him, but no, it was the door, being pounded.

"Russ, come on," someone was yelling, "you're late again, goddammit. It's time to go."

Oh. It was his other other father, Bob Lee Swagger, one more true man to find disappointment in him. father, Bob Lee Swagger, one more true man to find disappointment in him.

Russ got himself out of bed.

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Not if you have it displayed."

"But it isn't displayed."

"My, my, if it didn't just fall off the gun rack here."

Bob pointed to the empty gun rack above the seat in his truck. Behind the seat, he had just slid the Mini-14 in its gun case, plus a paper bag with three loaded twenty-round magazines and the immense forty-rounder, a curved thing that looked like a flattened tin banana. "What cop is going to give me a hard time? This here's Oklahoma."

"That isn't legal," said Russ. "My dad catches you with that, you'd go to jail." isn't legal," said Russ. "My dad catches you with that, you'd go to jail."

"Well, I'd never mess with your old man, so you'd best come up with a way to talk him out of it," Bob said, sliding the .45 Commander in its holster behind the seat too, along with the extra magazines.

"I don't know," said Russ. "This is getting hairy."

"It gets hairier. You drive."