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doing?”
    “Workin’ for a steel company. Good job. Got married.”
    “You’re kidding? Lester, married?”
    “Yeah, married a white girl.”
    “White girl! What’s he want with a white girl?”
    “Aw, you know Lester. Always an uppity nigger. He’s on his way home now. Be in late tonight.”
    “What for?”
    They stopped at the rear door. Jake asked again: “What’s Lester coming in for?”
    “Family business.”
    “Y’all planning something?”
    “Nope. He just wants to see his niece.”
    “Y’all don’t get excited.”
    “That’s easy for you to say, Jake.”
    “I know.”
    “What would you plan, Jake?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You gotta little girl. Suppose she’s layin up in the hospital, beat and raped. What would you do?”
    Jake looked through the window of the door and could not answer. Carl Lee waited.
    “Don’t do anything stupid, Carl Lee.”
    “Answer my question. What would you do?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.”
    “Lemme ask you this. If it was your little girl, and if it was two niggers, and you could get your hands on them, what would you do?”
    “Kill them.”
    Carl Lee smiled, then laughed. “Sure you would, Jake, sure you would. Then you’d hire some big-shot lawyer to say you’s crazy, just like you did in Lester’s trial.”
    “We didn’t say Lester was crazy. We just said Bowie needed killing.”
    “You got him off, didn’t you?”
    “Sure.”
    Carl Lee walked to the stairs and looked up. “This how they get to the courtroom?” he asked without looking at Jake.
    “Who?”
    “Those boys.”
    “Yeah. Most of the time they take them up those stairs. It’s quicker and safer. They can park right outside the door here, and run them up the stairs.”
    Carl Lee walked to the rear door and looked through the window at the veranda. “How many murder trials you had, Jake?”
    “Three. Lester’s and two more.”
    “How many were black?”
    “All three.”
    “How many you win?”
    “All three.”
    “You pretty good on nigger shootin’s, ain’t you?”
    “I guess.”
    “You ready for another one?”
    “Don’t do it, Carl Lee. It’s not worth it. What if you’re convicted and get the gas chamber? What about the kids? Who’ll raise them? Those punks aren’t worth it.”
    “You just told me you’d do it.”
    Jake walked to the door next to Carl Lee. “It’s different with me. I could probably get off.”
    “How?”
    “I’m white, and this is a white county. With a little luck I could get an all-white jury, which will naturally be sympathetic. This is not New York or California. A man’s supposed to protect his family. A jury would eat it up.”
    “And me?”
    “Like I said, this ain’t New York or California. Some whites would admire you, but most would wantto see you hang. It would be much harder to win an acquittal.”
    “But you could do it, couldn’t you, Jake?”
    “Don’t do it, Carl Lee.”
    “I have no choice, Jake. I’ll never sleep till those bastards are dead. I owe it to my little girl, I owe it to myself, and I owe it to my people. It’ll be done.”
    They opened the doors, walked under the veranda and down the driveway to Washington Street, across from Jake’s office. They shook hands. Jake promised to stop by the hospital tomorrow to see Gwen and the family.
    “One more thing, Jake. Will you meet me at the jail when they arrest me?”
    Jake nodded before he thought. Carl Lee smiled and walked down the sidewalk to his truck.

5
    __________
    L ester Hailey married a Swedish girl from Wisconsin, and although she still professed love for him, Lester suspected the novelty of his skin was beginning to fade. She was terrified of Mississippi, and flatly refused to travel south with Lester even though he assured her she would be safe. She had never met his family. Not that his people were anxious to meet her—they were not. It was not uncommon for Southern blacks to move north and marry white girls,