Southern Exposure

by Charles Schaeffer

I glanced at the calendar, February 5, marking the end of my first week as a green law grad in the offices of Attorney Winfield Marbury. Not a bad week either, judging by the speed with which legalities were usually wrapped up in the State Capital. By Friday, I had served divorce papers to one Clinton and Mattie Yarbo, who, after 27 years, were calling it quits. And kin of the estate of Wilfred Smoaks had grinned upon learning they were proud inheritors of a barn, six cows, four sheep, 22 hens and a rooster named Beaufort.All this country lawyering hadn't shielded me from the town's news. The biggest story in the local paper was succinct. None of your big-city sensationalism. A hunting accident had taken, tragically, from the peoples' midst one Titus Yantley, a venerable House member of the State Legislature. The official account, courtesy of Sheriff Morris Tuttle, blamed a deer hunter's bullet rocketing out of nowhere.

Staring up at me now was a statement by one of our clients, scheduled to face the judge next week on a drunk and disorderly charge. That's when Winfield Marbury appeared in the doorway of his own office. I slipped the statement in a file folder and met his eyes. I hadn't realized how tall he was until I saw his head nearly nudge the top of the frame. Distinguished was the word that said it all about the lawyer's face, which was long, and punctuated around the mouth with the middle age parentheses lines of a broad smile. Strands of gray streaked his thick black hair.

“Well, CarI, I hope Harvard Law hasn't let you down in the pursuit of your duties this week,” he said, s tone of banter in his voice, distinctive with the trace of a drawl, but devoid of any “y'alls, or even the temptation to let his southern roots bring them out. During seven years in the north I had shed my own down-home colloquialisms, but lapsed now and again.

“I guess I don't remember reading any law school case law about how to handle a barnyard will,” I said. “But I think all parties to the estate departed in good spirits.”

Marbury laughed. “I can't promise you won't have other weeks as good as this. Remember, you could have signed on with any big New York or Washington firm.”

“I know that, sir, “but as I explained at the start, I wanted to come home, just to see how things go, maybe give something back.”

He started to turn toward his office, then stopped. “I've an idea. How about dinner, the two of us? The Riverboat around sevenish? Best crawfish in the state.”

* * *

The Riverboat Restaurant, landlocked since its founding thirty years before, displayed all of the appurtenances you'd expect, down to the massive captain's wheel at the reservation desk.

Seated, Marbury ordered Jack Daniels on the rocks. I asked for a beer, catching the waiter's frown for ordering an out-of-state brand. Marbury picked up the wordless rebuke. “No use trying to hide. Gossip around here rides a fast nag. Everybody knows you went north. You'll live with it. Hell, I only strayed as far as the University of Virginia Took them years to get over it.”

During college years, I'd pushed the south and its culture far back in a dusty corner of my mind. It was true, vacation and semester-break trips home, which was seventy-five miles frothe capital, were like time travel to the past. But just as abruptly, back in the flow of university life, the present had always rushed back like a spring tide.

Now back for good, I was amused, sad, too, that the legislature, just a couple of blocks from the Law Offices of Winfield Marbury, had brushed aside its job of governing to wrestle with yet another ghost of the past. The events were vivid in my memory. In 1983, fifteen years after Rep. John Conyers first introduced the bill, and after rancorous debate, Congress in Washington , declared the third Monday of every January a Federal holiday honoring civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Junior.

President Ronald Reagan had signed the proclamation. But there had been proclamations before. Hadn't the spirit of the Emancipation Proclamation eluded the words for nearly a century? The decree by Congress for a King holiday opened old wounds. A year later our state legislature was bitterly divided over what to do about it.

I looked across the table at Winfield Marbury, finishing his bourbon. “I guess this Martin Luther King holiday is turning into a real donnybrook,” I said.

He smiled, and then in a voice touched by weary resignation, said, “It's one last battle for the old guard. Desegregation was their colossal defeat. Then the string of civil rights laws from Washington . Now the prospect of having to pay homage to the man who destroyed what they stood for--well, it's all too much for the diehards.” Marbury looked up and waved to catch the waiter's eye. “Frankly, I'm surprised the for-and-agin' support is as close as it is--almost fifty-fifty statewide at last count.”

* * *

On Monday my drunk and disorderly case representing Billy Bob Hebert, went as well as could be expected. Judge Taylor Steele released the defendant with a warning to go and sin no more. Billy Bob couldn't thank the Marbury firm enough for standing by him in his hour of need. And a check for our services, yes indeed, would be in the mail just as soon as the stalwart citizen could market a load of crayfish waiting to jump into his nets.

There was a chill in the February air as I started down the courthouse steps. Coming up, a young man, about my age, in a pressed khaki law enforcement uniform, glanced at me, turned away, then back. He spoke: “Carl Dunbar? Yeah, it is you. I heard you were back in town, taking up the law. Haven't seen you since high school.”

The nasal twang, the broad grin, even though the body bore twenty pounds more of fat, gave me clues enough. The greeter had to be Leonard Stuckey, a classmate, a standout guard on the football team, and, in those days, anyway, an impish prankster. I dug into my mental file of cordial responses, thankful I'd been able to recall his name.

“Len!” I shouted in a bit of overacting. We weren't, I recalled, ever close, but hung with the same after-school crowd at Jenkins Soda Shoppe. I remember him as straight arrow, while some of the guys never saw a corner they didn't try to cut.

“You're over with that Marbury firm,” he said, letting me know, I supposed, he cared enough to remember where I had landed after college.

I nodded. “And you. I figured you for the military.”

“Would you believe it? Flat feet kept me out. So where do I end up--in a real flatfoot outfit,” he said, tugging at his badge and laughing.

“You're in the sheriff's office?”

“Yeah, a deputy. You being a counselor--maybe we'll meet each other on the trail.”

We parted, promising to grab lunch sometime as soon as either of us could count on getting away from the office at the same time.

I was settling into my desk chair when Winfield Marbury heard me and emerged from his office wearing half-moon reading glasses. “Carl, I got a call this morning from a property owner over where Routes 703 and 120 intersect. Nothing on the land, about sixty acres, except trees. Before the shooting accident, seems as if a neighboring land owner penetrated the border and cut down about 60 of Ed Millbrook's trees--that's the name of the owner who called me.

“Well, Millbrook's already reported it to the Sheriff, who's asked for a property-line survey. If it comes out as Millbrook expects, the Sheriff will have to cite the neighbor for trespass and malicious destruction. Millbrook, naturally, wants more than justice--and you can't put back mature trees. There is a section in the law, though, that could mean compensation for his loss, as much as seventy dollars a tree.”

“And that's where I come in.”

“Exactly. It's almost certain Millbrook wants to sue. He may want more than tree money, since he told me he leases the land each year for deer hunting. A whole patch of missing trees, he complained, will make the spot a turnoff for deer hunters.”

Marbury took off his reading glasses and continued. “I want you to go over to the courthouse and research the exact wording of the law. Then go over to Millbrook's place and see how serious he is about pursuing this.

“Not exactly a clash for legal titans, but a notch up from wills and tipsy fishermen,” he said, chuckling.

* * *

I found references to the law requiring compensation for destroyed trees, plus the record of a precedent case, photocopied the text and was out of he courthouse in less than an hour. I phoned Millbrook's office about talking to him, but he put off the meeting until Monday.

Walking back to the office, I passed the capital building and realized the Legislature was inside meeting at the moment. I'd long been fascinated by politics, and might even have tried my hand, except the law always seemed more certain. And, thinking about it, politics would always be there. The ease of my courthouse assignment allowed me some extra time. So why not take a quick diversion and listen to the esteemed salons debate?

A visitors' gallery offered several dozen seats for curious citizens.But the press gallery gave a better view of the House floor, if you overlooked the cloud of cigarette smoke drifting up from five or six reporters, banging away on their Underwoods. None of them, including the chief correspondent for our town's paper, The Capital Register, bothered to look up. I slipped into an empty gallery seat and peered down into the well of the House.

About half of the membership were in their seats, lounging in various degrees of attention.

Delegate Horatio Lee Stroud, asking for permission to speak, was granted five minutes.

He took the podium and addressed fellow legislators in a voice, oozing with molasses and grits, a perfect model of the Old South down to his white suit and snow white hair curling over the collar of spotless jacket.

“Mr. Speaker, fellow delegates, by now you all know from newspaper accounts or personal word about the untimely demise of our esteemed colleague, Titus Yantley, my partner on a hunting trip, who died that day in a tragic hunting accident. I would like now, with the Speaker's permission, to ask for a moment of silence in memory of Mr. Yantley, who gave so much of himself to our state, this legislature and to the Commerce Committee, which I have the most good fortune to chair.”

Quiet fell over the House chamber, except for clicking of the typewriters of reporters, who, like newspeople everywhere, exempted themselves from sentimental gestures.

When the silent moment ended, a conversational buzz picked up in the chamber, as Delegate. Stroud turned to the Speaker for a call to order. A sharp rap of the gavel cut off most of the babble

At the front of the chamber, Stroud continued with legislative business, reporting that the bill declaring the third Monday in each January as Martin Luther King Day was stalled. Horatio Lee Stroud explained that the action in Congress, declaring the day a Federal holiday, had deeply divided much of the South, and, for that matter certain other regions of the nation, restless over the stream of intrusive civil rights laws and regulations emerging from Washington .

“We are faced with the quandary,” Delegate Stroud reminded his colleagues. “ Many in our state frankly resent--there's no point in sugarcoating it--being dictated to from Washington , which has moved heaven and earth to change our way of life. Adoption of this holiday, many of you have said to me or expressed in other ways, is to some the last straw.

“We have before my committee a number of bills introduced by your colleagues, not to comply with Washington 's proclamation, but to offer various alternatives, proposals that would make the day one honoring General Robert E. Lee or other fine generals who fought so heroically in the war without regard to life or limb. And there are still other bills, compromises, if I may, to create a joint holiday combining our respect for the generals and acknowledging the day as civil rights day, thereby honoring , if you will, the late civil rights activist.

“Now, a substantial number of citizens in our state favor honoring Mr. King for his own activities, while perhaps just as many would give the day to our generals, or, reluctantly accept a combined ceremonial day. As committee chairman, as you all know, regardless of my own views, and in the interest of comity and the public peace, I have placed before the committee Washington's version for our honorable colleagues to deliberate upon, and then, each seeking counsel with his conscience, act upon.”

Horatio Lee Stroud's allotted five minutes expired and he took his seat, replaced at the dais by a delegate from a small county, who implored the honorable members to consider retaliation against a neighboring state which refused to rein in renegade game poacher.

I pulled myself away from the press gallery, ducked out of the marbled main entrance, and strolled back to the sidewalk leading to my office. On the way I picked up a sandwich, soft drink and the morning paper, “The Capital Register.” I'd decided to eat lunch, with the paper, at my desk, sort of payback time for the side trip to the Legislature.

National news was conveniently tucked away below the fold on page four, a location the editors apparently hoped would preserve it from prying eyes. I scanned the columns, gleaning nothing to shake the world, and headed for the editorial page, which usually proved to be a lesson in past civics--long past. But it was a column by the paper's legislature correspondent, Craig Sumpter that caught my own eye.

No doubt Sumpter had been spoon fed a scenario about the status of the Martin Luther King holiday controversy. Before Yantley's demise, the committee of sixteen was almost certain to approve the MLK federal holiday version, but by just one vote, that of Titus Yantley. Columnist Sumpter had been unable to document the leanings of Yantley's replacement, Jasper Overton, a tightlipped down state farmer, who had received an interim appointment to the Legislature. Without solid facts, Sumpter had decided that the bill's fate, whichever way it went, depended on his vote.

* * *

The Riverboat restaurant boasted a nice bar and now on a Friday night it was abuzz with a dozen conversations as I mounted a stool, asked for scotch and water, and wondered whether I'd get the fish eye from the bartender for not ordering Southern Comfort. My drink came and the barkeep, unlike the restaurant waiter, seemed unperturbed by my disloyal selection. Midway along the mahogany bar a customer, deep in his cups, was muttering aloud about ‘Yankees' and pointy head liberals from the north. “Yeah, well me and the other good ol' boys in the outfit ain't gonna sit still much longer,” he grumbled, his whiskey-tenor voice topping the din. Looking warily around, customers on either side hushed him up.

I ordered a second and figured my trade entitled me to a question of the bartender.

“The guy down the way,” I said. “Seems a bit riled.”

Placing my refill down, he said, “Aw, ya'll can't worry ya'll's head too much over Jake Cooper. Likes to run off at the mouth, ‘sall.”

* * *

On Monday I didn't go to the office, but on he boss's orders, drove out to Millbrook's place for a talk. He was, no surprise, interested in suing the wayward tree-choppers, and he wanted to know how much I thought he could get. I told him our office needed more research to assess the cost of the damages and that we would be in touch. Halfway down the rickety steps of his frame bungalow, I heard some final words. “When ya'll start a-figurin', remember the loss of them trees hurts the worth of my leases to deer hunters. Didn't help things for me neither, havin' that legislator feller accidentally shot on my land.”

I let Winfield Marbury know about Millbrook's readiness to go to court over the trees, if it came to that.

“Well, we'll need a retainer, it we go any further,” he said.

I nodded. Then the nagging recollection about the menacing tone of Jake Cooper at the bar Friday night and Millbrook's sullen anger over damage to his deer-hunting land stuck a nerve.

I asked Marbury whether he might guess what the drunken Cooper was talking about.

Marbury pondered a moment. “Well, Carl, if you start eavesdropping on barroom grousing down here, you'll drive yourself to distraction.”

“But it wasn't just any grousing. He was talking about good ol' boys in the outfit not sitting still any longer.”

Marbury's mouth formed a grim look of resignation. “Well, if you must know, he was probably talking about the Klan.”

“But the Klan was outlawed years ago,” I said.

“Well, I can see they didn't teach you everything at Harvard. Moonshine is outlawed in West Virginia , too.”

“I should have guessed it,” I said, “the Klan is still operating.”

“Illegally. And secretly. More secretly than when it was riding high.”

We finished talking and Marbury assigned me to check some clients' deeds at the courthouse. On the way up the front steps, I noticed my high school friend, Len, the deputy, and his boss, Sheriff Tuttle, coming down. They were deep in conversation and didn't see me, so I passed by unnoticed. But then the thought struck that it was Tuttle who gave the official version of the shooting of Delegate Titus Yantley a day or so before I arrived on my new job with Marbury.

I had read the item, but at the time the details had little meaning to me. Now, I recalled there had been a photo of Tuttle standing next to Delegate. Horatio Lee Stroud, Yantley's hunting partner on the fateful day. The news item was worth a second look.

The courthouse library stored a month's worth of The Capital Register's back editions. Turning over copies to the one with the significant date, February 7, I found the item. I read it again, a bland account how a grieved Stroud returned to town, reported the accident, and went about his business. For the first time I noticed a hunting dog, a black and white pointer, Stroud's no doubt, sitting obediently at the legislator's feet.

I checked editions dated later in that week and found the account of Yantley's funeral, attended by the family, the District Attorney and a respectable number of fellow legislators and townspeople. Nothing I uncovered ever mentioned the coroner or whether he or anyone else ever declared Yantley dead.

Maybe it was boredom with barnyard wills, landowners suing landowners over desecrated trees and a host of other piddling office duties that set me wondering about Jake Cooper's menacing tone in the bar. Of what possible significance could a misfit whiner be?

Nothing lost, I figured, if I dropped into the Riverboat bar and if he happened to be there, mouthing off, as the barkeep had aptly put it.

Cooper was there, as the sun went down, not mouthing off this time, but six sheets to the wind and angling to run up a seventh as he knocked back a shot of Tennessee rotgut. A few minutes later, he slid off the barstool and half walked, half staggered to the door. If you had asked me why then, I couldn't have told you. But I decided to follow him--at a safe distance.

Even in the gathering twilight it was not much trouble as a tail, since he drove a smoke-spouting, faded, green Ford pickup, circa 1970, and I was behind the wheel of my 1968 Mustang, wheels I had bought with a small inheritance from my parents' estate after they died tragically in an automobile accident.

Cooper rumbled down Main Street , turned at Magnolia, and finally headed toward open country. Every now and then the pickup would veer too far left or right, then straighten out.

About five miles into the trip, I recognized that we were heading toward the junction of Routes 703 and 120, the crossroads not far from the property of our contentious client, Ed Millbrook.

A couple of miles further down 703, Cooper turned left onto a rutted dirt road, walled by tall trees. I knew tailing him there in the Mustang would be a dead giveaway. The choice was to

abandon the chase, or park somewhere as much out of the way as possible and follow on foot. I found a spot behind a grove of low-growing bushes, parked, got out, and hurried down the dirt road.

Free-flowing adrenaline masked the folly of my spontaneous shadow operation until now. But after another mile the sudden appearance a flickering light far ahead was flames to the moth. A very careful moth, as I crept closer, hiding behind one tree, then another, straining to not step on dead wood and twigs that would trip me up for sure.

Fifty more yards or so I came upon a large gap in the otherwise thick stand of trees. At least several dozen had been clear cut and dropped like slaughtered soldiers. Of course, I figured , I must have stumbled on the border of Milbrook's property, our client who was itching to sue.

Farther along, the woods thickened again and I resumed my cautious tread. As the flickering light grew brighter, the scene took familiar form, vivd from my childhood, from stark pictures in Life Magazine and southern newspapers that dared to print them. A small bonfire crackled between a figure in a hooded Ku Klux Klan robe and ten or twelve other figures in identical robes. The latest arrival, Jake Cooper, swayed as he had leaving the bar, making him a cinch to identify. Nobody greeted him by name, but the obvious leader--I had some vague memory of leaders being called Kleagles--ordered Cooper to sit down before he fell down.

The leader began to speak, not in a ranting voice, but in a tone of firm conviction, reassuring disciples that he was with them to the end. No amount of Yankee tyranny would bend the faithful, this fearless band of brothers. A hooded compatriot broke in with appropriate apologies. “How we gonna stop this heah steamroller? Ya'll know sooner or later they gonna shove this holiday thing down our gullets, make us eat more crow, bow to the King. Ha!”

“I understand your concern,” the mellifluous voice of the leader said. “But do not worry.

Things can be done, oh yes, things can be done.” That voice, the rolling baritone. Where had I heard it? A dog , a black and white pointer, warming by the fire, stood up, ambled over and curled up at the leader's feet, rubbing against robe's hem. The dog looked like the one in the newspaper picture, the dog belonging to Horatio Lee Stroud. The voice, still speaking. echoed that of Horatio Lee Stroud.

Time to high tail it--that was the phrase, wasn't it? Backing slowly from my hiding position, I turned and gingerly pushed through the undergrowth. Total dark now enveloped the woods and I stepped on a rotten fallen limb. The noise, not very loud actually, sounded like the crack of doom in the expanse of eerie stillness. I paused, holding my breath. Maybe nobody heard it. No such luck. Somewhere in the dark, maybe fifty yards away, my ear told me, I heard a click, followed by a shot and a bullet whistling near and embedding itself in a tree.

No time for cautious steps. My heart pounded in my ears. I was in full retreat now, moving as fast as the roots and fallen debris grabbing at my feet allowed. No second shot followed and I reached the dirt road, and began a desperate race toward my car. I imagined baying hounds, a shouting mob behind, but there was only the slap of my feet on the asphalt as I reached the main road, switched on the ignition, and sped toward town.

* * *

Next morning I was in the office early and found Winfield Marbury buried in a fat brief, but he put it down when he saw the anxiety in my face. The previous night's adventure came tumbling out, a bit incoherently, but Marbury got my drift. News of an illegal Klan meeting in the woods didn't surprise him, but he puzzled over my suspicion that behind the mask of the evening's leader was none other than Horatio Lee Stroud.

Marbury gently scolded me for putting my life at risk on a fool's errand. Then he said, after a bit, “It might be a stretch, but it's widely known that Stroud wants to use his committee chairman's job as a stepping stone to Speakership of the House, then the Governor's Mansion.”

“But heading up a secret Klan meeting,” I said.

“Well, Carl, that might not be as dumb as it sounds. Not down here, not now with another ‘poisonous' Federal civil rights message arriving from Washington . Just taking sides with the holdouts is enough to make them trust him, keep them in his camp. Nothing need's writing down, nothing public, just word of mouth that good old Stroud is one of them”

I thought about this. “Yes, but there's the bill in his committee, the compromise, aimed at making the holiday one honoring southern generals with a sort of reluctant tip of the hat to Martin Luther King.”

“That could all be part of the strategy. Look like the moderate, the voice of reason, in a firestorm. Acting Speakerlike. Governor like. Yet, pulling strings behind the scenes to make sure the MLK holiday dies in committee, or comes out watered down.”

“Like having his grits and eating them too.”

Sensing I couldn't take up my boss's whole morning with my theorizing, I apologized and asked for a few more minutes. I reminded him of the narrowly split vote, revealed in the Capital Register column. “I've been thinking as we talked,” I said. “The vote by Yantley, the accident victim, would have put the MLK bill on the floor for likely approval. But he never got a chance to vote, did he?”

“You sound as if you're thinking that the hunting accident was no accident,” Marbury said, frowning.

“Exactly what I'm thinking. Or an accident whose cause nobody is interested in pursuing.”

Marbury got up and walked to the window, looking out on Main Street and the Capitol Building beyond. He stood, back to me for a moment, then turned. “It's exactly what Yantley widow is also saying.”

I was surprised. “How so?”

“Earlier this morning she came here,” Marbury said. “That hunting trip her husband and Stroud took. Well, it was on leased acreage. In other words, hunters pay the owner--in this case--Earnest Spivey--to hunt on the land, the acreage abutting Millwood's. Nothing new, been going on for decades. But the widow Yantley figures negligence by the owner might be involved--her son probably put her up to it. Would she be in her rights to sue for negligence, sue Spivey that is, whose got some money squirreled away? No precedent in these parts, but a case could be made.”

“What do you really think?

“We know the property abuts Millbrook's, who also leases land to deer hunters. We haven't received a retainer from him. But I did take one from Mrs. Yantley, not because there's a real case against Spivey, but because something odd's going on. And a lot bodies are pushing hard to keep a skeleton in its closet. And there's this.

“While Mrs. Yantley was here, I phoned Spivey. He was open. Told me flatly nobody else bought any leasing fees the day of the accident, except Stroud and Yantley. In other words there were no other hunters out there. Millbrook said the same thing.”

“Maybe I'm off base here,” I said, “but there could have been a rogue poacher or two.”

Marbury nodded. “Always a chance, but for now it's just as logical to take the word of Spivey and Millbrook.”

“And logical to wonder what happened between the honorable Horatio Lee Stroud and his esteemed colleague, the late Titus Yantley.”

Before Marbury went back to his office, he turned and said, “Be careful. There are plenty of boll weevils down here hungry for a taste of northern Ivy.”

On Friday night, I called Leonard Stuckey, erstwhile high school buddy, turned deputy sheriff. Would he accept a drink on me at the Cottonwood Bar, near the edge of town Saturday around nine and show up in civvies, if he happened to be off duty? No sooner said than done, he replied to the offer that I had guessed would be irresistible.

Leonard stripped off a canvas jacket under which he wore a Pendleton checked shirt not designed to conceal his considerable girth. His grin was about as big as we shook hands and found a booth near the back of the bar. We finished the first drink over small talk and I tilted my empty toward him suggesting a refill. He nodded.

Halfway into the second drink, I guessed, was as good a time as any to retell my story of the secret Klan meeting, following up with my theory of the non-accidental hunting accident.

To say Stuckey was happy to hear this would be like saying possum roadkill wasn't half bad if you got it while it was still moving.

There was a finality, if I ever saw it, in the way he was shaking his head. A third drink, I pointed out, might help us both sort things out. Taking a gulp, Leonard looked at me directly: “Ya'll couldn't know from horse manure what ya'll's gettin into,” he said.

I had a strategy, which I had to admit to myself, was shifting and changing as I thought about it. “Look,” I said, appealing to his better self, hoping he wouldn't want a killer to get off scot free, “you can just help me check out the preliminaries. If we discover we're really dealing with an accident, we both drop it and go back to work.”

He listened some more, reluctantly, but at least he'd stop shaking his head. At length, he spoke up. “Okay, they's some... police photos of the accident scene -- and I say ‘accident' because that's what Delegate Stroud told Sheriff Tuttle and that's what Sheriff Tuttle told the DA and the newspaper

“There was a coroner's report,” he added. “Bullet entered the back, exited the chest. Easily could have been a shot from a half-blind--or half-drunk hunter somewheres else in the woods.”

“Nobody checked the ballistics?” I asked.

“What for? Delegate Stroud said the shot come from somewhere else.”

Before we parted--on an oath of strict secrecy--Leonard Stuckey agreed to make me a copy of the police photos, and sketch out the approximate location of the shooting. Then, if the photos showed me anything and I could find the fatal bullet, would he help me get it to the ballistics lab at the University? He said, “That last part, I dunno--we'll have to talk about that later.”

I know I didn't return to my deep south roots, as a yankee-schooled greenhorn lawyer to spend Sundays poking around the woods on a chilly February day. But here I was, standing in a clearing not all that far from Millwood's property and the rows of illegally felled trees. The clearing where I stood bore evidence of being trampled by numerous sets of boots. The photos confirmed that the disturbances occurred before the photographer arrived. Yantley's body, for the record, lay face down. I could make out blood oozing from beneath, obviously from an exit wound. His right arm stretched out still holding his own rifle. Years before I had hunted with my father and was savvy enough to know the bullet from a 30 30 deer rifle, could zip through a human body as easily as through a deer.

What did catch my eye was a parting in the scant foliage of the trees. The background revealed a rambling building, a building I had visited, the place Ed Millwood called home. Holding up the photo I moved around to a position which showed Yantley's body in relation to the partly obscured house. I could guess then about where Yantley was standing when he was struck, unless the hit spun him around, which was unlikely.

The exiting bullet continued on its path, but where? Through space until it spent itself?

Then the search was all over. If I was lucky, it embedded itself--like the one fired at me-- in a tree. But ahead on the my sight line of the bullet's probable path--dismay. Where a thicket of three should have stood, there was a familiar gap--a large one, the yawning space left by the trees felled on Millbrook's land. So it was all over, I realized with a sigh, until another thought struck me. Hadn't the trees been cut after the hunting “accident”? So, if the bullet got that far, it might well have lodged in the trunk of a tree before it was cut.

I began to see this as the “fool's errand” Winfield Marbury had called it. But then, I reasoned, the bullet could only have been stopped by any one of two or three of trees in line of fire. The question now was: Did the tree fall in a way to expose the shell or would it be hidden under tons of trunk and foliage?

Another half hour of searching, testing every nick and cut for the prize, passed and despair rose. And then about six feet distant from the sawed-off bottom of one of the largest trees, I spotted the scar of a penetrating bullet, the lead still visible. Digging carefully around it with my pocket knife, I had the lead projectile out in ten minutes. And even better luck--it was in fairly good shape. Reading its metal fingerprint would challenge a ballistic lab, but didn't ballistic folks love challenges?

Winfield Marbury rolled the projectile in the palm of his hands. “Maybe you'll want to leave law and go into police work,” he said with a grin. “Now, how do we get the rifle and have it tested for a match. Break in?. Steal it in the dead of night?”

“Remember, we don't have to place Stroud at the scene. He was there by his own admission. Even the Sheriff can't protect him from that. Of course, everybody involved bought the accident story--but now there's reason to find out just where the bullet came from.”

“And nobody but you and me who want to know---” Marbury smacked one fist into his open palm. “Except the widow Yantley, who plans to sue landowner Spivey for negligence on the death of her husband.”

“The DA's got to reopen the case!” I said, adrenaline now flowing.

“Maybe with a little nudge--a request on behalf of our client for subpoena in blank, requiring a test of the rifle...But if we turn out to be wrong....” His voice trailed off. “What's your poison--the noose, or tar and feathers?”

District Attorney Flavius Morton, plump and content in a sinecure job, was appalled at first, the very idea of questioning a pillar of the community, Delegate Stroud. Marbury retorted: Was Morton, or was he not, as an officer of the court, ready to see justice done? “Y'all bettah have this right, ‘cause you know what being wrong's gonna mean,” Morton warned.

Marbury was up to the sly threat. “We'd better have ballistics take a look at that rifle before it suddenly grows wings.”

A flustered Horatio Lee Stroud surrendered his rifle to an apologetic Sheriff Tuttle, who promised to return it in perfect shape as soon as possible. A wait of several days for a report by the lab over in River City followed, with Winfield Marbury and myself too distracted to pay much attention to the law practice. The report went to Sheriff Tuttle, who, like a trained Golden, fetched it to the DA. Nothing namby-pamby about it, either, the scored bullet exactly matched the rifling of Stroud's gun.

A preliminary hearing was set. A sullen crowd of Stroud's supporters, muttering angrily, milled around outside the courthouse. No surprise. Stroud, upon learning no other hunters were nearby on he fateful day, conceded it was his rifle that shot Yantley, but it was, nevertheless, an accident, because the victim had raised up just as Stroud found a deer in his sights. So why the lie? “I didn't see any reason to make poor Yantley, known as a fine hunter, seem as careless and inattentive as he was.”

Of course, no witnesses meant Stroud could stick with that story until the deer stopped breeding. Yet, as Marbury and I confided to each other, how could we plant the idea of what must have been Stroud's real motive. With Yantley dead there would be no vote for MLK day, only a hollow compromise dreamed up by the majority. And Stroud could have trumpeted throughout the land that he acted in Committee as the voice of sweet reason, working to appease Washington to avoid a cutoff of federal funds, and, ultimately, how he had to bow to the majority. Ah, democracy at work.

My own sworn account of witnessing the secret meeting of the Klan members, along with speculation that the voice beneath the leader's hood, sounded like Stroud's, stayed in the hearing record. My statement that a hunting dog--the pointer in the Capital Register's photo, had sidled up to the hooded leader that same night.

Later, on counselor Marbury's advice, the widow Yantley voiced interest in wrongful death action against Stroud. A search warrant granted by the wary judge produced the Klan regalia, found in Stroud's woodshed. By now, the town's once-reluctant law enforcers, took an earnest interest in the case, and, without prodding, sent the robe to the forensics lab, which discovered on the hem dog hairs of the type shed by a breed like Stroud's animal.

Horatio Lee Stroud, tarnished, if nothing else, remained in the legislature while the DA pondered legalities. Of course, we'd assumed Jasper Overton, Yantley's replacement, was in Stroud's pocket from the start. But now the political landscape had changed. And whateve

Overton's motive had been, his became the deciding committee vote for the bill declaring the third Monday in January Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The bill moved to the House for consideration. Other bills honoring General Lee and platoons of Confederate officers simmered on the back burner.

The pot shot at me in the darkened woods that night, I had always figured, was fired by a hooded Klansman. But, as it turned out, they never knew I was there. Stepping forward to explain, Ed Millbrook, antsy about the return of the tree killers, got off a warning shot. “I'm glad it missed,” he told me. He should have been , because I was able to tell him we could get him $90 each for destroyed trees, which were mistakenly cut down by Spivey's men when they strayed over the property line while clearing for a road.

On the day of the vote by the full House, Winfield Marbury and I, feeling pretty good about ourselves, watched from the visitors' gallery. A voice vote was called for, neatly sparing proponents from the wrath of the of diehards at the polls. Both Marbury and I heard the clear dominance of the ‘yeas' over the ‘nays.' The clerk declared the legislation passed. A chorus of cheers and boos erupted.

Marbury and I could only guess how far the establishment was prepared to go in the prosecution of Stroud, who, in the eyes of maybe half the state, was on the side of the angels, the other half, the devil, but now with a stain on his spanking white suit.

One more trick in our bag was the widow Yantley's lawsuit, which now could be broadened to cover the known shooter. That would wait for another day, maybe the day after District Attorney Flavius Morton, also a gubernatorial hopeful, summoned the gumption to try his uncalloused hand at the law. One thing was sure: the Governor's Mansion was forever safe from Horatio Lee Stroud.