She had driven only a few times before, and those around the yard and down the orchard lane. She nearly broke three necks shifting for the first time, felt certain she’d kill herself and her two young ones before she reached the end of the driveway. But she reached it just fine and made a wide right turn, missed the far ditch and corrected her course without mishap. Sweat oozed from her pores, but she gripped the wheel harder and drove! She did it for Will, and for herself, and for the kids who loved Will better than popcorn or movie shows or Hopalong Cassidy. She did it because Lula Peak was a lying, laying, no-good whore, and a woman like that shouldn’t have the power to drive a wedge between a husband and wife who’d spent damn near two years showing each other what they meant to one another. She did it because someplace in Whitney was a scum-suckin’ skunk who’d done Lula in and wasn’t going to get by with pinning the blame on her man! Nossir! Not if she had to drive this damned car clear to Washington, D.C., to see justice done.

She dropped Thomas, Lizzy P., the cookies and the soup at Lydia’s house with only a terse explanation: "They’ve arrested Will for the murder of Lula Peak and I’m goin’ to hire a lawyer!" She drove at fifty bone-rattling miles an hour the rest of the way into town, past the square and out to the schoolhouse on the south side, where she flattened ten yards of grass before coming to a stop with the left front tire crushing a newly planted rosebush that the second-grade teacher, Miss Natalie Pruitt, had brought from her mother’s garden to beautify the stark schoolground. Elly left word that Donald Wade was to get off the bus at Lydia Marsh’s place, then backtracked to the library and accidentally drove the car up onto the sidewalk, parking. There it stayed, blocking pedestrians, while she ran inside and told the news to Miss Beasley.

"That piss-ant Reece Goodloe come out to the house and arrested Will for killing Lula Peak. Will you help me find a lawyer?"

What followed proved that if one woman in love can move mountains, two can turn tides. Miss Beasley outright plucked the books from the hands of two patrons, ordering, "The library’s closing, you’ll have to leave." Her coat flew out behind her like a flag in high wind as she followed Elly to the door, already advising.

"He should have the best."

"Just tell me who."

"We’d need to get to Calhoun somehow."

"I drove to Whitney, I can drive to Calhoun."

Miss Beasley suffered a moment’s pause when she observed the Model A with its radiator cap twelve inches from the brick wall. The town constable came running down the sidewalk at that moment, shaking his fist over his head. "Who in the sam hell parked that thing up there!"

Miss Beasley poked ten fingers in his chest and pushed him back. "Shut up, Mr. Harrington, and get out of our way or I’ll tell your wife how you ogle the naked aborigines in the back issues of National Geographicevery Thursday afternoon when she thinks you’re downstairs checking the Ten Most Wanted posters. Get in, Eleanor. We’ve wasted enough time." When both women were in the car, bumping back down the curb, Miss Beasley craned around and advised in her usual unruffled, demagogic tone, "Careful for Norris and Nat, Eleanor, they do a great service for this town, you know." Down the curb they went, across the street and up the opposite curb, nearly shearing the pair of octogenarians off their whittling bench before Elly gained control and put the car in first. Miss Beasley’s breasts whupped in the air like a spaniel’s ears as the car jerked forward, sped around a corner at twenty miles an hour and came to a lurching halt beside the White Eagle gas pump on the adjacent side of the square. Four ration coupons later Elly and Miss Beasley were on their way to Calhoun.

"Mr. Parker is innocent, of course," Miss Beasley stated unequivocally.

"Of course. But that woman came to the library chasin’ him, didn’t she? That’s gonna look bad for him."

"Hmph! I got a thing or two to tell your lawyer about that!"

"Which lawyer we gettin’?"

"There isonly one if you want to win. Robert Collins. He has a reputation for winning, and has had since the spring he was nineteen and brought in the wild turkey with the biggest spur and the longest beard taken that season. He hung them on the contest board at Haverty’s drugstore beside two dozen others entered by the oldest and most experienced hunters in Whitney. As I recall, they’d given Robert short shrift, smiling out the sides of their mouths at the idea that a mere boy could outdo any one of them-big talkers, those turkey hunters, always practicing their disgusting gobbles when a girl walked by on the street, then laughing when she jumped half out of her skin. Well, Robert won that year-the prize, as I recall, being a twelve-gauge shotgun donated by the local merchants-and he’s been winning ever since. At Dartmouth where he graduated top in his class. Two years later when he took on an unpopular case and won restitution for a young black boy who lost his legs when he was pushed into the paddlewheel of a gristmill where he worked, by the owner of the mill. The owner was white, and needless to say, an unbiased jury was hard to find. But Robert found one, and made a name for himself. After that he prosecuted a woman from Red Bud who killed her own son with a garden hoe to keep him from marrying a girl who wasn’t Baptist. Of course, Robert had every Baptist in the county writing him poison pen letters declaring that he was maligning the entire religious sect. The church deacons were on his back, even his own minister-Robert is Baptist himself-because as it turned out, the murderess was a fervent churchgoer who’d almost single-handedly bulldozed the community into scraping up funds for a new stone church after a tornado blew the clapboard one down. A do-goodah," Miss Beasley added disparagingly. "You know the type." She paused for a brief breath and continued intoning, "In any event, Robert prosecuted her case and won, and ever since, he’s been known as a man who won’t knuckle under to social pressures, a defender of underdogs. An honorable man, Robert Collins."

Elly recognized him immediately. He was the one who’d come out of chambers in intense conversation with Judge Murdoch on Elly’s wedding day. But she had little opportunity to nurse the memory before becoming distracted by the surprising opening exchange between the lawyer and Miss Beasley.

"Beasley, my secretary said, and I asked myself could it be Gladys Beasley?" He crossed the crowded, cluttered anteroom in an unhurried shuffle, extending a skinny hand.

"It could be and is. Hello, Robert."

Clasping her hand in both of his, he chuckled, showing yellowed teeth edged with gold in a wrinkled elf’s face surrounded by springy hair the color of old cobwebs. "Forever formal, aren’t you? The only girl in school who called me Robert instead of Bob. Are you still stamping books at the Carnegie Library?"

"I am. Are you still shooting turkeys on the Red Bone Ridge?"

Again he laughed, tipping back, still clasping her hand. "I am. Bagged a twenty-one-pound tom my last time out."

"With an eleven-inch beard, no doubt, and an inch-long spur, which you hung on the drugstore wall to put the old-timers in their places."

Once more his laughter punctuated their exchange. "With a memory like that you’d have made a good lawyer."

"I left that to you though, didn’t I, because girls were not encouraged to take up law in those days."

"Now, Gladys, don’t tell me you still hold a grudge because I was asked to give the valedictory speech?"

"Not at all. The best man won." Abruptly she grew serious. "Enough byplay, Robert. I’ve brought you a client, vastly in need of your expert services. I should take it as a personal favor if you’d help her, or more precisely, her husband. This is Eleanor Parker. Eleanor, meet Robert Collins."

Meeting his handshake with one of her own, Elly inquired, "You got a wife, Mr. Collins?"

"No, I don’t, not anymore. She died a few years back."

"Oh. Well, then this is for you."

"For me," he repeated, pleased, accepting the quart of honey, holding it high.

"And there’s more where that came from, plus milk and pork and chickens and eggs for the duration of this war and without rationing coupons, to go along with whatever money you need to clear Will’s name."

He laughed again, examining the honey. "Might this be construed as bribery, do you think, Gladys?"

"Construe it any way you like, but try it on a bran muffin. It’s indescribable."

He turned, carrying the honey into his messy office, inviting, "Come in, both of you, and close the door so we can talk. Mizz Parker, as for my fee, we’ll get to that later after I decide whether or not I can take the case."

Seated in his office, Elly quickly assured Robert Collins, "Oh, I got money, Mr. Collins, never fear. And I know where I can get more."

"From me," put in Miss Beasley.

Elly’s head snapped around. "From you!" she repeated, surprised.

"We’re digressing, Eleanor, on Robert’s valuable time," returned Miss Beasley didactically. "We’ll discuss it later. Alone."

It didn’t take fifteen minutes for Robert Collins to ascertain the few facts known by the women and inform them that he’d be at the jail as soon as possible to talk to Will and make his decision about defending him.

Before that hour was up, Elly herself was standing in Sheriff Goodloe’s office with another jar of honey in her hand. He was deep in conversation with his deputy but looked up as she entered. Straightening, he began, "Now, Elly, I told you at your house you can’t see him till you got a lawyer."

She set the jar of honey on his desk. "I came to apologize." She looked him soberly in the eyes. "About an hour ago I called you a piss-ant when actually I’ve always had a fair deal of respect for you. I always meant to thank you for gettin’ me out of that house I grew up in, but this’s the first chance I got." She gestured toward the honey. "That’s for that. It’s got nothin’ to do with Will, but I want to see him."