Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(21)
“Booker T. now, he was my boy,” Bo continued. “Big old baby-faced son of a gun. Grew up to be a refrigerator of a man, just like that defensive lineman for the Bears. Remember ol’ William Perry? Anyway, we were inseparable growing up.” He shook his head. “A lot of the black folks at the church shied away from me after Daddy died and Momma left. Almost like I had some kind of disease or something they didn’t want to catch. But not Booker T. He didn’t treat me no different than he had before. He . . . was my only friend during elementary and middle school. My brother.”
“Did things change in high school?” Tom asked.
Bo shrugged. “Not with Booker T. He was still my brother and always will be. But things did change with everyone else. In the ninth grade I grew seven inches. By tenth grade I was six foot four and weighed over two hundred pounds. I went from being a benchwarmer on the junior high football team to starting at linebacker as a sophomore at Giles County High. At the beginning of my senior year, Coach Bryant came to Pulaski and watched me play. The next week Coach Gryska, one of the Man’s assistants, called the parsonage and offered me a scholarship to play for Alabama.”
Tom gave a knowing smile. Clem Gryska had also recruited him to play at Alabama almost twenty years before Bo.
“You met Jazz toward the end of college, right?” Tom asked.
“Yeah. Jazz grew up in Huntsville and ran track at Alabama. I met her at an athletic banquet a few months after I blew my knee out.” Bo smiled at the memory. “Funny, I met you and Jazz in a span of a few weeks during the worst part of my college career.”
Tom remembered that Coach Bryant had asked him to talk with Bo about his future after the knee injury. Tom had requested that Bo shadow him during some classes, and Bo had reluctantly agreed, still sullen over the loss of a possible career in the National Football League. Bo’s attitude changed when the Tuscaloosa district attorney asked for Tom’s help on some evidence issues in a murder trial, and Tom arranged for Bo to be a runner for the prosecutor during the trial.
“I’ve never seen a student who wanted to be a lawyer more than you,” Tom said. “Once you watched that criminal trial—”
“I was hooked,” Bo finished the thought. “When I saw that jury hand down a guilty verdict and the sheriff’s deputies lead the defendant away in shackles, all I could think about was Andy Walton being done the same away. I remember I ran back to the campus after that verdict. I didn’t have a car back then, so I pretty much walked wherever I went unless I hitched a ride. When I got to Jazz’s apartment, I was dripping with sweat and out of breath, and she had to fix me some water before I hyperventilated. Once I had cooled off, I told her I was going to law school. That I didn’t care how long it took or what my grades were, I was going to be a lawyer. A lawyer, goddamnit!” Bo slammed his fist down on the table, and for a flickering moment Tom saw the twenty-two-year-old student he’d first met those many moons ago. Bright-eyed with an energy that knew no bounds.
“How did Jazz react?”
“She said I could do whatever I wanted. That I, Bocephus Haynes, could do whatever I wanted and she’d be proud of it.” He paused, looking past Tom to nowhere in particular. “Then she told me she loved me for the first time.” Bo sighed. “Honestly, Professor, I think it was the first time since I was five years old that anyone had said those words to me. I mean . . . I knew that Uncle Booker and Aunt Mabel loved me, but they didn’t say it. And Booker T. and LaShell were kids. That’s just not something kids say to each other. I thought I must have misheard Jazz, so I leaned close to her and asked her to repeat what she had said. Then she took my face in both her hands and said, ‘I love you, Bocephus Haynes. I love you.’”
A hush fell over the room as Tom gave the memory its proper respect. Finally, in a voice just above a whisper, Bo said, “I wish I could say that I hugged her and told her that I loved her too, but . . . I didn’t. I was scared, and I just stood there, my face blank. Like I’d just gotten off a roller coaster and was going to be sick. But Jazz . . . she didn’t act disappointed. She just smiled and whispered in my ear that her roommate was gone for the afternoon. Then she led me by the hand into her bedroom . . .”
Bo leaned back in his chair, and his eyes met Tom’s. “I applied to law school the next week and . . . you pretty much know the rest.”
“You were the best student I ever taught,” Tom said. Then, knowing it was time to move the conversation from memory lane to present day, Tom leaned his elbows on the table and squinted at his friend. “Bo, what specifically is the business you came back to Pulaski to finish?”
Bo’s bloodred eyes blazed with fury. “To put Andy Walton and every one of the bastards that lynched my daddy in a prison cell.” He paused. “And to find out the real reason my father was killed.”
For several seconds Tom said nothing, processing everything he’d just been told.
Then, taking a deep breath, he asked the question he’d waited thirty minutes to ask. “What happened the night Andy Walton was killed, Bo?”
“Honestly . . .” Bo began, shaking his head. “I’m not exactly sure. I . . .” He paused and looked at Tom. “It’s going to sound bad, Professor.”
“I don’t care,” Tom said. “To be able to defend you, I have to know everything you remember.”