The Professor (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #1)(26)
“Ms Wilcox, you don’t have to decide today,” Rick said. “I mean, if you’d like some more time to think about it...”
Ruth Ann stood, her body trembling. I have to know why. She turned her back on Rick and walked to the door of the conference room. Then she turned around and looked Rick Drake directly in the eye.
“File it.”
PART THREE
20
Hazel Green, Alabama, is a one-stoplight town on the northern tip of the state. In 1939, two years before enlisting in the army and three years before joining the 101st Airborne, Sutton “Sut” McMurtrie bought a hundred-acre farm across the street from Hazel Green High School. A year later, on a cold and blustery day two weeks before Christmas, Sut’s wife Rene gave birth to their one and only child, a son. Wanting the boy to have a strong name, Sut named him after his grandfather’s hero, the general that Newt McMurtrie served under in the Civil War.
Thomas Jackson. To the world, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.
Tom was two when his daddy left the farm for the war, and he didn’t remember him going. But he did remember his return. Sut had been badly injured at the Battle of the Bulge, when his battalion, led by General McAuliffe, refused to surrender at Bastogne. Sut came home in a wheelchair, wearing the Purple Heart given him by President Roosevelt. Despite his condition, when his father saw him for the first time, he had picked six year-old Tom off the ground, sat him in his lap, and kissed him on the cheek and forehead. And for the first and only time in his life, Tom saw his daddy cry.
The wheelchair had lasted a week. After breakfast one morning, Sut ran his rough fingers over Tom’s head and slowly stood from the chair. Walking with a limp, he heaved the chair off the ground and stuck it in the garage. “Come on, boy, we got work to do,” he had said. That summer, the summer of 1945, Sut and six year-old Tom built the brick farmhouse that Tom gazed at now.
Tom breathed the fresh farm air and looked at the house he and his father built with their bare hands. He touched a brick, remembering how his daddy had laid each one individually. Feeling tears well in his eyes, Tom shook his head and looked away, towards Highway 231.
“Where the heck is he?” Tom asked out loud, looking down at Musso, who was chewing on an old shoe. They had arrived three days ago, but there wasn’t much Tom could do without some help. The house was a mess, having not had a tenant in over five years, and the yard that surrounded the house and led into the fields of corn might have to be bush-hogged, the grass was so damn high. Tom silently cursed himself, feeling guilty that he’d let the place go to pot.
Sighing, he watched as Musso stopped chewing, coughed, and then made a god-awful throat clearing sound. When the dog stood up and raised his ears, Tom turned his head and saw a car pulling up the driveway.
“’Bout time,” he said. As Musso barked and ran towards the vehicle – a Lexus SUV – Tom stood with his arms folded.
Once parked, the driver of the car, an enormous black man wearing a gray sweatshirt and jeans, stepped out and immediately disarmed Musso, grabbing him behind the ears and stroking him. The dog stopped growling and started shaking his tail.
“Musso, you’re even bigger and fatter than the last time I saw you,” the man said, picking the sixty-pound animal off his feet and letting Musso lick his face. Then, after planting his own kiss on the side of Musso’s massive head, the man, all six foot four and two hundred forty pounds of him, set the dog down, walked towards Tom and stopped a foot in front of him.
“Well, well, well,” he said, extending his hand. “The Professor has gone to the farm.”
Shaking his hand, Tom couldn’t help but smile. In forty years of teaching, he’d had lots of students come and go, but – like all teachers – he had an all-time favorite. And he was looking at him now.
“Bocephus, you doing all right?”
“All right?” Bocephus smiled, feigning shock. “I’m living the dream, Professor. One day at a time. One case at a time. One million-dollar verdict at a time. We’re talkin’ wide... ass... open.”
He laughed and caught Tom in a bear hug, holding him close. “It’s not right what they’ve done, dog. Let me go after ’em. Don’t you think it’s time for Jameson ‘Big Cat’ Tyler to face Bocephus Haynes?” He let Tom go and laughed, pointing at Musso. “I’d treat him the same way that bulldog would.”
As if on cue, Musso let out his patented throat-clearing sound.
“Yeaaaah,” Bocephus said, turning to Tom and trying to make the same sound in his own throat. “That’s what I’m talking about.”
Bocephus Aurulius Haynes was born and raised in Pulaski, Tennessee, which is about forty-five minutes northwest of Hazel Green. His father had died young, and Bo had grown up working on a farm, just like Tom. Also like Tom, Bo had a taste and a talent for football. The local town leaders of Pulaski had wanted Bo to wear orange and play for the Vols, but Bo had never been much for doing what other folks wanted him to do. In 1978, he signed a scholarship with Alabama. A year later, against Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl, Bo saw playing time on the Man’s last national championship team. His junior year, Bo was a pre-season All American, but he blew his knee out in the first game of the season. Though he returned for his senior year and played on the Man’s last team, he was never quite the same.