PROLOGUE  

Bad things happen in an instant. The worse a thing is the quicker it seems to strike. As if the devil knows full-well it’s best to not let you see it coming. Five minutes before they made their way into the woods, four teenage boys were thinking of nothing but getting home and getting fed. But the devil was in one of them – and in an instant he pounced.

There’s not a lot of color running through the woods of the South Carolina low-country. For most of the year it’s limited to the dirty brown-green of the Spanish-moss hanging from the trees, and the healthier looking version of that hue that creeps along with the thick and aggressive Kudzu plant. Any other color that finds its way onto the canvas of the low-country woodlands is an intruder that will eventually be swallowed up.  Red is as rare as any, but along a small pathway cut just inside the front edge of the forest there is a sudden rash of it. Spattered, blotted and absorbed by the Spanish moss; sprayed and lightly dripping from the shiny Kudzu leaves, the color radiates outward from the center of an improvised circle.

In the middle of the pattern lay the source of the burst, already being consumed by the Kudzu. Standing over the still body of one of the teenage boys, the biggest of the four dangles a baseball bat from his left arm. Grabbed at the handle the bat is still not long enough to reach all the way to the ground, and the new color drips from the end of it as well.

"Oh, please Lord," the big boy says in a sobbing voice. ""Won't you please just wipe all this away."

He begins to cry as he reaches down with his free hand to try and push back in the color grey oozing out of a large crack in the head of the limp figure. Unsuccessful, the red covers his hand to the wrist, and when he moves to wipe away tears collecting in his eyes he is unaware of the effect it has had on his appearance.

"God, Please!" he shouts, raising his voice and bat to the heavens. "Wake me up now! Please wipe this away!"

In his delirium he doesn't notice the sound of people running up the path behind him.

"There he is!" another boy shouts, pointing. "I told you he was crazy. He kilt him! He sure enough kilt him!"

Two local deputies were jogging up the path behind the boy, guns drawn and keys clanging against ammunition. They froze at the site of the large boy standing with the bat raised upward, each of them putting two hands to their guns and assuming the standing prone position.

"Shoot-im!" the boy shouted. "Shoot-im before he kills all of us."

The large boy recognized the voice and spun in their direction with fire in his eyes. With shaking hands one of the deputies pulled back the trigger of his gun

"Shoot-im, before it's too late!"

The moment hung in the air for what seemed like hours.

"Easy there, Dub," the older of the two deputies said to his locked-and-loaded partner. "We ain't-a-gonna shoot nobody just yet."

Reluctantly, the younger deputy eased off his trigger, his hands trembling violently.

"All right, son," the calmer officer said, slowly lowering his weapon to his side. "They's been enough bad happened here today. We don't need no more. Why don't you put that bat down and lay on your stomach there so we can see about tending to your friend."

"God can make this all go away," the big boy said, his voice tapering off as he lowered the bat. "Give Him just a minute."

"Ain't nobody wanting to get in the way of God, here, son. But I think He'd prefer it if you lay down on the ground there so we can see to your friend."

The large boy dropped the bat from his hand, but seemed determined to press his request to give God a little more time.

"I can tell you that the Lord can do some mighty powerful things," he said, starting towards the deputies.

In a panic the younger deputy fumbled with his gun and dropped it from his heavily sweating hands. It went off with a powerful bang.

"Jesus, Dub! What the hell you trying to do over there?" the older deputy shouted.

The gunshot had stopped the large boy in his tracks, while the younger deputy quickly dropped to his knees to try and fish for his revolver amongst the Kudzu.

"Leave it!" the older deputy commanded. "Just get your damn handcuffs off the back of your belt."

As the younger deputy fumbled even with his handcuffs, his older partner turned his attention back to the large boy.

"You see there? Unless you want my partner here to find some way to kill himself, we gotta put an end to this."

 "Yes, sir," the large boy said, lowering his chin to his chest.

"That's real good. Now how about we start with you turning around and laying down on your belly for me?"

The large boy nodded, then dropped to his knees and flopped on his stomach. He hit the ground with a thud.

"What ya doing?" the smaller boy shouted. "He's a killer. You gotta shoot-im!"

"Shut-up, boy!" the older deputy snapped. "Get on back down that path and wait there with your friend."

After a pause the boy finally shuffled backward down the pathway. "My daddy's not gonna like this," he said.

"Well, we'll have us a chat with your daddy soon enough," he said. "Now git!"

The boy took off running, as the younger deputy struggled getting the handcuffs around the bigger boy's wrists.

"For Pete's sake, Dub, can't you do nothing right?" the older deputy said, before holstering his gun and bending down to help his partner. He noticed something as he came in closer.

"My God...did you wet your britches?"

The younger deputy looked down with shame as his partner finally clicked the handcuffs into position.

"Come here," he said, grabbing his younger partner by the arm and pulling him back down the path a few steps.

"You better rub some dirt on that spot or something. I will not be embarrassed by such a thing, and I'm telling you right now..."

As the older deputy applied a stern lecture to his partner, the larger boy raised his head out off the Kudzu and looked back in the direction of the body.

"I'm so sorry, Marcus. There weren't nothing I could do," he whispered.

On the break of full tears, suddenly the large boy's eyes lit up with life, and a happy, satisfied smile broke out across his face.

"What most folks see when winter's over is just the same old tree. It ain't like that though. New leaves and new little branches sprouting out. Every spring a tree gets to take on a whole new shape against the big, blue sky. Different from the year ago one."

Bosephus Buckminster

CHAPTER ONE:

Carl Odette is one of the best people of all time to work for in the newspaper business. As an editor he may lack a few of the characteristics assumed essential for the job, but as a human being there is none finer. As it turned out this was a very good thing for me. Had he been even one scintilla less than the man he is, these days I would not only be unemployed but very likely locked away in a nut-house somewhere. Another flame-out quietly added to the list of synonyms for unfulfilled potential. For being the single most tolerant and understanding person I have ever come across, Carl will forever have my sincere gratitude and personal loyalty. My biggest hope is that someday he and I might even be able to speak again.

When Carl first took over the national news desk at The New York Times, most of us grunts cranking out copy in our department saw it as a chance to finally be out from under the thumb of a tyrant. Carl's predecessor had been a desk thumping, vein popping, shout at you kind of a guy. Which was the main reason that when Carl became our editor, every single one of us prima donnas in the national newsroom was determined to do whatever it took to make him successful. I think we all wanted desperately to prove that yelling isn't the only way to get good copy in on time. And while in the beginning we kept ourselves in line, it could never have lasted if Carl hadn't earned our respect and admiration. In that regard Carl changed the face of the newspaper business. At least at The New York Times national desk.

I may have flip-flopped a couple of times over how I feel about Carl, but I know now for certain he's a good man; all the way to the core. And though I'm equally sure he would not be so kind in his words about me, I'll never let anything cause me to question the character of my former boss again. We did hundreds of stories together over the years; very few with any measurable degree of conflict between us. But sadly, I must now confess that I let the last one we did wreck our relationship altogether. I allowed conflict to devolve into outright warfare between him and me, and in the end I must accept that our friendship was the biggest casualty - and that it was my fault. It wasn't the only bad-ending I brought down on myself with that one, but in many ways it was the most impacting

It was about this same time last year when Carl first introduced me to the folder on the proposed re-trial of a convicted murderer - some sixteen years after the crime - and from the very start my world was slightly off kilter. Over the past year I was convinced that my involvement in what was to become a three part series entitled Hate and Racism are Alive and Well in the New South was an assignment I would forever curse my friend Carl for laying at my feet. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of good things that flowed from my work on the "Hate..." story. I won a piece of a Pulitzer Prize, which on its own should have been the ultimate highpoint in my life as a newspaperman. That it wasn't even close is the best evidence I have to offer on how drastic the changes have been in Mark Daniels. How totally upside-down my short list of priorities has become. There is literally not one single value judgment I could make today that would match the answer given by the man I was before doing that story; something I now believe may just be one of those good things.

It's taken a while for me to come to that conclusion, what with the better part of the past year grinding by before I was able to allow myself to even think about the whole affair again. And while for me it has been by far the worst year ever, a year in which new lows were reached many times over, now that it's behind me I'm glad to have gone through it. I understand now that all the questioning, soul searching and nearly manic bouts of depression I've suffered through as a result of that original story have been for a purpose. I have been truly blessed. Not by the members of the Pulitzer committee, but by the simple act of getting to know an even simpler man. A man that will one day whisper the quiet words of an angel.

 During the very intense few weeks we spent together last spring I became the world's leading authority on one Bosephus Buckminster of Camden, South Carolina. His highest hopes; his deepest fears; all the stories behind the enigma that is Bo. I believe I have come to know him as well as anyone can, and that's the real blessing I'm talking about. The one thing that makes all the emotional garbage I've had to wallow through since, worth something. In the process of coming to that fresh outlook on things, after an absence of nearly a year the writer in me is back at his craft. The new Mark Daniels has another story to tell about his time in Camden, South Carolina. And while ultimately I have Bo to thank for that, it is to Carl Odette that credit must be given for getting us together in the first place. For some reason Carl fixed on me to do the story and wouldn't let go.

The day Carl first brought Bo my way I was sitting at my desk listening to a tape of a disgruntled Washington lobbyist, when over my right shoulder came a thick, tattered manila folder, wrapped with rubber bands at the top and bottom. There was enough material crammed into it for the file to bounce the other items on my desk when it hit, and turning in my chair I asked a rhetorical question.

"Did you just drop that on my desk, Carl?"

There was no one else around, but the question was asked out of a sense of incredulity rather than a need to know.

"I did," Carl said in his matter of fact fashion. "It's a story I need you to cover and it's not something I want to debate."

That's just not the way Carl passes out stories. Usually you get an email from him asking politely if you could stop by his office. After complying, what follows is a mandatory chit-chat about things at home, or the Yankees ridiculously bloated payroll, before Carl gently slides a folder across his desk.

"Tell me what you think about this one," he'll say, or something like it.

It may have something to do with his football player frame, or his near movie star good looks (a thing he seems to downplay with five dollar haircuts and a Walmart wardrobe), but Carl is one of the few people I've met who possess enough quiet confidence to give anyone speaking the upper hand to start a conversation. When he hands you a story, he always gives you plenty of time to peruse the material, sitting patiently while you read. If you ask a question too soon he'll say something to the effect of "Go ahead and finish looking over the whole thing and then we'll talk." Then he'll just lean back in his chair, waiting like an umpire between innings, and when he thinks you're done he'll sit up straight and throw out one of a handful of open-ended questions, like "Tell me what's going through your head." He's brilliant that way. He'll spend the next however long it took to listen to you object, complain or even rant, nodding his head but never saying a word in response.

"That's all good input and needs to be taken into account," he'll say when you're done. "Help me out here, though - who better than you, and why?" 

It never happened to me, but there were a couple of other reporters in our group that when Carl listened to their "who" and "why" responses, he actually gave in and pushed the story on to someone else. It was rare enough so that whenever you heard about it the automatic response was still surprise, but he did it just enough for the rest of us to not write the whole process off as futile.

That's why the day Carl assigned me to Bo I was more than just a little taken aback by how he did it. No small talk; no sagacious guidance. Just a big fat folder tossed over my shoulder, followed by an un-Carl like pronouncement.

"Mark, I know you're getting married in two months and that's probably got most of your attention right now," he said with an out-of-place, determined look written across his brow. "But this one has to be you."

With a closer look, puffy bags under Carl's eyes hinted that the decision was harder on him than it should have been.

"Can I ask why?"

"No - I can't get into that right now." 

I considered a stiffer resistance, but was knocked so far off track by his demeanor I couldn't get the words out. The one thing Carl had gotten right was that I had other things on my mind. Getting married was something that had been keeping me preoccupied for some time, and with the day fast approaching cold feet were getting most of my attention. While a little road trip might well have been just the cure for a groom's second thoughts, telling Karen I was heading out of town had the potential for compromising my personal safety.

"Carl, do you expect me to cover these proceedings in person?" I asked.

"Yes. You'll have to be there."

"Boss, there's no way I can just pack up and head on down to chuck-a-luck, South Carolina," I said, anxiety quickly ratcheting up the frustration level in my voice. "Damn it, Carl - when Karen hears that I'm going a thousand miles away..."

"I know. She's going to be pissed. But Mark, I swear to you, if you do this one right I'll nominate you for the Pulitzer myself."

I'd seen a couple of the original story summaries coming over the wire, and there wasn't a shred of evidence in them to suggest the file in front of me was good enough to win an award, but I also knew Carl wouldn't throw something like that around lightly. Still - we were talking about my wedding.

"Carl, what exactly do you see in this thing that makes something like a Pulitzer even remotely possible?"

"I can't put my finger on it. You'll have to trust my instincts on this one. There's something there. Something big."

I rubbed my forehead between two fingers. By the way he was hanging around it looked like Carl meant to have an answer right away, and saying no didn't seem a possibility.

"Carl, even if I say yes it'll have to be a tentative answer. I'll have to talk this over with Karen."

"I understand."

"No. I don't think you do. Things have been rocky enough between us lately."

What followed were the first truly uncomfortable moments Carl Odette and I had in nearly six years of working together. After a couple of minutes of looking down at his shoes, Carl just turned around and headed back in the direction of his office. As he settled in, through the glass partition I could see him sit behind his desk and stare straight ahead. It was like he'd fallen into a trance and I remember feeling worried for him.

I sat alone with the file for a while, struggling without precedent to know what the next step is after Carl forces a story on you. It felt a little like not getting the free peanuts and glass of Diet Coke from a fight attendant. I felt a little gypped. Eventually, I let go of the resentment enough to clear space on my desk to allow me to open the file, and not let any of the contents mingle with other items. The first of the clippings was a small Times story. The headline read:

Retarded Black Athlete Killed in Scuffle

It's always interesting to read over old articles from our newspaper, and see how the appropriateness of certain words has changed over the years. Now a-days, the use of the word retarded just wouldn't make it past the editors. They'd replace it with the two word phrase, mentally handicapped; which itself is an expression that's going through the kind of social examination that will one day make it, too, inappropriate for use in print. If the article had been from the sixties it might have said "Retarded Negro Athlete". We really do have trouble sticking with words that describe subjects that are difficult to talk about for very long. As if changing what we call things gives us a fresh start with the topic.

The Times article reported on the death of one Marcus Brown of Pixley, South Carolina, killed by multiple blows to the head with a baseball bat. The incident took place following a practice session for a Dixie Youth Baseball team, when a fight reportedly broke out between teammates. I suppose that's how the story made it into The Times in the first place. The fact that it was a fight among teammates had a slightly different angle to it, especially when one of them winds up dead. Still, it must have been a slow news day to make it all the way north and into The Times.

The local paper had a few more details. Three boys were being interviewed regarding the incident. One, the son of a local politician was a pitcher; the second the team's catcher; and the third boy a reserve outfielder. Their stories differed widely as to exactly what had happened, the local sheriff confessing to the reporter that "one of the boys is a little slow in the head, and it's hard to match up what he thinks he saw with the others." The third boy was Bosephus Buckminster, but the paper wasn't reporting the names of any of those involved yet. The sheriff would only say that his officers would get to the bottom of things in a day or two, and that he fully expected charges would be filed against one or more of the boys.

 Three days later, charges were filed. The local headline read:

Buckminster Boy Charged with Killing Friend

The story claimed the motive for the killing was simple jealousy. The sheriff spelled it out in a long quote:

"We don't think the boy meant to kill his friend, Marcus. He was the one who talked Marcus into joining the team in the first place. It just looks like that, in his mind at least, Marcus was more successful fitting in with the other fellas. What with his talents for hitting the baseball and all. Seems like the Buckminster boy just snapped."

The official statements taken from the other two boys told their side of the story.

Official Statement of Trey Hunter:

On Thursday September the thirteenth, Corey Aycock and me was cutting through the woods after practice on our way home. We saw Marcus Brown walking ahead of us, and we ran to catch up to him so we could all walk together. We was walking along like that, when all of a sudden Bo Buckminster come running up on us, hollering and cussing at Marcus. He was saying things like, "Why you walking with them. Ain't I good enough for you no more?" Marcus told him he was welcome to walk with us. That we was teammates and we could all walk together. That's when Bo called him a nigger and hit him hard on the back of his head with his baseball bat. Marcus fell to his knees and Bo hit him another one before me and Corey took off back out of them woods to get some help. A couple of deputies was hanging out by the ball field when we left, so we when on back to fetch em. When we got back, old Bo had killed that black boy dead as nails. He was just standing over him with that bat in his hand, looking crazy enough to do it again.

Trey Hunter was the politician's son. The statement from Corey Aycock matched Trey's almost to the word, with the exception of Corey not mentioning that Bo had used the "N" word before hitting Marcus. The oddest part of the official record was that there was no statement recorded for Bo's version of the story. The sheriff himself had admitted that there were discrepancies between the three as to what happened, yet the official record had just the one version from two separate witnesses. I made an entry into my notebook about finding the other, official or otherwise. It was the first of many notes I made that day, and it was just about all that was needed to reel me in. Had Carl just let me read the file first, I'm pretty sure I would have jumped all over the chance to get off the Hodges story and move on to one that actually required notes. I was pretty sure Carl would have known that too, which made the question of why he didn't all the more mysterious.