There had been only a few syrupy drops left in that little bottle under the sink in the church kitchen. Like liquid saccharine and who's to say it really made much of a difference to that last glass of iced tea? He might've gone on and died anyhow.
But those few drops emptied the bottle and where to get more?
It's just like all the old-timers keep mouthing: nobody ever notices what's slipping away till it's mostly already gone.
Isn't there one single old-fashioned honest-to-God country store left in the whole state of North Carolina? Used to be you could count on a storekeeper
When did hick stores start acting like 7-Eleven quick-stops with computerized inventory controls, wide and brightly lit aisles, even video cameras to record everybody who steps up to the cash register?
After driving up and down every back road in Colleton County this steamy Saturday morning in mid-June, the thief's almost ready to consider other alternatives when suddenly, at a nothing-looking crossroads in the middle of tobacco and sweet potato fields, here it is: a big shabby cinderblock with battered gas pumps and a promising air of neglect. The hard-packed dirt yard is thickly cobbled with forty years' worth of rusty bottle caps and the dirty plate glass windows hold faded announcements of long past gospel sings or benefit fish frys. From the number of pickups and cars parked out front, business is pretty good, which means that whoever runs the store must be too lazy and/or too tight to spend money fixing things up.
Coming in out of the bright noonday sun makes the crowded interior seem even dimmer than normal, but a quick glance around through dark glasses confirms that all the white, black and brown faces belong to strangers. Anyhow, most of them seem to be migrant workers who mill around the cash register to pay for the weekend's wine and beer or to settle up for lunchtime drinks and beans and wedges of hoop cheese bought on the tab all week.
The fat white man behind the counter nods and his sallow-faced wife says, 'Let me know if you need any help,' but both are too busy making sure their dark-skinned customers aren't stealing to pay much attention to an ordinary white person.
The narrow aisles are crammed head-high with canned goods, farm implements, seed bins and fishing poles; and the smell of fertilizer mingles with sweat and cigarette smoke. Towards the back, mops and brooms are jammed upright between plastic and tin buckets, mothballs and rat traps. Next to these, at eye level, is a shelf full of assorted insecticides. Modern aerosol cans, all with labels claiming to protect Earth's ozone layer, have been dumped in beside pump bottles of evil green liquids that may have been sitting in this very same spot since before what's her name—Rachel Carson?—wrote that book.
With quickening excitement, the thief pushes aside dried-out rolls of flypaper and boxes of shiny tin ant traps that never work worth a flip and spots a stack of orange cardboard boxes:
Borax? Isn't that for washing clothes? What good is borax?
A little further digging unearths a battered and faded box marked 98?. On the back, small black letters read:
Active ingredients:
Sodium Arsenate.....................2.27%
Total Arsenic (as Metallic).....0.91%
Arsenic in water soluble
form (as Metallic)..................0.91%
This is followed by a large orange WARNING:
There are two small bottles left on the shelf.
Shielded by a support post in the middle of the aisle, the thief slips one in each pocket, crams the empty boxes back where they came from, and looks around for something innocuous to buy. * * *
Back up at the front, the fat owner rings up $6.75 for a rusty mole trap and ninety-nine cents for the mothballs. Plus tax. 'That'll be eight twenty,' he says.
'Looks like somebody's fixing to get rid of some pests,' says his gaunt wife as she bags the two items.
Thinking how much nicer life is soon going to be for a certain person, the thief smiles and hands over a ten- dollar bill. 'We sure plan to try.'
CHAPTER 1
GRADING THE PLOT
My swearing-in ceremony was held on a hot and humid Monday afternoon in Colleton County's oldest courtroom, a big cavernous space paneled in dark oak and weighty with the stone-footed majesty of nineteenth- century law. The high vaulted ceiling is plastered with acanthus leaves; pierced brass lanterns hang down on long black cords above solid oak benches. Now that three bright-colored modern courtrooms have been added on to the top floor of the new jail annex, this part of the courthouse is used so infrequently that the air was cool and musty even though the place was jammed with well-wishers and a bailiff said the air-conditioning wasn't working right.
If and when we ever got around to the actual robing—put a microphone in front of some people and they never hush talking—I knew I'd appreciate the room's coolness. That heavy black garment had started out miles too big, but Aunt Zell had gathered and stitched and cut and hemmed till it no longer swam on me. Not that I'm the dainty flower of southern womanhood God probably meant for me to be—I came out of my mother's womb a size fourteen and it's been a struggle to get down to a twelve ever since—but Carly Jernigan had
