doctor, but it looked as if the jagged glass had barely
missed the veins on the underside of Braswell’s wrist.
The cut over Macedo’s right eye was mostly hidden
by his thick dark eyebrow.
I listened as Julie Walsh finished reading the charges.
Doug’s newest ADA was a recent graduate of Campbell
University’s law school over in Buies Creek. Small-boned,
with light brown hair and blue-green eyes, she dressed
like the perfectly conservative product of a conservative
school except that a delicate tracery of tattooed flowers
circled one thin white wrist and was almost unnotice-
able beneath the leather band of her watch. Rumor said
there was a Japanese symbol for trust at the nape of her
6
HARD ROW
neck but because she favored turtleneck sweaters and
wore her long hair down, I couldn’t swear to that.
“How do you plead?” I asked the defendants.
“Not guilty,” said Braswell.
“Guilty with extenuating circumstances,” said Macedo
through his attorney.
While Walsh laid out the State’s case, I thought about
the club where the incident took place.
El Toro Negro. The name brought back a rush of
mental images. I had been there twice myself. Last
spring, back when I still thought of Sheriff Bo Poole’s
chief deputy as a sort of twelfth brother and a handy
escort if both of us were at loose ends, a couple of court
translators had invited me to a Cinco de Mayo fiesta at
the club. My latest romance had gone sour the month
before so I’d asked Dwight if he wanted to join us.
“Yeah, wouldn’t hurt for me to take a look at that
place,” he’d said. “Maybe keep you out of trouble while
I’m at it.”
Knowing that he likes to dance just as much as I do,
I didn’t rise to the bait.
The club was so jammed that the party had spilled
out into the cordoned-off parking lot. It felt as if every
Hispanic in Colleton County had turned out. I hadn’t
realized till then just how many there were—all those
mostly ignored people who had filtered in around the
fringes of our lives. Normally, they wear faded shirts
and mud-stained jeans while working long hours in our
fields or on construction jobs. That night they sported
big white cowboy hats with silver conchos and shiny
belt buckles. The women who stake our tomatoes or
pick up our sweet potatoes alongside their men in the
7
MARGARET MARON
