A Painted House by John Grisham Page B

a few sedans, and these were driven either by town folk or by farmers who owned their land. Down the street at the Methodist church, there were fewer trucks and more cars. As a general rule, the merchants and schoolteachers worshiped there. The Methodists thought they were slightly superior, but as Baptists, we knew we had the inside track to God.
    I jumped from the truck and ran to find my friends. Three of the older boys were tossing a baseball behind the church, near the cemetery, and I headed in their direction.
    “Luke,” someone whispered. It was Dewayne, hiding in the shade of an elm tree and looking scared. “Over here.”
    I walked to the tree.
    “Have you heard?” he said. “Jerry Sisco died early this mornin’.”
    I felt as if I’d done something wrong, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Dewayne just stared at me. Finally, I managed to respond. “So?”
    “So they’re tryin’ to find people who saw what happened.”
    “Lot of folks saw it.”
    “Yeah, but nobody wants to say anything. Everybody’s scared of the Siscos, and everybody’s scared of your hillbilly.”
    “Ain’t my hillbilly,” I said.
    “Well, I’m scared of him anyway. Ain’t you?”
    “Yep.”
    “What’re we gonna do?”
    “Nothin’. We ain’t sayin’ a word, not now anyhow.”
    We agreed that we would indeed do nothing. If we were confronted, we would lie. And if we lied, we would say an extra prayer.
    The prayers were long and windy that Sunday morning. So were the rumors and gossip of what had happened to Jerry Sisco. News spread quickly before Sunday school began. Dewayne and I heard details about the fight that we couldn’t believe were being reported. Hank grew larger by the moment. “Hands as big as a country ham,” somebody said. “Shoulders like a Brahma bull,” said somebody else. “Had to weigh three hundred pounds.”
    The men and older boys grouped near the front of the church, and Dewayne and I milled around, just listening. I heard it described as a murder, then a killing, and I wasn’t clear about the difference until I heardMr. Snake Wilcox say, “Ain’t no murder. Good folks get murdered. White trash like the Siscos get killed.”
    The killing was the first in Black Oak since 1947, when some sharecroppers east of town got drunk and had a family war. A teenaged boy found himself on the wrong end of a shotgun, but no charges were filed. They fled during the night, never to be heard from again. No one could remember the last “real” murder.
    I was mesmerized by the gossip. We sat on the front steps of the church, looking down the sidewalk toward Main Street, and heard men arguing and spouting off about what should or shouldn’t be done.
    Down the street, I could see the front of the Co-op, and for a moment I thought I could see Jerry Sisco again, his face a mess, as Hank Spruill clubbed him to death.
    I had watched a man get killed. Suddenly, I felt the urge to sneak back into the sanctuary and start praying. I knew I was guilty of something.
    We drifted into the church, where the girls and women were also huddled and whispering their versions of the tragedy. Among them, Jerry’s stature was rising. Brenda, the freckled girl with a crush on Dewayne, lived only a quarter of a mile from the Siscos, and since they were practically neighbors, she was receiving more than her share of attention. The women were definitely more sympathetic than the men.
    Dewayne and I found the cookies in the fellowship hall, then went to our little classrooms, listening every step of the way.
    Our Sunday school teacher, Miss Beverly Dill Cooley, who taught at the high school in Monette, started things off with a lengthy, and quite generous, obituaryfor Jerry Sisco, a poor boy from a poor family, a young man who never had a chance. Then she made us hold hands and close our eyes while she lifted her voice to heaven and for a very long time asked God to receive poor Jerry into His warm and eternal embrace. She