The Buzzard Table - By Margaret Maron Page 0,17

I can find doesn’t pay enough to let me help pay your salary.”

“No further questions,” Claudia said.

“You may step down,” I told Harper.

When Reid said he had no further witnesses, I looked at Claudia. “What’s the State asking, Ms. O’Hale?”

Several of her male relatives are in the National Guard and she doesn’t have much tolerance for civil disobedience where the military is concerned. She suggested some jail time and an injunction against the young man ever stepping onto the airfield again.

“Mr. Stephenson?”

“Your Honor, as you know, Mrs. Bryant is the principal at West Colleton High School. Before you pass sentence, she’d like to speak on his behalf.”

Dwight’s mother stood up and placed her hands on the rail between her and the defense table. Mid-sixties now, her once fiery red hair has softened into a rusty white, but her commitment to her students still blazes brightly. She described how young Jeremy Harper had entered her school as a freshman with a chip on both shoulders. His parents were in the middle of a bitter divorce, their house was in foreclosure, and as if this weren’t enough, the older brother he idolized was killed in Iraq before midterm exams. He came very close to flunking out.

“When his brother’s effects were sent home, though, they included a good digital camera, and that camera saved him.”

She said the yearbook’s faculty advisor saw some of the pictures he took over the following summer and invited him to join the staff if he could get his grades up. “Last year, we won an honorable mention from the American Scholastic Press Association and they cited the photographs for their excellence.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall above the jury box. It was somewhat past my usual time to recess for lunch. Miss Emily followed my eyes. “I’ll get to the point, Debor— I mean, Your Honor. As you know, Anne Harald is a Pulitzer Prize winner. She’s seen Jeremy’s photographs and she thinks he has a genuine talent. She’s willing to give him pointers about getting good pictures that tell the story without violating legal and journalistic protocols.”

She paused and looked up at the man on her left. “Richard?”

Reid cleared his throat. “Mr. Williams would like to add to that, Your Honor.”

As Miss Emily sat down and Richard Williams stood, I said, “Mr. Williams?” and tried very hard not to beam back at him, but he has one of the most infectious smiles of anyone I’ve ever met. His hazel eyes twinkled behind his glasses, and when he beetled his thick white eyebrows at me, I almost lost it. I knew that if I asked him how he was, he’d say, “Awesome! Absolutely awesome!” and we’d be off and running.

A large tall man of late middle age, his soft white hair was retreating toward the crown of his head. He wore pleated gray slacks and a navy windbreaker that carried the logo of a Methodist youth camp.

Unlike most denominations, Methodists are required to bring in a new head minister every three or four years. I suppose it’s an attempt to keep their churches from forming cliques and splitting up every six or seven years the way the Baptists seem to do every time half the congregation starts to feel that the minister is listening only to the other half. But Richard has been youth minister at the Methodist church here in Dobbs for as long as I could remember. Not that I was ever anything other than a visitor there when invited to attend an event by some of my friends. I was brought up Southern Baptist and have never seen a reason to convert to something else.

I wasn’t quite sure what Richard Williams, who lives and works in Dobbs, would have to do with Jeremy Harper, who attends the high school out near Cotton Grove, twenty-odd miles away.

“Jeremy’s grandparents are members of our congregation, so I’ve known him since he was born,” Richard said. “And now that he and his mother are living with them—”

He didn’t have to explain further. The Cotton Grove house must have gone down the same drain as the parents’ marriage.

“Jeremy’s keeping up his grades and he works weekends at Burger King. I’ve been trying to counsel him about the best way to channel his peace efforts, but I don’t know anything about photojournalism, so when Mrs. Bryant called and told me about Mrs. Harald’s generous offer, it occurred to me that between us we could come up with something meaningful