Chapter 9: No, Sir

Doc Barksdale took his time.

He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his tie. He put them back on.

"A retired colleague," he said. "In Waco. I'm not at liberty to give his name without asking him first."

"You're not at liberty," Harlan said.

"Harlan, it's a professional courtesy."

"I've known you for fifty years, Ellis. You never once used that word on me."

Doc smiled, tired and sweet, and opened his hands.

It was the smile I had trusted for six years.

It looked tired on him now.

Harlan turned the Austin report back over and stared at it.

He had been right at that table every Sunday of his life.

He did not know what to do with his hands when he wasn't.

"Counsel," he said finally. "The box."

"Dad."

Floyd said it quietly.

He had not moved from my shoulder.

"Sit down, Floyd."

"No, sir."

The lawyer's hand stopped on the lid.

Harlan didn't look up. "I'll say that one more time."

"You can say it twice more and it won't change."

Floyd's voice shook, and he let it shake.

"I've sat in that chair since I was nine years old. I'm not sitting in it today."

Marlene's head came up.

"You had my wife's old boyfriend swabbed in a doctor's office," Floyd said. "You had my brother swabbed."

His brother looked at the ceiling.

"You put a report beside her plate and watched her read it," Floyd said. "I helped you do that. I carried it in."

"I let it be quiet, so I could pretend I wasn't there."

"Son."

"She asked me for a lab. She went to Austin and got one."

"You call it forged because it's the first thing in your life that didn't come from this table."

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