“On the square. You’ve got a good memory.” My mind plays back summer Saturday evenings at closing time, when, locking the front door, my father, invariably dressed in muted slacks and short-sleeved shirts, would stare balefully across the square and shake his head in distaste at the gaudily dressed black males strutting like peacocks as they dipped in and out of the Busy Bee, a black cafe. I recall a liquor store and black movie theater adjacent to the restaurant.

“I used to go in there when I was a kid, and he’d shoo me out,” Bonner says.

“I’m pretty sure he thought I was stealing comic books.”

“He thought everybody was,” I say hastily.

Though I don’t remember my father as a rude man, I doubt if he was overly polite to the black kids who waited restlessly for their parents to decide what store-bought nostrums would ease their aches and pains.

I try to picture Bonner as a ten-year-old and imagine him already picking up cues on how the world worked-slowly in our part of the state. I add, “You might not remember he became seriously mentally ill.”

Bonner, to his credit, doesn’t pretend sympathy he can’t feel.

“I had forgotten that,” he says.

“Well, what can I do for you, Mr. Page?”

I explain that I am merely trying to get oriented and haven’t even seen the charges filed against my client.

“Did your office handle the investigation,” I ask politely, “or did the state police get involved?” Usually, small-town sheriffs need all the help they can get.

Bonner spins a small globe on his desk.

“Do you know how many investigators there are on the state police force that are minorities? I’ll give you a hint. Not many. As you probably know, Bear Creek is now seventy percent black. To maintain the credibility of law enforcement over here, I do all my own investigations.”

And it keeps you in the public eye, I think to myself. In ten years I can see this man being the first black Congressman from the 1 st District. He has that much charisma.