Portrait of an Arsonist

Two boyhood friends. One burned down the courthouse. The other became a judge.

He grew up two blocks from the courthouse square, in a little gray shack of a house owned by the richest man in town.  When he was five, he saw a stranger coming up the road on foot.  There was something about the man, and he thought, “That’s my daddy.”  He was right, even though it was the first time he had ever seen him.  Five years later, when I knew them, his daddy was still making himself scarce. 

There was little light in the house, and not much furniture, but there was always a plate of biscuits on the table.  His mother didn’t want anybody to leave her house hungry, reminding me of the story of the widow’s mite.  Their only heat was a woodstove in the middle of the main room.  When we played out in the snow, she made sure we came in from time to time to dry our socks and gloves on the open doors of that woodstove.  Her kindness never wavered.

I’m going to call him Billy.  Billy didn’t cuss and he wouldn’t smoke cigarettes because his mother didn’t want him to.  We climbed trees …