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…