Ford County by John Grisham Page B

asked, interrupting.
    “Typed,” Butch said.
    “Who types ’em?”
    “He has to pay some guy over in the law library,” Inez said. “A dollar a page, and one of the books was over eight hundred pages. I read it, though, ever’ word.”
    “Did you understand ever’ word?” Butch asked.
    “Most of ’em. A dictionary helps. Lord, I don’t know where that boy finds those words.”
    “And Raymond sent these books up to New York to get published, right?” Leon asked, pressing on.
    “Yes, and they sent ’em right back,” she said. “I guess they couldn’t understand all his words either.”
    “You’d think those people in New York would understand what he’s sayin’,” Leon said.
    “No one understands what he’s sayin’,” Butch said. “That’s the problem with Raymond the novelist, and Raymond the poet, and Raymond the political prisoner, and Raymond the songwriter, and Raymond the lawyer. No person in his right mind could possibly have any idea what Raymond says when he starts writin’.”
    “So, if I understand this correctly,” Leon said, “a large portion of Raymond’s overhead has been spent to finance his literary career. Paper, postage, typing, copying, shipping to New York and back. That right, Momma?”
    “I guess.”
    “And it’s doubtful if his stipends have actually gone to pay his lawyers,” Leon said.
    “Very doubtful,” Butch said. “And don’t forget his music career. He spends money on guitar strings and sheet music. Plus, they now allow the prisoners to rent tapes. That’s how Raymond became a blues singer. He listened to B. B. King and Muddy Waters, and, according to Raymond, he now entertains his colleagues on death row with late-night sessions of the blues.”
    “Oh, I know. He’s told me about it in his letters.”
    “He always had a good voice,” Inez said.
    “I never heard ’im sang,” Leon said.
    “Me neither,” Butch added.
    They were on the bypass around Oxford, two hours away from Parchman. The upholstery van seemed to run best at sixty miles an hour; anything faster and the front tires shook a bit. There was no hurry. West of Oxford the hills began to flatten; the Delta was not far away. Inez recognized a little white country church off to the right, next to a cemetery, and it occurred to her that the church had not changed in all the many years she had made this journey to the state penitentiary. She asked herself how many other women in Ford County had made as many of these trips, but she knew the answer. Leon had started the tradition many years earlier with a thirty-month incarceration, and back then the rules allowed her to visit on the first Sunday of each month. Sometimes Butch drove her and sometimes she paid a neighbor’s son, but she never missed a visitation and she always took peanut butter fudge and extra toothpaste. Six months after Leon was paroled, he was driving her so she could visit Butch. Then it was Butch and Raymond, but in different units with different rules.
    Then Raymond killed the deputy, and they locked him down on death row, which had its own rules.
    With practice, most unpleasant tasks become bearable, and Inez Graney had learned to look forward to the visits. Her sons had been condemned by the rest of the county, but their mother would never abandon them. She was there when they were born, and she was there when they were beaten. She had suffered through their court appearances and parole hearings, and she had told anyone who would listen that they were good boys who’dbeen abused by the man she’d chosen to marry. All of it was her fault. If she’d married a decent man, her children might have had normal lives.
    “Reckon that woman’ll be there?” Leon asked.
    “Lord, Lord,” Inez groaned.
    “Why would she miss the show?” Butch said. “I’m sure she’ll be around somewhere.”
    “Lord, Lord.”
    That woman was Tallulah, a fruitcake who’d entered their lives a few years earlier and managed to make a