Numbers Don't Lie by Terry Bisson

thirteen-hundred-foot Appalachian remnant that dominates the northern half of the county. Since Wu’s procedure requires several passes, I went early on a Sunday morning when I knew the city cops would all be in church, and (my first mistake) used the NO U-TURN; FOR POLICE ONLY cut-across just past the city limits to shorten my way back down. I was finished, and getting ready to take the car back into town and pick up Candy at church (Methodist) when the ash-gray “smokey” dove out of the sun, as it were, and pounced.
    Police in general, and Alabama State Troopers in particular, are humorless, excessively conventional creatures, and my second mistake was trying to explain to him that I was not actually driving but tuning the car. He used my own words to charge me with six counts of the same moving violation (Illegal U-turn). My third mistake was explaining that I was Whipper Will Knoydart’s soon-to-be (for I had not yet officially proposed to Candy, for reasons which will become clear) affianced son-in-law. How was I to know that Whipper Will had once taken a shot at this particular trooper? The result of all these errors was that I was summarily hauled before a Justice of the Peace (church was just letting out), who let me know that Whipper Will had once called him a _______, and who then snatched away my New York driver’s license and imposed a punitive three-month wait before I was eligible to apply for an Alabama license.
    All of which is to explain why the P1800 was running so well; why I was on foot; and why Candy and I met for lunch in Huntsville’s old downtown every (or almost every) day instead of out on the Bypass, near the Parks Department office, where she worked. It suited me fine. A New Yorker, even a car-loving Brooklynite like me, is happy on foot, and I loathe and despise the Bypass. I went through the same routine every morning: Wake up, cross the corner lot to Hoppy’s Good Gulf men’s room (“It’s Whipper Will’s Yank.”), then head back to the office to wait for the mail.
    I didn’t even have to open it; just log it in. Whipper Will Knoydart had been a trailer park landlord for six decades, running low-rent, high-crime operations in four counties and making more enemies and fewer friends than any other man in northern Alabama. It was characteristic of the old man that his office was downtown, since he had often boasted that he wouldn’t be caught dead in a mobile home, which was only suitable (according to him) for “rednecks, niggers, and _______s.” Because Whipper Will had retired under a financial and legal cloud—a bank of clouds, actually—his office had been sealed and secured pending a state investigation. Under the agreement worked out among the Realtor’s Board, the IRS, the BATF, the DEA, and several other even less savory agencies, the premises had to be overseen by an out-of-state lawyer with no pending cases, past encounters, or conflicting interests. The fact that I was crazy in love with Whipper Will’s only child wasn’t considered an interest: In fact, it was Candy who had recommended me for the position. Nobody else wanted it, even though the resentment of Whipper Will was softening as it sometimes softens for malefactors after they are gone. Whipper Will wasn’t dead, but between Alzheimer’s, prostate cancer, emphysema, and Parkinson’s he was definitely fading away. He had been in the nursing home for almost nine months.
    In return for answering the phone (which only rang when Candy called) and logging in the mail, I got to use the office as a place to “live” (sleep) and study for the Alabama bar. Or at least, spread out my books; or rather, book. The problem with studying was, it was a golden Alabama October, and fall is (I have discovered) the season of love for forty-somethings. I was forty-one. I’m a little older than that now, and if you think that’s