No Defense - Prologue Continued

On tiptoes, I reached up to the top bookshelf, pulled out the blue and gold photo album that contained bits and pieces of our lives over the last year and brought it back to the bed.

Jessie and I lay on our stomachs over the photographs. She opened the album, which looked heavy and large in her small hand, then flipped past the pictures taken during the winter months of 1978. When I reached the April 1978 photos from the dedication of the Newell Hagerdorn County Courthouse, I stopped.

I pointed to a picture of Jessie. "Oh, look at you in your sailor dress. I bet you've grown an inch in just six months."

"I look like a little kid there," she said in her most mature four-year-old voice.

"Remember that day, Jessie?" I asked her. "We were celebrating the opening of your granddaddy's new courthouse. I guess I'd say all of this mess started that day."

"You mean the twins?" she asked profoundly, pointing in the picture to my bulging eight-and-a-half-months pregnant belly.

"No." I laughed. "Hank and Willy are messy, but we love them. Right?"

Jessie made a face and stuck out her tongue. As many times as I'd explained it to her, I had no doubt that she held the twins accountable for our move from Atlanta, Georgia, to Tallagumsa, Alabama, and for her father's leaving us not long thereafter.

I turned the album page and stared at the photograph that had been printed in all the Alabama newspapers the day following the courthouse-dedication ceremony. Mother and Daddy, my sister and her husband, and Eddie, Jessie, and I were standing on the top steps of the courthouse, the water from the fountain arcing in the background, all of us smiling-even Eddie, who hadn't been thrilled to be in Tallagumsa that day.

Although the ceremony dedicating the courthouse hadn't been nearly as happy as it looked in these pictures, if I had known what was to come in the months ahead I would have savored those hours. Perhaps then I would not have been so willing to turn all our lives upside down.