“We recently set up electronic surveillance around town. There’s a lot of talk on cell phones, on the internet. About you. You’ve stirred up a lot of ill will with your handling of this trial.”
That sent a live current of panic zinging through me. Automatically, I peered around, looking for danger.
We were marching along at a steady pace, but I felt compelled to speed up. I wanted to bolt, to shove the guard aside and make a run for my car. I wanted to get home. Felt a pressing need to be on my property, inside the safety of my own house. The place that was my refuge. I wanted the normalcy it provided.
I couldn’t escape my escort, though. I was trapped in their midst, as they walked alongside me. All four of them in uniform, carrying holstered firearms. With assault rifles strapped around their shoulders, hanging to the waist. It wasn’t like a rock star’ssecurity team. More like a convicted felon must feel when she leaves the courthouse, to be conveyed to prison.
We fell silent as the guards escorted me to my car in its designated spot, behind the courthouse. I tried to ignore the reporters aiming cameras at me, the onlookers pointing at us, making a high-pitched commentary. Someone in the cluster shouted, “She’s guilty!”
For a second, I wasn’t sure who they meant by that. Surrounded by uniformed guards, I was uncomfortably aware that my stroll around the courthouse looked like a perp walk, with me in the position of the accused.
While I stood by my car, gripping my key fob, the uniformed white guy laid out my instructions.
“You follow me. Our other vehicle will follow you. If we stop, you stop. Got that?”
Jesus.I didn’t put up an argument. Because I wanted to get the hell out of town.
“When we get to the city limits and we have an all clear, the rear vehicle will flash its headlights at you. Then you can pass my vehicle, head on out.”
He didn’t crack a smile. No surprise. I slid into my car, followed behind his car, just like he’d told me to. Easier to go along. Besides, I thought: I didn’t want to give him an excuse to shoot me if I fell out of line. There’s always a chance of that.
The area around the courthouse was still packed. Spectators, activists carrying banners, television journalists, and the National Guard. A whole lot of guardsmen, at least twenty or so that I could see. All of them armed to the teeth.
I felt like I was living a documentary. Maybe that was true.
I saw the lights flash behind me and the lead car pulled over to the side of the road, to let me pass. As I left the city of UnionSprings, I glanced into the rearview mirror, half afraid that some bogeyman would be following.
It was all clear, though. The patrol cars blocked the highway. No one would get through that barricade until I was long out of sight.
I was safe.
CHAPTER
70
Chatter.
The word echoed in my head.
I knew people were cussing me out. Folks all over the country, who didn’t even know my name, suddenly had an opinion. About my judicial ethics. My performance on the bench, knowledge of the law. My hair, my weight, my dialect.
They hollered when I entered and exited the courthouse. I supposed some were shouting at me in front of their television sets. Attacking me on social media. Accusing me of misdeeds and villainous motivations. It bothered me. Scared me, if I’m being honest.
But I knew that my discomfort didn’t compare with the real victims of the real-life drama that had unfolded. The suffering that Bria Gaines and Nova Jones had to endure put my troubles in the shade. I wasn’t facing prison—not that day, anyway. And it had been decades since I’d been subjected to unwelcome sexual aggression. That experience never leaves you, though. You can’t bury the trauma deep enough to make it disappear.
Since the first day of jury selection, I’d been ruminating aboutall these matters, juggling them in my head. And trying to keep my courtroom in line, the trial under control. The dire warning from the National Guard was about to push me over the edge.
I needed to get home.
That was my best method for drowning out the madness surrounding the Gaines trial. For a few hours, I wanted to push the trial to the back of my head and focus on the farm. Think about that instead.Life on the farm.
There was work ahead. Livestock to be tended. In the barn, I’d muck out the stalls. Work was waiting for me inside my house, too. My kitchen wasn’t up to standard, and I had laundry to do. I’d go from one chore to the next.
Rural life is hard, physically challenging, laborious. It wears me out sometimes, and I even wonder if it’s time for me to give it up. But it has its rewards. And the Charolais cattle, my mare Tornado, the crazy rooster, even the bull—they were better behaved than the people currently crowding the Bullock County Courthouse and the streets of Union Springs.
So I was starting to relax as I approached my driveway on the farm road.
When I pulled in, I braked and grabbed a couple of items from the metal mailbox. Tossed the mail on the dash. One of the envelopes was embossed with the business address of that land-grabbing attorney, Arch Pearce. The irony struck me: Why wasn’t the world chasing him with pitchforks and torches, instead of persecuting a dedicated doctor and the young girl she’d tried to help? Made no sense at all.
