11

I have a riddle for you.

A little boy lives in a trailer outside of Hayneville. He’s poor. No cell phone, no Internet, no cable TV, no toys except a few Happy Meal rejects. One Christmas his cousin gives him some chicken wire and lumber and a baby chick inside a cardboard box. The boy works all Christmas day to put together a little chicken coop, and from then on the chicken is his best friend. He loves it, and he spends hours petting it, watching it, following it around the yard. 

One night, the boy hears cackling and growling from the chicken house. He grabs a flashlight and his dad’s .410 shotgun, and he goes out to see what’s happening. There’s a fox, a beautiful red flash of a fox, trying to get into the chicken house. 

Of course the boy shoots the fox. That’s not my riddle.

The riddle is, why is the chicken a beloved pet, and why is the fox dead? You love your dog, so you put food in its bowl. Who loved the animal that’s in your dog’s bowl? When a baby chick pulls his first wriggling worm out of the ground, whose side should I be on?

I can’t answer that question. But I did think about it a lot over the last few weeks of my summer at the animal shelter. Those big bags of cat food clearly say “made with real chicken,” and it bothered me that when I fed a cat, I was feeding it a chicken, just like the chicken in my riddle. Why wasn’t the chicken a pet? How would the cat live if we spared the chicken?

It’s something you could think about on a mountaintop for years, but I didn’t have years or a mountaintop, so I threw myself into work. I put away the “Colonel Peale” dress and didn’t think about filing another legal brief. I kept the cages cleaner than they’d ever been. I organized the storeroom. I convinced Taleesa to buy me some paint, and I touched up the sign in front of the shelter, something Miss Megg told me only a county employee was allowed to do, though she wouldn’t tell if I wouldn’t.

And of course I kept on writing profiles of pets for the Herald. The week after my meeting with the governor, one of the Braxtons put up my column with the byline “Col. Atticus Peale.” They thought it was cute. I put a stop to it.

Thinking about my riddle was a good way to avoid that other riddle, the one that can’t be solved: seventh grade. The days were ticking down and I just didn’t want to deal with it. 

School and I just don’t get along. I’ll be honest with you: I don’t get along with the kids at school, really. I guess it all goes back to the early days, to the years of tea parties and playing princess.

Other girls never liked playing princess with me, because I have the whole Cinderella thing figured out. I always thought it was kind of dumb that the fairy godmother gives Cinderella stuff that lasts only until midnight, and I always thought that if I were Cinderella I’d interrupt the fairy godmother—I’m bad to interrupt people—and ask to be bitten by a radioactive spider instead. 

Then I’d be Spiderella, in a beautiful spider-silk gown, swinging through the capital with the proportional strength of a spider. I’d live with my stepmom and keep my secret identity, while saving the kingdom and dating the prince at night. Martinez liked it, as long as he didn’t have to play the prince. But other girls got really tired of their tea parties being busted up by supervillains. 

Mermaids were a problem, too. I love the idea of mermaids. To be a superhero of sorts, a fish-lady, except that you have the face and hair of Peyton Vebelstadt. That’s just about perfect. But in the cartoons, all mermaids seem to do is sit around on rocks combing their hair with seashells.

Then one day Martinez came home with an action figure, a Navy frogman, and I realized there was something better than a mermaid. I mean, what a beautiful word, “frogman.” Even though it isn’t what it sounds like. A frogman is, like, a really tough soldier guy in a wet suit with flippers, who plants bombs on the bottom of ships, and defuses bombs, and carries a cool-looking speargun. 

That gave me a new idea: frogmaids. Half-fish, half lovely girl, all adventure. Spearguns and utility vests instead of clamshell bikinis. Exploring caves, fighting polluters, having tea parties. Much better. I tried to recruit girls into my Frogmaid Corps, but none of them could handle the tough discipline involved. Peyton Vebelstadt was one of the first to drop out. Shameka Vinson was the last. She told me I was too bossy. 

I know, “bossy” is a bad word. One of our teachers tried to put a stop to it. In fifth grade, Ms. Johnson started the year with a “Ban Bossy” on her bulletin board, with biographies of women who were generals or who ran countries and so on. After about a month, she took it down and put up a billboard about speaking to each other with respect. I kind of got the feeling that I was the one to blame for that.

“Atty’s a very smart, very capable student,” Ms. Johnson said to Taleesa at our parent-teacher conference. “But she’s also what we call a shout-out. When she knows the answer, and she knows a lot of answers, she just blurts it out before anyone else can.” Then she turned to me. “Atty, when you do this, you’re taking away the other kids’ chances to learn and—”

“If I was good at hitting a ball, you wouldn’t tell me I was ruining the game for everybody else,” I said. 

“And that’s another thing,” Ms. Johnson said. “Interrupting people is rude. You need to find a way not to do that.”

I’ll say this: Mrs. Johnson did listen to my comment about hitting a ball. She tried to get me into Genius Bowl, the big academic trivia contest where blurting out the answers and interrupting people are actually good things. But I didn’t join for deeply personal reasons. 

Premsyl Svoboda, my one and only ex-boyfriend, was the captain of the Genius Bowl team. 

Premsyl broke my heart. In first grade, he was a new immigrant from the Czech Republic, and he didn’t know a word of English. Our teacher paired me up with him, to guide him around the school and teach him about English words and American customs. Mrs. Frist, the first-grade teacher, said I was the natural choice, because I was from an “intelligent, cross-cultural family” and should know how to reach out to someone who speaks only Czech. Which shows how much she knows. 

I taught Premsyl everything about America. All the important rules. Nobody likes a snitch. Boyfriends come up with pet names for their girlfriends in their native language, and they always hold your hand at the lunch table. American men can take their wife’s name. (So if I’m writing “Atty Svoboda” on my notebook, he should write “Premsyl Peale” on his.)

Mrs. Frist took Premsyl away from me. Because he asked. That’s right. My boyfriend didn’t break up with me directly, he went to the teacher and asked for permission to break up with me. And then I got in trouble for teaching Premsyl a bunch of rules about American culture that don’t really exist, though they should. 

“If an adult did some of the things Atty did, she’d probably be charged with fraud,” Mrs. Frist told my dad. 

So this is what I faced, going into the seventh grade. Seventh grade, which every credible psychologist said was a meat grinder that turns confident young women into self-doubting chain-smokers. 

Peyton Vebelstadt would be there, Premsyl would be there, Shameka would be there, everybody. The cast of the sad drama of my school life so far. 

And one of them, almost certainly, was Princess P.

Dad wasn’t having a great time, either. I knew because I read about it in the Houmahatchee Herald.

BEFORE MURDER, LOTTERY WINNER HAD CHANGE OF HEART

by Rickie Braxton

The Sunday before someone shot him dead, Jefferson Davis Ambrose had a religious awakening. 

Ambrose, a local pawnshop owner, was already a member in good standing at Red Creek First Baptist. He was also known as a penny-pincher—“Heatmiser” was his nickname because he refused to turn on air-conditioning in his store—and as a hard-driving businessman. He was also, much to the chagrin of his pastor, a regular player of the Florida Lottery, known for his regular trips across the state line to pick his favorite numbers. 

But on one Sunday in May, with a lottery ticket still in his back pocket, Jeff Ambrose came down the aisle of the church when pastor Michael Jones called. Ambrose, 64, said he’d never really known salvation, and wanted to change his life.

“He had tears streaming down his face,” Jones said. “He said that as soon as he had the money, he’d get out of the pawnshop business and devote all his time to doing the Lord’s work.”

What followed was a bizarre chain of events that seemed to be straight out of a Hollywood movie. In that Sunday night’s Florida Lottery drawing, Ambrose’s ticket came out a winner. He wouldn’t take home the biggest Lotto jackpot, but he hit all the numbers in the Fantasy Five and was set to take home $225,000.

Ambrose told his pastor that he’d use the money to close down his store and retire. He even had plans to return pawned items to some of his more financially troubled customers to show his change of heart. 

“We ask God to forgive our debts as we forgive our debtors,” Jones said. “He said he didn’t have much time left, and lots of debt to forgive.”

Friends told Ambrose to keep the lottery win a secret, at least until he’d collected the money. But it didn’t stay secret for long. On Monday morning, Ambrose stopped for breakfast at the Speedy Queen on Galvez Road and told the whole story to everyone who would listen—about his conversion experience, his lottery win, and his plan to close his pawnshop.

“I’d never seen him like that,” said Annie Smith, a waitress at the Speedy Queen who regularly served Ambrose. “He was bright and happy, like a little boy. I wasn’t sure how much of it was the Lord and how much of it was winning the lottery.”

Smith said she assumed he’d won the big lottery prize, about $12 million, not a lesser jackpot. And she was impressed when he pulled the lottery ticket out of his wallet and showed it to her. 

Police say Ambrose called at least two customers early Monday morning and told them to collect their items free of charge. One of those customers arrived to find Ambrose dead in the pawn shop’s back office, his winning ticket gone. 

Police later found the ticket, and a gun that matched the bullet in Ambrose’s body, in the possession of Jethro Gersham, 55, a disabled man who lived near the Speedy Queen. Gersham was a customer of Ambrose’s—he’d pawned the very gun that was later used to kill the pawnshop owner—and was often known to hang out in the Speedy Queen parking lot, chatting with customers. 

“He used to come around all the time,” Smith said. “Then a few weeks before the shooting, he and J.D. got in a big argument in the parking lot. J.D. called Jethro a deadbeat and Jethro called J.D. a greedy you-know-what.”

Police believe Gersham found out about the lottery ticket and came into the pawnshop claiming to have the money he needed to get his gun back. Then he shot Gersham and took both the gun and the lottery ticket, police say.

In fact, police say they have a confession, signed by Gersham, that confirms that’s how it happened. 

Gersham’s attorney, Paul Peale, says the police tricked Gersham into signing the confession. Gersham is illiterate, Peale said, and didn’t know what he was signing.

Peale said police should look more deeply into Gersham’s version of the story. When first caught by police, Gersham said he was given the gun by a man in a red hat—not Ambrose—who worked at the store. Gersham’s story doesn’t explain how he got the lottery ticket; the defendant claims the man in the red hat gave him only a receipt for the gun.

Ambrose didn’t have any employees at the pawnshop, though the co-owner, his brother-in-law, often worked behind the counter when Ambrose wasn’t around. Police say the brother-in-law was fishing the day of the killing, and has a receipt from a marina to prove it. 

Sources close to the case say Peale is working frantically to get Gersham a plea deal that will send his client to prison but avoid death by lethal injection. Peale declined to comment on the issue, citing attorney-client privilege.

When I read it, I heaved a big sigh. I know Dad would probably like me to grow up to be a lawyer like him. But if this is what it takes, I don’t know. How can you defend somebody, somebody you know to be innocent, and still help him plead guilty? I know Dad’s job was to do what’s best for his client, and I guess I can see where Jethro would rather go to prison for six or seven years—instead of life in prison, or getting executed—if it didn’t look like he could win. But how can a person go to jail for something as horrible as murder without even going to a courtroom and explaining their side of the story?

“You know I can’t talk to you about the case, Atty,” Dad told me. “But let me just plant an idea in your head. Better yet, let me ask you a question. Who taught you to read?”

“Nobody,” I said. “I’ve always been able to read. Even in kindergarten.”

It was true, or I thought it was. My earliest memories are of when Taleesa and Martinez first came into our lives. I remember crying because Martinez got to sit in the seat in the grocery cart. Suddenly I was too old to ride the coin-operated giraffe outside of Super-Valu because I was the big girl now, and I didn’t get to do little kid stuff. But even then, in my earliest memories, I could walk down the aisle of the store and point and read names. Tide, Bounty, OxiClean. People would stop and smile and tell me how amazingly smart I was, so I kept doing it, and did it louder. Reading is my superpower.

“So who taught you?” Dad asked again.

“Nobody,” I said. “Okay, you. Or Taleesa. Mom? Did Mom teach me to read?”

Dad paused, and sighed. “Do you remember a woman named Molly? Sometimes she went by Menolly, a nickname. It’s from a book.”

“Dragonsong,” I said. “I’ve read it. I love that book.”

“The copy that’s on our shelf now? First printing, with the flying dragon on the cover? Molly gave your mom that book. Do you remember Molly at all?”

“Never heard of her,” I said.

“You used to sit on her lap right there in the living room, reading picture books,” Dad said. “For hours. You were a toddler. And she would point to letters and sound them out. For hours at a time. Because you’d let her. After your mom died, and before I met Taleesa, she came around every day. First to help me, then really just to see you. Every day.”

“Why don’t I remember her?” I asked.

“Things got weird,” Dad said. “I really needed her. You really needed her. I love her like a sister. I miss her a lot. But she wanted . . . I don’t know. She wanted more. She told me she was in love with me. I really wasn’t ready for that. Honestly I hadn’t even thought about her in that way until she said it. I was just taking and taking from her and never even asked why she wanted to give. So she left. I mean, really left. Not a call. Not another visit.” Dad sighed again.

“Just what I needed,” I said. “More guilt. This woman taught me to read, and I don’t even know her.” I paused for a minute, then: “What the heck does this have to do with Jethro?”

“Atty, you and I have been watched over by the grace of others our whole lives,” Dad said. “We don’t even know all the people we need to thank for what we have. But Jethro, he didn’t have a Molly. He can’t read. Even the school system that was supposed to teach him to read, it didn’t do that. I can’t see any bitterness in him about that. But I can see why he doesn’t trust public institutions to do what they say they’re going to do. If the schools will let him sit there for nine years and not teach him, if the cops will make him sign a confession they know he doesn’t understand, why would he trust the court to give him a fair trial? And if you don’t believe you can get a fair trial, why wouldn’t you take a deal for a few years in prison, compared to execution?”

I shook my head. “Doesn’t anything work the way it’s supposed to?” I said. “Doesn’t anything work in real life the way it works on TV?”

“Football does, I guess,” Dad said.

That didn’t make me feel better at all.