He keeps a new notebook on his desk, a blue one from Dollar General, still a dollar and twenty-five cents. Last time I visited, it was half full.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
He smiled.
“Things that went right,” he said. “Sheriff Tennant told me to start writing those down too. She said a man who only writes down the bad things eventually forgets there are any good ones.”
Last spring I returned for The Notebook clinic dedication at Mount Zion. The congregation and half the town attended in Sunday clothes, including waitress Kayla Dupree and the elderly diner patron who had half-risen during my arrest. Afterward, he approached and shook my hand.
“I should’ve said something that day,” he said. “I should’ve stood up.”
“You’re standing up now,” I said.
Aunt Lorraine walked down the aisle on her two feet, with a cane instead of a walker. She cut the ribbon on the clinic door with a pair of pinking shears she’d used to cut out bulletin board letters for thirty-four years.
