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firewood. Several sit there collapsed in on themselves.
    By the way, where is everyone? Those extras in your life, lurking the streets, just aren’t here.
    My flavorless red rental weaves onto I-55. Walmarts, Taco Bells, and Red Roof Inns build and build till logos stumble over one another in the blur out my side window. Half a Hank Williams CD later, that thins out and giant golden-tip oak trees take over. Not just lining the road but running thick and deep. Suddenly America has gone and Mississippi has appeared. I’ve crossed from Jackson into Rankin County, where Pearl is.
    A silver castle sparkles in the distance. It rolls closer. Golden sunshine pings off the tips of the barbed wire of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Is Vincent locked up in there? How many jails are there in Mississippi?
    Opposite the prison is a sign saying MORE SWEA T IN TRAINING, LESS B LOOD ON THE STREET , with
Sweat
dripping sweat and
Blood
dripping blood. It’s the sign for the police academy.
    I need to talk with the police, too, before the trial, get the lowdown.
    As I push on, the grass bordering the road collapses into marshland. These could even be “backwoods.” I curve off the highway.
    The trees reach over the road to touch one another, blocking out the sun, and now I bolt through green for miles and miles, until a parked fire engine throws a whoosh of red at my windshield. The trees become older and the trunks become thicker, the closer I get to Jim’s. I don’t think it’s just my imagination. Moss has climbed all over the drooping branches; the trees look like they’re dripping green fur.
    I slow from a bolt to a crawl to a stop.
    Jim Giles’s street is a dirt path off the road. Gently, I poke up the path toward a bend.
    I hear before I see.
    A wave of wounded howls bursts from beyond the bend and rolls toward my car.
    Mississippi’s coming to get me.
Giles Farm
    Ten huge gray dogs yowl and leap in one tangled bundle behind barbed wire. This one airborne, then that one airborne, then that one, then that one, then that, like they are being juggled. Their teeth make it higher than the barbed wire, but the rest of them remains below. The farm is tucked away behind the bend, hidden from the main road and the world.
    I step from the car. The sound of my door slamming behind me isdrowned out by the dogs. Their howls shatter through the air and through the ground, through my body and eardrums. My bearings are toppled, leaving me blinking, disoriented.
    First thing. Triggering the hound alarm has tipped me past the point of no return. Any fear I have about Jim and his fighting must be folded away in my pocket for later.
    Okay, the vehicle gate in front of me is shut. Okay, it’s a small farm. Okay, barbed wire holds in the farm on the three sides I can see. Okay, I’ll walk the perimeter to see whether there’s a walk-in gate.
    I affect a confident stride.
    “Jim? Jim! Hello? Hello?”
    I’m reverse-psychology snooping.
If he’s shouting he can’t be snooping,
I hope Jim is thinking from wherever he is.
    “Jim? Jim!”
    The half of the farm closest to my car is green and open. A white trailer squats in the corner. I assume that’s the trailer where Jim flicks on a microphone and rants
Radio Free Mississippi
. Is Jim in there? If he is, doesn’t look like he’s coming out.
    The other half of Giles Farm is tightly packed with oak trees, the ground coated with rusty leaves. I squint, and deep behind the black trees, I make out the blur of a two-story wooden house. Is Jim Giles in there, staring at me from the second-story window?
    I journey the length and breadth of the barbed wire. There’s no walk-in entrance. The vehicle entrance is bolted shut. No one comes out.
Under a Hunchbacked Tree Dripping Green Fur
    The shrieks of the hellhounds are faint and far behind. I park under a hunchbacked tree and pull my phone from my pocket. My thumb taps out a reverse-psychology e-mail. (
If he’s e-mailing me he can’t