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the previous day’s ill-advised decision to try and steal a bag of popcorn, the job of planting that section fell to the twelve-year-old.
    As Cliff began working, his eyes focused on the long straight row of red dirt ahead, about twenty feet away Jesse lifted one of the strands of barbed wire and slipped through the fence. He then held it up for Jewel to slip through. The two walked to the wheelbarrow and took a couple of hoes. As Jesse began hoeing the row next to him, Cliff looked up at his friend.
    “What are you doing here?”
    “We went up together, we might as well go down together. Besides, if you had gotten the popcorn I would have eaten it.”
    Cliff then noticed as Jewel on the third row began hoeing, “What’s she doing here?”
    “She saw us go up,” Jesse answered. “How much trouble are you in?”
    “I’ve got to plant this field. And Mr. McCormack said that I can’t come back to the picture-show until after school starts. Does anyone know you were up there with me?”
    “Everybody in town except my mom,” Jesse replied with a smile.
    Cliff began hoeing. “You know, if you had gotten caught and I got away I’d still be in bed.”
    “No you wouldn’t,” Jewel piped in. “I’d wake you up and make you come out here just like I did him.”
    #
    WASHINGTON’S FEED STORE
    ELZA, TEXAS
    10:45 a.m., Sunday November 16, 1941
    Thomas Jefferson Hightower breathed a long sigh as he shut off the motor of his 1941 Ford Police prowler. The car was the only good thing about that job. Being the chief of a one-person police department had very few perks. The brand new car was, for all practical purposes, the only perk. Six months earlier the town council had given him a choice - they could get him a car, or they could hire a second officer. He opted for the car because it didn’t make sense to have a second officer to chase down a bank robber if they had to do it on foot. Not that chasing down a bank robber was an issue. Elza had very little real crime to worry about. Mostly he had some drunk doing something stupid, like Irwin Stoker walking into the Palace with a loaded shotgun. Still, it would be nice to have a second man to take a few of the midnight phone calls or block traffic for the occasional funeral.
    For the most part, his ten years as the Elza Police Department hadn’t been all that bad, until today. For the second time in his career in law enforcement, Jefferson was in way over his head. He hadn’t had any real training. He’d been hired because his uncle Darrell was mayor and Uncle Darrell was only the mayor because Elza needed a city charter to get the state of Texas to give them money to put a traffic light where Highway 84 crossed Main Street. In the state of Texas, city charters required that there be an elected town council, an elected mayor, and a police chief.
    It seemed like the best deal in the world at the time. It was a steady paycheck, and back in 1931 there weren’t that many steady jobs. It wasn’t hard work because there just wasn’t that much crime, and he got to carry a gun right out in the open. On the downside, until recently, he’d had to drive around in a worn-out 1928 Model AA Flatbed delivery truck that he bought second-hand with the words “Bradford’s Store” permanently faded onto the driver-side door.
    It had been a long morning for Jefferson Hightower. First, at 5:36 a.m. on the one morning of the week that he got to sleep past five, his phone rang with Susie Tidwell on the line frantic because Clifford hadn’t come home last night. Susie had heard about the events at the Palace through the Cherokee County Party Line News Service, which is what Jefferson called the local rumor mill. The telephone was the most remarkable invention in history, but at the very same time it was the worst thing that had ever come along. Almost every phone in town was on a “party line,” which meant that a single phone line was shared by a half-dozen customers. This meant,