“Anyway, after they narrowed it down, Quentin started checking family relations. He told the crowd he once tried a murder case in which the opposing lawyer—who was from out of state—hadn’t realized until the trial was over that four of the jury members were cousins. He got a big laugh. He’s a natural with juries, Penn. A real performer.”

“No doubt. So, how’d it wind up?”

“They settled on seven blacks and five whites, with one alternate from each race. Four of the blacks are women, and three whites.”

Seven women and five men. “What do you think, Rusty?”

“Hard to know with this case. I don’t know what else might come out that we haven’t heard yet. Has your daddy got any other big secrets that could break in the next week?”

“Who the hell knows? Not me.”

“I hear you. You gonna be in court tomorrow?”

“Barring unforeseen emergencies—which have been the rule up till now.”

“Okay, then. I’ll see you when I see you.”

That was eighty minutes ago.

The sky has been clear for our southward flight, and on final approach to New Orleans Danny gives us a good look at the state of the city six months after Katrina. As mayor of Natchez, I know the statistics well, but they pale in comparison to what we can see on the ground. Bed frames and masonry piled in the streets. Overturned boats lying in yards. A telephone pole sticking up through a wrecked house. An upside-down school bus. A pack of dogs loping along the Seventeenth Street Canal.

As Serenity drives our rental car into the city, negotiating a depressing number of uprooted trees, I tell her some of the stats I know. More than half the homes in the city are still without electricity. Three hundred thousand people have yet to return. Eighty-three thousand families are living in asbestos-filled FEMA trailers. Serenity nods through my recitation. Then, when I pause, she says, “Were you down here during the storm?”

“No. It hit Natchez, too. I was trying to hold things together up there.”

Another nod. “I came down and worked a boat with a rescue crew.”

Of course she did. I should have guessed by now.

“I have some cousins here,” she explains. “Distant. We spent two days pulling people off roofs and out of trees. Then I helped with some recovery work. The bodies, you know. Man, in some ways this place was worse than Iraq. Way worse.”

“What was your takeaway?”

A bitter laugh escapes her mouth. “Politicians don’t give a shit about the South. Except at election time. If Katrina would have hit the East Coast, most of this shit would never have happened the way it did.”