And with that, “Preacher” Quentin Avery whirs around the defense table, stops beside the podium, and faces a jury that, like me, must wonder just what this unpredictable attorney’s idea of an opening statement might be.

Chapter 42

“Lord, our district attorney likes to talk, doesn’t he?”

Quentin has stationed his wheelchair beside the podium, but I’m sure this is only his initial position. He will almost certainly move around the courtroom during his statement, seizing and releasing the territory between judge, jury, and the spectators like a wily field general, pressing home every advantage that his handicap gives him. “I guess when you graduate from a high-dollar law school like Harvard, you just can’t resist exercising all those fine, big words they teach up there.”

“Mr. Avery,” Judge Elder breaks in, “you know better than that.”

“My apologies, Judge. In my younger days I used to pride myself on my own verbal facility, but I’ve gotten so old now that I have to get straight to the point. When you’re liable to have to run to the restroom any minute, like me, you can’t take time to gild the lily.”

Quentin rolls his chair out into the open space before the jury box and smiles at them like a kindly patriarch about to address his relations at a family reunion.

“Where do I begin, ladies and gentlemen? To tell you the truth, my head is spinning. As best I can remember, we started out yesterday morning in Natchez, Mississippi, in 2005, and we ended up this afternoon by the side of a road in North Korea in 1950. I can hardly get my bearings. So while I try, I’m going to tell you a story about my daddy.

“Yesterday and today, while the district attorney’s witnesses paraded in and out of that box, I kept thinking back to my childhood. World War Two was going on, and I was nine or ten years old. This was a frightening time in the world, with nobody quite sure what was true and what wasn’t. Well, I got into trouble at school with some other boys, and then I managed to get out of it. I did that by using my quick wits and quicker tongue. I was pretty proud of myself, yes sir. Downright smug, probably. But you couldn’t keep nothing from my daddy. By four thirty that evening, Daddy knew everything that had happened. And he sat me down on our old porch and said something I never forgot. He said, ‘Son, half the truth is a whole lie.’”

Quentin falls silent, seemingly lost in a reverie about his father.

“Mr. Avery?” prompts Judge Elder.

“‘Half the truth,’” Quentin ruminates, “‘is a whole lie.’ These past two days, I’ve been noticing that some people didn’t have the benefit of my daddy’s instruction.”