The Monday following the Fourth of July, Jimmy asked Doris to tape a sign to the door of the Truck Stop Café before driving into Palestine for Joe"s hearing in the district court there. The sign she hung read identically to the one the druggist hung on the door to the pharmacy and the one across town at the service station. In simple, handwritten letters on every door of every business in Cranston, were the words “Closed for Court.”
In all the movies Doris had seen, the courtroom was divided down the middle, with victims or their families sitting behind the prosecutor"s table and supporters of the defendant filling the benches behind the defense table. Her first experience in a courtroom, however, shattered that illusion. From her perch in the far back corner, Doris wondered how so many p
