Because of his demanding job, Ron could not commit to a head coaching position. He could not make all the practices, but he was determined not to miss a single game.

He would handle the pitchers and catchers. One of his former law partners would handle the rest and call himself the head coach. Another father would organize the practices.

It was the first Saturday in April, a chilly morning throughout the state. A nervous bunch of players and parents and especially coaches gathered at the city park for the beginning of the season. The nine- and ten-year-olds were sent to one field, the elevens and twelves to another. All players would be evaluated, then ranked, then placed in the draft.

The coaches met behind home plate to get organized. There was the usual nervous chatter and cheap shots and lighthearted insults. Most of them had coached in the same league the year before. Ron, back then, had been a popular coach, just another young father who would spend hours on the field from April to July. Now, though, he felt a bit elevated. He had put together a brilliant campaign and won an important political race with a record vote. That made him unique among his peers. There was, after all, only one supreme court justice in the town of Brookhaven. There was a certain detachment that he did not particularly like, though he wasn't sure if he disliked it, either.

There were already calling him "Judge."

judge Fisk pulled a name out of the hat. His team was the Rockies.

The apartment was so cramped during the week they had to escape on Saturdays.

The Paytons coaxed Mack and Liza out of bed with the suggestion of breakfast at a nearby pancake house. Afterward, they left Hattiesburg and arrived in Bowmore before 10:00 a.m. Mrs. Shelby, Mary Grace's mother, had promised a long lunch under an oak tree-catfish followed by homemade ice cream. Mr. Shelby had the boat ready. He and Wes took the kids to a small lake where the crappie were biting.

Mary Grace and her mother sat on the porch for an hour, covering the usual topics, avoiding anything remotely related to the law. Family news, church gossip, weddings, and funerals, but they stayed away from cancer, which for years had dominated the chatter in Cary County.

Long before lunch, Mary Grace drove to town, to Pine Grove, where she met with Denny Ott. She passed along her latest thoughts on the new supreme court, a rather sad summary. Not for the first time she warned Denny that they would probably lose. He was preparing his people. He knew they would survive. They had lost everything else.

She drove two blocks and parked in the gravel driveway of Jeannette's trailer. They sat outside, under a shade tree, sipping bottled water and talking about men. Jeannette's current boyfriend was a fifty-five-year-old widower with a nice job and a nice home and little interest in her lawsuit-not that the lawsuit was attracting the attention it once commanded. The verdict was now seventeen months old. Not a dime had changed hands, and none was anticipated.

"We expect a ruling this month," Mary Grace said. "And it will be a miracle if we win."

"I'm praying for a miracle," Jeannette said, "but I'm ready for whatever happens.

I just want it to be over."

After a long chat and a quick hug, Mary Grace left. She drove the streets of her hometown, past the high school and the homes of childhood friends, past the stores on Main Street, then into the countryside. She stopped at Treadway's Grocery, where she bought a soda and said hello to a lady she had known her entire life.

Driving back to her parents' home, she passed the Barrysville Volunteer Fire Department, a small metal building with an old pumper that the boys rolled out and washed on election days. The station also served as a precinct, where, five months earlier, 74 percent of the fine folks of Barrysville voted for God and guns and against gays and liberals. Barely five miles from the Bowmore town limits, Ron Fisk had convinced these people that he was their protector.

Perhaps he was. Perhaps his mere presence on the court was too intimidating for some.

The Meyerchec and Spano appeal was dismissed by the clerk for a lack of prosecution.

They failed to file the required briefs, and after the usual warnings from the clerk their lawyer said they had no desire to go forward. They were not available for comment, and their lawyer did not return phone calls from reporters.

On the day of the dismissal, the supreme court reached a new low in its movement to drastically limit corporate exposure. A privately held pharmaceutical company called Bosk had made and widely marketed a strong painkiller called Rybadell. It proved to be horribly addictive, and within a few years Bosk was getting hammered with lawsuits. During one of the first trials, Bosk executives were caught lying.

A U.S. attorney in Pennsylvania opened an investigation, and there were allegations that the company had known about Rybadell's addictive propensities but had tried to bury this information. The drug was extremely profitable.

A former Jackson cop named Dillman was injured in a motorcycle accident, and in the course of his recovery became addicted to Rybadell. He battled the addiction for two years, during which time his health and the rest of his life disintegrated. He was arrested twice for shoplifting. He eventually sued Bosk in the Circuit Court of Rankin County. The jury found the company liable and awarded Dillman $275,000, the lowest Rybadell verdict in the country.

On appeal, the supreme court reversed, 5-4. The principal reason, set forth in the majority opinion by Justice Romano, was that Dillman should not be awarded damages because he was a drug addict.

In a rancorous dissent, Justice Albritton begged the majority to step forward and produce any scintilla of proof that the plaintiff was a drug addict "before his introduction to Rybadell."

Three days after the decision, four Bosk executives pled guilty to withholding information from the Food and Drug Administration, and to lying to federal investigators.

Krane Chemical's first-quarter earnings were much better than expected. In fact, they astounded the analysts, who had been expecting about $1.25 per share on the high end. When Krane reported $2.05 per share, the company and its amazing comeback attracted even more interest from financial publications.

All fourteen plants were running at full throttle. Prices had been cut to recapture market share. The sales force was working overtime to fill orders. Debt had been slashed. Most of the problems that had dogged the company throughout the preceding year were suddenly gone.

The stock had made a steady and impressive climb from single digits, and was trading around $24 when the earnings news hit. It jumped to $30. When last seen at that price, the stock was free-falling the day after the verdict in Hattiesburg.

The Trudeau Group now owned 80 percent of Krane, or around forty-eight million shares.

Since the rumors of bankruptcy just before the election back in November, Mr. Trudeau's net worth had increased by $800 million. And he was quite anxious to double that.

Before a final decision is handed down by the supreme court, the justices spend weeks reading one another's memos and preliminary opinions. They sometimes argue, privately.

They lobby for votes to support their positions. They lean on their clerks for useful gossip from down the hall. Occasionally, there are deadlocks that take months to resolve.

The last thing Justice Fisk read late Friday afternoon was McEl-wayne's dissent in the case of Jeannette Baker v. Krane Chemical Corporation.

It was widely assumed to be a dissent with three others concurring. The majority opinion was written by Justice Calligan. Romano was working on a concurring opinion, and there was a chance that Albritton would write a dissent of his own. Though the details were not complete, there was little doubt that the final decision would be a 5-4 reversal of the verdict.