IT'S HIS WORD AGAINST MINE

                         "Well now Lester...which way are we gonna have it? This court is open to your plea...Are you guilty or are you not guilty?"

                    The man was in his sixties; dressed in working overalls, with the smell of manure still in them. He leaned his head to one side, with the mop of white hair under a straw hat and closed one eye, as though he were  thinking to himself. Then he replied:

                          "Ya see judge, it's like this...When my grand-pappy settled in these parts of Alabama, he done finish one war with this here Mr. Lincoln, before he had to fight another one with the Yankees that came after him. I guess it was right about then that the Klan got started..."

                          "Lester, I don't need a lesson on how the Klan got started and everybody knows that you're a Coulpepper and that your family's been around these parts for a right spell. But what I wanna know, straight out is did you kill Axel Geese deliberately or was it in  self defense?"

                    Lester shifted from one boot to another. They both had manure on them, but the man was used to that, while this other kind of interrogation, he was not. Thus it took him a few minutes of deliberation before he replied:

                           "Well now judge, it all depends on what you mean by self-defense. That's kinda why I spoke about my great grand-pappy and the Klan. Ifin I'm right, they might be called terrorists today and ifin I'm wrong, then what they did was in self-defense." Lester explained, to which the exasperated judge demanded:

                          "Did Axel pull a knife on you Lester before you shot him?"

                          "Sure! All niggers pull knives judge. You know about that. It's part a their culture and that's why we got the Klan..."

                     The judge, who was a distant kin to Lester, going back to the Civil War, which wasn't so civil, scratched his head and tried to ignore the stench of manure. Of course it was necessary to correct him, so he composed himself in a sober manner and said:

                            " You can't say that word Lester and ifin you do, I have to fine you."

                            "What word was that judge?"
                         
                            "The one you used to indicate the assailent with the knife."

                   Lester thought for a moment and then replied with almost lamentable sincerity:

                             "But ifin I'm thinken that word..Why can't I say it?"

                             "Because Congress decided to pass a law against sayin it. You have to call them Afro-Americans today or else you get  fined."

                             "The Carpet Baggers again?"
                           
                             "I guess you could say that," the judge agreed, reluctantly, "But that's not the point here. Now since Axel Greese is dead  and there were no witnesses," he paused, taking a deep breath, "Did the Afro-American pull the knife on you, before you shot em?"

                   Despite his appearance, Lester was not an idiot. He knew that if he answered one way, the judge would put him in jail; but if he answered in another way, he would remain a free man. It didn't matter if it were the truth or not. It was just a matter of the law. It was as simple as that, so he replied:

                           "Yep, that's the way it was judge. He pulled the knife first and then I shot em!...After all...it's his word against mine!"