I. The Buick It had been a year. Marla Jenkins marked it without meaning to, on the first Thursday in October, when she climbed the stairs on Parler Avenue at seven in the morning and found …
Whatever Hour It Strikes
I. The Grant The Dorchester County courthouse in St. George has a clock tower, and the clock in it has not told the correct time since the autumn of 1979. This is the first thing a visitor notices …
The Grits Judge
I. Ten Sharp St. George, South Carolina, is the Grits Capital of the World. This is not a boast but a finding. In 1985 a man from the Quaker Oats company, reviewing shipping figures, discovered that …
The Edisto Keeps Its Own
I. Low Water The Edisto is the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America, a fact printed on a brown sign at Givhans Ferry that every child in Dorchester County has read and no child has …
The Tower With No Bell
I. The Drawer The offices of The County Line occupied the second floor of a brick building on Parler Avenue in St. George, above what had been a dry-goods store, then a dress shop, then a video …
Almost Here
I. The Last Barber on Main Street There was a time in the county when a man could learn more about his neighbors in twenty minutes at Kirk's Barbershop than he could in twenty years of attending the …