Laying Down The Law

Liberty Mellers Perkins is a Southern rural champion of justice. She got her law degree with the aid of a drip-dry lawyer suit, but gave up business drag for t-shirt and jeans when she set up legal practice in her hometown of Lulu, in Watermelon County Florida. Her redneck clients are prone to sinking fits, gossip, secrets, and bourbon whiskey. So is Lib.
Lib hears a shotgun blast and discovers a client of hers with most of his head spattered on the faded cabbage rose wallpaper in his farmhouse kitchen. She believes she recognizes the boy she sees running away. Billy couldn’t stomp a snake with both feet in the bucket but he wasn’t any better or worse than the rest of the current kid crop. When she can finally get hold of Bernie Jackson, the police chief and only sworn officer in Lulu, she reports the crime.
Bernie has his own version of police work, some of which is a little rough on the offenders – and on Lib. When Bernie arrests her and personally throws her into the town lockup, Lib is one very surprised menace to society.
Lib is caught in a conflict between what she was taught, what she believed, and how she acted. She was taught to respect folks, to have manners and to take pride in the things she did. She believed in a certain amount of what her law professors called situational ethics, which was another way of saying what her Momma called standing tall in deep shit. Bernie’s tactics give her the opportunity to force a confession from her client’s killer, but Lib lays down some rough justice of her own.
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