He did not own the judges.

There is no such thing.

Jasper County has about thirty-four thousand people in it.

Cutter’s Bluff has nineteen hundred.

What Arliss Gaddis had was not ownership.

It was that in a place that size, everybody is inside somebody’s arithmetic.

Here is the actual structure, which took a special prosecutor and a forensic accountant eleven months to lay out and which I can now do in six sentences.

Gaddis Timber employed a hundred and forty people directly and perhaps three hundred more through contract crews.