An honor student and varsity athlete was charged Monday in the killing of a young Charlotte man whose charred body was found in the trunk of a smoldering Mazda off Harper Church Road, south of Charlotte. The victim, William James Campbell, 19, had been shot once in the head.
      Investigators say Earl David Smallwood, 18, son of prominent attorney Peter Smallwood, killed Campbell only hours after delivering the commencement address at Randolph Academy, a private school in Southeast Charlotte.
      The victim’s mother, Ethel Campbell, demanded the death penalty for her son’s murderer. "He burned up William," she said from the courthouse steps, "and he should burn in hell for what he did."
      "I don’t know what happened," she went on, breaking into tears. "All I know is it would not have happened if my boy was not black."
      Minutes later, District Attorney Andrew Wheeler and Donald Sanders, an attorney for Smallwood, left the courthouse. "Early Smallwood is an outstanding young man who has a lot of family and community support," said Sanders. "His record is unblemished."
      "There are aggravating factors here that would support a life sentence," District Attorney Wheeler said.
      A farmer checking on his animals found the burning car Friday before daylight. Smallwood was arrested and taken to Mecklenburg County Jail later that morning. Few details were available as police continued to investigate.

Chapter 1

      Some memories we ignore. Others, little half-stories, we tell again and again, trotting them out for friends — and even people we barely know — like scrubbed children. We love what they say about us, the rosy image they project, exactly what we hoped and imagined our lives would be: bringing the baby home from the hospital, making up silly jingles about the shops and people we passed, turning everything into song. The baby’s first lopsided smiles, definitely not gas, real smiles. Steadying him, that day in the park, as he took his first steps, the rolling Charlie Chaplin gait, the sun playing around us in the grass like a goldfish. The time we were at the lake and skipped rocks across a clean, calm surface. Later, when he dove in, water quickly erasing the path he’d taken.
      See how the events of a child’s life can appear no more complicated than photographs in silver frames?
      Early’s sentencing is October 6, tomorrow. Our lawyer, Donald Sanders, worked out a plea to second-degree murder with the district attorney, and Early agreed to take it. Which means that tomorrow morning, our son will plead guilty.
      Donald says we have to prepare ourselves for the possibility that Early could get the maximum sentence. Life, with eligibility of parole. The sentence is up to the discretion of the court.
      It’s also possible, Donald says, that Early could get a lesser sentence, fifty years, forty, maybe as low as fifteen years.
      Prepare ourselves for a life sentence? Life is what is given to a child by his mother. Not a judge.
      If he gets forty or fifty years, I probably won’t be around when he’s released. Fifteen years? He’ll be thirty-three when he’s set free. That’s almost as many years in prison as he’s spent with us.
      Just for tonight, I’m going to stop being terrified. I’ll sink into the past, let memories fold over me, haphazard and slow. Not just the ones I tried to believe in all those years. The ones I tried to forget, as well. If the truth makes my reflection stare back at me, I’ll tell myself, Get an eyeful. I realize that if I go deep, I might find that I should have seen the end coming. Which raises the question, Was there a point where I could’ve come between my son and the things that lay in wait for him? Should I have paid closer attention? Stepped in, instead of holding back? Or is it all just a matter of choices and chance, the way every one of us drifts close to danger but only some get sucked in? The question I don’t want to ask myself: Was I the cause?
      At five, Early’s favorite bedtime story was the one I made up about the night he was born. I’d lie slant across the foot of his bed and say that on May 7, 1969, mothers and fathers from all over Charlotte rushed to the hospital to get a baby. I’d lightly squeeze his toes through the blanket, clear my throat to build suspense, and keep going. We heard there were dozens of newborns available for pick-up in the nursery, I’d say. But instead of each set of parents choosing a baby in a levelheaded, orderly fashion, there was a huge ruckus. Mothers started shoving mothers, fathers punching fathers — everybody was red-faced and yelling — because we all wanted the same baby. And you know who that baby was (my exact words, Early’s favorite part).
      When the battles were finally over, I’d tell him, we’d beaten out the Dunhams, who begrudgingly settled for the baby one bassinet over, a howler named Chip. The Jacksons had reluctantly taken Eddie and gone home. The Todds sulked off carrying Steven, but not yet resigned to the idea of Steven. (I would keep going until I’d named all his friends.) Yes, your dad and I were clearly the winners, I’d say. We paraded through the halls of that hospital, out the front door, across the parking lot to our car, holding our sleeping baby aloft, like a trophy, for everyone to see and admire.
      Over and over, Early would ask me to tell the story. The second or third time, I’d escalate the drama a notch: wrestling one of the mothers to the floor, her shoes flying off like in a cartoon, arms and legs in the air like a bug, her cries: "Okay, okay, take Early! He’s yours!" My sweet son would sit straight up in bed and wiggle with excitement. The idea of his birth causing such commotion! Imagine how much that little baby was wanted! His sheet and blanket would rustle, his head bob. That full head of fair hair he got from me.
      Then I’d tuck him in, making sure the covers were snug under his arms and along both of his sides. The pin-oak leaves out the window would be moving slightly, causing the moon to crack into pieces and fall over his shoulders like silver confetti.
      Finally, Peter would take over. He’d pat Early on the arm — Peter believed it made a boy "soft" for his father to kiss him — and say in his no-foolishness-about-it way, "Now, go to sleep." My husband, setting limits.
      Peter is a formal person, self-contained and private. A patent attorney with the oldest, most respected law firm in Charlotte. Board of Trustees at the Y. Head of a million committees. Franklin G. Caldwell Award for "outstanding service to the community." All his life, a star. Handsome, with that straight hair falling naturally into place, giving the impression it’s just been combed. Fit, 5-10, strong and compact, his muscular arms veiny. Nothing wasted, no extraneous anything. He looks like one of those men who are already seated in First Class when you’re passing through the plane to Coach, the way they’re so settled in, comfortable, even though you know they boarded just minutes before. They appear entitled, reading their Wall Street Journals, sipping their hot coffee.
      Of course, Peter got excited when Early walked at nine months. When he learned to catch a ball at two. When he was three and taught himself to read. "Pilot Survives Crash" was the headline he read out loud, phonetically, one morning at breakfast, perched on a kitchen stool, gazing at the morning paper folded on the counter — "pie-laht" is the way he sounded out the syllables. As though the word had been sitting on the edge of his tongue. We had no idea he could read!
      And oh, how that boy worked to make his father proud. In the backyard, he’d climb to the top bar of the swing set, hang by his knees, head dangling, cheeks pink. "Look at me, Daddy!" he’d call out. "Watch this!" Then he’d drop to the ground, rubbersole it up the sliding board, twist his agile body around and slide down head first. He seemed to know that Peter’s approval depended on what he could do, not who he was.
      Peter said I spoiled Early, that I was too involved in his life. Over-protective is the word he used. Maybe when your husband is under-protective, you move in to fill the void. I thought I was doing a good job though — I modeled myself after my own mother. Some people spend their lives railing against the way they were raised, every action a reaction to their parents, a fierce determination to do the opposite with their own children. I idolized my mother, tried to make my voice the same as hers, adopted her handwriting, even memorized the way she held a cigarette. (If you could look in on my dreams when I was in my twenties, you’d see me always holding a cigarette — my first two fingers graceful and straight, last two fingers curled under — even though I’d never smoked a day in my life.)
      Peter’s childhood? When he was nine, everything that was right turned wrong. He went from being raised by loving parents to living with two unmarried aunts, his life suddenly threadbare and cramped. Where would that leave him, years later, as a parent? He’d learned to survive a grim situation. Not just survive. He’d navigated his childhood as though it were a boat whose controls he’d had to take over. Now he firmly believed that going through tough times gives a child self-confidence. Let a kid flounder so he can see for himself that he’ll survive. It’s not so much what happens to us in life as what we do with it, he’d say. Then he’d say it again. It’s not so much what happens to us in life as what we do with it. As though repetition turned it into a gold-plated, hand-polished, embossed plaque.
      I believed we should make things easy for our children, help them glide through life. I wanted to give Early all the love he deserved. That was my job, to give him love and make him happy. I lived to hear that lilt in his voice. I didn’t think I was so different from other mothers. After all, we promise our children we’ll keep them from harm. We know the world is always waiting to hurt them. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to judge when we should do a little more of this or a little less of that. There are so many ambiguities we haven’t counted on. My closest friend, Joy, who raised three wonderful children on her own — her husband died before I met her — used to say we’re only as happy as our unhappiest child.
      Peter and I never argued about any of this; arguing is just not something we did.
      The real story of Early’s birth: an immediate, profound attachment between the two of us. A reverberation that was private. That baby and I had our own code. A code my husband could not crack.
      May 6, 1969, after a spaghetti dinner at home, Peter drove me to the hospital. I’d brought two plumped-up pillows from our bed to cushion my sides and was concentrating on breathing deeply and evenly through my mouth when each contraction hit. And they were hitting. Closer and closer together. I thought I’d deliver any minute. The traffic light at the corner of Ridge Avenue, our street, and Providence Road turned green just as we got to it. Most people speed up when the light is green, especially when someone in the car is in labor. Peter slowed down (not one to ever come close to breaking a rule, he always slows down at green lights). He looked both ways, gave his horn a quick toot to warn the one lonely driver going straight on Providence Road, who’d already come to a complete stop, not to dare run the red light. Then Peter turned left in the direction of the hospital, stopped at the next intersection for a yellow light (the same carefulness for yellow lights), waited for it to turn red, then green.
      I needn’t have worried about delivering in the car. I was in labor for thirty-six hours. The baby was angled the wrong way — sunny-side up, they said, though there was nothing sunny about it. Early was face-up, instead of face-down. Open to the world and whatever it dished out. Wide-open, even in the womb, and vulnerable.
      Hour after hour, contractions cut through to my back; my cervix refused to dilate; my hands crawled over my stomach. I desperately wanted Peter with me, in that pain-thick labor room, not out in the family waiting area. I wanted him to be the type of husband whose presence would make everything okay, certain. He could be that. At times.
      But the hospital had a rule about this, and he was not allowed in because he hadn’t gone through the Lamaze classes with me. We’d attended the first session together, but I knew I’d lost him when the instructor — an earthy woman in her thirties, who’d had three sons using Lamaze — held up the uterus she’d crocheted, drawing it in and pushing it out with her fingertips to demonstrate how we were expanding ("a tiny bit every day"). It looked like a bird taking breaths, preparing for flight. I heard a low groan from Peter when she hit the switch and put the room in darkness to show the home video her husband had made during her youngest son’s birth. While the film jerked along, she pointed with her pen: "Here. Right here. If you look carefully, you can spot small hemorrhoids forming." She said this as casually as if she were directing our attention to a mountain range on a map. "Just behind my vagina. See where the baby’s head is crowning? Next to that."
      So, except for the nurses, I was alone. Not even my obstetrician was there. He didn’t come until my thirty-third hour of labor, as if he were saying, "You want natural? I’ll give you natural." I found out later he was opposed to natural childbirth, even though during my pregnancy he’d acted as though he was its biggest advocate. I loved the idea of natural childbirth. I believed that if I were awake, if I were there, I could make sure nothing bad happened to my baby.
      After all those hours, Dr. Bowles, still in his week-end clothes, stood in the doorway across from where I lay. Straight as a spear, a sheaf of charts tight under one arm, that perfect crease in his khakis. His first words were "Is this what you’d call a beautiful experience?"
      He changed into scrubs, examined me, then returned to his spot across the room, leaning against the door frame, although with his stiff posture it was more like a tilt.
      "This ‘natural business’ is not working, Kathryne," he said. "You’re only two centimeters dilated. We have no choice. We’re going to have to give you a little injection." Why do doctors have to refer to themselves in the plural? I wanted to ask. As though they’re more than one person. As though they’re a whole team, for heaven’s sake. And why do they call everything "little?"
      Three hours after the sedative, I came to, just as Early had turned himself and was ready to be born. In that half-second, everything cracked open: Dr. Bowles was by my side, his chin jutted forward with interest. I was shifted onto a stretcher, rails clicked into place, wheeled down the hall into the brightest room I’d ever seen. Draped, swabbed. Nurses, like a flock of mothers, sponged my forehead, my eyes, and when my buttery baby slipped out — that human sound crossing the space between us — it was a beautiful experience.
      Seconds after he was born, I held him, his puckered ear against my heart. I counted fingers and toes, traced the sweet curve of a wrist bone.
      We named him Earl David Smallwood, after Peter’s father, and called him Early. Our little joke, since he’d taken so long to get here.
      For weeks after we brought him home, I stood over the crib, with its fresh-laundered, blue-elephants-tossing-balls-in-the-air cotton sheet pulled tight. I couldn’t get enough of that baby. His pinched eyes, glowing skin, the way he cocked his head as if waiting for my voice. I’d stand there for hours, just watching him sleep. Sometimes I’d wake him up to play. When I was ready to lay him back down, I could always quiet him — nudge him back to sleep — by stroking his eyelids lightly with the tips of my fingers. I’d brush those lavender, cellophane-paper eyelids all the way down to his puffy cheeks, as though I were raking with the world’s gentlest comb. His eyes would close as my fingers passed over them, but then they’d open, wide and defiant, furry lashes fluttering. Over and over, I brushed. Over and over, his eyes closed, then opened — a rhythm he and I settled into like a duet. Soon his eyes would open more slowly with each sweep, as he struggled against sleep. Until finally, his milk-sour hands, his legs, his perfectly-shaped head, his whole body would give in and he’d let himself fall asleep, as naturally as curtains in an open window go limp in summer’s warm breath.