It was the first weekend of February, the customary time for Paul and me to quail hunt with William on his farm in Early County, Georgia. All afternoon William had been on a rant about Tom Pollard.

For many years, Tom’s family owned a nearby farm and he and William grew up neighbors and friends…of sorts. Tom went to law school, and when his parents died he sold the farm and moved to Columbus, where he practiced law.

William dropped out of college after his dad died and returned home to run the farm. There were a number reasons William felt rancor toward Tom, and he generally enumerated them to Paul and me during our visits: Tom was a lawyer, a rich one, a member of the exclusive Marion Country Club, lived adjacent to the ninth green, drove a BMW, and wore fancy clothes. Those things torqued William’s jaw, but the thing that really ticked him off was the condescending way Tom talked to him, like calling him a hick or a yokel or William Hudspeth, RFD. Worse than that, he lived close enough to come quail hunting with William a few times each season.