Sycamore Row

instructed, and when she finished she said, “Wow. Great way to start the week.”
    “Not so for old Seth,” Jake said. “Please note that this arrived in the mail this morning, October 3.”
    “So noted. Why?”
    “The timing could be crucial one day in court. Saturday, Sunday, Monday.”
    “I’m going to be a witness?”
    “Maybe, maybe not, but we’re just taking precautions, okay?”
    “You’re the lawyer.”
    Jake ran four copies of the envelope, the letter, and the will. He gave Roxy a copy to enter into the firm’s newest case file, and he tucked two away in a locked drawer in his desk. He waited until 9:00 a.m. and left the office with the original and one copy. He told Roxy he was headed for the courthouse. He walked next door to Security Bank, where he placed the original in his firm’s lockbox.

    Ozzie Walls’s office was at the county jail, two blocks off the square in a low-slung concrete bunker built on the cheap a decade earlier. A tumorlike appendage had been added later to house the sheriff and his staff and deputies, and the place was crammed with cheap desks, folding chairs, and stained carpet fraying at the baseboards. Monday mornings were usually hectic as the weekend’s fun and games were tidied up. Angry wives arrived to bail their hungover husbands out of jail. Other wives stormed in to sign papers to get their husbands thrown into jail. Frightened parents waited for details of the drug bust that caught their kids. The phones rang more than usual and oftenwent unanswered. Deputies milled about choking down doughnuts and sipping strong coffee. Add to the usual frenzy the bizarre suicide of a mysterious man, and the cluttered outer office was especially busy that Monday morning.
    In the rear of the appendage, down a short hallway, there was a thick door covered in white hand-painted lettering that read: OZZIE WALLS, HIGH SHERIFF, FORD COUNTY . The door was closed; the sheriff was in early on Monday, and on the phone. The caller was an emotional woman from Memphis whose child had been caught driving a pickup truck that was hauling, among other things, a sizable quantity of marijuana. This had happened the previous Saturday night near Lake Chatulla, in an area of a state park where illicit behavior was known to be common. The child was innocent, of course, and the mother was eager to drive down and retrieve him from Ozzie’s jail.
    Not so fast, Ozzie cautioned. There was a knock at his door. He covered the receiver and said, “Yes!”
    The door opened a few inches and Jake Brigance stuck his head through the crack. Ozzie smiled immediately and waved him in. Jake closed the door behind himself and eased into a chair. Ozzie was explaining that even though the kid was seventeen, he had been caught with three pounds of pot; thus, he could not be released on bond until a judge said so. As the mother railed, Ozzie frowned and moved the receiver a few inches from his ear. He shook his head, smiled again. Same old crap. Jake had heard it too, many times.
    Ozzie listened some more, promised to do what he could, which was obviously not much, and finally got off the phone. He half stood, shook Jake’s hand, said, “Good mornin’, Counselor.”
    “Mornin’ to you, Ozzie.”
    They chatted about this and that and finally got around to football. Ozzie had played briefly for the Rams before blowing out a knee, and he still followed the team religiously. Jake was a Saints fan, like the majority of Mississippians, so there was little to talk about. The entire wall behind Ozzie was covered with football memorabilia—photos, awards, plaques, trophies. He’d been an all-American at Alcorn State in the mid-1970s and, evidently, had been meticulous about preserving his memories.
    On another day, another time, preferably with more of an audience, say around the courtroom in a recess when other lawyers were listening, Ozzie might be tempted to tell the story of the night he broke Jake’s leg. Jake had been a skinny sophomore quarterback playingfor Karaway, a much smaller school that for some reason kept the tradition of getting stomped each year in the season finale against Clanton. Billed as a backyard brawl, the game was never close. Ozzie, the star tackle, had terrorized the Karaway offense for three quarters, and late in the fourth he rushed hard third and long. The fullback, already wounded and frightened, ignored Ozzie, who crushed Jake as he desperately tried to scramble. Ozzie had always