Sycamore Row

anger pass, he admitted to himself that he and Carla had had the same conversation. Such a conspicuous purchase would naturally lead many to suspect Jake was moving up at the expense of a dead man.
    “Has the topic of a settlement been broached?” the judge asked.
    “Yes, briefly,” Jake answered quickly, eager to move away from real estate.
    “And?”
    “It went nowhere. In his letter to me, Seth Hubbard was explicit in his instructions. I believe his exact words were, ‘Fight them, Mr. Brigance, to the bitter end. We must prevail.’ That doesn’t leave much room for settlement negotiations.”
    “But Seth Hubbard is dead. This lawsuit he created is not. What will you tell Lettie Lang when, and if, the jury rules against her and she gets nothing?”
    “Lettie Lang is not my client. The estate is, and it’s my job to enforce the terms of the will that created the estate.”
    Judge Atlee nodded as if he agreed, but he did not say so.

27
    Charley Pardue’s arrival benefited from fortunate timing. Simeon was gone again. Had he been around the house on that late Saturday morning, he and Charley would have locked horns immediately, and the fight would have been nasty.
    As it was, though, Charley knocked on the door of the old Sappington place and found a houseful of women and children. The kids were eating cereal out of boxes and watching television, while the women loitered around a dirty kitchen drinking coffee and talking in bathrobes and pajamas. Phedra answered the door and managed to get him situated in the living room, then ran to the kitchen and gushed, “Momma, there’s a man here to see you, and he’s soooo fine!”
    “Who is he?”
    “Charley Pardue and he says he thinks he’s a cousin.”
    “Never heard of no Charley Pardue,” Lettie said, suddenly on the defensive.
    “Well, he’s here and he’s really cute.”
    “Is he worth talkin’ to?”
    “Oh yes.”
    The women scrambled upstairs and changed quickly. Phedra sneaked out the back door and eased around to the front. Yellow Cadillac, late model, spotless, with Illinois plates. Charley himself was just as presentable. Dark suit, white shirt, silk tie, a diamond tie clasp, and at least two small, tasteful diamonds on his fingers. No wedding band. A gold chain on his right wrist and a serious watch on his left. He exuded big-city slickness, and Phedra knew he was from Chicago before he got through the front door. She insisted on sitting with hermother when Lettie came back down to meet him. Portia and Clarice would join them later. Cypress stayed in the kitchen.
    Charley began by dropping a few names, none of which meant much. He said he was from Chicago, where he worked as an entrepreneur, whatever that meant. He had a wide, easy grin, a glib manner, and his eyes twinkled when he laughed. The women warmed up considerably. In the past four months, many people had come to see Lettie. Many of them, like Charley, claimed blood kinship. Given the bareness of her family tree, it was easy to be cynical and to dismiss a lot of potential relatives. The truth was that Lettie had been unofficially adopted by Clyde and Cypress Tayber, after she had been abandoned more than once. She had no idea who her grandparents were. Portia had spent hours sifting through the sparse history of their ancestry, with little to show for her efforts. Charley rattled them when he said, “My maternal grandmother was a Rinds, and I think you are too, Lettie.”
    He produced some paperwork, and they moved to a dining room table where they huddled over him. He unfolded a flowchart that, from a distance, more closely resembled a pile of scrub brush than a properly developed tree. Crooked lines ran in all directions, with notes wedged into the margins. Whatever it was, someone had spent hours trying to decipher it.
    “My mother helped me with this,” Charley was saying. “Her mother was a Rinds.”
    “Where did Pardue come from?” Portia asked.
    “My dad’s side. They’re from Kansas City, settled in Chicago a long time ago. That’s where my parents met.” He was pointing at his chart with an ink pen. “It goes back to a man named Jeremiah Rinds, a slave who was born around 1841 near Holly Springs. He had five or six kids, one of whom was Solomon Rinds, and Solomon had at least six kids, one of whom was Marybelle Rinds, my grandmother. She gave birth to my mother, Effie Rinds, in 1920, who was born in this county. In 1930, Marybelle Rinds and her husband and