Sycamore Row

He’ll feel like crap if he knows his people represented old man Hubbard, and lost.”
    “Come on, Jake. You know how Lucien hates his family and their history.”
    “Yes, but he loves their assets. I would tell him.”
    “Do you think the Wilbanks firm has any of its old records?”
    Jake grunted and smiled and said, “I doubt if they go back sixty years. There’s a pile of junk in the attic, but nothing this old. As a rule, lawyers throw away nothing, but over time the stuff just disappears.”
    “Can I go through the attic?”
    “I don’t care. What are you looking for?”
    “The file, something with clues. It’s pretty clear there was a dispute over the eighty acres, but what was behind it? And what happened in the case? How could a black man win a lawsuit over land in the 1920s in Mississippi? Think about it, Jake. A white landowner hired the biggestlaw firm in town, one with all the power and connections, to sue some poor black man over a property dispute. And the black man won, or so it appears.”
    “Maybe he didn’t win. Maybe the case was still dragging on when Sylvester died.”
    “Exactly. That’s it, Jake. That’s what I have to find out.”
    “Good luck. I’d tell Lucien everything and enlist his help. He’ll cuss his ancestors, but he does that before breakfast most days anyway. He’ll get over it. Believe me, they did far worse.”
    “Great. I’ll tell him, and I’ll start digging through the attic this afternoon.”
    “Be careful. I go up there once a year and only when I have to. I seriously doubt you’ll find anything.”
    “We’ll see.”

    Lucien took it well. He offered a few of his usual vile condemnations of his heritage but seemed placated by the fact that his grandfather had lost the case against Sylvester Rinds. Without invitation, he launched into history and explained to Portia, and at times throughout the afternoon to Jake as well, that Robert E. Lee Wilbanks had been born during Reconstruction and had spent most of his life laboring under the belief that slavery would one day return. The family managed to keep the carpetbaggers away from its land, and Robert, to his credit, built a dynasty that included banks, railroads, politics, and the law. He’d been a harsh, unpleasant man, and as a child Lucien had feared him. But give the devil his due. The fine home Lucien now owned had been built by dear old grandpa and properly handed down.
    After hours, they climbed to the attic and slid further into history. Jake hung around for a while, but soon realized it was a waste of time. The files went back to 1965, the year Lucien inherited the law firm after his father and uncle were killed in a plane crash. Someone, probably Ethel Twitty, the legendary secretary, had cleaned house and purged the old records.

35
    Two weeks before the scheduled start of the war, the lawyers and their staffs met in the main courtroom for a pretrial conference. Such gatherings were unheard-of back in the old days, but the more modern rules of engagement called for them and even provided an acronym, the PTC. Lawyers like Wade Lanier who fought on the civil side were well versed in the strategies and nuances of the PTC. Jake less so. Reuben Atlee had never presided over one, though he would not admit this. For him and his Chancery Court, a major trial was a nasty divorce with money on the line. These were rare, and he handled them the same way he had for thirty years, modern rules be damned.
    Critics of the new rules of discovery and procedure whined that the PTC was nothing more than a rehearsal for the trial, and thus it required the lawyers to prepare twice. It was time-consuming, expensive, burdensome, and also restrictive. A document, an issue, or a witness not properly covered in the PTC could not be considered at trial. Old lawyers like Lucien who reveled in dirty tricks and ambushes hated the new rules because they were designed to promote fairness and transparency. “Trials are not about fairness, Jake, trials are about winning,” he’d said a thousand times.
    Judge Atlee wasn’t too keen on them either, though he was duty-bound to follow them. At ten o’clock Monday morning, March 20, he shooed away the handful of spectators and told the bailiff to lock the door. This was not a public hearing.
    As the lawyers were getting situated, Lester Chilcott, Lanier’s co-counsel, walked over to Jake’s table and laid down some paperwork.“Updated discovery,” he said, as if