Sycamore Row

Hubbard’s, and maybe Sylvester Rinds’s.”
    There was a moment of silence in which neither man touched his cards. Neither made eye contact. As Lonny seemed to drift away, Lucien jolted him with “You knew Ancil, didn’t you?”
    “I did,” Lonny said.
    “Tell me about him. I need to find him, and quick.”
    “What do you want to know about him?”
    “Is he alive?”
    “He is, yes.”
    “Where is he right now?”
    “Don’t know.”
    “When did you last see him?”
    A nurse entered chattering away about checking his vitals. He said he was tired, and so she helped him into his bed, arranged his IV,glared at Lucien, then checked Lonny’s blood pressure and pulse. “He needs to rest,” she said.
    Lonny closed his eyes and said, “Don’t go. Just turn down the lights.”
    Lucien pulled a chair close to his bed and sat down. After the nurse left, he said, “Tell me about Ancil.”
    With his eyes still closed and his voice almost a whisper, Lonny began, “Well, Ancil has always been a man on the run. He left home when he was young and never went back. He hated home, hated his father especially. He fought in the war, got wounded, almost died. A head injury, and most folks think Ancil’s always been a bit off upstairs. He loved the sea, said he’d been born so far away from it that it captivated him. He spent years on cargo ships and saw the world, all of it. You can’t find a spot on the map that Ancil hasn’t seen. Not a mountain, a port, a city, a famous site. Not a bar, a dance club, a whorehouse, you name it, and Ancil’s been there. He hung out with rough characters and from time to time fell into bad ways: petty crime, then some not so petty. He had some near misses, once spent a week in a hospital in Sri Lanka with a knife wound. The knife wound was nothing compared with the infection he got in the hospital. He had lots of women, some of whom had lots of children, but Ancil was never one to stay in one place. Last he knew, some of those women were still looking for him, with their children. Others might be looking for him too. Ancil has lived a crazy life and he’s always looked over his shoulder.”
    When he said the word “life,” it came out wrong; or, perhaps it came out naturally. The long
i
was much flatter than before, much like the flattened
i
’s so common in north Mississippi. Lucien had deliberately fallen back into a twangier version of speech, in hopes that it might lure old Lonny here into the same habit. Lonny was from Mississippi, and they both knew it.
    He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. Lucien stared at him for a few minutes, waiting. His breathing became heavier as he drifted away. His right hand fell to his side. The monitors showed a normal blood pressure and heartbeat. To stay awake, Lucien paced around the darkened room, waiting for a nurse to appear and shoo him away. He eased next to the bed, squeezed Lonny’s right wrist firmly, and said, “Ancil! Ancil! Seth left behind a last will and testament that gives you a million bucks.”
    The eyes came open and Lucien repeated himself.

    The debate had raged for an hour, unabated, and tempers were on edge. In fact, the issue had been hotly discussed for a month with no shortage of opinions. It was almost 10:00 p.m. The conference table was littered with notes, files, books, and the remains of a bad take-out pizza they had devoured for dinner.
    Should the jury be told the value of Seth’s estate? The only issue at trial was whether the handwritten will was valid. Nothing more, nothing less. Legally, technically, it didn’t matter how big or how small the estate was. On one side of the table, the side being occupied by Harry Rex, the strong feeling was that the jury should not be told because if the jurors knew that $24 million was in play and about to be given to Lettie Lang, they would balk. They would naturally take a dim view of such a transfer of wealth outside the family. Such a sum was so unheard-of, so shocking, that it was inconceivable that a lowly black housekeeper should walk away with it. Lucien, while absent, agreed with Harry Rex.
    Jake, though, felt otherwise. His first point was that the jurors probably had a hunch that a lot of money was on the table, though virtually all had denied such knowledge during the selection process. Look at the size of the fight. Look at the number of lawyers on deck. Everything about the case and the trial was evidence of big money. His second point was that full