Sycamore Row

priority. He walked out thirty minutes after Booker walked in. “We need to go to the airport,” Lucien said.
    Ozzie thanked Booker and promised to catch up later.
    As the story unfolded, Lucien had left his briefcase on the airplane. He thought it was under the seat, but it could have been in the overhead compartment. Regardless, the flight attendants were idiots for not finding it. They were much too concerned with dragging him off the airplane. Ozzie and Prather listened and fumed as they raced to the airport. Lucien looked and smelled like a skid row bum they’d picked up for vagrancy.
    American’s lost and found had no record of a briefcase being turned in on the flight from Atlanta. Reluctantly, the lone clerk began the taskof trying to find it. Lucien found an airport lounge and ordered a pint of ale. Ozzie and Prather had a bad buffet lunch on a busy concourse, not far from the lounge. They were trying to keep an eye on their passenger. They called Jake’s office but there was no answer. It was almost 3:00 p.m., and he was obviously tied up in court.
    The briefcase was located in Minneapolis. Because Ozzie and Prather were law enforcement officers, American was by then treating the briefcase as if it were valuable evidence and crucial to an important investigation, when in reality it was a battered old leather bag with a few notepads, some magazines, some cheap soap and matches taken from the Glacier Inn in Juneau, and one videocassette tape. After a lot of uncertainty and haggling, a plan was put into place to route it back to Memphis as soon as possible. If all went well, it would arrive around midnight.
    Ozzie thanked the clerk and went to find Lucien. As they were leaving the airport, Lucien came to life and said, “Say, my car is here. I’ll just meet you guys in Clanton.”
    Ozzie said, “No, Lucien, you’re drunk. You cannot drive.”
    Lucien angrily replied, “Ozzie, we’re in Memphis and you got no jurisdiction here. Kiss my ass! I’ll do any damn thing I want to do.”
    Ozzie threw up his hands and walked away with Prather. They tried to follow Lucien as they left Memphis at rush hour, but couldn’t keep up with the dirty little Porsche as he weaved dangerously through heavy traffic. They drove on to Clanton, to Jake’s office, and arrived there just before seven. Jake was waiting for the debriefing.
    The only slightly good news in an otherwise dreadful and frustrating day was Lucien’s arrest for public drunkenness and resisting arrest. It would kill any talk of a possible reinstatement to the practice of law, but at the moment that was small satisfaction, something Jake could not even mention. Other than that, things were as grim as they could possibly be.
    Two hours later, Jake drove to Lucien’s house. As he pulled in to the driveway, he noticed the Porsche wasn’t there. He spoke briefly to Sallie on the front porch and she promised to call as soon as he came home.

    Miraculously, Lucien’s briefcase arrived in Memphis at midnight. Deputy Willie Hastings picked it up and drove to Clanton.
    At 7:30 Friday morning, Jake, Harry Rex, and Ozzie gathered inthe conference room downstairs and locked the door. Jake inserted the cassette into his video recorder and turned down the lights. The words Juneau, Alaska … April 5, 1989 appeared on the television screen, then disappeared after a few seconds. Jared Wolkowicz introduced himself and explained what they were doing. Lucien introduced himself and said that this was a deposition and he would be asking the questions. He looked clear-eyed, sober. He introduced Ancil F. Hubbard, who was sworn in by the court reporter.
    Small, frail, his head as slick as a white onion, he was wearing Lucien’s black suit and white shirt, both several sizes too big. There was a bandage on the back of his head, and a strip of the adhesive tape holding it was barely visible above his right ear. He swallowed hard, looked at the camera as if in terror, then said, “My name is Ancil F. Hubbard. I live in Juneau, Alaska, but I was born in Ford County, Mississippi, on August first, 1922. My father was Cleon Hubbard, my mother Sarah Belle, my brother Seth. Seth was five years older than me. I was born on the family farm, near Palmyra. I left home when I was sixteen and never went back. Never. Never wanted to. Here’s my story.”

    When the screen went blank fifty-eight minutes later, the three men sat for a while and stared at it. It was not something they