Sycamore Row

“Lettie, who was your mother, your biological mother?”
    Lettie smiled, nodded, understood, and said, “Her name was Lois Rinds.”
    “And who were her parents?”
    “Sylvester and Esther Rinds.”
    “What do you know about Sylvester Rinds?”
    “He died in 1930 so I never met him. He lived on some land that the Hubbards now own. After he died, Esther signed the land over to Seth Hubbard’s father. Sylvester’s father was a man named Solomon Rinds, who also owned the land before him.”
    “No further questions, Your Honor.”
    “Mr. Lanier?”
    Wade walked to the podium without notes. “Ms. Lang, have you ever had a birth certificate?”
    “No sir.”
    “And your mother died when you were three years old, correct?”
    “Correct.”
    “When we took your deposition in December, the week beforeChristmas, you were not so sure about your ancestry. What makes you so sure now?”
    “I’ve met some of my kinfolk. A lot of questions have been answered.”
    “And you’re certain now?”
    “I know who I am, Mr. Lanier. I’m certain of that.”
    He sat down, and Judge Atlee addressed the courtroom. “At this time we will watch the videotaped deposition of Ancil Hubbard. Let’s dim the lights. I want the doors locked and no traffic. This will take about an hour and there will be no interruptions.”
    The jurors, who had been so relentlessly bored the entire day before, were wide-awake and eager to witness this unexpected twist in the case. Many of the spectators shifted to the far-right side of the courtroom for a better look at the screen. The lights went low, the movements stopped, everyone seemed to take a deep breath, and then the tape began to roll. After Jared Wolkowicz and Lucien gave their introductions, Ancil appeared.

    He said, “
This is my story. But I really don’t know where to start. I’m living here in Juneau but it’s not really my home. I have no home. The world is my home and I’ve seen most of it. I’ve been in some trouble over the years but I’ve also had a lot of fun. Lots of good times. I joined the Navy when I was seventeen, lied about my age, anything to get away from home, and for fifteen years I was stationed all over the place. I fought in the Pacific on the USS
Iowa.
After the Navy I lived in Japan, Sri Lanka, Trinidad, so many places I can’t recall them all right now. I worked for shipping companies and lived on the oceans. When I wanted a break I settled down somewhere, always in a different place.
”
    Off camera, Lucien said, “
Tell us about Seth.
”
    “
Seth was five years older, and it was just the two of us. He was my big brother and he always took care of me, as best he could. We had a tough life because of our father, Cleon Hubbard, a man we hated from the day we were born. He beat us, beat our mother, seemed like he was always fighting with someone. We lived way out in the country, near Palmyra, on the old family farm, in an old country house that my grandfather built. His name was Jonas Hubbard, and his father was Robert Hall Hubbard. Most of our other relatives had moved to Arkansas, so we didn’t have a lot of cousins and kinfolks around. Seth and I worked like dogs around the farm, milking cows, chopping cotton, working in the garden, picking cotton. We were expected to work like grown men. It was a tough life, what with the Depression and all, but like they alwayssaid, the Depression didn’t bother us in the South because we’d already been in one since the war.
”
    “
How much land?
” Lucien asked.
    “
We had eighty acres; it had been in the family for a long time. Most of it was in timber but there was some farmland my grandfather had cleared. Cotton and beans.
”
    “
And the Rinds family had the adjacent property?
”
    “
That’s right. Sylvester Rinds. And there were some other Rindses there too. In fact, Seth and I played with a bunch of the Rinds kids from time to time, but always when Cleon wasn’t looking. Cleon hated Sylvester, hated all the Rindses. It was a feud that had been boiling for a long time. You see, Sylvester owned eighty acres too, right next to our land, to the west of it, and the Hubbards always felt as though that land belonged to them. According to Cleon, a man named Jeremiah Rinds took title to the property in 1870 during Reconstruction. Jeremiah had been a slave, then a freed slave, and somehow purchased the land. I was just a kid and never really understood what happened back then, but the Hubbards always