Sycamore Row

Toby came to our house a couple of times and hid behind the barn. Seth and I gave him as much food as we could. He hauled it back to the campsite, which was several miles away. One Saturday, some men showed up with rifles and shotguns. We couldn’t get close enough to hear anything, but our mother told us later they went to the campsite and ran off all the Rindses. A couple of years after that another black kid told Seth that Toby and his sister had drowned in the creek, and that some folks had been shot. I think by then I’d heard enough. Could I have some water?
”
    A hand slid a glass of water to Ancil, who sipped it slowly. He continued: “
When I was thirteen my parents split. It was a happy day for me. I left with my mother and went to Corinth, Mississippi. Seth didn’t want to change schools so he stayed with Cleon, though they rarely spoke to each other. I really missed my brother, but after a while we naturally grew apart. Then my mother remarried a jackass who was not much better than Cleon. I ran away when I was sixteen and joined the Navy when I was seventeen. Sometimes I think I’ve been running ever since. Once I left, I never had any contact with my family. My head is killing me. That’s all. That’s the end of a really bad story.
”

47
    The jurors filed silently out of their room and followed the bailiff down a back stairway to a side door of the courthouse, the same route they had taken every day since Tuesday. Once outside they scattered without a word. Nevin Dark decided to drive home for lunch. He did not want to be around his colleagues at that moment. He needed time to digest the story he had just heard. He wanted to breathe, to think, to remember. Alone in his truck with the windows down, he almost felt dirty; maybe a shower would help.
    Mista Burt. Mista Burt. Somewhere on the shadier side of his wife’s family tree, there had been a great-uncle or a distant cousin named Burt. Many years ago he lived near Palmyra, and there had always been whispers about Burt’s involvement with the Klan.
    It couldn’t be the same man.
    In his fifty-three years in Ford County, Nevin had heard of only one other lynching, but he had almost forgotten the story. It supposedly happened around the turn of the century. All witnesses were dead, and the details had been forgotten. Nevin had never heard a description of such a killing by a real witness. Poor Ancil. He looked so pitiful with his little round head and oversized suit, and wiping tears with a sleeve.
    Disoriented by Demerol or not, there was no doubt Seth knew what he was doing.
    Michele Still and Barb Gaston had no plans for lunch, and they were too emotional to think clearly. They jumped into Michele’s car and fled Clanton, taking the first road out with no destination in mind. The distance helped, and after five miles on an empty county road they were able to relax. They stopped at a country store and bought softdrinks and crackers, then sat in the shade with the windows down and listened to a soul station out of Memphis.
    “We got nine votes?” Michele asked.
    “Girl, we may have twelve.”
    “Naw, we’ll never get Doley.”
    “One day, I’m gonna slap his ass. Might be today, might be next year, but I’ll do it.”
    Michele managed to laugh and their moods were lifted considerably.
    Jim Whitehurst also drove home for lunch. His wife was waiting with a stew and they ate on the patio. He had told her everything else about the trial, but he did not want to replay what he had just heard. But she insisted, and they hardly touched their lunch.
    Tracy McMillen and Fay Pollan drove together to a strip mall east of town where a new sub shop was doing a booming business. Their “Juror” buttons got a few looks but no inquiries. They got a booth so they could talk and within minutes were in complete agreement. Seth Hubbard might have been fading in his final days, but there was no doubt he planned things perfectly. They had not been too impressed with Herschel and Ramona anyway. And, they didn’t like the fact that a black housekeeper would get all the money, but, as Jake had said, it was not for the jurors to decide. It wasn’t their money.

    For the Hubbard family, a morning that had begun with such promise had turned into a humiliating nightmare. The truth was out about their grandfather, a man they’d hardly known, and now their family name would be permanently stained. They could learn to handle the stain, but losing the money