Sycamore Row

would be a catastrophe. They suddenly wanted to hide. They sprinted to the home of their host, out by the country club, and ignored lunch while debating whether they should return to the courtroom.

    Lettie and Portia returned to the Sappington place during the break, but there were no thoughts of lunch. Instead, they went to Lettie’s bedroom, kicked off their shoes, and lay side by side, holding hands, and began to cry.
    Ancil’s story had closed so many circles.
    With so many thoughts swirling around there were almost nowords. Emotions were too high. Lettie thought of her grandmother Esther and the horror of the story. And her mother, a little girl with no clothes, no food, no shelter.
    “How’d he know, Mom?” Portia asked.
    “Who? Which one? Which story?”
    “Seth. How’d he know it was you? How did Seth Hubbard ever find out you were the daughter of Lois Rinds?”
    Lettie stared at the spinning ceiling fan and couldn’t begin to answer. Finally, she said, “He was a very smart man, but I doubt if we’ll ever know.”

    Willie Traynor stopped by Jake’s office with a platter of sandwiches and invited himself to lunch. Jake and Harry Rex were upstairs, on the balcony, having a drink. Coffee for Jake, beer for Harry Rex. They appreciated the sandwiches and helped themselves. Willie chose a beer. He said, “You know, when I had the paper, somewhere around 1975, some guy published a book about lynchings. He did his homework, had lots of gory photographs and such, and it was a good read. According to him, and he was from up north and eager to make us look bad, between 1882 and 1968 thirty-five hundred blacks were lynched in the United States. There were also thirteen hundred whites, but most were horse thieves out west. From 1900 on, almost all lynchings were of blacks, including some women and children.”
    “Is this really appropriate during lunch?” Harry Rex asked.
    “I didn’t know you had such a delicate stomach, big boy,” Willie shot back. “Anyway, guess which state leads the nation in lynchings.”
    “I’m afraid to ask,” Jake said.
    “You got it. We’re number one, at almost six hundred, and all but forty were black. Georgia is a close second, Texas a close third. So I remember reading this book and thinking, Six hundred is a lot. How many were in Ford County? I went back a hundred years and read every copy of the
Times
. I found only three, all black, and there was no record of Sylvester Rinds.”
    “Who compiled these numbers?” Jake asked.
    “There have been studies, but you have to question their validity.”
    “If they knew of six hundred,” Harry Rex said, “you can bet there were a lot more.”
    Willie took a swig of beer and said, “And guess how many people were charged with murder for taking part in a lynch mob.”
    “Zero.”
    “You got it. Not a single person. It was the law of the land, and black folks were fair game.”
    “Kinda makes me sick,” Jake said.
    “Well, old buddy, your jury’s sick too,” Willie said, “and they’re on your side.”

    At 1:30, the jurors reassembled in the deliberation room, and there was not a single word uttered about the trial. A bailiff led them into the courtroom. The large screen was gone. There were no more witnesses. Judge Atlee looked down and said, “Mr. Brigance, your closing argument.”
    Jake walked to the podium without a legal pad; he had no notes. He began by saying, “This will be the shortest closing argument in the history of this courtroom, because nothing I can say could ever be as persuasive as the testimony of Ancil Hubbard. The longer I talk, the more distance I put between him and your deliberations, so I’ll be brief. I want you to remember everything he said, not that anyone who heard it is likely to forget. Trials often take unexpected turns. When we started this one on Monday, none of us could have predicted that a lynching would explain the mystery of why Seth Hubbard left his fortune to Lettie Lang. His father lynched her grandfather in 1930. And after he killed him, he took his land and scattered his family, and Ancil told that story far better than I’ll ever be able to. For six months, many of us have wondered why Seth did what he did. Now we know. Now it’s clear.
    “Personally, I have a new admiration for Seth, a man I never met. In spite of his flaws, and we all have our own, he was a brilliant man. Who else do you know who could put together such a fortune in ten years? But