Sycamore Row

and change.
    The small numbers were the most tedious. Quince Lundy listed as much of Seth’s personal property as he thought the court could stand,beginning with his late-model vehicles ($35,000), and going all the way down to his wardrobe ($1,000).
    The big number, though, was still astonishing. The First Inventory valued Seth’s entire estate at $24,020,000. The cash, of course, was a hard number. Everything else would be subject to the market, and it would take months or even years to sell it all.
    The inventory was an inch thick. Jake did not want anyone else in the office to see it, so he ran two copies himself. He left early for lunch, drove to the school, and had a plate of cafeteria spaghetti with his wife and daughter. He tried to visit once a week, especially on Wednesdays when Hanna preferred to buy rather than bring her lunch. She loved the spaghetti, but even more, she loved having her father there.
    After she’d left for the playground, the Brigances walked back to Carla’s classroom. The bell rang and class was set to resume.
    “Off to see Judge Atlee,” Jake said with a grin. “The first payday.”
    “Good luck,” she said with a quick kiss. “Love you.”
    “Love you.” Jake hustled away, wanting to clear the hall before the throng of little people came swarming in.
    Judge Atlee was at his desk, finishing a bowl of potato soup, when Jake was escorted in by the secretary. Contrary to his doctor’s orders, the judge was still smoking his pipe—he could not quit—and he loaded one up with Sir Walter Raleigh and struck a match. After thirty years of heavy pipe smoking, the entire office was tinged with a brownish residue. A permanent fog clung to the ceiling. A slightly cracked window offered some relief. The aroma, though, was rich and pleasant. Jake had always loved the place, with its rows of thick treatises and faded portraits of dead judges and Confederate generals. Nothing had changed in the twenty years Reuben Atlee had occupied this part of the courthouse, and Jake had the sense that little had changed in the past fifty years. The judge loved history and kept his favorite books in perfect order on custom-made shelves in one corner. The desk was covered with clutter, and Jake could swear that the same battered file had been sitting on the right front corner of it for the past decade.
    They had first met at the Presbyterian church ten years earlier, when Jake and Carla arrived in Clanton. The judge ran the church in the same way he ran all the other aspects of his life, and he soon embraced the young lawyer. They became friends, though always at a professional level. Reuben Atlee was from the old school. He was a judge; Jake was just a lawyer. Boundaries must always be respected.He had sternly corrected Jake in open court on two occasions, with everlasting impressions.
    With the pipe stem screwed into the corner of his mouth, Judge Atlee retrieved his black suit jacket and put it on. Except when he was in court, under a robe, he wore nothing but black suits. The same black suit. No one knew if he owned twenty, or just one; they were identical. And he always wore navy-blue suspenders and white starched shirts, most with a collection of tiny cinder holes from airborne tobacco embers. He took his position at the end of the table as they talked about Lucien. When Jake finished unloading his briefcase, he handed over a copy of the inventory.
    “Quince Lundy is very good,” Jake said. “I wouldn’t want him looking through my finances.”
    “Probably wouldn’t take that long,” Judge Atlee observed wryly. To many he was a humorless man, but to those he liked he was occasionally a raging smart-ass.
    “No. It wouldn’t.”
    For a judge, he said little. Silently, and studiously, he went through the inventory, page by page as his tobacco burned out and he stopped puffing. Time was of no consequence because he controlled the clock. At the end, he removed his pipe, put it in an ashtray, and said, “Twenty-four million, huh?”
    “That’s the grand total.”
    “Let’s lock this up, okay, Jake? No one should see it, not now anyway. Prepare an order and I’ll seal this part of the file. God knows what would happen if the public knew this. It would be front-page news and probably attract even more lawyers. It’ll come out later, but for now let’s bury it.”
    “I agree, Judge.”
    “Any word from Sistrunk?”
    “No sir, and I’ve got a good source now. In the spirit of full