Sycamore Row
Page 81

Ten minutes later, court was called to order. The jury was brought in and the large screen was set up again. Judge Atlee apologized to the jurors for the delay, then explained what was happening. He looked at the contestants’ table and said, “Mr. Lanier, do you have any more witnesses.”
Lanier rose as if crippled by arthritis and said, “No. We rest.”
“Mr. Brigance?”
“Your Honor, I would like to recall Ms. Lettie Lang for limited purposes. It will just take a moment.”
“Very well. Ms. Lang, please remember that you have already been sworn and are still under oath.”
Portia leaned forward and whispered, “Jake, what are you doing?”
“Not now,” he whispered. “You’ll see.”
With her last visit to the witness stand still a horrible memory, Lettie settled herself in and tried to appear calm. She refused to look at the jurors. There had been no time to prepare her; she had no idea what was coming.
Jake began, “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 before Christmas, 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 always said, 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 felt like it was their rightful land. I think they even went to court over it, but at any rate, it remained in the Rinds family. This infuriated Cleon because he had only eighty acres, but yet these black folks had the same. I remember hearing many times that the Rindses were the only blacks in the county who owned their own land, and that they had somehow taken it from the Hubbards. Seth and I knew we were supposed to dislike the Rinds kids, but we usually had no one else to play with. We’d sneak off and go fishing and swimming with them. Toby Rinds was my age and he was my buddy. Cleon caught Seth and me swimming once with the Rindses and beat us until we couldn’t walk. He was a violent man, Cleon. Vengeful, mean, filled with hatred and with a quick temper. We were terrified of him.”
Because it was his third viewing that morning, Jake didn’t focus as hard. Instead, he watched the jurors. They were frozen, mesmerized, absorbing every word, as if in disbelief. Even Frank Doley, Jake’s worst juror, was leaning forward with an index finger tapping his lips, thoroughly captivated.
“What happened to Sylvester?” Lucien asked.
“Oh yes. That’s what you want to hear. The feud got worse when some trees got cut near the property line. Cleon thought they were his trees. Sylvester was sure they were his. Because the boundary line had been disputed for so long, everybody knew exactly where it was. Cleon was ready to blow a gasket. I remember him saying he’d put up with their crap for far too long, that it was time to do something. One night some men came over and drank whiskey behind the barn. Seth and I sneaked out and tried to listen. They were planning something against the Rinds bunch. We couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it was obvious a plot was being hatched. Then one Saturday afternoon, we went to town. It was hot, August I think, 1930, and everybody went to town on Saturday afternoon, blacks and whites. Everybody had to shop and stock up for the week. Palmyra in those days was nothing but a farming village, but on Saturdays it was packed, the stores and sidewalks were crowded. Seth and I didn’t see anything, but later that night we heard some kids talking about a black man who had said something smart to a white woman, and this had everybody upset. Then we heard that the black man was Sylvester Rinds. We rode home in the back of the truck with my parents in the front, and we knew something was about to happen. You could just tell. When we got home, Cleon ordered us to go to our rooms and not to come out until he said so. Then we heard him arguing with our mother, a bad argument. I think he hit her. We heard him drive away in his truck. We pretended to be asleep, but we were outside in a flash. We saw the taillights of his truck headed west, toward Sycamore Row.”
“Where was Sycamore Row?”
“It’s not there anymore, but in 1930 it was a small settlement on the Rinds land, near a creek. Just a few old houses scattered around, leftover slave stuff. That’s where Sylvester lived. Anyway, Seth and I put a bridle on Daisy, our pony, and took off bareback. Seth had the reins, I was holding on for dear life, but we rode bareback all the time and we knew what we were doing. When we got close to Sycamore Row, we saw the lights from some trucks. We got off and led Daisy through the woods, then we tied her to a tree and left her. We went on, closer and closer, until we heard voices. We were on the side of a hill, and looking down we could see three or four white men beating a black man with sticks. His shirt was off and his pants were torn. It was Sylvester Rinds. His wife, Esther, was in front of their house, fifty yards or so away, and she was yelling and crying. She tried to get close, but one of the white men knocked her down. Seth and I got closer and closer until we were at the edge of the trees. We stopped there and watched and listened. Some more men showed up in another truck. They had a rope, and when Sylvester saw the rope, he went crazy. It took three or four of the white men to hold him down until they could bind his hands and legs. They dragged him over and shoved him up into the back of one of the trucks.”
“Where was your father?” Lucien asked.
Ancil paused, took a deep breath, then rubbed his eyes. He continued: “He was there, sort of off to the side, watching, holding a shotgun. He was definitely part of the gang, but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty. There were four trucks, and they drove slowly away from the settlement, not far, to a row of sycamore trees. Seth and I knew the place well because we had fished in the creek. There were five or six tall sycamore trees in a perfect row; thus the name. There was an old story about an Indian tribe planting the trees as part of their pagan rituals, but who knows? The trucks stopped at the first tree and made a semicircle so there would be enough light. Seth and I had crept along in the woods. I didn’t want to watch, and at one point I said, ‘Seth, let’s get out of here.’ But I didn’t move and neither did he. It was too awful to walk away from. They strung the rope over a thick branch and wrestled the noose around Sylvester’s neck. He was twisting, yelling, begging, ‘I ain’t said nothin’, Mista Burt, I ain’t said nothin’. Please, Mista Burt, you know I ain’t said nothin’.’ A couple of them yanked the other end of the rope and almost pulled his head off.” Lucien asked, “Who was Mr. Burt?”
Ancil took another deep breath and stared at the camera in a long, awkward pause. Finally, he said, “You know, that was almost fifty-nine years ago and I’m sure all of these men have been dead for a long time. I’m sure they’re rotting in hell, where they belong. But they have families, and nothing good can come from naming their names. Seth recognized three of them: Mista Burt, who was the leader of the lynch mob. Our dear father, of course. And one other, but I’m just not going to give names.”