Sycamore Row - John Grisham

He produced some paperwork, and they moved to a dining room table where they
huddled over him. He unfolded a flowchart that, from a distance, more closely
resembled a pile of scrub brush than a properly developed tree. Crooked lines ran in all
directions, with notes wedged into the margins. Whatever it was, someone had spent
hours trying to decipher it.
“My mother helped me with this,” Charley was saying. “Her mother was a Rinds.”
“Where did Pardue come from?” Portia asked.
“My dad’s side. They’re from Kansas City, settled in Chicago a long time ago. That’s
where my parents met.” He was pointing at his chart with an ink pen. “It goes back to a
man named Jeremiah Rinds, a slave who was born around 1841 near Holly Springs. He
had five or six kids, one of whom was Solomon Rinds, and Solomon had at least six kids,
one of whom was Marybelle Rinds, my grandmother. She gave birth to my mother, Effie
Rinds, in 1920, who was born in this county. In 1930, Marybelle Rinds and her husband
and some more Rinds took off for Chicago and never looked back.”
Portia said, “That’s the same year the property of Sylvester Rinds was transferred to
the Hubbard family.” The others heard this but it meant little. Portia was not even sure
of the connection; there were too many missing details.
“Don’t know about that,” Charley said. “But my mother remembers a cousin who she
thinks was the only child of Sylvester Rinds. As best we can tell, this cousin was born
around 1925. They lost touch after 1930 when the family scattered. But through the
years there was the usual family gossip. This girl supposedly had a baby when she was
real young, the daddy caught a train, and the family never knew what happened to the
baby. My mother remembers her cousin’s name as Lois.”
“I’ve heard that my mother’s name was Lois,” Lettie said cautiously.
“Well, let’s look at your birth certificate,” Charley said, as if he had finally arrived at
a critical moment.
“Never had one,” Lettie said. “I know I was born in Monroe County in 1941, but
there’s no official certificate.”
“No listing of either parent,” Portia added. “We found this recently, down in Monroe
County. The mother is listed as L. Rinds, age sixteen. The father is H. Johnson, but that’s
the only mention of him.”
Charley was instantly deflated. He had worked so hard and traveled so far to prove
his lineage with his newfound cousin, only to hit a dead end. How can you be alive with
no birth certificate?
Portia continued, “My mother was sort of adopted by Cypress and her husband, and
she was thirty years old before she knew the truth. By then so many of her relatives
were dead and scattered it really didn’t matter anyway.”
Lettie said, “I was married with three kids when I found out. I couldn’t exactly take off
and go chase down a buncha dead kinfolk. Besides, I really didn’t care, still don’t. I was
a Tayber. Clyde and Cypress were my parents. I had six brothers and sisters.” She was
sounding a bit defensive and this irritated her. She owed no explanation to this stranger,
cousin or not.
Portia said, “So, under your theory, it looks like my mother might be a Rinds from