Sycamore Row - John Grisham

worked the front while his sister handled the kitchen. Menus were not needed. Daily
specials were sometimes scrawled on a chalkboard, but for the most part you ate
whatever the sister was cooking. Claude served the food, directed the traffic, worked the
cash register, created more gossip than he filtered, and in general ran the place with a
heavy hand. By the time Charley and the ladies settled into their seats and ordered iced
tea, Claude had heard that they were all related. He rolled his eyes at this; wasn’t
everyone related to Lettie these days?
Fifteen minutes later, Jake and Lucien ambled in as if they had just been passing by.
They were not. Portia had called Lucien thirty minutes earlier with the heads-up. There
was a decent chance Charley could be a link to the past, to the mystery of the Rinds
family, and she thought Lucien might want to meet him. Introductions were made, then
Claude sat the two crackers off to themselves near the kitchen.
Over grilled pork chops and mashed potatoes, Charley continued to tout the dazzling
benefits of the mortuary business in “a city of five million,” though the women were
losing interest. He’d been married but was now divorced; two kids, living with their
mother; he’d gone to college. Slowly, the women extracted the details as they thoroughly
enjoyed lunch. By the time the coconut cream pie arrived, the women were completely
ignoring him and trashing a deacon who’d fled with another man’s wife.
Late in the afternoon, Portia arrived at Lucien’s home, for the first time. The weather
had abruptly turned raw and windy and the porch was out of the question. She was
intrigued to meet Sallie, a woman seldom seen around town but well known
nonetheless. Her living arrangement was a source of endless condemnation on both
sides of the tracks, but it didn’t seem to bother either Sallie or Lucien. As Portia had
learned quickly, nothing really bothered Lucien, at least nothing related to the thoughts
and opinions of other people. He ranted about injustice or history or the problems of the
world, but was happily oblivious to the observations of others.
Sallie was about ten years older than Portia. She had not been raised in Clanton and
no one was quite certain where her people were from. Portia found her to be polite,
gracious, and seemingly comfortable with another black female in the house. Lucien had
a fire going in his study, and Sallie served them hot cocoa there. Lucien spiked his with
cognac, but Portia declined. The thought of adding alcohol to such a comfort beverage
seemed almost bizarre, but then Portia had long since realized that Lucien had never
seen a drink that could not be improved with a shot or two of booze.
With Sallie in the room, and commenting occasionally, they spent an hour updating
the family tree. Portia had taken notes of things Charley had said: important things like
names and dates, and throwaways like deaths and disappearances of people who were
not related to them. There were several strains of Rindses in the Chicago area, and
another bunch in Gary. Charley had mentioned a distant cousin named Boaz who lived
near Birmingham, but he had no contact information. He also had mentioned a cousin
who’d moved to Texas. And so on.