Sycamore Row - John Grisham

“I did,” Lonny said.
“Tell me about him. I need to find him, and quick.”
“What do you want to know about him?”
“Is he alive?”
“He is, yes.”
“Where is he right now?”
“Don’t know.”
“When did you last see him?”
A nurse entered chattering away about checking his vitals. He said he was tired, and
so she helped him into his bed, arranged his IV, glared at Lucien, then checked Lonny’s
blood pressure and pulse. “He needs to rest,” she said.
Lonny closed his eyes and said, “Don’t go. Just turn down the lights.”
Lucien pulled a chair close to his bed and sat down. After the nurse left, he said, “Tell
me about Ancil.”
With his eyes still closed and his voice almost a whisper, Lonny began, “Well, Ancil
has always been a man on the run. He left home when he was young and never went
back. He hated home, hated his father especially. He fought in the war, got wounded,
almost died. A head injury, and most folks think Ancil’s always been a bit off upstairs.
He loved the sea, said he’d been born so far away from it that it captivated him. He
spent years on cargo ships and saw the world, all of it. You can’t find a spot on the map
that Ancil hasn’t seen. Not a mountain, a port, a city, a famous site. Not a bar, a dance
club, a whorehouse, you name it, and Ancil’s been there. He hung out with rough
characters and from time to time fell into bad ways: petty crime, then some not so
petty. He had some near misses, once spent a week in a hospital in Sri Lanka with a
knife wound. The knife wound was nothing compared with the infection he got in the
hospital. He had lots of women, some of whom had lots of children, but Ancil was never
one to stay in one place. Last he knew, some of those women were still looking for him,
with their children. Others might be looking for him too. Ancil has lived a crazy life and
he’s always looked over his shoulder.”
When he said the word “life,” it came out wrong; or, perhaps it came out naturally.
The long i was much flatter than before, much like the flattened i’s so common in north
Mississippi. Lucien had deliberately fallen back into a twangier version of speech, in
hopes that it might lure old Lonny here into the same habit. Lonny was from Mississippi,
and they both knew it.
He closed his eyes and seemed to sleep. Lucien stared at him for a few minutes,
waiting. His breathing became heavier as he drifted away. His right hand fell to his side.
The monitors showed a normal blood pressure and heartbeat. To stay awake, Lucien
paced around the darkened room, waiting for a nurse to appear and shoo him away. He
eased next to the bed, squeezed Lonny’s right wrist firmly, and said, “Ancil! Ancil! Seth
left behind a last will and testament that gives you a million bucks.”
The eyes came open and Lucien repeated himself.