It came by mail, regular postage, the old-fashioned way since the Judge was almost eighty and distrusted modern devices. Forget e-mail and even faxes. He didn't use an answering machine and had never been fond of the telephone. He pecked out his letters with both index fingers, one feeble key at a time, hunched2 over his old Underwood manual on a rolltop desk under the portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest. The Judge's grandfather had fought with Forrest at Shiloh and throughout the Deep South, and to him no figure in history was more revered4. For thirty-two years, the Judge had quietly refused to hold court on July 13, Forrest's birthday.
It came with another letter, a magazine, and two invoices5, and was routinely placed in the law school mailbox of Professor Ray Atlee. He recognized it immediately since such envelopes had been a part of his life for as long as he could remember. It was from his lather6, a man he too called the Judge.
Professor Atlee studied the envelope, uncertain whether he should open it right there or wait a moment. Good news or bad, he never knew with the Judge, though the old man was dying and good news had been rare. It was thin and appeared to contain only one sheet of paper; nothing unusual about that. The Judge was frugal7 with the written word, though he'd once been known for his windy lectures from the bench.
It was a business letter, that much was certain. The Judge was not one for small talk, hated gossip and idle chitchat, whether written or spoken. Ice tea with him on the porch would be a refighting of the Civil War, probably at Shiloh, where he would once again lay all blame for the Confederate defeat at the shiny, untouched boots of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, a man he would hate even in heaven, if by chance they met there.
He'd be dead soon. Seventy-nine years old with cancer in his stomach. He was overweight, a diabetic, a heavy pipe smoker9, had a bad heart that had survived three attacks, and a host of lesser10 ailments11 that had tormented12 him for twenty years and were now finally closing in for the kill. The pain was constant. During their last phone call three weeks earlier, a call initiated13 by Ray because the Judge thought long distance was a rip-off, the old man sounded weak and strained. They had talked for less than two minutes.
The return address was gold-embossed: Chancellor14 Reuben V Atlee, 25th Chancery District, Ford3 County Courthouse, Clanton, Mississippi. Ray slid the envelope into the magazine and began walking. Judge Atlee no longer held the office of chancellor. The voters had retired15 him nine years earlier, a bitter defeat from which he would never recover. Thirty-two years of diligent16 service to his people, and they tossed him out in favor of a younger man with radio and television ads. The Judge had refused to campaign. He claimed he had too much work to do, and, more important, the people knew him well and if they wanted to reelect him then they would do so. His strategy had seemed arrogant17 to many. He carried Ford County but got shellacked in the other five.
It took three years to get him out of the courthouse. His office on the second floor had survived a fire and had missed two renovations. The Judge had not allowed them to touch it with paint or hammers. When the county supervisors18 finally convinced him that he had to leave or be evicted19, he boxed up three decades' worth of useless files and notes and dusty old books and took them home and stacked them in his study. When the study was full, he lined them down the hallways into the dining room and even the foyer.
Ray nodded to a student who was seated in the hall. Outside his office, he spoke8 to a colleague. Inside, he locked the door behind him and placed the mail in the center of his desk. He took off his jacket, hung it on the back of the door, stepped over a stack of thick law books he'd been stepping over for half a year, and then to himself uttered his daily vow20 to organize the place.
The room was twelve by fifteen, with a small desk and a small sofa, both covered with enough work to make Ray seem like a very busy man. He was not. For the spring semester he was teaching one section of antitrust. And he was supposed to be writing a book, another drab, tedious volume on monopolies that would be read by no one but would add handsomely to his pedigree. He had tenure21, but like all serious professors he was ruled by the "publish or perish" dictum of academic life.
He sat at his desk and shoved papers out of the way.
The envelope was addressed to Professor N. Ray Atlee, University of Virginia School of Law, Charlottesville, Virginia. The e's and o's were smudged together. A new ribbon had been needed for a decade. The Judge didn't believe in zip codes either.
The N was for Nathan, after the general, but few people knew it. One of their uglier fights had been over the son's decision to drop Nathan altogether and plow22 through life simply as Ray.
The Judge's letters were always sent to the law school, never to his son's apartment in downtown Charlottesville. The Judge liked titles and important addresses, and he wanted folks in Clanton, even the postal23 workers, to know that his son was a professor of law. It was unnecessary. Ray had been teaching (and writing) for thirteen years, and those who mattered in Ford County knew it.
He opened the envelope and unfolded a single sheet of paper. It too was grandly embossed with the Judge's name and former title and address, again minus the zip code. The old man probably had an unlimited24 supply of the stationery25.
It was addressed to both Ray and his younger brother, Forrest, the only two offspring of a bad marriage that had ended in 1969 with the death of their mother. As always, the message was brief:
Please make arrangements to appear in my study on Sunday,
May 7, at 5 P.M., to discuss the administration of my estate.
Sincerely, Reuben V Atlee.
The distinctive26 signature had shrunk and looked unsteady. For years it had been emblazoned across orders and decrees that had changed countless27 lives. Decrees of divorce, child custody28, termination of parental29 rights, adoptions30. Orders settling will contests, election contests, land disputes, annexation31 fights. The Judge's autograph had been authoritative32 and well known; now it was the vaguely33 familiar scrawl34 of a very sick old man.
Sick or not, though, Ray knew that he would be present in his father's study at the appointed time. He had just been summoned, and as irritating as it was, he had no doubt that he and his brother would drag themselves before His Honor for one more lecture. It was typical of the Judge to pick a day that was convenient for him without consulting anybody else.
It was the nature of the Judge, and perhaps most judges for that matter, to set dates for hearings and deadlines with little regard for the convenience of others. Such heavy-handedness was learned and even required when dealing35 with crowded dockets, reluctant litigants36, busy lawyers, lazy lawyers. But the Judge had run his family in pretty much the same manner as he'd run his courtroom, and that was the principal reason Ray Atlee was teaching law in Virginia and not practicing it in Mississippi.
He read the summons again, then put it away, on top of the pile of current matters to deal with. He walked to the window and looked out at the courtyard where everything was in bloom. He wasn't angry or bitter, just frustrated37 that his father could once again dictate38 so much. But the old man was dying, he told himself. Give him a break. There wouldn't be many more trips home.
The Judge's estate was cloaked with mystery. The principal asset was the house - an antebellum hand-me-down from the same Atlee who'd fought with General Forrest. On a shady street in old Atlanta it would be worth over a million dollars, but not in Clanton. It sat in the middle of five neglected acres three blocks off the town square. The floors sagged39, the roof leaked, paint had not touched the walls in Ray's lifetime. He and his brother could sell it for perhaps a hundred thousand dollars, but the buyer would need twice that to make it livable. Neither would ever live there; in fact, Forrest had not set foot in the house in many years.
The house was called Maple40 Run, as if it were some grand estate with a staff and a social calendar. The last worker had been Irene the maid. She'd died four years earlier and since then no one had vacuumed the floors or touched the furniture with polish. The Judge paid a local felon41 twenty dollars a week to cut the grass, and he did so with great reluctance42. Eighty dollars a month was robbery, in his learned opinion.
When Ray was a child, his mother referred to their home as Maple Run. They never had dinners at their home, but rather at Maple Run. Their address was not the Atlees on Fourth Street, but instead it was Maple Run on Fourth Street. Few other folks in Clan-ton had names for their homes.
She died from an aneurysm and they laid her on a table in the front parlor43. For two days the town stopped by and paraded across the front porch, through the foyer, through the parlor for last respects, then to the dining room for punch and cookies. Ray and Forrest hid in the attic44 and cursed their father for tolerating such a spectacle. That was their mother lying down there, a pretty young woman now pale and stiff in an open coffin45.
Forrest had always called it Maple Ruin. The red and yellow maples46 that once lined the street had died of some unknown disease. Their rotted stumps47 had never been cleared. Four huge oaks shaded the front lawn. They shed leaves by the ton, far too many for anyone to rake and gather. And at least twice a year the oaks would lose a branch that would fall and crash somewhere onto the house, where it might or might not get removed. The house stood there year after year, decade after decade, taking punches but never falling.
It was still a handsome house, a Georgian with columns, once a monument to those who'd built it, and now a sad reminder48 of a declining family. Ray wanted nothing to do with it. For him the house was filled with unpleasant memories and each trip back depressed49 him. He certainly couldn't afford the financial black hole of maintaining an estate that ought to be bulldozed. Forrest would burn it before he owned it.
The Judge, however, wanted Ray to take the house and keep it in the family. This had been discussed in vague terms over the past few years. Ray had never mustered50 the courage to ask, "What family?" He had no children. There was an ex-wife but no prospect51 of a current one. Same for Forrest, except he had a dizzying collection of ex-girlfriends and a current housing arrangement with Ellie, a three-hundred-pound painter and potter twelve years his senior.
It was a biological miracle that Forrest had produced no children, but so far none had been discovered.
The Atlee bloodline was thinning to a sad and inevitable52 halt, which didn't bother Ray at all. He was living life for himself, not for the benefit of his father or the family's glorious past. He returned to Clanton only for funerals.
The Judge's other assets had never been discussed. The Atlee family had once been wealthy, but long before Ray. There had been land and cotton and slaves and railroads and banks and politics, the usual Confederate portfolio53 of holdings that, in terms of cash, meant nothing in the late twentieth century. It did, however, bestow54 upon the Atlees the status of "family money."
By the time Ray was ten he knew his family had money. His father was a judge and his home had a name, and in rural Mississippi this meant he was indeed a rich kid. Before she died his mother did her best to convince Ray and Forrest that they were better than most folks. They lived in a mansion55. They were Presbyterians. They vacationed in Florida, every third year. They occasionally went to the Peabody Hotel in Memphis for dinner. Their clothes were nicer.
Then Ray was accepted at Stanford. His bubble burst when the Judge said bluntly, "I can't afford it."
"What do you mean?" Ray had asked.
"I mean what I said. I can't afford Stanford."
"But I don't understand."
"Then I'll make it plain. Go to any college you want. But if you go to Sewanee, then I'll pay for it."
Ray went to Sewanee, without the baggage of family money, and was supported by his father, who provided an allowance that barely covered tuition, books, board, and fraternity dues. Law school was at Tulane, where Ray survived by waiting tables at an oyster56 bar in the French Quarter.
For thirty-two years, the Judge had earned a chancellor's salary, which was among the lowest in the country. While at Tulane Ray read a report on judicial57 compensation, and he was saddened to learn that Mississippi judges were earning fifty-two thousand dollars a year when the national average was ninety-five thousand.
The Judge lived alone, spent little on the house, had no bad habits except for his pipe, and he preferred cheap tobacco. He drove an old Lincoln, ate bad food but lots of it, and wore the same black suits he'd been wearing since the fifties. His vice1 was charity. He saved his money, then he gave it away.
No one knew how much money the Judge donated annually58.
An automatic ten percent went to the Presbyterian Church. Sewanee got two thousand dollars a year, same for the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Those three gifts were carved in granite59. The rest were not.
Judge Atlee gave to anyone who would ask. A crippled child in need of crutches60. An all-star team traveling to a state tournament. A drive by the Rotary61 Club to vaccinate62 babies in the Congo. A shelter for stray dogs and cats in Ford County. A new roof for Clanton's only museum.
The list was endless, and all that was necessary to receive a check was to write a short letter and ask for it. Judge Atlee always sent money and had been doing so ever since Ray and Forrest left home.
Ray could see him now, lost in the clutter63 and dust of his roll-top, pecking out short notes on his Underwood and sticking them in his chancellor's envelopes with scarcely readable checks drawn64 on the First National Bank of Clanton - fifty dollars here, a hundred dollars there, a little for everyone until it was all gone.
The estate would not be complicated because there would be so little to inventory65. The ancient law books, threadbare furniture, painful family photos and mementos66, long forgotten files and papers - all a bunch of rubbish that would make an impressive bonfire. He and Forrest would sell the house for whatever it might bring and be quite happy to salvage67 anything from the last of the Atlee family money.
He should call Forrest, but those calls were always easy to put off. Forrest was a different set of issues and problems, much more complicated than a dying, reclusive old father hell-bent on giving away his money. Forrest was a living, walking disaster, a boy of thirty-six whose mind had been deadened by every legal and illegal substance known to American culture.
What a family, Ray mumbled68 to himself.
He posted a cancellation69 for his eleven o'clock class, and went for therapy.
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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hunched
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| （常指因寒冷、生病或愁苦）耸肩弓身的，伏首前倾的 | |
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Ford
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| n.浅滩，水浅可涉处；v.涉水，涉过 | |
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revered
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| v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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invoices
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| 发票( invoice的名词复数 )； （发货或服务）费用清单； 清单上货物的装运； 货物的托运 | |
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lather
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| n.(肥皂水的)泡沫，激动 | |
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frugal
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| adj.节俭的，节约的，少量的，微量的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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smoker
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| n.吸烟者，吸烟车厢，吸烟室 | |
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lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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ailments
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| 疾病（尤指慢性病），不适( ailment的名词复数 ) | |
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tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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chancellor
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| n.(英)大臣；法官；(德、奥)总理；大学校长 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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diligent
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| adj.勤勉的，勤奋的 | |
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arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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supervisors
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| n.监督者，管理者( supervisor的名词复数 ) | |
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evicted
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| v.（依法从房屋里或土地上）驱逐，赶出( evict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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vow
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| n.誓(言)，誓约；v.起誓，立誓 | |
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tenure
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| n.终身职位；任期；(土地)保有权，保有期 | |
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plow
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| n.犁，耕地，犁过的地；v.犁，费力地前进[英]plough | |
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postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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stationery
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| n.文具；(配套的)信笺信封 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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custody
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| n.监护，照看，羁押，拘留 | |
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parental
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| adj.父母的；父的；母的 | |
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adoptions
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| n.采用，收养( adoption的名词复数 ) | |
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annexation
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| n.吞并，合并 | |
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authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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scrawl
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| vt.潦草地书写；n.潦草的笔记，涂写 | |
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dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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litigants
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| n.诉讼当事人( litigant的名词复数 ) | |
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frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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dictate
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| v.口授；(使)听写；指令，指示，命令 | |
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sagged
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| 下垂的 | |
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maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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felon
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| n.重罪犯；adj.残忍的 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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parlor
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| n.店铺，营业室；会客室，客厅 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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maples
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| 槭树，枫树( maple的名词复数 )； 槭木 | |
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stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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reminder
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| n.提醒物，纪念品；暗示，提示 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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50
mustered
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| v.集合，召集，集结（尤指部队）( muster的过去式和过去分词 )；（自他人处）搜集某事物；聚集；激发 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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52
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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53
portfolio
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| n.公事包；文件夹；大臣及部长职位 | |
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54
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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55
mansion
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| n.大厦，大楼；宅第 | |
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56
oyster
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| n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人 | |
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57
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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annually
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| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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60
crutches
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| n.拐杖, 支柱 v.支撑 | |
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61
rotary
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| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
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vaccinate
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| vt.给…接种疫苗；种牛痘 | |
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clutter
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| n.零乱，杂乱；vt.弄乱，把…弄得杂乱 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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inventory
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| n.详细目录，存货清单 | |
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66
mementos
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| 纪念品，令人回忆的东西( memento的名词复数 ) | |
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salvage
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| v.救助，营救，援救；n.救助，营救 | |
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68
mumbled
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| 含糊地说某事，叽咕，咕哝( mumble的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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69
cancellation
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| n.删除，取消 | |
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