Sycamore Row - John Grisham

Lettie stared at him, dumbfounded. She had never heard Seth Hubbard say one word
about the Atlanta Braves, and she had never known him to watch a baseball game on
television.
They tried to make it to Atlanta at least once each season to catch some games. Say
what? This was news to Jake and everyone else who’d read Herschel’s depositions. He
had never mentioned such a road trip with his father. But there was little Jake could do.
It would take two days of hard digging to prove the trips to Atlanta never took place. If
Herschel wanted to invent tales about him and his old man, Jake couldn’t stop him at
this point. And Jake had to be careful. If he had any credibility left with the jury, he
could seriously damage it by attacking Herschel. The man had lost his father, then he’d
been cut out of his will in a very cruel and humiliating manner. It would be easy and
only natural for the jurors to feel sympathy.
And how do you argue with a son who wasn’t close to his father, but now swears that
he was? You don’t, and Jake knew it was an argument he could not win. He took notes,
listened to the fiction, and tried to keep a poker face as if everything was going great.
He could not bring himself to look at the jurors. There was a wall between him and
them, something he’d never before experienced.
When they finally got around to Seth’s cancer, Herschel became somber and even
choked back tears. It was just awful, he said, watching this active and vigorous man dry
up and shrivel with the disease. He had tried to quit smoking so many times; father and
son had engaged in long, heartfelt conversations about the smoking. Herschel quit when
he was thirty, and he begged his father to quit also. In his final months, Herschel visited
him as often as possible. And, yes, they talked about his estate. Seth was clear about his
intentions. He might not have been too generous with Herschel and Ramona when they
were younger, but he wanted them to have it all when he died. He assured them that he
had prepared a proper will, one that would insulate them from financial worries and
also secure the future for their children, Seth’s beloved grandchildren.
Seth was not himself toward the end. They talked all the time by phone, and at first
Herschel noticed his father’s memory was fading. He couldn’t remember the score of last
night’s baseball game. He repeated himself constantly. He would ramble on about the
World Series, though the Braves were not in the Series last year. But to Seth they were.
The old guy was slipping away. It was so heartbreaking.
Not surprisingly, Herschel was wary of Lettie Lang. She did a fine job cleaning the
house, and cooking and caring for his father, but the longer she worked there, and the
sicker Seth became, the more she seemed to protect him. She acted as though she didn’t
want Herschel and Ramona in the house. Several times Herschel called his father, but
she said he wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come to the phone. She tried to keep him
away from his family.
Lettie glared at the witness, slowly shaking her head.
It was quite a performance, and by the time it was over Jake was almost too stunned
to think or move. Through skillful and no doubt exhaustive preparation, Wade Lanier
had pieced together a fictional narrative that any father and son would envy.
Jake walked to the podium and asked, “Mr. Hubbard, on these trips to watch the