The Willows, as everyone in Cantrell had always called it.
Robie read through this line twice more to make sure he was seeing right.
It wasn’t a street name. It was the name of the house. He knew the place well. He had once dated a girl who lived there with her family.
Laura Barksdale’s father could trace his roots all the way back to when Mississippi was first settled. The Willows had once been a classic southern plantation complete with an army of slaves. The Barksdales’ ancestors had commanded Confederate troops in the Civil War. They had led Citizens’ Councils to keep blacks in their place when the civil rights movement came to Mississippi. They were prominent and wealthy and…
And now his father owned the place?
He left the phone booth to find two black men staring at him from a few feet away. One was big and bulky, wearing faded jeans, white sneakers, and a gray T-shirt.
The other man was smallish but wiry, with sculpted shoulders and thick forearms shown off because he had on a wife beater along with baggy black corduroys.
Robie nodded at them both and then started to walk past.
“Will Robie?” said the bigger man.
Robie turned to look at him. He was maybe twenty, not even born when Robie had left this place.
“Yeah?”
“You know my daddy?”
“I don’t know. Who’s your daddy?”
“Billy Faulconer.”
The image of a huge teenager with enormous shoulders, beefy arms, and a hearty laugh, which he used often, seeped into Robie’s brain.
Robie said, “We were on the football team together. He was a helluva left tackle. Protected my blind side really well.”
“Y’all were state champs your senior year. Got yourselves a parade and everythin’. Daddy still talks ’bout it.”
Billy Faulconer must’ve had kids young, Robie calculated. Pretty much right after high school. But in Cantrell that was not so unusual. There was no mad rush off to college for the high school graduates. There was only one sudden, panicked thought, really:
Now what the hell do I do?
He said, “It was a nice ride. Good for the town. No team from here had ever beaten a team from Jackson.”
“He talked ’bout you, too. Said you just upped and left one night after you finished high school. Nobody heard from you no mo’.”
Robie was not about to get into all that. “So how’s Billy doing?”
“Not so good. He got the cancer in his lungs. Ain’t long for this world.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
The tall young man looked at him appraisingly. “You here ’bout your daddy, ain’t you? What got you back here, right?”
“What’s your name?”
“Named after my daddy. But folks just call me Little Bill.”
“You’re pretty big for that name.”
“My daddy’s bigger. Least he used to be before the cancer got him.”
“So what do you know about Sherman Clancy dying? And my father being arrested for the murder?”
Little Bill shrugged. “Not much. Bad blood twixt the two.”
“Based on what?”
The smaller man said, “Jury ain’t convict old Clancy and that got your daddy all riled, I reckon.”
“Convict him of what?”
“Killin’ that gal,” said Little Bill. “Janet Chisum. Nice gal. Till someone did what they done to her.”
“I don’t know anything about it. I never heard of the Chisums.”
“They moved here a while back. She was a pretty white gal. One of three gals in the family. She done went out one night and never come back. Found her in the damn Pearl River the next day hooked on a tree. Shot in the head. Gator had taken a bite outta her, too.”
“And Clancy was arrested for the murder? Why?”
The smaller man said, “Somebody done seen him with the gal. That part of the Pearl is near his house. Other stuff cops know about.”
“But the jury acquitted him?”
“Yes they did,” said the smaller man.
“Why?”
The smaller man was about to say something but Billy broke in, “Clancy’s got himself a lot of friends hereabouts.” He rubbed his thumb and two fingers together. “And he got him money.”
His friend gave Little Bill a funny look but said nothing.
Robie looked confused. “Money! The Clancys were dirt-poor farmers when I was here.”
Little Bill shook his head. “That all changed. They done found gas or oil on his land. And then he took that money and got in early with some of the casino boys. Made himself a lotta cash. A lot. Got him a big old place down by the Pearl.”
“Had,” said his friend. “He ain’t got nothin’ no mo’.”
Robie said, “Okay, but why would my father be so angry that he was acquitted that he would kill him?”
“’Cause he be the judge,” said Little Bill.
Robie stared at him. When he’d left Cantrell his father had a small law practice that barely kept the roof over their heads. Most of his fees were paid in barter.
Little Bill seemed to read Robie’s mind. “Your daddy’s been the judge here ’bout ten years now. Things change. Yes they do. Even in Cantrell.”
“Yes they do,” agreed Robie. “You tell your daddy I said hello.”
“I sure will. Maybe you come see him while you here. We live down on Tiara Street, last house on the left.” He stared dead at Robie. “He ain’t got much longer, Mr. Robie. Bet it’d do him good, you know. Old times. Good times. Maybe only ones he ever had.”
Robie nodded. “I’ll sure see if I can do that.”
He got back in his car and drove off.
His mind was whirling with many new facts now. His father a judge.
The Clancys, rich.
This Janet Chisum, dead.
But then his mind focused on where he was going.
The Willows.
And with it, all those memories.
From his last night in Cantrell.
Chapter
10
WILLOW HALL HAD been aptly named nearly two centuries ago, because there had been a line of willow oaks on both sides of the long drive heading up to the house. Or so Robie had been told—the trees had died away many decades before he had been born. The cause had been the drying up of an underground spring that fed the willows’ thirsty roots.
In their place had been planted longleaf pines that could tolerate drier conditions and were a native species. They ran in columns eighty