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It cae, the old-fashioned way since the Judge was alet e- machine and had never been fond of the telephone He pecked out his letters with both index fingers, one feeble key at a time, hunched 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 hiure in history was e had quietly refused to hold court on July 13, Forrest's birthday

It caazine, and two invoices, and was routinely placed in the law school nized it immediately since such envelopes had been a part of his life for as long as he could ree

Professor Atlee studied the envelope, uncertain whether he should open it right there or wait a h the old ood news had been rare It was thin and appeared to contain only one sheet of paper; nothing unusual about that The Judge was frugal with the written word, though he'd once been known for his windy lectures from the bench

It was a business letter, that e was not one for sossip and idle chitchat, whether written or spoken Ice tea with hi 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 stoht, a diabetic, a heavy pipe smoker, had a bad heart that had survived three attacks, and a host of lesser ailments that had tor in for the kill The pain was constant During their last phone call three weeks earlier, a call initiated 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: Chancellor Reuben V Atlee, 25th Chancery District, Ford County Courthouse, Clanton, Mississippi Ray slid the envelope into the er held the office of chancellor The voters had retired him nine years earlier, a bitter defeat froent service to his people, and they tossed hier e had refused to can He claimed he had too much work to do, and, more important, the people knew him well and if they wanted to reelect hiant to ot 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 e had not allowed them to touch it with paint or hammers When the county supervisors finally convinced him that he had to leave or be evicted, 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 the room and even the foyer

Ray nodded to a student as seated in the hall Outside his office, he spoke to a colleague Inside, he locked the door behind him and placed theit 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 hianize the place

The room elve by fifteen, with a sh work tose 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 handsoree He had tenure, 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 sether 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 plow through life simply as Ray

The Judge's letters were always sent to the law school, never to his son's aparte liked titles and important addresses, and he wanted folks in Clanton, even the postal 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 eain minus the zip code The old man probably had an unlimited supply of the stationery

It was addressed to both Ray and his younger brother, Forrest, the only two offspring of a bad e that had ended in 1969 with the death of their e was brief:

Please ements to appear in my study on Sunday, May 7, at 5 PM, to discuss the administration of my estate

Sincerely,

Reuben V Atlee

The distinctive signature had shrunk and looked unsteady For years it had been eed countless lives Decrees of divorce, child custody, ter will contests, election contests, land disputes, annexation fights The Judge's autograph had been authoritative and well known; noas the vaguely familiar scrawl 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 ti as it was, he had no doubt that he and his brother would drag themselves before His Honor for one e to pick a day that was convenient for hi anybody else

It was the nature of the Judge, and perhaps s and deadlines with little regard for the convenience of others Such heavy-handedness was learned and even required when dealing with crowded dockets, reluctant litigants, busy lawyers, lazy lawyers But the Judge had run his family in pretty much the same manner as he'd run his courtroo law in Virginia and not practicing it in Mississippi

He read the suain, then put it away, on top of the pile of current matters to deal with He walked to theand looked out at the courtyard where everything was in bloory or bitter, just frustrated that his father could once again dictate so , 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 antebelluht 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 lected acres three blocks off the town square The floors sagged, 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 Maple Run, as if it were sorand 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 vacuue paid a local felon twenty dollars a week to cut the grass, and he did so with great reluctance 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