With Joel’s assistance, John Wilbanks appealed the Fifth Circuit’s decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, a complete waste of time. However, the appeal would keep Dunlap busy and buy a few months. Dunlap enrolled the $100,000 judgment, now with interest clicking away, with the circuit clerk in Ford County. Wilbanks ran to chancery court, woke up old Rumbold, and petitioned for an injunction to prevent Dunlap from trying to grab assets pending the appeal. After a brief and contentious hearing, Rumbold once again ruled in favor of the Bannings. Dunlap petitioned the Mississippi Supreme Court for an expedited hearing. Wilbanks opposed it.
Joel monitored the assaults and counterattacks from the safety of his garage apartment in Oxford. For $10 a month, he leased the ground floor of the garage and, using his father’s Ford truck, began quietly moving furniture and furnishings from their home to the safety of the garage. Nineva didn’t like it, but she had no say in the matter.
In mid-May, Joel and Florry loaded into her 1939 Lincoln and commenced a long road trip to Virginia. They checked into the Hotel Roanoke, where they hosted a cocktail party for Stella and her friends at Hollins. On a glorious spring day, they sat with a crowd of other proud parents and family members and watched Stella accept her degree in English literature. The following day, while the ladies sipped tea in the shade, Joel hauled boxes and bags from her dorm room to the car. When it was stuffed and he was exhausted, Stella said good-bye to college, to a school she loved, and to her friends. Joel had never seen so many tears, not even at a good funeral.
With the women in the rear seat barking instructions, and with the view in every mirror blocked by luggage and boxes, they roared away from Hollins and headed north. Three hours later, they were lost in Richmond, but stopped anyway at a barbecue place in a lesser part of the city. A local pointed this way and that, and after a quick lunch they were off again, headed for D.C.
Stella’s grand plan was still to live in New York, work for a magazine, and write serious fiction on the side. Getting there, though, would take more time than she realized. Jobs in publishing were scarce, but every school needed young teachers. St. Agnes in Alexandria was an Episcopal girls’ day and boarding school, and it offered her a contract to teach English to ninth graders and serve as a dorm parent. While she and Florry enjoyed even more tea with the headmistress, Joel schlepped her bags and boxes into a suffocating dorm room even smaller than the last.
The school allowed him to park the car in a safe place. For $10, a janitor agreed to keep air in the tires and crank the engine once a day. They called a cab and crossed the Potomac into D.C. At Union Station, they caught their train to New York.
Before Burch Dunlap and his greedy clients could seize their money, they had decided to spend some of what was left of it. Stella’s tuitions were now in the past and she had a job. Joel had only one more year of law school and he would start working. Florry’s land was safe from the vultures, and she had some money buried. Nineteen forty-nine could be their last summer together, so why not do it in style?
At the port in lower Manhattan, they boarded an ocean liner bound for London, and for two weeks had a delightful time resting and reading and trying to forget all the troubles back home. On deck, Joel and Stella noticed for the first time how slow Florry was getting about. She was carrying too much weight, as usual, but she had always been vigorous and busy. Now, though, she was missing a step and seemed winded after even a short walk. She was only fifty, but aging and looking tired.
In London, they spent a week at the St. Regis Hotel and saw the sights, then traveled to Edinburgh, where they boarded the Royal Scotsman for a week in the Highlands. When they were tired of visiting castles, manor homes, historic sites, and distilleries, they returned to London for a two-day rest before pushing on to Paris.
Stella and Joel were having coffee in the lobby of the Hôtel Lutetia when they got the news. Florry was not feeling well and had decided to rest through the morning and not walk the city at full throttle. A porter approached and handed Joel a cablegram. It was from John Wilbanks. The Mississippi Supreme Court had voted 7–2 to reverse Rumbold. The conveyance of the land to Joel and Stella was null and void. The property would remain in their father’s estate; thus, subject to all claims and liens.
“Reversed and rendered,” Joel said in disbelief.
“What does that mean?” Stella asked.
“It means the case is over. It means the supreme court felt strongly that Rumbold was wrong and decided to end the matter without further hearings.”
“What about an appeal?”
“Yes, we’ll file another appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and try to buy some time. Wilbanks and I will discuss bankruptcy.”
They sipped coffee and watched the foot traffic pass through the luxurious lobby. Stella said, “I have a question, and I want an honest answer. Does this mean that Jackie Bell and her children could one day be living in our home?”
“It’s possible but I still don’t believe it. At some point, Wilbanks will sit down with her lawyer and push hard to settle everything.”
“And how does that work?”
“We offer them cash.”
“I thought we tried that once.”
“We did, and they turned down $25,000. It’ll cost more now.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know. It’ll be a question of how much money is left in the bank accounts and how much money we can borrow against the land.”
“Do you really want to mortgage the land, Joel? You know how much Dad hated banks.”
“We may not have a choice.”
In its ruling, the state supreme court found that Pete’s conduct amounted to fraud in several ways. First, he retained an interest in his land by living on it and farming it and profiting from it. Second, he received nothing in return for the deed to his children. Third, the transfer of ownership was to family members, which is always suspicious. And, fourth, at the time he signed the deed he had reason to believe that he would one day be pursued by creditors because of his actions.
John Wilbanks read the opinion a dozen times and found the court’s logic sound. He went through the useless routine of appealing the decision to the only court left, the U.S. Supreme Court, but knew there was no chance the case would be accepted for argument. He consulted with a close friend in Memphis who was a bankruptcy specialist, and was not encouraged by the conversation. Putting Pete’s estate into bankruptcy would be a smart delaying tactic, but a successful outcome would be difficult.
Wilbanks went back to chancery court for another injunction to prevent a foreclosure pending appeals, and, of course, Rumbold gave it to him. Dunlap took another lump and appealed. Soon enough, though, not even a highly biased judge like Rumbold could forestall the inevitable.
After the hearing, a composed and quite confident Dunlap chatted with Wilbanks and offered a proposal. It was time to stop running up legal bills and face the obvious. The appeals would not work, nor would a bankruptcy. Why not simply deed the land, all 640 acres, plus the house and furnishings, over to Jackie Bell? If the Bannings would agree to it, then Jackie would forgo all claims to the bank accounts.
Wilbanks bristled at the proposal and said, as he walked away, “The Bannings will burn the house and the crops before they sign over a deed.”
Dunlap shot back, “Great, but please remind your clients that arson is still a crime, punishable by a long prison sentence.”