A Killer Collection (4 page)

Now, his pallid and expressionless
face sagged like limp dough.

The crowd was silent. Once the
potters had sprung into action, a few people began whispering in hushed tones. Ice
broken, the entire crowd began muttering to one another in a tone of nervous
excitement.

Nearby, a woman started crying.
Molly noted that it was the same petite woman who had been holding the devil
jug before George-Bradley wrenched it away. Molly turned to her mother and
quietly told her about the incident.

"Her?" Clara pointed at
the weeping figure. Without bothering to lower her voice she said, "That
bag of bones is a total drama queen. Don't go feeling too sorry for her. She
and George-Bradley have shared a
past
, and now that their affair is over
they fight like cats and dogs at these sales. They also try to outbid each
other at every auction just to get the other's goat. As usual, she'll do
anything to get a little male attention." They watched as two men offered
her tissues. Clara snorted. "Looks like she got it, too."

Molly examined the woman
enviously. Short and thin, she looked elegant in a short-sleeved beige sweater,
cream-colored skirt, and an abundance of gold jewelry. Her blonde hair was swept
up in a glossy twist and her shoes weren't even dusty. Molly, who was a
full-figured size fourteen, always wondered how it would feel to be as tiny and
trim as this woman.

"She's wearing panty
hose!" her mother exclaimed in disgust, looking at her daughter's
expression. Clara knew how Molly felt about herself. "In this heat."

That was a formal dismissal.
Wearing panty hose anywhere was an uncomfortable burden that the Appleby women
avoided at all costs. Wearing them to a kiln opening on a June day in central
North Carolina was beyond belief.

Before mother and daughter could
continue berating the theatrical woman, one of the potters sitting next to
George-Bradley gestured urgently to his friends. The second man quickly knelt
and felt for a pulse on George-Bradley's neck. His eyes instantly grew round in
panic and after a moment's hesitation, in which he glanced helplessly at the
potter beside him, he began to administer chest compressions.

As Molly watched the two men
continue to attempt to revive George-Bradley, the paramedics arrived. The crowd
parted as the ambulance backed up in a series of loud bleeps, directed by one
of the potters. Three paramedics hustled over to the prone figure with kits and
a gurney. Bending over George-Bradley, they worked hurriedly, their faces set
and completely unreadable. Within minutes, he was lifted into the ambulance.
One paramedic continued performing CPR inside while a second briefly questioned
the potter who had checked for George-Bradley's pulse. As the paramedic hopped
back into the ambulance, Molly could see him look at his patient and shake his
head. Then the doors were closed and the ambulance pulled away, its sirens
eerily silent

The crowd watched the vehicle
progress down the drive. Despite the event, not many people had moved from
their spots. Unsure of how to act, they simply waited to see what would happen
next. Once the source of their shock was removed, they just continued checking
out as if nothing unusual had occurred.

"Do you think he's all
right?" some people asked without much genuine concern. George-Bradley may
have been respected in person, but behind his back, tongues wagged.

"Didn't look too good to me.
I heard he has some kind of serious diabetes."

"Really? Well, did you see
him goin' at those cookies? I thought you couldn't eat like that if you had his
condition."

"His condition is called Too
Many Big Macs,' if you ask me," a woman said with a snide laugh.

"I'd call it too much smoking
and beer chugging," added another.

One of the local dealers, a handsome
man in his mid-forties wearing a denim shirt tucked into dark brown pants
approached the cluster of buyers.

"Oh, I know exactly what
George-Bradley’s condition is," he said importantly.

"Well?" a woman holding
a large vase with speckled glaze demanded. "What would that be?"

"When an ambulance leaves
without using its sirens," he explained, "it can only mean one
thing."

The buyers looked back and forth
at one another, realization slowly dawning in their eyes.

"What you saw leaving here,
my friends," the man in the blue shirt declared, "was a corpse."

~~~~~

The excitement of George-Bradley’s collapse and dramatic
departure had renewed the energy of the crowd. Gossiping at a mile a minute,
men and women alike paid for their items and got in their cars, eager to be the
first to spread the tale of his death around town.

Molly was shocked at their
flippant reactions. She had just seen her first dead body, and she felt as
though her mind wasn't working correctly. She couldn't seem to move her legs
and as the line moved forward, she simply stood still as other buyers went
around her, paid, and left.

Finally, only Clara and Molly
remained in the quiet yard. Clara comforted Eileen, who suddenly looked years
older. Between the stress of the kiln opening and the shock of having one of
the area's most notorious collectors collapse in her yard, the woman looked
done in. Clara helped her pick up trash and gather the rest of the
refreshments. As they worked, the women murmured together in low tones.

Molly felt that this was certainly
not the time to interview C. C., but he caught her eye and waved at her to join
him in the barn.

"I can come back at a better
time," she offered once inside.

"Nah." He shook his
head. "I need somethin’ else to think about instead of folks keelin' over
at my openin'. Come on, I'll show you around." C. C. seemed deeply
relieved to have another subject to talk about. Molly received a detailed tour
of the pottery studio, the kiln, and was even invited into C.C.’s house to view
a few treasured pieces crafted by generations of Burles long gone.

C. C. showed Molly how he worked
throughout the year in the cramped bam that looked like a small metal cabin. He
had a fan for the summer and a space heater for the winter as his only
comforts. The floor was mud-covered concrete, cool even in the summer heat. The
entire length of the back wall was lined with tall wooden shelves used as
drying racks and the rest of the room's accouterments were reminiscent of
colonial times. A crude three-legged stool was pulled up to a wheel that used
foot power instead of electricity. An old door on sawhorses served as a table
for holding blocks of clay wrapped in tight plastic to retain moisture. Wooden
tools like spatulas or cheese knives were stuck haphazardly in chipped crocks
near the wheel. Lined up on a warped tabletop were a dozen undecorated jugs
that appeared moist to the touch. Every tool and piece of furniture was
encrusted with clay.

"I just threw them this
momin'." C. C. pointed at the jugs with a gnarled and chapped finger.
"Couldn't sleep. Those new jugs that haven't been burned are called
'greenware.' See, I've turned them on the wheel but they haven't been in the
kiln yet. They'll dry out for a bit and then go in the fire for a good, long
roastin'. Come on in the house and I'll show you some old pieces."

Molly trailed after the spry older
man on a gravel path that meandered behind the barn. Tucked neatly into the
woods, their unpainted house looked as though it had always belonged in the
copse of trees.

Inside, Molly noticed that the
Burles lived a simple life. Their sparse furniture was easily twenty years old
and the rusty hue of the shaggy carpet hinted that it too had been around for
some time. Pulling pots off of a nearby bookshelf, C. C. showed her a jug with
grapes on it that his grandmother had made out of rolled balls of clay and
applied one by one to the piece that his grandfather had turned hours earlier.
Afterwards, she had incised some leaves and curled vines around the grapes to
create a beautiful and delicate design.

Molly handled the piece gently,
admiring its form, lightness, and the artistry of the grapevine.

"Can it hold water?" she
asked.

'Tight as Noah's Ark," C. C.
answered. "After all, the Burles made this stuff for people in these parts
to use every day of their lives. Local people made butter and cream in our
chums and stored all kinds of foodstuffs in these crocks. I’m still tryin’ to
get used to the idea that people are buyin’ my pottery just to look at it.”

"What's the history of this
piece?" Molly asked, holding up a piece that looked like two jugs stacked
on top of each other with spouts sticking out in opposite directions.

"That there is a monkey jug.
See, you put liquor in its bottom half and a water chaser in the top. These are
actually two jugs fired on top of one another so they have separate
compartments. Now, you get yerself a nice cup, pour some whiskey from this
bottom section"—C. C. tapped the spout of the bigger half of the
jug—"then turn it around"— he swiveled the jug so that the opposite
spout on the top half faced forward—"then add yer water. You've got a
cocktail party all in one place. Me, I like how the whiskey half is so much
bigger than the water half."

Molly laughed as she admired the
jug's speckled glaze. It looked exactly like the glaze on the pieces C. C. had
put out for sale this morning.

"Could you tell me more about
the family recipe?" she asked, pointing at the glaze.

"Now, that's fun. You get out
your mixer and add one part powdered glass (we have a machine to break it up),
one part ash from burned wood, and one part slip."

"Slip?"

"Slip is some broken
greenware mixed with water."

"So you blend all that stuff
and end up with greenish icing for your cake?"

"That's right. We keep it
stored in a big barrel and dip a piece right into it. Gotta make sure there's
no slip on the bottom or that pot will stick like glue to the kiln floor when
it gets fired."

Molly examined a few more pieces
on his shelf. She could see that even though the recipe for glaze was the same,
each piece had a unique pattern of flecks, blotches, and drips. She picked up a
beautiful crock that had a swirl decoration in green and beige.

"How do you make the glaze
into that swirl pattern?"

"That's not the glaze,"
said C. C. with a smile. "You’re lookin’ at two different colors of clay.
The secret to makin' swirl is some- thin' I only share with other potters. You
get yourself a wheel and I'll teach you."

"I think that would be
wonderful," Molly said, and she meant it, but her few attempts to make
pottery were disasters. Her finished products were wobbly, without the
slightest hint of symmetry, and completely unimaginative.

When the tour concluded, Molly's
head was stuffed with new details about the Burle family and their pottery. She
was touched by the way C. C. handled each piece with infinite tenderness, by
the pride he took in carrying on his family trade, and his excitement in
teaching a new generation of potters the traditional methods handed down by men
like himself for over a century.

C. C. had been creating useable
art since the 1930s. His hands were arthritic, but they still turned perfect
vessels and guided the hands of future artisans. Words were whirling around
Molly's head and she was impatient to do justice to this gifted man. She
couldn't wait to write her article.

After thanking C. C. and Eileen
for their time and offering awkward condolences for the negative ending of the
opening, Molly met her mother at the car. As the sedan kicked up dust going
down the driveway, Molly looked back wistfully in the side mirror at the empty
tables that had been laden with pottery earlier that morning. Her thoughts
turned back to the sight of George-Bradley's body being loaded into the
ambulance. The kiln opening had been more eventful than she could have ever
imagined.

Molly examined the brownish flecks
freckling the green glaze of her snake pitcher, and struggled to put the memory
of the paramedics loading the dead collector into their ambulance out of her
mind. She leaned back against the soft leather of the passenger seat and
glanced at her mother. "Where to?"

"Let's go to lunch,” Clara
replied. “All this drama makes me hungry."

~~~~~~~~~~

About all the potters that 1 knew lived to be up in their
eighties, so I don't see where pottin' had killed any of them. Something's gonna
take you away from here sometime or another anyway!

—BURLON CRAIG,  CATAWBA VALLEY POTTER, from
Foxfire
8

The Jugtown Cafe didn't look like much on the outside,
but the locals and pottery hounds all knew that it was the place to eat when
visiting Seagrove. Though it was between breakfast and lunch time for most
people, the lot was filled with cars and trucks.

Inside, pottery displays on high
shelves lined the perimeter of the room. Molly and Clara were seated below a
row of menacing face jugs with large mouths and chipped teeth. They got the
last table by the front door, relieved to be in the path of outside air since
the air-conditioning was set to sub zero.

"It's freezing in here!"
Molly rubbed her bare arms.

"Coffee?" her mother
begged a passing waitress who carried a stack of empty plates covered with
brown gravy.

At the next table, four men were
finishing breakfasts of ham, eggs scrambled with cheese, bacon, toast, and
biscuits with gravy. One of them caught Molly staring and smiled.

"We had to roll hay
today," he offered. "Makes a man mighty hungry."

"I must have gotten up this
morning at your regular time," she said, saluting him with her coffee mug.
"Don't know how you guys do it."

"It's been a hard summer with
this drought." He shook his head, lines of worry sprouting around his eyes
and the corners of his mouth.