Bootlegger’s Daughter (11 page)

Monday morning’s big “local” story was yet another drug deal gone wrong over the weekend, this one down at Fort Bragg: shotguns, three dead, no arrests yet. The N amp;O’s editorial page carried endorsements for most of the major candidates. They did not reach down as far as outlying judgeships, and I’d already moved on to the sports section, where the owner of the Durham Bulls was still shaking his minor league monopoly over Raleigh ’s dreams of getting its own team.

“I’m finished with the front part, if you want it,” I said, cheerfully handing it over.

“Is that jam?” he fretted as he tried to restore the virgin alignment of each sheet only to be foiled by a sticky smear on the op ed page. A very small smear, I might add, and one I’d wiped away so carefully that any normal person would never have noticed.

“You mean to tell me Julia still hasn’t finished redoing y’all’s breakfast room?” I asked.

“Touché.” He looked contrite. “Forgive my shortness, Deborah. You’re quite right. I shouldn’t allow disorder at home to affect relations here.”

I groaned at the mild pun, and my cousin smiled with restored good humor. He saw the feature section of Friday’s Ledger still face up at the end of the table and said, “That’s a nice picture of you.”

Despite fulsome campaign ads on every other page, the paper had used its Focus page for a here’s-who’s-running look at all the local primary candidates: age, education background, work experience. There wasn’t enough room on the page for everyone’s picture, so only the candidates for district court judgeships, clerk of the court, and county commissioners got to have their shining faces published. For the first time it dawned on me that those were also the only three races with serious black candidates-Linsey Thomas’s subtle way of alerting blacks and liberals to the potentials for racial balance?

“I was right surprised to see Talbert’s letter,” John Claude said as he poured himself a cup of coffee and added a precise tablespoon of half-and-half from the refrigerator.

“What’s to be surprised about?” I asked, shifting all the papers over to make room for him at the end of the table. “G. Hooks writes a letter every year supporting Jesse.”

“Not G. Hook’s letter in yesterday’s News and Observer. I meant Gray Hook’s letter in Friday’s Ledger.”

“Oh, yeah. That sort of surprised me, too,” I admitted. “You reckon he and his daddy had another fight or something?”

Grayson Hooks Talbert-everyone called him G. Hooks-is one of the movers and shakers of the state’s Republican Party, a man so far to the right that he almost makes Jesse Helms look liberal. Chairman of the board and major stockholder of Talbert International, a pharmaceutical company of global proportions, he also sits on the boards of several major corporations that have profitable ties to government. Talberts always had money, but the Reagan-Bush years have been particularly good to G. Hooks, and his country estate on the Durham side of the Research Triangle now boasts its own private airstrip and two Lear jets.

All that jetting off to open new markets out on the Pacific rim was probably how a relatively moderate Republican had slipped into the lovely old Victorian governor’s mansion back here in North Carolina. Not that G. Hooks hadn’t contributed heavily to James Hardison’s election two years ago. It must have been like sucking lemons though, since the antediluvian Democrat who’d tried to pull an upset was probably closer to him philosophically than Governor Jim Hardison would ever be.

He had two sons: Gray-short for Grayson Hooks Talbert, Junior-and Victor. As near as I could tell, listening to gossip and reading between the fine lines of newsprint, the younger son had emerged from the womb with G. Hooks’s single-minded devotion to business. A dutiful ant who ran their New York office while shuttling back and forth to Capitol Hill, Victor Talbert had graduated with a Wharton MBA, married a Harvard Law whiz, and appeared quite happy to stay out of the South.

Gray, on the other hand, started off a happy-go-lucky grasshopper. Flunked out of Carolina, U VA, and the Citadel, smashed up two Porsches and a Jag before he was twenty. Without getting into a heavy nature/nurture debate, you have to wonder about the psychological damage you can do if you name your first son Junior and then don’t add Senior to your own name. To give him credit though, G. Hooks hung in and kept trying to find a proper niche for his namesake. After all, Talbert Pharmaceuticals was a huge empire, surely there was some little duchy where the princeling couldn’t screw up?

Evidently not.

Nobody knew what the final straw was-a television reporter once told me that G. Hooks had on retainer at that time a full-fledged personal publicist whose sole mission in life was to keep Gray’s name out of the papers and his face off the TV screens-but the upshot was the equivalent of being told to go sit in the corner and keep his mouth shut or plan on sweeping floors or begging on street corners the rest of his natural life.

The corner he was sent to happened to be a farmed-out piece of Colleton County dirt that joined my daddy’s land at the edge of Cotton Grove Township. G. Hooks had inherited it through his mother’s side, then never bothered to do anything with it beyond listing it for a tax loss. (Daddy’d once offered to buy it-Daddy’s like the USSR before Glasnost: always looking to put another buffer zone between him and the rest of the world-but G. Hooks had drawn himself up all righteous-like and sent word through his local manager that he didn’t deal with bootleggers.)

To everyone’s surprise, young Gray turned out to be a real farmer. Oh, there were a couple of rough years at first when he tore up the roads with his silver turbo Carrera. Some of the wild crowd followed him into exile, and there were weeklong brawls out at the farm and messy aftermaths-I represented one of the local women in her paternity suit and got her a decent settlement-but eventually things settled down. Gray settled down, too. Guess he had to. Daddy said that every time the sheriff got called out, G. Hooks would halve his allowance.

(Don’t ask me how Daddy knows that. He just does. But then he’s always kept tabs on everything that goes on around his part of the county. He may not’ve ever studied Francis Bacon, but he sure does subscribe to Bacon’s tenet that knowledge is power.)

Before Gray Talbert got his act together, he was down to ten dollars a week. A thirty-year-old playboy can’t raise much hell on that, so the rowdies quit coming around. Daddy says at that point it was probably a combination of boredom and farm genes kicking in. Whatever, Gray took to messing around in one of the old greenhouses back of the house. Then he signed up for some horticulture classes at Colleton Community College and next thing you know, he’s started himself a little nursery business. That was eight years ago, and the single dilapidated greenhouse has expanded into at least a dozen sprawled around under the pines out there. He soon got out of the retail end and just does wholesale. I have the impression that he roots liner shrubs, mostly azaleas and boxwoods, things that don’t take a lot of intensive labor.

Like everything else Talberts touch, there must be pretty good money in wholesale shrubbery because he still drives a Porsche, although more sedately these days, in keeping with the low profile he’s maintained since buckling down to business. Unlike his father, Gray’s never involved himself in politics. If I’d been asked, I’d have said that along with G. Hooks’s work ethics, Gray has probably grown into a similarly conservative mindset as he nears forty. That’s what made it so surprising that he’d write a letter to the Ledger supporting me.

“Maybe he’s just being neighborly to Kezzie,” said John Claude. “Your daddy’s been helpful about providing Talbert with people who’ll work steady.”

“Maybe he’s sweet on you,” said Sherry, who’d come in on the tail end of our conversation. Never mind that Gray Talbert and I have hardly ever even spoken to each other. Sherry’s always on the lookout for potential romance.

At which point, there was a click of high heels on the stairway and we caught a flash of honey blonde hair and the rear view of a shapely female form as it sped though the wide reception hall, past Sherry’s desk, and out the front door. Then Reid followed, knotting his tie, his jacket slung over one arm.

“Y’all leave me any coffee?” he drawled, enjoying it that none of us had realized he’d spent the night upstairs again.

The pained shadow returned to John Claude’s face.

I woke on election day to the smell of hot corn muffins entwined around fragrant tendrils of sage and fried pork. Country sausage. That comforting nostalgic blend of aromas took me straight back home to Mother’s kitchen, back to a time and place where no one worried about calories, much less cholesterol levels. As I remembered what day it was my appetite faded, but I still slipped on a robe and followed my nose down to the kitchen.

Barely six o’clock and Aunt Zell was already fully dressed to go out. She was one of the poll watchers and had to get over to the fire station early. A white denim chef’s apron protected her neat blue shirtwaist from splatters as she finished browning sausage patties in a cast-iron skillet. Corn muffins studded with blueberries big as marbles had just come from the oven, and her face was slightly flushed beneath short white hair neatly waved.

“Smells wonderful,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee, “but I’m not very hungry.”

Aunt Zell’s china blue eyes swept over me appraisingly. “Not feeling nervous, are you?”

She brought the sausage and muffins over to the breakfast table and took the chair opposite mine. Spring sunlight fell across the table and bounced off the cut crystal sugar bowl in splintered rainbows. The bright rays turned Aunt Zell’s hair to pure silver, and when she lifted her glass of orange juice, it glowed like liquid sunshine.

“At least try a little of this sausage meat,” she urged. “Your daddy sent it over yesterday evening, just special for you.”

I lifted one eyebrow in a skeptical tell-me-another and she smiled. “Well now, he did say it was for me, but then he went and slipped and said how he knows you like it with a little extra sage and not much red pepper.”

I nibbled the piece she put on my plate and God, it was good!

Hog killing used to be a two-day affair when I was little. I’d drag my footstool up to the kitchen table to watch Mother and Maidie, the black woman who worked for Mother, grind the pork and then mix it up in huge tin dishpans. They’d add salt and spices and then fry up a little “try” piece till the whole house was redolent of browned meat. The sample would be rolled around on their tongues with a critical thoughtfulness I’ve only since seen on the faces of serious wine connoisseurs.

“What do you think, Maidie?” Mother would ask.

“I believe a pinch more sage, don’t you reckon? And maybe half a dab of black pepper?”

More mixing, more try pieces, until Maidie said, “That’s it right there. We’ve got it just perfect.”

And it always was because if there’s one thing eastern North Carolina has over the rest of the whole damn world, it’s the way we know what to do with pork.

Just the same, delicious as it was on my tongue this morning, I wasn’t going to be mollified by a couple of sausage patties.

“Five whole months without even a phone call,” I said. “Not one single word of encouragement.”

“Oh, honey, what do you think this sausage is? Don’t you know yet how afraid he is that you’re going to wind up getting hurt?”

“I’m not little missy from de big house anymore,” I muttered.

“Saying something doesn’t make it so,” she said tartly.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that even when you’re an old white-haired lady and he’s been in his grave fifty years, people around here are still going to remember that you’re Kezzie Knott’s daughter. He recognizes it even if you won’t.”

Her own breakfast finished-half a muffin and two bites of sausage-Aunt Zell stood briskly and began to clear the table. Before I could think of a withering retort, the phone rang.

As soon as the first syllables reached her ear she started smiling with pure pleasure. Five years dropped from her pretty face and she signaled for me to go get on an extension. Uncle Ash was calling from South America -he’s a buyer for one of the big tobacco companies-and, unlike my own father, who wouldn’t pick up the phone and him only fifteen miles away, Uncle Ash had called all that distance to wish me luck. His booming voice was like a warm encouraging hug. “And don’t worry, shug. I sent my absentee ballot in last week by registered mail. Bet I’m the first grain of sand in what’s gonna be a real landslide.”

Ever since I woke, I’d been assailed by doubt and misgivings. “I’ll be happy if it’s just not a sand bucket,” I said.

“Aw, naw, you’re going to do just fine, idn’ she, Zell?” he boomed.

“Well of course she is!” my aunt answered smartly. “And I want your solemn word right this minute, James Ashley Smith, that you’ll be home at Thanksgiving so you can see her swearing-in.”

“Already got it on my calendar, Miz Ozella.”

I knew the conversation was about to get mooshy-Aunt Zell and Uncle Ash sometimes act like they were married only four months instead of forty years-so I got off the phone and went up to brush my teeth and find something fitting to wear.

The flowered dress and cherry tunic I’d laid out the night before looked too sweet-sixteenish this morning; and I was rummaging in my closet when Aunt Zell called up that she’d see me later. “Now don’t forget to come vote-early and often!”

I finally settled on a red-and-white houndstooth skirt with a red patent belt, red patent heels, white silk shirt, and navy blue blazer. Bright red lipstick and bright red earrings.

I looked patriotic as hell.

Reid arrived at the office just as I was leaving for court, took one look at my clothes, and offered to send over to the little theater for an Uncle Sam top hat.

Everybody’s a comedian.