Bootlegger’s Daughter (12 page)

The polls opened at 6:30 a.m. and closed at 7:30 p.m. It made for a very long day.

Judge Harrison Hobart managed to keep his feelings reined in as I walked a couple of misdemeanor larceny cases by him. Now that primary day was upon us and he was barred from running again, the old fossil had decided to go out with dignified formality.

Judge Perry Byrd was a different horse altogether.

A horse’s ass, to get more specific.

With his broad face more florid than usual, he was sarcastic and snide and nitpicked every motion I made in the routine breaking-and-entering I had to argue before him. As soon as he’d rendered a guilty verdict and I’d given notice of appeal, I got out of his courtroom before I said something we’d both regret.

Most everyone around the courthouse wished me luck and swore that they’d either already voted for me, or surely would before the polls closed. I took it with a grain of salt big as a cow block and drove on over to the fire station.

Lunch hour had filled the polling place with familiar faces, and the usual jokes and glad-handing went on as we waited in line to vote. One of my high school classmates was tending the Republican register. “I’d wish you luck, Deborah, but you’re sitting in the wrong pew.”

“That’s okay, Kath,” I smiled. “Can’t everybody sing with the angels.”

We still use paper ballots in Dobbs. One of the party elders handed me this year’s sheaf of seven IBM cards and a soft pencil, and I went into an empty curtained booth to mark my choices. Aunt Zell was posted by the machine at the end and she smiled at me encouragingly as I fed in my ballots one at a time, face down.

“I’ll be home soon as the polls close,” she promised. “Folks’ll probably start coming in before nine.”

I told her I hoped she hadn’t fixed all that fancy food for nothing.

“Family’s going to come whether you win or lose,” she said. “But you’re going to win! You’ll see. Now go have some lunch and quite worrying.”

Following Aunt Cell’s advice, I drove through a fast-food lane, ordered a cheeseburger with everything, fries, and a drink, and took them back to the office. Sherry eyed the yellow-and-red bag hungrily when I came through the door.

“The phone hasn’t quit ringing all morning,” she said. “I haven’t had a minute to go eat.”

Since most of the calls were well-wishers for me, I guiltily pretended I’d been thoughtful and brought her lunch. “I couldn’t remember if you liked it all the way or not,” I lied, “but maybe you can scrape off what you don’t want.”

My appetite was gone again anyhow.

“Now isn’t that nice of you!” said Sherry, flipping on the answering machine before heading for the kitchen. “And you can just go right on in and work in peace,” she added officiously. “I won’t put through any phone calls unless they’re real business.”

Both Reid and John Claude were out, so I had no excuse to idle around the place, and Sherry was right in hinting about the work that needed my attention. There were pleadings to write, depositions to read, motions to draft, but I couldn’t concentrate. The afternoon dragged along on little snail feet, and the few calls that got past Sherry were more than welcome.

Eventually, the grandmother clock on my mantelpiece limped its way around to four-thirty and I was ready to pack it in when Reid stuck his handsome face in the door and started humming “Hail to the Chief!”

“Idiot!” I laughed as my spirits began to rise again.

“So what time do the games begin?” He pushed his way on in, followed by John Claude, who had to carry the firm’s mantle of dignity by default.

“Aunt Zell says around nine, but y’all can come on anytime. You, too, Sherry,” I called through the open door. “Bring that good-looking boyfriend, too, if you want.”

“Does that mean I can bring Fitzi?” asked Reid.

“What the hell’s a Fitzi?” I laughed. “That blonde we didn’t see yesterday morning?”

“Hey, you really didn’t see that particular lady,” Reid warned. “All the details of her divorce settlement haven’t been worked out yet and-”

“Dammit all, Reid!” John Claude was past pained shadows and into outright indignation. “You promised!”

“Promised what?”

“You know very well what,” our senior partner said icily.

“I promised not to fuck any more of our clients.” Reid’s face was that of an innocent child unjustly accused. “You didn’t say I couldn’t fuck Ambrose Daughtridge’s.”

“She’s Daughtridge’s client?”

“Well, of course. Didn’t I give you my word?” He drew himself up and put on an exaggerated drawl. “A Stephenson never breaks his word. Suh, you have impugned my honoh as a gentleman.”

“A gentleman doesn’t use the f word in front of a lady,” John Claude said crisply.

I gave Reid my fiercest glare before he could make the obvious rejoinder.

By ten o’clock, Aunt Zell’s whole downstairs was jammed with people. From the kitchen to the front veranda, it seemed like Knotts and Stephensons were there in their thousands, and Smiths and Lees in their ten thousands. Not to mention half the neighborhood.

The initial returns were in and just as I’d hoped, the two white men had knocked each other out of the race. Luther Parker and I were the front-runners, predicted to wind up with fifty-three percent of the vote, although our actual finishing positions were too close to call. Sherry had gone over to the courthouse, stationed herself in the lobby outside the board of elections office, and kept calling over with the figures till it was clear that the runoff would be between Luther Parker and me.

I finally managed to get through to him and we congratulated each other and someone on an extension line-whether his or mine I couldn’t tell-exclaimed, “And may the best man win!”

Parker chuckled. “You might want to rephrase that, Miss Knott.”

The party swung into high gear after that, despite the lack of anything harder than sparkling cider and iced tea. The dining table was loaded with platters of finger food, and there was too much laughing and talking to hear myself think. Minnie was so ecstatic about me passing the first hurdle that she wanted to sit down in the middle of all the hoopla and start mapping out the rest of my campaign.

“Not tonight!” cried Seth and grabbed her hand and danced her out into the wide central hall where fiddles and guitars were tuning up on the staircase.

Further up, near the landing, a bunch of teenagers-cousins, nieces, and nephews-camped on the staircase to watch their elders play. They always start out too cool to join in. Nevertheless, I saw toes tapping and signaled to my brother Haywood’s youngest son, eighteen now and a senior at West Colleton High. Stevie turned red, but he eased past his daddy, who was cutting loose on the fiddle, and met me at the bottom of the stairs. Someone had carted out the Persian rug that usually covered the parqueted floor and we two-stepped up and down the hall, following Minnie and Seth. Then Will handed his guitar to Reid and everyone clapped hands as he and Reid’s red-haired Fitzi did a cross between an Trish jig and mountain clogging. (A Fitzi, I’d discovered, was a gorgeous third-year law student named Patsy Fitzgerald, who was going to spend the summer clerking for one of the state justices in Raleigh.)

Most of the kids knew a little clogging and soon they were into it too. Minnie and I passed from hand to hand as more dancers crowded into the hall or spun off into the living room. Eventually, Stevie came round again.

“So whose heart are you breaking this year?” I asked him as we swung through the dining room for another glass of cider.

“Not me,” he shrugged, suddenly serious.

“Somebody breaking yours?”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” he said. “Could we? For just a minute?”

“Sure, honey. What’s wrong?”

We took our glasses out onto the side terrace and I sat down on the white brick wall. Stevie leaned against a nearby pillar. The mild night air felt good after the warmth of dancing among crowded bodies. Overhead, the moon was one night from full and shone in the sky like a battered silver platter handed down through the generations: most of the decorations polished flat now, but a precious heirloom all the same. I’d shed my jacket and changed earlier into a more festive skirt, but I still wore my red patent heels and they glistened in the moonlight. I tapped my heels together lightly, experimentally, and looked up to see Stevie watching.

He grinned. “Does it feel like Oz?”

“Not yet. Ask me again after the runoff next month.”

“You’ll win,” he said loyally. “Aunt Minnie says you have poll appeal and Dad says she knows politics.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “but that’s not what you wanted to talk about, was it?”

“What’s going on with Gayle Whitehead?”

“What makes you think anything’s going on?” I countered.

He gave me a patient look. “She said there was. She said she doesn’t want to talk about it, but if I really wanted to know, you’d tell me.”

“Stevie-”

“Is this the famous attorney-client confidentiality you always hear about on those lawyer shows?” he asked.

I leaned back on my hands. “If you’re still planning to go to law school, you’d better quit thinking it’s like a Paramount sound stage. I didn’t know you and Gayle were going together.”

“We’re just starting,” he said. “We’ve been good friends for years, but lately- I don’t know. It’s like now that high school’s coming to an end, we’ve suddenly realized it’s maybe something more than just a friendship.”

Before I could say something wise and auntlike, he grinned, “Yeah, we know all about nostalgia and fear of the future. We also know we’ve got at least four years of college before we can do anything about it. All the same, right now…”

Ah, the sweet right now!

“Anyhow, she really did say you could tell me,” he finished earnestly.

I believed him, so I did.

When I concluded, he was quiet. All the kids had grown up knowing that Gayle’s mother had been murdered, but now that he cared for her, I guess it was the first time the edges had been taken off for him.

He gave me such a pure look of “Here am I, Lord, send me,” that I jumped up and hugged him hard. “Thanks for offering, honey. If there’re any dragons you can slay, I will ask you, I promise.”

The party was winding down as we came back inside. “Ah, there’s our candidate,” beamed Miss Sallie Anderson. “Come right here and let me hug you good night, honey, before I take these poor old bones home to bed.”

More neighbors followed, but there were plenty of friends and kinfolk left as Will and Haywood picked up their instruments and began to play a final and familiar tune. Seth carried the verse in his clear baritone and I went and stood beside him to sing alto. One of my earliest memories was harmonizing with Seth, me just a baby and him nearly grown. The others stood and listened till the chorus; then everyone linked arms and swayed together, and all our voices blended in a sweetness too beautiful to bear:

Will the circle be unbroken

By and by, Lord, by and by?

There’s a better home a-waiting,

In the sky, Lord, in the sky.

Corny as that old song is, it always brings tears to my eyes. My mother dead, Seth and Haywood’s mother dead, our daddy too proud to come celebrate tonight-our circle sure was gapped.

Even so, enough of it remained.

My one scheduled court case next day had been postponed, but it didn’t help as much as I’d hoped for catching up on office chores. Every time I’d start to dictate a letter or abstract a deposition, the phone would ring. I’d finished about a half a percentage point ahead of Luther Parker-exactly sixty-two votes ahead, to be exact-and everybody who hadn’t come by the house last night seemed minded to call in their congratulations.

“I’ll say you’re busy if you want me to,” Sherry offered. Wednesday mornings were usually slow for her, too, because that’s when John Claude normally attended court in Widdington and Reid headed for Makely.

“No, I’ll talk to them.” As long as people felt like they had a personal stake in my election, every conversation could mean one more vote in June.

Most well-wishers were disposed of quickly, but Minnie kept me on the line forty-five minutes discussing how best to utilize our less than thirty days till the runoff election. Even the defeated ADA from Black Creek called to say-at pompous length-that I could count on his support both now and in November. No word from Perry Byrd’s fat protégé. He’d struck me as a closet Republican though, so I doubted if he’d be supporting Luther Parker either.

I kept going straight through lunch and by midafternoon had just about had it with telephones. When Sherry buzzed that Gayle Whitehead was there, I immediately pushed aside the papers and had her sent in.

“This is probably a bad time,” Gayle apologized.

“Your timing’s perfect. You don’t know what a relief it is to actually see who I’m talking to.” I waved her over to a chair and caught a whiff of fragrance. I almost never wear perfume and it makes me sensitive to everybody else’s. This was something light that reminded me of my mother’s spring gardens. Wisteria? Narcissus? I was caught offstep by an underlying hint of tobacco. A lot of high school kids still think it’s cool to smoke; evidently that included Gayle.

“I’m sorry you didn’t flat-out win yesterday.” She wore jeans and sneakers today and her hair was caught up in a loose ponytail by a yellow plastic clip that matched her yellow shirt. “I voted for you.”

“Hey, your first time voting, wasn’t it?” Incredible to realize that little baby Gayle could now help pick judges and presidents, negotiate contracts and marry or join the army without parental consent.

“You really are all growed up, aren’t you?” I teased.

“Yeah.” Dimples flashed in her cheeks. “Still not old enough to buy beer though.”

“Do you want to?” Despite what I see in the courtroom, I’m always curious about what turns people on.