Bloody Kin (8 page)

As she recalled from earlier years, there were four games the first day, two the second, and the championship game on Sunday. For three days, every business office, department store, restaurant, you name it, would suddenly sprout portable televisions and radios.

“Don’t employers
mind?”
Kate asked as she and Rob drove to a nearby restaurant.

“Most employers are in Greensboro this weekend,” he said. “And those that aren’t are hanging over a television, too.”

The restaurant was uncrowded and they were seated right away.

“So,” Kate said, resigned to the inevitable sports talk, “is Carolina going to win?”

“I guaran-damn-tee you, as Lacy would say. They’re unbeaten in conference play. Of course, Duke gave them a scare last Saturday and Maryland’s hungry to win a championship for Lefty Driesell, but Carolina has two All-Americans.”

Rob brushed at a cowlick of russet hair and laughed at the polite tilt of her head. He had heard the resignation in her voice.

“Poor Kate! You really did pick a bad time to come, didn’t you? Dead bodies in your packhouse, wall-to-wall basketball for the next three days. Depending on how many ACC teams get picked for the NCAA, you may not get anybody to talk about politics, the Middle East, or even prayer in the public schools till after the first of April!”

“Murder takes second place too,” she said, and told Rob of his brother’s decision to wait till the next day to pick up the picture of Bernie Covington.

“You have to remember that Dwight helped win a basketball championship in our high school division. Once a player, always a fan.”

“You didn’t play?”

“Oh, I played. Second string. My team just didn’t have the same talent as Dwight’s. We finished third every time. I was better at baseball.”

“Was it hard having a brother you couldn’t match?” Kate asked shrewdly.

“Do I sound jealous?” His slanted green eyes were rueful. “You know, Dwight could have played for Carolina. The recruiters were interested, but he wanted to join the army, see the world. When I got over to Chapel Hill, I couldn’t even make junior varsity.” He grinned at her and the playful fox look returned to his pointed face. “Sibling rivalry’s a dreadful thing, Kate. Be grateful you’re an only child. You ready to order?”

Kate prudently chose a salad plate and glass of white wine. Rob opted for a steak sandwich and beer.

“Who’s Bernie Covington, anyhow?” he asked. “And why does Dwight want his picture?”

Kate had forgotten that Rob hadn’t been there when Lacy remembered that Jake’s old army acquaintance also had a prominent black mole on his right cheek. “Miss Emily must be slipping,” she teased when she had explained.

“Dwight must have gone straight back to Dobbs,” Rob agreed.

“On the other hand, he’s one of the few people who can spend an hour with Mother and leave knowing more than he’s told.”

“Like what’s happened to his marriage?” Kate guessed.

Rob nodded. “He’s hurting, but all he’ll say is that Jonna likes her own home town out in western Virginia better than she likes Dobbs or Washington and that the divorce will be final this summer if they can agree on custody and visitation for their son. I offered to handle it for him, but he told me to butt out and I did.”

His tone was light, but Kate sensed the hurt.

“Anyhow,” she said, steering the conversation back to less personal ground, “Lacy mislaid the snapshots Jake sent him years ago, but I found copies in the things that came today.”

“Was it the same man?”

Kate shrugged. “It would be quite a coincidence, wouldn’t it?”

Their food arrived and as they ate, Kate mused, “Odd how much difference a beard makes. I can’t get used to Gordon without his, can you?”

“I hardly knew him,” said Rob. “You heard Mother: once Gordon and Elaine married, they took off for more exotic climes. Colleton County was too provincial for them. I doubt if I ever saw him or his brother, either, more than two or three times in the last few years and that was always at a party or some sort of mob scene where you can’t speak to anyone except at a shout. I’ve only come to know Gordon since Thanksgiving. I do know I’ve heard Mother and Bessie talk that when Jake tried to play matchmaker, it was between James and Elaine, not Gordon. Jake ever mention it?”

“I’d forgotten all about that,” said Kate, “but you’re right. It was after Vietnam. They were all back in college then and James came down for spring break. Jake told me he thought James and Elaine might click, but nothing ever happened. Then Gordon tagged along the summer Patricia and Philip were married and it was love at first sight.”

According to Bessie Stewart, the first sight of a millionaire brother-in-law probably hadn’t hurt either. True or not, thought Rob, Elaine and Gordon had seemed perfectly matched: both had proper bloodlines and Elaine’s allowance from Patricia was large enough to finance the sort of life they wanted. Even Bessie and his mother approved of how devoted to each other Elaine and Gordon appeared.

He wondered aloud why James had never married.

“Jake said he couldn’t afford to,” said Kate. “There was a small trust fund somewhere. Enough to keep him off the unemployment line, but not enough to support a wife in the style-to-which, et cetera. I think that’s why they had drifted apart by the time Jake met me. You know what a workaholic Jake could be. He just couldn’t understand a man not settling down to a real career, and James seemed to be the perpetual houseguest. Always the extra man to balance Elaine’s table.

“They kept in touch, though—met for drinks when James was passing through town, and he came over for dinner once right after we were married; but I think Jake was disappointed in the way James’s life was turning out, even though he never said so.” Jake’s loyalty to people and places was another of the things Kate missed with aching sorrow.

To change the subject and take away the sad look in her eyes, Rob said, “I hear you’re ready to start remodeling the packhouse tomorrow?”

Her lips widened in a slow smile. “Is that maid at Gilead by any chance one of Bessie Stewart’s nieces?”

“DeWanda Lanelle Sanders,” he admitted with one of his small tight grins. “She’s got a sister if you need someone to help out this spring.”

“Gordon told me that you’d staffed Gilead. I’m surprised you hired outsiders like the Whitleys.”

Rob finished his sandwich and shook his head when the waiter suggested another beer. “It’s hard to get someone local who’ll live in,” he said, “and the trustees don’t like to leave Gilead without someone on the premises. The college has been good about finding responsible prospects, although—come to think of it—it was Whitley who approached me last fall. He was recommended by the grad student who’d had it before him.”

“Is Tom Whitley a graduate student, too?” she asked, sipping the last of her wine.

“Because he’s older? No. He dropped out of high school and ran away to the army. I believe he got an equivalency diploma in the service, and last spring decided not to make a military career, but come east and study horticulture or landscaping instead. His wife’s a kindergarten teacher, you know, so it worked out perfectly when Gordon needed an emergency nursemaid for Mary Pat. You’re sure you don’t want another glass of wine?”

“And go reeling into my obstetrician’s office? No, thank you.” She glanced at her watch and saw that it was nearly time for her appointment.

Rob called for the bill and on their way out, they paused by the cash register to watch the final shot of the game as Carolina put Clemson away for the year, 78-66.

C
HAPTER
9

All up and down the radio dial, sportscasters were going wild. Duke and Georgia Tech seesawed back and forth with the lead.

“Duke’s ahead 61-59. Here comes Price with a twenty-five-footer.

Tech ties it up for the ninth time. Duke in possession.
Stolen
by Petway. Twelve seconds left—Petway to Price—
missed!
And we’re going into overtime!” shrieked a hoarse announcer.

Kate kept her eyes on the road, but her fingers continued to twiddle the dial knob until she hit a radio station playing an old Beatles song. Her foot relaxed on the accelerator and she dropped just below the speed limit, soothed as always by the strains of “Penny Lane.”

An aroma of celery and freshly baked wheat rolls rose from the brown grocery sacks on the back seat.

“More fruits and vegetables and roughage,” the obstetrician had said. The doctor had been brisk and efficient and, on the whole, pleased with Kate’s physical condition. “But no nonsense about dieting,” she told Kate. “You’re almost too thin. Drink a milk shake once in a while and try to cut out the cigarettes.”

Dr. Teresa Yates had been recommended by her doctor in New York, and Kate thought they would probably be compatible once basketball season ended. There was a small television set in the waiting room and Dr. Yates’s nurse kept popping in and out to relay the score throughout Kate’s examination.

It figured. A certificate behind Dr. Yates’s desk announced that she had interned at Duke Hospital.

There was one good side to the tournament, though. Kate hated having anyone hover while she tried on clothes, and the salesclerks at the maternity shop could barely be pried away from the game long enough to take her money for the slacks and tops she’d selected and tried on as freely as if she’d been alone in her own closet.

At the crossroads before her turnoff to the farm, Kate pulled in at a shabby white-frame country grocery and parked between a late-model pickup and one that was even older than Lacy’s.

Inside, the potbellied stove had been replaced by a small gas grate, but several men still sat around the soft drink chest on upended wooden cartons and slat-bottomed chairs to watch the ball game on a black-and-white television set up in a corner. They gave polite nods as Kate entered.

Cracker barrels and open bins of pickles were long gone and penny candy was two for a nickel these days, yet some things remained as they were when Jake was a small boy and had ridden his bike here for his mother to pick up items not worth a special trip into town: a loaf of bread, cigarettes, a quart of milk, or, best of all, a wedge of cheese.

Wheels of mild cheddar—everyone called it hoop cheese—still came in round wooden boxes, and no city supermarket could match its flavor. Mrs. Fowler, the stout and graying matron who tended the store, rose to fetch her knife as Kate approached the counter.

“Bet I know what you want,” she smiled, and Kate acknowledged that she’d guessed correctly.

As the storekeeper cut off a generous hunk, weighed and wrapped it in waxed paper, she told Kate how glad they were to hear she was going to be living here for good; then, lowering her voice, said how awful it was that someone had been killed in her packhouse and did Dwight Bryant have any idea who he was or why he was there?

“Not for sure,” said Kate, “I believe they’re still checking his fingerprints.”

Before she could open her purse, Mrs. Fowler asked, “Want me to put this on y’all’s tab?”

“Tab?” asked Kate.

The woman’s kindly face took on an embarrassed look. “I thought maybe—that is, uh— Well, did you mean to keep on like Jake did?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fowler, but I don’t understand.”

“Well, see, Mr. Lacy’s always put things on tab here—gas, drinks, Nabs and such little mess as that—and then Jake always paid it ’fore he went back to New York.” Like many country people, Mrs. Fowler was self-conscious about appearing to press for payment. “There’s no rush,” she assured Kate, “but it’s starting to be right much and—”

“How
much?” asked Kate. Mrs. Fowler consulted a little green notepad that had “Honeycutt” penciled on the front. She punched keys on her old-fashioned adding machine, then tore off the tape and handed it to Kate: $347.63.

“I know that’s a lot,” Mrs. Fowler apologized, “but it’s been five months and I’m sure Mr. Lacy didn’t realize . . .”

Kate made herself smile reassuringly. “It’s all right. It’s just that I don’t have my checkbook with me.”

“Oh, no hurry,” said Mrs. Fowler, anxious to put money talk behind them. “No hurry at all.”

Nevertheless, as Kate returned to her car with the cheese she realized that $347.63 probably represented a full month’s profit for Mrs. Fowler. Lacy really shouldn’t have let it go so long. On the other hand, if Jake had been automatically taking care of it for him, Lacy had probably forgotten that his day to day out-of-pocket expenses were now his own responsibility. She and Jake had always paid the utilities at the farm and restocked the freezer and pantry when they were down, because Jake said Lacy was too proud to take money. Evidently not too proud to let Jake pay his bills, though.

She approached the cutoff to the road past the Honeycutt farm, and she saw Willy Stewart out on his tractor, an enormous John Deere with a closed-in cab and some sort of wide mechanism trailing along behind.

It inched across the field, axle-deep in lush green oats, and it looked to Kate like some prehistoric brontosaurus munching its way across a herbaceous plain.

She signaled for a right turn just as Miss Emily zoomed up from the opposite direction with her left-turn signal flashing erratically from its electric-purple fender.

Kate waved and started past, but Miss Emily honked her horn and signaled for Kate to roll down her window.

“Stop and visit with me a few minutes,” the older woman invited.

“Okay,” she called, and Miss Emily whipped in front of her to lead the way through the drive and around to the back. Since coming to the country, Kate often amused herself by trying to spot houses that actually used their front doors. Often, the front entrances were completely abandoned. They sat in stately isolation facing beautiful lawns unmarked by even a walk to connect doors to the grounds. Most seemed to be used only for home funerals or weddings. Unless a house was as grand as Gilead, or the callers total strangers, everyone came to the back door automatically and passed through the kitchen to more formal areas of the house.

Emily Bryant slung an armload of books and folders onto the deacon’s bench inside her glassed-in sun porch. The orange jacket of her yellow and orange pantsuit followed. Beneath, a fuzzy orange jersey molded her plump torso. She looked like a little round tangerine as she bustled about her kitchen.

“Well, that’s
one
week I’m glad to see finished. I had those McNeeley twins in my office four times this week. They’re going to spend the rest of the year in detention hall if they don’t straighten up their wing feathers and start flying in the same direction as their teachers. Their daddy was just the same but I was twenty years younger when he came through school and there was only one of him. How was Robbie? Was the doctor nice? And wasn’t that Duke game the most exciting thing you ever saw?”

Kate laughed. “I didn’t see it.”

“Well, neither did I,” Miss Emily admitted. “Those dratted McNeeleys. But I heard the end of overtime on my way home. Iced tea, or would you rather have a Pepsi with something in it?”

“Tea’s fine,” said Kate, who no longer saw anything odd about the ubiquitous beverage.

From icy January through sweltering August, few were the true Tar Heels who didn’t keep a half-gallon jar of iced tea in the refrigerator year-round. Although most of the towns were wet now, the counties were still predominantly dry, so everyone had grown up on soft drinks or iced tea. Until recently, with or without lemon were the only choices offered. City restaurants had learned to ask before adding sugar, but most crossroads cafes still took for granted that their patrons expected iced tea to arrive at the table strong and sweet.

“But wasn’t Christ’s first miracle turning water to wine?” Kate had asked when originally confronted with the Bible Belt’s official antipathy to anything alcoholic.

“Yeah,” Jake had grinned, “but the Southern Baptists’ first miracle was turning the wine to iced tea.”

Remembering, Kate smiled as she took the tall frosty glass.

Miss Emily smiled back, her plump face rosy beneath the tangled red curls. “Did you hear the baby’s heartbeat today?”

Kate paused in mid-sip. “Yes, I did! How did you know? Was that nurse another of Bessie’s nieces?”

“Just a guess. Well, no, I do listen to what some of the younger teachers tell me and they get so excited when the doctor puts the stethoscope in their ears. Our doctors never thought to let my generation in on the fun. Whenever people start talking about the good old days, I say let them have it. Can you imagine what childbirth must have been like for my mother? You’re not going to have amniocentesis, are you?”

Kate dragged her thoughts away from that miraculous little heartbeat she’d heard today between the sturdier thumps of her own heart. “No, the doctor didn’t say anything about needing it. Why?”

“Oh, well, I expect I’m old-fashioned, but it seems like knowing the sex months ahead is like knowing in July what Santa Claus is going to bring you for Christmas. All the mystery’s gone.”

As she spoke, the back door opened and Bessie Stewart came in with a basket of neatly folded, if bizarrely colored, laundry.

“All what mystery’s gone?” she asked. “Dwight find out who that man was in your packhouse, Kate?”

Again, as with Rob earlier, Kate explained about Jake’s army friend with a similar mole and how she’d found the pictures this morning and relayed the name to Dwight, who, she regretted to report, was too engrossed with basketball to come out this afternoon.

“But it’s the ACC Tournament,” said Miss Emily.

“So I’ve heard,” Kate said dryly. “I’m surprised to see Willy out in the field, Bessie. I thought he was a rabid fan, too.”

“He’s not too partial to Duke,” said Bessie. “’Sides, he’s got a radio on the tractor and I ’spect he heard Duke give Georgia a whipping. Don’t try to talk to him tonight, though. If State don’t beat Maryland, there won’t be no living with that man the rest of March.”

She shook her head when Emily offered tea and passed on through the kitchen to put away the laundry.

“I guess I’d better be on my way,” said Kate, slowly pulling on her jacket.

“Lacy minding his manners any better today?” asked Miss Emily, who seemed to read her shifting mood.

“Some. By the way, who’s Tucker Sauls?”

“Tucker Sauls? He runs a little sawmill up past the county line. Why?”

“No reason. He was there when I got back from dinner with Gordon and Mary Pat. And I might have known that was your niece helping with dinner, Bessie,” she teased as the other returned.

“It’s right nice having her close by,” Bessie said guilelessly.

“What about Tucker Sauls?” Miss Emily persisted.

“Not much. He was there and Lacy introduced him. Said they were going to haul some logs out of the bottom for firewood. I just wondered if he was someone I was supposed to remember since Lacy made a point of introducing him.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t met him before,” said Miss Emily. “They’re old fishing buddies from way back.”

“Had ’em a fish trap down on the creek twenty-five years ago, didn’t they?” asked Bessie with an arched eyebrow.

“Needed tending night and day,” Miss Emily agreed with solemn impishness.

“What?” asked Kate, who sensed a hidden mirth.

“Nothing, nothing,” they chorused.

“Oh, come on,” Kate wheedled. “What were they doing? Courting?”

The thought of Lacy Honeycutt and Tucker Sauls sweet-talking any women into joining them at a fish trap set them giggling like teenagers and Kate had a sudden glimpse of the laughter and intimacy these two had shared for over half a century.

“Well,” said Miss Emily, “you knew that Lacy used to own land on the other side of the creek towards Dobbs?”

“Yes. Jake said the farm went all the way to the crossroads before his grandfather divided it.”

“That’s right. Andrew got the homeplace, him being the older; and Lacy got the piece east of Blacksnake Creek. Andrew was always sensible and settled, but Lacy was—”

She hesitated and looked at Bessie.

“Wild,” Bessie said promptly.

“Not really mean, though.”

“Maybe not polecat-mean,” said Bessie, striving for strict fairness, “but you got to say he was the devil’s playmate sometimes. Remember that night he got Hassie Ferrell drunk and left him for dead in the gravehole that’d been dug for old Mr. Tink’s funeral? And the time Willy’s cousin Marcellus—”

“Even dead and skinned, Marcellus should’ve known the difference between a skunk and a possum,” Miss Emily interrupted. “Anyhow, we’re talking about Tucker Sauls and that still he and Lacy used to have down on Lacy’s side of the creek bottom.”

“A still?” asked Kate.

Both women nodded.

“A
moonshine
still?”

“Just a little one,” said Bessie, still being fair.

“Couldn’t have been very big or they wouldn’t have been able to keep moving it up and down the creek bank till the sheriff got tired of hunting for it,” Miss Emily said complacently. “They weren’t doing it for money. Not like Kezzie Knott. They just wanted something smooth for themselves and a few friends.”

“Would’ve been all right if they kept it to grown-ups,” Bessie chuckled. A gold crown gleamed behind her warm brown lips whenever she laughed.

“They sold white lightning to
children?”

“Not sold,” said Miss Emily. “What happened was, Jake followed Lacy down to the still when he was about four one day and pestered them till Tucker Sauls gave him a little noggin. Men! It was just like them to forget little boys don’t have the same constitution as big boys. Jake got drunk as a lord and first he threw up and then he turned green and fell down. Scared the pure mischief out of Lacy and Tucker, too, for once.