I grinned back. “My fifty-cent milk pitchers.”
“Excuse me?”
So I gave him an abbreviated version of Daddy’s tale of old Mrs. Crocker and how determined she’d been to save a worthless piece of china.
He nodded. “That’ll happen.”
As new arrivals bore down upon us, I said, “I hope your wife will be joining us later?”
“No, I’m afraid she doesn’t feel well. She’s subject to migraines and one caught up with her today.”
He wasn’t used to lying and I wondered what the real story was there. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to wonder long because I was immediately surrounded by friends and relatives and half the county’s movers and shakers, each needing a hug or a handshake and some words of welcome or, since many of them had been at Mount Olive last Sunday, words of dismay about what had happened in Colleton County.
To my surprise, Wallace Adderly arrived with the Reverend Ligon.
“Hope you don’t mind me crashing, Judge,” he said with easy charm. “I hear your brothers are famous for their barbecue.”
Early forties or not, Adderly had no gray strands in his close-cropped hair. I’d seen pictures of him back in his activist days when he wore his hair in an enormous Afro. Back then he’d been tall and whippet-thin with a feral cast to his features. Now, he was broader of face and figure. Not fat, just matured to his fullest physical potential through prosperity and regular meals.
“Delighted you could come,” I assured him. “I’d have sent you an invitation had I known you were going to still be here.”
“Oh yes,” he said with pointed deliberation. “I’m probably going to be here quite a while yet.”
The pigs started coming off the grills at one o’clock and Isabel and Aunt Sister got their hushpuppy assembly line fired up. By one-thirty, Will and Robert had chopped enough pork to get started.
We didn’t have a podium per se, but my brothers and sisters-in-law and I gathered together near the front tent where Daddy was sitting with Luther and Louise Parker and my cousin John Claude Lee, home from Turkey only yesterday. When Daddy stood up and rang the hand bell, everyone fell silent. Past eighty now, he was still straight and tall and his soft white hair held the mark of the straw Stetson he was holding in his strong hands.
“My family and I welcome you,” he said. “It’s always a pleasure to us to have friends and neighbors join us like this. I ain’t much for making speeches—yeah, Rufus, I hear you back there saying ‘Good’—”
People laughed as Aunt Sister’s husband held up his wrist and tapped his watch.
“—and I ain’t gonna let people who are good at making speeches talk till all the barbecue gets cold. But all across this country, they’s folks like you and me having picnics and cookouts today and taking a minute to think about why we celebrate the Fourth of July. It’s our birthday. The birthday of America. America don’t always get it right and she’s messed up pretty bad sometimes. But even messed up, she’s still a lot better than anyplace else and we got to work to keep her that way. I ain’t saying reelect my daughter and Luther Parker or reelect these county commissioners and Sheriff Bo Poole because America will fall apart if you don’t, but it’s people like them that does America’s work and keeps her strong. Long as they’re doing a good job in our little part of America, I say let’s keep them!”
Loud applause, then Daddy called for everybody to stand and Annie Sue stepped forward to lead the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
She and Louise Parker were probably the only ones who hit “And the rockets’ red glare” dead on, but the rest of us made up in enthusiasm for what we lacked in ability.
More clapping.
“They’s too many preachers here today for us to favor one over the other,” Daddy said slyly, “so I’m gonna ask Judge Luther Parker to say grace.”
Luther had evidently been primed, for he did ask God’s help during these trying times and he did commend the soul of Arthur Hunt to God’s mercy. Then he gave thanks for the day’s fellowship and concluded by asking “that Thou bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and our souls to Thy service. Amen.”
Hearty amens echoed his and soon double lines were passing down both sides of the serving tables where Minnie stood with a watchful eye, calling for fresh bowls of coleslaw or more hushpuppies as the baskets got low.
When I stopped to see if she needed any help, she had an infectious smile on her face. “Don’t you just love watching people?”
“Who?”
“Second table on the left. Don’t stare. Clifford Gevirtz and Alison Lazarus. He’s wearing a yellow shirt, she’s got on a blue dress. I said don’t stare.”
The woman looked vaguely familiar but I didn’t recognize the man and certainly neither of them had Colleton County names.
“Who’re Clifford Gevirtz and Alison Lazarus?”
“He’s the new large-animal vet.”
“The one that pulled Silver Dollar through colic this spring?”
Minnie nodded. “And she directs the literacy program here in the county. I introduced them last week and now here they are together. Don’t they make a nice couple?”
“Matchmaking again, Minnie?”
“Well, why not? They’re both from New York and they’re both single and he’s the best horse doctor we’ve had in a long time. And married men are more likely to stay put than bachelors. I do wish we could find somebody for Dwight Bryant.”
Dwight was going through the line just then with a tow-headed little boy in front of him.
“Hey, Cal,” I called. “When’d you get down?”
“Hey, Miss Deborah!” A snaggle-toothed grin lit up his face. “My daddy came and got me last night.”
Dwight’s son and ex-wife lived in the western part of Virginia, a good five-hour drive away the way Dwight drives, but that doesn’t stop him from making the trip whenever Jonna will let him have Cal for the weekend.
I broke line for a crisp hot hushpuppy and munched my way through hungry ranks to the table occupied by some of the courthouse crowd, including Cyl DeGraffenried, who didn’t look overjoyed to be here. Clerk of Court Ellis Glover stood up with a half-eaten ear of corn in his hand and tried to give me his seat, but I motioned him back down and perched on the edge of my cousin Reid’s chair as they hashed over the week’s events yet again.
“—only thing saving us from the media sticking a microphone in our face every minute is no decent hotels out in the country,” said Sheriff Bo Poole. “Keeps ’em in Raleigh.” He sprinkled a few drops of Texas Pete hot sauce over his barbecue. “Keeps ’em there at night, anyhow.”
“That and the quick arrest,” said Magistrate Gwen Utley, blotting her lips with a paper napkin. “Knowing who did it takes the air out of their stories.”
Reid was representing the Bagwell boy. He said nothing.
“You are going to plead your client guilty, aren’t you?” asked Alex Currin, who, like me, is a district court judge and would therefore not be hearing the case.
“Hard to make a man plead guilty when he knows he didn’t do it,” said Reid.
“Yeah?” said Currin. “I heard they took a handwriting sample and Starling’s printing matches what’s on the church.”
“Starling’s not my client,” Reid said.
“But your client says they were together that night,” said Portland Brewer, and she reminded Reid of a story that had appeared in the paper only yesterday.
A reporter had gone back and researched the sale of Starling land some twenty-two years earlier, at least two years before Charles Starling was even born, to what became Balm of Gilead Church. He had spoken to contemporaries of Starling’s grandfather, Leon, and he had pieced together a portrait of a hot-tempered alcoholic who used to run up huge tabs at various shot houses around the county. In less than fifteen years, the man literally drank up an inheritance of thirty-two acres and a crossroads country store back when you could still buy a farm for another four hundred dollars an acre.