Home Fires

15

He that feeds the birds

Will not starve His babes

—Hico Baptist Church

July the Fourth came three days later.

Despite the fiasco of the pig-picking Daddy had thrown for me the first time I ran for judge, he saw no reason not to do it again, and invitations had been distributed by voice or mail in early June for a Fourth of July blowout.

The problem with a party this size is that it quickly assumes a juggernaut momentum of its own and you can’t stop it on a dime.

For a dime either, as far as that goes.

Deposits had been paid on rental tents and tables, the pigs had been ordered, the cabbages and the hushpuppy mix bought, cartons of soft drinks, paper plates and plastic utensils were piled high in my new garage, along with a stack of borrowed pots for boiling corn on the cob and pails for icing down the drinks. Plastic tubs already held a half-dozen watermelons and waited for the ice water that would chill them properly. Cousins were flying in from Atlanta and Washington.

Black citizens were still roiled up and angrily denounced the climate that could produce a Bagwell and Starling. Wallace Adderly had been on every local television channel and most of the radio talk shows to voice their basic concerns as he saw them.

“Churches are our key institutions,” he said. “Not the schools, not city hall, not the playing fields and gymnasiums. When you burn a church, you do more than destroy a building. You strike at the very heart of the African-American community. Every white person in this state ought to rise up in shame for what has happened in this one small area, this despicable attempt to undermine the strength of a people who will not be denied.”

Nevertheless, with both culprits in jail, and with offers of help pouring in from all over, tensions were easing and most of the media had pulled back to New York and D.C.

I had conferred with Seth’s wife, Minnie, about whether a big political celebration would seem frivolous so soon after the burnings in which a man died. (Minnie’s my campaign adviser and can usually read the community’s pulse.)

“Life keeps moving,” she said philosophically. “Some people are always going to pick fault, but let’s quick go ahead and invite all the preachers in the community. We’ll need to cook some extra hams and shoulders and that means Seth’ll have to round up another cooker.” She was already drawing up a mental list of things to do. “We’ll ditch the beer kegs, stick to soft drinks and lemonade, and if we remember that poor man in our prayers and sing the national anthem before we eat, we should be okay.”

I gave her a hug. “Hypocrite.”

“God bless America,” she said wryly.

With the new pier such a success, my family thought it’d be more fun to have the pig-picking where people could go swimming if they wanted to. Stevie and Emma had volunteered to lifeguard and we hung old sheets across a couple of doorless rooms in my new house to act as changing rooms.

Haywood and Robert set up the cookers beneath a clump of oak trees that used to shelter holsteins from the burning sun back when this pond was newly dug, back when what’s going to be my front yard was a pasture. Two long blue-and-white-striped tents—one for serving the food and drinks, one for eating—were erected and staked down by Wednesday afternoon and folding tables were hauled in and set up underneath the tents before dusk. When I finally crawled into my old bed at the homeplace sometime after midnight on the third, everything that could be done ahead of time was done.

“You mama always liked a good party,” Daddy said happily when I kissed him good night.

As I lay there listening to the familiar creaks and groans of the old house settling down for the night, I could almost hear Mother’s light voice floating up the stairwell: “Deborah! Where did you put those tablecloths? Kezzie? You’ll have to send one of the boys to the store for more plastic cups. And better tell him to get another carton of paper napkins while he’s there.”

And Daddy’s exasperated roar. “Just how the hell many people you expecting, Sue? You promised me it was gonna be a little get-together this time.”

“Now, Kezzie,” Mother would say, then she’d flit off to take care of another dozen details that would make the weekend run smoothly.

What Daddy could never remember was that her idea of a good party was one that started on, say, a Wednesday and didn’t end till after breakfast on Monday. Cousins and friends still miss my mother’s parties. There would be picking and singing, maybe even a little dancing, marathon card sessions, lots of food and drink, people shoehorned into every cranny of the house with babies and teenagers sleeping on pallets spread across the floor. And all that was before local friends and relatives arrived for the real party on Saturday.

Daddy always grumbled about having to wait on line to use the bathroom, or being eaten out of house and home, but Mother would just smile and keep moving, knowing that he’d be standing right there on the porch beside her come Monday morning, telling their guests, “I don’t see why y’all got to run off so quick. Seems like you just got here.”

The Fourth dawned hot and hazy and by the time Maidie and I drove out to the pond, we could smell the smoky succulence of roast pork as soon as we stepped out of the car. Robert and Haywood were seated out by the cookers where they could keep their eyes on the thermometers. They’d rigged a makeshift table from a couple of ice chests and were playing gin.

Robert knocked with two points and I took advantage of the next shuffle to lift the lid and fish out a Pepsi. “What time did y’all put the pigs on?”

“Around six,” said Haywood, looking suspiciously at the ace of spades that Robert had just discarded.

There are still purists who insist that the only way to cook pig is on a homemade grill over hardwood coals, but I’m here to tell you, people, it don’t taste too shabby over gas either. All up and down North Carolina roads, from early spring to late fall, you’ll see what look like big black oil drums on wheels being towed behind cars and pickups.

Pig cookers.

What you do is start with a basic two-wheel steel trailer and a 250-gallon oval oil drum. Then you take an acetylene torch and cut the drum in half lengthwise through the short wall. Weld the bottom half to your trailer, add hinges and a handle to the top half and a heavy rack to the bottom half. Scrounge some burners from your local gas distributor. Punch a hole in the top for your heat gauge and another hole in the bottom so the fat can drip out into a metal bucket. Add a small tank of propane gas and you’ve got what it takes to start cooking.

Of course, you do need a little experience to know when to flip the pig—too soon and it won’t cook all the way through, too late and it’ll fall apart when you lift it—and you really ought to have a secret sauce recipe you can brag about even though most of the braggarts just add the same basic five ingredients to cider vinegar. It all eats good to me, but Haywood and Robert still argue over just how much red pepper’s needed.

“Gin!” said Haywood. “Did I catch you with a fist full of picture cards?”

I waited till Robert finished adding up the score, then asked, “How much longer till you turn them?”

“Getting hungry, shug?” Robert set down his cards. “That little ninety-pounder’s been going right fast. Let’s take a look.”

He got up and walked over to the nearest cooker, Haywood and I right behind him. When he lifted the lid, a cloud of smoke escaped, carrying wonderful smells. The pig had been split from head to tail and lay on the grill skin side up, split side down.

Robert laid his hand on one of the hams and looked at his brother. “What do you think?”

Haywood flattened the palm of his own huge hand against the shoulder ham, held it there a moment and said, “I’n sure feel the heat.”

“Let’s do ’er then.”

By now Seth and Minnie were there as well as Maidie and four or five of my nieces and nephews. A raised cooker lid draws more kibitzers than a game of solitaire.

Using old dishtowels as potholders, four of the men each grabbed a foot and at Robert’s signal, they gave a heave and gently flipped the pig over so that it was now skin side down over the gas burners. Eager fingers reached in to pick off hot crispy slivers of the tenderloin, mine right along with them.

“Hey, now,” Robert scolded.

He swished a clean dishmop through the sauce and used it to slather the meat with a generous hand before closing the lid, ignoring all the pleas for just one more little taste.

“Y’all can just wait till everybody’s here,” he said firmly, even though Maidie pointed out that he’d had his fingers in, too. He just grinned, licked his lips, then he and Haywood wiped their hands and resumed their card game, so Maidie and I went on up to the tents to spread red-white-and-blue tablecloths and unfold chairs.

Since we expected people to drift in and out most of the afternoon, we had only rented enough tables and chairs to seat a hundred at a time. The rest would find perching places on the grass or along the pier.

Under the food tent, Amy and Doris had iced down the soft drinks in big garbage pails that had been bought for this purpose last party, and now they were slicing lemons into the wooden tubs. Sugar and water would be added and then the mixture could be left to steep itself into refreshing lemonade.

Will arrived with two iron stakes and a sledgehammer. “Where you think we ought to do horseshoes?”

I looked around for a level spot away from traffic lanes between the tents and the house. Jess and Ruth had erected a volleyball net down near the pond. “How ’bout around on the other side of the pier?” I suggested.

Robert’s grandson Bert and Haywood’s granddaughter Kim scampered past carrying bocce balls.

“Play with us, Aunt Deborah?” asked four year-old Kim.

There were probably a zillion things that still needed doing, but hey, how long do great-nieces and -nephews stay four? Besides, the way we play bocce, whoever’s closest wins a point even if the ball in question is thirty feet away, so our games aren’t very long.

By the time they lost interest and went to help tie red, white and blue balloons to my porch railing, the younger guests were arriving. I watched Andrew’s Ruth go shyly out to meet her first real boyfriend. Soon a volleyball game was organized and several kids were already in the water.

Now cars began to stream in, filling the old pasture.

The Reverend Freeman arrived with his teenage son and seven-year-old daughter.

“Stan and Lashanda, right?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lashanda grinned. Her hair was braided into a dozen or more pigtails and each was clipped by playful yellow barrettes so that it seemed as if she was wearing a headful of yellow violets to match her yellow T-shirt.

She looked so cute that I had to hug her.

“Hey, dibs on Stan!” called one of my nephews from the volleyball court. “We need a good spike. Get in here!”

Zach’s Emma came by and gathered up Lashanda. “Did you bring your bathing suit? Good! I’ll show you where to change.”

“This is awfully nice of you, Judge,” said Ralph Freeman. His handclasp was firm, his smile warm and friendly.

“It’s Deborah,” I told him.

His smile widened. “Then I’m Ralph.”

“Actually, it’s good you could come with all that’s been happening. Have you found a place to hold services yet?”

“Well, Mount Olive offered to let us use their sanctuary after their second service, but now they’re scrambling, too. For the time being, our board of deacons has come up with an old-fashioned revival tent. We’re going to pitch it on our new site.”

“That’s right. I heard that Balm of Gilead was selling its land to Shop-Mark, but I didn’t know you were that close to breaking ground on a new church.”

Freeman gave a rueful laugh. “Talk about the Lord working in mysterious ways. We thought the land we wanted was out of our range, but when Balm of Gilead burned, the man selling felt so bad about it he came down considerably on his price. And you’d be surprised by the donations we’ve received this week. The story of our loss went all over the country and people are sending their support from as far away as California.”

“And then there’s probably insurance, too?”

“Maybe enough to buy us a new piano,” he conceded. “Which reminds me. Our board’s voted to send you a letter of thanks along with a letter to the Fire Department. It means a lot to our congregation that you saved our pulpit Bible.” He gave me a teasing smile. “And the fans, too, of course.”

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.

Last to go was the land around the crossroads itself even though the store had been closed for several years. A devout black carpenter named Augustus Saunders had held the note on it for longer than any white bank would have, and when old Leon said he could have it for another five hundred dollars to finance what turned out to be his last alcoholic binge before his liver failed, Saunders took him up on it.

The store became a church and now the church was selling that parcel for almost a quarter-million. More than once in the past month, since word of the sale began leaking out, Charles Starling had been heard to curse Balm of Gilead and to swear that “a nigger stole my granddaddy’s land for five gallons of white lightning” and “I’m owed, ain’t I?” along with several other incendiary remarks.

Reid just shrugged. “I don’t represent Charles Starling and my client had no grudge against any of those churches.”

“Yes, but Bagwell—”

“Wait a minute—”

“I heard—”

As the others attacked, I stood up. “Anybody else want some fresh hushpuppies?”

Across the crowded tent, I saw Wallace Adderly making his way toward us.

Cyl DeGraffenried jumped to her feet. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

This was the first time she’d spoken to me directly since I found her crying in my office but I tried not to show my surprise. We picked up big cups of iced tea as we passed the drinks table and were halfway down the slope to where Isabel and Doris were frying up hushpuppies fast as they could when Wallace Adderly overtook us.

“Ms. DeGraffenried?”

I paused but Cyl kept walking.

“Ms. DeGraffenried!”

Without turning around, she said, “Yes?”

“Ms. DeGraffenried, have I done something to offend you?”

“Yes!” she snapped and continued walking.

I trailed along, just as puzzled as Adderly seemed to be, judging from the look on his face.

“When?” he asked. “What?”

Cyl stopped and turned and her eyes were as cold as the ice cubes in her tea. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

“We know each other?”

“I know you, Snake Man.” She fairly hissed the word.

Adderly did a double take, then shook his head. “I’ll be damned! Little Silly. What’s-his-name’s baby sister.”

“Niece,” she snapped. “And his name is Isaac Mitchiner. My God! You took him into a snakepit and you don’t even remember his name? He’s dead, isn’t he?”