Bootlegger’s Daughter

19 too gone, for too long

For two solid weeks, we’d had nothing but sunshine. Now, when fair weather would have been welcome, one soggy cloud after another had rolled across the Triangle since lunch-time, cooling everything down.

Including me.

I’d still been pretty hot under the collar when Denn McCloy first called and not just because of where the thermometer stood either. Where the hell did he get off, I asked him, papering the district with lies about me and then calling up begging for help?

“I’ll explain all that,” he promised. “Just say you’ll help me. Daughtridge won’t get off his fat butt.”

“You called Ambrose?”

“He says to give myself up and then we’ll talk.” Panic edged his voice. “Michael’s dead and he’ll throw me to the wolves. He’s always despised me. All these years and he still-”

“Look, Denn, if you didn’t do it-”

“You, too?” Hysterical howls blasted my ear. “Oh God! I’ll kill myself. I swear I will!”

I tried to calm him, but he’d worked himself up till nothing I could say about the wisdom of Ambrose’s advice seemed to penetrate. I was still pissed at him. On the other hand, if he wasn’t Michael’s killer, then maybe he was entitled to the grief and panic that flooded through the telephone wires.

“It’s not a matter of what I think, Denn. It’s what you can prove.”

“Then help me prove it. Please, Deborah? I need a lawyer who believes in me. At least come and talk to me. Please?”

Against my better judgment, I finally agreed to meet him at Pullen Park, a venerable Raleigh landmark a mile or so west of the Capitol.

When I hung up the phone, the sun was shining brightly, so I’d driven out of Dobbs with nothing warmer on my arms than the thin beige cardigan that matched my tailored beige slacks. Even before I reached Garner, I’d passed through two heavy downpours and the temperature had dropped considerably.

Definitely not my idea of merry-go-round weather.

The latest cloudburst had dwindled into a fine mist as I drove into the nearly empty parking lot beside Pullen Park, and when I got out to lock my car, I shivered in the damp chill.

No umbrella, of course. Reid borrowed it back in March and still had it.

I followed the sound of an old-fashioned calliope past banks of rain-drenched roses and day lilies, past hydrangeas so heavy with water that their blue flower heads bent to the ground till I came to a round wooden structure bounded by wire netting and a waist-high plank wall.

Raleigh ’s carousel is a true jewel, a beautifully restored turn-of-the-century Dentzel. Purists think it ought to be in a museum and are horrified that the city keeps letting children clamber around on the fanciful menagerie, kicking their heels against those enameled flanks to spur them on year after year. Personally, I applaud the city’s thinking: the animals are much happier out here than they’d ever be in a museum.

But how like Denn to choose a place like this for a rendezvous. He knew perfectly well he should turn himself in to Sheriff Bo Poole and try to hire himself a Perry Mason. Instead, he wanted to do the carousel scene from Strangers on a Train. With all this rain turning on and off like somebody fixing a water spigot, I had the feeling it was going to be more Larry, Curly, and Moe than Farley Granger and Robert Walker.

Oh, well, at least it wasn’t the observation deck of the Empire State Building. (Yes, I’m a video junkie.)

Actually, if the day had continued as hot and sunny as it began, the park might have made a good place to meet, crowded as it usually was with kids of all ages. Here in the rain, though, there were only a half-dozen children waiting to ride, one accompanied by what looked like a part-time father, the others divided between two young mothers and an older woman.

Obeying Denn’s now-ridiculous instructions, I bought a ticket and watched the beautifully tooled, overhead iron cranks raise and lower the animals as the whole wonderful contraption moved round and round with a measured grace almost lost in our computerized world. Back then, people were less fastidious about hiding the gears and crankshafts of their machinery. In feet, it must have been solid and comforting to see, proof and promise that man could solve almost every problem with sturdy engineering.

The loopy swirling music of the restored Wurlitzer band organ made me think of Teddy Roosevelt, trolley cars, and white eyelet dresses tied with pink and blue sashes.

The round wooden platform slowed to a stop and I went straight to the very same animal that had been my favorite as a child: a proud gray cat with a green saddle blanket and a goldfish in his mouth. Back then it was the only animal I trusted to go up and down in proper merry-go-round fashion.

Farm kids don’t get taken to city parks all that often and I was almost too big for the carousel before I finally figured out how to tell in advance whether the steed I’d chosen would prance or remain frozen in place. Till then, if my cat was already taken and I was forced to choose another animal, it was all pure chance. I would sit apprehensively in the alien wooden saddle till the music started, waiting to see if I’d been lucky. Dismayed resignation if my tiger or reindeer kept its feet on the ground, but, oh, the sheer bliss if it slowly surged upward as the menagerie gained momentum!

The first ride came to an end and I bought a second ticket. The muscular young man who manually shifted the mechanical gears in the center acted like he thought I’d come straight over to the cat near him because I wanted to flirt. Since it was a slow day, he gave us a longer ride. The children and the two mothers were delighted, the father and grandmother exchanged disapproving frowns. I didn’t feel like explaining about childhood trust and checked my watch wondering where Denn was.

“Don’t look like he’s coming,” said the operator as the second ride finally ended.

I just smiled enigmatically and walked off into the mist like Lauren Bacall, past the fish-feeding station, over the bridge, under the willows, around the lake, and back past the swimming pool-all deserted except for the ducks that paddled along in case I had a loaf of bread with me. If Denn McCloy was anywhere in the park, I couldn’t see him.

A gray Ford pickup had materialized near one of the service areas, but before I got my hopes up, I saw that it sported one of those silver-gray permanent licenses issued to state-owned vehicles.

The skies turned dirty gray again, the mist became distinct drops. The hell with it, I thought. It was bad enough I hadn’t called Dwight the minute I hung up from talking with Denn, why should I stand out here and get drenched to the bone playing out his games?

I rounded the full-sized 1940s-style caboose parked beside the miniature train track and was heading for my car when I heard, “Psst! Deborah!”

“Denn?”

“Shh!”

I looked up and saw him gesturing dramatically from one of the caboose windows. Damned if it wasn’t going to be Strangers on a Train after all.

The interior of the old red caboose was painted a shiny gray enamel. Big iron boxes were bolted to the wall and floor to form wide benches. I wondered if these were old-time bunks and wished that one of the lockers still held a rough wool train blanket.

Denn looked warm in corduroy trousers, plaid wool shirt, and a quilted vest. Since his normal wear was black leather, I guessed this getup was his idea of a disguise. He even wore a John Deere cap to hide his short white buzz cut and, without his usual earring, looked almost like a little old farmer come to town to sell watermelons.

Keyed up though he was, he noticed my damp and chilled condition and said, “I’ve got an extra jacket on the truck. Want me to get it?”

“If it’s not too far away.”

He pointed to the gray pickup sitting in plain sight.

“You stole a state license plate?” I said.

“Borrowed. And I’ve got to give it back by five o’clock.”

It was three-thirty.

I watched as he splashed over to the truck, slipped aside the tarp that covered the bed, and pulled out a black plastic garment bag, which he brought back to the caboose. Inside were several shirts, a couple of tweedy slacks, and a Durham Bulls warm-up jacket.

It felt wonderful around my shoulders. I settled back on one of the iron benches and said, “Okay, talk.”

“How about some coffee, kiddo?” he asked. “I bet they have some at the concession stand.”

“C’mon, Denn. You promised if I came without telling Dwight-”

He slumped down on the opposite bench and the wrinkles around his mouth made him look another ten years older. “Yeah, okay. I know.”

But he couldn’t seem to start. I’d seen this with witnesses before.

“You left me a message on my office machine,” I prompted. “You wanted me to meet you at the theater?”

“Yeah, but before that…” He got up and started pacing back and forth from one end of the caboose to the other. Rain drummed so noisily on the iron roof that I barely heard his words as he walked over to the doorway to watch water cascade off in silver sheets.

I felt like drumming my fingers on his head. “Why was Michael there?” I prodded. “Did you shoot him?”

“God, no! How can you even ask that?” He turned and for a moment I thought his face was splashed with rain. Then I realized that beneath his John Deere cap he was crying uncontrollably.

“I loved him. He was my life.” Tears streamed from his eyes and dropped in dark splotches on his vest. “Now he’s dead- and dear God in heaven, how can I-how will I live without him?”

I can’t stand to see anybody cry uncomforted. Convulsive sobs wracked his thin body as the rain sluiced down all around us, and I held him like a child and went on holding him, listening to his incoherent grief, till the worst was over.

Yet, even after his emotions were back under shaky control and he’d used his handkerchief to wipe his eyes and blow his nose, it still took a few minutes before he could talk about anything except his enormous loss.

“I’d been with others by the time we met-hell, it was the swinging sixties-of course I had. We both had. But after that, he was the only one,” said Denn. “I never looked at another man after our first night together. After a year, he comes back down here and I think I’ve lost him forever… but then he sends for me and eighteen years, kiddo. Sounds soupy in this day and age, doesn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “Actually, it sounds lucky.”

“We were good together, too.” He sat down on the iron bench opposite me. “Michael gave me security and I gave him warmth-someone he could be free with for the first time in his life.”

“My mother used to say that Dancys live behind glass walls,” I said.

He thought about it a minute, then nodded. “Only Michael was always trying to get out. He was a good person. Too good sometimes. Too religious. The kind of religion that-” He fell silent again, twisting his handkerchief in his small clever hands. “I’m not religious myself. But I always thought it ought to comfort and sustain. Not put you on a cross, too.”

The rain had slacked off. I glanced at my watch. Almost four.

“What happened Friday?” I asked again.

“We fought. Again. He’s been so restless this spring.” His face threatened to crumple again, but he forced himself to stay calm. “He says he’s tired of me. Tired of the country, tired of making pots and being good, tired of me.” Denn’s voice dropped. Became shamed. His head drooped until his face was obscured by the bill of his cap. “He’s seeing someone else. Someone younger than me over in Durham. Twenty years younger.”

Once more he resumed his pacing. “But he’d have come back to me. I know that now. He would have.”

How many times I’ve sat in my office, filling in the blanks of a divorce petition, and heard tearful wives or brokenhearted husbands say those exact words: “It’s just a phase. A fling. The seven-year-itch. The other lover doesn’t matter. It won’t last. We have too much history together.”

Sometimes they did; more often they didn’t.

“I pop off. I admit it. I say things I shouldn’t. Make threats I don’t really mean. But after all the things he says-” He blew his nose again to cover a choked gulp. “This time’s different and I see there’s nothing to do but leave until he comes back to his senses.”

While Michael had gone stomping off to the creek with the dog to cool off, Denn had flung his most important possessions into the pickup.

“-because I can’t get my Chinese chest in the Volvo and I don’t want to leave it. Not that I expect to come back and find the locks changed-”

From his tone, I gathered that was exactly what he expected. It sounded as if there’d been an ultimatum: get out or be thrown out.

“So why was Michael at the theater?”

“Cathy must have heard me call you and told him. I don’t know. Maybe he thinks I’m gonna keep the truck to make him mad. He’s ashamed of being gay. Did you know that? That’s why it was so brave of him. To come out down here-I mean even if it was self-punishment-which it wasn’t. Not really. But he could be pure Primitive Baptist at times. Very moralistic. And, of course, the truck’s part of it.”

He was chattering, lurching from one subject to another, barely making sense, and I said so.

“Well, it was like, okay, maybe he’s gay, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a man like any of those other good ol’ country boys. Pickup truck, dog in the flatbed, rifle on the gun rack, the whole goddamn schmear. Sitting up there in the cab of that truck, he can tell himself he’s just like everybody else. I hate the fucking thing, but I need it to move my stuff to a friend’s place over here. I was gonna see you and then take it back and get my car.”

While I was still curious about what he wanted to give me, I’ve learned not to interrupt witnesses when the narrative flow is upon them.

“It takes me longer to get my stuff unloaded than I think and it’s a little past nine before I get back down to the theater. I drive around to the rear and the first thing I see is the Volvo. I drive right up to it and shine the headlights inside and-and-”

He nearly lost it again.

“Why didn’t you call for help?”

“Okay, so it’s dumb, but walk in my shoes for one minute, kiddo. I’ve just had a flaming fight with Michael, right? Everybody knows I’ve got a half-inch fuse. And there he sits, blown to hell before he can even get out of the car to talk to whoever’s holding the gun. I’m gonna call the same deputy sheriff that comes out the day before and lectures me about shooting at people?”

He held up his hands.

“I know, I know. Some dumb schmuck from Long Island, right? Too stupid to remember that there’s a test they can do to prove whether or not you’ve fired a gun, but God! I’ve just seen the man I’ve lived with eighteen years-I’m supposed to think straight?”

“Why did you shoot at him out at the mill?”

Without thinking, he blurted, “I wasn’t shooting at him. I-”

He looked at me guiltily.

I was incredulous. “You were shooting at me?”

“Not at you. I just wanted you and the Whitehead kid to quit bugging Michael about Janie Whitehead and go away. That’s why those flyers. To get your mind back on your campaign and off Michael.”

The rain had stopped entirely now. There were occasional drips from the trees above and I could hear the carousel’s Wurlitzer again.

He was so outrageous that there was no point getting angry. I could only shake my head and marvel.

“You know something, Denn? You really are a piece of work. You take a shot at me. Spread lies about me. And then you expect me to hold your hand when you go talk to Dwight Bryant?”

The wrinkles around his mouth creased in an ironic grin. “Yeah.”