Bootlegger’s Daughter

by Margaret Maron

  Off to the right and still on the last level area before the land begins to slope away stood a large wooden barn built of weathered gray boards. Yellow roses climbed as high as the second-floor windows on one side and twined up over a trellised doorway in the front. Once the barn had sat in a meadow at the edge of cotton fields. Now the fields were grown up in Queen Anne’s lace and brown-eyed Susans, and wild cherries, oaks, sweet gums, and poplars had reclaimed the meadow.

  Michael Vickery had converted the barn loft into living quarters the spring Janie died. The ground floor was used as a workshop with a huge kiln out back, and the old wood smokehouse, now a display shop for retail sales, had been salvaged from someone else’s farm halfway across the county.

  A Closed sign hung on the door, but Michael’s gray Ford pickup and Denn McCloy’s maroon Volvo were both parked in front of the shop, along with two Japanese imports that probably belonged to their help.

  As I pulled into a space next to the truck, a medium-sized dog trotted over, jumped up into the bed of the pickup, and gazed at us with friendly alertness. She was a black-and-tawny brindle, a Lab crossed with Doberman maybe, with a little touch of setter somewhere down the line. Her thin tail whipped the air as she welcomed us. I tapped my horn, countrywise, to signal visitors, and eventually Michael waved from the barn door that he’d be right with us.

  Michael Vickery must have been a sore trial to his parents.

  To his parents? Hell, he must have a been a sore trial to himself.

  Down here where males are men and females are supposed to be their comfort and pleasure, it had to’ve been hard coming to terms with who and what he was. God knows he tried to play the role assigned to him by birth and sex because God also knows (indeed His spokesmen still thunder that message from every evangelical pulpit) that this state’s never been all that tolerant of open homosexuality.

  Colleton County ’s no longer as provincial as it used to be. The Triangle’s gay community is too large and too deliberately visible for us to pretend it only exists in California or New York (or even Chapel Hill, long considered Sodom and Gomorrah South by most of the state’s conservatives). Oprah, Phil, and Dr. Ruth are on every television screen, so we even know that one doesn’t willfully choose to be a homosexual. That doesn’t mean that we don’t feel enormous sympathy for a neighbor if that neighbor’s child comes out of the closet, and it doesn’t mean there’s not a lifted eyebrow or salacious derision behind the same neighbor’s back.

  Nevertheless, Michael Vickery and Denn McCloy are welcome almost everywhere any other men of their socioeconomic class care to go. They might have trouble putting money down at a cockfight back of redneck tavern, but so would my cousin Reid. They go to church, eat at local barbecue houses, and seem to take part in any of the community activities that interest them. Michael’s on call with the volunteer fire department, for instance, and Denn designs costumes and builds sets for the Possum Creek Players, the county’s little theater group.

  Back in the fall of 1972 though, even money and family prominence hadn’t provided the grudging tolerance now given. There’d been midnight drive-bys with drunken yells, hurled bottles, and some poorly aimed shotgun blasts. A couple of better-placed shots from Michael’s Winchester bought him back a little respect, and the night-riding pretty much stopped after Daddy let it be known up at the crossroads store that he didn’t appreciate that kind of ruckus in his neighborhood.

  Michael was in his midforties now. He’d studied art at Yale, tried painting in Paris and sculpting in New York, and finally came on back home to Cotton Grove. Maybe he got tired of wondering in alien corn. Not that he’s ever struck me as a professional Southerner. Or an overly effete artist either. When he first came home to stay, it soon got around that he was going to dig clay out of the banks of Possum Creek and make ceramic statues. No one actually accused him of planning to make mud pies and him a grown man, although there was some shoulder shrugging about it being a strange way for a Dancy to make a living.

  “His sisters must of got his share of the family balls,” I heard Daddy tell Mother, but that didn’t stop me from mooning over him briefly that spring when Gayle was first born and I’d stop by to help Janie.

  He was-still is-very handsome, with muscular arms and dazzling smile, and he seemed as macho as any guy in town back then. Certainly nobody I knew had the least idea that he was gay. I guess he was still fighting it because I know he was dating Pat Wiggins-sleeping with her, some people said- right up till he sent for Denn McCloy. Folks assumed he was fixing up an apartment over the barn so he could come and go without his mother knowing who he was coming and going with, she being so proper and puritanical.

  The back of the Vickerys’ grounds edged Jed and Janie’s backyard, and whenever I saw Michael outside sketching, I’d grab the laundry basket and go hang out diapers. The end of the clothesline was only a few feet from the edge of their property and I could casually work my way down till I was within easy speaking distance. He was always friendly, but I could tell he thought I was just a lump, so I went back to giving Jed my full adoration.

  “God, that’s such a waste,” Gayle sighed as Michael walked across the barnyard towards us. “How can such a good-looking hunk like that be queer?”

  I had to smile, remembering my own astonishment when he first came out of the closet. Michael Vickery really does look like the answer to a maiden’s prayers: tall and trimly muscled, with strongly handsome features, piercing blue eyes, wavy brown hair that’s starting to go gray at the temples, and an air of reserve just begging to be shattered. Slouchy walk, tight end-he’s got it all.

  Denn McCloy, on the other hand, hit the place like a fireball eighteen years ago. He may not have flamed, but he sure did smolder. He’s toned down a lot over the years, but back then he’d gotten off the plane with bushy hair and wearing a vest and bell-bottoms (white suede) over a pirate’s shirt (pink polyester) left unbuttoned to show a gold St. Christopher’s medal swinging on his chest (thin and hairless). Three generations removed from County Cork, straight from Hempstead, Long Island, via the alternative clubs and would-be theaters of the East Village, he even talked in stereotypical italics, like a bad imitation of Tiny Tim. Except for Tiny Tim (and he was on television), Cotton Grove had never seen anybody like Dennis McCloy close up unless he was standing under a spotlight with an electric guitar in his hand. He must have been Mrs. Vickery’s personal nightmare from hell, but she held her head high and said not a word against him.

  Neither Mother nor Aunt Zell particularly liked Mrs. Vickery- “Evelyn Dancy Vickery,” Mother always called her, with that little ironic quirk her eyebrows took whenever she was secretly amused.

  The Dancys had lived in Cotton Grove since the Revolution. Up until the postwar boom, they’d owned its only bank. Yet somehow, except for Dr. Vickery, who’d married in from Tennessee, they weren’t really of Cotton Grove. It was almost like there was a one-way glass wall-a teller’s window, Mother claimed-between them and the rest of the town. They could pass among us, but no one ever got real close to them. In times of community stress, Dancys would do all the proper things, pull out their checkbook and shoulder their fair share of the load, but Mother had noticed that they never seemed to hug or reach out to another human with a warm impulsive hand. She thought all the Dancys overly proud and much too cold natured.

  “They never let anybody or any thing touch them,” she said.

  Normally I accepted her evaluations, but that winter there were so many snickers and ribald speculations going around about what Michael Vickery and his “New York fairy” were doing out at the old barn that it seemed to me pride might not be altogether bad if it could help such a sternly moralistic woman as Evelyn Dancy Vickery rise above what had to’ve been a personal Gethsemane. Everybody knew how much she adored Michael and how proud she’d been of his artistic achievements.

  She might could’ve glossed over it if he’d stayed with his original fine-art pretensions-by the seventies, most of
Colleton County understood that real artists had different standards of behavior-but no sooner had Michael emerged from the closet than he abruptly lowered his sights and started churning out commercial pottery. With a pragmatic eye for what would sell at craft fairs and decorative art shows, he developed stunning blue-green glazes for pots and jugs and tableware that seemed country naïve and city smart at the same time.

  These days he and Denn employed three full-time assistant potters at the kiln and a part-time sales clerk for the shop where they test-marketed new items and sold their culls and seconds on weekends. A department store in Atlanta took all the first-quality stuff they made. Even without Michael’s Dancy trust fund, Pot Shot Pottery seemed to be bringing in a very comfortable living.

  Gayle and I got out of the car as Michael, trailed by Denn McCloy, came up to us with a friendly if slightly puzzled smile. This was probably only the fourth or fifth time I’d ever dropped by and each previous visit had been to see Denn about a costume or some stage business.

  Like many attorneys, I have a large streak of ham in me and I’d even taken the prosecutor’s role in The Night of January 16th a couple of years back. Playacting was too time-consuming for me to indulge in it often, but I loved it. Part of the fun was Denn, of course. He may never have starred on Broadway or even on Off Broadway, but he was New York, and he brought an auro of bitchy backstage glamour and outrageousness that made our amateur theater feel connected to a worldlier tradition.

  Today, both were in jeans (Denn’s still black leather, of course), lumber boots, and blue chambray work shirts, but whereas Michael’s shirt strained over well-developed biceps, Denn’s hung loosely on his small wiry frame.

  “Congratulations,” said Michael. “Do I have to call you judge now? I hear you won.”

  “Not by enough. It’ll be a runoff with Parker in June. Appreciate your vote, though. Yours, too, Denn,” I said, extending my hand to his for the ritual kiss he always gave his female friends. “Y’all both know Gayle Whitehead, don’t you?”

  I wasn’t actually sure they did since she was so much younger. Michael nodded, but Denn openly stared. The tailgate of the pickup was down and he hoisted himself up to sit cross-legged while the setter nuzzled his ear. The years had not been particularly kind to his gamin looks. Whereas Michael had grown ever more handsome as he entered his midforties, I thought that Denn was beginning to look wizened and already fifty. His hair had been a tangle of long black curls the first time I saw him. Now it was nearly white and cropped to a quarter-inch stubble, which he usually covered with a flat black leather cap that matched his jeans. His skin had a grayish tinge and his dimples had deepened into wrinkles that creased his cheeks from eye sockets to jawline.

  He pushed the dog away, adjusted the small gold earring that she had disturbed, and said, “Whitehead? Are you the baby that-?”

  His head jerked toward the creek.

  “Yes,” said Gayle. “In fact that’s why we’re here.”

  She’d pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and her warm brown eyes gazed up at Michael Vickery. “I’m trying to find out how it all happened and Deborah said maybe you’d tell me about the day you-”

  “No!” snapped Denn. “He doesn’t like to talk about it. It was too awful.”

  Michael cut him off with a sharp gesture. “That’s okay.”

  Their eyes locked with such tension that I suddenly realized they must have been fighting before we came.

  “It’s okay,” he repeated in a quieter tone.

  Denn stared off into the distance, his wrinkled face like a stony mantle over the lava boiling up beneath. “You hate it when people ask.”

  “This is different,” said Michael. “She has the right.”

  Denn flicked his shoulder impatiently. “It’s morbid.”

  “Not to me, Mr. McCloy,” Gayle said.

  “It’s okay,” Michael said again as the dog jumped down from the truck and began sniffing my hand.

  I ruffled her silky ears and her wagging tail announced a friend for life.

  “Gayle’s trying to put it all in perspective,” I explained, as much to Denn as to Michael. “We were going to the mill, but the lane’s been blocked off, so I thought we could cross over from here if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all,” said Michael, and Denn gave him an angry look.

  “Did you know my mother?” Gayle asked diffidently. She was still child enough to be intimidated by Denn’s displeasure.

  “Not very well,” Michael replied. “She was from Dobbs and I was out of the country when she and your father moved to the house back of my parents. I probably returned around the time you were born, so I didn’t see much of her. From what I remember though, you’re very like her.”

  “You were one of the men that found us, weren’t you?”

  “Not really.” Michael glanced at Denn; then, as if suddenly coming to a decision, he said, “You see, I had a couple of boys working out here that day and-”

  “Holy shit! Do you hear yourself!” Denn exploded in rage, springing down from the tailgate. “Boys? You’re reverting all the way back to type, aren’t you, Massa Michael?”

  Even after all these years, his accent was more Long Island than Southern.

  “Stop it, Denn.” Michael’s fist clenched and unclenched and the ice in his voice chilled the warm May air. “You’re embarrassing our visitors.”

  “Well exscuu-uu-uuse me!” said Denn in a deliberately swishy Steve Martin takeoff. “No ice cream for me tonight, girls.”

  He started off toward the barn, then turned back in an abrupt change of tone that sounded conciliatory to me. “We still didn’t decide on which slip for the next rack.”

  “Use whichever one you like,” Michael said coldly. “I’m going to walk these ladies over to the mill.”

  Out of a corner of my eye as we passed through an opening in the fence, I saw Denn flip him the bird before slamming the barn door with a bang.

  11 its been one of those days

  If there were homosexual marriages,” observed Michael as we hiked down the slope to where Possum Creek sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight, “gays could then get legal divorces and there would be a clean ritualistic break when things go wrong.”

  “You haven’t seen as many messy divorces as I have,” I told him dryly.

  We paused instinctively when we reached the bank and watched the slow-moving water ripple over rocks in the shallow creek bed. The dog, Lily, splashed out ahead of us and looked back to see if we were going to throw her a stick.

  Gayle had pulled her sunglasses back down over her eyes. “Even when divorces aren’t messy, they can be sad,” she said, and I knew she was thinking of Dinah Jean and Jed.

  “In any event, my apologies for that scene.”

  For a moment as we stood on the creek bank gazing down into the water, I thought Michael was about to add something more and looked at him inquiringly, but Dancy reserve pulled him back behind that glass wall. Once more he became an urbane guide.

  “Were you told that the first couple of days after you and your mother disappeared, the National Guard and everybody else were out looking for you?” he asked Gayle.

  She nodded and brushed at a dog fly circling her head.

  “By the fourth day though, they were starting to slack off. People began to think you’d never be found because they’d looked in all the logical places. Including the mill.”

  “You searched it?” I asked.

  “Not I. I would have that Thursday afternoon on my way out to the barn, but a couple of your brothers were here before me. Didn’t you know?”

  I did, but I hadn’t realized he did.

  “Just as I started to turn in, I met them driving out. Seth and-I get them all mixed up. Which is the one that’s an auctioneer?”

  “Will,” I said. Was I being sensitive or was he talking about my brothers as if they were a litter of dogs? Just as numerous and just as indistinguishable?

  “They said
they’d checked it out and I saw no reason to do it again.”

  Something snotty in his tone reminded me of Scotty Underhill ’s insinuations, and I was again on the defensive when I said, “They searched both floors. The mill was empty.”

  He nodded after a split second, then continued his narrative for Gayle. “By Saturday morning, there just didn’t seem anywhere else to look. The weather’d been too wet outside, and I’d had to be in Chapel Hill all day Friday. But it faired off on Saturday, and I’d hired two guys to clear off the underbrush along the bank here while I was stacking bricks for my first kiln on the other side of the barn.”

  More pesky dog flies had appeared and, as we talked, Michael pulled out his pocketknife to cut us some leafy twigs so we could brush them away from our heads.

  Suddenly, from back up on the crest of the slope, we heard a car engine crank up with a loud racing of the motor, then a screech of brakes and a glimpse of the rear of the maroon Volvo as it shot out of its parking spot and almost slammed into the weeping willow beside the rail fence. There was another angry clash of gears before it dug out of the farmyard in a great cloud of dust.

  A muscle jumped in Michael’s clenched jaw, but his voice was steady as he went on describing to Gayle that long-ago May morning-how the two workmen had followed the sound of her crying down along this very path. I lagged behind a moment, noticing that from this angle down below, the rose stakes nailed to the fence up there made an odd pattern against the sky.

  Then, brushing at flies, I caught up with the others, and we retraced those workmen’s steps till we were opposite the abandoned gristmill. The creek was even lower this afternoon than it’d been back then, and we were able to cross on big flat rocks near the old dam without getting our shoes wet.

  Lily beat us across and was waiting to shake water from her brindle coat all over our legs.

  “One of them stayed here, the other hiked out and met me at the road as I was returning with their snacks.” Michael pushed the dog aside and it ran off up the bank. “The phone hadn’t been hooked up yet, so we had to drive back to the store. I called the sheriff myself and then drove on around and through the lane to wait for them.”