Bootlegger’s Daughter

by Margaret Maron

  (But I would have been a fine judge too, dammit.)

  I wanted to stay in bed with my head under the covers and the air conditioner turned down to sixty. I wanted to fly to New York City and stand in the middle of Times Square surrounded by twelve million people who’d never heard of Colleton County or anybody in it. I wanted to buy a pound of chocolate truffles and go sit through three screenings of Random Harvest where nobody would notice if I bawled my head off, because everybody cries for Greer Garson and Ronald Colman.

  Instead, I drove out to the country, parked my car up a deserted lane, and walked out into a twenty-acre field that bordered the western edge of Possum Creek. The tobacco was waist high, and scattered here and there were plants that had already begun to top out too early with pink tuberoses-the end of the plant’s dedication to leaf growth and the beginning of its desire to make seeds.

  I found a sturdy stick at the edge of the field, and for the next fifteen or twenty minutes I walked up and down the rows slashing tops off every flowering hill like Lash LaRue flicking guns out of outlaws’ hands. Whack! for those lying letters Denn sent. This for Linsey Thomas’s endorsement of Luther Parker. Luther Parker? Whack! Fifty-nine percent? Whack! Every Vickery that ever walked the face of the earth? Whack-whack-whack!

  Eventually my fury and humiliation abated and instead of slashing at tobacco tops, I found myself using the stick to poke at stone flakes and flip bits of quartz out of the dirt as I walked along.

  The woodland Indians that lived here before Columbus arrived usually built their villages and camps on the west side of rivers, and my brothers and I had picked up hundreds of their projectile points when we were children.

  As had my aunts and uncles.

  As do my nieces and nephews.

  As will their children and their children’s children if the land abides with us.

  Yet no matter how many we carry away, each spring plowing turns up more. The oldest go back more than eight thousand years, the newest are less than two hundred, each point shaped by a human hand.

  There’s something innately soothing about walking slowly up and down rows of growing plants, your mind drifting across consciousness like a cloud across the blue sky overhead, only your eyes alert to leaf green flint or white quartz.

  A front had passed through during the night and the air was cool and dry. The tobacco was just high enough that whenever I lifted my eyes from the dirt, I was an island in the middle of a fresh green lake that rippled in the soft June breeze.

  Yet I was not alone. A hundred eyes watched my passage up and down the long rows. Grasshoppers fled before me, lizards skittered, a toad sat passive and immobile. In the next furrow over, a young snake with rusty blotches gave me a turn until the shape of the head and patterns along its length let me see that it was a harmless corn snake and not a poisonous copperhead. I’m not afraid of any snake once I know it’s there, yet, like Emily Dickinson, I never come across one unexpectedly without that involuntary “tighter breathing and Zero at the bone.” Desmond Morris says that’s because we’re descended from apes, and snakes were the only natural predator that could follow us up into the trees. The Bible says it’s because we’re descended from Eve and lost Eden through the serpent’s guile.

  Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And 1 will put enmity between thee and the woman.

  Poor snakes.

  I found chips and flakes and broken points with missing bases and then a piece of pottery half as big as my hand, the outside textured in an even pattern, the inside smoothed by clever fingers gone to dust two thousand years ago. Was it enough for the maker, this simple grace of common work done well? If she’d known that she would live and die and all that would survive to mark her passage would be these few square inches of sand-colored bowl, would it have troubled her?

  Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.

  I could see her sitting before campfires on cold autumn nights. Did she watch the red and gold sparks fly upward and merge with the stars until her mind stretched into the vastness of the cosmos? To know and believe absolutely and without doubt that God-whatever god-created the universe and all that is in it is to stand with a shield against the outer darkness; and yet always comes a still, small, the-emperor-has-no-clothes voice that asks, “But then who created God?”

  And what is the universe that it is mindful of-wait, wait, wait! There on the ground lay the tip of a beautifully flaked point, its base hidden by the dirt. Holding my breath, I stooped and picked it up. Lovely! No missing base, no broken corner. It was a Kirk Corner Notched point, as whole and perfectly formed as the day it came from its maker’s hand, two thousand years before the first pyramid.

  As I smoothed away the last few grains that clung to this gift from the past, I suddenly realized that I’d begun whistling a syncopated version of It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer.

  Okay, so Luther Parker won this time. No matter who finished out Perry Byrd’s term, that seat was up for election in two years. I’d learned a lot this go-round and next time… a cluster of small chips drew me forward.

  I saw the cloud of dust kicked up by the wheels before I heard the pickup. I had wondered how long it would take him. Though I hadn’t noticed anyone, I wasn’t fool enough to believe no human eyes had seen me down here in this back field.

  By the time Daddy’s battered red Chevrolet made its circuitous way around the edge of the fields, I was waiting at the end of the rows where cultivated land gave way to creek brush. He pulled up beside me and spoke through the open window.

  “If you don’t want no company, I can get on back to the house, but Maidie thought you might like some dinner.”

  A tip of his head indicated a soft blue cloth tucked into a cardboard box on the seat beside him.

  “She send enough for you?” I asked, knowing well and good who thought I might be ready to eat lunch.

  “I reckon.”

  He cut off the engine and handed over a jug of sweet and strong iced tea, and we walked down a path to a big flat rock beside the water. Trees overhung this stretch, but sunlight still dappled the brown water. We spread the blue cloth on the rock and I set out a platter of crispy fried chicken, warm spinach salad, and deviled eggs. The biscuits were still hot from Maidie’s oven.

  As we ate from paper plates, perched on the rocks, I showed him the arrowhead and the piece of pottery and we talked about bonfires and Indians, about family and tenants, until finally he said, “You’re doing okay then?”

  I reached for my father’s gnarled and workworn hand. “Yes, I really am.”

  “Them crows sure put a pecking on you, didn’t they, shug? You still sorry you didn’t win?”

  “Yes,” I said honestly. “I can live with it, but yes.”

  “You know something, daughter? You never once told me how come you wanted to make a run for it.”

  I picked up some nearby pebbles and began plunking them into the creek. “You never asked.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  So I told him about how it’d all come to a head that rainy January day when a black plumber was charged with drunk driving and Perry Byrd had mean-mindedly piled the whole weight of the law onto his shoulders.

  “You’d’ve turned him loose?”

  “No, sir. He did go out on the highway after drinking; he did, for whatever reason, refuse to take the Breathalyzer. Those two things are against the law and the law does save lives. But justice could’ve been tempered with mercy. Maybe one night in jail to think it over, but on the weekend, when it wouldn’t interfere with his livelihood. Instead of taking away his license altogether for a year, I’d’ve kept him off the road when he wasn’t working. How can a plumber keep his business going if he can’t make house calls? Punishment’s supposed to deter a person from doing it again, not crush his spirit. And it shouldn’t depend on what color his skin is, what sex he happens to be, or what social class he’s from.r />
  “White-collar embezzlers should get at least as much time as a blue-collar worker who steals a TV; if a mayor’s daughter gets to do community service for a hit and run, so should the mayor’s cook’s son. The Perry Byrds can be bigots, snobs, and toadies in their personal lives, but when they put on that black robe and sit on that high seat, they should be like priests administering law like a sacrament of Justice. For all the people. It’ll never be an exact science, but it doesn’t have to be a crap shoot either.”

  Frustrated, I took another handful of pebbles and plunked them one by one into the slow-moving creek while Daddy lit another cigarette and watched the little splashes without speaking. Silence rippled out around us. A brown thrasher swooped past, as if we were only a couple of fellow creatures come down to drink, too. I lobbed the last pebble and said, “When you were bootlegging, did you ever kill anybody?”

  He tipped his hat back on the crown of his silver head and looked at me steadily with those piercing blue eyes. “No. Wanted to a couple of times, meant to once, but never did.”

  Something that had been coiled tightly within me for years suddenly relaxed. “What was prison like?”

  “It didn’t crush me.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re a hawk.”

  “You are, too, shug.”

  “Am I?”

  He flicked his cigarette into the creek.

  “Let’s you and me go find out,” he said and pushed himself upright with such purpose that I didn’t question.

  I packed up the box and folded the blue cloth over it again and followed my tall father back up the path. Tree roots had pulled themselves out of the ground, loose pebbles crunched underfoot, yet his thin back was straight as ever and his feet didn’t stumble.

  I climbed into the passenger side of the old pickup-part of Daddy’s “I’m just a plain ol’ dirt farmer” window dressing-and we drove along the edge of fields till we came to a homemade bridge spanning the creek. As soon as we drove across, we were on Talbert land.

  “Gray Talbert know about this bridge?” I asked as we rattled across the loose boards.

  “He furnished the boards. Shorty and B.R. and Leonard asked him if it was all right and he said fine.”

  Shorty, B.R., and Leonard all lived rent-free on Daddy’s land, but they worked for wages with Gray Talbert. Coming across the creek like this instead of going around by the roads probably saved them six or eight miles each trip.

  “Is he expecting us?”

  “Well, no, I can’t say he is. I believe he had to go to Raleigh this evening. They don’t expect him back much before five.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was a little after two.

  We drove on up the lane and approached Gray Talbert’s nursery business from the rear. As we neared the greenhouses, Shorty Avery appeared, hitched up his jeans, and motioned for Daddy to pull in under the willow tree.

  “A willow tree’s like a nice big umbrella,” said Daddy. “Hard to see under from the air.”

  “Howdy, Mr. Kezzie, Miss Deb’rah,” said Shorty Avery as we got out of the truck. He was maybe midfifties and had farmed with Daddy all his life, one of those wiry little white men that look like tuberculosis would take them away the very next winter, but who go on till ninety.

  “Hey, Shorty,” I said. “How’s Barbara May these days?”

  Barbara May was his daughter and a high school classmate of mine.

  “She’s doing fine. Her oldest is fixin’ to start high school in September.”

  We agreed that time flies, then Daddy said, “Everything okay here?”

  “Just fine,” said Shorty. “You want to show her around, you just go right on ahead.”

  Daddy’d evidently been here before, and he pointed out some interesting features that Gray had instituted. “See how all these newer greenhouses are dug into the ground three feet? Lets you take advantage of the natural insulation of dirt. Easier to heat, easier to cool. And these here evergreens. Now, they make a good windbreak, don’t they? So thick you can’t even see through ’em, can you?”

  I nodded and agreed and wondered what the point of this tour was. Whatever it was, Gray’s other employees seemed to know about it. No one came over to greet us, no one asked why we were there.

  “How many greenhouses you reckon Gray’s got here?” Daddy said.

  I looked around and began to count. It was difficult to tell because the windbreaks were almost like a maze. Daddy waited till I’d walked to the front of the business and back again. “Fourteen,” I said.

  “You missed two.” The evergreens were laid out in interlocking L-shaped patterns, he told me. “Real pretty looking from the air, I bet. And real easy to make a USDA inspector on the ground get turned around. Maybe look at the same greenhouse twice.”

  As he spoke, he led me around the corner of a windbreak, and sure enough, there were two more identical greenhouses. This time of year Gray wouldn’t need to use the growing lights that ran the length of the arched plastic roof. The hundreds of knee-high marijuana plants seemed to be flourishing nicely on natural sunlight.

  “I heard somewheres that every stalk of this stuff is worth about a thousand dollars,” said Daddy.

  “Enough to buy a new Porsche every year?”

  “With a little bit of pocket change left over,” he agreed dryly.

  We walked back to the truck and Daddy thanked Shorty for his hospitality.

  “Any time, Mr. Kezzie. Nice seeing you, Miss Deb’rah.”

  We drove back across Possum Creek and parked near my car.

  “As I see it,” said Daddy, “we got us a little gray area here. We can tell Terry Wilson or Bo Poole and they’ll close young Gray down and put him in jail maybe and that’ll leave Shorty and Leonard and B.R. and the rest of ’em out of work.”

  “Or?”

  “Or I can send G. Hooks a copy of the videotape I had somebody make back there last week. One of them tapes that has the date and time running through the whole thing? G. Hooks is a right big contributor to the Republican Party. I figure he can have a little talk with the governor.”

  I began to see where Daddy was going on this.

  “How’s it gonna look,” he asked rhetorically, “if people find out that one of Hardison’s biggest backers is growing this stuff?”

  “Even though it’s Gray-?”

  “It’s G. Hooks’s name on the deed, same man as said he didn’t care to deal with bootleggers.” He cut his eyes at me. “Been saving this for just the right time. Sure would love to see his face when he finds out he’d got a bigger mess fouling his own nest. Not too smart to do stuff on your own land. Don’t leave you much of what they call deniability.”

  I scrunched down on my spine and rested my sneakered feet on the ancient dashboard. “So you’re going to squeeze G. Hooks’s balls and he’s going to squeeze Hardison’s?”

  Daddy frowned. “I never did like to hear a lady talk dirty. Besides Hardison’s never cottoned to G. Hooks. He’s gonna like it that Talbert has to beg him for a favor.”

  “Will I still be a lady if I let you blackmail G. Hooks into getting me appointed to fill Perry Byrd’s unexpired term?”

  “Why not?”

  “There’s a small matter of ethics,” I said stiffly, even as the shameless pragmatist inside my head began to raise himself hopefully from the floor of yesterday’s defeat and despair.

  “You want this. You know you do!”

  “Think of the price,” warned the preacher. “You can live with defeat. Can you live with this?”

  “Ethics make mighty thin eating to a man hungry for that justice you were talking about,” said Daddy. “Besides, you don’t take it, who you reckon Hardison’s likely to appoint? Another nigger-hating, lickspittle mossback like Perry Byrd who’ll keep trying to undo all the progress the South’s made these last twenty years?”

  Afterwards, I liked to think I wrestled long and hard over my answer, weighing the good I might do against the certain knowledge that this
was a tainted appointment.

  In reality, it was only a moment or two before I nodded and said, “Just make sure G. Hooks understands that one week after I’m appointed, Terry Wilson’s going to be told about those greenhouses.”

  Daddy looked a mite uncomfortable. “Well, now, shug, I thought ten days. Give him time to get ’em all cleaned out good and planted with real nursery stock.”

  I bolted upright. “You already sent him that video? Then what the hell was all that back there?”

  “Thought you ought to know what’s involved. Make the choice yourself.”

  “See if I was a hawk?” I asked sardonically.

  “No. I already figured you were. Just wasn’t sure you knew it yet.”

  Margaret Maron

  Born and raised in central North Carolina, Margaret Maron lived in Italy before returning to the USA where she and her husband now live. In addition to a collection of short stories she's also the author of 16 mystery novels. Her works have been translated into seven languages her Bootlegger's Daughter, a Washington Post Bestseller won Edgar Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards. She is a past president of Sisters in Crime and of the American Crime writers' league, and a director on the national board for Mystery Writers of America.

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