“Where did you live before here?” Hollis asked as she came up the porch steps.
Kenny either wasn’t listening or pretended not to hear. Katharine suspected it was the latter, from the way he flushed as he peered at a couple of cars cresting the rise into the valley. “Hurry and get dressed. We ought to be getting on over to Granddaddy’s. Looks like everybody’s finally here.”
Chapter 29
Katharine presumed lunch would be Kenny’s family, herself, and Hollis. Instead, before the musicians arrived, dozens of other people showed up bearing potato salad, congealed salads, slaw, casseroles, baked beans, Brunswick stew, and a variety of homemade cakes and pies.
While Kenny went to change, Lamar took Katharine and Hollis around the group, introducing them as “Miz Murray, another genealogist, and her niece, Hollis, Kenny’s friend.”
“I am not Kenny’s friend,” Hollis whispered fiercely to Katharine.
“It’s okay. I’m not a genealogist, either,” Katharine whispered back.
“You’re more of a genealogist than I am Kenny’s friend.”
But when Kenny appeared in jeans and a T-shirt, Hollis abandoned his grandfather and went to help him put ice in tall cups for soft drinks and tea.
Katharine noticed at least fifteen cats of varying ages and sizes weaving in and out among the guests, and remembered Kenny’s comment about having a few up in the barn.
She also saw the plaque Kenny had mentioned:
WARNING! EXPLOSIVES! IN CASE OF FIRE,
THIS PROPERTY WILL NOT BE PROTECTED
BY THE FIRE DEPARTMENT.
THE FIRE MARSHALL
Knowing Lamar, she didn’t know if it was official or a joke.
“Oh, it’s real, all right,” he told her. “I got a basement full of old cannonballs and ammunition from the War of Secession that we’ve dug up at various building sites over the years, and the fire department says they can’t endanger their fire fighters. I figure we’re so far from the station, we’d burn down before they got here, anyway, so I don’t let that keep me awake at night.” Lamar put a hand at Katharine’s back and steered her toward the smoking pit. “These no-good ugly men standing around doing nothing are my daughters’ husbands.”
The men had lifted the pig and were carving it onto huge platters with sweat streaming down their heat-reddened faces. Each man wore a bright T-shirt with a message across the front.
“I dressed them up for the occasion,” Lamar boasted. He clapped the nearest man on the shoulder. “This here’s Buddy. He’s married to Bessie, and he’s both an electrician and an army-trained demolition expert. His shirt is no joke.”
Buddy was tall, broad, balding, and nearly forty. His blue shirt read, I AM A BOMB TECHNICIAN. IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING, TRY TO KEEP UP.
Lamar moved on to a man up to his elbows in greasy pig. He looked almost as young as Kenny. He was handsome in an Elvis sort of way, with lean muscles and a black curl falling over his forehead. “This is Floyd, married to Wanda, my youngest. He’s a pretty good carpenter when he keeps his mind off NASCAR races.” Yellow letters on Floyd’s green shirt warned, IF EVERYTHING IS COMING YOUR WAY, YOU ARE IN THE WRONG LANE.
A man in a purple shirt held up greasy hands. “Sorry I can’t shake right now. I’m Jake, Kenny’s daddy. He thinks a heap of your son.” His shirt read, KEEP STARING. I MIGHT DO A TRICK.
“Jake’s got the same sense of humor as Pop, here,” Floyd told her with a snicker.
The next man had a shock of white hair. His muscles looked hard, his hands calloused. He wore a red T-shirt that announced, I USED TO HAVE AN OPEN MIND, BUT MY BRAINS KEPT FALLING OUT, and he was shadowed by a miniature of himself who looked about five.
He grinned. “Hey, Katharine. Beau Wendell. Long time no see.”
Katharine barely managed not to gasp. She and Tom had known Beau years before. A banker, he and his wife moved in the Murrays’ extended social circle and attended their church. Their daughter had gone to preschool with Susan. Katharine had lost touch with them years before, but she was darned sure that the wife she had known wasn’t one of Lamar Franklin’s singing daughters.
“Good to see you again,” she murmured. “Is this your grandson?” His daughter must have married young.
Floyd snickered again.
“No, this is my son, Joe.”
Katharine’s face flamed, but it had been an honest mistake. Beau was older than Tom—probably no more than ten years younger than Lamar. To hide her chagrin, she bent down to extend a hand to the child. “Hello, Joe. Good to meet you.”
“You’re a purty lady,” he said in a broad North Georgia accent.
As she bid the men goodbye and moved on with Lamar, she couldn’t help wondering: would Tom leave her one day, marry again, and have more children? She repressed a shudder.
Two hours later Katharine sat on a rocker on Lamar’s wide front porch wishing Tom were there. The food and the company were gone. Hollis and Kenny had finished eating and ridden up the side of the mountain. The family was busy putting away food and dousing the fire, but they had refused her offers of help. They treated her like a special guest, but she felt very much the outsider. The only living creature paying her any attention was a black cat that had claimed her lap and was making the hot day even hotter.
She was still having trouble telling Kenny’s aunts apart, for they had come home and changed their costumes for ordinary clothes. Kenny’s mother wore a flowing, flowery dress. Wanda, the youngest, was in short cut-offs and flip-flops and looked as young as Hollis. Katharine thought it was Flossie who was pregnant, but she couldn’t remember who Flossie was married to. And was it Bessie or Janie in the denim jumper directing the others as they carried in leftovers? Whichever she was, in bare feet and with her hair pulled back with a scrunchy, she didn’t look like anybody who would have sung for a president.
“That’s Janie.” Lamar ended Katharine’s quandary as he took the rocker at her side and bent to pick up a gray tabby. “She’s the one in charge of the kitchen. You having trouble keeping the girls and their husbands straight?”
“A bit,” Katharine confessed.
He chuckled. “They’re like those logic puzzles Kenny used to bring home from school. The folks in the brick house do not grow grapes. The ones in the modern house do not have a child. The one who plays drums lives in the farmhouse. I made a little chart to help you sort us out.” He handed Katharine a sheet of paper.
Katharine scanned the table and grinned. At the top, Lamar had written, Smartest and handsomest, Lamar Franklin. His daughters and their worthless husbands:
* * *
Name
Lives in…
Plays…
Husband
His job…
Melinda
Plantation house
Lead guitar
Jake
Mason
Bessie
Brick house
Dulcimer, backup guitar
Buddy
Electrician
Janie
Stone house
Banjo, mandolin
Viktor
Mechanic
Flossie
Farmhouse
Percussion
Beau
Plumber
Wanda
Modern house
Keyboard
Floyd
Carpenter
* * *
Lamar pointed and explained. “Melinda and Bessie are the oldest, Wanda is the baby—”
“—and I’m the best-adjusted, poorly treated middle child.” Janie sank into the rocker on the other side. “Whew! We’ve got most of the stuff in the freezer and the refrigerator and the others are washing up, but you’re gonna have to make sure the men douse that fire good, Daddy, as dry as it is. And don’t let them sit down until they’ve put all the tables in the trucks to take back to the church later. I plan on sitting here with Katharine and resting awhile.”
Lamar got up with a huff and hand
ed Janie his cat. “This is the one who bosses me around like her mother used to. I need me a wife who can take her in hand.” He ambled toward the men at the smoking pit.
“It’s a good thing you’ve got a husband,” Janie said with laughter in her voice, “or I think Daddy would be making eyes at you. He thinks you hung the moon.” Her face was flushed and damp, and she fanned with one hand. “It sure is hot today, isn’t it?” But she didn’t seem to mind the cat on her lap.
Katharine was glad she didn’t have to reply to Janie’s first remarks. “It sure is.” She peered down at the chart Lamar had left with her. “Do all your husbands work for your daddy?”
That made Janie laugh aloud. “I only got one, and he works for himself. The other husbands don’t work for Daddy, but with him. He’s both a roofer and a general contractor, and they all have their own businesses with their own crews. But I’m the only daughter who dared marry a man Daddy couldn’t hire. Of course, Beau—Flossie’s husband—wasn’t a plumber to begin with. He was a banker down in Atlanta.”
Katharine started to tell her she already knew that, but decided not to bring Beau’s past into the conversation.
Janie had no such inhibitions. “He and his first wife fixed up a big old house down there, so he learned to be real handy, but then they got divorced and she got the house, so he bought a condo down there and a cabin not far from here, to live in on weekends. Ten years ago he hired Daddy to put a new roof on the cabin, and he hired Buddy to rewire the place. Flossie helped Buddy with the wiring. She might not look it, but she’s a good electrician. Daddy made all of us learn some phase of building. Anyway, back to Beau and Flossie: Even though he was more ’n twenty years older than her, they fell in love and decided to get married. She didn’t want to live down in Atlanta away from the rest of us, though, and Beau was tired of being a banker, so he decided to retire and move up here full time. Daddy didn’t have a good plumber and Beau liked plumbing, so he got his license and put together a crew. Once he got his business started, he helped Buddy and Jake set up theirs better. He insisted they all hire somebody to keep the books, too, and suggested we hire her to keep books for the music side of the business. Melinda had been doing that, but she was glad to give it up. Having Beau in the family has been good for everybody.”
Katharine’s gaze wandered to the yard, where Beau was playing Frisbee with Joe. The little boy chortled with pleasure when he flipped it back and his daddy missed it. She had to admit that Beau looked very content.
“Beau and Flossie are the ones with the farmhouse and horses?”
“Yeah. He says he’d always wanted to farm a little, keep horses, and have a passel of young’uns, but his first wife wanted one child and hated the country. The baby Flossie’s having in January will be their fourth.”
“How many children are in the family besides Kenny?” Katharine had seen a lot of children around during dinner, but except for the little boy, they seemed to have disappeared.
“Six right now—all girls except Joe. We tend to run to girls in the family, as you might have noticed. Bessie’s Rena is eleven. She’s spending the weekend with a friend. I have a couple and Flossie has a couple, but they are all under five, so they’re inside napping right now. Kenny was the only bud on the bush for years. Once he went off to college, we all sort of blossomed. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wanda didn’t start a family pretty soon.”
“Melinda doesn’t look old enough to have a son who has graduated from college.” Katharine’s younger child had just graduated, too, and Melinda looked years younger than she.
Janie made a wry face. “She’s not. She and Jake ran off and got married when she wasn’t but sixteen, and Kenny was born seven months later. Mama and Daddy were fit to be tied. Wanda, Mama’s youngest, was barely two. But Kenny was such a sweetheart, none of us ever regretted his coming, and Jake and Melinda have lived down everybody’s dire predictions that they’d never make it. They’re as happy now as they were back then.”
“So Kenny and Wanda grew up together.”
“I’m not sure that’s the way Kenny would put it. Wanda has always kept him reminded she is the aunt and he’s only the nephew. Besides, she’s been working since she was six.”
“But Kenny doesn’t sing.” Katharine didn’t bother to make it a question. Anybody who had heard him knew that.
“No, but he has lots of other talents. He started working with Daddy on houses when he was about nine, and he worked with Jake on our house when he wasn’t but fifteen. Jake’s a mason, and he and Kenny did all the stonework. Kenny worked the next couple of summers with Viktor, my husband, and Viktor says he’d make a fine mechanic, especially since cars have computers in them nowadays.” Janie sounded as proud as if she, not Melinda, were Kenny’s mother.
“Is it you or Viktor who grows the grapes?”
“Viktor. He’s from Yugoslavia—Slovenia, it is now. His family has a vineyard there.”
Katharine felt disparate parts of her week start moving toward one another like tectonic plates. “I was reading about Slovenia last night. It sounds like a lovely place.”
“It is. We go back every year for a visit and so he can do research. He’s a nut about genealogy, like Daddy. Don’t get either one of them—” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I forgot you do genealogy, too.”
“Not as much as your daddy does.”
“Viktor is worse. He’s traced his family back nearly two thousand years. Can you imagine? They’ve had a vineyard for two hundred. His oldest brother owns it since their daddy died, and their second brother works for him, but Viktor was crazy about cars, so he learned to be a mechanic and came over here to work on imports. I met him when I took my BMW in for a checkup seven years ago.”
A short man with eyes like black olives and a shock of black curly hair came up the steps and dropped a kiss on Janie’s head. “Are you talking about me?”
“I’m telling Katharine you love cars.”
“I do. See?” He held his arms wide so Katharine could read the message on his bright orange shirt: I GOT A NEW CAR FOR MY WIFE. BEST TRADE I EVER MADE.
“Don’t believe him,” Janie told Katharine. “He adores me.”
“I adore her cooking.” Viktor patted his ample paunch. “Janie’s the only one in the bunch who can cook.” He sat on the floor and leaned his curly head against her legs.
“Mama did the cooking,” Janie explained. “Even after the girls got married, everybody ate here at night after work. And since I didn’t get married until five years ago—four years after Flossie, even—and since Wanda is hopeless in a kitchen, I was the one who helped Mama. After she died, it fell to me to do the cooking. We still pretty much eat at Daddy’s every night.”
“Is a good family,” Viktor said. “Everybody lives near and helps one another.”
“Who cooks when Mama and the Aunts are on tour?” Katharine wondered.
“We men can cook,” Viktor reminded her. “Today the women went to church and we stayed home slaving over a hot pit.”
“For which we are all grateful.” Janie tugged his curls fondly.
“Where did you live before you built your houses?” Katharine didn’t see a sign of earlier habitations, but the small farmhouse surely wasn’t large enough for all the daughters and their husbands.
“Daddy gave each daughter a piece of land when we got married. Melinda and Bessie put trailers on theirs—Daddy can get them cheap from people who are replacing them with houses.”
“Mobile homes,” Viktor said in a voice rich with disgust. “The state house of Georgia. I come to visit Janie’s family the first time and what do I see? A family of builders and not one of them has a proper home. Daddy in this old pile, two of them in trailers, and Flossie and Beau in a little cabin in the woods. I say to Janie, ‘I will not marry you until we build something worthy of you, to hold your precious things.’ She had them in storage. Can you imagine? She and her sisters would go to the storage place to admire their
furniture.”
Janie nodded. “It’s true. We’d all started collecting antiques years ago, but we had no place to put them. We planned to build someday, but if it hadn’t been for Viktor, I don’t know if someday would have ever come.” Again she stroked his head. “He got the others busy and they built our house while he planted his vineyard and orchard.”
Viktor waved toward the houses up the cove. “Once her sisters saw Janie’s fine house, they all insisted on houses. Five houses in five years, to suit the owners. Now people come to visit and look!” His hand swept out to encompass the cove. “They see what the men can do, and everybody gets more business. Much better, right?”
“Much better,” Katharine agreed. But if the houses had all been built in the past five years, Kenny had grown up in a mobile home. Did that explain his flushed reluctance to tell Hollis where he used to live? Katharine wished she knew how to tell him not to be ashamed of his past, that a close family is a rare and precious thing.
“I was helping Katharine sort out the family,” Janie said. “Don’t interrupt, Viktor. You distract me.”
He stroked her ankle and gave Katharine a wink. “That is what I do best. But I can tell you about the family. Here is how I learned them apart. Melinda is the oldest and the prettiest. Bessie is the most serious. My Janie is the sweetest. The three of them, they fell down the staircase. Boom, boom, boom.” His hand made stairs in the air.
“We are like stair steps,” Janie corrected him, “one year apart.”
“They were so much trouble, Mama waited eight years to have Flossie. She was such a handful, poor Mama waited another five years to have Wanda. Wanda is the baby, and spoiled rotten. After her, Mama gave up.” His grin was so impish, Katharine smiled back.
“When did you all start singing together?” she asked Janie.
“About the time I got born. We always sang at home, and Mama and Daddy sang duets in churches around here. Bessie and Melinda started singing with them when they were four and five. The next year I joined them, and gradually we girls started getting asked to sing by ourselves. By the time we were in middle school, we were singing all over the South, even up into Kentucky. Flossie started singing with us when she was eight, not long after Kenny was born.”
Daughter of Deceit Page 26
