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 naive 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.”
