“Yeah, Stanton and me. Kezzie’s invited us to your pig picking.”
“He’s really giving one?”
Terry grinned. “You mean he forgot to invite you? Hell, girl, it’s gonna be the social event of the political year. I hear Jim Hunt’s coming, and they’re even trying to get Terry Sanford- all the biggies.”
A week later, Ambrose Daughtridge stopped by for a heart-to-heart after court adjourned and began by telling me that Denn and Michael had indeed written mutually beneficial wills.
“Each named the other as executor of his estate and, failing that, I was named substitute executor,” he said.
That Michael had intended to rewrite his will carried no legal weight, of course, and his original instrument would be probated as written: everything to Denn. His left everything to Michael as primary legatee and, should Michael die first, to his own brother’s sons, two teenage boys.
Ambrose leaned closer and, in a softer than usual tone that meant this was to go no further, confided that Mrs. Vickery intended to try to have the ninety-nine-year lease on her Dancy property set aside.
“If she just could’ve brought herself to tell me about Michael back then, I’d have sure made some different provisions in that reversion clause,” he said.
To look after his sons’ interests, Denn’s brother had retained the legal services of a high-powered law firm in Raleigh. For starters, they were claiming that the lease alone was worth over a million dollars; and the court fight was shaping up to be every bit as complicated as John Claude had anticipated.
I wanted no part of the battle, and it gave me great satisfaction to tell Ambrose, “I really do appreciate your courtesy in consulting me and your concern for the proprieties, so let me assure you, for the record, Ambrose, that there was nothing in my dealings with Mr. McCloy that would preclude your settling his affairs any way you choose.”
Without the least hint of irony, he said, “Thank you, Deborah. Now you be sure and bill his estate for services rendered, you hear?”
A rainy afternoon in a Pullen Park caboose? An arm to lean on, the night of his lover’s wake?
Sure.
28 i will arise and go back to my father’s house
My mother had been such a sociable and hospitable person that people loved to come visit almost as much as she loved having them come. Daddy might grumble over the upset and inconvenience, but he enjoyed being a patriarch and acting the host to all the far-flung friends and family who trekked back to the farm. No matter how full the house, floor space for one more sleeping bag or pallet could always be found. Her favorite parties were big ones. Not the “cocktails from seven to nine” type, but big sprawling affairs that might go on for days.
The summer that one of the little twins decided to get married at the farm, Mother brought home a stack of etiquette books from the library. I remember that when Daddy started to fuss about the size of the guest list at breakfast one morning, Mother opened one of the books and said, “Now, Kezzie, listen to this: ‘Whether or not you have included a request to RSVP, once invitations are extended beyond the bride and groom’s immediate family, you may safely assume that at least twenty-five percent of your guest list will not attend.’ ”
Daddy shook his head at that. “That stuffs written for New York City, not down here,” he said pessimistically. “Everybody’ll come and bring along their friends.”
In the end, formal invitations were mailed to 220 people, Mother rented 250 folding chairs just to be on the safe side, but Daddy was right: at least twenty-five people had to stand through the ceremony.
The year before she got sick, Mother threw a Saturday birthday party for Daddy that had people coming in from seven states up and down the eastern seaboard. The first guests arrived on a Tuesday, the last didn’t depart till the following Wednesday week. At one point, the old farmhouse slept eight extra adults and two babies, and Daddy threatened to have the boys dig a three-holer in the backyard so he wouldn’t have to stand in line for a bathroom.
She would have loved the pig picking Daddy put on for me: three pigs, an iron wash pot full of real Brunswick stew (“It ain’t real Brunswick stew if it ain’t got at least one squirrel in it”), wooden tubs of lemonade and iced tea for children and teetotalers, and kegs of beer discreetly off to one side for those who liked their liquids a little wetter.
The pigs weren’t due to come off the cookers till six-thirty, but by the time I got there a little after two, cars were already lining the lane and one of my nephews had begun directing guests into the near pasture. “But I saved you a place right at the front door, Aunt Deb’rah,” grinned his snaggle-toothed eight-year-old sister who was helping out.
A volleyball game was in sweaty progress in the side yard and the clank of iron against iron drew me past the cookers and on down to a stretch of open space beside the potato house, where horseshoes were flying back and forth. I got there just in time to see Minnie win her game with a ringer. “Come and take my place,” she said. “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen and see if they’ve got enough cabbage chopped up.”
Ostensibly she and Seth and three of my other brothers and their wives were hosting this party. Even though it was Daddy’s idea, Minnie had done most of the planning and she was the one who coordinated all the details. If Minnie had organized the flight out of Egypt, it wouldn’t have taken forty years to reach the Promised Land.
My brother Will and I paired up against an agricultural extension agent and her boyfriend, the principal of a Widdington high school. We’d have taken them, too, if my leaner at the end hadn’t been knocked flying by the principal’s second shot. They easily fended off Dwight Bryant and his sister-in-law Kate, a couple of tobacco lobbyists from over in Widdington, and two attorneys from Makely, only to be done in finally by Terry Wilson’s son Stanton and Linsey Thomas.
“Y’all hear ’bout Perry Byrd?” Linsey boomed from behind his bushy moustache as he and Stanton waited to see who their challengers would be.
“Hear what?”
“He had a stroke this morning.”
“What?”
“Yep. Went out after breakfast this morning to cut his grass, leaned over to crank his lawnmower, and never came back up.”
The two attorneys from Makely chimed in with more details about the rescue squad’s arrival, its resuscitation attempts, and the rush to Dobbs Memorial.
“Is he going to be okay?”
They shrugged. In that near-shout that was his normal speaking voice, Linsey said, “I called over to the hospital right before I came out here and they said he’s critical but stable, whatever that means.”
“Wonder who Hardison’ll appoint if Byrd has to resign?” asked one of the attorneys.
“Oh Lord,” I grinned. “You don’t suppose this is where Hector Woodlief finally gets a public office?”
They reminded me that the governor would have to pick another Democrat, since Perry Byrd was one.
“Maybe I’ll have to rethink my editorial policy,” said Linsey as Haywood and Seth banged their horseshoes together and wanted to know if he was there to talk or play.
Linsey may have endorsed Luther Parker, but after running a brief story about how it’d been Denn McCloy who’d written those flyers, he’d quietly decided that the Ledger would have no further comment on the race for judge.
He also had enough of his grandmother in him that he’d refrained from sensationalizing Denn’s allegations against Michael Vickery, and the N amp;O was so surprisingly restrained in its coverage that I wondered if maybe some behind-the-scenes personal plea hadn’t persuaded the publisher to back off. Terry’s speculation that the two men had been involved in drug trafficking had not found its way into print; even so, a lot of people around the county had come up with a similar explanation for their violent deaths.
By now, it was two weeks since I’d discovered Michael’s body, and talk had begun to die down as life returned to normal for almost everyone involved.
Since the Vickerys were such faithful Democrats, kind-hearted Minnie told me that an invitation had been sent to them-out of courtesy for their position in Cotton Grove, not because she actually expected them to attend. “Of
