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These days he and De
Gayle and I got out of the car as Michael, trailed by De
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 De
Today, both were in jeans (De
“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, De
I wasn’t actually sure they did since she was so much younger. Michael nodded, but De
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 De
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.
De
“This is different,” said Michael. “She has the right.”
De
“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 a
“Gayle’s trying to put it all in perspective,” I explained, as much to De
“Not at all,” said Michael, and De
“Did you know my mother?” Gayle asked diffidently. She was still child enough to be intimidated by De
“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 De
“Holy shit! Do you hear yourself!” De
Even after all these years, his accent was more Long Island than Southern.
“Stop it, De
“Well exscuu-uu-uuse me!” said De
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 De
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.”