Designated Daughters (13 page)

Harkers Island—Monday afternoon

A
nd
those
are some of our oldest,” said the docent, who seemed to speak in italics. She gestured toward a glass case ahead of them. “I’m
sure
your editor would be interested in them.”

Monday afternoons were usually slow here at the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum and Heritage Center. With a half hour to go before closing time and no other visitors, she had time to give her full attention to this reporter from
Our State Magazine
, who had arrived out of breath but happy to see that the museum was still open.

“I was afraid I was going to be too late,” the woman said, after identifying herself.

“I just
love
your magazine. Have you written for them very long?”

“Oh, I’m not a writer,” the brown-haired woman said, although she was dressed like one in a beige photographer’s vest that matched her slacks. “My job’s to roam around the state looking for offbeat subjects that might make a good article for us. I don’t think we’ve done an article devoted solely to decoys. Is it true that the old carvers just did it with no instruction?”

“No
formal
instructions, if that’s what you mean,” said the docent, who was a descendant of Harkers Island fishermen. “Boys learned by watching their fathers. Some were better than others, of course. My granddad never
did
get the hang of it, but his brother? You’d
swear
it was a real duck. They didn’t need models because they hunted the birds for food every winter and they knew
exactly
how the heads were colored or how the feathers lay along their backs. It was just something they
did
when the weather was too rough to take the boats out—like mending the nets or making crab pots.”

“Did they use any special wood?” The woman focused her iPhone on a handmade buoy.

“Not
really
. Just whatever was laying around, mostly scrap juniper from one of the boat builders here on the island. They’d rough-carve the shape with knives, then scrape ’em smooth with a piece of broken glass.”

“Any special paint?”

“Boat paint, house paint, whatever was
cheap
.”

The self-identified
Our State
scout drifted over to the locked glass case. The decoys here were weathered and faded and one of them was pitted with small holes. “Why do some of these have cracks in their necks?”

“Usually the heads were made separately and then pegged on. Over the years, as they got wet and then dried out, the wood would swell and shrink and
that’s
when the heads would try to separate.”

“Do you think you could take some of them out and let me get a close-up?”

Normally, this would not be allowed, but everyone else had left for the day and this
was
an
Our State
representative, the docent told herself. Every time the museum was mentioned in the magazine, attendance picked up.

“Sure thing.” She went back to the counter in the outer room and returned with a key ring.

“Why are these under lock and key and some of those prettier decoys are just sitting out on shelves?”

“
These
are pretty special.” The docent carefully lifted a duck from the case and set it on top. It had a red head and a white body with black breast and tail. The paint was chipped and worn, but the feathering was exquisite. “This one’s a 1902 Hanley Willis. He
loved
redheads. Just
look
at the details. And you can barely see where the head is joined. If you wanted to buy one like
this
, it would cost you six or eight thousand dollars.”

“Really?” She zoomed in with her camera and clicked off several shots. “Back then, though, how much would one like this sell for?”

“Oh, fifty or seventy-five cents. Certainly no
more
than a dollar.”

“What’s that metal thing on the bottom?”

“Just an iron weight to help it ride level in the water.”

The docent turned it over so that the other could take more close-ups. “Are those his initials?”

“HW,” said the docent. “He was one of the
few
who signed their work back then.”

The H was slanted like the W and the right upright of the H formed the left downstroke of the W, with a crossbar to indicate the H.

“But
we’d
know his work even without the initials because he always put a tiny little dot of white in the center of each eye.”

Click
,
click
,
click
and close-ups of the eye joined those of the initials.

“Did he ever do other kinds of ducks?”

“There’s a pintail in the North Carolina Wildlife Museum in Raleigh and a ruddy duck in a museum up in Virginia and he was known to have carved at least
one
green-winged teal that’s owned by a private collector in Maryland, but those are
very
rare.” The docent put the redhead back in the case and brought out a rather plain, dark brown decoy. “Now we don’t know
who
carved this canvasback, but it’s all one piece of wood. A cypress knee. Dates back to the Civil War. It’s even more valuable than the redhead.”

“Wow! Never have to worry about him losing
his
head.”

The docent laughed. “Except that he
almost
did. See those pit marks?
Some
body hunted over this one and wound up putting a few buckshot in his side.”

T
he last item on my calendar that afternoon was a final DWI, and with what had gone before, I was not surprised when it was called and the ADA shrugged her shoulders. “Another one of Mr. Young’s clients, Your Honor.”

“And he still hasn’t surfaced?” I asked.

“No, ma’am.”

I can’t decide whether to be amused or exasperated by Zack Young. But thanks to him, I’d get to leave a little earlier than usual. The defendant, a neatly dressed young woman of Asian heritage, had come forward when her name was called and stood there looking at me in a mixture of fear and bewilderment. This was probably her first time in court and certainly her first time to be represented by Young or she might have looked a bit more confident.

I dismissed the trooper who’d ticketed her and scheduled her to come back on his next court date.

“You may want to join the rest of Mr. Young’s flock,” I told her and pointed toward some five or six others who clustered together on benches at the back of the courtroom. Some of them had brought along friends or a family member for support, so there were at least a dozen altogether. Black, white, Latino, and Asian, they ranged in age from late teens to a gray-haired woman who sat shoulder to shoulder with a youth who was probably her grandson.

“Anything else?” I asked the prosecutor.

She thumbed through the shucks and shook her head.

For the most part, those people at the back of the room looked tired and somewhat puzzled, unsure of what was going to happen now. Except for meals and bathroom breaks, some of them had been here all day, waiting for their cases to be called. At times like this, I’m never totally sure if they were told beforehand what was going on or if they understood why, but I always feel compelled to apologize.

“I’m sorry that you’ve had to sit here all this time,” I told them, “but none of you waived your right to representation so I can’t hear your cases without your attorney. That means you’ll have to come back to court another day. This is not the court’s fault. It’s not the district attorney’s fault. It’s Mr. Young’s fault. He seems to have disappeared, but don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll show up before you leave the courthouse.”

Judge-shopping is as old as the court system and the first time it happened to me, the first time I realized that an attorney had deliberately disappeared when I was due to hear his client’s case, I admit it—I was rather pleased. It meant that the case for the defense was weak and the attorney preferred to have it continued in the hope of drawing a different judge, one who might be more sympathetic or more easily persuaded by flimsy arguments. It meant I was being taken seriously.

So I could sit here on the bench, gossip with my clerk and the prosecutor, read a book, and wait till five thirty to adjourn, or I could make it easy on all of us and adjourn now. Whichever way I decided, I knew that within five minutes after adjournment, Zack would somehow hear about it. I’m not sure who his informant is, but he’d be ambling in to talk to his clients about rescheduling their appearances.

I lifted my gavel and rapped it lightly. “Court’s adjourned.”

“All rise,” said the bailiff.

Out in the courthouse parking lot, I put my briefcase and laptop in the trunk of my car and thought to check my phone for messages. There were three.

From Minnie: “Coat hangers!!!”

From Dwight: “C U at Mr. K’s.”

From Cal: “dont 4get marshmellas.”

Coat hangers? Marshmallows? See me at Daddy’s?

Memory flooded in. So that’s what Will meant when he said he’d see me later as I was leaving his place.

To my relief, the dry cleaning shop around the corner was still open and yes, the clerk was willing to sell me a bunch of wire hangers. Marshmallows would be cheaper at a grocery but quicker at a convenience store. I bought three of their largest bags. I couldn’t remember if I’d promised to bring anything else but whenever we have one of these family projects, there’s always more than enough food to go around.

There was just time to swing past the house, change clothes, and pick up a pair of pliers to straighten out the hangers. Some families use fancy skewers to roast their hot dogs. We’ve always threaded ours on coat hangers.

(“
Hot dogs twice in the same day?
” my internal preacher said disapprovingly.)

(“
So tomorrow we’ll eat grapefruit and salads
,” said the pragmatist.)

Over at the homeplace, Dwight and Cal were already at work in our family graveyard, along with Robert, Andrew, and Seth. Bandit and the pampered beagle Andrew keeps as a house pet lay panting nearby, which made me think they’d had a good run together.

Up the slope from them, Haywood was adding to Daddy’s brush pile with trimmings from the live oak trees that shade the graves. Will had picked up Herman and brought him out from Dobbs, but meetings had kept their wives in town this evening. No sign of Isabel, Minnie, or April. They were probably still putting together the fixings in Minnie’s kitchen or April’s: the coleslaw, pickle relish, chili sauce, chopped onions, mustard, and mayo that make hot dogs so sinfully delicious. A washtub full of ice and soft-drink cans sat on the tailgate of Andrew’s truck.

I myself was perched cross-legged on the tailgate of Dwight’s to start straightening out the wire coat hangers when Zach and Barbara drove in, followed a few minutes later by their kids, Lee and Emma, on a four-wheeler.

Seth and Minnie’s Jess and Andrew’s Ruth had ridden their horses over and I was sure we’d see more of the nieces and nephews as they finished with work or after-school activities.

Mother had started this May tradition of cleaning the graveyard on the first Mother’s Day weekend after she married Daddy. She wanted the boys to talk freely about Annie Ruth and remember what they could of her, and she figured that working with their hands would loosen their tongues and make them less self-conscious about speaking. Robert, Frank, and Andrew actually have what they say are clear memories of their mother; and as the younger ones got old enough to realize they would never have true memories of their own, she encouraged each of the three older boys to give a special memory to a little brother. Robert gave Ben such a vivid memory of Annie Ruth kissing his little pink toes that he’s now convinced he really does remember those kisses and how they tickled.

I have a feeling that Andrew made up the memories he gave Seth and Jack. Annie Ruth had died within a year of Jack’s birth and Seth was still a toddler. Herman and Haywood say they can remember her tucking them into opposite ends of a dresser drawer to make room in the cradle for Ben, but I have my doubts.

Not that I would ever say it to them.

Due to Aunt Rachel’s dire condition last Sunday, we were late getting to it this year, but none of my brothers—none of them who live around here anyhow—ever want to skip. We always cut the grass, wash bird droppings off the gravestones, and weed around the flowers. We prune the rosebushes Mother had helped the boys pick out for Annie Ruth and the rosebush the boys planted for Mother the first year after she died. We repaint the names and dates on the large rocks outside the low stone wall that mark where our pets are buried. And as we work, we talk about those who lie here, remembering funny stories that we share with the grandchildren.

Aunt Sister’s ugly pet goat is always good for a laugh, which for some reason always prompts Andrew to tell about the first (and last) time my Stephenson grandmother came to dinner and scared the bejeebers out of Frank.

As a child, I always took it upon myself to clean around the little white marble stone topped with a small white lamb. It was hard for me to wrap my head around that baby, a brother dead before he actually lived.

Daddy and Annie Ruth’s first son.

Stillborn.

The oldest grave belongs to Daddy’s great-grandfather, who bought the original ninety acres back before the Civil War. The newest was Uncle Rufus, Aunt Sister’s husband.

There’s the black marble obelisk that Daddy raised to the memory of his father as soon as he could borrow the money for it, an act of defiance by a teenage boy who burned with rage against the ATF agents who caused the car crash that killed him. His mother is buried under a more modest stone, but then she died peacefully in her own bed.

There’s a pair of twin stones for Jacob and Jedidiah—same birth date, the death dates only weeks apart—and a flat bronze tablet for Andrew’s carney grandson, another boy we never got a chance to know.

The graveyard is bounded by a waist-high stone wall and Daddy sat there to watch as Cal wandered from one marker to another, reading the names, adding and subtracting dates, and asking dozens of questions.

“Is that where you’re going to be someday, Granddaddy?” he asked, pointing to the space between Mother’s marker and Annie Ruth’s.

“I reckon,” he said.

“But not before I’m an old, old woman,” I called, reminding him of his promise to me when I was a child and went to him in tears because I had just realized parents could die, too, not just pets.

“What about us, Dad?” Cal asked.

I rested on my hoe to hear Dwight’s answer, because this was one topic we’d never thought to discuss yet. My people are here, of course, but his are scattered around at various churches.

“I imagine they could tuck us in somewhere,” he said lightly.

“Let’s go over there,” Cal said, pointing to an empty corner shaded by the live oaks on the other side of the wall. “Near the pets so Bandit can be near us.”

“Your wife might have something to say about that,” Will teased, as he gave the Marshal Niel rosebush a final snip to keep it in manageable shape.

“How come Aunt Rachel’s not buried here?” Cal hadn’t gone with us to her funeral, and only now was he realizing that she might have had a place here.

“We talked about it,” said Daddy, “but her husband wanted to be with his family and she wanted to be with him.”

“
Thy people shall be my people
,” said Robert, who goes to church with Doris almost every Sunday.

Daddy, who only goes to church for weddings and funerals, gave him a half smile and finished the passage: “
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.
”

Will’s head came up in astonishment to hear him quoting scripture, not something he does very often, but not all that odd considering that his mother read aloud from the King James Bible every night before bedtime.

With so many of us working, the graveyard was pristine and all the animal names repainted an hour after I arrived, with another hour of fading daylight still to go. The moon, a few nights from full, had cleared the eastern trees and shone with dull luster in a cloudless blue sky.

Haywood had the bonfire blazing and Isabel, Minnie, and April had ridden over on Bel’s golf cart with a basket of warm buns and the side dishes. Everyone grabbed a straightened coat hanger. Everyone except Will and Daddy, that is. Those two had walked off to one side and put their heads together for what looked like a serious talk on Will’s part. I heard him say, “…if you could let me borrow your shotgun to shoot the duck?”

Daddy had an amused look on his weathered face. “Well, for ducks, don’t you need to use lead shot? I might have one or two of them old shells still laying around.”

Then the two of them had gone up the slope to the house together.

Lead shot? For ducks? Federal law prohibited the use of lead shot for waterfowl years ago. Too many wild ducks and swans ingested them and then died of lead poisoning. Worse, when eagles and buzzards ate the sick birds, they, too, died. Besides, Will’s no Deadeye Dick, so even if he planned to use illegal ammunition, how was he going to kill a duck with only one or two shells?

I was almost nosy enough to follow them and ask, but Dwight had roasted two dogs on the same hanger and one of them had my name on it.

They were gone only a few minutes, then the back door slammed up at the house and I saw Will put a shotgun in the trunk of his car before he and Daddy walked back down the slope to rejoin us.

Before I could ask about the gun, Andrew’s wife April called to him. “I saw your ad in the paper, Will. You’re selling Mrs. Lattimore’s things next Saturday?”

He nodded. “You ought to come bid, April. Check out my website. I just finished updating it. There’s a stained glass panel that would look good over y’all’s front door.”

“Really?” April’s a sixth-grade teacher, but she relaxes by moving walls, relocating doors and windows, or adding built-in bookshelves, cupboards, or other architectural embellishments to their 1930s house. Andrew swears he’s afraid to go to the bathroom at night for fear that the bedroom will be on the other side of the house before he can get back.

Will pulled out his cell phone and brought up some pictures to show her while Cal handed me a coat hanger with two nicely browned marshmallows on it so that we could share. I showed him how to pull the outer crispy shells off so that the cores could be toasted again, the only way to eat them as far as I’m concerned.

There wasn’t much wind this mild evening, but the breeze shifted and we did, too, to keep the smoke out of our eyes, as I waited my turn for pictures of the Lattimore auction.

Dwight and I were probably the only two there who had spent a social evening in that big house before Mrs. Lattimore died, and that was only in the public rooms on the first floor, so I was as curious as my sisters-in-law about the furnishings that would go under Will’s hammer on Saturday.

By the time Will’s phone and pictures had gone around our group, Doris and Isabel had decided they might drop by even if they couldn’t afford anything. Barbara and Emma looked interested, too.

“They’re selling that bronze deer?” asked Minnie. “That’s been a Cotton Grove fixture forever.”

Will shrugged. “There’s a hefty reserve on it, so it may not go. If it doesn’t, they’ll donate it to a park or something and take a charitable donation against estate taxes.”