Margaret Maron - Bootlegger’s Daughter

“White-collar embezzlers should get at least as much time as a blue-collar worker who steals a TV; if a mayor’s daughter gets to do community service for a hit and run, so should the mayor’s cook’s son. The Perry Byrds can be bigots, snobs, and toadies in their personal lives, but when they put on that black robe and sit on that high seat, they should be like priests administering law like a sacrament of Justice. For all the people. It’ll never be an exact science, but it doesn’t have to be a crap shoot either.”

Frustrated, I took another handful of pebbles and plunked them one by one into the slow-moving creek while Daddy lit another cigarette and watched the little splashes without speaking. Silence rippled out around us. A brown thrasher swooped past, as if we were only a couple of fellow creatures come down to drink, too. I lobbed the last pebble and said, “When you were bootlegging, did you ever kill anybody?”

He tipped his hat back on the crown of his silver head and looked at me steadily with those piercing blue eyes. “No. Wanted to a couple of times, meant to once, but never did.”

Something that had been coiled tightly within me for years suddenly relaxed. “What was prison like?”

“It didn’t crush me.”

“No,” I said. “You’re a hawk.”

“You are, too, shug.”

“Am I?”

He flicked his cigarette into the creek.

“Let’s you and me go find out,” he said and pushed himself upright with such purpose that I didn’t question.

I packed up the box and folded the blue cloth over it again and followed my tall father back up the path. Tree roots had pulled themselves out of the ground, loose pebbles crunched underfoot, yet his thin back was straight as ever and his feet didn’t stumble.

I climbed into the passenger side of the old pickup-part of Daddy’s “I’m just a plain ol’ dirt farmer” window dressing-and we drove along the edge of fields till we came to a homemade bridge spanning the creek. As soon as we drove across, we were on Talbert land.

“Gray Talbert know about this bridge?” I asked as we rattled across the loose boards.

“He furnished the boards. Shorty and B.R. and Leonard asked him if it was all right and he said fine.”

Shorty, B.R., and Leonard all lived rent-free on Daddy’s land, but they worked for wages with Gray Talbert. Coming across the creek like this instead of going around by the roads probably saved them six or eight miles each trip.

“Is he expecting us?”

“Well, no, I can’t say he is. I believe he had to go to Raleigh this evening. They don’t expect him back much before five.”

I glanced at my watch. It was a little after two.

We drove on up the lane and approached Gray Talbert’s nursery business from the rear. As we neared the greenhouses, Shorty Avery appeared, hitched up his jeans, and motioned for Daddy to pull in under the willow tree.

“A willow tree’s like a nice big umbrella,” said Daddy. “Hard to see under from the air.”

“Howdy, Mr. Kezzie, Miss Deb’rah,” said Shorty Avery as we got out of the truck. He was maybe midfifties and had farmed with Daddy all his life, one of those wiry little white men that look like tuberculosis would take them away the very next winter, but who go on till ninety.

“Hey, Shorty,” I said. “How’s Barbara May these days?”

Barbara May was his daughter and a high school classmate of mine.

“She’s doing fine. Her oldest is fixin’ to start high school in September.”

We agreed that time flies, then Daddy said, “Everything okay here?”

“Just fine,” said Shorty. “You want to show her around, you just go right on ahead.”

Daddy’d evidently been here before, and he pointed out some interesting features that Gray had instituted. “See how all these newer greenhouses are dug into the ground three feet? Lets you take advantage of the natural insulation of dirt. Easier to heat, easier to cool. And these here evergreens. Now, they make a good windbreak, don’t they? So thick you can’t even see through ’em, can you?”

I nodded and agreed and wondered what the point of this tour was. Whatever it was, Gray’s other employees seemed to know about it. No one came over to greet us, no one asked why we were there.

“How many greenhouses you reckon Gray’s got here?” Daddy said.

I looked around and began to count. It was difficult to tell because the windbreaks were almost like a maze. Daddy waited till I’d walked to the front of the business and back again. “Fourteen,” I said.

“You missed two.” The evergreens were laid out in interlocking L-shaped patterns, he told me. “Real pretty looking from the air, I bet. And real easy to make a USDA inspector on the ground get turned around. Maybe look at the same greenhouse twice.”

As he spoke, he led me around the corner of a windbreak, and sure enough, there were two more identical greenhouses. This time of year Gray wouldn’t need to use the growing lights that ran the length of the arched plastic roof. The hundreds of knee-high marijuana plants seemed to be flourishing nicely on natural sunlight.

“I heard somewheres that every stalk of this stuff is worth about a thousand dollars,” said Daddy.

“Enough to buy a new Porsche every year?”

“With a little bit of pocket change left over,” he agreed dryly.

We walked back to the truck and Daddy thanked Shorty for his hospitality.

“Any time, Mr. Kezzie. Nice seeing you, Miss Deb’rah.”

We drove back across Possum Creek and parked near my car.

“As I see it,” said Daddy, “we got us a little gray area here. We can tell Terry Wilson or Bo Poole and they’ll close young Gray down and put him in jail maybe and that’ll leave Shorty and Leonard and B.R. and the rest of ’em out of work.”

“Or?”

“Or I can send G. Hooks a copy of the videotape I had somebody make back there last week. One of them tapes that has the date and time running through the whole thing? G. Hooks is a right big contributor to the Republican Party. I figure he can have a little talk with the governor.”

I began to see where Daddy was going on this.

“How’s it gonna look,” he asked rhetorically, “if people find out that one of Hardison’s biggest backers is growing this stuff?”

“Even though it’s Gray-?”

“It’s G. Hooks’s name on the deed, same man as said he didn’t care to deal with bootleggers.” He cut his eyes at me. “Been saving this for just the right time. Sure would love to see his face when he finds out he’d got a bigger mess fouling his own nest. Not too smart to do stuff on your own land. Don’t leave you much of what they call deniability.”

I scrunched down on my spine and rested my sneakered feet on the ancient dashboard. “So you’re going to squeeze G. Hooks’s balls and he’s going to squeeze Hardison’s?”

Daddy frowned. “I never did like to hear a lady talk dirty. Besides Hardison’s never cottoned to G. Hooks. He’s gonna like it that Talbert has to beg him for a favor.”

“Will I still be a lady if I let you blackmail G. Hooks into getting me appointed to fill Perry Byrd’s unexpired term?”

“Why not?”

“There’s a small matter of ethics,” I said stiffly, even as the shameless pragmatist inside my head began to raise himself hopefully from the floor of yesterday’s defeat and despair.

“You want this. You know you do!”

“Think of the price,” warned the preacher. “You can live with defeat. Can you live with this?”

“Ethics make mighty thin eating to a man hungry for that justice you were talking about,” said Daddy. “Besides, you don’t take it, who you reckon Hardison’s likely to appoint? Another nigger-hating, lickspittle mossback like Perry Byrd who’ll keep trying to undo all the progress the South’s made these last twenty years?”