A Killer Collection (5 page)

Molly searched for something to
say, but couldn't think of anything that wouldn’t sound hollow. The lack of
rain since last winter had put the Carolinas in the worst drought anyone had
seen for over sixty years. Many farmers had lost all of their crops or had to
put down their cattie because they couldn't keep them fed and watered. The
clover and alfalfa crops had turned into fields of brown bramble. With the exception
of the few well- irrigated farms, the summer crops were goners. Large amounts
of hay were only available from the Midwest, at exorbitant prices and the
Carolina farmers who couldn't afford to buy it were selling or slaughtering
their entire herds months earlier than usual. No one could remember a time when
meat and produce prices were higher, and it irritated the Carolinians to have
to buy their food from faraway states like California.

Life was so different out here
from Molly's little subdivision in Durham. Only two hours away, her
neighborhood was filled with two-car families who worked and went to school in
air-conditioned rooms. They played ball in the yard and went to the mall,
rented movies, and ate out twice a week. Here, men struggled with the earth.
They planted seed or pulled forth clay. Their backs were bent and their hands
were weary. Their faces were crisscrossed with lines, the skin turned into
tanned leather by the sun.

Molly looked around at the other
men in the room. Undoubtedly they worked in the local furniture mill for eight
hours a day, their lungs breathing in thin air beneath the false glow of
fluorescent lights. Their hands too, she saw, seemed to belong to those of much
older men.

Returning her gaze to her own
table Molly examined her mother as she studied her menu. Tall and thin with
dark hair, Clara had a regal presence that came from a mixture of intelligence,
confidence, and good looks. She scowled and narrowed her gray eyes as she
searched for their waitress, motioning across the room toward her empty coffee
cup. Molly smiled at her impatience, her own gray eyes twinkling with
amusement. She felt revived by the strong, sweet coffee.

'Tell me more about
George-Bradley," Molly prompted after they had given their breakfast orders
to the harried waitress. "You said he had a juicy past."

"It's not an uncommon story,”
Clara said. “Often, a collector person will marry someone who has no interest
in what their partner’s collection. One spouse can try to get the other
interested by bringing them to sales or to auctions or by telling them about
the incredible workmanship of an item, but you can't make someone feel the
passion. It has to grow from the inside. I think people are born as collectors,
or they're not. You have to have the Gene. George-Bradley's wife, Bunny, didn't
have it."

"The Gene?"

"Yes. You see, he'd go to
sales and shows and she would stay home or go shopping. She never went with him
on the road, and she hated every piece he brought into the house. I've heard
this right from the horse's mouth. It got so they practically divided the house
in half so that all of his 'ugly things' were in his half. She was born without
the Collecting Gene."

"Well, some of those face
jugs can be pretty scary. Not the type of thing to put in your guest
room."

“True, but what happened was that
George-Bradley spent more and more time with people who shared his passion.
Especially women. That woman you saw this morning, her name is Susan something,
she wouldn't normally be attracted to someone with George-Bradley's looks, but
when you find a person who loves what you love, it can change the way you look
at them. You form this connection that’s deeper than mere physical
attraction."

"So why doesn't
George-Bradley just get divorced?"

"Who knows? Bunny’s always
known about him running around, but she never sought a divorce either.
Marriages are full of secrets. You never know what's really going on behind
closed doors."

The waitress arrived with
delicious crepe-style pancakes, eggs, and very crisp bacon, as requested. Molly
poured some pecan syrup in a thin drizzle over the melting pat of butter in the
center of her light and savory pancakes and licked her lips in anticipation.

Clara raised her eyebrows as she
watched Molly pour, but refrained from saying anything about her daughter’s
eating habits. Molly was on the plump side with her round hips and an ample
bosom, but she was still a lovely woman. Clara always marveled at her
daughter's flawless and luminescent skin and the sweep of long, dark eyelashes
framing eyes that always held a glint of amusement.

Such beauty and intelligence
should not go to waste
, Clara thought. "Now, speaking of
marriage—" she began.

"Don't start," Molly
interrupted. "I just haven't found the right guy."

"But you're thirty now. You'd
better get a move on. I want grandchildren before you put me in the nursing
home."

Molly sighed. "I'm working on
it, but if you keep nagging me about grandkids, you're going to that home much
earlier than you'd like."

As her mother fantasized aloud
about where to hold the wedding reception, Molly's thoughts wandered to Matt
Harrison, the marketing director at
Collector’s Weekly
. She’d had a
crush on him the moment she joined the staff, but even after two years, they
had barely exchanged more than a quick greeting in the break room or a wave in
the hall. Molly could see into Matt's office from her desk, and for two years
she’d furtively studied his tall frame and watched his shy smile as he talked
on the phone or worked on his computer.

As she wondered for the millionth
time whether Matt had a girlfriend, her mother plowed full steam ahead on her
usual litany regarding the family engagement ring that awaited Molly in Clara's
jewelry box. Molly was saved from having to listen by the arrival of a group of
boisterous newcomers who sat down at a neighboring booth. All three women were
talking at the same time so that it was difficult to distinguish what was being
said. They sounded like a gaggle of geese.

As they settled into their seats,
it became clear that loudest woman was speaking about George-Bradley. Molly and
Clara's ears perked up.

"This morning, at C. C.
Burle's opening," the woman continued, relating her story to her two
wide-eyed friends.

"What happened?"

"Well, Trish said he just
keeled on over. Boom. Landed right on the grass without hurtin' a hair on a
single piece of pottery."

"Did he have a heart
attack?" her friend asked.

"I don't know. Trish said
they picked him up in an ambulance and took him away. He was white as a sheet
in bleach, but that's all I know. He was stuffing cookies in his mouth like
they were goin' out of style, that's for sure. With the shape he was in, it
could have been anything. When Trish told me, I wasn’t surprised a bit, but
poor C. C. and Eileen."

The women all clucked in sympathy.
"Did George-Bradley cut the line at this openin’ too?" Someone asked
after a moment.

"Of course he did! Right in
front of Hillary Keane.
And
Trish said he grabbed a face jug right out
of Susan Black's hands. She was spittin' mad."

"I don't know who he thinks
he is, that George-Bradley," one of the women snarled. "When I was
first collecting, he took an old crock right out of my hands at a tag sale. He
told me it was damaged and I wouldn't want it. Stuck it in front of my face and
said, 'See? Look at all them scratches.' Then he put a different crock in my
hands and said, 'Allow me to advise you. Buy this one.' And stupid me, I bought
it. I found out later that the scratched crock actually had a poem written on
it about the potter's wife. It was late nineteenth century and worth over
$1,000. I hate that man for cheatin’ me that way!"

Her friends murmured in agreement.

"Still, I don't wish a heart
attack on anyone." The woman sighed reluctantly as if that's exactly what
she wished. "If that's what happened."

"Oh, we're going to find
out," announced the third woman triumphantly, holding up a cell phone.
"You know Randy, the guy I dated for a while? He works at Asheboro
General? I asked him to send me a text message when he finds out what's goin' on
with George-Bradley."

Molly and Clara exchanged looks.
They were done with their meals and their plates had been cleared. Normally,
they’d be impatient to leave, but combination of the morning's events, their
full bellies, and the opportunity to listen to interesting gossip rendered them
immobile. They lingered over their cups of tepid coffee and openly
eavesdropped.

After the women in the next booth
placed their orders, one of them said, "I don’t hear your phone beeping.
Why wait for a text? Call that Randy and find out what happened."

"I already tried. I'm sure
George-Bradley will end up being fine. He'll be back at the next kiln opening
breaking the bones of little old ladies and pushing people like me into the
dirt."

Clara could contain herself no longer.
She couldn't resist leaving her neighbors unenlightened.

"No, he won't," she
inserted herself into their conversation with a conspiratorial whisper.
"His days of being the rudest, greediest man in Asheboro are over."

"Really?” asked one of the
women. She was practically drooling as she leaned forward to listen to Clara.

"Yes." Clara stood and
placed a few dollars on the table for their waitress. "George-Bradley is
dead."

Molly also rose, watching the
women's faces as they digested the news. She felt suddenly uneasy. Shouldn't
they all be feeling more than morbid curiosity? Someone she’d just met, that
she’d shaken the hand with and spoken to, was dead. A man's life was over.

The spark was gone from the day.
Molly was ready to go home.

Above her head, the face jugs
smiled crooked, sinister smiles from their lofty positions above the diners,
their pointed teeth and slanted eyes gleaming sharp white from within the
shadows.

~~~~~~~~~~

The best pieces of pottery bring out in most of us on
almost overwhelming desire to touch, caress, and hold them.

—PETER CONSENTINO from
The Encyclopedia of
Pottery Techniques

The trio of women at the Jugtown Cafe thanked Clara and
she and Molly finally exited the eatery. Outside, the June sun was searing the
ground and the humidity hung like a damp washcloth over the sky. The car was
stuffy and filled with thick air. It was a typical summer day in North
Carolina, the kind that drained people of energy and made them seek the shelter
of rooms with air-conditioning or at least a ceiling fan.

"Let's take the slow way
back," Clara suggested as she rummaged around in the side pocket of her
purse for her driving glasses. Replete with her tasty lunch, Molly eased the
passenger seat back and stretched out her long legs.

Avoiding the interstates, the
"slow way" took them through flat farmland and quirky crossroads
following a crooked trail from Seagrove to Pittsboro, which was just south of
Chapel Hill. Clara always drove home this way if she wasn't pressed for time.
She enjoyed the rural scenery and the lack of large trucks and other noisy
traffic.

They passed dozens of pottery
shops on the way and Molly noted how different the signs for each pottery were.
Some had been like C. C.'s—simple, hand-painted lettering on a white wood
board. Some were even more rustic and were so faded that it was hard to
distinguish the name of the pottery. Others were sparkling new and had clearly
been made by professional sign makers. Their raised gold or green letters
caught the eye and different graphic designs of purple pots or rainbow vases
were a sharp contrast to the hand painted letters wobbling across a board.

Molly studied her brochure on
Seagrove, which she had borrowed from her mother before proposing the article
to her editor. More than one hundred potteries were speckled over an area of
about twenty-five miles. Though they were visited by busloads of tourists every
year, it didn't seem possible that all of the potters could earn a living from
the same trade. After all, Molly had never even heard of the area until her
mother mentioned it, and she had lived in North Carolina for ten years.

Clara had informed her that many
of the potters had full-time jobs. Some worked in the local mills or canneries,
some raised livestock, and others worked as guest artists at schools around the
state. Most of the potters were men. If they were married, their wives watched
the "shop," which was often just a painted shed, while their husbands
went to work. Over the weekends, the potters would turn and burn (an expression
for creating pieces using the wheel then firing them in a kiln). Children of
pottery families helped with the shop and if they showed the talent for it,
began turning pieces or helping apply glaze at an early age.

This family lifestyle that
centered on clay had been in place for over three hundred years in rural North
Carolina.

Molly learned that most of the
pottery was no longer made in the traditional way because very few potters
could afford to pursue their craft on a full-time basis. Many now bought pre
mixed clay and glazes to save time. Some potters even had commercial kilns, but
most built their own, priding themselves on creating the vessel that would burn
their wares. They often cut pine slabs from their own yards to feed the kiln's flames.

The potteries Clara drove by grew
more and more spread out as they left the heart of Seagrove behind them. Some,
like Jugtown Pottery, were down small lanes slightly off the beaten path, but
these remote locations never hindered their success. For decades, hundreds of
buyers and apprentices alike had traveled to seek the wares and knowledge of
the family of potters who’d been in the same spot for generations.