Home Fires (14 page)

“They were drunk as skunks and got themselves thrown out of a shot house at eight-thirty last night, less than three miles from Mount Olive,” the bailiff said. “And nobody saw them after that. They say they went straight to Starling’s trailer and slept it off there, but it’s down at the very end of the trailer park and our people canvassed the place. So far, none of the neighbors can put Starling’s car there before ten o’clock.”

“Same green paint they used in the Crocker family graveyard?” I asked.

“Same green, same lettering. Good thing your nephew wasn’t hanging with ’em last night.”

By the time Starling and Bagwell were actually bound over in a federal courtroom so jammed with reporters that all cameras were banished, the charges had escalated. Under the new and tougher laws, death as a result of deliberate arson was now a capital offense and they were being held in our local jailhouse without bail.

As Ed Gardner described it for me later, the investigation had started in earnest that afternoon after all the coals cooled off enough and everybody’d gathered at Mount Olive.

“It was a real team effort,” Ed said, ticking the participants off on his finger.

In addition to Ed and an ATF Special Agent In Charge who’d helicoptered over from Charlotte with the resident FBI agent, there were about twenty other ATF agents (twenty-one if you counted four-legged accelerant-sniffing Special Agent Sparky), two SBI arson investigators, a handwriting expert from the SBI who would measure and photograph the new graffiti and compare the results with the Polaroids taken at the graveyard—“He was sure wishing your brother hadn’t made those boys clean it up so fast”—a couple of detectives with arson experience from Sheriff Bo Poole’s department and a couple of members of the local volunteer fire department.

“What about Buster Cavanaugh?” I asked. “Don’t tell me our county fire marshall wasn’t there?”

“Yeah, well, we sorta forgot to call him and his nose was bad out of joint when he caught up with us.”

Patrol officers kept reporters and cameras back behind the lines, but they couldn’t do much about the two news helicopters that circled overhead all day.

“Least they didn’t fly into each other and crash down on our heads,” Ed said dryly.

They began with a physical examination of the whole exterior, paying particular attention to the graffiti, then moved over to the most damaged area of the fellowship hall, trying not to disturb any evidence that might still be there.

“Ol’ Sparky hit on accelerant right away. We took samples from the floor and wall areas. This time there was no attempt to make it look like an accident. No electrical wires in that area, no appliances with heating elements, and no fancy delay devices either. They just broke in somehow—maybe busted a window. Judging by the pour patterns, once they got inside, they started sloshing gasoline or kerosene around. Soaked the rug and the curtains and some wooden chairs that were there, then put a match to the curtains.”

With all that wood, it hadn’t taken long.

Mr. Ligon had told them of his disgruntled church mouse and how drunk he’d been the afternoon before. He was worried that if Arthur Hunt hadn’t started the fire, maybe he’d perished in it? They had probed the area around his room with no success.

“We’d about decided he’d taken off, then one of my buddies hollered from inside the church.”

Sometime in the past, well before 1900, a false floor had been installed so that the choir could sit on tiered risers behind the minister. When the wall burned, so did the chairs and the risers and the false floor.

They found Arthur Hunt where he had fallen through both floors to the dirt beneath the church.

Video cameras whirred with new energy and there was a frenzied buzz from all the electronic still cameras when the sexton’s charred body was rolled out on a draped gurney to the ambulance and sent to the Medical Examiner over in Chapel Hill.

He that feeds the birds
Will not starve His babes

—Hico Baptist Church

July the Fourth came three days later.

Despite the fiasco of the pig-picking Daddy had thrown for me the first time I ran for judge, he saw no reason not to do it again, and invitations had been distributed by voice or mail in early June for a Fourth of July blowout.

The problem with a party this size is that it quickly assumes a juggernaut momentum of its own and you can’t stop it on a dime.

For a dime either, as far as that goes.

Deposits had been paid on rental tents and tables, the pigs had been ordered, the cabbages and the hushpuppy mix bought, cartons of soft drinks, paper plates and plastic utensils were piled high in my new garage, along with a stack of borrowed pots for boiling corn on the cob and pails for icing down the drinks. Plastic tubs already held a half-dozen watermelons and waited for the ice water that would chill them properly. Cousins were flying in from Atlanta and Washington.

Black citizens were still roiled up and angrily denounced the climate that could produce a Bagwell and Starling. Wallace Adderly had been on every local television channel and most of the radio talk shows to voice their basic concerns as he saw them.

“Churches are our key institutions,” he said. “Not the schools, not city hall, not the playing fields and gymnasiums. When you burn a church, you do more than destroy a building. You strike at the very heart of the African-American community. Every white person in this state ought to rise up in shame for what has happened in this one small area, this despicable attempt to undermine the strength of a people who will not be denied.”

Nevertheless, with both culprits in jail, and with offers of help pouring in from all over, tensions were easing and most of the media had pulled back to New York and D.C.

I had conferred with Seth’s wife, Minnie, about whether a big political celebration would seem frivolous so soon after the burnings in which a man died. (Minnie’s my campaign adviser and can usually read the community’s pulse.)

“Life keeps moving,” she said philosophically. “Some people are always going to pick fault, but let’s quick go ahead and invite all the preachers in the community. We’ll need to cook some extra hams and shoulders and that means Seth’ll have to round up another cooker.” She was already drawing up a mental list of things to do. “We’ll ditch the beer kegs, stick to soft drinks and lemonade, and if we remember that poor man in our prayers and sing the national anthem before we eat, we should be okay.”

I gave her a hug. “Hypocrite.”

“God bless America,” she said wryly.

With the new pier such a success, my family thought it’d be more fun to have the pig-picking where people could go swimming if they wanted to. Stevie and Emma had volunteered to lifeguard and we hung old sheets across a couple of doorless rooms in my new house to act as changing rooms.

Haywood and Robert set up the cookers beneath a clump of oak trees that used to shelter holsteins from the burning sun back when this pond was newly dug, back when what’s going to be my front yard was a pasture. Two long blue-and-white-striped tents—one for serving the food and drinks, one for eating—were erected and staked down by Wednesday afternoon and folding tables were hauled in and set up underneath the tents before dusk. When I finally crawled into my old bed at the homeplace sometime after midnight on the third, everything that could be done ahead of time was done.

“You mama always liked a good party,” Daddy said happily when I kissed him good night.

As I lay there listening to the familiar creaks and groans of the old house settling down for the night, I could almost hear Mother’s light voice floating up the stairwell: “Deborah! Where did you put those tablecloths? Kezzie? You’ll have to send one of the boys to the store for more plastic cups. And better tell him to get another carton of paper napkins while he’s there.”

And Daddy’s exasperated roar. “Just how the hell many people you expecting, Sue? You promised me it was gonna be a
little
get-together this time.”

“Now, Kezzie,” Mother would say, then she’d flit off to take care of another dozen details that would make the weekend run smoothly.

What Daddy could never remember was that her idea of a good party was one that started on, say, a Wednesday and didn’t end till after breakfast on Monday. Cousins and friends still miss my mother’s parties. There would be picking and singing, maybe even a little dancing, marathon card sessions, lots of food and drink, people shoehorned into every cranny of the house with babies and teenagers sleeping on pallets spread across the floor. And all that was before local friends and relatives arrived for the real party on Saturday.

Daddy always grumbled about having to wait on line to use the bathroom, or being eaten out of house and home, but Mother would just smile and keep moving, knowing that he’d be standing right there on the porch beside her come Monday morning, telling their guests, “I don’t see why y’all got to run off so quick. Seems like you just got here.”

The Fourth dawned hot and hazy and by the time Maidie and I drove out to the pond, we could smell the smoky succulence of roast pork as soon as we stepped out of the car. Robert and Haywood were seated out by the cookers where they could keep their eyes on the thermometers. They’d rigged a makeshift table from a couple of ice chests and were playing gin.

Robert knocked with two points and I took advantage of the next shuffle to lift the lid and fish out a Pepsi. “What time did y’all put the pigs on?”

“Around six,” said Haywood, looking suspiciously at the ace of spades that Robert had just discarded.

There are still purists who insist that the only way to cook pig is on a homemade grill over hardwood coals, but I’m here to tell you, people, it don’t taste too shabby over gas either. All up and down North Carolina roads, from early spring to late fall, you’ll see what look like big black oil drums on wheels being towed behind cars and pickups.

Pig cookers.

What you do is start with a basic two-wheel steel trailer and a 250-gallon oval oil drum. Then you take an acetylene torch and cut the drum in half lengthwise through the short wall. Weld the bottom half to your trailer, add hinges and a handle to the top half and a heavy rack to the bottom half. Scrounge some burners from your local gas distributor. Punch a hole in the top for your heat gauge and another hole in the bottom so the fat can drip out into a metal bucket. Add a small tank of propane gas and you’ve got what it takes to start cooking.

Of course, you do need a little experience to know when to flip the pig—too soon and it won’t cook all the way through, too late and it’ll fall apart when you lift it—and you really ought to have a secret sauce recipe you can brag about even though most of the braggarts just add the same basic five ingredients to cider vinegar. It all eats good to me, but Haywood and Robert still argue over just how much red pepper’s needed.

“Gin!” said Haywood. “Did I catch you with a fist full of picture cards?”

I waited till Robert finished adding up the score, then asked, “How much longer till you turn them?”

“Getting hungry, shug?” Robert set down his cards. “That little ninety-pounder’s been going right fast. Let’s take a look.”

He got up and walked over to the nearest cooker, Haywood and I right behind him. When he lifted the lid, a cloud of smoke escaped, carrying wonderful smells. The pig had been split from head to tail and lay on the grill skin side up, split side down.

Robert laid his hand on one of the hams and looked at his brother. “What do you think?”

Haywood flattened the palm of his own huge hand against the shoulder ham, held it there a moment and said, “I’n sure feel the heat.”

“Let’s do ’er then.”

By now Seth and Minnie were there as well as Maidie and four or five of my nieces and nephews. A raised cooker lid draws more kibitzers than a game of solitaire.

Using old dishtowels as potholders, four of the men each grabbed a foot and at Robert’s signal, they gave a heave and gently flipped the pig over so that it was now skin side down over the gas burners. Eager fingers reached in to pick off hot crispy slivers of the tenderloin, mine right along with them.

“Hey, now,” Robert scolded.

He swished a clean dishmop through the sauce and used it to slather the meat with a generous hand before closing the lid, ignoring all the pleas for just one more little taste.

“Y’all can just wait till everybody’s here,” he said firmly, even though Maidie pointed out that he’d had his fingers in, too. He just grinned, licked his lips, then he and Haywood wiped their hands and resumed their card game, so Maidie and I went on up to the tents to spread red-white-and-blue tablecloths and unfold chairs.

Since we expected people to drift in and out most of the afternoon, we had only rented enough tables and chairs to seat a hundred at a time. The rest would find perching places on the grass or along the pier.

Under the food tent, Amy and Doris had iced down the soft drinks in big garbage pails that had been bought for this purpose last party, and now they were slicing lemons into the wooden tubs. Sugar and water would be added and then the mixture could be left to steep itself into refreshing lemonade.

Will arrived with two iron stakes and a sledgehammer. “Where you think we ought to do horseshoes?”

I looked around for a level spot away from traffic lanes between the tents and the house. Jess and Ruth had erected a volleyball net down near the pond. “How ’bout around on the other side of the pier?” I suggested.

Robert’s grandson Bert and Haywood’s granddaughter Kim scampered past carrying bocce balls.

“Play with us, Aunt Deborah?” asked four year-old Kim.

There were probably a zillion things that still needed doing, but hey, how long do great-nieces and -nephews stay four? Besides, the way we play bocce, whoever’s closest wins a point even if the ball in question is thirty feet away, so our games aren’t very long.

By the time they lost interest and went to help tie red, white and blue balloons to my porch railing, the younger guests were arriving. I watched Andrew’s Ruth go shyly out to meet her first real boyfriend. Soon a volleyball game was organized and several kids were already in the water.