Designated Daughters (9 page)

“She’s why Jacob died,” Aunt Sister said tightly.

Daddy was as surprised as the rest of us. “What’re you saying, Sister?”

“Well, she was. Jacob wouldn’t’ve been down there at the creek if not for her. I never said before and then she ran off to Widdington to live with her sister right after that and I thought I wouldn’t never have to think about her again, but Rachel going on and on about her’s brought it all back. The way she led all the boys on. You, too, Kezzie. She tried it with you. Tried to turn you from Annie Ruth.”

“She might’ve tried, but it didn’t work.” Daddy shook his head as if clearing away cobwebs of memory. “I knowed what she was and I never looked at her twice after me and Annie Ruth got together.”

“That’s ’cause you had more sense than the boys did. She played them off against each other and that last day, Jed came storming up from the woods and went right to the field and started on them suckers. Wouldn’t even come to the house for dinner. I asked him if he’d seen Letha and he said he never wanted to hear her name again. All the same, she’d been by that morning on her way to the creek, swishing her tail in a skimpy bathing suit and looking for somebody to go swimming with her. Me and Rachel had to work. Not that we’d’ve gone. Mammy never let us go swimming when other boys were around lessen you was there, but Letha’s mammy just let her run wild.”

Daddy frowned. “She’s what the boys were fighting about that morning?”

Now it was Aunt Sister’s turn to look bewildered. “They fought?”

“I had ’em splitting logs for the cooker and they got into it so bad, I sent Jed back to the house to start suckering. Jacob wouldn’t say what they was fighting about, so I told him to finish splitting the wood and stay away from Jed till they could act civil. Last words I ever spoke to him. Always felt like it was my fault he went to the creek alone.”

“What actually happened?” asked Sally, who had opted for a Diet Mountain Dew that matched the pale yellow green of today’s wig. She had dressed more conservatively for today’s meeting. White cotton capris and a high-necked black tee that was so loose even Doris and Bel couldn’t fault it. “Y’all keep saying he drowned, but why? How?”

“We had us a rope tied to the limb of a big ol’ water oak,” Daddy said. “We’d swing out and drop down in the middle of the creek where the water was real deep. They said the rope broke and Jacob, he hit his head on some rocks near the edge. They got him outen the water ’fore I got there, but I seen his head.” He laid his hand on the side of his own head above his right ear. “It was all caved in.”

“Who was ‘they,’ Mr. Kezzie?” Dwight asked.

“Ransom Barley and Billy Thornton.”

“Not this Letha?”

“Letha McAllister.” His voice came harshly. “If she was there, she must’ve run home soon as it happened, ’cause she won’t there when I got to the creek and today’s the first I knowed she was even anywhere around.”

“Well, maybe if you’d’ve told us they fought that morning—”

“I
couldn’t
say nothing, Sister. Jed was hurting so bad. Last time he seen Jacob, they was cussing each other. I won’t gonna rub more salt in his wounds.”

“Did you know he’d enlisted in the army?” Jay-Jay asked.

Daddy shook his head. “He took off the same day we buried Jacob. Didn’t know where he went. I put out the word but nobody’d seen him. Was almost a month ’fore Mammy got a postcard from him. I drove down to Fort Bragg to get him. Even took his birth certificate to prove he won’t old enough to join up, but I got there four hours and twenty-eight minutes too late. I fetched him home anyhow, though. They wanted me to wait and let ’em send him home proper, but I told ’em the hell with that. I’d take him home my own damn self and they could go f—”

He broke off abruptly and there was a grim silence as images of what that ghastly trip home must have entailed flashed in our minds.

“Granddaddy?”

I realized that Cal was about to blurt out a question, but Dwight said, “Not now, buddy,” and he subsided.

The other grandchildren were looking subdued and anxious. They had never heard him use language before. Even my brothers and their wives were silent.

To get us back on track, I said, “On Wednesday, Daddy, you said Ransom Barley and his family moved back to Georgia a few years after that. What about this Billy Thornton?”

“What about him?”

“Where’s he now?”

“Ain’t heard nothing about him in years.”

“Won’t he Davis Thornton’s daddy?” Haywood asked. “Sharecropped with Leo Pleasant?”

“I reckon.”

“I think they moved to Johnston County when me and Herman was in the eighth grade. Ain’t that about right?” he asked his twin.

Herman nodded. “Last I heard, Davis was working in a welding shop in Benson. Don’t know about his daddy.”

I made notes of what they’d said. If this Billy Thornton was still around, Dwight would find him. In the meantime, we moved on with the pictures. Church friends and family made up the bulk, of course. There was one more old-timer in the crowd, but he was one of Aunt Rachel’s longtime customers and not someone who’d lived in our neighborhood as a boy.

At the very end, a pudgy male figure dressed in blue scrubs walked past the camera and Dwight paused. “Who’s that?”

Sally squinted at the screen. “Just one of the orderlies. They sent up a supper tray every evening for whoever’s there and he always brought it up. Real pleasant. Asked a lot of questions about you, Uncle Kezzie, and what it was like growing up on a farm. He said his name, but I forget it. You remember, Jay-Jay?”

Her brother shook his head.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dwight said easily as the last pictures flashed across the screen, but I knew he’d have the guy’s name by midday tomorrow.

Dwight Bryant—Monday morning, May 20

S
hortly after he came back to Colleton County and was sworn in as Sheriff Bo Poole’s second-in-command, Dwight had gone fishing on one of the farm ponds with the man who was now his father-in-law. Kezzie Knott had been almost like a father to him after the early death of his own dad. All through his adolescence, he had hung out with the Knott boys—fishing, hunting, swimming, and playing whatever ball was in season. Their house had drawn him like a magnet. Miss Sue always seemed to know when he needed to talk during those tough years when his own mother was stretched to the breaking point to earn a living for her four children and get the academic degrees that eventually made a better life for all of them. And half the time he wasn’t sure Mr. Kezzie realized he wasn’t another son to be cuffed or praised, depending on the circumstances.

The rowboat was drifting in the middle of one of the farm ponds and their hooks were in the water when the older man said, “So you’re gonna be a deputy sheriff now, boy? Lot different from working in Washington, I reckon.”

“I dunno. Crime’s crime.”

“And it’s always black and white to you?”

“’Fraid so, sir.”

“Well, as long as you stay straight and play fair, you’ll do good.”

Up until he was in his early teens, when Miss Sue finally got Mr. Kezzie to quit making whiskey himself, Dwight had actually helped the boys chop firewood for cooking the mash in one of those large copper stills, so it felt weird to say, “I hope you won’t take this wrong, Mr. Kezzie, but I’ve got to say it—”

“No, you ain’t,” he interrupted. “You catch me doing what’s against the law, you gotta do what the law says.”

Like the sly old fox he was, he gave Dwight a sardonic grin. “’Course now, you gotta catch me doing it first.”

And Dwight had laughed as a sun perch took his hook and dived for the bottom of the pond.

He had not yet had to arrest Deborah’s father, but they both knew he would if the proof was there. Not that the old man was still actively making it. Dwight was pretty sure of that, but there was a suspicion that he might be bankrolling the smaller productions of men who were, just to keep his hand in. So far, though, it was all rumor and speculation. No one had offered evidence or even made a direct accusation. But nature and moonshiners both abhor a vacuum and Colleton County still had stretches of isolated woodlands and plenty of men who knew the trade. Word was out that a fairly large still must be in operation somewhere close to the line between Colleton and Johnston Counties, and he’d been asked to a strategy lunch with some of Johnston’s officers and a couple of Alcohol Law Enforcement agents.

With Sheriff Bo Poole sitting in on the morning briefing, Dwight said, “Long as I’m down that way, I’ll go on over to Benson and see if I can locate this Billy Thornton or his son.”

Poole looked skeptical. “You really think Rachel Morton’s death goes all the way back to that drowning?”

Dwight shrugged. “Seems to me that the only reason to kill her was to stop her from talking about something bad that happened years ago and her brother’s drowning is what she kept going back to. Don’t know if it’s relevant but we’ve gotta start somewhere and it’s the only thing I know to go with right now.” He turned to the red-haired deputy he had come to rely on for all things related to computer searches and data bases. “Mayleen, see if you can locate a Ransom Barley down in Georgia. He’d be around eighty now. His father worked for CP&L fifty years ago, and his younger brother’s name was Donald. I’m afraid that’s all the information I have.”

Richards smiled. “Should be enough, Major.”

“And there was a Letha McAllister. She moved to Widdington back when she was a teenager, so she’d be around eighty as well, if she’s still alive.”

“That might take a little longer,” Richards said. “Especially if she got married.”

“Five or six times probably,” Dwight said and repeated some of Miss Sister’s assessment of the girl.

Both of the other two detectives on duty had court appearances that morning, but he asked them to take a look at the end of Mayleen’s video, then go over to the hospital when they were finished in court and see if they could ID that orderly. “And question the staff again. Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll remember seeing someone enter or leave that room after the family left.”

Sheriff Poole gave them a quick update on the jailor accused of brutality. Three former prisoners had filed a formal complaint and he had been arrested last night. “Hate to say it, but it looks like they have a case. I’ve suspended him, but he’s waived his PC hearing and now we wait for the DA’s office to indict. I’ve called a meeting for the other jailors and the bailiffs, too. Sometimes the uniforms go straight to their heads and they forget they’re not in charge of the universe.”

The youth Tub Greene had arrested for Friday night’s barroom brawl was sitting in a cell two corridors over. His probable cause hearing was that morning and he would no doubt be bound over for trial in superior court.

“Good work,” said Poole, and the rookie detective turned bright red under the praise.

A little before ten, Mayleen Richards tapped on the open door. “Major? I’ve located a Donald Barley down in Waycross, Georgia. He says his brother Ransom died six years ago. You want to talk to him?”

Dwight nodded.

“Line two,” she said.

Dwight pressed the lit button and was soon introducing himself to one of the last living friends of the Knott twins.

“Yes, I remember them,” Donald Barley told Dwight. “What’s all this about?”

“We’re trying to reconstruct the day Jacob Knott supposedly drowned,” Dwight said. “Were you there?”

“
Supposedly?
What do you mean, ‘supposedly’? He drowned in the creek, didn’t he?” Before Dwight could answer, he said, “What was it called? Possum Creek? Save me, Jesus! I haven’t thought about that creek in years.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“No, but my brother Ransom was.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“Oh. That’s what you meant by ‘supposedly.’ It was that fall on the rocks that probably killed him, not drowning, right?”

“What did your brother actually tell you, Mr. Barley?”

“Do you know how long ago that was, Major…Bryant, was it?”

“Yes, sir. More than sixty years.”

“And I was just a kid brother who didn’t get to tag along that day.”

“Why not?”

“My brother was a horny teenager, if you really want to know, and he didn’t want me around, cramping his style while he showed off for this girl he liked.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“Sorry.”

“Could it have been Letha? Letha McAllister?”

There was a long silence.

“I’m sorry, Major. That could have been her name. But there were a couple of girls after that—a Lisa and a Valeta—and I used to get the names mixed up.”

“What about a Rachel?” asked Dwight. “Rachel Knott?”

“The Knott boys’ sister? I know she liked Ransom because she was always asking me about him when she’d see me at church, but I don’t think she was the one he was after right then. I’m pretty sure it was a Lisa or Leta or something like that. But yeah, Rachel’s brother didn’t drown. At least not outright. Ransom said a rope he was swinging on broke and he landed on his head. Scared the hell out of them. One minute the kid’s playing Tarzan and the next minute he’s lying there, facedown in the creek. Ransom said all the water around his head was bright red. They pulled him out and tried to give him artificial respiration, but it was too late. So did he drown or was it the rocks? Whichever, Ransom never went swimming there again and I know he was glad when Dad said we were moving back to Georgia.”

“You said ‘them.’ Were any other kids around that day?” Dwight asked.

“There must’ve been, but don’t ask me who. Like I say, I wasn’t there. And after that first day, after he talked to the sheriff, Ransom never wanted to speak about it. This is the first time I’ve even thought of it in years.”

After another few minutes in which Barley could add nothing new, Dwight gave him his phone number and said, “If you think of anything else, I’d sure appreciate a call.”

But after he cradled the receiver, Dwight leaned back in his chair with even more questions running through his head.
Did that rope really break or did someone bash young Jacob Knott with a rock? He and Jed had fought over that girl. Was there another fight down on the bank of Possum Creek?