Molly craned her head to see that the man whose name was on the tip of her tongue was lying facedown in the grass, his body almost hidden by the other tables. He was completely still, his face an immoveable white mask. A face jug with a snarling mouth and a pair of devil’s horns was inches away from George-Bradley’s outstretched hand. It was the very piece he had snatched away just moments before from the petite woman.
Clara drew in a sharp breath, taking in the shocking scene. She grabbed Molly's arm in alarm and then, just as suddenly, she relaxed her grip.
"Thank the Lord!" Clara exhaled in relief, her eyes glued on the pottery jug where it rested in the grass. "It didn't break."
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 2
Perhaps an ideal future lies ahead when the world will be divided not by ideologies, but into those who make pots and those who buy them.
—ROSEMARY ZORZA, from Pottery: Creating With Clay
For a moment, no one moved. Then a man bent over George-Bradley and checked for a pulse.
"It's weak," he said to no one in particular. "Someone better call 9-1-1."
From where she stood, Molly watched the man as he unbuttoned George-Bradley's sweat-stained shirt He asked others to lend a hand moving the inert body into the shade until help arrived. Two of the potters attempted to pick George-Bradley up, but reconsidered. Instead, they carried over a large plywood board, which they balanced on the seats of three chairs. Their lean-to prevented the sun from shining directly onto the immobile form, but only made the paleness of his face seem more noticeable. Ten minutes ago George-Bradley had been flushed with animation.
Now, his pallid and expressionless face sagged like limp dough.
The crowd was silent. Once the potters had sprung into action, a few people began whispering in hushed tones. Ice broken, the entire crowd began muttering to one another in a tone of nervous excitement.
Nearby, a woman started crying. Molly noted that it was the same petite woman who had been holding the devil jug before George-Bradley wrenched it away. Molly turned to her mother and quietly told her about the incident.
"Her?" Clara pointed at the weeping figure. Without bothering to lower her voice she said, "That bag of bones is a total drama queen. Don't go feeling too sorry for her. She and George-Bradley have shared a past, and now that their affair is over they fight like cats and dogs at these sales. They also try to outbid each other at every auction just to get the other's goat. As usual, she'll do anything to get a little male attention." They watched as two men offered her tissues. Clara snorted. "Looks like she got it, too."
Molly examined the woman enviously. Short and thin, she looked elegant in a short-sleeved beige sweater, cream-colored skirt, and an abundance of gold jewelry. Her blonde hair was swept up in a glossy twist and her shoes weren't even dusty. Molly, who was a full-figured size fourteen, always wondered how it would feel to be as tiny and trim as this woman.
"She's wearing panty hose!" her mother exclaimed in disgust, looking at her daughter's expression. Clara knew how Molly felt about herself. "In this heat."
That was a formal dismissal. Wearing panty hose anywhere was an uncomfortable burden that the Appleby women avoided at all costs. Wearing them to a kiln opening on a June day in central North Carolina was beyond belief.
Before mother and daughter could continue berating the theatrical woman, one of the potters sitting next to George-Bradley gestured urgently to his friends. The second man quickly knelt and felt for a pulse on George-Bradley's neck. His eyes instantly grew round in panic and after a moment's hesitation, in which he glanced helplessly at the potter beside him, he began to administer chest compressions.
As Molly watched the two men continue to attempt to revive George-Bradley, the paramedics arrived. The crowd parted as the ambulance backed up in a series of loud bleeps, directed by one of the potters. Three paramedics hustled over to the prone figure with kits and a gurney. Bending over George-Bradley, they worked hurriedly, their faces set and completely unreadable. Within minutes, he was lifted into the ambulance. One paramedic continued performing CPR inside while a second briefly questioned the potter who had checked for George-Bradley's pulse. As the paramedic hopped back into the ambulance, Molly could see him look at his patient and shake his head. Then the doors were closed and the ambulance pulled away, its sirens eerily silent
The crowd watched the vehicle progress down the drive. Despite the event, not many people had moved from their spots. Unsure of how to act, they simply waited to see what would happen next. Once the source of their shock was removed, they just continued checking out as if nothing unusual had occurred.
"Do you think he's all right?" some people asked without much genuine concern. George-Bradley may have been respected in person, but behind his back, tongues wagged.
"Didn't look too good to me. I heard he has some kind of serious diabetes."
"Really? Well, did you see him goin' at those cookies? I thought you couldn't eat like that if you had his condition."
"His condition is called Too Many Big Macs,' if you ask me," a woman said with a snide laugh.
"I'd call it too much smoking and beer chugging," added another.
One of the local dealers, a handsome man in his mid-forties wearing a denim shirt tucked into dark brown pants approached the cluster of buyers.
"Oh, I know exactly what George-Bradley’s condition is," he said importantly.
"Well?" a woman holding a large vase with speckled glaze demanded. "What would that be?"
"When an ambulance leaves without using its sirens," he explained, "it can only mean one thing."
The buyers looked back and forth at one another, realization slowly dawning in their eyes.
"What you saw leaving here, my friends," the man in the blue shirt declared, "was a corpse."
~~~~~
The excitement of George-Bradley’s collapse and dramatic departure had renewed the energy of the crowd. Gossiping at a mile a minute, men and women alike paid for their items and got in their cars, eager to be the first to spread the tale of his death around town.
Molly was shocked at their flippant reactions. She had just seen her first dead body, and she felt as though her mind wasn't working correctly. She couldn't seem to move her legs and as the line moved forward, she simply stood still as other buyers went around her, paid, and left.
Finally, only Clara and Molly remained in the quiet yard. Clara comforted Eileen, who suddenly looked years older. Between the stress of the kiln opening and the shock of having one of the area's most notorious collectors collapse in her yard, the woman looked done in. Clara helped her pick up trash and gather the rest of the refreshments. As they worked, the women murmured together in low tones.
Molly felt that this was certainly not the time to interview C. C., but he caught her eye and waved at her to join him in the barn.
"I can come back at a better time," she offered once inside.
"Nah." He shook his head. "I need somethin’ else to think about instead of folks keelin' over at my openin'. Come on, I'll show you around." C. C. seemed deeply relieved to have another subject to talk about. Molly received a detailed tour of the pottery studio, the kiln, and was even invited into C.C.’s house to view a few treasured pieces crafted by generations of Burles long gone.
C. C. showed Molly how he worked throughout the year in the cramped bam that looked like a small metal cabin. He had a fan for the summer and a space heater for the winter as his only comforts. The floor was mud-covered concrete, cool even in the summer heat. The entire length of the back wall was lined with tall wooden shelves used as drying racks and the rest of the room's accouterments were reminiscent of colonial times. A crude three-legged stool was pulled up to a wheel that used foot power instead of electricity. An old door on sawhorses served as a table for holding blocks of clay wrapped in tight plastic to retain moisture. Wooden tools like spatulas or cheese knives were stuck haphazardly in chipped crocks near the wheel. Lined up on a warped ta
bletop were a dozen undecorated jugs that appeared moist to the touch. Every tool and piece of furniture was encrusted with clay.
"I just threw them this momin'." C. C. pointed at the jugs with a gnarled and chapped finger. "Couldn't sleep. Those new jugs that haven't been burned are called 'greenware.' See, I've turned them on the wheel but they haven't been in the kiln yet. They'll dry out for a bit and then go in the fire for a good, long roastin'. Come on in the house and I'll show you some old pieces."
Molly trailed after the spry older man on a gravel path that meandered behind the barn. Tucked neatly into the woods, their unpainted house looked as though it had always belonged in the copse of trees.
Inside, Molly noticed that the Burles lived a simple life. Their sparse furniture was easily twenty years old and the rusty hue of the shaggy carpet hinted that it too had been around for some time. Pulling pots off of a nearby bookshelf, C. C. showed her a jug with grapes on it that his grandmother had made out of rolled balls of clay and applied one by one to the piece that his grandfather had turned hours earlier. Afterwards, she had incised some leaves and curled vines around the grapes to create a beautiful and delicate design.
Molly handled the piece gently, admiring its form, lightness, and the artistry of the grapevine.
"Can it hold water?" she asked.
'Tight as Noah's Ark," C. C. answered. "After all, the Burles made this stuff for people in these parts to use every day of their lives. Local people made butter and cream in our chums and stored all kinds of foodstuffs in these crocks. I’m still tryin’ to get used to the idea that people are buyin’ my pottery just to look at it.”
"What's the history of this piece?" Molly asked, holding up a piece that looked like two jugs stacked on top of each other with spouts sticking out in opposite directions.
"That there is a monkey jug. See, you put liquor in its bottom half and a water chaser in the top. These are actually two jugs fired on top of one another so they have separate compartments. Now, you get yerself a nice cup, pour some whiskey from this bottom section"—C. C. tapped the spout of the bigger half of the jug—"then turn it around"— he swiveled the jug so that the opposite spout on the top half faced forward—"then add yer water. You've got a cocktail party all in one place. Me, I like how the whiskey half is so much bigger than the water half."
Molly laughed as she admired the jug's speckled glaze. It looked exactly like the glaze on the pieces C. C. had put out for sale this morning.
"Could you tell me more about the family recipe?" she asked, pointing at the glaze.
"Now, that's fun. You get out your mixer and add one part powdered glass (we have a machine to break it up), one part ash from burned wood, and one part slip."
"Slip?"
"Slip is some broken greenware mixed with water."
"So you blend all that stuff and end up with greenish icing for your cake?"
"That's right. We keep it stored in a big barrel and dip a piece right into it. Gotta make sure there's no slip on the bottom or that pot will stick like glue to the kiln floor when it gets fired."
Molly examined a few more pieces on his shelf. She could see that even though the recipe for glaze was the same, each piece had a unique pattern of flecks, blotches, and drips. She picked up a beautiful crock that had a swirl decoration in green and beige.
"How do you make the glaze into that swirl pattern?"
"That's not the glaze," said C. C. with a smile. "You’re lookin’ at two different colors of clay. The secret to makin' swirl is some- thin' I only share with other potters. You get yourself a wheel and I'll teach you."
"I think that would be wonderful," Molly said, and she meant it, but her few attempts to make pottery were disasters. Her finished products were wobbly, without the slightest hint of symmetry, and completely unimaginative.
When the tour concluded, Molly's head was stuffed with new details about the Burle family and their pottery. She was touched by the way C. C. handled each piece with infinite tenderness, by the pride he took in carrying on his family trade, and his excitement in teaching a new generation of potters the traditional methods handed down by men like himself for over a century.
C. C. had been creating useable art since the 1930s. His hands were arthritic, but they still turned perfect vessels and guided the hands of future artisans. Words were whirling around Molly's head and she was impatient to do justice to this gifted man. She couldn't wait to write her article.
After thanking C. C. and Eileen for their time and offering awkward condolences for the negative ending of the opening, Molly met her mother at the car. As the sedan kicked up dust going down the driveway, Molly looked back wistfully in the side mirror at the empty tables that had been laden with pottery earlier that morning. Her thoughts turned back to the sight of George-Bradley's body being loaded into the ambulance. The kiln opening had been more eventful than she could have ever imagined.
Molly examined the brownish flecks freckling the green glaze of her snake pitcher, and struggled to put the memory of the paramedics loading the dead collector into their ambulance out of her mind. She leaned back against the soft leather of the passenger seat and glanced at her mother. "Where to?"
"Let's go to lunch,” Clara replied. “All this drama makes me hungry."
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 3
About all the potters that 1 knew lived to be up in their eighties, so I don't see where pottin' had killed any of them. Something's gonna take you away from here sometime or another anyway!
—BURLON CRAIG, CATAWBA VALLEY POTTER, from Foxfire 8
The Jugtown Cafe didn't look like much on the outside, but the locals and pottery hounds all knew that it was the place to eat when visiting Seagrove. Though it was between breakfast and lunch time for most people, the lot was filled with cars and trucks.
Inside, pottery displays on high shelves lined the perimeter of the room. Molly and Clara were seated below a row of menacing face jugs with large mouths and chipped teeth. They got the last table by the front door, relieved to be in the path of outside air since the air-conditioning was set to sub zero.
"It's freezing in here!" Molly rubbed her bare arms.
"Coffee?" her mother begged a passing waitress who carried a stack of empty plates covered with brown gravy.
At the next table, four men were finishing breakfasts of ham, eggs scrambled with cheese, bacon, toast, and biscuits with gravy. One of them caught Molly staring and smiled.
"We had to roll hay today," he offered. "Makes a man mighty hungry."
"I must have gotten up this morning at your regular time," she said, saluting him with her coffee mug. "Don't know how you guys do it."
"It's been a hard summer with this drought." He shook his head, lines of worry sprouting around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.
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."
A Killer Collection Page 3