A Killer Collection Read Online Free PDF Page B

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