Jay Brackton lashed the rope of his small fishing boat to the piling on the Lake James Creek dock at the back of his new house on Plantation Drive--the biggest house in Marion, North Carolina--handed the fishing rods to Ken Kemper, and, when he joined Ken on the lake bank, pulled his T-shirt back onto his muscular torso and took back the fishing rods while Ken pulled his own T-shirt on.
Handsome, with strong, buzz-cut features, Brackton was still magnificently fit, at forty-three, in keeping with having been a U.S. Marine between college and law school and being interested in being a formidable force in Marion politics ever since having returned home after Wake Forest law school and opening the town's premier law office. A lawyer in the town for years, in November he was running for mayor of Marion, a town of 7,500 residents in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains that hadn't gone much of anywhere since the mid-1950s. Development of the town had ceased when Interstate 40, down from Statesville and up from Asheville, bypassed the town. Brackton had designs to get the economy going again by getting it out of the hands of the banks and back in those of local businesses.
He had ambitious plans to bring the town, where he'd been born, back into the limelight. If anyone could do it, he could. The decision the people of the town had to make was whether they wanted to be in the limelight and were willing to work and sacrifice to get there. His opponent was the manager of a bank in town and was quite pleased with the status quo, not unreasonably pointing out that him being black and a bank manager itself showed phenomenal progress for a Southern town.
Brackton's choice for a fishing companion was a bit odd. nineteen-year-old Ken Kemper, of mixed parentage and having inherited the best-looking traits of both, was a bit of conundrum in the town. His single-parent black mother, who ran, singly, a barber and beauty shop on Marion's main East Court Street under highly gossiped circumstances, let the young man just roam on his motorbike as he would. He was somewhat of a wild child, although he hadn't been in trouble and no one could complain about the young man's disposition or actions. He was liked by everyone and a ray of sunshine wherever he went. Thus, he could be thought more as a free spirit, always tooling around on his bike, seen here and there, doing this and that--not pinned own in what was otherwise a conservative, buttoned-down town--well, except for his thirty-four-year-old mother, Davonne Kemper, who quite obviously was much too friendly with certain men in town and didn't give a fuck who knew it.
But who she fucked and who fucked her were the talk of the town.
And there was the obvious fact that, as beautiful and perfectly formed as the young man was, he was neither here nor there in heritage. His mother was clearly black, but he wasn't wholly so. Marion was a Southern town. The mixing of races was still something to titter about. There was no father in evidence and never had been--and Davonne Kemper didn't seem to care who turned up their nose about that. Davonne did very much protect any information on where her beautiful young son had come from, though--who she'd coupled with in the white community to create Ken. Davonne had never been out of Marion, so all of the white men of the town were under scrutiny for that one.
When the news went around the town grapevine recently that the young man would be going down to Asheville to start at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, a sigh of relief went around the town. They all liked Ken for himself, but he continually existed as a racial and economic dividing line in the town, which made everyone uncomfortable. He was neither here nor there and no one could blame him for that being the case.
The sigh came with a question, though. Who was paying for it--the college education? Surely Davonne's business was barely profitable enough to put food on the table, even though she owned the building her shop occupied on East Court Street free and clear and they lived in the upstairs apartment there.
But better out of sight, out of mind, although there wasn't anyone in town who would say that that young man wasn't friendly and helpful. He just was... different... and somehow undefined. And, as far as the "old Marion" whites were concerned, he was much too good looking and free about town for having non-white blood in him. All of them with daughters watched them carefully when Ken was around--not because they were suspicious of Ken, but because they were mindful of their daughters' infatuations. If they'd known everything there was to know about Ken, though, they wouldn't have worried about their daughters.
It might be better if the young man wasn't so friendly and helpful, some said, accompanying that with a meaningful look. If nothing else, he definitely was from the wrong side of the tracks, and, as Marion sat where two major rail line crossed, there were multiple ways of being from the wrong side the tracks here. There was race and there was class. There also was a laziness about the town that kept its young people restless until they could break away and move away.
Most of those in town couldn't quite get their minds around what was wrong with the young man being here. They just knew he didn't fit and therefore his very existence posed a threat to... well, something. He was neither fish nor fowl. There was no clear placing him on this side of the tracks or the other.
Looking out of the kitchen window, Jay Brackton's wife, Susan, saw the man and young man get out of the fishing boat and pull their shirts on. She dropped a teacup on the floor and gave out a "Shit." When the family maid, Betty Bond, came into the kitchen to find out what had happened, Susan, normally a proper Southern lady in all circumstances, cursed the woman, and Betty beat a hasty retreat.
Brackton and Ken heard the crash and the curses as they walked up from the riverbank, but neither said anything.
"Sorry we didn't catch anything we can bring home," the man said.
"That's OK. It was good to be able to get out on the river," Ken answered. "Thanks for taking me. And thanks for covering the tuition at UNC-Ashland. I want to--"
"Don't mention it," Brackton quickly said. "You deserve a good education. It will help you get out into the world and out of Marion. It would be good not to say anything about it in town, though."
"Of course," Ken said. He wasn't dumb. He knew there was an election coming up and it would be inconvenient for him to be in town during the campaigning for that--just as Brackton probably thought it best for Ken to be out of Marion forever.
"Are you going back to the beauty shop from here?" Brackton asked.
"Yeah. Mom has something for me to do."
"I have some papers to give to the sheriff. I know the sheriff department's way out of your way back to the beauty shop, but I can't be seen delivering the papers and there aren't many I can trust to do it for me. You think you could drop them off for me? They should be handed directly to Michael Bond. Campaign stuff."
Everybody in town knew that Brackton was aligned with the sheriff in this election--that Bond, who was the brother of the Brackton's maid, Betty, and was the first black man let on the force in Marion, let alone having risen to the position of sheriff, would keep his job if Brackton was elected and wouldn't if the bank manager running against Brackton won. Ken was gratified that Brackton would trust him with this.
