Sweetgrass (33 page)

“You can’t help but lose some,” she commented when Mama June bent to pick them up.

“Used to be we only used sweetgrass to work up the basket. I do love the look of it and the feel of it in my hands.” She sighed and her smile was bittersweet. “When I hold this grass in my hands, sometimes I imagine that I’m sitting with my mother and my grandmother, and all the women who sewed with this same grass from this same field. All of us sewing in the old way taught at our mother’s knee. My kin—generation after generation—are buried in that field of sweetgrass and their spirits flow into these blades of grass in my hand. It’s my blessing to weave us all together, to bind us tight with these strips of palmetto.”

She paused to look Mary June in the eye. “It’s all a woman can do,” she said. “We take hold of all these blades of grass in our hand. Some are soft and sweet like sweetgrass. Some are strong and tough, like the rush. And some are pliable but weak, like pine needles. Each blade is special. Each of them is needed for the basket.

“We women are the weavers. We take them all in our hands, then bind them together best we can, hoping to build up something beautiful.” She sighed. “It’s all we can do.”

Their eyes met and held.

Nona smiled again and pulled out a small leather pouch from her bag. It was creamy-colored and soft with age. Inside was the hammered and filed handle of a teaspoon. Its patina was burnished with age. She held it in her hand as if it was spun glass.

“This was my mama’s ‘bone.’ That’s the old word we use for the tool we sew with on account of the old-time sewers
made a tool from real bone, like a rib of a cow. Nowadays, though, most like a teaspoon handle. I couldn’t sew without this one,” she said, holding it fondly between her fingers. “Don’t know what I’d do if I lost it. I make all my baskets with it. Hope to pass it on to Grace someday.

“And this,” she said, handing over another teaspoon handle with baroque filigree, “is your bone. Elmore hammered it smooth just for you from an old silver spoon he found lying in the sweetgrass field. Don’t know how it got there. Coulda been left on a grave. Coulda been a hurricane.” She cackled mischievously. “Maybe ol’ Beatrice left it there.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if that old ghost was throwing the silver around,” Mama June said, venturing a laugh. The smile quickly disappeared. “Thank you, Nona,” she said more seriously, taking the spoon in hand. “This means a lot to me.

More than I can say.”

“You’re welcome.” Nona handed her one of the small coils begun by Grace. “This will be a good start.”

Mama June took the sweetgrass coil and fingered it, thinking of the young girl who’d sewn it, remembering her as a baby in her arms, and now a vivacious, bright adolescent filled with the dreams Nan was talking about just the night before.

“How come we’ve never done this before?” asked Mama June.

“Time wasn’t right before,” Nona replied readily. She handed her a skein of grass. “Now, take a small bundle of grass. That’s right. Now, feed it into the coil, like I do.”

Mama June watched as Nona expertly fed strands of grass into the coil as she wrapped it with the thin strip of palmetto.

“You’re sewing it like thread,” Mama June interjected.

“That’s right. Now, you try it.” She watched as Mama June struggled with the thin grass.

Mama June’s fingers felt clumsy and the grass slid between her fingers. “You make it look so easy.”

Nona chuckled. “Don’t let it slip. You be the boss of that basket!”

She leaned over to closely watch Mama June’s progress, stopping to guide her hands as she darted her tool into the grass to make a space for the binding strip to pass through, pulling it back through, feeding more grass and then wrapping the bundle tight before the next stitch.

Time passed as the two old women sat weaving side by side. Row upon row, the circle expanded, growing wider and wider, the stitches radiating outward like the spokes of a wheel.

MORGAN DROVE AIMLESSLY
all afternoon. He drove north up Highway 17 to Bulls Bay, passing lines of blue sewer pipes being laid and bulldozers that lay still, like great beasts in the field, waiting to devour still more sections of precious wetlands. He cruised through his old haunts in the Old Village and then Shem Creek, where he saw college kids and young executives carouse at the bars that littered the docks beside the few remaining shrimp boats. Finally he crossed the old, rusted Grace Bridge that spanned the Cooper River toward Charleston.

The sun was just lowering, setting the sky afire over the water. Against this backdrop, he felt a thrill of awe at seeing the progress of the new bridge being built practically on top of the two older ones. The enormous steel structure seemed to grow at an amazing pace, faster and higher toward the clouds, like Jack’s fabled beanstalk. And like Jack in the fairy
tale, he felt certain the structure would change the lives of all Charlestonians forever.

The enormity of the new diamond-shaped bridge dwarfed the delicate truss bridge he’d come to love over his lifetime. So many milestones were marked by crossing that narrow two-lane bridge to and from the coast and the city. It was difficult to imagine the Charleston horizon without it.

He sighed, confused with the warring emotions that always came when he tried to reconcile the fast pace of change along the Southern coastline. His parents and their friends were like the old Grace Bridge, he thought, looking dispassionately out the window. They spanned the same years, they were old and rusty, and they were part of a Lowcountry that was fast disappearing.

He reached the high point of the old bridge and looked out over the Cooper River. The port was overflowing with containers piled high, waiting to be loaded onto the enormous ships that would carry goods across the ocean. All healthy signs of growth, expansion and progress. Beneath the bridge, the waters teemed.

He remembered the submarines that used to slide under this bridge back during the Cold War. Some of those babies were nuclear subs with enough warheads to ignite Armageddon. You could bet that put Charleston high on the enemy list for bombing, he thought. Of course, it was all hush-hush. They weren’t supposed to know they were even here. His brother used to tease him when a sub rolled under them as they drove over this bridge. It was damn scary for a young kid to see. Those things were enormous and they slunk under the bridge like deadly monster sharks. Hamlin wasn’t scared of them, though. Ham wasn’t afraid of much.

He reached for the bottle of bourbon in the brown paper bag and took a gulp. His brother’s ghost was riding shotgun in his
truck. He could feel his presence all afternoon, breathing down his neck. Ham was making up the rules again, same as always.

So when the sun set and darkness fell, it didn’t surprise him when he found himself driving down the dirt road that led to Blakely’s Bluff. Cypress, tupelo, live oak and countless shaggy pines and palmettos loomed high around him like a jungle. He could barely see ten feet ahead of him in the starless, moon-deprived blackness, and he cursed out loud to his brother as he gripped the wheel and leaned forward, squinting hard. The road twisted like a snake through the swamps. A couple of times he almost landed in a ditch, food for the alligators.

He was already food for the mosquitoes. The windows were rolled down to fend off the sweltering heat and the mosquitoes were feasting. The sound of frogs swelled around him, bellowing with a chorus of crickets, cicadas and katydids.

A breeze carrying the scent of the sea warned him that he was nearing the bluff. Then, suddenly, he broke through the tunnel of foliage into a clearing. A sliver of moon cut through the velvety blackness allowing him the miserly silhouette of a large, bold house against an eerie vista of dark, swiftly moving clouds.

Bluff House. He felt a shudder rack his body. The house loomed against the horizon, its secrets clinging close in the shadows, daring him to approach. So many conflicting memories assailed him at the sight.

He stopped the truck and stared, his heart pounding in his chest. The old engine rocked the truck while countless, nameless bugs, attracted by the headlights, slammed suicidally against the windshield. Morgan cut the engine and instantly all was still. The only sounds he heard were the steady, rhythmic rolling of the surf and the soft wing beats of insects.

Morgan knew he had come, literally, to the end of the road. He had a choice to make. He could stay here for the night and face the ghost of his brother, or he could turn the truck around and leave Blakely’s Bluff forever.

He leaned against the steering wheel and lowered his head against his arms. He couldn’t fight this any longer. It wasn’t the drink talking, or the fatigue, or the malaise that was settling into his bloodstream as thick and brackish as silt-laden water in a swamp ditch. He heard his brother howling, calling his name in the wind.

“All right, you son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I’m coming.”

That night, Morgan screamed.

He was in the boat again. In Shark Hole. The sky was threatening and the clouds were boiling. From somewhere in the miasma, thunder rumbled. Morgan was afraid. He didn’t feel safe. He wanted to go home.

“We’ve got to go home!” he kept saying in a panic, over and over. “We’ve got to go home!”

Hamlin was in the boat with him. He was bigger and powerful and he was laughing. “We’re okay,” he kept answering. “Don’t worry.”

The thunder grew louder, deafening, and the wind picked up, causing whitecaps to form on the open water. Morgan felt his body seize, knew that they should’ve gone home before the skies got ugly. He’d said so!

But Hamlin only laughed. “We’re okay. Don’t worry.”

The wind hadn’t been so bad at first, but then, suddenly, it freshened and began to blow a little harder, and a little harder still. It felt like they’d sailed right into a black wall of cold. Whitecapping was bad news for a flat-bottomed boat. They had to pass through open water before they reached the relative protection of the tall marsh grass.

The sides of the boat were low. As he clutched them, Morgan’s knuckles turned white. The boat took a beating. The engine started losing power and water began coming in over the rim.

Hamlin stopped laughing then. “Put this on!” he called out, and tossed Morgan the life preserver. There was only one.

“You take it!” Morgan screamed.

“I’m okay!” he called back. “Put it on, squirt!”

Morgan did as his older brother ordered. He always did what Hamlin told him to do.

Hamlin clutched the motor with a strange gleam in his eye and turned into the wind. The waves took his measure. They were bullies, broad-shouldered and granite-jawed as they rammed against the boat. Hamlin gritted his teeth and guided them across the whitecaps in the moaning flat-bottomed boat. They bucked high and hit the waves hard, heading toward the marsh in a zigzag pattern. But the motor was weak and began to sputter. They just didn’t have enough power to ride the top.

The boat kept getting smaller and smaller and the waves bigger and bigger, until they appeared to Morgan as a primeval beast ready to devour them. Over the howling wind he heard a horrible crack as one of the boat’s braces, worn from the pummeling, broke clean in half. Water gushed in, spewing high, victorious. Morgan felt the cold water as pure terror and cried for his big brother.

“Ham! Ham!”

Time altered. With a sudden thrust Morgan felt himself somersaulting in the air in slow motion. He saw feet and legs and hands and wood and darkness, then suddenly—bam—he was underwater. All was quiet, peaceful. For a split second, he wanted to stay. But he bobbed to the surface, gasping for air,
his arms and legs suspended in the cold water. But there was nothing to hold on to.

Where was Hamlin? He saw his brother’s head not too far away. He opened his mouth to call but the wind whipped a spray of salt water across his face. The droplets stung like pellets and he coughed. He closed his eyes just for a moment. Just long enough to stop the stinging. When he opened them again, his brother was gone. Panic’s aim was true. Morgan thrashed and cried and screamed. “Ham! Ham!”

He felt himself being pulled under. His mouth was filling with water, he couldn’t breathe, but he told himself he couldn’t go under. Would not go under. He had to keep his head above water. He had to find his brother. He clawed at the waves, desperate, angry, crying, reaching, screaming.

Morgan jolted forward, gasping for air, his eyes wide with terror. He was bathed in sweat. He looked around the room, ready to bolt at any strange noise. It took a few minutes for him to awaken from the nightmare enough to recognize where he was. The moonlight seeped into the room like a stain, giving his skin a surreal pewter sheen.

He collapsed back against the bed and raised his arm to cover his eyes. He’d had this same nightmare many times before, though not so vividly in years. When he was a kid, he’d had it over and over again. He’d always wake up screaming and crying. It got so he hated to fall asleep.

He ran his hands through his hair, waking up a little. Though his mind was hazy with fatigue and drink, he compelled himself to bring the details of the accident to mind again, this time while he was awake. He had to come to terms with what had happened that day. He sensed his brother lurking, demanding that he face it. He heard his voice in his head.

He rubbed his eyes and stared out. Enough of this crap!
He was done with this. “Come on!” he called to his brother. “I know you’re out there. Let’s get this over with once and for all!”

Think, squirt! What were you doing when the storm hit?

He dragged his thoughts back to that fateful day. It didn’t start out as anything special. It was just a summer day like so many others. They were at Bum’s Camp, as usual. He’d seen the bad weather coming and he’d told Hamlin that he thought they should go home. But his brother was working on something and didn’t want to. He’d teased him, calling him a worrywart and a baby—stuff like that. When the thunder began rumbling, though, Hamlin checked the sky and figured it was time to head back. But by then, even though Morgan was only eight, he knew it was already too late. They had to cross open water in a small boat. It was Hamlin who’d taught him not to take chances with the weather.

You were scared.

“Damn straight I was scared.” He’d clung to the sides of the boat like a baby. When he looked into his brother’s face, however, he saw the dare that could spark in his eyes without warning. Hamlin held tight to the engine, his coarse, sun-kissed hair slicked back by the wind and the golden, chiseled muscles of his athletic body angled forward, as hard and unrelenting as the mast of a ship. He was laughing.

Hamlin was ten years older than Morgan, a snot-nosed, know-nothing kid. To him, his brother was a god. Hamlin was more of a father to him than his own father was. He’d taught him most everything he knew. But he had a wild streak and took a lot of risks. He laughed at danger. He’d laughed in the dream. Morgan heard him laughing now.

His laughing had made Morgan feel angry. But when it had stopped, he was scared. He didn’t believe Hamlin when he said they’d be okay.

Did you think I made a mistake?

Morgan could sense his brother’s presence very near.

“You did the best you could. It wasn’t your fault the engine gave out.”

But then I gave you the life preserver.

Morgan nodded, tightening his lips. “You should have put it on yourself!”

So you think it was my fault that I gave you the life preserver?

“Not your fault. But if you’d been wearing the life preserver, you wouldn’t have died.”

But you would have.

“No,” he ground out. “I would have held on to you. I wouldn’t have let go.”

He heard Hamlin laughing again.
Oh, yeah, sure, squirt.

“I would have!”

The laughing stopped and the voice grew gentle.
You did try to reach me.

“I knew it was bad. I kept trying to grab hold of you. To save you.”

I was your older brother. I should have been looking out for you.

“You did. You were.”

You’re right, pal. I gave you the life preserver.

“I kept reaching for you! I couldn’t find you.” Morgan’s eyes filled with tears and he began weeping openly. “I couldn’t do anything. I was just floating there, getting farther and farther away. The waves kept hitting me and I was choking. I couldn’t do anything.”

You survived.

After a few moments he calmed and could answer. “Yes. I must’ve swum. I can’t remember. I just know I ended up in the creek. The tide was lowering and I hugged the grass line for all I was worth. I got cut up pretty bad by the oysters, but I hung on until someone came.”

Who came? Who rescued you?

Morgan paused and it was as if the fog rolled back. He saw a boat coming. Hearing his name being called he’d cried out, “I’m here! I’m here!” He clawed through the fog, trying to see who was calling his name. Suddenly the mist cleared and he saw a man’s hand reach out to grab him and haul him close, calling his name over and over, “Morgan! Morgan!

Not Hamlin. Morgan.

“It was my father who came for me. He pulled me out of the water.”

That’s right, brother. Never forget that.

Morgan choked up. He couldn’t reply.

Never forget me.

Outside the window, the wind rattled the marsh grasses and brought the long, drooping fronds of the palmettos scratching against the house. Morgan closed his eyes tight, reached out to the empty darkness and wept.

Mama June was awake before her husband. She’d come to Preston’s room the night before to climb into his bed. She’d craved his warmth and needed his strength, both of which he’d freely offered, wrapping his good arm around her and holding her close against his body. They lay like spoons while she wept and told him all that had transpired.