Low Country (19 page)

your granddaughter…for a minute, last night, she

looked very like my daughter at that age. She used to

chase the ponies, too.”

“
Ay, Dios
,” he said softly after a long while. “I’m

sorry. Lita must have been an awful shock for you. I’ll

see to it that she doesn’t come again.”

“No. She’s a nice child. And the ponies are obviously

helping her. Later, maybe, another day, you can bring

her over and I’ll tell you where to find the baby and

her mother. I think I know where they’re hanging out

this fall. I can’t stop living. I don’t want to. She’s wel-

come here.”

He got to his feet and went to the door and called

to Lita to come in, it was time to go.

“You are a very nice woman, Mrs. Caroline Venable,”

he said. “I’m sorry if we brought any pain at all into

your enchanted hideaway here. I think that you didn’t

know about Dayclear, and I’ve shocked you badly,

and as I say, I wish I could bite my tongue out, but

I’m sure it would simply go on flapping. Your husband

should have told you about it. You must talk with him

about it now.”

Anger flared from somewhere under the hangover.

How dare this man, this perfect stranger, this hired

employee of my husband’s, this trespasser, tell me what

I must and must not do, or what Clay should have? I

recognized the anger for what it was: a mask for fear,

but that did not lessen it. I sat up abruptly and glared

at him.

Low Country / 163

“I find that arrogant beyond belief,” I said coldly.

“My…relationship with my husband is absolutely none

of your affair. It never will be. And you are dead wrong

about the new project. You’ve got your facts confused.

There is no way Clay would start to develop this island

without telling me first. There’s no way I wouldn’t

know. For one thing, he doesn’t own this part of the

island, I do. All of it, except for the settlement itself.

And I’d never in this world permit such a thing. He

knows that.”

He looked at me silently for a long time, a level look

suddenly as cold as my own. All the small-boy charm

was gone from the brown face. I could almost feel the

impact of the opaque black eyes. Uneasiness crept in

over the anger. I did not know this man. How could

I have forgotten that?

“They’d like to know that over in Dayclear,” he said

finally. “They’re really upset. They’re sure they’re going

to lose their homes. It’s all they talk about, the old

ones. There’s not anywhere else for most of them to

go.”

“They do know that,” I retorted. “Right after Clay

deeded this part of the island over to me I went over

and told them. I told Jackson. He said he’d tell the

others. Toby would do what he said. I told them they’d

never have to worry about losing their homes. My

God, I love this marsh as much as my grandfather did,

and all of them knew how he felt about it.…”

164 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Well, perhaps you’ll pardon them for being a little

confused,” he said. “They’ve got surveyors over there,

and people in pink Izod and LaCoste shirts thunking

around in their little deck shoes with no socks, making

notes on clipboards, and every now and then Mengele

himself pays a royal visit and chats everybody up, and

his trusty sidekick Goebbels is over there every other

day, and then I come poking around in their bushes

and sticking tags on their live oaks…you can see why

it might look to them like something’s up. And for the

record, I’m not mistaken. I’ve seen the master plan.”

I felt my face whiten.

“You are definitely mistaken. I don’t care what you

think you’ve seen. And even if you weren’t, Clay does

not own Dayclear, nor do I. It belongs to them, the

people who live there. My grandfather always said that

it did.…”

“Actually, nobody knows who it belongs to,” he said.

“There’s no way you could establish clear title to those

homes. I imagine they’ll be offered a handsome cash

buyout. That’s the way it’s usually done.”

“And how can you possibly know that?”

“A friend of mine told me. Someone who lives in

Dayclear. Perhaps you know of him. Ezra Upchurch?

I gather he’s rather well known in the Lowcountry.…”

“Ezra Upchurch! Living in Dayclear? I

Low Country / 165

thought he was on John’s Island,” I said. “Of course I

know of him. I know him, too. I used to play with him

when we were both about eight, but then his mother

came and got him and they moved.…What’s he doing

back in Dayclear? I wouldn’t think things were lively

enough for him over here.”

“He thinks otherwise,” Lou Cassells said, smiling a

new, cold smile. “He’s decided to come back to the

humble village of his birth and stay a spell. Rediscover

his roots, so to speak. As a matter of fact, I’m staying

at his house, his and his old aunt’s. He’ll be happy to

know that according to Mrs. Mengele, Dayclear is safe

as a baby’s butt in a cradle.”

Ezra Upchurch. Bastard child of a mother who fled

Dayclear at fifteen, leaving him behind with his young

grandmother. Changeling child possessed of a quicksil-

ver mind and a steely will, so gifted that he graduated

from the county high school at sixteen and went on to

Morehouse College in Atlanta on a full scholarship,

and from there to Yale Divinity School and then Duke

Law. Full scholarships all. Then he came back to the

Lowcountry and began a rich, glinting career that in-

cluded preaching at the smallest, most time-lost pray

houses in the marshes and woods, taking the smallest

and most impossible pro bono legal cases for the re-

maining Gullah Negroes, playing piano in a number

of scabrous, deep-woods

166 / Anne Rivers Siddons

roadhouses where few white faces were ever seen, disc

jockeying for black jazz stations up and down the coast,

racing his Harley-Davidson, and lecturing at colleges

and universities all over the country for astronomical

fees, most of which went to support the various drives,

funds, and marches that he organized to improve the

lot of his people. He was almost magically successful

at these; the media adored him, as did what he called

“my little folks” everywhere. A great many white Low-

country people, particularly the gentry and those who

aspired to be, called him an agitator. His supporters

called him a savior. No one called him humble. His

fat, flashing ego preceded him, to paraphrase Cyrano

de Bergerac, by a quarter of an hour. To hear him

speak was an unforgettable experience. I never had,

not in person, but I had heard him on television; the

fine hairs on my arms had risen at his words and voice.

Ezra Upchurch, in Dayclear.

What must I think about that?

I shook my head slightly. It had begun to throb.

“Well, since you know him so well, you go back and

tell him that none of it’s true and I’m not going to let

anything happen to this part of the island. And that

includes Dayclear. And let that be an end to it. I don’t

want to hear any more about this…silliness. Do you

understand me?”

He nodded his head and tugged at a forelock

Low Country / 167

in an elaborate parody of a servant with his mistress.

“Yes, Miz Mengele,” he drawled. “I understand, I

sho’ does. You have, by the way, read
Lady Chatterley’s

Lover
?”

I stared at him, speechless.

“Ah, so you have. Well, then, doesn’t it give you the

least little pang of fear, or whatever, to realize that

you’re out here all alone in the wilderness with your

husband’s greenskeeper? You know what came of that

for Lady Chatterley.”

I got up off the sofa and marched to the door and

opened it and stood beside it, speechless with anger.

Beyond the glass windows I could see that Estrellita’s

mouth was open in a little round O and her black eyes

were huge. She stared in at us.

He turned and went out the door.

“Go on home, Mrs. Venable,” he said, without

looking back.

“Go to hell, Mr. Cassells,” I said, my voice shaking.

After they had gone I stood for a long time, staring

out over the marsh and the creek, across it to the dis-

tant line of trees that marked the river. All of a sudden

I could see it: a jumble of masts and flying bridges and

antennas soaring over the rippling green marsh grass,

villas and homes clustering around manicured lagoons

that did not yet exist, golf carts crawling like beetles

over the green hummocks where now the ponies

cropped.

168 / Anne Rivers Siddons

The ponies…

I would, of course, go to Clay about it the instant

he got home. Of course I would. But that would be a

while yet; I knew that he could not possibly be home

yet from Atlanta. Usually his money trips lasted several

days. So there was no need to leave the island and go

back to Peacock’s. No need at all.

I got up and straightened up the coffee table and

plumped up the sofa pillows and gathered the spilled

magazines and newspapers from the floor where I had

left them. I pulled the bottle of Wild Turkey out from

under the sofa and carried all of it into the kitchen. I

tossed the magazines and newspapers into the trash

basket and set it beside the back door, ready to carry

over to the big Dumpster on Peacock’s.

And then I poured myself another small drink and

took it out onto the deck, and sat down in the old twig

rocker, and put my feet up on the railing, as my

grandfather and I had done a number of times before.

There was all the time in the world.

6

T
his time it was Lottie who woke me
.

I know that I did not have more than the one drink,

but when you have drunk as much as I did the night

before, and when you are as small as I am, it doesn’t

take much to drag you under again. It’s as if the alco-

hol still in your system is like a banked but living fire;

it only takes the touch of a match and it’s off and

roaring again. I fell asleep sometime around eleven in

the morning, in the rocker, and only woke when the

sun was slanting toward midafternoon, my head hung

cripplingly over the back of the chair. I heard myself

give a great, gargling snore as Lottie shook me awake.

I snorted and gaped and blinked, licking my lips.

They were dry and chapped, and the sick-sweet taste

of bourbon was strong on my tongue. She came into

focus as I squinted at her, seeming in the painful dazzle

of light off the creek to loom

170 / Anne Rivers Siddons

over me like a colossus. She was leaning against the

railing, scowling at me and rolling my empty glass

back and forth with her toe.

“What are you doing here?” I rasped.

“Better still, what are you?” she said. Her voice was

the familiar twanging growl, but there was something

in it I did not recognize, or rather, something not in it

that I missed. None of the usual fudgy, tolerant warmth

was there today. Her leathery face was closed and

scowling. Her muscular arms were crossed over her

chest.

“You look like Daddy Warbucks.” I giggled, and

then hiccupped loudly. “Oh, shit,” I said. “I think I fell

asleep. My neck is killing me.”

“I think you passed out,” Lottie said. “I hope it
is

killing you. What the hell do you think you’re doing,

out here by yourself dead drunk?”

“I am not dead drunk,” I said with what dignity I

could muster. It was not much. “I had one little drink

sitting out here, and I fell asleep. I hardly got any sleep

at all last night.…”

“No wonder,” she said. “It must have taken you all

night to drink half a bottle of bourbon. This is bad

stuff, Caro. I thought you didn’t keep booze out here.”

“Well, ’
scuse
me,” I said indignantly, trying to sound

righteously affronted. “How many times have I rooted

you out at noon with a hangover that would stun an

army mule?”

Low Country / 171

“That’s me,” she said. “That’s what I do. I’ve been

doing it since I was fifteen, and I never do it unless I

mean to. It’s fun and I like it and when I don’t want

to do it I don’t. It’s different with you, and you know

it.”

“And why is that?”

“Because there’s something in you that won’t stop

until you’re dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve always

known that. There’s something in you that doesn’t

have any limits. And you can’t let go of all that pre-

cious pain, or you won’t. It’s a shitty combination,

and I’m not going to sit around and watch you self-

destruct.”

“So who asked you to?” I said, shame and anger

stinging in my throat. “I don’t remember asking you

to be my own private temperance society. And as for

my pain, as you call it, what do you know about my