Low Country (27 page)

inches. It roared out of the yard, made a circle, and

came burring down on us again. The two men called

greetings and laughed loudly. I could not make them

out for the fantail spray of wet black mud.

Mark Bridges made a high, strangled sound like the

squeak of a rabbit caught in a snare and threw himself

down on the steps and rolled into a ball. Sophia

hurtled off the bottom step like a missile. She ran into

the path of the motorcycle and stood there, fists balled,

screaming with fury. I could not seem to move.

“Stop that, you sons of bitches!” she shrieked. “Can’t

you see you’ve scared my child to death? Stop it this

second or I’ll get the police on you!”

The motorcycle skidded to a stop. The silence rang

like a brass gong. Sophia did not move. The two men

dismounted and came toward her slowly. I recognized

Luis Cassells first, mud-spattered and

236 / Anne Rivers Siddons

windblown, his big, dark face crestfallen. Then I saw

that the other man was Ezra Upchurch. He was even

more mud-slimed and wind-savaged, but one would

have known that squat, tanklike build and the massive,

overhanging brow and the perfect blue-black of his

skin almost anywhere. Practically every man, woman,

and child in America had seen it in newspapers and

on television since the late seventies.

“Jesus, lady, I almost hit you,” he said, and the

beautiful, coffee-rich voice seemed as familiar as a

neighbor’s, because I had heard it so often over the

air.

“You almost hit my son, too, you complete, capering

asshole,” Sophia spat, and I gasped, simply because

the words were so at odds with her chilly elegance.

“What’s the matter with you that you think you can

come roaring in here on that thing and run children

down? Mark is a sensitive child; it’s going to take me

days
to get him calmed down! I’m of a good mind to

report you to the authorities
and
to Clay Venable. If

you aren’t aware of it, this is his land you’re trespassing

on. I happen to work for him, and this lady happens

to be his wife.”

Ezra Upchurch looked down at the crouched ball

on the steps that was Mark Bridges. I had sat down

beside him and put my arms around him, and I could

feel the profound trembling that shook him like an

ague.

Low Country / 237

“I’m sorry,” Ezra Upchurch said. “I didn’t see the

boy. I know whose land this is, ma’am. Hello, Caro.

Haven’t seen you since you were in training bras.

Come a long way, I see. Ma’am, my name is Ezra

Upchurch—”

“I know who you are,” Sophia said. “It doesn’t make

you any less an asshole.”

Luis Cassells laughed.

“She’s got you pegged, Ezra,” he said. “Caro, I apo-

logize. This is my fault. Shem was crabbing under the

bridge when you came over and when we stopped to

talk to him he said he’d seen you come this way with

a…real fine-looking young lady. He didn’t say anything

about the boy. We wouldn’t have scared him for the

world. We were just…having fun.”

“Oh, God, Luis,” I said, my heart still hammering.

“You could have killed somebody. Mrs. Bridges is new

with the company, and I was about to bring her over

to Dayclear. She’s doing…some research for Clay. But

I think maybe we ought to get the little boy home.…”

Ezra Upchurch walked close to Sophia Bridges. His

coal-black eyes, lost in ridges of pouched flesh and a

network of fine wrinkles, lingered on her, taking in the

exquisite carved face and the long, slender body and

the safari outfit.

“I do apologize,” he said. “Let me make it up to your

boy…”

He started for the steps, where Mark had

238 / Anne Rivers Siddons

begun to sob. He did not move to uncoil himself from

the anguished ball. Through the silky fabric of his little

Shetland sweater I could feel his heart going like a trip-

hammer.

Sophia Bridges moved like a cat. In a split second

she stood in front of her son on the bottom step.

“If you touch my son I’ll scratch your eyes out,” she

said in the cold, pure voice I had first heard at the guest

house. “That’s before I call the police.”

He stopped and studied her. Then he smiled. It was

a lazy, insinuating, completely sexual smile. I felt its

sheer wattage even though it was not directed at me.

“Unnnh…
uh
!” he drawled. “What we got here?”

The lapse into street black was as deliberate as a

pinch or a leer. Sophia Bridges’s face blanched with

fury.

I stepped in then.

“Sophia, there are chocolate chip cookies and fresh

milk in the fridge, and the coffee’s still hot,” I said.

“Why don’t you take Mark in and give him some, and

I’ll just say good-bye to these two…gentlemen. I agree

with you, they were foolhardy, but I know they didn’t

mean any harm. Mr. Cassells here has a granddaughter

that he dotes on; you know, the little Cuban girl I was

telling Mark about. And Mr. Upchurch

Low Country / 239

was born and grew up in Dayclear. If you can find it

in your heart to forgive him, he can tell you almost

anything you might want to know about it. You

couldn’t have a better tour guide. He knows things I

never will.”

She said nothing but lifted her child up and carried

him bodily into the house. I would have thought his

weight, frail as he was, would be too much for her

slender arms, but she carried him easily. I could hear

Mark still sobbing into her shoulder, but it seemed to

me that the sobs were growing fainter. Sophia did not

look back.

“I thought maybe the little boy might like a nice,

slow ride on the cycle,” Ezra Upchurch said, pitching

it just loudly enough for Sophia and Mark to hear.

“The kids in Dayclear love it.”

“Over my dead body,” she flung back over her

shoulder.

But Mark lifted his strange, tear-drowned little face

for a moment and looked at Ezra Upchurch, and then

at the motorcycle, before lowering it again to his

mother’s shoulder. Ezra made the old peace sign with

his fore and middle fingers and smiled broadly at the

boy. That smile had bent tougher spines than Mark

Bridges’s. Just before he tucked his face back into its

nest of expensive Armani khaki, I thought I caught the

faintest ghost of an answering smile.

I stood looking at the two men.

“Good work, guys,” I said. “Maybe she

240 / Anne Rivers Siddons

won’t call the police, but she’s going to tell Clay, sure

as gun’s iron.”

“Not Mengele! Oh, no,” quavered Luis Cassells, and

I glared at him.

“I’ll take my chances,” Ezra Upchurch said equably.

“Look, I
am
sorry, Caro. I guess she’s got a right to be

pissed. What’s the matter with that boy, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think maybe he’s been sick.

And he’s a long way from home, and he probably

misses his father. They’re divorced. She’s pretty pro-

tective of him.”

“She’s pretty, period,” he said, grinning. “But that

mama is way too much mama for me. Whoo-eee!”

Then he fell back into the perfect, Harvard-inflected

English that was one of his hallmarks.

“I hope you’ll persuade her to bring the boy on over

to Dayclear,” he said. “I’d like to make this up to both

of them. If it’s…ah, research I believe you said…that

she’s after, I’d be delighted to play cicerone for her.

You, too. I’d like to catch up with you. I know what

you’ve been doing since I saw you last, but not how

you feel about it. Will you try to change her mind?”

“I will, but don’t count on it,” I said.

But to my surprise, Sophia Bridges decided to go on

to Dayclear. When I got inside she was sitting with

Mark at the kitchen counter drinking coffee while he

finished his milk and cookies, and

Low Country / 241

both of them were neatened and brushed and face-

washed and composed again.

“Mark has decided he wants to go,” she said. “So we

will. We’ll leave now. But I’m adamant that I don’t

want that motorcycle anywhere around. I must insist

on that, Caro.”

“I’m sure Ezra can hide it in the swamp or some-

thing,” I said, amused and not a little annoyed at her

peremptoriness.

She stared at me hard.

“He better do that,” she said without smiling, and I

sighed, and we left for Dayclear.

8

I
n fact, he had done just that. When we got to
the

general store, I saw the motorcycle deep in the tangle

of scrub and kudzu out back, hardly showing at all.

Only its crusted headlights were clearly visible. But I

was looking for it, and had no trouble spotting it. I do

not think that Sophia Bridges saw it. She had begun

photographing when we reached the sand road that

led in through the woods to the settlement, leaning

out the window and imploring me to go slower. When

we rounded the last curve and the general store was

in sight she was intent on capturing a back view of an

old man leading a spavined mule down the road. Both

wore straw hats. Mark may have seen the cycle, though.

I heard a soft gasp from the backseat that I somehow

did not think was alarm, but whether he was intrigued

by the motorcycle or the chapeau-clad mule and its

owner I did not know.

Low Country / 243

As we approached the old man and the mule I put

a hand lightly on Sophia’s shoulder and said, “I

wouldn’t photograph them head-on. Not right now.

They’re very shy about strangers until they get to know

them, and they don’t like cameras. Later on, after he

gets used to you, he’ll probably pose for you all day.”

She turned a glowing face to me.

“They don’t by any chance think the camera steals

their souls, do they?” she breathed reverently.

“Not since they got here from Africa a couple of

hundred years ago,” I said acidly. “It’s just not con-

sidered polite. I think the soul thing was that tribe in

New Guinea that had never seen a white man, anyway.

Maybe you ought to leave the camera and tape recorder

here the first time out.”

She did not want to do that.

“I want to be very clear about what I’m doing,” she

said. “Really up front with them. I don’t want to seem

as if I’d just come to gawk.”

But I thought that without the tools of her trade she

felt uncertain, somewhat at sea, and perhaps afraid

that the people of Dayclear would not perceive her

authority and expertise at first.

“You’re with me, and they know me a little,” I said.

“That’s the only entree that’s going to work, believe

me. You better hope Ezra
is
around. That’s the best

way, by far. Next to being long-lost kin, to be known

by a native to the village is the

244 / Anne Rivers Siddons

most acceptable way to come into a Gullah community.

Their sense of family is tremendous; we don’t have

anything like it in our culture, not really. The family

structure, the ancestors, the tribe…it’s everything. Mark

will be a real draw, too, even if he doesn’t want to say

a word. They won’t care about that. Children are al-

most magical to the Gullahs. Back in Africa they were

the responsibility of everybody in the village. Hillary

Clinton’s right about that.”

In the end she left the camera and the recorder in

the car, but she was more ill at ease than I had ever

seen her when we walked into the little general store.

I could not imagine why. Surely her fieldwork in cul-

tural anthropology had led her into stranger and more

threatening places than this. Mark lagged behind her,

clutching the hem of her jacket.

Janie Biggins was at the store counter again today.

She wore, over a shapeless black cotton dress that

looked as if it might have been a maid’s uniform once

and probably was, a man’s heavy wool cardigan

missing its buttons. The little store was chilly. There

was no heat except for the iron stove in the back, but

that was glowing red against the nip of the bright, cold

day. Several old men sat in chairs around it. They

stopped their talk when we came in and stared at us.

Janie Biggins did, too. There was no cheerful wel-

come for me today. I knew that it was partly

Low Country / 245

because I had brought strangers with me into the fort-

ress of Dayclear, but I thought, too, that they had all

probably heard by now about Clay’s plans for the

settlement and the land surrounding it. I knew that

they would wait, now, to see what I would do about

that. I felt a twist of pure misery, and a stronger one

of anger. I hated being in this position.

“Good morning, Janie,” I said politely. “I’ve brought

some friends of mine to visit Mr. Cassells. Do you

happen to know where he is?”

She shook her head slowly, not looking directly at

me.