Low Country (37 page)

I wished he would wake up now and smile, but he

did not. He simply slept, and slept, and slept, and I

watched him as I had my children.

“Let him,” Charlie said on the third day, when I

called him, alarmed. “It’s what he needs. It’s what I

hoped he’d do.”

“He looks dead, Charlie.”

“Who looks good when they sleep, Caro? Except

you, of course. Find yourself something to do and let

him sleep. He’ll wake up when he’s ready, and you’ll

see a big change in him.”

And so, on the afternoon of the third day, I

332 / Anne Rivers Siddons

got into the Cherokee and went at last to Dayclear, to

do, finally, what I had promised Hayes I would do.

In the days after Kylie, I became skilled at living on

the very top level of my mind. Part of this process

consisted of a conscious, ongoing dialogue with myself

about the things I saw in the world around me. I was

aware that I was doing it; I even came to call the

process my little class trips, as in, “Oh, look, class,

there’s the first robin of spring,” or “Class, notice par-

ticularly how pretty Mrs. Carmichael’s tulips are this

year.” Even when the nethermost core of me was

screaming with pain and loss, even when foreboding

loomed in my subconscious like an iceberg, I was able

to take my class trips and keep myself in the moment.

The amount of focus and single-mindedness it required

was astonishing. If I could have harnessed it I might

have lit leaves and paper to fire with the sheer force of

my concentration. It is a talent I have yet to find any

real use for, beyond the numbing of pain.

So even as I drove over the bridge onto the island,

passing over the rippling marshes and the tranquil

black water of the slough, I did not think, as I might

have, of what I would see here if Dayclear became the

epicenter of another Peacock Island Plantation property

or, rather, what I would not. And I did not see in my

mind the face

Low Country / 333

of my depleted and diminished husband as he slept,

or wonder what might become of him if I could not,

after all, bring myself to deed the island back over to

him. I only thought that if the mild weather continued

we would have one of those rare, perfect, attenuated

springs where everything reached its absolute optimum

early and balanced there, shimmering with life and

perfection, long after the savage young summer should

have been born.

“A perfect spring for painting; I’ll have to get back

to it,” I said chattily to myself.

But the other thoughts, the older, darker ones, were

there. I felt them, bumping like sharks, down deep.

When I came into the settlement, it seemed that

everyone in it was out renewing themselves in the sun.

Old men sat on the porch and steps of the store,

wrinkled old turtles’ faces turned up to the light,

drowsing or nodding among themselves. I knew that,

barring a deadly cold snap, they would sit there now

until late next fall. A ritual herd movement had taken

place.

A few of the younger men and women were

scratching in the bare garden plots across the road

from the cabins, turning over the rich black soil, per-

haps to ready it for planting—though that lay a month

or so ahead—or perhaps just to see what they could

see. Old women hung laundry on sagging lines behind

the houses; in the

334 / Anne Rivers Siddons

soft, fresh little wind sheets and underwear and overalls

billowed like sails, and would, I knew, smell fragrant

beyond words when donned, sweet with salt and sun.

A couple of old women sat in chairs set out in front of

the houses, watching children toddling and stumbling

after thin black dogs and chickens in swept-out door-

yards. In a dooryard near the end of the line of cabins,

old Toby Jackson, near-blind and smiling, looked into

the sky. I wondered what he saw behind his useless

lids. Perhaps he smiled because it was wonderful bey-

ond the telling; wouldn’t that itself be wonderful? His

hands were busy with the coils of a sweet-grass basket,

as they almost always were, and the grand paisley

Legare Street shawl lay loosely on his shoulders, more

decoration than protection on this soft day.

I went into the store and found Janie behind the

counter, as usual. She had opened both the front and

back doors, and light that did not reach the fusty old

interior all winter flooded it, picking out the astounding

clutter and shabbiness and dust. The iron stove was

cold. All the old men were outside. Janie was propped,

elbows on the counter, flipping through a book of

lottery tickets. Out back I could hear garbage cans

rattling. Esau, hastily tidying up for the spring that had

come before he was ready for it.

“Hey, Caro,” Janie said, flashing her gold-toothed

smile. “It’s God’s day, ain’t it?”

Low Country / 335

“It is indeed,” I said, smiling back at her. “You fixing

to win the lottery?”

“From yo’ lips to God’s ear,” she said. “Shoot, why

not? Lady over to John’s Island won fifteen thousand

dollars last month. Never had a pot to piss in before,

neither.”

“What did she do with it?”

“Got her boy to buy her a double wide over to

Edisto. Gon’ start a beauty parlor over there.”

“Wonder why she didn’t stay on John’s?” I said.

“Oh, most of the folks around where she live is old.

They either wears head rags or does hair wrappin’.

Not much business in the old places.”

“What about you, Janie? Would you stay here if you

hit the jackpot?”

She looked at me out of the corner of her eye.

“You handin’ out money today?”

“Well, I wish, but no, I was just curious.”

She sighed.

“I don’t know. That’s God’s truth. There ain’ much

over here. Never has been. But the spaces, they’re easy

on the eyes, you know. The marsh and the woods,

they don’t confuse the mind like the cities do. When

I go over that bridge I always come home with my

head achin’ and my eyes wo’ out from things and stuff.

Look like I can’t look at but one or two things at a

time. I might feel different if I was younger, but I ’spec

it’s too late for me to move now. This old place, this

is a good

336 / Anne Rivers Siddons

place for the old folks. We don’t need much, but what

we do need is right here.”

I dropped my eyes. I had thought I might go from

one villager to another, the ones I knew, anyway, and

tell them what SouthWard proposed merely as part of

an idle conversation on a spring day, but I saw that I

could not do that. I could not say it but once.

“Is Ezra around?” I said. “I need to talk to him.”

“He and Luis gone over to the old cemetery with

Auntie Tuesday to clean up the family plots. They took

the chirrun and that Sophie with ’em. She want to

make pictures of the markers, she say. I don’t know if

Auntie gon’ let her do that or not. Ain’t too many

white folks seen that graveyard.”

“Sophia’s not white,” I said in confusion.

“Yeah, she white. She might be black in her blood,

but she white in her mind,” Janie said. “Least she used

to be. Look like she changin’ some these days. Ol’

Ezra, he talkin’ his trash to her all the time now. Not

many gals stand up to Ezra’s trash.”

I laughed, surprised at the acuity of her words.

“White in her mind.” It was just what Sophia Bridges

was.

“You know when they’ll be back?”

“I git ’em in here now if you really need ’em,” she

said, and turned and went out onto the rick

Low Country / 337

ety little back porch. I followed, protesting that I could

wait.

But she had already taken up a weathered old

wooden mallet, and with it she struck a mighty blow

on a huge, age-blackened bronze bell that sat at the

foot of the back steps. It was as big around as an oil

tank, and rose above her waist. I thought it must be

centuries old, and hand cast. It spoke with a great,

ponderous boom that rolled away through the drows-

ing woods like summer thunder, echoing and echoing

until I lost it among the farthest trees back to the west,

fringing the inland waterway.

“My lord,” I said reverently. “That’s some bell.”

“Sho’ is. Used to be a quittin’ bell on one of them

big indigo plantations on Edisto. Called folks out of

the fields five miles away.”

“How did it get over here?”

“Esau’s great-granddaddy took it when they ’mancip-

ated him, instead of money or a mule. Took him three

weeks to git it over here by oxcart. Said from then on

he was gon’ to be the only one to ring that bell, and

while he was alive, he was. You listen now.”

I did. From far away came the thin shriek of what I

first took to be a hunting osprey, or perhaps even an

eagle, but did not sound quite right for that.

“That’s Ezra,” Janie said. “He got him one of

338 / Anne Rivers Siddons

them whistles ladies in the city carries to keep from

gittin’ jumped on at night. They be on in here ter-

reckly.”

And in ten minutes or so I saw them, trudging up

the sandy white road that led away into the scrub and

the forest. Mark and Lita capered in front, with Sophia

just behind them. I could see the easy swing of her

stride even though I could not make out her features

yet. Then came Ezra’s great bulk with the tiny figure

of his aunt on his arm, and behind him, carrying what

looked to be hoes and a rake, came Luis Cassells. I

realized that I would know his great-shouldered slouch

anywhere. Auntie’s rangy yellow dog trotted at his

heels.

When I had hugged the children and greeted every-

body and they had settled Auntie Tuesday into a chair

on the porch, Janie brought opened Mello Yellos and

Mountain Dews for us, and we sat down on the porch

steps. The old men nodded and smiled and dozed. No

one spoke. Ezra and Luis looked at me keenly, but I

simply could not get my tongue working. I wished I

was anywhere on the face of the earth but here, about

to propose this monstrous indignity to these dignified

people.

Finally Ezra said, “I think you’ve got something to

say to us, Caro.”

And I sighed, and took a deep breath, and said, “I’m

only here because I promised I would

Low Country / 339

tell you this. I want you to know that it is not my idea.

I still feel the way about this island that I always have.

But I promised.”

He nodded, not speaking. I could not read his eyes.

Luis was not looking at me but out across the cleared

field to the edge of the forest. Sophia Bridges looked

at her feet. They were shod in muddy old tennis shoes

and she wore filthy blue jeans and a sweatshirt whose

message had long since faded. Her narrow, beautiful

head was wrapped in a kerchief in the manner of the

other women in Dayclear. She looked as near as Sophia

could look, I thought, to belonging here.

Auntie Tuesday nodded her head and made a sort

of hypnotic humming sound: “MMMMM hummmm,

Mmmm hummmmm…”

I realized she was singing to herself, but I could not

tell what the song was.

And so I told them. About the dilemma Clay found

himself in—though I could not have said why I did

that—and about his and Hayes’s long search for

something that would save the company and the jobs

of so many people, and finally about SouthWard. I

did not think that the name would mean much to most

of the villagers, but Ezra looked away from me, and

Luis made a soft little sound of disgust, and I knew

that they knew of it. I also knew, somehow, that they

were not surprised to hear the name on my lips. I felt

my face color, but I went on.

340 / Anne Rivers Siddons

I told them everything Hayes had told me. I was

very careful about that. I told them just what South-

Ward proposed to build on this land, and also how

they proposed to mitigate the project so as not to dis-

turb the settlement or my house too much. I told them

about the dredging and the rerouting of the creek, and

about the berms and the greenbelts and the careful in-

digenous landscaping. I saw a few eyes go to Luis

Cassells then. And finally I told them about the plans

for the settlement, ending with the offers of health in-

surance and steady salaries and central heating and

television and indoor plumbing for everybody, and

about the catch-up tutoring for the children. Finally I

fell silent. I was standing so that to look at them was

to look into the sun, and I could not do it, and was

glad. I pulled my sunglasses out of my pocket and put

them on. In the dark green world the people of

Dayclear stood silent and still, looking at me with po-

lite, closed faces.

“You may want to talk about this among yourselves,”

I said finally. “You probably will. I don’t think you