Low Country (41 page)

ture, looking like a great mahogany yacht in a tiny

harbor. I wondered where Auntie might have come by

it; it would have been at home on Legare Street. It

gleamed with care and polish. Lita lay curled in the

middle of it, covered with an exquisite ivory quilt so

old that it was yellowed and brittle. Her fist was

doubled under her chin, and her face was smooth and

calm and flushed with sleep. I listened; her breath came

slow and deep and even. For now, she seemed all right.

For now…

“Where’s Auntie?” I said.

“She down to the cemetery. She grow some things

down there that help this child. Plant ’em there so the

ancestors bless ’em. We gon’ put ’em in this here soup

when she git back, and they perk her up right good.

You, too. You looks like the hind axle of hard times.”

“I feel like it. It was so awful about the ponies. Has

anybody heard from Luis and Ezra yet? I hate to think

of that poor old mare just lying there in the sun.…”

My eyes filled up and I fell silent. It seemed too cruel

for the mind to encompass.

“She ain’t lie there,” Janie said. “Esau and two, three

of the others took Esau’s tractor and some log chains

and move her to the woods over behind the creek, back

of our cemetery. There a big hole there, go way down

in the ground. Been there a long time; don’t nobody

know who dug it. Our good old animals goes there.

It deep and

370 / Anne Rivers Siddons

cool and real quiet. Esau drops pine branches over

them.”

I put my face into my hands.

Sleep well, dear old Nissy, I said in my mind. Down

there in the deep, cool, quiet ground with all the other

good animals, under your green blanket.

“Here, you take some of this now,” Janie said,

handing me a bowl of the soup. I took it and sipped;

it was wonderful, silky and thin and tasting of green

things and sea salt.

“What is it? You could make a fortune in any restaur-

ant in Charleston with this,” I said.

“Fiddlehead soup. Found the first fiddleheads

yestiddy, out in the woods. They real early this year.

Auntie say they has power, but I just thinks they taste

good.”

They did. Gradually the cold, hard knot of grief and

the red lick of submerged anger deep inside me

loosened and cooled. I went and stood on the doorstep

of the cabin, looking off across the bare garden plots

to the edge of the marsh and the creek. The sky was a

tender, washed blue and in it specks wheeled and dove.

Ospreys. I wondered if they were nesting already in

the dead cypresses along the distant river. If so, we

could kiss this terrible winter good-bye. The ospreys

never miscalculated.

Behind me I heard a thin little voice: “Caro? Caro…”

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I turned and ran for the bedroom. Janie stood in the

doorway, smiling.

“Somebody wake an’ talkin’,” she said.

I sat down on the bed and smiled at Lita. She was

half sitting, tangled in the quilt and frowning with sleep

and confusion. Her wiry curls spilled over her forehead

and cheeks, and she had the imprint of a quilted square

on one of them. Her skin was lightly pearled with

perspiration. She reached her arms up for me even

before her eyes were fully opened, and I gathered her

against me.

“You had a nice long nap, didn’t you?” I said into

her hair. It did not feel at all like Kylie’s, or I don’t

think I could have done it.

“Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know. Where’s Abuelo? Caro, I had the

most awful dream.…”

I sat her up and brushed the hair off her face and

looked into it.

“I’m afraid it wasn’t a dream, sweetie pie,” I said.

“You found the horses, and they were real sick, and it

made you very sad. Your grandfather and Ezra have

gone to take Yambi to the doctor so he can be well

again. They’ll be back before long, and they can tell

you about it.”

Please let it be so, I said to the distant God who

took children and horses.

“They didn’t take Nissy with them, did they?” she

said in a tiny voice. I saw that she was screwing her

face up with the effort not to cry.

372 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“No, baby. They didn’t. Nissy was too sick, and she

died. We didn’t see any of the other horses sick,

though, so maybe they didn’t eat the apples.…”

Her breath drew in, and I winced.

“You need to know that it was not your apples that

made them sick, Lita,” I said. “Somebody came and

put something bad in the apples after you left them

there. We know you would never hurt the horses. They

know that, too. It was some bad people, and we’ll find

out who it was, don’t you worry about that.”

She was silent for a while, breathing deeply. Then

she looked up at me. Her eyes were entirely ringed

with white, remembering.

“Her teeth were sticking out all yellow,” she said.

“And there was flies in her eyes. I knew she was dead

then. There was flies in my mama’s eyes, too.”

I pulled her back hard against me, my own eyes shut

tight against the pain. I would have given anything on

earth if I could have scrubbed the memories out of her

head.

“You’re a brave girl,” I said. “It was a bad thing to

see, but she isn’t suffering now. Esau took her and put

her with all the other good animals from Dayclear who

have…died. They’re all together.”

She sighed deeply and relaxed against me a little.

Low Country / 373

“Yambi stayed with her,” she murmured against my

shoulder. “That was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

He wouldn’t leave his mama.”

“That was just the right thing to do,” I said, seeing

in my mind the image of a small child huddled in a

wrecked mountain hut, her shivering flesh pressed to

the cold flesh of her mother. I did not think I was going

to be able to bear this.

Suddenly she gave a great sob, and then pressed her

fists against her mouth. Her whole body shook with

the effort not to cry.

“It’s all right,” I said, beginning to rock her. “It’s

good to cry. It’s the right thing to do. It’s a way of

honoring Nissy. She would be pleased with your tears.”

And then they came, a great, wild storm of them, so

hard and primitive and somehow ancient that I was,

for a little while, frightened for her. She wept and

howled, and sometimes lapsed into a phrase or two

of anguished Spanish, and then howled again. I could

almost hear this sound rolling out over a jungle

somewhere, as old as time itself and as implacable.

These were not a child’s tears.

Presently she began to subside into simple sobs and,

after a long while, sniffles. When she finally pulled

herself away from me and looked up, her eyes were

swollen nearly shut, and her face was congested with

red anguish. But her breathing was slow again, and

deep.

374 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“I think I’m hungry,” she said.

Auntie was back by now, and she brought in a bowl

of the soup, presumably bearing its cargo of herbs,

and a piece of hot cornbread. She sat down on the bed

beside Lita and began to feed the soup to her by the

spoonful, crooning wordlessly. I stood and stretched

and looked down. The front of my shirt was soaking

wet with Lita’s tears.

“You go in that drawer in the front room an’ git one

of them ol’ undershirts,” she said. “Th’ow that shirt of

your’n in the wash pot. Don’t do to sit around in it.

That’s poison there.”

I looked at her.

“It’s what come out of her,” she said, smiling. “The

song and the tea drawed it. Look like it got most of it,

too, but you don’t want it soakin’ into you. I bile it

with lye soap when I does my wash and Ezra bring it

to you.”

“Oh, Auntie, I don’t care about the shirt,” I said.

“I’m just so glad she’s better, and so grateful to

you.…What was in that tea? What was in the soup?”

“This ‘n’ that. Little feverfew, some goldenseal, some

seamuckle, jimsey, little life everlasting. You couldn’t

make it, chile. It’s all in the words you says over it. I

make some up before you go and you can give it to

her if she git bad again, though.”

“I don’t think she’ll be with me,” I said. “I think she’ll

be staying with her grandfather,

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unless he’s really late getting back. I’ll be glad to stay

with her until he comes, though.”

“I give you some anyway,” she said.

Lita fell asleep again, and we three women sat in

chairs that Janie dragged out into the dooryard, talking

idly of nothing much, taking the sun. It was slanting

low when the noise of an old truck came down the

road, followed by the angry burr of Ezra’s Harley.

I met them up at the store. Luis’s face was drawn

and grim.

“Lita?” he said.

“Sleeping. She’s been awake, and talked, and cried

most of it out, I think. And she ate a good lunch. I

doubt that she’ll forget it, Luis, but I think she’ll heal

from it. Auntie…Auntie has been beyond wonderful.”

“I don’t think you’ve been so bad yourself, Caro,”

he said, relief making the tight muscles around his

mouth sag into a tired smile. “You know, it was you

she cried out for before she stopped talking.”

“Oh, Luis…” I said softly.

I can’t take the weight of this, I thought.

“It’s okay,” he said, understanding. “It’s more than

enough that you were here today.”

I found some beer in the cooler and opened it for

him and Ezra and Esau, who had come wearily into

the store behind him. They all took deep swallows,

but no one spoke.

376 / Anne Rivers Siddons

Finally I said, “The colt?”

“The colt is alive,” Ezra said, and his voice was hard

and remote. I had not heard this voice before. His eyes

were distant, too. I could not imagine what they saw.

“The vet thinks he’ll make it. He didn’t eat many of

the apples, apparently.”

“He likes sweet potatoes better,” I said, and felt the

tears sting again.

“Well, that saved him then, because those apples

were full of it, whatever it is,” Ezra said. “The vet isn’t

sure, but he’s got a friend with his own lab who’s

running tox tests right now. He thinks probably botu-

lism toxin. Nothing else is really powerful enough to

down a grown horse so fast. He thinks that they ate

the apples last night early. It would have been put in

by injection. He found the holes in some of the apples.”

“My God, you don’t think it was a doctor!” I cried.

Somehow the thought was horrifying beyond words.

“No, no. You can get the stuff; plastic surgeons use

it, and other kinds of doctors, too. It’s around. There’s

probably a real good black market for it, if you know

where to go. And you can get hypodermics at any

drugstore. I don’t think whoever did it got the stuff

himself, but I think somebody he knew did. We’ll know

more when the test comes in late tonight. If it’s botu-

lism toxin,

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I think I know where to start looking for the source.”

“Where?”

“Better you just don’t ask,” he said. “I’ve got some

friends in not very high places.”

We were quiet again for a bit.

“Do you think any of the rest of the herd got into

the apples?” I asked.

“Doesn’t look like it right now,” Luis said. “Simon

Miller and his boys from Greenville rode and walked

every inch of the creek and the bottoms where they

usually are. They didn’t see anything. And there were

an awful lot of apples left. It looked to me like the pile

we took day before yesterday was mostly still there.

They’re in a croker sack in the back of the truck. I’m

going to drop them in the incinerator at the dump on

Edisto when I go tonight.”

“When you go?”

“Walk me down to Auntie’s,” he said. “I need to see

Lita. We’ll talk on the way.”

We walked side by side down the rutted sandy road.

The swift darkness was rolling in from the Inland

Waterway, and the shadows of the Spanish moss laid

long fingers across the road. The air was cooling rap-

idly. Luis walked with his hands in his pockets, his

stride heavy and slow. I cradled my elbows in my

hands against the chill. The old white Fruit of the

Loom men’s undershirt was decent and clean, but it

was worn thin.

378 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“I’m taking her over to Edisto,” he said finally, not

looking at me. “Ezra has a friend over there who’s not

using his trailer. He left the key with Ezra. I can’t stay

here with her, Caro. Everywhere she looked she’d re-

member…And who knows what’s going to come next?

I can’t take the chance. I’m quitting your husband’s

company, too, as soon as I can give notice in the

morning. I’m not going to make myself a sitting target;

she’s the one who’s vulnerable.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, looking at him.