Shem Creek (45 page)

PEOPLE have secrets. Everyone does. And, at one point or another, many people say they would like to run away and start life over in a place where no one knows their business. I know that I have felt that way. More than once. And I am no stranger to disaster and, most certainly, no one would ever call me a coward. Coward or not, sometimes you just want to slip away into the night.

What drives us to that point? Did you do something horrible? Or, did something horrible happen to you?

Maybe you just feel like you need some anonymity. You have endured all the questioning, opinion-giving and gossiping humanity you can bear. It’s time to strip away everything, all the clutter and noise, and look at your life—how it got to that point and figure out what you intend to do about it. At least, that’s how it was for me.

When my tragedies occurred and getting through the days felt like pulling a wagon of bricks that was missing a back wheel, the only choice was to move to Pawleys Island and attempt to put everything in perspective. I should have packed a seat belt. First, I met Huey Valentine. Huey, one of the most wonderful men who ever lived, befriended me and eventually gave me the swift kick I needed to put down my golf clubs for a while. That kick came when Rebecca showed up and Armageddoned the pattern of self-indulgent complacency that ordered my shallow and insignificant life, which in all my precious stupidity, I thought I was enjoying. Yeah, I thought it was fabulous—okay, it wasn’t fabulous and I knew it. But it was usually better than bearable and, to be frank, until she appeared, I couldn’t think of any better way to occupy my time. Golf and tennis. Tennis and golf. A party here, an opening there. Pretty shallow and useless.

I didn’t think I had much in common with Rebecca until the divorce was all over and I discovered we had everything in common, we were simply at different stages in our lives. If her parachute hadn’t landed on Huey’s doorstep, I’d still be treadmilling in my sandy island rut. And if we all weren’t there to engage Huey’s mind, his life would have been one narrow garden path slowly tiptoeing back to the eighteenth century.

Here’s the other lesson I’ve learned. You only see what you want to see and believe what you want to believe. I’m not talking about the Gray Man or Alice Flagg, Pawleys Island’s most famous walking dead residents. No, no. This goes back to my eyes and those of my Pawleys friends. I thought we were all lonely and making the best of it, and we were to some degree. But my vision was warped. I was everyone’s mother; Huey was my chaste and antiseptic spouse; Rebecca was our daughter. Huey belonged to me and Rebecca did too. Wrong!

What we all taught each other was stunning and honest to God, life altering. But here’s the thing. I will never accept that these changes could have come about any place but Pawleys Island. Sure, you’ve heard about the handmade hammocks and the pristine beaches. You’ve seen gorgeous pictures of the sunsets and the marsh teeming with wildlife. But you don’t know Pawleys until you’ve been there and experienced its tremendous power. It is only a tiny sandbar south of Myrtle Beach and north of Georgetown. But, be warned. It is there that the Almighty Himself would like to engage you in conversation and redirect your soul. Listen to me; for all the jokes I make, this time I’m not kidding.

If you’re happy in your misery and determined to remain so, don’t ever go to Pawleys. If you do make the trip, be on guard. Truth is coming to get you and peace isn’t far behind. But it all comes at a price. You’ll have to be the judge of whether it’s worth all the hullabaloo.

This is how it happened to me. . . .

I looked out across the dunes and up and down the beach. Another gorgeous day. Blue skies, billowing clouds and the sun rising with the mercury. Eastern breezes rustled the palmettos and sea oats. Sun worshippers by the score had accepted early invitations to assume the lizard position. They were scattered and prone, armed with coolers, beach chairs, novels, visors and canvas bags of towels, toys and lotions, littered all along the edges of the Atlantic in both directions. They looked like clusters of human solar batteries recharging themselves in drowsy warmth. The waves rolled in low murmurs of hypnotic suggestion, washed the shore and pulled away.

The weather that day seemed without guile but I knew better. As soon as the hands of time crossed noon, Mother Nature would bellow the flames of hell’s furnace blowing unspeakable heat all over the Lowcountry and the sensible lizards would retreat to shade and hammocks until later in the day. The others would fry, fooled by the breeze and lulled into a comfortable stupor by the ocean’s song.

Let me tell you something, honey. You’d never catch me

in a swimsuit smelling like cocoa butter and fruit, sticky with salt and sand, half catatonic and dehydrated from exposure. No. I had better things to do with my time, like feeding Huey. Or playing golf in that same sun. It was the lying around part that was a problem for me. Besides, who needed to see me in a bathing suit? I assure you, no one.

But back to my current priority . . . feeding Huey.

After his call, I picked up sandwiches from The Pita Roll and drove over to his gallery in the Oak Lea Shops. He had been practically breathless on the phone but private audience breathless drama was pretty much Huey’s modus operandi.

“Abigail! Darling! Drop everything and come! You must meet Rebecca!”

“Who’s Rebecca?”

“Our savior! You’ll see!”

“Well, we
could
use a savior. . . .”

“And, would you be a dear and bring us some lunch? Just tuna for me, on rye, but only if it looks fresh, and turkey on white bread with mayonnaise for our darling girl and, of course, get something for yourself. My treat.”

Huey Valentine had not missed a meal in all his fifty-five years. I had to laugh. When Huey got excited, he thought about food. When he was depressed, he thought about food. What can I say except that Huey was well fed. I imagine the least insulting but most accurate term one might use to describe Huey’s appearance would be
portly
, but in a way
portly
suited his entire demeanor which, when in the company of close friends, grew a shade larger than life itself.

Huey was the consummate Southern gentleman, an aristocratic Nathan Lane, never rude to anyone’s face but felt no remorse about a wicked comment to me about others, especially tourists.

You could set your wristwatch by Huey. He was never late for an appointment or a dinner party. He wrote thank-you notes on his Dempsey & Carroll ecru hand-engraved stationery that was so stiff, folding it cracked it like an egg. And he always used an ornate fountain pen, signing with the flourish of John Hancock. Speaking of John Hancock, Huey Flagg Valentine could probably trace his ancestry back to Charlemagne’s grandparents. Evergreen, the plantation where he lived with his mother and houseman, had been in his family’s name since fifteen minutes after the land was claimed for King Charles II.

I had never seen him dressed in anything but all white, summer and winter, and yes, he wore a hat. But not to affect a grand attitude, so much as to save his balding head from the terrors of melanoma. Everything about him was stylish and elegant. He couldn’t help it. All those generations of social grace and good taste were imbedded in his DNA.

I just adored him. Everyone did.

It was on Huey’s arm that I had gladly attended every party, concert, dinner or gallery opening for the past three years, since my return to Pawleys Island.

Life was so strange. I thought I was going to move into my family’s house and write my memoirs, but I was slightly embarrassed to admit that all I had done was exercise and slide in and out of social commitments with Huey. It wasn’t the worst thing, really. I mean, heaven forbid that I had a little fun. Besides, the thought of reliving my past through writing it all down? Well, let’s just say that I had yet to arrive at the moment where I felt comfortable enough to play with my inner gorillas. They could wait. In any case, I questioned the real value of an autobiography because it seemed like vanity in the extreme. It wasn’t like I abandoned a career as a back-up singer for the Rolling Stones and my writings would become the latest zeitgeist on sex, drugs and rock and roll. Frankly, my therapist recommended I give writing a whirl, saying it might be a good exercise in closure. Instead, I had closure with everything else—my frantic law practice, my marginal personal life and my nice expensive therapist. I simply closed up my house in Columbia and came back to Pawleys just to think about things.

I imagine you could say I’m a lucky woman, at least in terms of inheritance and assets. My mother died when I was very young and then Daddy finally gave up the ghost after a short bout with leukemia six years ago. As an only child, the house on Pawleys came right into my hands. The old rockers, the creaking floorboards, the tongue-and-groove walls, the ancient kitchen and the claw-footed bathtubs were all mine. The only changes I made were to add a furnace, a fresh coat of paint, window boxes of flowers and new screens. Oh, and I did update the bathroom and kitchen fixtures but that had to be done—you know how salt corrodes everything in its path.

If you looked twice at my house you would scratch your head wondering why I loved it so much. Anyone with a developer’s eye would want to knock it down and replace it with a home with central air-conditioning and heat and probably, God forbid, wall-to-wall carpet, an in-wall vacuum system, doorbells and every other invention of the twentieth century. No thanks. I still preferred floors I could sweep, friends calling out to announce their arrival over the roar of the ocean and I could not have cared less what mysterious wonders the damp air performed on my hair. Once I crossed over that causeway, leaving the mainland, the plantations and the Waccamaw River, the world ceased to exist.

On very hot nights I used the ceiling fan in my bedroom because I loved to hear the waves at night and the birds in the morning. And I loved the memories. If I closed my eyes I could hear my mother’s gentle voice, negotiating with Philemon, the creek man and an island institution during my childhood. He had a bucket of fresh flounder and another one of shrimp and from them Momma would buy our dinner.

I could see us at the table, Daddy telling Momma how delicious the meal was. Later I would squeeze in between them on the porch swing, while Momma sang sweetly and I drifted off to my dreams. When you lose a parent at a young age, those few memories you have are more precious than any single ring or necklace left to you. Whenever I was here, even alone as I am now, I could stand where they once stood and somehow in the magical workings of the Pawleys Island salt air, I could bring them back to me. For that and for a thousand other reasons too, I would never sell this house or leave it for too long.

Daddy inherited our home on Myrtle Avenue from his father and his father inherited it from his mother. Our family’s Pawleys Island history went back almost as far as Huey’s plantation origins. Somewhere around the time Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves Daddy’s father’s mother’s husband hauled it in sections (we think) to this parcel of land from Butler Island and put it all back together. If you were inclined to inspect the underside of this great relic you would still find the mortise-and-tenon joints put together with pegs.

When I was a girl, Daddy and his friends would fix cocktails and go under the house to have a look, reappearing later, amazed by nineteenth-century building skills. It was no doubt that her meticulous construction kept
Miss Salt Air
from flying to Kingdom Come during Hurricane Hugo, our most foul visitor of 1989. Oh, she got her bonnet blown off (lost the roof) and there was water damage to be sure, but Daddy brought a team of men up from Charleston and raised her from the dunes to new and dignified heights on sturdy pilings of brick.

Anyway, it’s the island, really, that spins the spell. The house helped but the most compelling reason for my return here was to languish in great peace as opposed to despair. For all of my life, any time spent here made everything right.

I could stand on the porch and breathe in with all of my lungs, exhale my troubles in a
whoosh
and the breezes carried them away. My shoulders dropped back to their natural position. I moved differently, slowly but with deliberateness. I slept soundly remembering all my dreams.

That seemed to be the general consensus of everyone on Pawleys Island. It’s a simple retreat for some and a spa for the soul to others. One thing is certain; it’s unlike any other place in God’s entire creation.

Even Huey agreed with that. As much as the Waccamaw waters flowed through his veins, on many evenings I had seen the look on his face when we shared the end of day, watching the moonrise over the Atlantic.
You can’t paint this,
he would say. And he, who possessed the heart and soul of the artist, was right.

With that statement, Huey claimed a corner in my heart, which until then had been under lockdown. So, when Huey said,
Drop everything and come meet our new savior
I dropped everything and did as he asked. I bought lunch and drove my old Jaguar sedan right over to him, cursing the entire United Kingdom over their wimpy air-conditioning.