Sweetgrass (22 page)

He looked away. They’d become friends in the past months, and it had been years since he’d had a friend. He didn’t want to ruin a good thing.

“Come on. I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

She looped her arm in his. “You couldn’t have walked me to an ice cream parlor back then, right?”

“Nope. But I could’ve bought you some shrimp or watermelon from a vendor. Maybe some pine straw.”

They strolled through the crowded walkways to an ice cream parlor, where they waited in line and talked about the movie. He ordered a double coconut almond fudge cone, and after long deliberation, she decided on a raspberry sorbet in a cup. Rather than stay in the frigid air of the air-conditioned shop, they opted to sit outside on one of the benches and watch the parade of people pass them by. The sky was darkening, the weather was balmy and Morgan was enjoying himself.

“This used to all be a marsh,” he told her, looking over the brick shops and windows filled with merchandise. “You couldn’t even get to the Isle of Palms from here until after Hurricane Hugo. That’s when they built the connector. The Sullivan’s Island bridge was down and folks were hoppin’ mad that they couldn’t get back to their homes. Just over there a piece,” he said, pointing toward the marsh, “Hamlin and I used to ride in our flat-bottomed boat looking for red drum.”

“You don’t talk much about what it was like when you were a kid,” she said, scooping out the sorbet with a pink plastic spoon. “It’s nice to hear.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true. How could anyone live here and not have a million stories to tell? It must’ve been heaven
for a boy here with the ocean and creeks for a playground. To go out on a boat—” She stopped, suddenly uncomfortable with the territory they both knew she was treading into.

He took a bite from his cone.

“Did you have any favorite places to hang out?’

He swallowed, relieved that she got the conversation rolling again in another direction.

“Actually, I did,” he replied readily. “My brother and I discovered this good-size hummock that was fairly dry and not too buggy. She was a beauty. ’Course, we knew the Sewee Indians were there before on account of the shell ring, but we figured they were long gone and it was ours. Squatters’ rights. We worked like the devil bringing in boatload after boatload of wood, any kind of old scrap we could lay hands on. Mostly from Daddy’s storage house.” He snorted. “He never figured out what happened to that heart pine.”

He looked off, and in his mind’s eye he could still see the rambling shack that he and Hamlin had built on that island they’d claimed as their own. They’d thought it was a castle. When they sat on the rickety porch surveying their kingdom of lush palmettos, cedar and shrubs overlooking a vast view of water, they’d felt like young princes among men.

“It was a fine-looking shack, with a metal roof and a porcelain sink and even an old icebox we found at some dump. It did the job for Cokes and sandwiches. We called it Bum’s Camp. It was a special bond between us.”

“It sounds like a pretty amazing place. Is it still around?”

“It burned down,” he replied flatly.

“Oh. Gee, that’s too bad.”

“My father burned it.”

She skipped a beat. “Oh.”

“After Ham died, he found out that we were coming home from there when the accident happened. I don’t know
why he did it. Well, maybe I do. But he went straight there and torched it.”

They sat awhile in an awkward silence while he wondered if she would pursue this. He hoped she wouldn’t.

“Hamlin sounds like a dream big brother.”

“Oh, yeah,” Morgan said thickly. “He was that.” A bittersweet smile shaped his face at the sudden memory of his older brother teaching him how to wield a hammer. “Hamlin could build anything. He taught me everything he knew.”

“Hamlin was older than you by quite a few years, wasn’t he?”

Morgan nodded. “Ten years.
A decade,
he used to say, ’cause it somehow made it sound like even more. He liked being the oldest one. I guess it made him feel in charge. Not that he needed anything to help him there. Ham was always the leader, no matter what the game. He made up all the rules.”

“And you and Nan followed them?”

“You better believe it. Not because we had to, but because we wanted to. He was just so much
fun.
He knew how to do just about everything, and if he didn’t, he tried it, anyway.”

“Do you? Try everything, I mean?”

“Me? No. I tend to play it safe.”

“I don’t know about that. I heard about your exploits in Montana. Throwing yourself between bison and men with guns doesn’t sound like playing it safe to me.”

“Oh, that,” he said with a self-deprecating shrug. “That wasn’t dangerous, not if you know bison. The secret is in watching their tails. If they raise them, they’re either going to charge or take a dump. In either case, your guard best be up.”

She laughed and he liked the sound of it. It was open and hearty, as if she didn’t worry if someone might look at her askance or tell her to hush. The sound of it made him laugh, too.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, sensing the change in him.

“Nothing. Just the opposite. I was thinking, it’s a new phenomenon for me to talk about Ham and laugh.”

She smiled, relieved. “I’m glad. It sounds to me like you had some good times with your brother.”

“I did,” he said, and in a rush, images flooded his mind, all of his brother, all of them with him smiling. Hamlin fixing the rigging on the sailboat, laughing at the wind. At the wheel of Mighty Moe, giving the cousins a ride in the logging cart. Dipping Nan’s pigtails in paint while she napped. Ham’s face, serene yet focused, his tanned body arching forward, tossing a net over the water with the gracefulness of a dancer. Pulling the throttle of the boat’s engine full back, his eyes shining with devil-may-care as they soared high then hit the water hard, laughing even when it hurt.

“I haven’t thought of him in a long while. At least, not about the good times.”

“Maybe you should.”

Morgan stood up, ending the conversation. His ice cream cone was dripping like a volcano spewing lava. He held it at arm’s length and extended his free hand to her.

“Are you done with yours?” he asked.

She gave him her garbage and he walked over to the metal trash bin and tossed it. He wiped the mess off his hands with the miserly napkin that came with the cone.

It gave him a minute to think. He had to admit, it hadn’t been so bad talking about his brother. After Hamlin died, he’d shut down. He wouldn’t go to his brother’s funeral. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t so much as mention his brother’s name. His parents had said he was in shock, that he needed some time, but it was more. He’d felt dead inside, as if he’d died beside his brother in that boat. He hated to go anywhere, because no matter where he went—school,
church, shopping—everyone knew about the accident and everyone felt the need to come up and tell him how sorry they were, how bad they felt for him and, worst of all, how lucky he was to have survived. They wouldn’t let it just go away. So he went away instead. He’d found it easier to survive if he avoided people and hid out.

Tonight, however, was different. He felt as though a window inside himself had been pried open after years of being tightly shut. He could breathe a little easier. Thinking about Ham, talking about him, hadn’t been as painful as it used to be. Was it Kristina? Or maybe time was a healer, after all.

He looked over at Kristina sitting on the bench. Her profile revealed a softly rounded woman with strong bones.
Soft and strong.
He thought that an apt description. When he returned to her side, she stood and smiled easily into his face and he thought to himself,
I feel comfortable with her. I trust her.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulder, an act that had her turn her gaze toward him, questioning. “Let’s go.”

They began walking, hip to hip, in the general direction of the car.

Nona put her hands on her ample hips and perused the kitchen garden. There were mounds of rosemary and parsley, purple spikes of lavender, flowery heads of dill, tall clumps of basil and row upon row of greens. And tomatoes, lots of tomato plants that promised sweet, warm fruit that would taste like heaven on a piece of crusty bread along with a leaf of that basil.

“That garden is making my mouth water,” she said to Kristina as she walked through the black iron gate.

Kristina sat back on her heels and smiled in welcome. Next to her was an old apple basket filled with weeds. Nona thought her smile was as bright and cheery as the violas she was planting between the tomatoes.

“It’s coming along,” Kristina replied modestly, though her pleasure rang in her voice. “I don’t know if I’ll be here long enough to gather the harvest, but I love gardening. It’s always been a hobby of mine. More of a passion, really.”

“It shows,” Nona said with admiration in her voice.

“I had a huge garden in California. The soil there is so rich! You could drop a seed in, spit on it and it would take off. The soil here is so different, though. It’s sandy.”

“Just give it lots of water,” Nona advised. “That’s the secret. Lots of water.”

“It’s such a pretty space, and someone obviously spent a great deal of time here once. It must have been incredible in its heyday.”

“This has been the house’s kitchen garden since time was. The main produce for the family was grown in the fields down the road a piece, back when this was a farm. At one time, we used to grow most everything we needed right here, aside from flour, sugar, coffee and such.”

“Morgan told me Mama June used to keep the garden up.”

Nona nodded and her eyes grew wistful in memory. “She surely did. I remember she planted herbs. And flowers. She always loved her flowers. Filled the house with them. Whenever she had a spare minute she’d be out here with a trowel.”

“It’s been a long time since this garden was tended.”

Nona shrugged and looked off. “I reckon she lost interest after a while.” Nona bent low to tug out a weed that was hidden beneath a leaf of mustard green. “It’s good to see the garden taking shape again.”

“And speaking of pretty spaces,” Kristina said as she dug her trowel deeper into the soil. “I’ve been going out to Blakely’s Bluff a lot.”

Nona nodded, her gaze on the garden. “So you’ve said.”

“It’s a lovely place.”

“It has the best view of the ocean anywhere.”

“And the house! It’s wonderful. Designers like to say a house has good bones. Bluff House has them in spades. Tall ceilings, big windows, a wide staircase and a view to die for. Whoever built that house knew what she was doing.”

“He,”
Nona corrected. “The man who built it was a cantankerous old Confederate soldier.”

“Says you. I say he was a wounded spirit, a visionary who needed nature to heal his wounds.” She grinned widely and Nona could only chuckle in response. “It’s kind of sad that no one goes there,” she added.

Nona recalled that occasionally a cousin of the family came by to use it, and she imagined young Chas and Harry brought their buddies up for a weekend of no good. She didn’t think any one of them did a darn thing to fix up the place as a thank-you, or even clean up after their sorry asses.

“It wasn’t always like that,” Nona replied. “The family used to go to Bluff House all the time. They had outings and reunions there, and big barbecues. Someone was always going out to the bluff. Mr. Preston, he had this old shrimp boat he loved to tinker on. Lord, he’d go down to work on that boat every spare minute. He called the boat The Project on account of that’s what he always used to say whenever Mama June would ask him where he was headed. ‘I’m going to work on my project,’ he’d answer.” Nona chuckled at the memory. “Those kids used to have good times there.”

Kristina handed Nona a bottle of cold water from the cooler and paused to take a long sip of her own.

“I suppose things changed after the accident,” Kristina said softly.

Nona drank from her water, gathering her thoughts, then reached out to pull on another weed. She wriggled it in her strong hands, easing it from its grip in the earth. “See this
weed here?” she asked Kristina. “It’s not so big when you look at it on the surface, but sometimes the roots go real deep. You have to be careful when you tug on them, so’s they come up clean. Because if they break, they won’t die and they’ll come up again, stronger than ever.

“That’s the way it is with the pain in this family. The roots go deep and the pain spreads to all of them. Everyone’s afraid if they tug too hard something’s going to break and the pain will grow all over again. So they just leave it be. But underneath, those roots just keep growing stronger and stronger.”

She sighed heavily and looked at Kristina, deciding.

“Hamlin Blakely was a fine boy,” she began. “Full of life and mischief, like a boy should be. He was the dickens, I tell you, and the apple of his mother’s eye. He was but eighteen when he drowned. A terrible tragedy it was. I loved him and mourn him like a son, but my pain can’t hold a candle to the fire Mama June endured. Lord, when she got the news I thought she would lose her mind. Ranting and raving and pulling at her hair. Even today I can’t bear to think of it without a shudder. Hard times, they were.

“Mama June fell into a deep, deep despair. She wouldn’t come out of her room. Wouldn’t get out of her bed, not to clean herself or cook or care for her children that lived. They surely needed her, especially young Morgan. He was in the worst way. A lost lamb.” Nona sighed heavily. “But I don’t blame her. I don’t think she cared about her own life, that’s for true. There were days Elmore and I didn’t think the family would make it through. We prayed on it. Lord, how we prayed!

“She stayed in her room for weeks and weeks. The doctors and the priest came, but nothing helped her snap out of it. In time, she came down on her own. She tried to do simple chores, but her heart wasn’t in it. The slightest mention of young Hamlin’s name or anything that even made
her think of him would send her back to her room. After a while, the family used to call them her ‘spells.’ They kind of became a normal part of life around that house.
Mama June’s spells…
”