Low Country

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  He had promised Charlie that he would take a long weekend off. I had thought it was a wonderful idea, but now I was not so sure. Maybe, in this new vulnerability of his, the structure and discipline of the office would serve him better than this utterly alien, unformed time. Then I thought, My poor lost Kylie. First I bind her with my own need, and then her father, whom we thought had let her go a long time ago, calls her back with his delayed grief, or whatever this is. I had assumed that he had dealt with his own pain in silence, but perhaps he had merely buried it, and it had found a weakness in the wall only now and broken through. Old sorrow and an obscure anger welled; I can’t even handle my own need for her, I thought. Don’t ask me to shoulder yours.

  “Of course I wouldn’t mind,” I said. “It’s probably a good idea. Didn’t Charlie say that Halcion sometimes caused increased dreaming?”

  Clay sighed and rubbed his eyes, and turned over.

  “I guess he did. I think I’ll nap just a little longer. Don’t wait breakfast on me.”

  He slept for most of three days and nights. Sometimes I came and sat beside him and simply looked at him. In the dim light his Christmas tan looked bleached, and his sun-streaked hair was simply a lightless brown, dull, rough. He looked thinner and smaller under the light duvet I had put over him, and his face was naked and somehow blurred, hollow at the cheekbones and temples. He looked at once much younger and quite old. I remembered how he had seemed to me the second time I saw him, when he had come alone to the island in Shem Cutler’s boat, and I had seen that he was not golden and radiant after all, or limned in light, but merely a too-pale, too-thin outlander with no magic to him. Until he had smiled.

  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 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 particularly 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 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, perhaps 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 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 dooryards. 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 beyond 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?”

  “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 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 rickety 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 drowsing 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 ’mancipated 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 them whistles ladies in the city carries to keep from gittin’ jumped on at night. They be on in here terreckly.”

  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 everybody 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 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.

  I told them everything Hayes had told me. I was very careful about that. I told them just what SouthWard proposed to build on this land, and also how they proposed to mitigate the project so as not to disturb 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 indigenous 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 insurance 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 polite, closed faces.

  “You may want to talk about this among yourselves,” I said finally. “You probably will. I don’t think you have to decide one way or another right now, but I do think the company wants to move pretty quickly on it, so I guess I’ll go on and let you talk. Maybe Ezra can come and tell me when you’ve made some decision. I’ll let the…right people know. And I’ll answer any questions you have right now, if I can.”

  I waited again. Nothing. Only still black faces, looking at me.

  “Anybody?”

  “I think everybody pretty much agrees that it’s up to you, Caro. Not us,” Ezra Upchurch said. His voice was as soft as the breath of a sleeping tiger, but it was still a tiger’s breath.

  “Oh, no,” I said, distressed. “Of course it’s not up to me. It’s up to all of you; that’s the whole point. I’m only relaying the message. It’s entirely up to you all.…”

  “Ain’t us owns this island,” a cracked old voice said. I did not know whose it was.

  “I know that, but I’d never go against your wishes. You must know that. I promised my grandfather…I never would.…I only thought that this new thing might make things better for some of you. I know how hard it is to get good medical and dental care sometimes, and how much plumbing costs, and heating.…”

  But I did not know those things and fell silent. I should not have come. I should not have come. I should not have let Hayes talk me into this. He had used my fallen husband to get me to do this; I saw that now. I took a deep breath and started to speak, but then Toby Jackson spoke. I had not seen him join the group on the porch. I supposed that his old wife must have guided him up the road.

  “Miss Caro, is people gon’ come over here and pay to look at us?” he said.

  Something cold and rock-hard around my heart cracked and broke open. I almost stumbled with the release of it.

  “No, they are not,” I said as clearly as I could pitch my trembling voice. “They are not going to do that because I am not going to turn this land over to the Peacock Island Plantation Company. Not now and not ever. I’m sorry I even let them talk me into telling you about it, and we will not speak of it again unless you all bring it up.”

  I waited a while, my breath coming fast and shallow, to see what they would say. A few of them nodded, and one or two smiled a little at me, as they always did, but still no one spoke, and I wondered if I had made myself clear. I started to speak again, and then did not. I stood a minute longer.

  “Thank you for your time,” I said idiotically, and turned to go.

  “Wait a minute,” Sophia called after me. “If you’ll give me a ride back it’ll save Ezra a trip.”

  “Of course,” I said automatically. My ear
s were ringing with the silence of the people of Dayclear.

  She left to get her things together and call Mark from the backyard of the store, where he and Lita were chasing a platoon of squawking Domineckers.

  Luis Cassells came down off the porch and fell into step beside me. He did not speak, either, until we had reached the Cherokee. I got in and he put his hand on the rim of the lowered window and looked in at me.

  “How are you feeling about all this? It was a tough thing to do and a brave one,” he said.

  “It was a stupid thing to do,” I said. “I never should even have mentioned it. It should not have come up. Luis, do you think they understand that I mean to keep the island? That they’re okay; they’re safe?”

  “They understand everything,” he said. “They’re grateful to you, even if they aren’t ready to show it yet. You don’t have to worry about that. They’ve always known where your heart was, Caro. They just haven’t been sure whether you would follow it.”

  “I’ve tried to do that,” I said tremulously. I wanted to cry, to howl aloud. I had just doomed my husband’s company.

  I said as much to Luis Cassells.

  “It was the right choice,” he said.

  “I just did in my husband’s entire future,” I said, trying to smile. “You’ll excuse me if I can’t feel too confident about my choice.”

  He shook his tangled dark head. “Your decision about Dayclear isn’t the agent of your husband’s future’s tailspin, Caro, much as people might like you to think it is. And it’s not the only one for him. He could have others that don’t cost so much. You could, too…”

  “No,” I said. “Not Clay. For him, I think the company has been the only one.”

  “Then you don’t know anything, carita,” he said, and pulled his head out of my window and went back down the hill. It was not until Sophia and Mark were in the car and we were headed back down the road toward the bridge that I realized he had said not Carita but querida.

  The Spanish for “dear.”