Low Country

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  The sinus infection settled in by noon. I knew that I had done it to myself, sitting in the damp wind on the wet beach last night, and did not care at all. The infections make me sick and so dizzy that it is hard to walk, and the pressure in my eyes and cheeks feels like intense sleepiness. My face swells and my eyes close, and I am good for nothing but to burrow into bed and sleep. I know that they last approximately three full days and nights; if I take antibiotics, perhaps two and a half. When the fourth day dawns I am invariably as clear-headed and full of energy as I ever was, and so I have learned to give in to them, cancel whatever I can, and crawl into bed with hot tea and magazines.

  And that is what I did. Estelle knows the drill now; she does not hover, but she keeps a carafe of hot tea beside my bed, and leaves soup and sandwiches for me, and goes on about her business. If Clay is at home he checks on me occasionally, but I really do prefer to be left alone, and it pleases me when one of the attacks happens to fall during one of his business trips. I don’t feel so much that I am wasting time.

  I will wonder the rest of my life what would have happened if I had not been at home in bed for the next three days. Or what would not have.

  On the morning of the fourth day I awoke and the room did not spin and my eyes did not feel poached and my face was not swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, and I was ravenous. I showered and washed my hair and pulled on jeans and a T-shirt—for outside it was still warm and sweet with sun—and went downstairs. Estelle, smiling, made me sausage and cheese grits, and gave me a list of the calls that had come in while I was out of pocket. None were from Clay. One was from Shawna: Clay and Hayes were going on west with the SouthWard people, to see a gold rush theme park in northern California. Perhaps they would be in by Thursday. He would let Shawna know where he could be reached. They were on the move almost constantly; I probably couldn’t reach him.

  “I have my finger on him for you though, Caro,” Shawna chirped. I made a rude noise at the answering machine and finished my coffee and thought about the soft golden week spinning out ahead of me. The light on the marshes would be wonderful: ineffable and radiant. I jumped up and rooted out my paints and camera and threw some clothes into my duffel and fairly flew to the island.

  I was set up on the end of the dock, drowning in the gilt glitter off the water and the marshes, breathing in the clean old salt breath of the island, feeling the sun pouring like pale new clover honey over my arms and face, when I heard the shouts from the house. I knew without turning around that it was Luis Cassells, and that something was badly wrong.

  By the time I had pounded halfway down the dock, he came around the corner of the house, stumbling and running, and in his arms he carried Lita. Her face was buried in his neck and she did not move. My heart swooped into my stomach and back up, and I stumbled and nearly fell. “Dear Lord, goddamn it, you take care of this little girl,” I whispered as I ran.

  I met him at the steps up to the dock. He thrust her into my arms and I took her automatically and held her close. She scrubbed her face into my shoulder. I watched him as he stood there, head hanging, chest heaving for breath enough to speak. While I stood I was going over the sick-child checklist in my mind, as I had done a thousand times; I did it automatically. Breathing shallow but clear, skin cool, grip strong. She was obviously conscious and I had seen no blood. Her arms were so tight around me that I could hardly get my own breath. I waited.

  He lifted his head and looked at me, and his face was white under the tan and mottled red over his cheeks. His eyes were opaque black and blazing with something: fear and anguish, I thought, and fury.

  “Take her to Auntie, over in Dayclear,” he rasped. “Tell her to keep her warm. Then get Janie to ring the bell; Ezra and Esau are fishing down at the bridge. When they come, tell Ezra to bring a truck and meet me here, and to bring whoever else is around who can lift. And then go back and stay with Lita…”

  “What is it, Luis?”

  “It’s the horses,” he said sickly. “The mare and the colt. We found them about a half-mile down the creek. We were bringing apples for them. They’ve been poisoned, and I think it was the apples; there are half-digested apples all over the place. Tell Ezra that, too. I’m going to wait here for them. I’ll need something to carry some of the apples in, and a tarp or something to cover the pile under the house. Don’t go near those apples, and don’t let anybody from Dayclear but Ezra and the men come back here. Especially no children.”

  “I’ll call a vet, and the rangers,” I said. Lord God, please. Not Nissy and the baby. I was afraid to ask.

  “Not the rangers! I mean that, Caro. Just get Ezra and tell him what I said. We’ll take the colt to the vet in the truck, it’s faster.”

  “Nissy…” I whispered in dread.

  “We can’t help her, Caro. But the colt is still alive, I think. It would be good if somebody could walk the creek and see if any of the other horses are…sick. There’s no way to know how many of the apples were eaten.…”

  “Who could do such a thing?” I said through stiff white lips; I had felt them blanch.

  “Who, indeed?” he spat. “But I’ll tell you who thinks she did. Lita does. She thinks she did it with her apples. She hasn’t said one word since. I’m so afraid for her. My God…go on now. Get her out of here. Auntie has some kind of tea that she uses for sleep; tell her to give Lita some of that.…”

  “Luis…”

  “GO, CARO!”

  I helped him ease the limp child into the Cherokee and ran up for my keys and ran back down. Clashing the Jeep into gear, I said to him, “Did she see?”

  “She found them,” he said, and closed his eyes. Then he gave the car fender a smack and said, “Vamanos,” and turned and went under my house to find the tarp that stayed there, over the whaler. I screeched out of the yard and headed as fast as I dared for Dayclear and Ezra’s Auntie Tuesday. Lita lay with her head in my lap, eyes closed, perfectly still. Her face was as white and empty as that of a dead child. There were no tear tracks on her bleached cheeks.

  When I reached the store I held the horn down with the flat of my hand. Janie came out, muttering darkly, saw me and the child in my lap, and put both hands to her mouth.

  “Ring the bell,” I called, and she turned and ran. In a second I heard it speak with its great dark voice, like eternity. The sound seemed to roll on forever.

  “Send Ezra and Esau down to Auntie’s,” I said. “Luis needs them over at my place. Oh, God, I never thought…Is Auntie at home, do you know?”

  “She to home,” Janie said. “I seen her this morning, and she say comp’ny comin’ and she got to brew some tea. I give her some lemons an’ sugar for it.…What the matter with the baby, Caro?”

  “Somebody poisoned the horses,” I quavered. I was finding it hard to speak past the dread that lay cold and knotted in my throat. Under it was a red anger of a magnitude I had never known. But I knew that I could not let it out yet.

  “This baby didn’t get none of it, did she?” Janie cried.

  “No. But she found the horses. The mother is dead. Luis needs Ezra and Esau to bring a truck; he wants to take the colt to the vet in it. And he needs some people to walk the creek and see if any other horses got into the apples.”

  “I tell ’em when they come. An’ I go walk that creek myself,” she said. “You get that baby on down to Auntie. I reckon she know what to do; she knowed you was coming, didn’t she? Go on now…”

  “Thank you, Janie,” I said, and screeched off down the lane. Far off down the hidden creek I thought I heard the faint, stuttering drone of a faulty outboard engine.

  Auntie Tuesday stood in her doorway. She looked from me to the child with her milky old eyes and shook her head.

  “MMMMM, MMMMM,” she said sadly. “Badness walkin’ right up here in the world today, sho is. Bring that baby on in here. I ’spec we can find somethin’ make her feel better.”

  I lifted Lita and brought her up the steps. She still did not remove her
face from my shoulder, and she still did not speak. Occasionally she shuddered, a deep, racking tremor that ran all through her, but that was all. I started to put her down on the little cot in the corner, where Auntie slept, but she shook her head at me.

  “Set down in that rockin’ chair and rock her,” she said. “I done built up the fire. You jus’ get settled comfortable and rock her now. Keep on a’rockin’ her. I got somethin’ on the stove do her some good.…”

  “She’s not sick or hurt,” I said over Lita’s head. “She saw something terrible and she thinks it’s her fault. She’s stopped talking again. But it’s not physical.…”

  “I knowed it wasn’t her body,” Auntie said. “Look like it worse when it git the soul. Well, we do what we can. We do what we can. The Lord give us things from the earth help the soul as well as the body, and He tell those of us what’ll listen how to use ’em. It the tackies, ain’t it?”

  “How did you know?” I could only whisper it.

  “Seen ’em last night. Seen ’em in the fire. Knew somethin’ dark was after them. If it’s a happy thing coming I sees it in water. Here, see will she take this.”

  She brought a chipped cup of something steaming hot from the old stove in the corner of the dark little room. I took it, not questioning for an instant the wisdom of giving a child the arcane brew of whatever this strange old woman found in the woods. I held the cup to Lita’s lips.

  “Take a sip for me, baby,” I said.

  But she turned her head away.

  “Give her to me,” Auntie said. “I been gittin’ that tea down chirrun’s craws for lots of years now.”

  She indicated that I should get up and let her sit down in the rocker and put the child in her lap.

  “Auntie, she’s too heavy for you,” I said. “I’m afraid she’ll break one of your little old bones.”

  “Ain’t no child gon’ hurt me,” she said, and I got up with Lita, and she settled herself stiffly into the rocker and held out her arms, and I put the child into them. Lita’s face found the thin old shoulder and burrowed there. Her legs dangled almost to the floor, but Auntie held her firmly. She put her face down to the top of Lita’s head and whispered something into her hair, and began to rock. Presently I heard her begin to sing softly, in a thin reedy old monotone:

  “Fix me, Jesus, fix me right,

  Fix me so I can stand.

  Fix my feet on a solid rock

  Fix me so I can stand.

  My tongue tired and I can’t speak plain,

  Fix me so I can stand,

  Fix my feet on a solid rock,

  Fix me so I can stand…”

  She sang it over and over, more a faraway, atonal chant than a song, and presently the dim little room seemed to shimmer with it, and the flickering light from the lit stove rose up to meet it, and song and fire and woman and child seemed to sway in the room until my eyes grew heavy and I nodded. Whenever I forced them open I saw that she still sat, cradling the child, rocking, rocking. The last time I looked I saw Lita lift her head from Auntie’s shoulder and sigh deeply, and relax against her into sleep.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, sliding into sleep myself, but I could not have said who it was I thanked.

  When I woke it was after noon; I could tell from the square of pale sunlight that was creeping across the cabin’s linoleum floor, from the open doorway. The sweet smell of high sun on pine and salt from the estuary blew into the room. Another smell, rich and green and savory, came from a big black iron kettle on the stove. Janie Biggins was stirring it and smiling over at me. Her gold tooth flashed in the sunlight from the doorway.

  “That smells good,” I said. “What are you doing here, Janie?”

  And then I remembered, and whipped my head around toward the rocker. It was empty. I made an inadvertent sound of fear.

  “She all right,” Janie said. “She gon’ be fine. She sleepin’ hard. Auntie and I put her to bed in the spare room. She sleep a long time, I ’spec. Need to. Auntie say when she wake up maybe she talk some.”

  “Oh, God, I hope so. She…There was a long time when she didn’t talk at all, before she came here. Luis didn’t know if she ever would again. I was so afraid that she’d lost it again.…”

  “Auntie sing her a healin’ song. It a good one. I’ve seed it bring the tongue back to folks what had been struck and ain’t talk for months. ’Sides, Auntie seen her talkin’ in the well water. She gon’ be all right. Her mama gon’ take care of her.”

  “Her mama’s dead, Janie. She’s only got her grandfather.…”

  “Auntie seed her mama in the water, too,” she said, and I could tell that for her, that ended the matter. I did not pursue it.

  I got up and straightened my rumpled clothes and went into the tiny, shedlike room off the cabin’s main one. A big, beautiful old rice bed stood against the far wall, the room’s only furniture, 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 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 restaurant 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…”

  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.

  “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.

  “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.”