She weighed almost nothing, but I was still breathing hard when we reached the store, partly because of the fear that gripped my heart. What if she did not speak? What if she never did again? Who was there that could heal this child?
We did not see the colt at first, but I called softly, “Yambi, Yambi,” and then he came, trotting around a little lean-to that Esau had obviously made to shelter him from the weather. His legs had grown longer, and his mane and tail were more luxuriant than the little stiff brushes I remembered, and he looked altogether better than I could have expected. The Bigginses or someone had been currying him; his coat was as sleek as I supposed a marsh tacky’s ever got, and on his narrow little head was a soft rope snaffle. He stopped and looked at us.
“Look, Lita,” I said. “He’s waiting for you.”
Against my shoulder, she shook her head. But then slowly she turned it, and she looked. I felt a tremor go through the little body.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the yam. It was still warm and ashy from its tenure in the coals of Auntie’s stove.
“Why don’t you give him this?” I said, and she held her hand out very slowly, and I laid it in her palm.
She looked up at me, and then she held it out over the barbed wire fence.
The colt was still, his head cocked. We were not among the callers he was used to. On the other hand, we came bearing yams. I watched while he worked it out. The yam won.
He came trotting with his springy step up to the fence and put his black nose into Lita’s palm and took the yam with his rubbery black lips. He gulped it with one great swallow, nosed at her hand, and then put his head over the fence and began to nose and sniff at her arm and neck and face and hair. I felt rather than saw the beginning of the smile on her face.
We stood there for a long time, the silent child and I, she smiling now, her eyes closed, as the colt nuzzled her face and neck with his wet black nose. Tears ran down my face in sheets, and I did not even realize it until much later, when my wet collar began to grow cold.
We must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes when she turned her face back into my shoulder and gave a great sigh and said, so softly that I almost did not hear her, “It’s time to go home now, Caro.”
I stood very still, holding her. The colt began nosing at my arms and hands. I looked far into myself, feeling with my heart. Yes, she was still there, my daughter, the tiny, focused, radiant essence of her, burning steadily.
“Can we do this?” I whispered.
And as if she had said it, I knew that we could, knew that the point of flame that was Kylie Venable could warm both me and this cold child, and could do so forever. I put my chin down on the top of Lita’s head.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is. So let’s do it. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”
Author’s Note
There is no Peacock’s Island on St. Helena’s Sound, or anywhere else, that I know of, but perhaps there might have been, and if there had, I think it would be a lot like this one. There are no actual people like the ones in this book, but perhaps if there had been, they might have lived on Peacock’s Island. There is no Gullah settlement called Dayclear, and indeed, the very name is my invention; the accepted Gullah word for dawn is “Dayclean,” though I have seen “Dayclear” in one or two places. There are wild ponies, or marsh tackies, still on some of the Sea Islands, and there are resort developments on almost all of them, many of them called plantations, but Peacock Island Plantation is my own hybrid. There is, thank God, an Ace Basin, and it contains all the wildlife mentioned in this book and more, except a twenty-foot alligator named Leviathan and a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old panther—and after all, in the Lowcountry, who knows?
My thanks and love to Barbara and Duke Hagerty, who shared their friendship, their library, their house and home, and their passion for Edisto Island and the Ace Basin; to Sandra Player, whose miraculous teenage years provided Caro Venable with a provenance of her own; and to Dr. Alex Sanders, president of the College of Charleston, who once again gave me words, flesh and blood for this book. He will know which ones.
My gratitude and admiration to the creators of two wonderful books,* whose pages I have borrowed liberally and literally.
And, as always, to Larry, Ginger, Heyward, and Martha, the home team.
Anne Rivers Siddons
Atlanta, Georgia
May 1998
*“Ain’t You Got a Right to the Tree of Life?”—The People of Johns Island, South Carolina—Their Faces, Their Words and Their Songs, revised and expanded edition, recorded and edited by Guy and Candie Caraway and published by Brown Thrasher Books, University of Georgia Press, 1989; When Roots Die—Endangered Traditions of the Sea Islands by Patricia Jones Jackson, published by the University of Georgia Press, 1987.
PRAISE FOR LOW COUNTRY
“Absorbing…enjoyable…Ranks with the best of Siddons’s novels.”
Orlando Sentinel
“Delicate, compelling, full of real feeling and lush description. A treat.”
Kirkus Reviews
“Compelling…A book that surpasses her more recent novels…Siddons is a pro at capturing the humanity in her characters.”
Austin American-Statesman
“Lush, lyrical.”
Boston Globe
“Matches in quality almost any title in the Siddons canon…Siddons’s followers have come to expect her locals to be painted in a full palette of local color, and the stroke of her brush is as pleasing here as in any of her other works.”
The State (Columbia, SC)
“An Anne Rivers Siddons novel is as seductive as one of those upscale home-design magazines…The descriptions of the island, sea and sky are near perfect.”
The (New York) Daily News
“Siddons, as always, is a terrific storyteller who knows how to hook readers…She’s managed to build a loyal following and stay on bestseller lists by creating engaging heroines…who deal with life crises in a realistic, believable manner.”
Virginia-Pilot
“A special story…wonderful.”
Denver Post
About the Author
ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS’s bestselling novels include Nora, Nora; Low Country; Up Island; Fault Lines; Downtown; Hill Towns; Colony; Outer Banks; King’s Oak; Peachtree Road; Homeplace; Fox’s Earth; The House Next Door; and Heartbreak Hotel. She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Books by Anne Rivers Siddons
Homeplace
Peachtree Road
King's Oak
Outer Banks
Colony
Hill Towns
Downtown
Fault Lines
Up Island
Low Country
"Nora, Nora"
Islands
Sweetwater Creek
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LOW COUNTRY. Copyright © 1998 by Anne Rivers Siddons. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books™.
ePub edition November 2005 ISBN 9780061747137
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