“Have a beer, man,” Willet said.
Audie shook his head. “Working tonight.”
Cheryl said Audie was one of the best fishermen in the Everglades. “He just bought me a new Camaro. And you should see his truck. It’s beautiful.”
“Don’t do that, sis.” His voice was low and rough.
“Do what?”
“Brag.”
Cheryl fake pouted, pushing her high gloss lips out in a pretty way. Willet liked her, I could tell. He had a weak spot for overdone women. The band played a decent cover of “Fat Bottomed Girls” and Cheryl tugged on Willet’s arm. “Come dance with me.”
Willet left me with Audie, who sipped his tea and examined his hands. During the years when girls in my class were ironing their hair and putting on mascara, I’d been living under the shadow of my missing sister. My trip to see Bubba was my only experience with a man. Thanks to my work with Granny Clem, I knew plenty about childbirth, but I knew nothing about how to talk to strange men. I resented Willet for leaving me alone with Audie. I sipped my beer and shoved another hush puppy in my mouth. It felt strange to sit next to someone and not say a word. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I asked the only thing I could think to ask.
“Do you like fishing?”
He coughed and looked at me. “You ever fished?”
“A little,” I said. “Daddy used to take us pole fishing.”
“Where was that?”
“Mississippi.”
“I’ve never been.”
“You’re not missing much.”
“What brings you here?”
I told him we were looking for anyone who might have known our father. “I don’t think we’re going to find anything.”
“You never know,” he said. “You might turn something up. But be careful. Curiosity ain’t too highly prized around here.”
I said we’d figured that out already. Audie laughed and asked how long we planned to stick around. I couldn’t imagine we’d stay much longer. We couldn’t chase our father’s ghost forever. “I’m sure we’ll head home soon,” I said.
Audie said he and Cheryl lived with their father even though Audie paid rent on an apartment. “I hate to leave Cheryl alone with Pop,” he said. “His mind is slipping.” Their mother had left them years earlier, though not in the same way Daddy left us. She moved to Miami with a man and started a new family. Still, I knew what it meant to be abandoned by one parent and left to care for the other.
Audie looked at the shiny gold Rolex on his wrist and tossed a hundred-dollar bill on the table. “Well, if you decide to stick around for a while, I’ll take you and your brother out on the boat. You ought to see the islands while you’re here.” He left without saying goodbye to his sister.
I hoped we’d get to see the islands before we left the Everglades. I was curious after Iggy’s talk about the men who lived on the old Calusa mounds. If Daddy lived here, even for a little while, maybe he hadn’t lived in town or on the streets. Maybe he’d been one of the men who tried to disappear in the islands. Willet returned and ordered another round of beers. “Where’s Audie?”
“He said he was running late.”
Willet picked up the hundred-dollar bill. “Where did this come from?”
“Audie left it,” I said. “For the tab.”
“He must be the most successful fisherman that ever lived,” Willet said. “Who leaves a hundred bucks for one glass of tea and a basket of clams?”
Cheryl came back to the table with a fresh coat of lip gloss and took a long swig of beer. She sat so close to Willet their shoulders touched. “Please stick around for a while,” she said. “We never get any new people around here.”
I said we’d already showed the photos all over town and we hadn’t learned a thing.
“If your father lived around here, someone’s bound to remember him,” Cheryl said. “Unless he was just passing through. Tourists don’t stay. Hardly anyone bothers to remember them unless they do something worth remembering.”
“What’s worth remembering?” I asked.
She told us about the man who took out his son’s eye with a fishing hook, and about the woman who got drunk and fell off the boat on a sunset cruise, and about the kid who climbed a poisonwood tree on a dare.
“Swole up like a balloon,” Cheryl said. “Went blind for a solid week.”
Daddy always said the quarry was cursed, but bad things happened everywhere. Maybe Willet was right; there was no such thing as a curse, just evil people doing evil things or stupid people doing stupid things. I touched my pocket where I carried the quarry rock. I’d brought it with me because it seemed like a link to the spot where all our troubles began, a reminder of what we were searching for, a talisman or a key. Maybe it was foolish to assume any one place in the world was more evil than another. Maybe the whole world was a dangerous place.
THE ISLAND WAS NOT quite as he remembered it. People were less friendly. No one remembered him or Fern. One man claimed to remember his mother, called her “the old nigger Indian.” It took all of Junior’s will not to punch the man. Ora had liked to say all people were the same. No matter where they lived or how they supported themselves or what language they spoke, they were the same beneath their skin. Junior never believed her until he returned to Chokoloskee, but now he saw she was right. Good people like his mother and Clementine and Ora would be good people no matter where they lived. And people like the men who’d killed Fern’s baby and caused Ora’s death—those people were everywhere. He wondered what sort of person he was, beneath his skin. He was too angry to be good.
Fern settled into a home for wayward girls run by a trio of nuns. She was the least wayward girl he’d ever known, but at least she had a roof over her head. Fern told him to go. “Clementine needs you,” she said. “I can’t go back to that place, but you have to.” He didn’t leave right away. He camped for a few days and watched the birds fly out over the water, but he knew Fern was right. He promised her he’d visit often and said she should call him if she ever needed anything. “Everything I needed is gone,” she said. She watched him drive away, but did not lift her hand to wave.
He drove straight through and arrived back in White Forest sleep deprived and half crazy with grief.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come back,” Clementine said.
“Neither was I,” he told her.
He said he would stay for a while but he didn’t want to be called Junior anymore. Junior was a child’s name, he said. It implied a relationship with his father and he knew he’d never see his father again. Clementine offered to give him a brand-new name, a new identity. She showed him her stash of birth certificates and explained the process. She could make him reborn. He thanked her but said she should just call him by his first name: Earl. Later, though, when Clementine slept and Chester went out to hunt squirrel, Earl helped himself to a birth certificate and all the tools to create a new identity just in case. It seemed like a handy thing to have. He suspected he would need it someday.
Chester took to stalking the men who’d sent Ama and Ora to their deaths. He told Earl they met late at night at the quarry. He told them about their white cloaks and the terrible things they said. He told him about the man he’d shot and how his life was turning bad just as Fern had predicted.
“You ought to stay away from that place,” Earl told him. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
Shortly after Earl returned, Clementine took in a girl named Loretta. Her parents had been killed when the car they were driving got stuck on a set of train tracks. Earl couldn’t understand why the couple hadn’t abandoned the car to the train. Loretta was a few years younger than Earl and Chester. It had been years since Clementine took in a child. After the Depression, fewer children were left behind, but Loretta was an exception, orphaned so suddenly at the age of thirteen.
Earl’s grief over his sister settled deep. It lent him an intensity that mingled with his natural charm. Loretta, with her own fresh grief, f
ell hard for him and wasn’t the least bit unhappy when she got pregnant at sixteen. They married and she miscarried. She blamed Clementine, said something in the salves or teas must have caused the baby to let go of her womb. She said she’d get a proper doctor for any future babies. Earl told her Clementine would deliver any child of his and would treat them for any ailments in the same way she’d treated Earl and Chester. He wouldn’t trust a doctor or a hospital. If she couldn’t accept that, she couldn’t have him. For years it seemed she’d never conceive again. Earl thought it was for the best. They were hard years. A group of students from some northern university came down to register black people to vote. Two of them were found drowned in a nearby river, tractor parts lashed to their legs to keep them underwater. One, a black man, was discovered swinging from the live oak tree near the quarry. Crosses burned on the front lawns of anyone who dared speak out for the cause of civil rights. Rocks were hurled through windows. Churches burned to the ground. White people spat on black people in the street. No one was held accountable.
When Loretta became pregnant again in 1960, Earl worried. He knew enough about genetics to understand any baby he produced would carry the blood of his mother. The black blood, the Seminole blood, might bring a dark-skinned baby even though he and Loretta seemed white as lilies. He was relieved when Willet came out with pink skin. Loretta named him for her dead father. When their daughter came along two years later, just as pink, she named her for her dead mother. Loretta wanted a whole brood of children, but they didn’t come easy. She and Earl were both surprised to discover she was pregnant again, ten years after Willet was born. When Pansy came out with tanned skin and the purple birthmark, Earl died a little. Things were changing in the world, but they didn’t change so quickly in White Forest. A dark baby, even one as light as this, would raise suspicions.
THIRTEEN
AFTER OUR FIRST WEEK in Florida we’d learned nothing new, but we’d met a few people who were friendly enough to help us look. Cheryl and Audie and Iggy seemed to understand why we were searching for information about our father. Cheryl suggested we head to Chokoloskee, the island fishing community just south of Everglades City. “You can’t leave without showing your photos there,” she said. Cheryl didn’t want us to go back to White Forest. She was smitten with Willet and determined to talk us into staying longer.
At the end of our first week in the Everglades, Audie took us out on his boat. I’d wanted to see some of the more remote islands, the ones Iggy had told us about. The maps labeled the area as the Ten Thousand Islands, but Audie said no one really knew how many islands there were. “Less than ten thousand,” he said. “But more than anyone feels like counting.”
Audie took us through the mangroves and out into the Gulf. Along the rivers and in the swampy areas, the mangrove trees grew close together and I thought we’d get stuck as Audie threaded the boat through the thick trees and alongside the massive roots that jutted up from the water. I could see what Iggy meant about how easy it would be to disappear. A man could be standing a few feet from the boat and we’d never see him in the thick foliage. Audie picked up speed when we reached wider waters, but even then the green islands seemed to rise up out of nothing. He sped around them without slowing and without consulting a map.
I asked him how he knew where to turn. He said he’d lived his whole life on these waters and he didn’t need any map. He pointed out landmarks—a jut of sandbar, a patch of mud flat, a river of sea grass, a clump of mangrove—and said it was no different from navigating on land. But it was different. On land the buildings and roads and signs didn’t shift with the winds and the tide. We idled for a bit near a large mangrove cluster and I wondered how anyone could access such an island. It looked impenetrable. Tangled roots jutted up from the water and thick green leaves made it impossible to see past the rim. Audie steered us to the other side of the island and pointed out a small strip of sand and shells, barely visible unless you knew where to look.
The water around the islands was the color of strong tea, but it swirled and cleared and turned a bright turquoise green when we reached the open waters of the Gulf. Audie killed the engine as a flock of white pelicans rose into the air, wings slapping against the water’s surface. I stared at the sky until my neck ached. The day was warm, but a cool breeze blew across the water. My hair was damp from the salt spray and my T-shirt stuck to my skin.
“There’ll be lots more to see at sunset,” Audie said.
“Man,” Willet said. “This is where you work? Sure as hell beats a construction site.”
“It beats most jobs,” Audie admitted. “Gets cold out here in the middle of the night, though.” He asked Willet if he’d ever done any fishing.
“Caught a few catfish in my life,” Willet said. “That’s about it.”
“If you want to earn some cash, I could use some help. I’ve been thinking about hiring someone, but most of the men around here have their own thing going. It’s a different sort of fishing, but you might take to it.”
“We’re not going to be here long enough for you to get a job,” I said.
Willet ignored me. He had his arm wrapped around Cheryl’s shoulders. She leaned against him in such an easy, casual way that anyone would think they’d been a couple for years. I’d never seen him with a girl before. There were plenty of girls in our high school who flirted with him, but Willet never paid them any attention. He was always too busy working to have any sort of normal relationship, but now that Mama was gone he no longer had to work so hard. I didn’t want Willet getting too attached to Cheryl. It would make it that much harder for him to leave and I believed we would leave soon. We’d encountered too many dead ends to stay.
At sunset, Audie steered the boat toward the rookery. A pair of dolphins leapt from the water behind the boat and danced in our wake. The slick gray creatures were like children tumbling across a field. Cheryl was delighted. “It’s good luck when they swim with you, Bert.”
I hoped she was right. I figured we could use some good luck.
Audie stopped the boat beside a long span of mangroves situated in the middle of a vast area of water. It looked like the leaves on the trees had turned white, but the white clusters were birds—thousands of them, large and small. The birds descended to the trees in a racket. Their wings slapped against the air and they called to one another as they flew. It was raucous and thrilling. Audie pointed at one clump and then another. He identified the birds for us: snowy egrets, brown pelicans, roseate spoonbills, white ibis, blue heron. “They fly in every night,” he said.
“Why do they come here?” I asked.
“This is their home,” Audie said. “Where else would they go?”
Flock after noisy flock descended on the trees. I touched the quarry rock in my pocket and felt its cold, smooth surface. White Forest seemed a long way away from these bright waters and squawking birds. Willet looked happier than I’d ever seen him. He grinned at Cheryl and she smiled back and the two of them seemed surrounded by light.
When Audie docked the boat, I found a pay phone and fed a handful of dimes into the metal slot. Granny Clem’s voice sounded tinny and far away. I could picture her, standing at the kitchen sink with the phone pinched between her ear and shoulder, the cord stretched long over the table where I’d spent so many mornings drinking coffee and picking at a slice of lemon cake.
I asked how she was doing. She told me Mollie Jordan was ready to pop. Mollie was a fourteen-year-old girl who denied ever being with any man. When asked how she happened to become pregnant, she’d looked at Granny Clem with wide eyes and said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways.” Granny Clem called Mollie’s unborn child Jesus, the second. Mollie’s father insisted the child be sold and any record of Mollie giving birth erased. Granny Clem suspected he was the father of Mollie’s child, but the girl wouldn’t accuse him of anything no matter how many ways Granny Clem asked.
“I’m sorry I’m not there to help you,” I said.
“Oh, d
on’t worry about it. It’ll be an easy birth. She’s healthy as a horse. I hope we don’t see her again in a year or so.”
I knew Mollie would show up again. Granny Clem would lecture her about birth control and she’d continue to insist she wasn’t having sex, so she didn’t need to worry about it. And, anyhow, birth control was a sin. If God wanted a baby in the world, who was she to go against his will? Granny Clem tried to persuade the young girls who came to her that preventing a pregnancy was easier than ending one, but the girls couldn’t bring themselves to take the pill and the boys never bought condoms. It was sinful to have sex outside marriage, sure, but it was even worse to plan for it. “Religious logic is no logic at all,” Granny Clem said. We’d had the same conversation a dozen times.
“Are you learning anything about your father?”
I told her no one seemed to know him.
“Well,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about it. You know everything you need to know.”
I thought of all the things I knew about Daddy and I came up with very little. I knew he liked stale cornbread soaked in buttermilk at night and fresh biscuits with fig preserves in the morning. I knew he wore soft cotton shirts and crisp denim jeans almost every day. I knew he hated going to church, not because the sermons were dry and boring, but because the folks in the pews were self-righteous hypocrites. I knew he didn’t allow us to eat at the all-white supper club or swim in the all-white pool. The knowledge wasn’t enough. I wanted more.
“He loved you,” Granny Clem said. “That’s the most important thing.”
She was wrong. I wanted something better than love, something bigger and more valuable. I wanted truth.
The next morning Willet and I drove across the causeway to Chokoloskee. It had rained overnight and dark brown water swirled on both sides of the road. Debris blew across the causeway—leaves and branches, beer cans and cigarette butts. Yesterday’s blue skies had faded to gray. The trash and the gray sky and the water reminded me of the quarry. It seemed we were always searching for something in the midst of dark water. Willet drove slowly. I sat with my feet on the dashboard, though I knew it made him crazy. He told me I’d end up with my knees in my mouth if we wrecked the truck. I told him not to wreck the truck.
The Past Is Never Page 20
