“Hi, Anny. Want to go for a little ride?”
My head was spinning.
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
We walked down the path through the garden and out to the curb. It was very dark; the faux gaslight in front of my house had gone out.
“You look nice with your hair like that,” he said.
“Thank you. You look pretty spiffy yourself.”
Neither of us mentioned the time of night.
At the corner of Bull Street and Wentworth, he stopped under the streetlight and looked at me.
“Aren’t you going to ask me where I’ve been?”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“You’re damned right I do. I’ve been in Iowa with T.C. We went out to a big bike meet. I rode with them all the way. It was…wonderful.”
“You rode to Iowa on a motorcycle?” I said stupidly. Through the crack in the bell jar, something very like laughter began to seep in, fizzing.
“I goddamned well did,” he said. “On this.”
We turned the corner, and the light struck a huge, bulbous motorcycle parked at the curb. It shone blackly in the light. It looked like an archaic Cretan drawing of a bull.
“It’s an Indian,” he said. “They just started making them again. I bought it in Iowa. T. C. thinks I’m crazy, he says there are too many kinks in this model, but there haven’t been so far. I worship this lady. Come on, Anny. Get on.”
“Get on?” I was aware of how stupid I sounded.
“Get on the bike behind me. I’m going to blow some of the stuffing out of your head. It’s time, Anny. It’s long past time.”
“How did you know about the stuffing?”
“Because I had it, too, until we got halfway to Iowa. And Gaynelle says you haven’t even been out of the house. We’re starting now. Get on.”
I did. The big bike had a wide, deep seat, and I fit easily into it. I wrapped my arms around Henry’s waist and put my face against his vest, and simply sat, breathing in leather and gasoline and June and Henry.
“This is nice,” I murmured.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he said.
The bike roared into life. I had simply forgotten the sound. My head pounded with it. I had not heard a noise this loud since the ride to Folly Beach. It seemed a lifetime ago. Well, it had been. An enormous giggle like a hiccup rose up out of my stomach and burst to the surface like swamp gas.
We threaded our way over to Hasell and turned onto East Bay. The wind was cool and heavy with Confederate jasmine and oleander. I kept my eyes shut, clinging to Henry. The giggles kept bubbling up. I could not see whether there was much traffic on East Bay, but I had no sense of it. The bike murdered the silence.
“Where are we going?” I called to him. It did not seem important.
“Damned if I know. Maybe to Daytona, to the famous coleslaw pit. Maybe to the IHOP for breakfast. Maybe just around in circles. You pick.”
“I want to go to Sweetgrass,” I said, and suddenly knew that I did, more than anything. I ached for Sweetgrass and the river and the new green marsh.
“Sweetgrass it is. There’s one thing I want to do first, though.”
“What?”
“Show you.”
We bowled down to the Battery. The grand old houses were all dark, sleeping. Off beyond White Point Gardens I could see the first delicate shell-pink flush of dawn on the harbor. Against my face, Henry’s vest smelled rough and masculine and somehow contentious. I giggled again, and opened my eyes.
Midway down the Battery, Henry hit the brakes and gunned the motor. The howl from the Indian broke the world apart. The bubble flew into a million shards. I threw my head back and yelled.
“Yeeeee-HAW!”
Behind us, on the High Battery, window after window bloomed into furious light.
Acknowledgments
YOU WILL NOT FIND the beach house, nor the dunes it sat upon, on Sullivan’s Island, though you might still find a few old houses like it. And there is not, as far as I know, a cluster of small tabby houses on a wide creek on John’s Island. But to me, Charleston and the Low Country are a state of heart as well as of fact, and it is that which I have tried to evoke.
Moreover, none of the people in this book live anywhere but in my own mind. If there are similarities to flesh and blood Charlestonians, I hope they are comfortable ones.
My thanks again to Duke and Barbara Hagerty, who have shared some of their most treasured place names, and who are, to me, the heart of Charleston still. Thanks, too, to Nance Charlebois, who got me hooked on Harleys and coleslaw wrestling. And all thanks to the dedicated people who work to protect the beautiful Gullah language and culture.
And finally, as always, to the A team: Heyward, Martha, and my beloved longtime agent and editor, Ginger Barber and Larry Ashmead. Thanks for the memories, guys.
About the Author
Anne Rivers Siddons has written fifteen bestselling novels, including Outer Banks, Colony, and Up Island, which are available from HarperCollins e-books.
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Credits
Jacket illustration by Greg Harlin
By Anne Rivers Siddons
Fiction
Heartbreak Hotel
The House Next Door
Fox’s Earth
Homeplace
Peachtree Road
King’s Oak
Outer Banks
Colony
Hill Towns
Downtown
Fault Lines
Up Island
Low Country
Nora, Nora
Islands
Nonfiction
John Chancellor Makes Me Cry
ISLANDS. Copyright © 2004 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 March 2004 ISBN 9780061745317
FIRST EDITION
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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