The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  Now I walk in the shoes of this five-year-old boy, his very first shoes, as his bare feet are hemmed within leather and laces and he is offered as a possession, taken from his mother without a second thought.

  I hear Emmaline inside the kitchen with Able, talking in their girlish voices and carefree giggles, and I am nearly overcome by my emotions. What if someone removed her from me, gave her away and I was powerless to stop it?

  I pour the pain into ink and write and write and write.

  The words paint pictures and I live Mr. Bass Carter’s life through lines and pen. This, I know now, is story at its highest capability. It agitates us to genuine joy and tears. Within story, we are given a new soul, another’s soul to try on like clothing, knowing we can shed it again should we choose.

  “I been a long time fo’ this world,” Bass Carter says in the end. “Hard lotta years, I been here. Work hard plowin’ and plantin’ and harvestin’ all my livin’ days since the war. God done brung me through it. Don’ reckon I knows nothin’ to say that matters mo’ than that.”

  I pose him for a photo and take it since Thomas is nowhere nearby, then jot the frame number and note the subject on our list, so as to later match it to Bass Carter’s interview.

  Merry examines him and gives drops for his eyes. “It won’t stop the cataracts, but it will help you feel better,” she says.

  Bass Carter thanks her, and his granddaughter offers a basket containing bread and jam. The old man rises and bids us a pleasant good-bye, and we watch as he rattles off beside his granddaughter in the mule wagon. He turns his face to the hills, but cannot see them. Perhaps just the feel of the breeze is enough to remind him of the view.

  I find myself strangely wrung out as we lunch in Mrs. Walker’s kitchen and discuss plans to travel the mountain roads to hidden places where we will encounter the women who engage in midwifery. “We’ll set out first thing in the morning,” Mrs. Walker says and offers lodging for the night. “In the meanwhile, you might interview the Lundy sisters, who run the whistle-stop store along the track near Rice Creek. It isn’t far, just over two miles each way. If you’re amenable to it, I’ve a medication delivery for them. That will get you in the door. When you hail the house, tell them Merry Walker sent you.”

  I thank her, and she asks if I’d like to leave Emmaline here with Able. I’m leery of it, not knowing the place well, and tell her that I believe Emmaline had better come with me.

  “I understand,” she sighs. “I’d send Able along for the walk, but I must keep her close to home until I can decide what to do about her. Her kind aren’t welcomed around here. Jolly might enjoy trotting along and chasing a groundhog or two on the way, though. Call her from under the house as you go.”

  We are interrupted, then, by the arrival of a boy with a kitten injured by a snare trap. Merry draws a hasty map and sends Emmaline and me off with a package, and Able watches sadly through the window as we strike out with Jolly at our heels.

  Able is still waiting there, hours later, when we return. Emmaline is overjoyed and rushes up the steps with her golden curls bouncing as she offers up peppermints from the Lundy store. I’ve learned much about the valley from the sisters, who have run the whistle-stop all their lives. Neither ever married.

  I spend the evening typing furiously on my Royal DeLuxe portable, writing and revising and retyping a clean copy of my first narrative interviews as Thomas, Merry Walker, and the girls play dominoes at the kitchen table. I suspect we’ve eaten food that can’t be spared, but Mrs. Walker will not admit to it.

  Finally, with the girls settled on a pallet for the night and Thomas bunking in a room that would normally house patients requiring overnight care, I am tucked into bed and writing this letter to you.

  Ah, but before I stop, I had promised to share a bit of the mystery of poor little Able.

  Do you remember our long-ago nights in Charleston, and the wild ghost tales we told in the lavender room at Grandmother’s? You recall, I am sure, Old Juba’s stories of the fearsome blue-eyed mountain Indians with their six fingers and brown skin and wicked ways? No doubt you can still hear Juba threatening that, were we to vex her enough, those Melungeons would come and steal us away in the night.

  Ziltha, there are such people! The girl, Able, is a Melungeon. According to Mrs. Walker, her kind live high in the hills, but they are a reclusive, suspicious sort and do not warm to outsiders. Nor do outsiders warm to them.

  I see no extra fingers on her little hands, but Nurse Walker assures me that, indeed, the sixth finger is not an uncommon thing among Melungeons. Ziltha, can you imagine? All these years, that which we thought to be mere ghost tales and fairy dust is real after all. A secret hides among the high peaks and hidden hollows of this place.

  I cannot help but ponder these odd people and wish to know more. My curiosity is piqued. Is yours?

  As always,

  Alice

  I ran a finger over Alice’s signature, grounding myself in it, seeking some sort of … I wasn’t sure what. Comfort, maybe? A promise that an uncertain situation could end up leading to something good?

  Uneasiness hung over me this morning, and even after hours of losing myself in the letters, it was fresh and potent. I’d felt it the minute I’d come to consciousness. Before I’d even opened my eyes, the scents of my mother, of her threads and yarns, her bath spray and her favorite room deodorizer were waiting, reminding me that this building wasn’t just brick and stone, it was a living thing, the keeper of my family’s past.

  I’d come downstairs, telling myself I would get serious about the cleaning and sorting, but instead, I’d found the next postmark in order and started looking for the pieces. Two separate letters had been sent in the envelope—ten complete sheets altogether, covered front and back. Fortunately, the paper wasn’t water stained and the pieces were fairly large.

  I’d put one letter together, and the second was waiting.

  I could no more resist it than if it’d been a gold coin, just waiting for me to grab it up and put it in my pocket.

  One more, I told myself. One more and then I’ll go upstairs and talk to Clyde.

  MAY 4, 1936

  Sister Dear,

  Three days have passed since I was able to write, and this was most certainly a trio of days to remember! I have, by the glow of electric light and kerosene and coal oil lantern (whatever could be provided in the places we were lodging) completed no less than my first seven field interviews, and I have a slew more to write up. At this pace, I will more than make my quota for The Project.

  Once again, let me tell you the story of my experiences with Nurse Merry Walker, as if you were here with me:

  The morning after coming to her cozy home, we rise early while the mists still sigh from the mountain slopes and blanket the hollows. Thomas carries boxes to the car for Mrs. Walker.

  “You ladies have a fine trip,” he says, but he is worried that the journey will take us away for two nights. “I’ll be back here for you on Saturday noon, Lord willin’ and the creeks don’t rise. Meantime, I’ve got plenty of work to do.”

  Merry Walker thanks him and then asks if he might stay the nights here, instead, and look after Able. “I don’t dare take her with me, but I do worry, leaving her here alone.”

  Thomas agrees, though I think he’d planned for camping out, and then he is off. One more trip to the house, bringing water from Mrs. Walker’s kitchen in rinsed-out Royal Crown bottles, and we are ready. Merry also presents both Emmaline and me with small bundles of goat cheese and bread, along with Bass Carter’s blackberry jam.

  “For our journey. It won’t do to go hungry,” she says.

  We leave Able behind with an admonishment that she is not to venture out while we are away. “I must find a safe place for her soon,” admits Mrs. Walker as we drive away in her car. “It’s a complicated matter.”

  We pass by Thomas on our way out of town, and I am momentarily distracted by his enthusiastic waving and carrying on. He lifts
his camera as if he means to snap a photograph of our departure. “Fill up that notepad, Mrs. Lorring! I’m not hauling that typewriter around for nothing!”

  “I will, Mr. Kerth!” I call out in response, and then feel a blush stealing into my cheeks. Heaven forbid that Mrs. Walker think anything untoward is happening between us.

  In back, Emmaline waves out the window and yells, “Good-bye, Mr. Thomas!” She is still unable to decide whether Thomas is a playmate or an adult, and though I have instructed her to address him properly, “Mr. Kerth” is not quite a fit.

  Unhappy at being left behind, Jolly trots after the car, yipping and howling out a complaint.

  “Here, here, Jolly!” Mrs. Walker scolds gently, for everything about this woman is gentle and kind. “You go home now!”

  Finally, another half mile down the road, Jolly complies.

  Our route from there takes us along winding and shadowed corridors that slither through narrow valleys and climb mountainsides like poorly stitched ribbon on a girl’s dress, ruffled and shrunken, torn and folded. Wild rhododendron and spreading ferns brush fingers over the car as we pass. Gray fox and groundhog skitter for cover among the rocks. Dogwood and redbud spatter slopes with color, and the air is so thick with nectar, each breath is sweet.

  I wonder, in all of our family travels when times were good, in the fields of Europe and the far-flung reaches of the South Pacific, have I ever seen a place more glorious to the eye and beguiling to the senses than this one? Around us, misted valleys and high mountain vistas offer fold upon fold upon hundredfold of myriad greens. All is dressed in a splendor of cloud shadows.

  I have always been a woman of study and reason, rather than of evident faith, but suddenly I see with clarity that in doing what had seemed the worst thing, in taking away my university position, God has indeed done what is best for me. A thing that was needed. He has broken me loose from my perch. I sense that flight is only now beginning.

  My travels with Merry Walker pause first at Log Hill. There we meet a woman of inestimable age, a midwife through five generations in some families now. Her body creaks and complains and her breath labors as she settles into a badly listing bentwood chair. She offers the better ones to us, smiles a toothless smile, and greets Mrs. Walker as an old friend. “Ain’t none so good round these parts as Mrs. Walker,” she boasts, then admires Emmaline, and finally says to me, “Hist over here and set a spell, child. ’Twas right nice of you’uns to ride by. You come up’n here fer hearin’ stories, y’say?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “And to document them—to write them down, so that others might read them.”

  Her eyes glitter and shine. If she is aware of the destitute nature of this cabin with the sagging spine, she does not show it. The place seems as if it may give a weary gasp and slide off the hill at any moment. “Well ain’t that a right pearly thang!”

  Onward she goes, with stories of births she has attended. The tales stretch far and wide, hill to valley, life to death. “Course ain’t all of them is borned fat and healthful. Cress Temple’s eighth boy come ’longside a lil’ tiny twin that wadn’t long for this world. Hooked together on the side a the body, they was. Ri’chere.” Shifting in the chair, she points to her hip. “Listen, child, that was the poorest thang. One babe a’squawlin’, the other’un still and pale as milk. Come from glory and gone on to glory in the same hour. Had to cut ’em apart. Wadn’t nothin’ else to be done over it. Put that little’un that was still breathin’ inside a roastin’ pan, we did. Kep’ him in the basket part, all bundled up in a sheep fleece with a bit of warm water ’neath him. Land’s if he didn’t survive anyhows.”

  She throws back her head. Laughter jangles the air, and Emmaline tosses against her chair and laughs too.

  I’ve written all of it in my notes, from which I compose first drafts, then edit and retype for submission to the state headquarters. We have been encouraged to retain our notes and rough drafts, in case problems should occur with the mail. For now, I am collecting them in the bonnet of my traveling bag, where they will be safe and dry. I shudder to think of such material ever being lost!

  Something more has roused my curiosity, these last days as we have traveled about. In conversation, I have learned more of Mrs. Walker’s trouble with the girl, Able. It is rather a grim story, I am afraid. Not a soul will take the child in. Mrs. Walker sees no option but to attempt a placement at an orphan school she has heard of. It is a place expressly for Melungeon children. It is said to be high in the mountains near the border, but finding the details of its location has been difficult. Nurse Walker hopes to know something soon and to arrange for Able to go there. She is, of course, concerned as to what they will say about Able’s condition and whether they will be equipped to shelter the baby, but this is the only solution she can think of.

  It is so very sad to consider … a baby not yet born and already with no place in the world to be wanted. Able is such a bright and beautiful thing, too. She sings like an angel and mollycoddles Mrs. Walker’s hound dog, yet she seems to have only a cursory realization of the state she is in. She is more little girl than woman. What in heaven’s name will become of her and of the baby?

  When we return to the clinic, I plan to speak to Thomas about the Melungeons. Their stories do, quite rightly (as the midwives would say), belong in the patchwork of these mountains.

  I intend to find those stories while I am here… .

  The hallway door opened, a breeze blew through, and I bent forward over my carefully pieced pages, holding them in place with my body.

  “Thought you might not be up here yet this morning.” Mark Strahan was wearing a drysuit, the ends of his hair damp, as if he’d greeted the sunrise on the water, despite the spring chill that had me in a sweatshirt.

  “Didn’t sleep too well.” That was only part of the truth, of course. The rest of it was that my late night with Casey Turner had left me with much to think about. Too much.

  Now here was Mark, further muddying the waters with a strangely friendly greeting.

  “Thought I’d see if we’d caught your little friend. If you’d rather not be present for the big reveal, there’s coffee downstairs. I came in early to take care of some inventory.”

  Coffee? Mark was suddenly offering me coffee and morning pleasantries? Clearly he didn’t know where I’d been last night. Or maybe he did.

  “I think I’m willing to risk the big reveal.”

  “Gotten a little braver since yesterday?” he said with a slow, spreading smile.

  “Working on conquering the phobia.” All the same, as he moved toward the storage room door, I set a piece of cardboard over my hard work and backed away a few steps, preparing to bolt if necessary. “But … if he is in the cage, he can’t, like, get out … until you let him out, right?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Most of them can’t get out.”

  “What does that mean? Most of them?” Was he just messing with me, or was he serious?

  “We do catch a few Houdinis from time to time.” He turned the storeroom doorknob and I felt my skin crawl. “When we get one of those, they can… .”

  “I’m sure this is just a regular squirrel.”

  He winked at me before going in. “Let’s hope.”

  I paced the hallway, debated taking him up on the coffee offer, tried to angle a long-distance glance through the gap in the door. A head-to-toe shiver ran over me, and I remembered my mother taking me into a zoo bathroom and stripping my traumatized six-year-old self down to the underwear to check for squirrel bites and scratches as my aunts whispered about whether a series of rabies shots would be needed … and how horrible it would be if they were. The petting zoo attendant felt so bad about the mugging, he offered free tickets to come back another time. My mother couldn’t talk me into it no matter how hard she tried.

  The squirrel trap was dangling from Mark’s hand when he emerged. He looked triumphant—Mark, not the squirrel. In the lit
tle wire enclosure, the bushy-tailed invader was checking walls and corners, his four-fingered hands reaching through the bars and groping air, gleaming black talons arching outward.

  Mark held him up like Exhibit A. “Yep, one minute the world is offering you a stack of free peanuts, and the next minute you’re stuck in a cage. I think I found your squirrel entry point in there. There was a hole in the ceiling around the old radiator pipe. I plugged it with a piece of mattress fabric, but I’ll send Joel up later to do something permanent and check around a little more. In the meantime, you’re safe to operate in your storeroom, but there’s glass all over the place.”

  “Ummm … I think the squirrel is ready to go away now.”

  Mark laughed. He had a nice laugh. The soft kind that comes from deep in the chest. “I’ll take him down to the park.”

  “What? I thought you’d give him to the wildlife department or something, so he can be released far away. Someplace where he won’t break into any more buildings.”

  “It’s a she squirrel.”

  I didn’t even care to ask how he knew that. “Well … she’d probably like to live in the woods too.”

  A quick head shake and then, “She might have a nest around here. I’d hate to think of her kits starving to death, all alone. Wouldn’t you?”

  My conscience wrestled with my desire for a rodent-free building. It was a fairly even match. “Yes … I guess I would.” Why did I have the feeling I’d be seeing that squirrel again?

  Lifting the trap, Mark gave the animal a sympathetic assessment. “What about you? You somebody’s mama?”

  A long, slow Southern drawl stretched the last word, mama, in a way that told me he had one and he loved her a lot. “This is like a scene from the Squirrel Whisperer.” The words came out sounding flirty, even though I knew that wasn’t a good idea.