The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  In the midst of that thought, there was another one—something that had struck me yesterday in the Iola room at Benoit House, the very thing Alice was learning as she traveled to the mountains.

  How wonderful the days when all was well.

  How necessary, also, that we must release them now. It is fine enough to glance at the past, but one must never focus there overlong. Don’t you think?

  Here was Mark, with an unthinkable past, still looking forward, still seeking after today’s purpose, still taking chances on other people.

  I wanted to understand him. I needed to. I’d walked too long in the shoes of a child who was still waiting for her daddy to magically come home and fix everything. But the truth was, I had to fix myself. For too long, I’d harbored a five-year-old’s broken heart, one that was terrified, deep down, that no one could really be trusted. I was always ready to leave but never ready to really love. I told myself it was better that way, safer.

  I have lost the carefree girl I once was … allowed the cutting blades of fear to whittle me down to nubs. I dearly believe it was not fate that brought me here, but God himself. This is the place I will finally find courage and breath and voice.

  What I’d witnessed as I’d watched Mark tend to Joel was the work of love. I needed that like I needed air.

  “It’s been six years, and still sometimes when the phone rings, I pick it up expecting to hear Hadley’s voice on the other end. I’m ready for her to give me the play-by-play of her latest softball game or complain about something her mom won’t let her do or ask when I’m going to fly out and pick her up for a visit.” His voice held a combination of sadness and resignation. “It’s just so … random. You never know when it’s coming.”

  Without even intending to, I laid a hand on his arm, felt muscle and skin beneath my fingers. Warmth. Life. “I know.” The connection between us was soul-deep in that moment, the kind of shared bond that no one wishes for. “I still walk into the Excelsior and think I hear my mom singing in the next room, or I catch the scent of her bath spray and feel like she’s just passed by. It’s so real in that moment, I almost create it for myself. And then in the next moment, it’s not real, no matter how much I want it to be.” It was the first time I had confessed that to anyone. “That’s not what my mother would’ve wanted. I know that on one level, but on another level, I’m afraid that if I let her go, I’ll forget who she was. I won’t be able to get her back.”

  “Yeah. That’s it, I think. But on the other hand, life has to go on, one way or another. I’m still Hadley’s dad even though I can’t see her or pick up the phone and talk to her. I came to Roanoke looking to get away from all the things that were constant reminders of what’d happened, of the ways I’d failed my little girl. I just wanted some … peace. I put a bid on this house with everything in it, then bought the shop in a different location and eventually moved it uptown to the Excelsior. I thought I had things set. I thought I’d found my escape—a place that was so perfect, trouble couldn’t touch it. Instead, what I got were nosy neighbors who wanted to know why a lawyer opens a surf shop, townie kids with issues, and two local congregations looking to start a center for teens and young adults. I didn’t want anything to do with it at first, but then I realized, I can do for other kids what I didn’t do for Hadley. If there’s anything good that can come from her death, it comes from letting her life stand for something. From convincing another kid not to make that one stupid mistake. Hadley didn’t get a second chance. Teenagers need to know that sometimes, they won’t. It’s been a way of finally dealing with the pain and starting to let go.”

  I stepped away, breaking the flesh-to-flesh bond between us, suddenly uncertain. Anger and blame were so much easier to manage than acceptance. They were hard and solid. They made good walls. Acceptance was soft. It let everything in, including the pain.

  The conversation flagged. We watched Rip as he rolled onto his back and stretched all four legs into the air, twitching in a dream.

  “Surfing,” Mark whispered and motioned to the dog. I chuckled, relieved at the change in topics, and Mark added, “Don’t laugh. He’s pretty good at it.”

  “He surfs?”

  A smooth grin and a wink answered, and Mark was Mark again—charismatic, in charge, comfortable. He reached for his wallet, but then noticed he was still in sweats. “I was going to give you a business card. It’s got Rip’s picture on it. You can check him out on the Rip Shack YouTube channel, though. He’s a surf bum. Loves the water. Never let it be said that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

  “Now this I’ve gotta see.” Inadvertently, I’d cast the net for an invitation. I caught myself holding a breath, wondering if Mark would pick up on it, and then he did.

  “Come watch him this afternoon. I’m only in the shop until twelve thirty today. If the weather holds, I thought Rip and I would hit the water after that.” He glanced over his shoulder toward the house, added an apologetic wince as an afterthought, his honey-brown eyes narrowing. “Sorry … I forgot I had the little party animal in there to deal with.”

  It reminded me that I’d been on a mission of my own before I found Joel curled in the stairwell. “I probably shouldn’t leave Clyde alone in the building for too long, anyway. He had an incident yesterday.” The real world pressed in with the force of a D9 bulldozer, plowing over tentatively built bridges and haphazardly strung lines of communication.

  I felt foolish, standing there on Mark’s porch, talking about surfing and … well … flirting with him, because that’s what it was now, really. It wouldn’t in any way help solve the problems with the building or pay the bills at Bella Tazza or get me back to Michigan to take some of the stress off Denise. It would only complicate things.

  Guilt weaseled back to its usual space. There was no time for a personal life right now … and Roanoke Island, a thousand miles from home, certainly wasn’t the place to start one.

  “I should get going.” I shrugged toward the car.

  “Tell you what. Let me grab a business card for you. Text me later if you think you’ve got time to go to the beach, and we’ll see where everything’s at. Maybe we can still work it into the day.”

  No was in my mind, but yes was in my mouth. “Okay.” I knew better. I did. But I was flattered, or fascinated, or both. I could watch surfing dogs on YouTube, but it wasn’t the dog who’d piqued my interest.

  I waited for Mark to retrieve the card, then admired Rip’s surf photo before saying my good-byes and walking to the car. On the way to Walmart, I called Clyde to let him know I’d be a while yet—I’d gotten caught up in something unexpected. He couldn’t shuffle me off the phone quickly enough. He was busy with the letters.

  “And you’re staying there today, right? In the building?” I added at the end of our conversation. “You’re not going to try the stairs again?” I imagined him falling in the stairwell and lying there until I got back.

  “I ain’t going AWOL, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at. Buy me plenty of them plastic sleeves. I’m good with these letters, but there’s a lot missin’ here—some pieces I can’t find and other parts that’s been wet. Hard to make out enough to understand what they say.”

  “You’re actually reading the letters?” I tried to imagine Clyde following the tender story of Alice’s journey into the Blue Ridge.

  “Well, you ask me to put ’em together—how am I s’posed to do that without readin’ what they say?”

  “Clyde, if you don’t want to put the letters together, you don’t have to. I can just work on it as I get time.” It was petty, I guess, trying to force him to admit enthusiasm for something that had to do with me. “Or I can take them back to Michigan with me when I go. There’s no big rush.” That wasn’t true, of course. I was desperate to know the rest of Alice’s story. I was even more convinced now that, in some way, I needed it.

  My stepfather growled like a bear coming out of hibernation. I pictured him shifting forward in his seat, that scraggl
y chin jutting out. “Well, I hadn’t got nothin’ else to do.”

  “You can watch your TV shows.”

  “Can’t go nowhere. Got me locked up here like a pris’ner. You at least gonna bring me some breakfast? Duck Doughnuts. I like Duck Doughnuts.”

  Sighing, I relaxed in my seat as Roanoke Island faded in the rearview mirror. “You know, Clyde, you could just admit that the letters are interesting.”

  “I didn’t say they wasn’t interestin’. Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” A laugh chugged out, punctuating the sentence. This was so ridiculous, it was funny.

  “Brought back some mem’ries.”

  “Memories?”

  “Them Melungeons.”

  The word stopped me short. I’d never heard it spoken before. “You know about Melungeons?” It hadn’t occurred to me that, at his age, Clyde probably remembered some of the things Alice was describing in her letters.

  “I knew some once’t. My daddy was a Navy man. Was a recruiter in the mountains when I was little—Blue Ridge and the Smokies. North Carolina, Tennessee, on up into Virginia some. We’d tramped all over the country by the time I graduated high school. Had a Melungeon family down the road a piece in Tennessee. They was Mullinses and the mama was a Collins. A lot of them Mullinses and Collinses was known to be Melungeon. Local folk didn’t cotton to them much. Sort of thought they was odd and trickish, but my mama didn’t mind it. She was German, herself. After the war, she knew what it was to be looked at sideways by folks. She didn’t believe in doin’ it unto others. She let me run around the woods with little Henry Mullins. He and I knew enough to mostly keep it to ourselves. You could get in real trouble with that kind of thing back in them days. Once in a while, my daddy found him a recruit from the Melungeons too. A lot of them was dirt poor, didn’t have too many prospects, so the Navy pay looked good. And they had a natural-born likin’ for the water. Even though they mighta spent their whole life in the mountains. Was a peculiar thing.”

  “That’s really fascinating.” My mind raced to Appalachia, conjuring images of two boys running the mountain hollows, aware yet unaware of all the things that separated them.

  I’d always loved Appalachia. At the end of every summer on the Outer Banks, Mom tacked on a few days in the North Carolina mountains—our reward for having worked so hard at the Excelsior. Together, we camped under the stars or enjoyed the sense of history in old cabins, hotels, or bed-and-breakfast houses. We hiked trails to waterfalls and climbed rocks and cataloged wildflowers. We collected pretty rocks, acorns with perfect hats, and hickory nuts to use as the faces for Mom’s handmade Christmas angels.

  Had my mother’s fascination for that area started long before I was born? Perhaps with stories Clyde had told her?

  “Guess I got lots of them mem’ries.” His voice took on a faraway quality. “Didn’t figure anybody cared to hear them tales. Never woulda thought of it, except for the letters. Here these two young folks are trekkin’ all over the mountains, lookin’ for Melungeons. And the thing about a Melungeon is, ain’t no point in lookin’ for him. He don’t want you to find him, you won’t.”

  Dearest Ruby,

  With any good fortune, by the time this letter reaches you, we will have discovered the Melungeons and begun to win their confidence, so as to record the history of these maligned and elusive people. Indeed, their origins in these mountains seem as ancient and mysterious as the hills and hollows themselves. By all accounts, these blue-eyed, dark-skinned people were here to greet the first European explorers in this high country. Even the Cherokee cannot say exactly when and how the Melungeon people came to be. An old Cherokee woman, Alva Rainwater, whose manner of speech was as musical as her name, imparted to me during her interview that even her great-great-grandmother, a medicine woman of the tribe, did not know of a time before the Melungeons.

  Such is my fascination that lately I have come to end each interview with these two questions: “What do you know of the history of the Melungeons?” and “Have you any information that might help us find them, so as to document their stories?”

  Invariably, the question brings wary glances. Several people have hushed me over it and then looked with great suspicion at Able, whom we’ve been compelled to bring along with us after leaving Nurse Merry Walker’s. There was no other choice. A bloody chicken foot and a live timber rattlesnake were found hanging from a string on Mrs. Walker’s porch the morning of our departure. These folk symbols portend the coming of death, and indeed could have caused one, as Nurse Walker bumped into the snake while opening her front door.

  A crudely scratched note had been nailed there as well, and the threat was made clear enough—Able was to be kept no longer at Mrs. Walker’s home nor allowed to birth the child there. That same morning, Able awakened from a dream of crossing water, which in mountain superstition also indicates sickness or death.

  Thomas and I simply could not leave her behind. At Mrs. Walker’s instruction, Able will travel along with us until we either find relatives to take her in or discern the exact location of the Melungeon orphans’ school and can settle her there. Finding that information may not be such a simple thing. As we travel, the mountain folk do not look kindly on Able. They eye her as if they expect her to vanish into vapor or throw a hex upon them. What a strange thing that in this modern age when man can traverse the oceans by plane and a telephone wire can carry our voices almost instantly, such superstitions still exist, but such is the case.

  Indeed, we have experienced our first run-in with a Klansman, who was quite proud of his affiliations. It was my own doing, I suppose. I went looking. Those were our instructions, as per our leaders—that we field reporters would write about all spheres of life. In some way, perhaps I had been under the belief that our official status with the government held us separate from whatever local prejudices and old battle lines still exist here. I was disavowed of that illusion this very afternoon, by a man at a small vegetable stand near a crossroads. Upon hearing his unabashed conversation with the proprietor, I asked if I might interview him. He was quite willing to speak with me and was most candid—dare I say splendidly proud—in regards to his missions with the Klan and his own beliefs. During the interview, he produced several postcards bearing photos of lynchings.

  Ziltha, I suppose we might consider ourselves sheltered, but even having heard of such abominations, I could not imagine something so obscene as a photograph of white-hooded hooligans with their guns, pitchforks, pickaxes, and their little children, posed beneath a tree with the bodies of three lifeless Negro men hanging like sacks of grain. I would have done well never to have seen such a thing, for it is the sort of sight that drops your spirit to its knees and causes you to silently cry out, How can this be? How?

  I remained as impassive as my newly practiced reporter’s face would allow, but inside I was prodded like a sleeping dragon. Had Tom not been off with his camera and equipment, and the girls playing with kittens behind the barn, I would have closed the interview then and there. But Tom was nowhere in sight, and by then the proprietor of the vegetable stand had gone away as well.

  I had barely begun to pray that the girls would not reappear when, of course, they did. They had found the company of two children belonging to the Klansman, and together, the girls were giggling and sharing the kittens. The four of them were upon us before I knew it.

  The Klansman withdrew his daughters roughly by the arm, backhanding the eldest girl hard across the face and admonishing her that they would quite likely catch some terrible malady now. He cast eyes at me in a way that chilled my blood. “She your’n?”

  When I understood that he was referring to Able, I was aghast! The man then grabbed me by the chin, asking, “You some colored’s whore?”

  Never in my life have I experienced anything of such a nature, and I hope I never shall again, Ziltha! One always hopes that, in the face of evil, one might be bold and courageous, brandishing the sword of truth a
nd the shield of justice. I know that, had it been you in that situation, the man would have quickly had cause to regret his behavior, but I don’t mind telling you that I was more toward shrinking violet than roaring lion. I thought I might faint.

  Only when Emmaline called out, “Mama?” and started my way did something within me rise up. You must protect the children, it insisted. I yelled to the girls to go back to the car, where I hoped they would be safe, though I was well aware that the Klansman could move past me if he chose. Able, fortunately, had the good sense to gather up Emmaline, who was agog, and beat a hasty retreat.

  I then tore myself from the man’s grasp and slapped him full across the face, saying, “Sir, I am an employee of the United States government, a Federal Writer, and you will mind yourself, or you will find the law at your door!”

  He seemed quite undaunted, an acidic smile showing tobacco-browned teeth (what remained of them). “Ain’t no law nowheres near here what can’t be counted kin to my fam’ly, one way or t’other.”

  “The federal law,” I ground forth. “And if you doubt that I am able to bring that to bear, you just try me out, sir!”

  The man then snatched the pad of paper right from my hand and began tearing away the sheet notes. He shredded them, his beady eyes pinned to me with such hatred as I have never seen from another human soul. Before all was through, he had stomped the pad into the mud, which was just as well for me, as I did not want it after his ugly mitts had touched it.

  His face was suddenly inches from mine, and I stood my ground, but oh, Ziltha, if you could have heard my heart hammering!

  “You mind yer bid’ness, gal. Y’ain’t in no big city, n’more. You’uns come to my mountain. Git on the wrong side a us, you’ll find yerself down t’holler where ain’t no fed’ral gov’mint ner nobody’ll never find what’s left of ya.” He promptly disappeared into the woods from whence he’d come, dragging his daughters with him. The vegetable man then returned, and I realized that he had been hiding during my peril, unwilling to become involved. He seemed quietly regretful about the issue, though we did not speak. I went to the car but was too shaken to sit with the girls. Instead, I paced back and forth outside, and that was where Tom found me.