Chapter 13
I
Lee was perched on top of the Southern Shores billboard beside the driveway to the mansion. He attached a rope to the very top of the billboard, the other end of which was hooked up to Jack’s tractor on the highway.
Lee gave Jack the high sign and scampered down off the billboard as Jack opened up the throttle.
A crowd of townspeople had gotten out of their cars to watch.
Jack’s tractor strained and then surged ahead as the billboard came crashing down.
II
The whole town had turned out for a barbecue on the lawn at Bellevue.
Lee’s voice rang out over a loudspeaker as the guests milled around helping themselves to chicken and potato salad and lemonade and brownies.
“There’s plenty more chicken for any of you folks who haven’t had seconds yet, and The Colonel’s got a barrel in the barn for those of you who don’t like lemonade. Okay now, I’ve just been told we’ve got six pick axes left over here at the judges’ stand. That’s room for six more contestants in the parking lot demolition contest due to start here in about 15 minutes…”
Foster came out of the house with a knapsack slung over his shoulder. He walked across the lawn to a tree where Bubba was finishing off a piece of chicken and stooped down beside Bubba’s wheelchair.
“I’ll be saying goodbye now.”
“Goodbye? Where are you going?”
“Into the swamp.”
“You going camping?”
“I guess.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“You are coming back, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t really want to live here without Annabelle.”
“I’m afraid I never did understand about her.”
“Neither did I. She was either a ghost that only I could see or a figment of my imagination.”
“She made you happy though?”
“I never dreamed I could love someone the way I loved her.”
“I envy you that.”
“If you see her, tell her to come out in the woods so we can make babies together.”
“If I see her, I may just keep her to myself.”
They smiled.
Foster patted Bubba’s arm and stood up.
“I better be going if I want to get to Taylor’s Point before dark.”
“Take care, Foster.”
“Bye, Bubba.”
III
Foster hiked deeper and deeper into the woods as the sun beat down on him. The path he was following dissolved into a maze of underbrush and vines.
As he walked, he confirmed his identity by reciting the mission statement:
“When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place – a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of Nature.”
Gnats and mosquitoes buzzed around his face, getting into his mouth and nose and eyes. Sweat ran down his cheeks and saturated his shirt. His boots sank deeper and deeper in the mire until he finally missed a step and sank knee deep into the water.
“Shit!”
A snake glided ominously through the shadows under a log.
A carnivorous plant closed its leaves over a struggling fly.
The sun disappeared behind dark clouds. Foster hacked his way through some vines, and sat down on a log to eat a peach from his knapsack. He looked around him as he rested. The sun was setting and the entire horizon blazed like an apocalyptic fire. He was surrounded by vegetation so thick that it was difficult to see more than thirty feet in any direction.
Foster resumed his pilgrimage and once again stepped into a bog up to his knees. He realized he was in something uncomfortably like quicksand.
There was a roll of distant thunder, and it began to rain. At first the rain did not penetrate the trees and vines overhead; but eventually it began pouring through drenching Foster completely.
He broke through to a clearing and discovered he was back at the log where he ate the peach earlier in the day. He could even see the peach stone now crawling with ants under the log.
He struck out again – not at all sure he was going in a new direction.
The storm passed, and a calm settled over the darkening woods.
Foster tried to kindle a fire using a scrap of paper from his knapsack and the driest sticks he can find. He used up half of his matches without any success. When it looked as though he might be having some luck, he blew frantically on the glowing twigs, but they refused to burn.
Somewhere an alligator slipped into the stagnant water.
Darkness descended on the swamp.
Foster curled up next to a large tree and shut his eyes in a desperate effort to go to sleep.
Strange birdcalls and the croaking of frogs echoed in the darkness.
IV
The sun rose into a clear sky. A gentle breeze blew through the tall marsh grass. Birds and frogs began to stir. A fish jumped.
Golden sunlight flooded the woods.
Foster stirred and rose slowly to his feet. His clothes were soaking wet on one side, and his arms were caked with mud. He brushed himself off and stretched. Then he stopped and listened. He could hear something that sounded like the ocean.
He grabbed his knapsack and began to run towards what appears to be a clearing not far away.
Foster emerged onto a beautiful small beach on a cove opening out onto the ocean. He threw his knapsack into the sand and immediately began undressing.
He fell back into the sand as he tried to pull off his boots and then scrambled to his feet as he stripped off his T-shirt and underpants. He sprinted toward the surf.
Just as he hit the water, he caught sight of someone swimming in the surf further out.
It was a girl. She also appeared to be swimming in the nude.
Foster stood frozen with amazement. When the girl noticed Foster, she started swimming towards him. As she started to stand up and walk through the water towards him, Foster could not believe his eyes.
It was Annabelle.
The energy with which she splashed through the surf and the total lack of any shyness or self-consciousness make her seem like a totally different person. She spoke when she got close enough for him to hear her easily. Her voice and accent were also much more down to earth.
“H’you. I didn’t know anybody knew about my secret beach.”
Foster just stared at her as she approached. “Annabelle?”
“It’s Alma.”
She smiled sweetly at his bafflement.
“The cook at the Dixie Diner. When I’m on the graveyard shift, I come down here for a swim after work. The old road over there comes out on route seventy-six about three miles south of the diner.”
Their eyes locked in an eruption of irrepressible desire.
“You comin’ in?”
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Sources
“The Order for the Burial if the Dead “The Book of Common Prayer
The Revelation of St John The Divine 17: 1-3
The Gospel According to St Matthew 5: 3-5
Song of the Chattahoochee by Sidney Lanier
A Voice From On High by Bill Monroe
Lines Composed A Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth
The Wind In The Willows by Kenneth Grahame
In The Garden by Charles Austin Miles
For The Beauty Of The Earth by Folliot S. Pierpoint
The Good-morrow by John Dunne
The First Book of Samuel 3: 4, 9
The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris
Jesus Is Real To Me as adapted by Mary Lee
Walking by Henry David Thoreau
The Good-morrow
I wonder
by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
Twas so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir’d, and got, t’was but a dreame of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
The Good Morrow Page 13
