From Potter's Field (35 page)

I had not taken one vacation when I was growing up because we had no money, and now I had no children. I thought of Wesley and wanted to call him as I listened to the loud wash of surf rushing to shore. Stars showed through cloudy veils and voices carried on the wind and I could not decipher a word. I may as well have been hearing frogs scream or birds crying. I carried my empty coffee cup inside and did not feel afraid for once.

It occurred to me that there was probably nothing to eat in this house and all I'd had today was that pretzel.

'Thank you, Anna,' I said when I found a stack of Lean Cuisines.

I heated turkey and mixed vegetables, turned on the gas fire and fell asleep on a white couch, my Browning not too far away. I was too tired to dream. The sun and I rose together, and the reality of my mission did not seem real until I spied my briefcase and thought about what was in it. It was too early to leave, and I put on sweater and jeans and went out for a walk.

The sand was firm and flat toward Sea Pines, the sun white gold on water. Birds embroidered the noisy surf with their songs. Willets wandered for mole crabs and worms, gulls glided on the wind, and crows loitered like black-hooded highwaymen.

Older people were out now while the sun was weak, and as I walked I concentrated on the sea air blowing through me. I felt I could breathe. I warmed to the smiles of strangers strolling past, hand in hand, and I waved if they did. Lovers had arms around each other, and solitary people drank coffee on boardwalks and looked out at the water.

Back in Anna's house, I toasted a bagel I found in the freezer and took a long shower. Then I put on my same black blazer and slacks. I packed and closed up the house as if I would not be back. I had no sense of being watched until the squirrel reappeared.

'Oh no,' I said, unlocking the car door. 'Not you again.'

He stood on his hind legs, giving me a lecture.

'Listen, Anna said I could stay here. I am her very good friend.'

His whiskers twitched as he showed me his small white belly.

'If you're telling me your problems, don't bother.' I threw my bag in the backseat. 'Anna's the psychiatrist. Not me.'

I opened the driver's door. He hopped a few steps closer. I couldn't stand it any longer and dug inside my briefcase, where I found a pack of peanuts from the plane. The squirrel was on his hind legs chewing furiously as I backed out of the drive beneath the shade of trees. He watched me leave.

I took 278 West and drove through a landscape lush with cattails, marsh lace, spartina grass and rushes. Ponds were tiled in lotus and lily pads, and at almost every turn, hawks hovered. Away from the islands it seemed most people were poor except in land. Narrow roads offered tiny white painted churches and mobile homes still strung with Christmas lights. Closer to Beaufort, I found auto repairs, small motels on barren plots, and a barbershop flying a Confederate flag. Twice I stopped to read my map.

On St. Helena Island I crept around a tractor on the roadside stirring up dust and began looking for a place to stop for directions. I found abandoned cinder block buildings that once had been stores. There were tomato packers, farmhouses and funeral homes along streets lined with dense live oaks and gardens guarded by scarecrows. I did not stop until I was on Tripp Island and found a place where I could have lunch.

The restaurant was the Gullah House, the woman who seated me big and dark black. She was brilliant in a flowing dress of tropical colors, and when she spoke over a counter to a waiter their language was musical and filled with strange words. The Gullah dialect is supposed to be a blend of West Indian and Elizabethan English. It was the spoken language of slaves.

I waited at my wooden table for iced tea and worried that no one who worked here could communicate to me where the Gaults lived.

'What else I get for you, honey?' My waitress returned with a glass jar of tea full of ice and lemons.

I pointed to Biddy een de Fiel because I could not say it. The translation promised a grilled chicken breast on Romaine lettuce.

'You want sweet-potato chips or maybe some crab frittas to start?' Her eyes roamed around the restaurant as she talked.

'No, thank you.'

Determined her customer would have more than a diet lunch, she showed me fried low-country shrimp on the back of the menu. 'We also got fresh fried shrimp today. It so good it'll make you tongue slap you brains out.'

I looked at her. 'Well, then I guess I'd better try a small side dish.'

'So you want all two of 'em.'

'Please.'

The service maintained its languid pace, and it was almost one o'clock when I paid my bill. The lady in the bright dress, who I decided was the manager, was outside in the parking lot talking to another dark woman who drove a van. The side of it read Gullah Tours.

'Excuse me,' I said to the manager.

Her eyes were like volcanic glass, suspicious but not unfriendly. 'You want a tour of the island?' she asked.

'Actually, I need directions,'1 said. 'Are you familiar with Live Oaks Plantation?'

'It's not on no tour. Not no more.'

'So I can't get there?' I asked.

The manager turned her face and looked askance at me. 'Some new folks is moved there. They don't take kindly to tours, you hear my meaning?'

'I hear you,' I said. 'But I need to get there. I don't want a tour. I just want directions.'

It occurred to me that the dialect I was speaking wasn't the one the manager - who no doubt owned Gullah Tours - wanted to hear.

'How about if I pay for a tour,' I said, 'and you get your van driver to lead me to Live Oaks?'

That seemed a good plan. I handed over twenty dollars and was on my way. The distance was not far, and soon the van slowed and an arm in a wildly colorful sleeve pointed out the window at acres of pecan trees behind a neat white fence. The gate was open at the end of a long, unpaved drive, and about half a mile back I caught a glimpse of white wood and an old copper roof. There was no sign to indicate the owner's name and not a clue that this was Live Oaks Plantation.

I turned left into the drive and scanned spaces between old pecan trees that had already been harvested. I passed a pond covered with duckweed where a blue heron walked at the water's edge. I did not see anyone, but when I got close to what was a magnificent antebellum house, I found a car and a pickup truck. An old barn with a tin roof was in back next to a silo built of tabby. The day had gotten dark and my jacket felt too thin as I climbed steep porch steps and rang the bell.

I could tell instantly by the expression on the man's face that the gate at the end of the driveway was not supposed to have been left open.

'This is private property,' he flatly stated.

If Temple Gault was his son, I saw no resemblance. This man was wiry with graying hair, and his face was long and weathered. He wore Top-Siders, khaki slacks and a plain gray sweatshirt with a hood.

'I'm looking for Peyton Gault,' I said, meeting his gaze as I gripped my briefcase.

'The gate's suppose to be shut. Didn't you see the No Trespassing signs? I've only got them nailed up every other fence post. What do you want Peyton Gault for?'

'I can only tell Peyton Gault what I want him for,' I said.

He studied me carefully, indecision in his eyes. 'You aren't some kind of reporter, are you?'

'No, sir, I most certainly am not. I'm the chief medical examiner of Virginia,' I handed him my card. . He leaned against the door frame as if he felt sick. 'Good God have mercy,' he muttered. 'Why can't you people leave us be?'

I could not imagine his private punishment for what he had created, for somewhere in his father's heart he still loved his son.

'Mr. Gault,' I said. 'Please let me talk to you.'

He dug his thumb and index fingers into the corners of his eyes to stop from crying. Wrinkles deepened in his tan brow, and a sudden blaze of sunlight through clouds turned stubble to sand.

'I'm not here out of curiosity,' I said. 'I'm not here doing research. Please.'

'He's never been right from the day he was born,' Peyton Gault said, wiping his eyes.

'I know this is awful for you. It is an unapproachable horror. But I understand.'

'No one can understand,' he said.

'Please let me try.'

'There's no good to come of it.'

'There is only good to come of it,' I said. 'I am here to do the right thing.'

He looked at me with uncertainty. 'Who sent you?'

'Nobody. I came on my own.'

'Then how'd you find us?'

'I asked directions,' I said, and I told him where.

'You don't look too warm in that jacket.'

'I'm warm enough.'

'All right,' he said. 'We'll go out on the pier.'

His dock cut through marshlands that spread as far as I could see, the Barrier Islands an infrequent water tower on the horizon. We leaned against rails, watching fiddler crabs rustle across dark mud. Now and then an oyster spat.

'During Civil War times there were as many as two hundred and fifty slaves here,' he was saying as if we were here to have a friendly chat. 'Before you leave you should stop by the Chapel of Ease. It's just a tabby shell now, with rusting wrought iron around a tiny graveyard.'

I let him talk.

'Of course, the graves have been robbed for as long as anyone remembers. I guess the chapel was built around 1740.'

I was silent.

He sighed, looking out toward the ocean.

'I have photographs I want to show you,' I quietly said.

'You know' - his voice got emotional again - 'it's almost like that flood was punishment for something I did. I was born on that plantation in Albany.' He looked over at me. 'It withstood almost two centuries of war and bad weather. Then that storm hit and the Flint River rose more than twenty feet.

'We had state police, military police barricading everything. The water reached the damn ceiling of what had been my family home, and forget the trees. Not that we've ever depended on pecans to keep food on the table. But for a while my wife and I were living like the homeless in a center with about three hundred other people.'

'Your son did not cause that flood,' I gently said. 'Even he can't bring about a natural disaster.'

'Well, it's probably just as well we moved. People were coming around all the time trying to see where he grew up. It's had a bad effect on Rachael's nerves.'

'Rachael is your wife?'

He nodded.

'What about your daughter?'

'That's another sorry story. We had to send Jayne west when she was eleven.'

'That's her name?' I said, astonished.

'Actually, it's Rachael. But her middle name's Jayne with a y. I don't know if you knew this, but Temple and Jayne are twins.'

'I had no idea,' I said.

'And he was always jealous of her. It was a terrible sight to behold, because she was just crazy about him. They were the cutest little blond things you'd ever want to see, and it's like from day one Temple wanted to squash her like a bug. He was cruel.' He paused.

A herring gull flew by, screaming, and troops of fiddler crabs charged a clump of cattails.

Peyton Gault smoothed back his hair and propped one foot on a lower rail. He said, 'I guess I knew the worst when he was five and Jayne had a puppy. Just the nicest little dog, a mutt.' He paused again. 'Well' - his voice caught - 'the puppy disappeared and that night Jayne woke up to find it dead in her bed. Temple probably strangled it.'

'You said Jayne eventually lived on the West Coast?' I asked.

'Rachael and I didn't know what else to do. We knew it was a matter of time before he killed her -which he almost succeeded in doing later on, it's my belief. You see, I had a brother in Seattle. Luther.'

'The general,' I said.

He continued staring straight ahead. 'I guess you folks do know a lot about us. Temple's made damn sure of that. And next thing I'll be reading about it in books and seeing it on movies.' He pounded his fist softly on the rail.

'Jayne moved in with your brother and his wife?'

"And we kept Temple in Albany. Believe me, if I could have sent him off and held on to her, that's what I would have done. She was a sweet, sensitive child. Real dreamy and kind.' Tears rolled down his cheeks. 'She could play the piano and the saxophone, and Luther loved her like one of his. He had sons.

'All went as well as could be expected, in light of the trouble we had on our hands. Rachael and I went out to Seattle several times a year. I'm telling you, it was hard on me, but it nearly broke her heart. Then we made a big mistake.'

He paused until he could talk again, clearing his throat several times. 'Jayne insisted she wanted to come home one summer. And I guess this was when she was about to turn twenty-five, and she wanted to spend her birthday with everyone. So she, Luther and his wife, Sara, flew to Albany from Seattle. Temple acted like he wasn't fazed a bit, and I remember . . .'

He cleared his throat. 'I remember so clearly thinking that maybe everything would be okay. Maybe he'd finally outgrown whatever it was that possessed him. Jayne had a grand time at her party, and she decided to take our old hound dog, Snaggle-tooth, out for a walk. She wanted her picture taken, and we did that. Among the pecan trees. Then we all went back into the house except her and Temple.