Low Country (32 page)

Abuelo…Grandfather said I could surprise you. Are

you surprised, Caro?”

I reached down slowly, almost reluctantly, and

touched the damp curls on top of her head. It was all

right. They were springy and a bit wiry, not like Kylie’s

at all. I ruffled them.

“I
am
surprised,” I said. “You must be a witch. I

didn’t think the old lady would let anybody near her.”

Not again, my heart said.

Luis pulled sugar cubes out of the pockets of his blue

jeans and offered one to the nervously pawing Nissy.

She looked at him, the whites of her eyes showing so

that she looked wall-eyed and stupid, and then took it

delicately. The colt came skittering up and nosed at

Luis’s hand, and gobbled his sugar so fast that he

choked a bit, and coughed, and tossed his big goblin’s

head. We all laughed. He would grow up to be an

ordinary, homely little marsh tacky like the rest of his

herd, but right now he was an enchanting mixture of

grace and caricature.

284 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“He really does need a name,” I said.

“He has one,” Lita said shyly. “That is, if you like it.

I call him Yambi. It means ‘yam’ in the Vai language.

Ezra told me. He eats all the yams we bring him.

Auntie Tuesday lets Abuelo take the leftover ones and

put them under your porch, and they’re always gone

when he comes back. I know it’s him that eats them.

Abuelo found one that had little tiny teeth bites in it.”

“Yambi it is then,” I said. “Hello, Yambi. Are you

an honorary Gullah like Lita?”

The colt cocked his head at us, saw that no more

sugar was forthcoming, wheeled, and fled away on his

still-delicate hooves. In a moment the entire herd had

one of its feigned panic attacks and went thundering

back down the road toward the line of the woods.

Lita’s small face screwed up with dismay, and Luis

said, “They’ll be back after a while. You wait and see.

They’ll come back for lunch. There’s not a marsh tacky

alive that can resist the smell of…what, Caro?”

“Ham sandwiches. Egg salad. Tuna fish on hoagy

rolls. Potato salad I made myself. Estelle’s fruitcake.

Chocolate chip cookies. Oh, and taco chips.”

“Taco chips,” Luis said triumphantly. “Marsh tackies

never get enough taco chips. They’ll be back begging

and pleading.”

We stowed the groceries and my picnic bas

Low Country / 285

ket and Auntie Tuesday’s big plastic jug of lemonade,

and went back out into the sun. As if by previous

agreement, though there had been none, we drifted

across the wet grass to the edge of the marsh and stood

looking across it toward the creek. The grasses waved

in the soft, fish-smelling breeze like the sea that lay

beyond, and I saw for the first time the faintest tinge

of gold-green, just at the tips, so that they looked as if

they were haloed. That suffusion of new green meant

the coming of the spring in the Lowcountry.

Please, no, something inside me whispered. It is not

time for the spring yet. It’s much too early for the

green-up. It’s merely an aberration. We have weeks of

winter yet.

And we did; I knew that. This haze of green
was
an

aberration; it happened sometimes on the marshes,

when there had been a lot of rain and almost no cold.

I was still safe there in the bubble of winter.

The weight of the sun on us was palpable, and the

smell of salt and clean mud and the billions of things

growing and dying deep in the black silt was mesmer-

izing. Small white clouds that looked like washing hung

out, sailed across the tender blue sky. Songbirds set

up their choruses in the small knots of myrtles and

scrub trees on the little hummocks that dotted the sea

of grass. We stepped onto the creaking wooden

boardwalk over the marsh and strolled out

286 / Anne Rivers Siddons

toward the water that glittered in the noon sun like

crumpled foil. No one spoke. Sun and sleepiness lay

heavy on my eyelids.

We sat silently for quite a long time on the little

dock, swinging our legs over the edge toward the wa-

ter. The Whaler and the canoe had been put away in

their cradles under the house, but I had forgotten the

salt-faded old oilcloth cushions, and we laid them on

the uneven old boards and stretched out on them in

the sun. I closed my eyes under its red weight. I could

hear the water slapping hollowly against the pilings

below and smiled slightly. It was the sound of all my

summers in this place.

Beside me, Luis said quietly, “How is it for you? Is

it all right?”

“Yes,” I said, not opening my eyes. “So far it’s all

right. It seems that so long as the sun is out, it’s okay.”

“Then we shall stop the sun,” he said in the tone of

Moses commanding the Red Sea to part, and I smiled

again. Pretty soon the slapping water faded, and I think

that I slept for a while.

A great splashing and shrill shouts from Lita woke

me. She and Luis were standing at the very edge of the

dock, looking back toward the shore. I scrambled to

my feet, sweating and confused, and staggered over to

join them.

Dolphins. A school of them, huge and rubbery and

silvery, so close that you could see their

Low Country / 287

silly, cunning smiles and hear the wet, breathy little

noises of their blowholes. They were churning straight

for the marshy banks of the creek, silvery thrashing

ahead of them. And then, incredibly, they drove a

roiling school of small fish into the reeds and

floundered, slapping and blowing, out of the water

and onto the bank after them. Each of the six or seven

huge dolphins managed to eat a fair number of the fish

before they half rolled, half flapped themselves back

into the water. They frisked for a moment, flashing

tails and fins, and then were gone.

I began to laugh.

“My grandfather told me about them,” I said. “I

never believed him. He said there was a…what? A

group, a pod…of salt river dolphins that actually drive

the fish on shore and go after them and eat them. He

said they only exist from about Seabrook down to

Hunting Island, and that they taught themselves to do

that ages ago, and it’s almost a genetic thing with them

by now. But only with this particular group. Any visit-

ing schools have got to do it the old-fashioned way.

They work for it.”

“Ah,
Dios
, how perfect,” Luis said softly. “They know

so much better than we do how to use their world,

and they do not need to either destroy it or leave it.

They’re very smart fish, dolphins. Do you know that

some of the old Gullahs call them horsemen?”

288 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Horsemen? Why?”

“I’m not sure I understand. It’s a tale one of the old

men told around the stove at the store one night. I

think it’s because the fishermen used to know a trick:

they’d go out to where they knew the dolphins liked

to hang out, and they’d bang on the sides of the boat

underwater, slow, heavy bangs, and for some reason

that attracted the dolphins, and they’d come swimming

toward the boat, driving the fish before them. So there

was fish for everybody then: the fishermen and the

dolphins alike. I made out that they call them horsemen

partly because they work for men like intelligent horses

do. The ‘men’ part I think has to do with certain…ah,

bodily parts that apparently are quite like…”

“I get you,” I said, feeling myself redden.

He leered.

Lita came running back from the bank, flushed with

excitement.

“I touched one!” she cried. “I just reached right out

and touched him on his head, and he let me! It was

like touching wet rubber!”

“They’re pretty tame,” I said. “The ones around here,

anyway. You know, sometimes they sleep right off this

dock, just sort of drift suspended in the water and sleep

all night.”

“How do you know they sleep?” Lita said. “Maybe

they’re just fooling. I do that sometimes.”

“You can hear them snore,” I said. “No kidding, I’m

serious. I’ve heard them snoring in the

Low Country / 289

nights in summer, when the windows are open, so

loud that you can’t sleep. It’s a funny, snorty, bubbling

sound, but it’s definitely snoring. When eight or ten

of them are doing it, you can kiss your slumbers good-

bye.”

“I don’t believe you,” Luis said, obviously wanting

to.

“Scout’s honor. My grandfather said they’d been

doing it since he was a young boy out here. If you

don’t believe me, you just come spend the night

sometime and listen yourself—”

I stopped, reddening again.

“I’ll do that,” he said.

“Isn’t it lunchtime?” Lita said from the end of the

dock, where she was watching in case the dolphins

came back.

“Can you wait a little longer?” Luis said. “We’re

having company for lunch.”

“Who, Abuelo?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Not much of one,” I said, as the menacing growl of

the Harley-Davidson curled into the still air. It grew

rapidly until it and the machine burst into the clearing

at the same time. I saw that three people rode astride,

one sandwiched between the other two.

“It’s Mark!” Lita shrieked in an excess of joy. “It’s

Mark the nark and Ezra Shmezra!”

“And Sophia, of course,” Luis said dryly, giving her

a long look.

290 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“Yeah. Her, too. Okay. I know. I’ll be polite.”

I lifted my eyebrows at Luis over her head.

“Competition,” he mouthed silently, and I laughed.

“It starts young.”

“Does it ever. Of course, she is one fine-looking lady,

you must admit.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I must, at that.”

“Just not my type.” He grinned. “I like ’em down and

dirty.”

I bridled, and then looked down at myself. I was all

black mud up to the knees of my blue jeans, and my

rubber Bean shoes were caked with it. My T-shirt was

spattered with marsh water. My hair hung around my

face and stuck to it with noonday sweat, and I could

feel twigs and bits of moss caught in it. In disgust I

twisted it up off my neck and secured it with the rubber

band I carry with me always, for just such a purpose.

“That’s pretty,” Luis said. “You look sort of Spanish

like that.”

“Like one of Velázquez’s
majas
?”

“Yeah. Like that. I’ll bet you’ve been told that be-

fore.”

“Only once,” I said.

Mark and Lita rushed to meet each other, shrieking

in the ear-piercing treble of small children everywhere;

I had almost forgotten it. They rushed off together

down to the edge of the creek,

Low Country / 291

where, from her extravagant gestures, I gathered that

Lita was telling him about the dolphins. Ezra and

Sophia came down the little rise to the edge of the

boardwalk. He wore blue jeans and a red T-shirt and

looked, Luis said in my ear, like a brick shithouse.

Sophia, to my surprise, wore skintight, faded blue jeans

spattered with black mud and a large, flapping man’s

blue work shirt with an elbow out and filthy, wet

sneakers. She still managed to look like an Ibo princess,

though. Just a slightly grimy one. She was carrying the

smart Louis Vuitton tote that I never saw her without,

and I saw the outline of the ubiquitous camera and

tape recorder inside it, as well as several small, plastic-

wrapped bundles and a long, pale brown baguette.

“Brothers and sisters,” boomed Ezra. “Let us break

bread. Since we brought it, that is.”

“We did, too. Caro brought enough for an army,”

Luis said, clapping Ezra on his massive shoulder. In

the sun that poured straight down, Ezra Upchurch

shone almost blue. It was a beautiful color, rich and

virile and somehow royal. I thought that he would

match Sophia Bridges in elegance any day, as long as

he stood in sunlight.

“Caro,” Sophia said coolly. She looked levelly at me.

Her face was calm and courteous, but closed.

“Sophia,” I said back.

We lapsed into silence, and the men stood

292 / Anne Rivers Siddons

quietly, too, watching us. What is the matter with

everybody? I thought in irritation, but still I did not

speak, and still we regarded each other, Sophia Bridges

and I.

What are you doing here? her long almond eyes

said to me as clearly as if she had spoken. You are not

a part of this company. You belong on the other side

of that bridge. You belong with Clay Venable. Where

do you stand in this?

I might ask you the same thing, my eyes said back

to her. So do you belong with Clay Venable. So do

you belong on the other side…of the bridge and the

fence. Where do you stand in this?

We were silent for another moment, and then, just

as Ezra drew a breath to speak, we burst into simultan-