Low Country (45 page)

under the punishing Lowcountry sun with a hoe or a

wrench, or even a mule team.

“You ought to know, too, that I’ve resigned and that

I’m going to be marching,” she said soberly.

“What…did Clay say?” I said.

“I don’t know. He’d gone to Charleston. I left a let-

ter.”

“What will you do next?”

Low Country / 407

She shrugged and smiled. It was a peaceful smile.

“It will emerge,” she said.

“I feel like I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” I said,

smiling back at her bleakly.

“Yeah. I meant it when I said you ought to get out

of here for a few days. Get some perspective. I don’t

see how you can, this close.”

But I found that I could not do that. I could see

perfectly well the wisdom of her advice, but I could

not seem to leave the island house. I did not feel

anxious or afraid, and I was not terribly aware of

anything beyond the dull, disbelieving grief I felt

whenever I thought of Clay, but I still could not

wander far from the house. So I cleaned. I put on all

the West Coast jazz I could find—somehow symphonic

music threatened my precarious hold on peace and

baroque music seemed as if it would break my

heart—and waded into cleaning my grandfather’s

house.

I had not thought it really dirty, only cluttered with

the residue of many years of island living, most of

which I was loath to discard, since it had belonged to

my grandfather. But with my microscopic new focus I

saw years, decades, of the kind of dull, mucky patina

that humidity and steady salt winds leave. I scrubbed

and mopped and scoured and swept and vacuumed

and changed ancient, sticky shelf paper and threw out

jars of rock-hard garlic salt and clumped herbs and

408 / Anne Rivers Siddons

spices, and disinfected and polished and even did a

little touch-up painting. I slept and started over the

next day. When I was finally done, when I could find

nothing else to rout out or touch up or scrub and my

nails were broken to the quick and my muscles ached

down to the bone and my body smelled of days-old

sweat, I stopped and took a long shower and looked

around me. The house shone. There was nothing more

here that I could do. And the telephone had not rung.

I realized only then that for three days I had been

waiting for Clay to call and say it was all a mistake.

I sat in the sunset of the night before Ezra’s great

march and felt the first sly, promissory fingerings of a

great grief and a greater rage, and called Janie Biggins

and found out where Luis and Lita Cassells were stay-

ing on Edisto. And then I got into the Cherokee and

drove through the translucent, fast-falling dusk until I

was there. If anyone had asked me why, the best I

could have done would be to say, I need to be with

people who know who I am.

The Creekview Court had no view of Milton Creek,

which I assumed to be the nearest body of water off

Edisto Oak Lane. But it did have a view of the island

supermarket on one end and a nice panorama of woods

and marsh on the other. I don’t know what I had

thought a trailer

Low Country / 409

park would be like; the only image that came readily

to mind at the words was the pitiful, flattened wreckage

left behind by the South’s frequent, vicious, trailer-

eating tornadoes. But the Creekview was as neat and

pretty as any small village whose inhabitants had

considerable pride of place, and looked to me to be

about as permanent as most. It was apparently a ma-

ture park; the plantings and trees were sizable and be-

ginning to green up, and there were towering camellia

bushes blooming fervently around many of them. In-

stead of rusted aluminum camp chairs and rump-sprung

junkers, there were gaily painted wooden outdoor fur-

niture and big umbrellas and well-tended sedans and

midsize sports utility vehicles, and a good number of

bikes and skates spoke of children. In the luminous

green afterglow from the sunset, lights in windows

were cheerful and welcoming, and joggers and walkers

and in-line skaters thronged the clean streets. A thin

white paring of a new moon rode high in the sky,

waiting to bloom. It reminded me of a village scene

painted by a minor Dutch artist of the eighteenth cen-

tury, naive and idealized. For a long moment I paused

at a cross street and simply drank it in. I would have

given anything, at that moment, to belong to a place

like this, my arena small and landlocked, my house as

movable as a turtle’s shell in case of calamity.

410 / Anne Rivers Siddons

The small side street where Luis and Lita were stay-

ing had only four trailers, and since one of them had

a huge, muddy black Harley-Davidson in front of it, I

found it with no trouble. But I grimaced; I had not

wanted to contend with Ezra Upchurch on this night.

Only Lita. Only Luis.

I might have driven on past it, in fact, if at that mo-

ment Luis and Lita had not come around the side of

the trailer from the back and spotted me. Lita had a

big plastic bowl in her hands, which she tossed into

the air when she saw me, and left to plop to earth while

she streaked, squealing, toward the Cherokee. Luis

held a cell phone to his ear, and when he saw me he

smiled and said something rapidly into it and shoved

it into his pocket and trotted behind her toward my

car. So, feeling as shy as a teenager calling at a boys’

dormitory, I got out of the Jeep and went toward them

across the tiny lawn.

Lita hit me around the knees and almost knocked

me over, gurgling with laughter, and Luis caught her

by the back of her T-shirt and restrained her while he

put a big arm around my shoulders and drew me close

in an exuberant hug.

“
Ay, querida
, but you are a sight for sore eyes,” he

yelled. “And an answer to a prayer. And whatever else

a brighter mind than mine could come up with. Come

in. We’ve got real pizza

Low Country / 411

from the real pizza place in the village. None of that

frozen stuff for the likes of us.”

He walked me into the trailer, and I looked around,

Lita hanging from my hand and chattering so fast in

Spanish that she sounded like an Alvin and the Chip-

munks recording. The inside was much more spacious

than I would have thought, and sparsely furnished,

but with obviously new furniture and some taste. A

huge television set had pride of place, with a tomato-

colored recliner and a rocking chair drawn up to it,

and on a big red-plaid sofa there was a litter of books

and toys and crayon drawings. On the small pine

dining table was a welter of maps and charts and books

and a half-empty bottle of red wine: Luis’s territory,

obviously. The real pizza box sat on a shining Formica

counter, smelling so good that I felt water gather in

my mouth.

“We almost ate it before we went to feed the rac-

coons, but Lita wanted to wait,” Luis said. “She knew

something I didn’t, obviously.”

“Told you she’d come,” Lita said, rolling her bright

almond eyes at her grandfather. “Told you.”

“So you did. Fourteen million times,” he said. “She’s

wanted to call you for at least three days. She was

afraid you wouldn’t be able to find us. But I thought

you might need a little time to yourself.…”

Of course, Ezra would have told him about

412 / Anne Rivers Siddons

the deed to the island, and the march, all of it.

“Where’s Ezra?” I said. “I saw his machine outside.”

“He swapped it for my truck for the night,” Luis said,

grinning. “He’s got stuff to haul for the big doings to-

morrow, and I’ve always wanted to get that hawg off

by myself.”

“And have you?”

“Yep. Lita and I went to the beach this afternoon. It

was great. Just like
Easy Rider
. So. Not that you need

a reason, and I hope it’s purely because you’ve missed

us, but I suspect there’s more to this than a social call.

Can we do something for you?”

His words were light, but his voice was gentle and

his face concerned, and I felt a prickle of weak tears in

my eyes, and turned away.

“Not really,” I said. “I just was…at loose ends, sort

of, and I guess…I think I might have been a little

lonesome out there in the marsh. I’m awfully used to

seeing this monkey face around by now.”

And I gave Lita’s hand a squeeze. She squeezed back,

hard.

“A bad time for you, Caro, and that’s no joke,” Luis

said soberly. “A huge betrayal. A huge loss. A true evil.

I would have given a lot to be able to prevent it.”

“It wasn’t really deliberate, Luis,” I said, surprising

myself. “I know Clay feels bad about it,

Low Country / 413

too. I think…he just can’t see any other way right

now.”

“Then he’s a worse fool than I thought he was. But

I wasn’t talking about Clay. I know the poor stupid

bastard’s hurting. Look what he stands to lose…No,

I meant our friend Hayes. Goebbels. Iago. He who

smiles and smiles, and is a villain. Of course Mengele

should have told you the minute he found out about

that deed, and fired Iago’s ass, and taken you over

there with him to watch him personally fire that sucker.

But his head’s so fucked up by all those years of play-

ing God that he really thinks he created the heavens

and the earth, and now he’s got to save his holy empire

or he won’t get to be God anymore. He might have

come around, given time, but ol’ Iago did him out of

any leeway he had. He’s no fool, Iago. He always knew

who would inherit the earth.”

“Who?”

“South Ward. You start screwing around with the

wilderness and South Ward is two steps behind you,

sure as gun’s iron. I’ve always known that. Those folks

over in Dayclear have always known that. We know

that at best we’re guests on that land. Nobody owns

it but the gators and the crabs and the coons.”

“And the panther,” Lita piped. “Don’t forget the

panther, Abuelo!”

I look at Luis in surprise.

414 / Anne Rivers Siddons

“We heard him, Lita and I. We heard him early in

the morning, right before we found the mare and her

baby. I’d heard
of
him, of course, but this time I heard

that sucker. Lita did, too. You don’t forget that. She’s

right. I reckon that’s who owns this island. Pity

Mengele forgot that.”

I turned my head away, thinking of the night we had

heard the panther, Clay and I. It had been the begin-

ning of it all, of everything.

“Clay heard him, too, once,” I said. It was almost a

whisper. I thought my throat would burst with pain.

“He forgets fast then,” Luis said. “That cat ought to

put his snout right down Mengele’s britches and roar.

Look, Caro, let me put a proposition to you. Not that

kind, though don’t I wish. It’s this. I just got a call

from…a person in Columbia, somebody I’ve been

looking for but wasn’t sure existed. If he’s willing to

do what he says he will, we’ve got this botulism busi-

ness nailed. Name of seller, name of buyer, dates,

places, the whole nine yards. It could lift that march

tomorrow right up into the stratosphere. It could put

the blame right where it ought to be, too…and that

ought to get ol’ Clay baby off the hook a little with the

media. But I’m going to have to leave right now and

go meet him; he won’t talk over the telephone, and he

won’t talk at all unless he sees the color of my cash

first. I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of

some

Low Country / 415

body to stay with Lita; I don’t want her over on the

island until this is all over, and I don’t know anybody

over here who could come on such short notice. Lottie

will come get her first thing in the morning and take

her to her studio; she’s keeping Mark Bridges, too,

until the crowd’s dispersed, but Lottie’s…tied up to-

night. I’d get Auntie, but she, by God, wants to march

and I think she should. So…do you think you could

possibly baby-sit for me, just till Lottie gets here in the

morning? I’ll probably be going straight to the bridge

from Columbia. I wouldn’t ask you except that I don’t

like thinking of you over there by yourself in that

house, just sitting there and waiting for us to barbecue

Clay right under your nose. In fact, I think you ought

to be off the island completely till tomorrow night.

Somebody in that pack of press jackals is bound to get

wind of where you are and come beating on your door.

I was going to tell Lottie to go get you in the morning

and take you over to her studio till the dust settles,

anyway. Could you stay here, do you think? It’s a lot

to ask of you, I know, to help us sink your husband.…”

He looked intently into my face and then looked

away.