Plantation (23 page)

“Thanks,” I said, knowing it would work. The last thing I wanted was to spend the night wide awake, thinking of ways to kill my sister-in-law.

Rolling back across the uneven land, Millie’s conjure ingredients rattling in her pockets, my roots in mine, I felt completely at 1 7 6

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k home. I could not believe it, but I felt that I was exactly where I belonged on the planet. Why had I condemned this place? In the blue night air, in the fullness of pine and floral suffusion, in that moment, I could not remember.

I hopped off the golf cart and we went around to the front of the house. She put the lye under the front steps along with the herbal mixture and a can of nails.

“That will have to do until tomorrow. Millie’s pooped.”

We walked around to the back porch where we said good night. I stood on the back steps and watched Millie drive off in the direction of her home. As though she had eyes in the back of her head, she threw her arm up and waved to me. I waved back and, sure enough, I saw her bob her head in recognition.

What a night! I hadn’t even been home twelve hours!

M i s s L av i n i a ’s J o u r na l
I saw them go off in the night together, Millie and Caroline.

That Millie makes my nerves act up with all her hocus-pocus.

But I do so hope they figure out a way to fix that Frances
Mae.What a disgrace she is! I’m sure my rug is all right, but
what in the world is the matter with that woman? Am I obliged
to give a shower in her honor? Heavenly days. I imagine I’ll
buy diapers for the new baby and diapers for her as well.Wait
until I tell Sweetie and Nancy this one! What a night!

Seventeen

Gone Fishing

}

ORNING came with an early sunrise, the

sounds of hundreds of baby birds begging to be Mfed and their mothers squawking for them to just wait a minute. I drifted off, waking again soon at the sounds of Trip hollering at his dogs for yelping at the birds. It was time to go see what hazards men had heaped on the Edisto. If I still owned anything around here, it was a piece of that river.

I gave in to Saturday morning and got up to stretch, surprised by how well I felt. I had slept so soundly! The bed was barely wrinkled! Then I felt pretty naïve—after all, I
had
drunk tea with Millie. Only God knows what was in it.
And,
I had taken that quick soak with freaking alligator root, for God’s sake. Richard would have laughed himself sick over that.

I pulled on my jeans, a white T-shirt, and a chartreuse cotton cardigan. One brush tamed my bed head, and then another scrubbed away the sleep from my teeth. I was pulling my hair into P l a n t a t i o n

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a rubber band when I went looking for Mother. Taking the steps two at a time, I found her with Trip in the kitchen. Still in her robe, she was reading the newspaper intensely and having a cup of hot tea. Her everpresent cigarette, Benson & Hedges 100, menthol please, waited. Its smoke rose in soft spirals with the same patience evil uses in baiting human souls. Some things would never change.

“Morning!” I said, kissing Mother’s cheek and giving Trip the hairy eyeball.

“Caroline,” he said, putting his mug down on the table, “I want to thank you for not knocking Frances Mae’s teeth out last night.”

“She’s a piece of work. Don’t
menshone eet,
” I said, pouring myself a glass of orange juice. “That’s French for ‘don’t mention it.’ I learned that from Miss Nancy.”

“Nancy is a veritable wealth of information,” Mother said, to no one in particular.

“Although I must admit, it was tempting,” I said.

“Well, thank you for exercising your excellent personal discipline. Wanna go out in the boat?” Trip asked. “Tide’s perfect. I’ll even let you drive.”

He
must
have been feeling guilty to let me drive.

“I get to drive?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, deal. You must be desperate for company.” I grinned at him, raising my eyebrows in a dare. Poor bastard. Frances Mae was more color and drama than he deserved.

“Must be hard up as hell,” he said. He got up and slapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, missy.”

“I do believe my children have scales on them somewhere.

God knows they’d rather be on the water than the land.” She wasn’t snide, but it was another tiny dart to the neck from her quiver of guilt weapons—said smilingly, meant seriously.

Mother looked up from her place at the kitchen table and did, in fact, smile at us. She was reading the obituaries. At least she seemed pleased that my sister-in-law’s incontinence couldn’t rattle 1 8 0

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k our cages to the point where Trip and I would fight with each other. I mean, it was pretty humiliating to have a wife who did those things.

I wrapped one of Millie’s biscuits in a paper towel and put it in the microwave for ten seconds. Then I slathered it with some of Miss Sweetie’s strawberry jam and ate it as fast as I could get it in my mouth.

“For heaven’s sake, Caroline, put it on a plate and sit at the table! You’re eating like you were born in the trees!”

I swallowed the last bite, drained my orange juice, and put the glass in the dishwasher. “It’s okay, Mother. Trip will have me back in an hour and we can plan the day. Alright?”

“I imagine it has to be alright! What say do I have in the matter?”

“Aw, come on now, Miss Lavinia, I’ll be back in an hour.” I gave her cheek another light kiss and she smiled around the corners of her mouth. She loved it when I called her Miss Lavinia. Sometimes.

“Oh, go on and leave me my peace. Oh, my! Look at this! Dale Clarkin has gone off to Glory!”

She busied herself with the details of his death, brows narrowed and lips pursed. Trip and I stopped at the back door and waited for her to say more.

“Who’s he?” Trip said, looking at me like he’d never heard of anybody named Clarkin.

“Just someone I used to know, that’s all,” Mother said, sighing.

“My, my. He was such a wonderful dancer!”

“Old boyfriend, hmmm? Come on, Mother, ’fess up,” I said, by the open door. Reading aloud to us was a tactic to delay us. Trip slipped out to the back porch and was getting impatient.

“Well, you go on with your brother, dear. I don’t want to bore you with stories about old lovers.”

“Lovers?” Now my eyes got wider.

“Come on, Caroline! Are you staying or coming with me?”

Mother looked around to face me and just smiled. “Don’t keep your brother waiting, Caroline. It’s terribly rude.”

P l a n t a t i o n

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“Right,” I said, and closed the door. Classic Lavinia. Bait and switch.
Oh, go with your brother! No! Stay with me!
Jeesch. I opened the door again. “You can manipulate me as soon as I get back, Mother!” When she saw me laughing, she squinted her eyes and shook her head.

“Take a jacket!” she said.

I ignored her and hurried down the back steps. Trip was already twenty yards in front of me, talking to Millie. I ran to catch up to them.

The early morning pungent fragrance of damp pine and earth gave me a start. I had nearly forgotten how smells defined the time of day. Soon the sun would burn away the dew and this part of the world would smell like something else. What would it smell like at noon? Before a summer rainstorm? How funny, I thought to myself, that I had nearly allowed those memories to drift away, so easily, that familiarity with my past. But the ACE was powerful. I thought I’d discuss that one with Richard when I went home.

He’d wax volumes about the meaning of remembering smells, while I sat like an adoring idiot. Maybe I’d be better off just to look it up on the Web.

“Mornin’!” I called out to Millie. Trip’s dogs came bounding toward me. They were gorgeous animals, sleek and healthy. I scratched their heads and behind their ears. Trip had kept dogs for years. Sometimes he brought a brace of golden retrievers for bird hunting, but today he had Labs. Anybody who loved animals couldn’t be all bad.

“Mornin’!” Millie called back.

The dogs followed me as I walked and Millie drove her golf cart toward me. She stopped, took off her jacket, and handed it to me. “Don’t you know better than to go out in the morning air without a jacket?” She looked stern as she said it.

“Thanks,” I said. “Whatcha doing up so early?”

“Shoot, girl, don’t you know I got powder to spread?” She dropped her jaw in a snap to jar my memory. “Last night?”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“Right,” I said, pointing my finger at her, “see you later.”

Trip had untied the cleats, boarded his boat, started the motor, and was getting ready to cast off from the dock when I hopped on. His dogs sat on the dock, where they would wait for his return.

“New boat?”

“Yeah, I took this one out of the hide of an investment banker.

He used to live in downtown Charleston on the Battery. Now he lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta.”

“Probably costs the same. I hear Atlanta’s got some high-tone apartments.”

“Not that high. There’s beer in the cooler,” he said.

I looked at my watch. Eight o’clock. Good grief.

“Nah, that’s okay,” I said, “but thanks. So did this little puppy put you in the poorhouse?”

He coiled the ropes on the floor of the boat and pushed away from the dock with a paddle.

“In the thirty neighborhood by the time she was all fitted out.

Hand me a Heineken, will you? You girls behave! I’ll be right back!” he said to his dogs.

“Sure. Well, she sure is yar.” I waited for a response. Silence. “I heard Katharine Hepburn say that once in the
The Philadelphia
Story
. Yar? Get it?”

“Yar, I get it.”

He laughed and I shook my head. I dug around in the ice of the cooler, pulled out the coldest can, and gave it to him. Trip’s drinking seemed pretty excessive to me. I mean, I knew it was Lowcountry tradition to drink beer on the boat and I knew that cocktails were a part of life and that wine with dinner was a sign of sophistication and . . . what was I doing but justifying his behavior? Hell, I wasn’t such a prude just because I didn’t drink that much! I just didn’t like anything that made me foggy in the head.

The first minute Richard could see that any alcohol was beginning to make me tipsy, I’d hear about it. But, if I didn’t have Richard to P l a n t a t i o n

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make sure I didn’t overindulge, would I? Was I being an enabler to Trip? God, perish the thought.

I watched Trip from the side as we made our way down the Edisto, past old Hope Plantation and all the others. His thirties had brought him good looks; I had to admit that. God knows he was gawky in his teens and twenties. But his chin was filled out and all his outdoor sporting adventures had given him a nice tone. And, he was probably lonely. It couldn’t be easy in his shoes. Something about lonely men was appealing.

I looked around at the riverbeds, and the old rice gates. What marvelous inventions they were. I could almost see them rise and fall and hear the voices of men speaking Gullah calling out to each other. After rice was planted in the fields, the gatekeeper would raise his panel gate, allowing freshwater in on high tide to flood through a trunk—usually a hollowed-out log. That freshwater allowed the seeds to germinate. When the heads of the new plants peeked out from the water, he would wait for low tide, open the gate on the other end first, and the water would rush back to the Edisto. If the incoming water contained the smallest amount of salt, the entire crop would die.

The scene was from another time, all of it built by the ingenuity of slaves to make the white man rich. It made me sick to think about it. I knew more about slavery than the average white person because of Millie, and because I was descended from rice planters.

The entire concept of owning someone baffled me all my life, although women were certainly treated like property until recently and still were in many places.

The river always did that to me—made me think about things I ignored day to day.

The Edisto River was a trickster with many personalities. One was her freshwater area that supported certain fish, crustaceans, and vegetation. It was so clear you could drink it. And, if you didn’t want to drink it, you surely wanted to run your hand through it as the boat made its way downriver. That’s exactly what I did.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k The winding estuaries on its sides were home to everything from oyster beds to alligators, fiddler crabs, and osprey. When you looked at the riverbanks, they reverberated with small creatures, birds and fiddlers, busy with their day. It was another world in miniature, except for the alligators. Some of those suckers were huge!

When you arrived downstream to the salted water, everything changed again. You caught different fish, heard different birds, and saw different vegetation. At that moment, I was filled with awe by the incredible beauty around me. Then I remembered Trip, Frances Mae, and Mother—the reason for my visit.

I was on a fact-finding mission; so far I knew several things.

One, my sister-in-law was a horror show. The fact that she was a crass and gross individual from a family of scum was not nearly as offensive as her ambition. Two, Mother seemed fine, aside from her entitlement issues and all her dinner table hoo-ha. Why Trip thought she needed to live in a retirement community was beyond me. She obviously had the means to support herself and, although Millie was getting on in years, I’d prefer one Millie to a thousand younger caretakers. And, three, why
did
Trip put up with Frances Mae?

Over the years, Trip had become the most successful divorce lawyer in Colleton County. All a woman had to do was leave Trip’s business card on the table and her husband instantly became the benchmark of perfection.
Divide by two
. That was Trip’s motto and no man wanted to do that. Better to take up hunting and fishing more regularly and ignore the wife. That was what Trip himself appeared to be doing, in addition to drinking his ass off.