The Girl in the Maze (3 page)

Martha dreamed of floating in dark water, brushed by feathery fronds of seaweed.
Bang, bang.
She rocketed toward the surface.

Bang, bang, bang.
“Miss Covington? Are you in there?”

Martha opened her eyes, shuddered, and looked at the clock.
Seven forty-six.
The sun glinted through the gauzy curtains. What happened to the alarm?

“Miss Covington?” Eileen Pritchett's voice grated like a hinge on an iron gate.

“Just a minute.” Martha's own voice was husky, garbled. The inside of her mouth felt like she had been sucking on a dishrag. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and reached for her kimono, disoriented. She didn't remember going to sleep last night—the last thing she remembered was the orange light, a terrible feeling of doubt—

“Miss Covington? Somebody on the phone for you downstairs.”

She cracked the door. Eileen stood there, winded from the walk upstairs, her chest heaving. “You got a phone call. Lady says it's somethin' important.”

“All right, I'll be down in just a moment.”

“You want me to tell her to hold on?”

“Yes, please. I'll be right there.”

Martha put on her slippers, hurried downstairs to the hallway, and picked up the phone.

“Hello, this is Martha—”

“It's Lydia. I was hoping to catch you. Don't come in to the office today.”

“What? But why?”

“Go to the marina on Bay Street.”

“The marina?”

“Pier Fifteen. Be there no later than nine o'clock. Bring your notebook.”

“Why? What's happening?”

“We're going to the island today. I'll explain when you get there. Wear comfortable shoes.”

A few minutes later, Martha was at the front door, satchel in hand. She paused, looked at her watch. Fifteen extra minutes. What, exactly, had she seen from her window the previous night?

She went around to the backyard, crossed the gravel parking area, and stepped onto the dewy grass. She passed under the canopy of the fat oak tree and continued toward a wide, unkempt area. A few more steps, and her foot bumped against something solid. She knelt down to examine a block of crumbled masonry. She set her satchel in the grass and ran her fingers along the pitted surface. She could make out the traces of a low wall, mostly obscured by overgrowth. Across the way, she could see another section, maybe a corner, jutting above the weeds. This was the rectangular shape she'd seen, an outline easier to discern from her upstairs window.

The wall was made of tabby concrete and embedded with oyster shells, pearl-like fragments. She took hold of one of the shells. It wobbled like a loose tooth. The shell was blackened. She paused, listening to the buzz of insects in the grass.
No, not a wall. A foundation.

Martha looked at her watch again. Eight-forty. She wiped her sooty fingers against the grass, picked up her satchel, and headed for the pier.

A morning fog shrouded the marina as she crossed a planked dock toward a small group gathered near the end. She spotted Nick first, wearing a photographer's vest and crouched on bended knee to take a photo of Lydia, who was posing next to a stocky, gray-haired man in a navy blazer. Off to one side was Stacey, in shorts and a summer hat, pulling at a wheeled plastic cooler.

After the photo was taken, Lydia introduced Martha to the man in the jacket. He had a craggy face and a beaklike nose, but his eyes were sharp and alert. He reminded Martha of a terrapin.

“Senator Crumbley, I'd like you to meet the newest member of our staff, Martha Covington. She's helping us with the island history project.”

Crumbley took Martha's hand. “Let me extend my sympathies. Do you know you're working for one of the toughest ladies south of the Mason-Dixon?”

Lydia gave the senator a playful swat on the shoulder. “Oh, be quiet, Joseph. Let's get you some coffee before you cause any trouble.”

Lydia escorted the senator across the gangway and onto the ferry. Martha turned toward Nick, half-whispering. “What's this about?”

“Crumbley is chairman of the Natural Resources Committee,” Nick said. “He was in Savannah yesterday for a blue-plate fundraiser. Lydia managed to rope him into this tour. Old friend of the family.” Nick tucked his notepad into a vest pocket. “The Crumbleys and Dussaults go way back. A few favors owed. Know what I mean?” He opened and shut his eyes four times, rapidly. “Dynasties, old money. Lydia thinks he might be able to help us.”

Stacey stepped forward, rolling the cooler along by its plastic handle.

“Y'all going to stand around and whisper all day, or is somebody going to help me load this cooler?”

Martha watched over the starboard railing as the
Marsh Belle
meandered along a narrow waterway in a cool morning mist. The steady movement of the boat and the light breeze were lulling, and the foreboding that had gripped Martha since the previous night started to melt away. Broad vistas of emerald marshland glided by. The air smelled of brine and mud. She wondered exactly where the island was located. The landscape around them—a confusing patchwork of marsh, forest, and curling tributaries—offered no clue.

She took a deep breath. The marsh air was fragrant, alive, sensuous.

She could still see her mother, in the kitchen. Always in her shorts and Tevas, lean and tanned, tomboy haircut, whipping up a mean bowl of brownies.

“How old were you?”

“About six, I guess. It was not long after we moved to Decatur.”

“And what about your father? Where was he?”

Martha gazed at the folk-art rooster on Vince's shelf. “He was busy during those years, but later, after he got tenured, things were different.”

“How so?”

“He had more time. We used to go on fishing trips together. We read books. We went to plays and art films.”

“How do you see yourself during those years?”

“Normal.”

“What about high school?”

“I had friends. I was on the swim team. I was a good student.”

“You scored in the top percentile on the verbal SAT.”

“Yes, and I got a journalism scholarship. Everything was fine, until—”

Martha felt her eyes moistening. A lump was forming in her throat. She looked at her lap and Vince handed her a tissue. She took it, wiped her eyes, then put her hand on top of his and locked on his eyes. Warm, dark eyes. He gazed back at her for a few seconds. Scary-wonderful seconds. Then he simply squeezed her hand and took his own hand away.

“We can't go there, Martha.” Vince swiveled his desk chair slightly, steepled his fingers. “It would change our relationship, take it into a place we could never come back from. And then I would no longer be able to help you.”

She sat and cried for several minutes. But she never tried it again.

In the next session, she began to tell him about Lenny.

Crumbley stepped onto the deck, an insulated coffee mug in hand, followed by Lydia. They paused at the railing a few feet away, seemingly unaware of Martha's presence.

“No bridges to the mainland, not even an airstrip,” Lydia was saying. “You've got to take a boat—or a helicopter, I suppose.”

“And you say sixty-five people out here?” Crumbley asked. “It's amazing to find that kind of isolation today. How do they manage it?”

“Most of them still live off the land and the marsh. The Geechees have had this island to themselves for almost two centuries now. That's what makes their culture unique.”

The waterway wound around a curve and widened slightly. Martha felt a tap on her shoulder. Nick pointed toward a low horizon of green hovering just above the water. Not far away, the dark timbers of a wood pier emerged from the mist, like a trackway to the afterlife.

“There it is,” Nick said. “Get ready to visit paradise.”

They were greeted at the end of the pier by a contingent of islanders. Lydia introduced Astrid Humphries, a full-figured woman with short, pressed hair. Lydia called her the unofficial “mayor” of Shell Heap Island. They also shook hands with Toby, an older gentleman with a full white beard. He leaned on a twisting lacquered wooden staff.

They climbed inside a Range Rover, with Toby taking the driver's seat, and rumbled along a rutted road toward the island's interior. Wild turkey and piglets scattered. The sandy track was dappled with sunlight filtered through canopies of oak trees.

After a few minutes, Toby slowed the Rover and made a hard turn through a gap in the woods. Soon the road disappeared entirely and they traveled over soft pine needles along the forest floor.

“Are you sure we can find our way back?” Crumbley asked. Martha kept a tight grip on the handhold above her door.

“Don't worry, Toby has lived here since birth,” Lydia said. “He knows every pine needle and gopher hole on this entire island. And trust me, what you're about to see is worth the effort.”

The car rolled to a stop next to a gully deep inside the forest.

“Here we are,” Lydia announced.

They climbed out and stepped into a virgin forest of live oaks and loblolly pines. Brown nuthatches twittered in the underbrush. The ground was sandy and filigreed with sunlight and shadows.

Crumbley looked around at the majestic trees with their draperies of Spanish moss. “This place is magical,” he said.

“You haven't even seen the best yet.” Lydia led them along a faint, sandy trail. An armadillo trundled out of the brush and crossed their path. They walked along in silence, the forest around them cool, peaceful, alive. Overhead, oak limbs converged like the vault of a giant cathedral. Martha took a mental snapshot of the scene. Later, she would try to capture it in words.

Lydia stopped along the trail and tugged on a hot-pink strip of surveyor's tape tied to a sapling. “We're standing on the future site of Tidewater Plantation. This is the northwest boundary of the project. Right here is where they plan to build forty-two homes, in phase one alone. In that direction, sixty acres will be cleared for the golf course.”

They continued along the path for a few hundred yards until the trees parted and the path climbed toward the summit of a large sand dune. The air tasted of salt, and nearby, Martha could hear the measured breathing of ocean waves.

At the top of the dune, a wide track of windswept beach came into view, bordered by more scrubby dunes. A crescent of golden sand, undisturbed by footprints, stretched as far as Martha could see, embroidered by boughs of wind-polished driftwood.

They chuffed down the windward side of the dune, passing through patches of sea oats and morning glories, to reach the edge of the beach. Here the sand was hard-packed and rimmed by a line of purple oyster shells. Crumbley knelt to pick one up.

“This is incredible,” he said, turning the shell over and over in his hand. “Simply beyond belief. This place must be one of the state's best-kept secrets.”

“Imagine lifeguard towers and Jet Skis, cabanas and boardwalks,” Lydia said. “It's all coming, if Hoshima gets their way. There aren't many places like this left in the golden isles. We'd like to save just one of them.”

“We need to make this place more accessible to people,” Crumbley said, “but seems like there might be a way to do that without ruining it. Maybe I can arrange for Governor Vellner and the members of the resources committee to come out and have a look.”

They returned to the Range Rover and drove southward on the main road. In a few minutes, the village of Turkey Point announced itself with a simple wooden sign on poles set close to the ground. Toby beeped his horn and an old mutt sleeping in the middle of the road rose and sauntered aside.

Cabins and houses were scattered among the trees on both sides of the road. Some were unpainted, with rusting tin roofs, others looked newer, but all were neat and well cared for. Many had yards fenced with boards or garden wire, and chickens and roosters roamed the grounds. An abandoned school bus with a front porch attached was nestled back among the trees. An old man sat smoking a pipe on a chair under the corrugated tin awning.

Twigs snapped under the tires as Toby pulled into the driveway of one of the larger houses, a cinder-block ranch painted a light shade of green. A gray satellite dish sprouted from one eave. They piled out of the car and Astrid led them toward the front door.

The air was fresh here, scented with pine and the faint aromas of cooking, wood smoke, and car grease. Martha's parents had been dyed-in-the-wool urbanites, hewing close to the gentrified Atlanta neighborhood of Decatur all her life. Until now, rural Georgia was something she'd seen only through the window of a car; she'd never been this up-close-and-personal before.

They paused a moment in Astrid's front hallway to admire a collection of intricately woven baskets. Martha ran a finger along one of them, felt its springy texture.

“These are beautiful. Who made them?” Crumbley asked.

“All by Astrid. She's one of the top sweetgrass basket artisans in the country,” Lydia said. “One of her pieces is displayed in the Smithsonian Institution.”

“Where did you learn this art?” Crumbley lifted the woven lid of a breadbasket.

“I was taught by my grandmother,” Astrid said. “She learned it from her mother, who was a slave. She brought the craft with her from West Africa.”

Astrid led them through the air-conditioned envelope of the house, past solidly middle-class furnishings, and into the backyard, where a community cookout was under way. Some African American men and women milled about; others were seated in lawn chairs, balancing paper plates full of food. Others chatted in the shade of the oaks. A dusty boom box sat on the porch rail, playing lazy strains of Dixieland jazz.

A party
. Martha felt a tremor of social anxiety working its way up her spine. She focused her attention on the potluck table, where a big rectangular sink was propped up on bricks.