Low Country (35 page)

did not speak, he went on.

“We’d buy out the village and pay each family a

handsome annual salary to stay and take part in all

this. We’d provide the clothes and the tools and craft

materials, and of course we’d offer insurance and

health coverage, maybe get them on some kind of

regular medical and dental services from the county.

Oh, and we’d electrify the houses that didn’t have

it…Sophia says some of them don’t…and keep the

houses and outbuildings in good shape, and see that

everybody has plumbing and heating and televi-

sion.…It’s more than they could aspire to in their lives,

Caro, and the best part is, they won’t have to move

and they won’t have to scrabble for a living anymore.

How can they lose?”

I looked at him. Black spots wheeled before my eyes.

“The ponies…” I whispered.

“We’d like to make a kind of wild, natural island out

in the river where the two creeks run into it, dredge it

there and build it up and landscape it and put some

picturesque little lean-tos

Low Country / 313

on it for shelter, and keep it planted in grass, and put

the ponies there. They’d be fed grain and hay on a

regular basis, and we’d have a vet look them over

periodically, and if they tame up a little, maybe even

curry them once in a while.”

“You think they’ll go for condos?” I said. My ears

were buzzing. “I think they’re more the timeshare types

myself.”

He ignored that.

“We thought we might have a kind of monthly pony

swim, from the new island over to Dayclear and back.

Like they do when they bring the wild horses in from

Chincoteague and Assateague, on the Outer Banks.

They’re a big favorite with families. That way the

ponies would be healthier and better cared for than

they’ve ever been in their lives, and they’d be a real

asset, instead of parasites.”

“I thought Clay was kidding,” I managed to whisper

through lips that felt blanched and swollen. “I thought

he was teasing me. He laughed when I called it Gullah

World.…It’s a theme park, Hayes. How can you even

think of it?”

“I can think of it because it’s what your husband

thought it would take to get you to agree to this, Caro,”

he said. There were mottled white spots on his clamped

jaws now. “I can think of it because it’s the only way

either of us can see to save that goddamned flea-bitten

settlement and

314 / Anne Rivers Siddons

those goddamned mangy horses, and Clay says we do

that or we forget it. I wonder if you know what would

happen to all of us if we forgot it, Caro?”

“Clay’s told me about all that.…”

“I wonder if he’s told you just how bad it could be?

But the important thing is that SouthWard loves it,

and we took an awful chance by insisting on revising

the first plan. They didn’t even want to listen to any

changes at first. If you knew what Clay and I and

everybody else has gone through to work this thing

out for you…”

My hand flew to my mouth.

“SouthWard! My God, Hayes!” I cried.

“They’re going to save your ass, Caro,” he said. “All

our asses, plus some black ones and some hairy horse

ones. Nobody else would even listen. Clay and I have

been all over the country with this. Nobody else even

gave us an appointment.”

SouthWard…

Once, when Clay and I had been newly married and

the children had not yet come, we took a driving trip

through the lower Southeast, so that Clay could show

me other resort communities and tell me how his vision

for the Peacock Island Plantation Company properties

differed from anything yet in existence. We saw some

well-done properties and some merely rather ordinary,

and a few that I thought were ghastly in concept

Low Country / 315

and execution. Of these, one or two were unique to

me in their sheer bizarreness of taste.

One of these was in the mountains of North Georgia

and was called Hillbilly Hollow. I would like to think

that the name was someone’s idea of tongue-in-cheek,

but after we had driven through it, I abandoned that

idea. Hillbilly Hollow was a caricature of every bad

joke anyone had ever heard about the Appalachian

mountains and the people thereof. By the time we left

it I did not know whether to laugh hysterically or

simply cry.

At the gate was a security guardpost gotten up like

a miniature log cabin. Artificial chickens, pigs, and

dogs dotted the little backyard. On the leaning front

porch a guard sat in a rocking chair, dressed in tattered

overalls and with a torn felt hat pulled down over one

eye, holding a shotgun in his lap. A rustically lettered

sign on a piece of knotty pine said, STATE YO’ BIZNESS

POLITE-LIKE. This particular guard wore wraparound

yellow sunglasses and was reading
Rolling Stone
, but

the effect was hardly diluted.

Inside the gates was a sales office in the same cabin

style, but much larger, dripping with calico and ging-

ham and more rustic sayings burned on pine. A woman

in a calico dress and apron, with breasts like, as Clay

said in wonder later, the bumper of a 1953 Studebaker,

gave us literature about the different styles of resort

homes and rentals available, and the amenities enjoyed

by

316 / Anne Rivers Siddons

the future residents and visitors to Hillbilly Hollow.

They included a general store for vittles, a brush-

shrouded “still house for wines and likkers,” a large,

supervised playground and activities cabin for little

billies, a lake with paddleboats and motor rentals for

when you needed to make a fast water getaway, a

miniature golf course for when the city cousins came

to visit, a shuffleboard and hoss shoe complex, Ping-

Pong and bowling facilities, and an RV campground

and mobile-home theme park with hillbilly rides and

attractions for the rugrats. A senior citizens cabin

community was planned for “when grandmaw and

grandpaw need a place to hang their hats,” and a

shooting range and gallery were under construction,

so that “Bills and Billies could keep their shootin’ eyes

sharp against the revenooers.” A smaller sign in the

office said that if you required tennis or handball or

regular golf or equestrian facilities, Atlanta was ninety

miles south thataway.

The Studebaker lady told us that Hillbilly Hollow

was already at ninety percent occupancy, and the

waiting list stretched into the next year.

“You folks better get your names in the hat right

quick,” she said, smiling broadly.

Hillbilly Hollow was the first resort property to be

developed by SouthWard of Atlanta.

Over the years, SouthWard prospered, and no one

could quite figure out why. All of its

Low Country / 317

properties were themed, and none of them with much

more innate taste than Hillbilly Hollow. Soon they

covered the inland southeast like kudzu, and became

a joke to the developers and residents of newer, more

restrained and upscale communities and a near-bottom-

less source of income to their shameless and canny

young developers. They were cheap to build, cheap to

buy or rent into, and cheap to maintain for the simple

reason that SouthWard did very little of that. After

about ten years stories and news reports began to seep

out about equipment breakdowns, failed inspections,

sewage and gas leaks, pollution of nearby streams and

rivers, and lawsuits against the company by residents

and neighbors alike. SouthWard invariably settled.

There was always a new theme community sprouting

somewhere else to pay the freight. SouthWard was

flush and fat.

They had never managed to get a toehold on the

Southeastern coast, though. Waterfront land was at a

premium by the time they looked seaward. Almost all

of it was either under development, about to be, or

privately owned. In the few instances that they saw a

window of opportunity, local consortiums shut them

out before they could even make an offer. They had

almost resigned themselves to looking to the Texas

coast for colonization, which did not suit nearly as

well, since Texas itself often seemed to be a

318 / Anne Rivers Siddons

theme park and was therefore less receptive to their

novelties.

Until now.

Hayes had the grace to redden.

“This is altogether different, Caro,” he said. “For one

thing, we’re maintaining design control. For another,

they realize they can’t come into this market with

anything like their others; Charleston and Lowcountry

people would laugh them out of business in a month.

This is going to be a new direction for them, a move

into serious, substantial resort development, with all

the responsible environmental concerns met, the whole

ball of wax. Dayclear would give them the kind of

dignity they want to project now.…”

He stopped. I did not think even he believed his

words. I did not reply. I was trying very hard not to

see it: fishnets and plastic crabs and black people

dressed in aprons and head kerchiefs and faded over-

alls, plowing marsh tackies and picking cotton and

singing. An RV village where the dense Florida mari-

time forest, untouched for eons, stood now. Miniature

golf on the secret green hummocks.

But Hayes gave it a valiant try.

“If you saw the site plan and the density studies and

the environmental proposals, saw that they were

mainly Clay’s and his strictest to date, and you had

our promise in writing about the settlement and the

ponies, would you be willing to

Low Country / 319

take the proposal about Dayclear to the folks there?

Just run it past them, see how the wind blows from

that quarter? We thought they’d rather hear it from

you than one of us. You’re known to them, and they

know how you feel about the island.”

“Hayes,” I said slowly, around the nausea and in-

credulity, “in the first place, what makes you think

SouthWard would honor Clay’s plans for two seconds

after they owned the property? And in the second

place…who is ‘we’? You and who thought they’d

rather hear it from me? Does Clay know you’ve told

me all this?”

He puffed out his cheeks and blew a gust of air, like

a man who must now do something distasteful to him.

He looked away toward the dazzling creek, and then

back to me, his hands in his pockets.

“There’s something else I came to tell you. I don’t

want you to get upset, because it’s all right now, I

promise. But…”

“But what? God, Hayes, what?”

“Clay’s in the hospital in San Juan. He had some

kind of collapse or something last night; Carter called

me early this morning. He wanted me to tell you. But

Clay’s okay now…”

He raised his hands toward me as I scrambled to

my feet. I could feel the blood running out of my face

and hands.

“No, listen, Caro, he really is. Carter’s taking

320 / Anne Rivers Siddons

him back to the hotel right about now. They just kept

him overnight as a precaution. He’s coming home in

the morning. Carter says the doctor thinks it was ex-

haustion and stress plus maybe a mild heat stroke;

apparently he was out all day on a boat, and then spent

the late afternoon tramping around the Calista property

with that guy who was looking to buy it. In the end

the guy nixed the deal. Carter said he offered so low

that they told him to eat shit and hit the road. It must

have been the last straw for Clay. A decent sale could

have changed things. There wasn’t anything wrong

with Clay’s heart, though, or anything like that. They

did find a duodenal ulcer, though. He’s been asking

for that for months; the strain of the business with

Calista, and then the enormous stress of trying to get

this Dayclear thing up and going…he hasn’t been

eating right, and the hours he’s keeping are criminal.

He’s traveling way too much, too. Well, you know all

that. Maybe now he’ll cut back some and let me take

some of the load. I’ve been trying to do it for a long

time, but you know Clay.…”

I sank down on the top step, weak and trembling.

Clay had always seemed to me simply…invulnerable.

Put together from sinew and steel and powered with

an inexhaustible energy, driven smoothly on the current

of his extraordinary intensity. Clay in the hospital?

Clay with an ulcer? What did this say about me?

Low Country / 321

“Why didn’t someone call me?” I whispered.

“What could you have done? By the time Carter

heard from the doctor, Clay was almost ready to leave

the hospital. Neither he nor Carter wanted to scare

you, and Clay’ll be home before you could get down

there. They called me because they didn’t want that

motormouth Shawna to get hold of it somehow and