Low Country (44 page)

facts before you start a fight. I always knew that you

really thought it was yours, though; I never thought

you were just blowing smoke at us, to save your hus-

band’s fanny. Nobody over here did. Most of them

knew your grandfather. They knew you were his girl.”

“So…even when I was over here spouting off about

nobody ever having to worry about anything again

you all knew…Clay still owned it?”

“Yeah. But we knew how you felt. We still hoped

you could change his mind about it. I take it that’s not

the case, huh?”

Low Country / 397

“I don’t think it is, Ezra,” I said. I was so tired that

I thought I would fall out of the chair and simply lie

on the sun-warmed earth of the Bigginses’ storeyard

until it swallowed me into the damp coolness under

its surface.

“Okay,” Ezra said. “Now we ruin his ass.”

13

W
hen Ezra Upchurch set out to ruin an ass
, he

didn’t waste any time. By afternoon of the next day he

had a press conference of national proportions set up

for high noon two days later. Because he was Ezra

Upchurch, the national media listened when his people

in Washington called to announce it. Because he was

Ezra Upchurch, most of them planned to attend.
The

Today Show
was in North Carolina filming a series on

black church bombings and would send a crew. All

three major evening news shows scheduled reporters.

Virtually all the national news magazines and many

of the dailies would at least have stringers and photo-

graphers present. They would all meet at the bridge

from Peacock’s over to the island. Ezra would meet

them there with the residents of Dayclear, five or six

other Gullah communities in the Lowcountry, and rep

Low Country / 399

resentatives of every significant environmental group

that could mount a presence. They would march from

Dayclear to the bridge, singing and holding hands as

they had done, many of them, so many years before,

in Selma.

Even in my fugue state of a pathetic grief, I knew

that it would be irresistible. No matter if Clay could

have managed to prevail over the natural tastelessness

of South Ward and create something approaching en-

vironmental genius for the island, he would be dead

meat now in the eyes of the nation, a despoiler of

priceless wetlands and a fragile, ancient culture. It

might not matter at all to South Ward, but it would,

indeed, be the emotional ruin of Clay Venable.

Oh, Clay, I thought in such pure sorrow that it sur-

prised me, when Sophia Bridges told me Ezra’s plans.

What did you think would happen? Did you think the

Sierra Club would give you a lifetime achievement

award?

While I was still sitting in the chair in front of the

Bigginses’s store the afternoon I confronted Clay, spent

and silent, Auntie Tuesday came out of her cabin,

toddled down the street on Janie’s arm, and brought

me a giant pickle jar full of her tea.

“You take you some of this when you gits home,”

she said, peering into my face. “Take you another cup

befo’ you goes to bed. You sleep through without no

hag-ridin’. You gon’ need yo’

400 / Anne Rivers Siddons

sleep for a while. I fix you some fiddlehead broth to-

morrow and send it over. This time I put some St. John

in it. You gon’ need yo’ courage, too.”

“Auntie,” I said tiredly, “please don’t ever tell me

whether you saw all that in fire or water.”

“Didn’t see nothin’ this time,” she said. “Ezra been

talkin’ all along about callin’ in those news folks did

he have to. I knowed from the look of you when I seen

you out my window that he gon’ have to now. That

gon’ be hard on you. Likely gon’ split you right in two.

This he’p. It really will.”

I hugged her when I left with my pickle jar, holding

her hard. She was almost a head shorter than I and so

frail that I could feel her tiny bird’s ribs, but there was

a strength in her that I could feel in my own hollowed

and watery bones. I wished that I could simply move

in with her and be cosseted, as she had cosseted Lita.

But I knew that there was no place for me now in

Dayclear. I was not the enemy. They all knew that.

But I was married to him. I could not blame them if

they wondered which loyalty would finally prevail.

So I drove slowly back to my island house and be-

fore the grief that hung like heavy, rotted fruit over my

head could fall, I heated the tea and drank a cup. I

could not handle much more right now than drowsi-

ness, sleep. The knowledge of the betrayal needed time

to work its way deep into the fibers of my mind and

heart so that I

Low Country / 401

knew its whole scope, its essential truth. Until that

could happen, I knew that I would spend my time

veering wildly from despair to denial, and back again.

I had done it with Kylie. I would do it, too, now, with

whatever might be left of my marriage. Better to

drowse. Better still to sleep.

And I did. The smoky, slightly bitter tea eased the

ache in my heart and the snarl in my head just enough

so that I could read, and I stretched out on the sofa

and lit my fire and pulled out the crumbling, yellowed

old copy of
The Jungle Book
that had been Kylie’s fa-

vorite. The exotic, firelit world of Mowgli and Baloo

and Bagheera and Shere Khan swallowed me totally.

I fell asleep before the fire and dreamed, not of my

own threatened river and forest, but of a gold-green

jungle where animals spoke and a child lived in a

profound and sustaining harmony with them. When

I awoke, it was almost ten the next morning, and I was

cold and stiff and hungry, and the razor-sharp new

pain was infinitesimally dulled.

It seemed to me that I should make a plan, a blue-

print for living a new way, a map for getting through

the next days in a new and diminished territory. So I

showered and washed my hair and put on clean jeans

and shirt and sat down on the deck with coffee and a

fossilized bagel. I brought a legal pad and a pen with

me for the outlining of my new life, but nothing came

to me. Nothing at

402 / Anne Rivers Siddons

all. I could not think of a life without this island and

this house, and I could not imagine one without Clay.

It was a strange, suspended time, that morning. I both

had a husband and did not; both had a home and did

not. I would think, Well, we can live very well over

here if we lose the Peacock’s house, and then think,

But who is we? Or I would think, This is absurd; Clay

will no more let me lose this place than he would let

me go naked, or starve, and then realize that he was

prepared to put the machinery of that loss into motion

whenever he wished, and so far as I knew, would do

it without delay. I felt nearly crazy, actually near insan-

ity. I did not know how even to think of Clay in any

terms but the ones in which I had always thought of

him: my husband; the man I had always loved; the

man I would grow old with; would, with luck, come

to the end of my days with.

And yet, for all practical purposes, he had ended

that life yesterday. Or had it been I? I did not know

even the most basic truth of all this, and so I sat in the

soft sun of late January and waited for what would

come next.

It was Sophia Bridges, on Ezra’s motorcycle. She

came roaring into the clearing and slewed smartly to

a stop, dismounting in one single fluid motion of her

long, elegant legs and unpacking a small sweet-grass

basket from the saddlebag. I stared at her. She might

as well have ridden up on

Low Country / 403

a Komodo dragon. Even in my strange, suspended

state, I realized how profoundly Sophia had changed

on this island. There was little of the chilly, distant

woman I had met in the kitchen of the guest house

before Thanksgiving. She seemed almost totally a cre-

ation of this wild island now.

“I brought you some of Auntie’s magic soup,” she

said, dropping down beside me in the rickety chair

that had been my grandfather’s. “And I wanted to see

how you are. You took a bad knock yesterday, Ezra

says.”

A Southern woman is raised from birth to say when

someone asks how she is, “Oh, fine, thank you for

asking.” I remembered saying it even when the

enormity of Kylie’s death was still new, and re-

membered the strange looks it evoked from the asker.

But now I simply said, “I think I’m in bad trouble,

but I don’t know how I feel yet. It’s like being shot or

something, and it hasn’t started hurting yet but you

know it will any minute. I don’t even know how to

describe it. But thanks for asking.”

She grinned wryly at that last, and stretched out her

legs in the old faded jeans that were her island uniform.

“I think I know. I remember when Chris told me he

was leaving me. It seemed like there ought to be some

kind of book that would tell me how to feel and what

to do about it. You just don’t

404 / Anne Rivers Siddons

know who or what you are anymore, do you?”

“I guess that’s it,” I said. “Mainly, I just can’t believe

that what’s happened…really happened. I just can’t

believe it.”

“I know. In my case, I didn’t know who I was any-

way, so in the end it wasn’t so much different from the

way I usually felt. But it must be awful for you. You

never much doubted who you were, did you?”

“I guess I never much doubted
what
I was. I think

there must be a difference that I’m just learning about.

So much for teaching old dogs new tricks.”

“Well, I guess the main thing is not to do anything

sudden,” she said. “Nothing’s cast in stone, is it? I

mean, you haven’t decided really to leave or anything,

have you? Things change so fast, Caro. They really

do. That’s one thing I’ve finally learned. Things

change.”

“I guess I haven’t decided anything,” I said. “But,

Sophia…I don’t think I can live with…what will hap-

pen over here. I don’t think I can be around for that.”

“Then where would you go?”

I just looked at her. I had not gotten that far. She

was right. Where would I go? The town house? And

risk running into Hayes Howland or Lucy every time

I put my head out my front door? See the line of green

on the horizon that was the fringe of Peacock’s Island

every time I

Low Country / 405

walked on the Battery? No. Not the town house.

“I never got around to residential options,” I said.

“Neither did I, but one presented itself, anyway, and

one will for you,” she said. “Maybe the first thing we

both needed to learn was just to let go and let life do

it.”

“Well,” I said, feeling absurd laughter start deep in

my stomach, “life has done gone and done it.”

And we sat in the sun and laughed and laughed, like

schoolgirls giddy with new spring and limitless possib-

ility.

Presently she said, “I came to tell you what Ezra

plans to do. He wanted to come tell you himself, he’s

so proud of it all, and he was just sure that the jewel

in the crown would be to have you march with them

to meet the media. It’s the old Upchurch touch, doncha

know. The piquant, poignant little coup de grace.

When I got through telling him how many kinds of

assholes he was he saw the wisdom of letting me come

alone to tell you. It’s a good plan and I think it could

work, but I can also see how it would just finish you

off if you thought you had to be part of it. My advice

to you is to go somewhere off-island…like maybe Ja-

maica or the U.S. Virgins, or Bhutan…until this is over.

It’s going to hurt some folks you care about before it

does any good, and whether it will stop the project or

not is anybody’s guess.

406 / Anne Rivers Siddons

Mine would be that it might stop Clay but it probably

won’t even make a dent in South Ward’s hide. But

Ezra’s good, I’ll give him that. He’s done more with

less to work with than this. It’s just that he is essentially

a butthead and will never understand why you don’t

want to see Clay pounded through the ground.”

“Do you understand?” I said.

“Of course I do, Caro,” she said softly. “I’ve loved a

man. You don’t stop just because they’ve done a big

awful. It may change the
way
you feel about them, but

it doesn’t necessarily lessen it.”

I rubbed my eyes hard and said, “You better tell me

what Ezra’s got cooking,” and she did.

When she was done, I said on a long breath, “My

God. How could he do that in less than twenty-four

hours?”

“His Washington staff did most of it,” she said, and

it was only then that I remembered that Ezra Upchurch

did not always wear overalls without a shirt and work