Low Country (50 page)

They know? I thought, and then, of course: his watch.

The tears threatened. I turned my head. Then I

looked back.

On a small sapling that leaned over the grave

someone had hung photographs. I saw one of Lita,

obviously taken at some school event, solemn and alien

in a dark dress with a white collar and a little wreath

of flowers in her wild hair. There was one of a smiling

young couple in front of a great wedding-cake church:

Luis and his bride on their wedding day. Oh, dear

God…the last one was a photograph of Lita on Nissy,

taken at my house on the marsh. I recognized the steps

up to the deck. Luis’s dark-furred hand held a rope

that had been slipped around Nissy’s neck, and she

had pulled it taut, but was standing, still and mulish,

with the grinning child on her back. Behind them, al-

most out of focus, I stood, smiling, the light from the

creek silhouetting my flyaway hair. I remembered that

day: it had been New Year’s Eve, the day we had all

spent at my house, the day of the night when I first

stayed alone at the house after the great fear had be-

gun, and did not drink. The day that Luis had told me

about finding what you would die for, and then living

for it…

I felt my knees give again, and Sophia tightened her

hold around my waist. I knew that she had taken the

photograph and that she had prob

454 / Anne Rivers Siddons

ably placed it there with Luis’s other sparse treasures.

I did not think, after all, that I could do this.

As if at a signal, though I heard none, the people

began to hum quietly, and to sway back and forth to

the rhythm of the music. It had no words, and the tune

was atonal and sounded very old in the cold, quiet

glade. Outside the wall of trees the wind moaned, but

in here it did not stir the bare branches. The people

hummed and hummed, and I closed my eyes and let

the sound take me where it would.

When I opened them again, the humming was

slowing, and then it stopped. Ezra Upchurch came out

of the small crowd and stood beside the open grave.

He wore overalls over a flannel shirt, clean but worn

thin and faded almost patternless. He had a great, vivid

camellia in his overall strap, and he looked down at

the coffin of his friend and put his hand lightly on it.

There were silver tear tracks on his dark face. He took

a great breath and looked up at the crowd, and said,

in a voice that rang out over the clearing and into the

woods: “Our friend Luis felt that cycle leavin’ him, and

he say, ‘Uh-oh, Lord, I think I’m coming home.’ And

the Lord say, ‘I know you, Luis. Come on home…’”

And I knew that I could not stay. Murmuring to

Sophia, I turned and stumbled back out of the clearing

and through the vines until I

Low Country / 455

stood again in the muddy road. Tears flooded my face

and soaked into the collar of Clay’s jacket, and my

chest heaved and bucked. The big grief was back, but

there was something else, too. It was a simple, one-

celled gratitude. I had wondered if it was the right

thing, laying him to rest here so far from anyone and

anything that he had known. And I saw now that it

was. He would be a part of them forever now. They

would make him so. They would make a song of him

and for him. They would make a great tale of him and

for him. He would belong to them in a way that many

of their own never did, and their children would sing

of him, and their children, and as long as Dayclear

stood, Luis Cassells would be at home.

And Dayclear would stand.

Looks like we’re stuck with you, I said to him in my

head. Looks like you’re stuck with us. You’re ours now.

Sleep tight, Luis.

And I went back down the road to Auntie Tuesday’s

house.

“It ain’t over, is it?” she said. She had been nodding

by the stove. Its red was fading to gray, and I stooped

and opened the door and poked at it until it leaped

into life again.

“No. I…I just couldn’t be there anymore.”

“That all right. We knows you come. He knows,

too.”

We sat in silence for a bit, and then I sighed

456 / Anne Rivers Siddons

and said, “I’d better go see what I can do about Lita.”

She nodded. “I tol’ her you was on your way. She

just turned her head. I ’spec it be all right now,

though.”

“Don’t count on it, Auntie.”

“Well, you know, I seed that it was.”

I shook my head and got up and went into the bed-

room where Lita was.

It was darkened, obviously in the hope that she

would sleep, but she was not asleep. She lay very still,

curled on her side, facing the door. Auntie had covered

her with the same beautiful quilt she had laid over her

after the mare had died, but it seemed to me that the

little body under it was vastly diminished now, much

smaller than the one I had seen here before. I could

not make out her face, both because of the darkness

and the tangle of hair that had fallen into it. But I could

see the gleam of the whites of her eyes. They did not

seem to blink.

I sat down on the bed beside her. She did not move.

I reached out to touch her hair, and she flinched

slightly, so I let my hand fall to the quilt.

“Hello, baby bug,” I said. “Auntie told you I’d come,

didn’t she?”

She did not move.

“I know that you don’t feel like talking right now,

and that’s okay,” I said. “It’s all right to be sad. I’m

sad, too. Your abuelo was the most won

Low Country / 457

derful man, and we’ll miss him terribly. But there are

still a lot of people who love you, and we’re all worried

because you won’t talk to us. Do you think you might

just try a word or two?”

Nothing.

“Well, then, I’ll just sit here with you for a while. I

think Auntie’s making us some supper. In a little while

I’ll go get it and bring it in on a tray, and we can have

it together right here. Like a picnic. Would you like

that?”

She did not speak, but she put one hand out and

clamped it onto my wrist. The strength in it was almost

frightening.

“You don’t want me to go?” I said, looking into her

face.

This time she shook her head, very slightly, no. No.

“Then I won’t. Auntie will bring in our supper.

Would you…” And I knew that it was something I

must do. “Would you like me to stay here with you

tonight?”

She nodded her head, still not speaking. Yes. Her

fingers tightened on my wrist.

“If I stay, will you try to close your eyes and sleep a

little bit? After our supper, I mean.”

No. Her head shook back and forth, harder and

harder. No. There was fear in her white-ringed eyes.

Well, I could not blame her. The last time she had shut

her eyes her grandfather had died.

458 / Anne Rivers Siddons

But we could not sit here like this forever, her hand

fastened in a death grip on my arm, her eyes staring,

staring.

Then I had a thought.

“Would you like to go see Yambi? He’s right up

there behind Janie and Esau’s store, and every time

anybody goes by he says, ‘Where’s Lita? Where’s

Lita?’ I bet he’s lonesome, too. He lost his mommy,

just like you lost your abuelo.”

She stared into my face intently for what seemed a

very long time. Then, very slowly, she pulled her arms

out from under the quilt and held them out to me. I

could literally see them quivering with fear, but she

did it.

I reached out and took her into my arms and held

her close to me for a while, feeling the rabbitlike tremor

of her heart, and then got up and carried her out into

the living room. Auntie looked up and smiled.

“MMMM hmmm,” she said. “Yes
sir
.”

“We’re going to walk up and see Yambi,” I said over

Lita’s head. She had buried it in my neck, and was

clinging for dear life. “I think we might like a bite to

eat when we get back.”

“Got me some vegetable soup and corn bread,” she

said. “And got a warm yam here for that colt. Been

savin’ it. He like to eat me out of yams, but this one’s

special. Wait a minute, let me put somethin’ round

her.”

She pulled herself up out of the chair and tot

Low Country / 459

tered stiffly over to a hook behind the back door and

took a thick old maroon cardigan from it and wrapped

it close around the child. I settled her deeper into the

circle of my arms and went out of the house into the

wind.

She weighed almost nothing, but I was still breathing

hard when we reached the store, partly because of the

fear that gripped my heart. What if she did not speak?

What if she never did again? Who was there that could

heal this child?

We did not see the colt at first, but I called softly,

“Yambi, Yambi,” and then he came, trotting around a

little lean-to that Esau had obviously made to shelter

him from the weather. His legs had grown longer, and

his mane and tail were more luxuriant than the little

stiff brushes I remembered, and he looked altogether

better than I could have expected. The Bigginses or

someone had been currying him; his coat was as sleek

as I supposed a marsh tacky’s ever got, and on his

narrow little head was a soft rope snaffle. He stopped

and looked at us.

“Look, Lita,” I said. “He’s waiting for you.”

Against my shoulder, she shook her head. But then

slowly she turned it, and she looked. I felt a tremor go

through the little body.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the

yam. It was still warm and ashy from its tenure in the

coals of Auntie’s stove.

“Why don’t you give him this?” I said, and

460 / Anne Rivers Siddons

she held her hand out very slowly, and I laid it in her

palm.

She looked up at me, and then she held it out over

the barbed wire fence.

The colt was still, his head cocked. We were not

among the callers he was used to. On the other hand,

we came bearing yams. I watched while he worked it

out. The yam won.

He came trotting with his springy step up to the

fence and put his black nose into Lita’s palm and took

the yam with his rubbery black lips. He gulped it with

one great swallow, nosed at her hand, and then put

his head over the fence and began to nose and sniff at

her arm and neck and face and hair. I felt rather than

saw the beginning of the smile on her face.

We stood there for a long time, the silent child and

I, she smiling now, her eyes closed, as the colt nuzzled

her face and neck with his wet black nose. Tears ran

down my face in sheets, and I did not even realize it

until much later, when my wet collar began to grow

cold.

We must have stood there for ten or fifteen minutes

when she turned her face back into my shoulder and

gave a great sigh and said, so softly that I almost did

not hear her, “It’s time to go home now, Caro.”

I stood very still, holding her. The colt began nosing

at my arms and hands. I looked far into myself, feeling

with my heart. Yes, she was still

Low Country / 461

there, my daughter, the tiny, focused, radiant essence

of her, burning steadily.

“Can we do this?” I whispered.

And as if she had said it, I knew that we could, knew

that the point of flame that was Kylie Venable could

warm both me and this cold child, and could do so

forever. I put my chin down on the top of Lita’s head.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is. So let’s do it. There’s some-

body I want you to meet.”

Author’s Note

There is no Peacock’s Island on St. Helena’s Sound,

or anywhere else, that I know of, but perhaps there

might have been, and if there had, I think it would be

a lot like this one. There are no actual people like the

ones in this book, but perhaps if there had been, they

might have lived on Peacock’s Island. There is no

Gullah settlement called Dayclear, and indeed, the very

name is my invention; the accepted Gullah word for

dawn is “Dayclean,” though I have seen “Dayclear” in

one or two places. There
are
wild ponies, or marsh

tackies, still on some of the Sea Islands, and there are

resort developments on almost all of them, many of

them called plantations, but Peacock Island Plantation

is my own hybrid. There is, thank God, an Ace Basin,

and it contains all the wildlife mentioned in this book

and more, except a twenty-foot alligator named Leviath-

an and a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year-old pan-

ther—and after all, in the Lowcountry, who knows?

My thanks and love to Barbara and Duke Hagerty,

who shared their friendship, their library, their house

and home, and their passion for Edisto Island and the

Ace Basin; to Sandra Player, whose miraculous teenage

years provided Caro Venable with a provenance of her