Sullivans Island-Lowcountry 1 (23 page)

got caught all the time.

“Mr. Marvin,” Mrs. Smith gasped.“They say that they brother’s

stuck in an air shaft down to the fort.”

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“Mr. Marvin, iffin we don’t shake it, Henry’s gone be laid

out at McAlister’s by tomorrow. And y’all ain’t gone have us

bothering y’all no more, ’cause we’re gone get beat to death.”

“Ain’t nobody beating nobody like that on this Island while

I’m at the helm. Y’all children come and get in the truck.” He

hiked his pants up over his stomach like men do and headed out

the door.We ran after him. I looked at his feet. Sandals! Even in

the rain!

I thought riding in the truck was sort of fun with the siren

blaring and all, even if my little brother’s life was hanging by a

thread. Jesus, I thought, he’s probably passed out by now, but

when we got there, no such luck. You could hear everybody

screaming and somehow, Aunt Carol had gotten herself on top

of the fort and her skirt was blowing in the wind every which

way except down. When we climbed up we could see her

underwear and maybe it was my imagination, but I thought

Mr. Struthers was staring at her butt.

“Afternoon, Carol,” Mr. Struthers said to our aunt.

“Oh! Marvin! I’m so glad you’re here!” She clutched her

bosom and wiped her eyes.“Please! Get this child out!”

“Carol, everything’s all right now. You boys move aside.

Henry?”

“Uh-huh?” Henry sounded so pitiful to me.

“You just relax now, I’ve got some motor oil, and I’m gonna

drip it around your head, all right, son?”

Motor oil? Anyway, Mr. Marvin started pouring and Henry

started screaming again.

“It’s up my nose! Help! It’s in my mouth! I’m gonna barf !”

Sure enough, the next sound we heard was our little brother

barfing down the air shaft. Mr. Struthers shook his head and

yanked on Henry’s feet. Henry popped out of that thing like a

piece of toast from the toaster and continued to barf and cry for

the next few minutes.

I knew one thing—I was never having children. It was too

much trouble.

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“Good thing Momma’s in the hospital,” I said to the crowd,

thinking myself pretty funny,“ ’cause when she hears about this,

she’s gonna have a heart attack.”

“Now, Susan? Your momma doesn’t need to ’eah about this.

’Eah me, girl? She’s got enough on her plate.”

“We won’t say anything, Aunt Carol, I promise,” Maggie

piped up quickly.

Even I started to tremble a little bit. “She ain’t gone hear it

pass my lips,” I vowed to them.“Come on, let’s go home.Thank

the Lord it’s raining, Henry, ’cause you don’t smell so hot. Don’t

worry, Daddy won’t even notice.”

“Thank you, Marvin,” Aunt Carol said in a husky voice.

“You’re welcome, Carol. Glad I could help. How’s Louis?”

“Oh, Louis never changes.”

“Well, if he does, let me know. Can I give you a ride home?”

“No, thank you, Marvin. I’ll walk with the children.”

He winked at her and then offered his arm to help her

down the ladder. Good grief. I looked at Maggie, who had

missed the whole thing, and then to Timmy, who made a face to

let me know he hadn’t. Henry was busy saying good-bye to his

friends and I just wanted to get home.

Livvie told me later that Stuart Brockington had made it his

business to stop by our house to let them know about Henry’s

head being stuck. Livvie was on the front porch moving the

hammock to safety when she saw him drop his bike in the yard.

Aunt Carol and Livvie took his message, not believing one syl-

lable of what he said. Mission accomplished, Stuart pushed his

bicycle out of the yard and was gone. In the next moment, the

alarm from the fire truck rang through the air. That was when

they realized Stuart had told the truth.

“Where’s Mr. Hank?” Livvie had said to my aunt.

“In the shower.”

“Yes’m.You want me to go down there and take care of this?”

“No. It’s better if I go. Marvin Struthers is an old friend of

mine. I can convince him not to tell Hank.”

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149

“Yes’m. Thank Gawd for that. It’s good when a friend can

be useful for something.”

“Can you wait till I get back to leave?”

“Yes’m, iffin you say so.You go on now, and I’ll call Harriet

to have her boy come bring me home. Iffin Mr. Hank ask me, I

tell him you gone for bread and milk.”

When we got home, the Island Gamble looked like it was

ready for anything the skies could dump on it. All the shutters

were closed, the porches emptied, the lights out.We went up the

back steps and my daddy was in the kitchen with Livvie. He was

eating a bowl of potato salad at the table. Livvie rushed to us.

“Mr. Henry, you come with me!” She grabbed Henry and

took him back down the steps.“I’m taking him in the house the

other way.”

We tiptoed in the house because we knew we had been out

in the storm too long, or at least Daddy might think so. Lucky

for us, he couldn’t have cared less.

“You children go find something quiet to do until the storm

passes. Hey, Carol, I thought you went for bread and milk.”

“Oh, Lord! You’re right! But, you have enough, don’t you?

The line at the Red and White was so long, I turned around and

came home!”

Boy, was she a good liar.

Later, we were all upstairs playing Monopoly on the floor

when Aunt Carol brought us a tray of peanut butter and jelly sand-

wiches, some potato chips and a carton of milk with paper cups.

“Oh! Look at y’all! Y’all are such good children!”

“Gosh, thanks, Aunt Carol!” Maggie said, and put the tray

down on the floor next to us.“Nothing else to do in this storm.”

“Just sit tight and stay away from the windows, okay? Call

me if you need anything. I’m going on the porch with your

daddy to watch the ocean.”

“Okay,” we said.

I looked over at Henry, who had completely recovered from

scaring us all half to death. He was devouring a sandwich and

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stuffing potato chips into his little mouth, seeming pretty darn

relaxed for somebody who almost got killed two hours ago.

Livvie had gone home and that was a good thing, because

the National Guard Reserve was riding up and down the Island

in Jeeps with bullhorns, telling everyone to evacuate and go to

Moultrie High School in Mount Pleasant for shelter. I’d always

thought that going to a shelter would be fun.They say the Red

Cross came in and they gave you all the doughnuts you could eat

for free. And you got to sleep on the floor in the classrooms. It

would be fun to see what they do in public schools.You know,

investigate the desks of Protestants and stuff like that.Anyway, we

kept on playing for a little while and it started getting dark and

the storm got louder. It was raining to beat the band and the

wind was whooshing and howling like crazy. Just when Timmy

landed on Reading Railroad—and wouldn’t you know I owned

them all—the lights went out.

“Go get the flashlight!” I said to Henry.

“I don’t know where it is,” he said.

“It’s down in the kitchen,” I said.

“I ain’t going,” he whined,“it’s too dark.”

“Oh, good Lord,” I said,“I’ll go. Stop the game, and Maggie,

don’t let them touch the board.”

“Hurry up,” she said.

“Jeesch! I’m hurrying!”

I went down the stairs, feeling along the wall because it
was

very dark.When I got to the kitchen, the flashlight wasn’t under

the sink where it was supposed to be. I knew there was another

one in the shed outside, but I didn’t want to go out in the

storm. Then I thought about the great game we had going

upstairs and figured, oh, what the hell, it’s just water. I went out

the back door, across the back porch and through the screen

door. The wind caught the screen door behind me and flipped

the latch when it slammed and I realized I was locked out.

“Shit!” I screamed, knowing no one would hear me in all

the noise of the storm. I ran as fast as I could to the shed. Sure

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151

enough, the big flashlight was there and it worked. What a

break! I thought, and decided to go around to the front of the

house and go in the front door.

I saw Mrs. Simpson was standing on her porch, with her

hands on her hips, looking at our house, but she didn’t see me. I

realized my father would give me a lot of grief for going out in

the storm, so I sneaked up to the porch. I heard my father’s

voice and the voice of my aunt.

“Oh, Hank! We can’t do this!”

“I had you first, Carol, don’t ever forget it!”

“Please, Hank! Shouldn’t we stop?”

I stopped dead in my tracks and the rain just poured over

me. Whatever they were doing, I wasn’t supposed to see and I

knew that. But I had to see. I had to know. I crept around to the

corner of the house and climbed on the oil tank to peek at the

porch and there they were. My daddy had Aunt Carol up against

the porch railing pushing her butt with his hips. Her skirt was all

scrunched up around her waist. All of a sudden I knew what I

was seeing and I wanted to run away.Their voices got louder as

Aunt Carol started screaming,“Oh, my God! Oh, God!”

This was just too much for me.Their voices howled around

my head. I heard Mrs. Simpson laughing from her front porch.

She had seen it all; I knew it. I ran to the back door, punched

out the screen and unlocked the door. I stood on the back porch

for a few minutes, trying to calm down. My ears were pound-

ing. There was an old beach towel on the rack. I used it to dry

myself off. For the first time in my life I wanted to throw myself

on the ground and cry. There was no one I could tell this to,

not even Maggie. I hated my father and my aunt from that

moment on.

Eight

Hurricane Maybelline

}

1999

HE library closed at three the next afternoon because

of the approaching storm, which was now officially

T classified as a hurricane and christened Maybelline. I

had been spending any spare time I had going through micro-

film of the
Post & Courier
stories covering the investigation of

Daddy’s death from 1963. There were photographs of Daddy’s

school building project, and of other things he had worked on,

like hospitals and municipal buildings. There were photographs

of the scene of the accident showing the skid marks from the

bridge to the marsh. But my eyes kept going back to the blurred

photograph of his car when it was pulled from the mud of the

marsh. Mr. Struthers was standing by the wrecker truck and Fat

Albert was standing beside the driver’s door. Fat Al was wearing

civilian clothes with those same regulation, police-issue, black

shoes. Even in the old photograph you could see the shine. I

decided to print it and blow it up to an eight-by-ten. I did and

threw it in the file of other pictures I had been gathering for

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153

several months. I was anxious to get home, make sure Beth was

all right and to secure the house.

My boss, the ever-optimistic-about-his-chances Mitchell

Fremont, offered me a ride home and, against my better judg-

ment, I accepted. A ride was a ride. It was raining sheets of

water and if I had chosen to walk I could have drowned.

Through my office window I watched the wind dance and

cavort with the palmettos, wondering if Mitchell’s toupee

would stay on his head when we got outside. He came by my

office and gave me the signal to go, leaving a blast of freshly

applied Aqua Velva in the air.

I gathered up my things, putting the day’s newspapers and

some folders into my L. L. Bean canvas tote bag, twisted myself

into my raincoat like Houdini, and followed him out.

We were the last people to leave. I waited in the back

vestibule while he set the security alarm. We fought our way

through the elements to the car, him jangling his big, heavy,

power-broker key chain, nervous and twitching, and me, head

down, pulling my coat around me so I didn’t fly away. He

clicked his remote button and the locks in his Chevy popped up

with the blipping sound of a tiny spaceship.

“Get in!” he hollered.

“I am!” I answered him, thinking he irritated the daylights

out of me.

I threw my things on the floorboard and struggled against

the wind to close the passenger door. While I was fumbling

around for the seat belt, he started the car, the windshield wipers

and turned on the headlights.

“You gonna be okay at your house? I mean, can I do

anything?”

“No, thanks, Mitchell.We love a little hurricane in my family.

If I had thought this through I probably would’ve gone to the

beach. I love sitting on the porch and watching the ocean go

crazy. You know, boil some shrimp, get some beer . . . ”

“You’re some kind of woman, do you know that, Susan?”