Eliza waved good-bye as they turned to leave.
“She is sweet,” Henry said.
“She is. It’s odd, having a stepsister I barely know, but then, when I was in tenth grade she was in first. She’s leaving in a few days for the summer to travel around Italy with a group of girls from Ashley Hall.”
They walked across the street and up the stairs to High Battery. Henry looked over the railing. “Tide’s coming in,” he said. The water beat a gentle rhythm against the seawall. They both heard the sound of air being forced through an opening.
“What was that?” Eliza asked.
“A dolphin.” Henry leaned his forearms against the railing. “Exhaling. You really have been away for a long time.” He turned to Eliza and put his finger to his lips and motioned for her to come closer. She looked where he pointed. They watched the gray curve arc across the top of the water and then disappear. They looked ahead some fifty feet and waited for it to reappear. When it had disappeared for the second time, Henry whispered, “I haven’t seen one this close in a long time.” They waited and watched and listened until the sound of the dolphin blowing disappeared. Henry straightened up, and they began walking north along the seawall. The lamps cast a soft yellow light. They walked to the end of the promenade without saying anything. Voices died out, a car door slammed, and an engine started as the last of the partygoers dispersed.
“Are you tired? Do you want to go home?” Henry asked.
Eliza thought about her plan to awaken early and finish checking the changes made to the first twenty pages of the Magritte manuscript, but she gave in to the luxurious feeling of everything being suspended. “No, I’m okay.”
“Then let’s cut across the playground to Adger’s Wharf.”
They walked past the concrete tennis court that doubled as a basketball court and on across the green playing fields toward the water’s edge.
“Do you remember the woman who used to coach all the track teams?” Eliza asked.
“Of course.”
“What was her name?”
“Hazel. Hazel Wilson. Miss Wilson to us.” Henry reached down and picked up a worn tennis ball and threw it back toward the tennis court. “I remember when she cut me and Charlie from the track team because we missed one practice. Charlie was upset, and we went to see his father to see if he would intervene. Dr. Walker had no sympathy for us. He felt Miss Wilson had done the right thing and gave us a lecture on commitment. When he later learned that we were the two best runners on the team, he reversed his position and spoke to Miss Wilson, but she was adamant that we could not run.”
As they reached Adger’s Wharf, Eliza was surprised to see that only two of the old warehouses remained. In their place, rows of small townhouses had been built. When they reached the cobblestone street, Henry said, “Here, we can go this way,” and led her along the sandy pathway onto the oyster shells. “Better?”
“Much.” It was typical of Charleston never to upgrade the oyster shell paths, first used as a type of gravel in the 1700s, even when cement was invented a century later. The oyster shells had, over the years, been crushed to a fine grade. The sound of their footsteps on the shells reminded Eliza of the slow ticktock of the long-case clock in her front hall. When they reached Gillon Street, Henry said, “This is all new. You haven’t seen it yet, have you?”
“No.”
“It’s one of the mayor’s pet projects, this small park.” The park was laid out as a long rectangle along the water’s edge with benches punctuating the straight lines of paths.
“It’s nice,” she said.
“There’s a dock at the end. We can walk down to that if you’re not too tired and then head back.” There were no city sounds, no voices or buses or cars, just the crunch of their footsteps on the shell path. It was six in the morning in London, and the early June day—with light that lasted from six in the morning to almost ten at night—would just be beginning.
They reached the wide dock that stretched out past the marsh into the water. The tide had not yet turned, and the rotten egg smell of the pluff mud was faint.
“Does the city use this for tour boats?”
“No, no boats,” Henry said. “Fishing isn’t even allowed. Just for people to enjoy. A lot of Charlestonians, especially the old ones, don’t like it.”
Henry found the swinging bench at the end of the dock. “Hop on.”
He started them off with a push of his feet. “You have to sit closer or else we’ll be out of balance.” Eliza edged over a bit. Henry pushed the ground with his feet. “I bet you haven’t been on a porch swing in a long time. They don’t have these in England, do they?”
Eliza shook her head.
“I have to go down to Oakhurst early tomorrow morning to take some photographs for Drayton’s book. Come with me.”
Before Eliza could answer, they heard a voice call to them. “Hey, I am the Master of the Moon. Who are you?”
Henry scraped the soles of his shoes hard against the wooden planks to stop the swing. The voice called again. “Hey, I am the Master of the Moon. Who are you?” The voice was coming from a dark crumpled form in the corner of the dock. An old black man held a bottle in a brown paper bag in front of him. “I am the Master of the Moon. I said, who are you?”
Henry stood up and walked over to him. “I, my friend, am the Master of Time.”
“Hey, man. That’s good. That’s all right. Hey, that’s good. I like that—Master of Time—that’s all right. Hey, man, you all right.”
Henry leaned down. “Are you going to be all right, my friend?”
The old black man spoke in a loud, almost songlike voice. “The Master of the Moon thanks the Master of Time for his concern, but the Master of the Moon is in fine shape. He is enjoying this beautiful night with the moon and the stars and the peace all around. The Master of the Moon will take care of himself directly.”
“Well then, my friend, enjoy the rest of the night.”
“I sure will, and you take care of yourselves.”
Henry returned to Eliza. “I’d better get you home.”
Home. The word sounded unfamiliar. She listened to the sound of Henry’s footsteps punctuate the receding lilt of the old man’s voice as he echoed what he had said before. Where was home? she wondered.
They walked the seven blocks to Broad Street without saying anything. Their silence pulled their shared past in close around them.
When they reached Broad Street, Henry said, “We can walk down Church Street. I bet you’ve never walked down Church Street at”—he lifted his left arm and twisted his wrist so that his watch would catch the light of the street lamppost—“quarter to two in the morning.”
They turned onto Church.
“He’s still there. Plenge the Hatter,” Henry said, referring to the Hat Man, the painted figure of a man whose body and face were composed of all different types of hats. “He just got repainted. I liked him better the way he was, but he was so faded and the paint was beginning to flake off—I guess he was in danger of disappearing. Too dark to see him now though.”
It was comforting to be back in a place where the most that could happen to a German haberdasher’s sign from the 1870s was a fresh coat of paint. “You know who I think that man was?” Eliza said.
“What man? The old man on the dock? The Master of the Moon?”
“I think he’s Clarence who used to work for Mrs. Lockwood. I think he was an alcoholic back then, but I think Mrs. Lockwood would get him to polish her silver and brass and help her in her garden when he was up to it. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s who he is.”
Where Church Street crossed Water Street, its original brick paving remained, and Henry guided Eliza to the sidewalk.
“Well, here we are. Front or back door?”
“Front door is fine.”
“So I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning?” Henry turned Eliza toward him. “Come on, Eliza, don’t look at me that way, we both know what we’re
doing.”
“I know. You’re right. We do.”
“So I’ll pick you up”—Henry looked at his watch—“in three hours and seven minutes.”
“Ouch, perhaps I should reconsider.”
“No, don’t. We can sleep on the dock later in the morning. On the other hand, you could make it a little easier for both of us.”
Eliza looked at him.
“If you would come home with me, we probably would have another five, ten minutes of sleep.”
Eliza smiled and shook her head.
“Ah, Eliza, five A.M. it is.”
Eliza leaned against the closed door and listened as Henry walked down Church Street, whistling the last Sam Cooke melody the band had played. She listened to the sharp sounds of his heels striking the sidewalk until she could hear them no longer.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT 4:50 THE CLOCK BEEPED AND FLASHED. ELIZA’S BODY, weighted by so little sleep, felt as if it were cast in a metal too heavy to move. Henry would be outside in ten minutes. Why was she doing this? If Henry wanted to be with her, he could see her later in the day. She looked at the clock again. The last time she was up at five in the morning was last August when she and Jamie had driven from London to St. Tropez. Jamie was not one for straight lines, and the idea of driving instead of flying to the south of France had been his idea. He had written down a list of cathedrals and châteaux they should see on the way. And as usual, they were late leaving London and missed their booking on the channel ferry and had to wait until a space opened on a later one. A fourteen-hour trip turned into twenty-one, so when they finally reached St. Tropez, it was 5:00 A.M., seven hours past their estimated arrival time.
Eliza felt the same heaviness Jamie had felt when, at a red light on the outskirts of St. Tropez, he had leaned his head on the steering wheel and asked her to wake him up when the light changed. Now she wanted to close her eyes for just one more minute, just for the space of a light to change, but she didn’t.
She sat up on the edge of the bed to steady herself. She patted the walls until she found the bathroom door, reached inside, and flipped the light switch. She stood over the sink basin and looked in the mirror. God, she looked exhausted. She promised herself she was going to get more sleep and not drink so much coffee. She splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, pulled her hair back. She slipped into a pair of ripped jeans she found at the back of her closet and grabbed a white tee shirt and flannel shirt from her chest of drawers. She was out the door into the cool morning air with two minutes to spare.
Henry was leaning, arms crossed, against his Jeep. “Good morning,” he said and opened the door for her. He got back in the Jeep and reached over and stroked her cheek. “Eliza, my love, your face is creased. You must have just woken up.”
She hid a yawn. “I’m assuming that’s your polite way of telling me how tired I look.”
Henry tilted his head and raised his eyebrows and shifted the Jeep into first gear. “An extra ten minutes might have been nice.”
“It’s midmorning in London. I feel great.”
“You look great.”
As they turned right onto Ashley Avenue, Henry slowed to pass an elderly man dressed in a full-length duster coat and aviator goggles walking unsteadily in the middle of the street. As he shifted back into second gear, he looked in his rearview mirror. “That was Mr. DuBose. I wonder why he is out so early. A few months ago he stopped Lawton and a few of his friends fishing on the Battery and instructed them to soak bread crumbs in bourbon and then to throw the alcohol-soaked bread to the seagulls and watch them fly into each other. Mr. DuBose must have spoken to a number of children because one of the mothers—Betsy Downing—they moved down from Chicago—heard about it and was horrified and called the police. Two officers went around and spoke to Mr. DuBose, and Charlotte had to promise to hire a nanny of sorts to keep him off the streets.”
“I guess if you are not from here and haven’t grown up with the DuBoses—well, you could get the wrong impression.”
Henry checked his rearview mirror again. “I wonder if Charlotte knows he is out so early.”
“Remind me again why we are out so early,” Eliza yawned.
“It was my strategy to get you to spend the night with me or what was left of it. But seeing that it failed, I had no choice but to carry on. And I do want to take some early morning shots on the river.”
“For Drayton’s book?”
“Uh-huh.” Henry hooked his arm over the seat and patted the seat behind them. “I brought some coffee. It’s in a large dark green thermos.”
“Here, I’ll get it.” Eliza lifted her body over the front seat as if performing a pike dive. On the floor behind her seat, she saw an old machete, a roll of red surveyor’s marking tape, and a can of Deep Woods Off!, but no thermos of coffee. “I don’t see it,” she said.
“Maybe it rolled under the seat.”
Eliza felt under her seat. “Found it.”
Henry tapped the steering wheel with his hand. “Good. So tell me, how many men have brought you coffee at five in the morning?”
“Not telling.” She twisted off the top and turned it over to use as a cup.
“Didn’t think you would.”
She steadied the cup between her legs and poured. “Coffee?” She offered the cup to Henry.
“You first.”
Eliza held the cup in her hands and let the steam cover her face. She took a sip. “Not bad. You’ve gotten better.”
“Ten years of practice.”
She passed the cup to Henry.
He took a sip and passed it back. “You have the rest. Did you get any sleep?”
“A bit.”
As they slid out of Charleston past the marina and the marshes, the morning was still dark and foggy. Eliza liked the feeling of being with Henry in a capsule bounded by darkness. They were overtaken by one pickup truck and one or two night travelers, but for most of the journey, they had the highway to themselves.
“You don’t drive nearly as fast as you used to.”
“No, I don’t suppose I do,” he said.
Far away the low whistle of a fast-moving freight train resonated in the soft heavy air. “Is that the night train coming from Yemassee?” Eliza asked, but before she finished her question, she knew the answer. “I remember when I was five or six, spending the night with my grandmother in the country and being all tucked up with her in her feather bed with a silk comforter and the window being open and feeling the cool air and the night crickets and hearing the sound of that train heading north across the marshes and feeling as if I were in the safest place in the world.”
“I know—that whistle makes you feel as if everything is perfect and in its place.”
“Back then it pretty much was.”
Henry braked before the railroad crossing and checked for oncoming trains. He bumped slowly across the tracks. Eliza rolled her window down and listened to the frog chorus in the misty darkness.
Henry picked up speed as they drove down Parker’s Ferry through the five-mile canopy of ancient oak and gum trees and then on past the acres and acres of cypress and tupelo swamps before coming to the rise of Oakhurst Plantation. The air was cool and damp and fragrant with wild honeysuckle.
After years of being away, Eliza had accepted that these sights and sounds were no longer part of her life, but here they were. And now being alone with Henry—everything she had been so careful to construct detours around—all disregarded in the course of one morning.
A large gray-brown bird arced down across the front of the Jeep before disappearing in the woods.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Red-shouldered hawk.” All this land, now on both sides of the road, was his. “Do you remember the blessing the priest ended Simon and Caroline’s ceremony with?”
“I do,” Eliza said. “Deep peace of the quiet earth to you, deep peace of the gentle night to you.”
“When I heard those words, it made me
think of being out here like this in the early morning hours.”
Henry stopped in front of the massive gates of Oakhurst Plantation. Eliza looked beyond the brick peers and wrought-iron gates to the double row of ancient live oaks. Coming back to a place that was so familiar began to collapse time for her, and she felt as if she had never left.
“Slide over—you can drive through.” Henry climbed out to open the heavy gates. He slid back into the driver’s seat, and Eliza moved back to her side. “You don’t have to run away.”
The dark was lifting as they drove down the long oak allée to the main house. Several hundred feet away, three young deer froze and then disappeared into the mist of the forest. The two-and-a-half-story plantation house had been built in the early 1800s on a foundation of brick arches. A wide porch wrapped around it. It sat on a rise of land unusual for the Lowcountry that sloped down to the large rice field that buffered it from the river. The house had been spared being burned during the Civil War because the daughter of a governor of New York had married into the family that owned it.
“Lawton and I used to come down here every weekend, but now that he’s older, he likes to stay in town and play sports with his friends. He started playing tennis with some of his friends at a small tennis academy at The Citadel. They have matches every Saturday.”
Henry parked the Jeep to the left of a small canal that led past the rice field to the Edisto River. Eliza got out and walked along the bank toward the river while Henry got his camera and equipment from the backseat. He fished out a vest covered with zippered pockets and shook it out before putting it on.
“Eliza,” he called. “What kind of shoes do you have?” He transferred rolls of film from a camera bag into his zippered pockets as he spoke.
“Moccasins,” she said.
“You might want to take a pair of snake boots—we’ll probably get out and walk. Come with me. And watch out for snakes.” She followed him into the boathouse. “They are bad at this time of year.” He pulled a pair of boots off a rack and shook them upside down and then looked inside. “Snake free,” he said. “These should fit, here, try these.”
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