by Pat Conroy
From above, we heard John Hardin call down to us and he lowered a wooden ladder from his living area. The house had three decks ingeniously constructed. On the top deck, John Hardin had built a small bedroom for himself with a hammock and a library filled with paperback books. He lit his uncommon house with candles and kerosene lanterns and cooked his meals with a small hibachi. The ocean breeze was his only air-conditioning and John Hardin freely admitted that his tree house was unusable during the winter. But historically, the cold months had almost always coincided with his breakdowns and he had availed himself of the free lodging that always awaited him on Bull Street in Columbia. In the creek, he caught most of his own food with his cast net and his rod and reel. Proud of his self-sufficiency, he pointed out his outhouse camouflaged in a thick clump of sea myrtle.
“It’s illegal to have an outhouse on this stupid island,” John Hardin said to Leah. “Zoning laws. There’s a conspiracy afoot in America to make human beings ashamed of their waste products. I’m proud of my waste products.”
“I’ve never thought much about mine,” Leah said, smiling at me and following John Hardin into a small, bizarrely shaped room almost completely dominated by a Pawley’s Island hammock.
“This is the guest bedroom. I haven’t had any guests yet, but when I do this’ll be where they sleep. You can come here anytime you want, Leah. You don’t even need an invitation.”
“Thank you so much, John Hardin. You’re so sweet.”
“It’s strictly off-limits to the rest of my family. I better never catch your ass sneaking around my property, Jack.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” I said, feeling overgrown and claustrophobic as I made my way from one small enclosure to another. There were tricks to getting from room to room and very little appeared solid underfoot, and I had the feeling that I was on a yacht anchored in an open bay on a windy afternoon. John Hardin had decorated the walls of his sitting room with art given to him by fellow inmates of the state hospital. The paintings looked like stamps minted in a country where nightmares were used to lure a strange breed of tourist. It was a desperate cousin of art, disturbing in all its forms and images.
“All artists are schizophrenics,” John Hardin said to Leah. “Did you know that, Leah?”
“I don’t think so.”
“They all see the world with a skewed perspective. They paint what they know best—distortion.”
“Are these friends of yours?” Leah asked.
“The only friends worth knowing. The ones who’ve been on Thorazine for at least a year. Thorazine keeps you so far away from yourself that your art becomes the only clue that lets you know you’re still around.”
“That’s nice,” Leah said, but nervously, aware she might be saying the wrong thing to her taut, thin-skinned uncle. “I’ll paint some pictures for the guest room. Would you like that?”
John Hardin’s face grew soft and he said, “I’d treasure them forever. You can bet on that.”
“I’ll paint a picture of the Piazza Farnese in Rome,” she promised. “I miss it so much that I can see the whole piazza when I shut my eyes.”
“You miss it that much, darling?” I asked.
“Of course, Daddy. That’s home.”
“Waterford’s home,” John Hardin said. “Everything else is just local color.”
“But Rome’s where I grew up,” Leah said. “You’d love it there.”
“I’ve never liked people who can’t speak English,” John Hardin said. “I always think they’ve got something to hide.”
“How ridiculous,” I said. “How Southern.”
“No matter,” John Hardin said as he led us to the largest room, which had three lawn chairs, a hammock, and a screened porch to keep out the insects. John Hardin showed real talent for carpentry and, despite the hazardous footing, the rooms seemed to flow together with an unplanned naturalness as if the house were the result of a dream the tree had. A breeze lifted off the ocean and several hundred notes from the wind chimes tinkled like ice shaken in silver cups. They altered the mood of the forest the way an orchestra does a theater when it begins tuning up its instruments. The sound seemed discordant to me but had a calming effect on John Hardin.
John Hardin took a piece of paper out of his pocket and read it to himself silently before saying to Leah: “I wrote something out that I’d love your help with. I could see that you were kind of an expert on how men and women interact yesterday.”
“No,” she said. “I’ve never even had a boyfriend.”
“But you know how I should talk to Jane Hartley if I want to impress her.”
“You should be yourself, John Hardin. She’d like that.”
“Listen to this,” he asked. “You play the role of Jane. I’ll play myself.”
“Jesus Christ!” I said.
“It’s fine, Daddy,” Leah said, before I could continue. “Read it to me and I’ll try to play Miss Hartley.”
“She’s a naturalist. A scientist. So I should try to carry on a conversation that interests her. Let her know right up front that we share mutual concerns. So we’ve sat down to dinner and ordered our meal. I ordered all vegetables. What if she’s a vegetarian or hates people that don’t mind eating the animals she’s taken a vow to protect? That’d start the evening off wrong.”
“I’d order whatever you feel like eating, John Hardin,” Leah suggested.
“Good idea,” he said, writing something down on his sheet of paper. “I’ll order fish. Even if she’s a vegetarian, I happen to know that some vegetarians don’t mind eating seafood. And I love fish. Now you say something. Pretend you’re Jane.”
Leah hesitated, then said, “What a beautiful tie you’re wearing tonight, John Hardin. It goes so well with your suit. It’s nice that you’re not a nudist anymore.”
John Hardin looked confused, then looked down at his notes and said, “Did you know, Jane, that the male night moth emits a cry so powerful that its sound creates waves that can actually kill other insects in flight?”
He looked up at Leah, who was puzzled, but game. She said, “No I didn’t know that. How interesting.”
“The male night moth is the terror of the insect world,” John Hardin read again from his notes. “Did you know that recent research proves that alligators like the taste of Labrador retrievers better than the taste of French poodles? Researchers believe that alligators are so accustomed to living near golf resorts and residential homes, they’ve actually added domestic dogs to the preferred meals on their food chain.”
“Those poor dogs,” said Leah in genuine horror.
“Isn’t the weather lovely, Jane?” John Hardin read on.
“Yes, it’s getting warmer every day, John Hardin,” Leah said, glancing at me to see if she was performing up to par. I nodded and Leah went on. “Do you think it might rain tomorrow?”
“Funny you should mention rain. It reminds me of snow. Do you know that a female polar bear will cover her nose with her paw when she’s hunting a seal near an air hole? That’s because her nose is black and the snow around her is all white. The bear becomes invisible as she creeps up on the seal to make her kill.”
“How do you know so much about nature?” Leah asked.
John Hardin smiled and began to read from his written text. “Because it is my conviction that man himself is part of nature and that to study nature is to study one’s own self. A spider must eat a fly just as a man must eat a cheeseburger. It is all related and one and the same.”
“I’d cut the fly and the cheeseburger line,” I said, my nerves becoming frayed by the wind chimes.
“Food is food. In nature it don’t make a damn. Jane’s intelligent enough to get my drift.”
“Maybe you could say a horse eats oats,” Leah said. “A fly’s sort of disgusting.”
“Great idea, Leah. You’re sensitive the way Jane’s sensitive,” John Hardin said. “You aren’t sensitive for shit, Jack.”
“Thanks,” I said, then caught s
ight of a boat rounding the bend of Sawgrass Creek. “That’s Ledare. Want to go for a boat ride with us, John Hardin? She says she’s got a surprise for us.”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to stay here and work on my imaginary conversation with Jane Hartley. Do you have any suggestions for me, Leah? Any inside stuff that might let me know how pretty girls think?”
Leah took her uncle’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “Everybody wants a friend. Just let Jane know how much you like her and everything else will be fine.”
“I’m going to the library tomorrow to read all their books on nature. By the time I take her to dinner, I’ll know more about animals than anyone she ever met.”
“When’re you thinking about taking her, John Hardin?” I asked.
“It’ll be years,” he said. “It’ll take two or three years just studying before I could even think about asking her out.”
“But she could meet someone else,” Leah said.
“That’s the chance I’ll have to take,” John Hardin said as Leah and I went down the wooden ladder.
“Don’t tell anyone about my tree house,” he warned as he joined us on the ground. “My enemies are everywhere and it drives them crazy when they hear that I’m a free man.”
“Your secrets are safe with us,” I said and turned to watch the powerboat approaching us from a mile away. Its drone was comforting, so familiar was it to this low country boy that it could not wake me even from a fitful sleep.
As we walked past the old fish camp, John Hardin unlocked its door and invited us inside. I was glad to see that he had fixed the place up, repaired the broken windows, and even painted it on the inside. The wood-burning stove was still in its corner and the same mildewed cots hugged the far wall, but John Hardin was using it for a workshop now and his tools were well ordered and in immaculate condition. There was a pile of fresh lumber, clean-smelling and newly cut.
“Do you know why I bought the wood?” he asked.
“No idea.”
“I’m going to build a coffin for Mama.”
“What a ghastly idea,” I said. “Does she know?”
“Of course she doesn’t know, it’s going to be a surprise,” John Hardin said, clearly hurt by my tone of voice. “It’s one less thing she’ll have to worry about. I’ll build it strong. It’ll be beautiful.”
“She’ll like that very much,” Leah said. “I’m not so sure,” I said.
Leah cast her eyes disapprovingly at me and said, “My father’s wrong. It’s a wonderful thing.”
“It’ll be a work of art, Jack, you’ll see. It’ll be the most beautiful coffin ever seen in this county,” John Hardin said, looking around as though intruders were listening to him. “This county is so full of drunkards and perjurers and scoundrels, whoremongers, Satanists, and tax evaders.”
“Tax evaders?” I said.
“I don’t have to pay taxes because of my status as a schizophrenic, but there are people who don’t fill out any forms for the Internal Revenue Service. They’re lower than fungi, mushrooms that grow on logs.”
“Why don’t you go on the boat with us?” Leah asked.
John Hardin watched the boat as it slowed down to make its approach to the dock.
“No, you go on,” he said and like an animal he ran back to the tree, went swiftly up the ladder, drew it in, and shut the hard world out from under him again.
Ledare watched us as we peeled off shirts and pants, revealing our bathing suits underneath. As we stepped aboard, she motioned for Leah to come sit between her legs and take the wheel.
“You’re not a low country girl until you can handle a boat,” Ledare said. “Pull the gear back to reverse and let’s head out toward Waterford Sound.”
Leah did as she was told and the boat began to move slowly back into the middle of the creek.
“Turn the wheel to the right and straighten out the rudder,” Ledare said. I watched as Leah followed the instructions closely; her dark intensity burned brightly in contrast to Ledare’s generous blondness. Leah seemed inked by the sun while Ledare looked as though the sun had left no sign of its passage in the hue of her skin.
“The tide’s still coming in and is almost high,” Ledare said. “Don’t worry about sandbars.”
“How fast can we go?” Leah asked.
“Let her rip, child,” Ledare said. “When you’re a kid, you’ve got to get speed out of your system.”
Leah opened up the throttle and the boat, a sixteen-foot Renken, Charleston-made, lifted up out of the displaced water and cut through the main channel between the Isle of Orion and the uninhabited Barnwell Island. Ledare pointed the way as we navigated the backwaters behind the barrier islands and the spartina spread out in a vast green coverlet from horizon to horizon.
When we reached the Waterford River, Ledare gave a sign for Leah to slow down and put the boat in idle. I worked my way between them, opened a beer, and sat down heavily, taking the wheel. I adjusted my Atlanta Braves baseball cap and put more sunscreen on my face and neck as Ledare untangled rope in the stern of the boat. Then she fed the rope out behind the boat a little at a time, handling it expertly like a trapeze artist testing equipment under the Big Top.
“What’re you doing, Ledare?” Leah asked.
“See that look in her eye?” I said. “She was the four-time winner of the Sea Island Water Festival Skiing Tournament.”
“Five-time,” Ledare corrected. “And that’s boys and girls, darling. I can ski better than any boy who ever grew up in this town.”
“Better than Daddy?”
Ledare laughed and looked fondly at me. “Your daddy’s a nice boy, Leah, but he can’t hold the top part of my bikini when it comes to water skiing. Tell her, Jack. Swallow your male pride and give it to her straight.”
“She’s arrogant beyond belief,” I said. “But the girl ain’t human when she gets on skis. Then she’s poetry in motion. A goddess of the sea.”
Ledare jumped into the water feet first and Leah followed her example as I put the boat into forward gear and inched ahead, pulling the tow rope toward the two swimming figures behind me. Suddenly, it was as though I was transported into a thousand afternoons of my childhood when the smell of the river and the sound of motors purring overwhelmed me with a sense of deeply entered and deeply lived-out time. I could remember a hundred images of Ledare cutting through the water on her slalom, leaning into a turn so steep that she looked as though she were lying down against the surface of the water. All the laws of physics and all the beauty of geometry seemed to come into play when Ledare took to the water behind a fast boat. I watched as she coached and encouraged Leah and remembered how for most of my growing up I had assumed that Ledare would become the mother of my children. I watched as Ledare positioned Leah’s hands on the tow bar and placed her feet in the skis and adjusted them tightly.
There was nothing that Ledare did in the water that did not seem graceful. She appeared water-bred and water-happy and she swam in a circle around a slightly frightened yet fiercely excited Leah, who had inherited an unquenchable competitive spirit from me. She hated failure and hated especially to have witnesses to that failure. But Ledare calmed her, instructed her to keep her skis together and her arms straight, and to let the boat do all the work. After putting on her own skis, she positioned herself behind Leah and placed Leah between her legs, with her skis outside of Leah’s; she put her hands outside of Leah’s hands on the tow bar, and gave me the signal to gun the motor.
Looking back, I saw that Leah had let go of the tow bar as soon as she heard the roar of the engine and that Ledare had dropped her handhold at the same time. She was gently talking to Leah as I circled the boat and brought the bar floating on top of the surface directly into Ledare’s hands as she repositioned both of them for another try.
“A tight grip. Then arms straight out. You can’t bend the arms. Get the skis on either side of the rope. Perfect, Leah. Now, I’m going to signal your daddy and we’re gonna ski t
hrough town.”
Leah held on the second time and she rose up on her skis, her weight leaning against Ledare’s legs. They came out of the water together, Ledare’s legs spread wide as she nursed her young skier along and they went for two hundred yards before Leah lost a ski and fell. Ledare fell simultaneously and swam to retrieve Leah’s ski in the wake of the boat.
Again, Ledare gave the signal, Leah got up, and this time they passed together through town with Leah not daring to move a muscle and Ledare waving to passersby along the waterfront park. They went under the bridge and Leah caught a quick glimpse of cars passing above them.
Touching Leah on the shoulder, Ledare pointed toward the wake on the starboard side of the boat and using the pressure of her left hand urged Leah away from the boat. The two of them pointed their skis at the marina down Oyster Creek and, twinned in motion, they moved as one skier riding over the wake then racing along outside the boat, swift and lovely and graceful in their strange but buoyant pas de deux. I heard Leah squeal with joy and watched as Ledare coached her; and then the rope slackened and they waited for that precise moment when they felt its tension again and they let the power of the boat take control, bringing them swiftly back across the wake and then over the opposite one in two perfect leaps. I could hear Ledare talking above the noise of the motor, but could not make out the words. But I saw Leah relax and gain confidence under Ledare’s patient tutelage. One can do anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided with a passionate and gifted teacher.
I made a circular motion with my index finger but Leah fell again as I turned the boat in a slow one-hundred-and-eighty-degree curve. When I came back around, Ledare insisted I throw another ski rope from the back of the boat so that she and Leah could ski separately behind the boat.
“Is Leah ready for that?” I asked.
“She’s a natural,” Ledare said, nodding toward Leah.
And natural she was as I gunned the motor once more and woman and girl rose out of the Waterford River in tandem, both screaming with pleasure as I pulled them again through the center of town past the many-columned mansions set between the live oaks of Water Street. I thought of Venice, that city lifted out of the Adriatic, each palace sensual and removed as though designed by architects in love with the shape of orchids and wedding cakes. But I could not deny the fact that the simplicity and spacing and proportion of the houses of Waterford stirred my sense of aesthetics as much as any canal ride in Venice.