by Tom Poland
Jackson said he’d show me an abandoned barn where I could park the Rover all summer, and we agreed to meet at the landing in an hour. The sun was fast setting over the mainland and I hoped to find a radio, my one concession to civilization, at Price’s Store. If a hurricane was coming, I need to know.
Instead of pulling in and parking, I should have been dismounting and hitching my horse for Prices Store was of the late 1800s. The parking lot was sand, nothing more, just oil-stained sand. Two rusting Mobil Flying Red Horse gas pumps stood side by side like liver-spotted Wal-Mart greeters, and nearby, a black Ford pickup with canvas lashed to its bed was making the small metallic sounds cooling motors make.
Inside, two front windows filtered light through panes thick with khaki-colored dust. Off to the right, an old man was slicing wedges off a huge wheel of soft cheese. Motes of dust sparkled in shafts of sunlight slanting through cracks in the wall. It was primitive like all true country stores are primitive.
Past a rack of dog collars and some cane fishing poles I spotted an old Arvin radio of the 50s high upon a shelf amid some batteries, but it was not to be mine. A slender hand reached up and took it, the hand of the woman in the red blouse I’d seen in the café and that odd nervousness returned.
“Hi. My name is Tyler,” she said, “Tyler Hill. I saw you at the café.”
“Slater Watts,” I said taking her hand. “You must live close by,” I said, though that was hard to believe.
“No, this is my first time in this part of the world. I’m on my way to Sapelo.”
“What brings you to Forbidden Island,” I asked, curious that a woman like her would be in this desolate jumping off place.
“Forbidden Island?”
“That’s what some locals call Sapelo.”
“My coming here is a long story,” she said shifting her weight from one leg to the other, “a long story. So, you’re going to Sapelo, too.”
“That’s right. How did you know?”
“I heard you tell the waitress at the café you were going to the island. People in Charleston warned me not to come down here alone.”
“Yes, it has a bad reputation,” I said. “You won’t find a red carpet rolled out there for you.”
“Then just why are you going?” she asked with surprising intensity.
“Work. I’ve come down to write an article on island medicine for an Atlanta magazine. How about you? Work related?”
“No, like I said, it’s a long, long story, way too much to go into.”
“There’s no place to stay on the island, you know.”
“Yes. That much I know. I’m camping; staying in a tent.”
“Well, that makes two of us,” I said.
“So, you’re a writer researching island medicine. Do you believe in it?”
“I want to. In fact, I need to, but that’s a long story, too.”
“Well, I’m sure you know a lot more about the island than I do,” she said, grabbing batteries from the shelf. “This radio looks like an antique. I hope it will catch Dr. Laura. Let’s talk when we finish up. It’s hot in here.”
“Sure, we can do that,” I said.
How fast things changed. This woman was going to Sapelo where Rikard killed people with his thoughts, and she was worried she couldn’t catch Dr. Laura’s advice for strife-torn souls.
I picked up a wedge of cheese and some odds and ends and the old man totaled our tabs and placed our supplies in soft, worn brown paper bags wrinkled like ancient leather. We went outside to load up our provisions, and when she was done Tyler came over to me, dusting her hands against her jeans.
“Now, tell me all about Sapelo,” she said.
“I don’t know that much, other than hearsay and what I’ve read.”
“I’m eager to get over there. I’ve come a long way today, all the way from Apex, North Carolina. Say, did you know I followed you for a bit after we left the café?”
“No. How did you beat me here?”
“I took a shortcut. You missed a hand-lettered sign that said ‘Sapelo’ during the storm.”
“Ahhh, the storm. I see. Now just why are you going to Sapelo all by yourself?”
She began to speak, then hesitated. Again, she shifted from leg to leg, like a child afraid to leap from the diving board for the first time.
“Okay, since we’re going to the island together, I guess I’d have to tell you at some point.” Yet again, she rocked from leg to leg searching for the right words. “My daughter ran away from home seven years ago. I’ve tried to find her time and time again for three years now, but I always run into dead ends. I had no leads—no idea at all where she might be until my birthday May 6. When I got home from work, I found a basket on my doorstep that afternoon. Here, I’ll show you.”
She ran to her truck and pulled a beautiful green and brown basket with an elegant handle woven in one piece from the truck cab, a far better basket than the ones women accent homes with. All the while her words echoed in my head … “If we’re going to the island together.”
She held the basket before me. It was a work of art.
“So, this basket is from your daughter?”
“I hope so. She’s always loved crafts, but then, when a child is missing, anything that keeps hope alive helps you make it to the next day. A florist in Raleigh was pretty sure it came from Charleston. It’s a sweetgrass basket.”
“Charleston. That’s not far from here.”
“I know. Right after I found the basket, I drove to Charleston and showed it to some basket weavers at the Old Market. An old black lady, ‘Auntie,’ said the grasses and weaving style could only have come from Sapelo. So, here I am.”
“You said she ran away seven years ago, but you’ve only been looking for her for three years?”
“Well, that’s part of my long story. Let’s just say my hands were tied.”
“Why wouldn’t she just wait until you’re home and give it to you herself?”
Tyler gave me a shy, half-bashful apologetic smile and shifted her weight to the other leg yet again. I thought her face reddened slightly.
“Oh, that would never happen.”
A dark look flashed across her face like a cloud shadow racing over ground. She looked away.
“I take it you aren’t married,” I said, which was far more than a hunch. She wore no rings. Nor did she wear any makeup. She was what one of my Atlanta buddies called a natural beauty.
“No, I’m not.”
“Divorced? Is that why her father won’t help you look for her?”
“No, widowed. Her father was murdered and her stepfather’s the reason she ran away. It’s complicated. I’ll tell you one thing though. I’ll find her or die trying.”
“I hope you find her,” I said, impressed by her frankness and wanting to talk more, but the sun was dropping with fury. Then she stepped closer to me, very close. I caught her scent and could almost taste her breath.
“I need passage to the island. People in Charleston told me I was crazy to go to Sapelo alone. What do you say we go together? We could camp close by one another. You do your thing; I’ll do mine, or … we can work together as a team. How about it?”
I thought hard. I had my own people to track as well writing a major article and delivering the mysterious package to Mallory. And the main thing was persuading Rikard to break Brit’s coma. Murphy said Sapelo was a graveyard of sorts, and I sure didn’t want to be around if she found her daughter decomposing over there.
“You have a good reason for going to Sapelo,” I said, “the best. I just know what people tell me, but I did see something yesterday you ought to know about. I have a friend, a photographer, who has been to the island. Yesterday, he showed me a photograph he took a year ago on Sapelo: three conch shells wedged in a tree toppled by the sea. When he enlarged the photo the conch shells were skulls, placed to stare east toward Africa.”
A dreadful look crossed her face, and her lower lip trembled.
“
Now don’t go imagining anything bad about your daughter,” I said. “I just thought you ought to know what kind of place the island is. It has no law enforcement. Lethal currents surround the island and it runs thick with snakes and alligators. So, you can see Sapelo is dangerous, a place you shouldn’t go to. For that matter, neither should I.”
“I’m going. Count on it. You do your writing and I’ll look for my daughter, or we can search together. When we’re back at camp, we can share what we’ve learned. Besides, it’s no fun to eat alone. I know. I do it every night.”
So did I, and suddenly a world of possibilities shot through my mind. She was going to the island, with or without me. The mere mention of skulls would have been enough to deter most men I knew, but not her.
Fate had indeed thrown a monkey wrench into my plans—a stunning blonde. Tyler. She seemed all right. She was missing a daughter, and in a way so was I. She had lost a husband as I had lost a wife, and she had survived seven years without a clue as to where her daughter was or even if she were alive. She seemed tough. That she had suffered, there was no doubt, but that, too, was good. People who have suffered know what to value and more often than not possess foolproof bullshit detectors.
Everything had changed. Perhaps a companion on the island would be good, although I had come to find solitude. Still, a beautiful woman wasn’t the worst company in the world. The possibilities—the up and down sides—ricocheted through my mind and then I saw something in her eyes that moved me. Something deep, an unfulfilled yearning.
“Okay, we can go over together, camp together, too, if you want. I have a way to the island and you can go with me. A local fellow is taking me over in a little while. We can pitch our tents in the same place if you want, or close by at least.”
“Thank you so much. You have no idea of the price I’ve paid for losing Lorie. Finding her is the only way I can make my life work out now. Besides, from what I’ve heard about Sapelo, I’d say two heads are better than one when it comes to a place like that.”
“You’re right, but I’ve just known you for, what, thirty minutes? I have a mission too. Maybe we’ll get in each other’s way.”
“Your name is Slater, not Salter, right?”
“That’s right. Slater, an old family name.”
“Slater, this basket is the best lead I’ve had since my daughter slipped out of her bedroom as a 15-year-old. Once I went all the way to Memphis, where some kid said she worked on Beale Street. I walked the street for three days handing out flyers before returning to Apex. Nothing will stop me from finding her if she’s on that island. And when I do, I’ll fix everything.”
“I hear you,” I said, wondering just what needed fixing.
“You and I can work together or apart, but from what I hear, we’ll be fools to go it alone,” she said and she seemed happy, very.
“We’ll give it a shot, but first we’ve got to get there. Follow me and I’ll introduce you to Jackson, the swamp rat. We’ll unload our stuff at the dock then put our cars in a safe place for the summer.”
“For the summer! What do you mean?”
“For July, August, and on into September if need be,” I said.
“I can’t do that,” she said, her disbelief grew and for once she seemed unsure of herself.
“If you go with me, you will,” I said, throwing her plans in the air. She had, for certain, complicated mine. “I’m here for the summer, maybe the fall too.”
“I just can’t. I have a job. Three weeks. That’s it.”
“You could be stuck on the island a long time. Who knows? We may never come back.”
“Well if we don’t, we don’t,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and then she turned and headed for her truck. Her cockiness returned with a vengeance. In the cab, she gave me the thumbs up like some fighter pilot about to fly a sortie. Her truck roared to life and she pulled up behind my Land Rover.
As I drove to the landing, Tyler’s black truck trailed me close. She had caught me off guard, thrown me off track too, and I had meant to ask the man at Prices Store about Rikard’s and Mal’s whereabouts, not that he would have known.
After about four miles, we turned off the noisy, graveled road only to rattle down a washboard lane by the name of Botany Bay Road. Moss-draped Live Oaks lined the road, and it was picturesque, like a White Oak Vinegar label or Tara in Gone With The Wind, the kind of setting photographers trade on.
Botany Bay dead-ended at a rickety dock of boards and pilings tilting leeward like a drunk. I pulled up just past an old mobile home attached to a rusted screen porch so corroded from salt-air that entire sections had fallen away while others hung in the wind like brown gauze.
The sun had just touched the horizon, and the land was giving up its heat. Nighttime was imminent. I parked as close to the dock as the muck would allow, and Tyler pulled in behind me. An ill-maintained Boston Whaler was tied up at the dock.
An impoverished dog with jutting ribs was sniffing along the waterline, hunting something to eat. At one time he must have been a handsome dog. He had a brown coat with a white star on his forehead and a tail that never stopped wagging. But now he looked like a rotting boat with its ribs exposed, not long for this world.
A breeze stirred. The tide was going out and black skimmers slid across the creek, dipping their bills for fish. Subsiding waters left blue gray muck that glistened in the dying light, and small birds on long, slender legs probed the silt. On the water’s far side, black-and-orange oystercatchers stood on the bank stark against green spartina. They paid no heed to humans. The dog splashed into the water and swallowed a dead fish as laughing gulls mocked its plight.
Fifteen yards past the littered boat ramp, a porpoise surfaced, its smooth gray skin shimmering in the dying light, and the water cascading over its back paled white. The porpoise surfaced behind an unsuspecting cormorant, startling the bird into a lumbering takeoff. Like an over-burdened seaplane, it just cleared the estuary, wing tips flailing the water. The porpoise sunk from view, rose once more, then vanished. The cormorant diminished to a speck as it flew over the deep green marsh grasses where far beyond, white spray kicked up—breakwater. The sound of all that water thundering against the sand came steady but understated, an in and out subsiding of surf.
Tyler got busy. She unlashed the tarp and started hauling things to the dock. She slung a small suede bag over her shoulder and clutched her basket as if it were the Holy Grail. As I helped her unload supplies, I realized she only had enough food for three weeks, sure enough. I had brought enough food and supplies to make it through the summer so if she stayed longer, we’d have to ration what I brought or we’d be living off the land in short order, like the sandpipers.
A boyhood habit surfaced after many years of city suppression. I stopped to skip a few oyster shells across the creek. Just as the third shell hopped across the water, a twig snapped behind me. A heavy-set man in a gray-green uniform emerged from some scrubby growths, myrtles maybe. His shoulder patch featured a crude logo that looked like the old hippie peace symbol, a circle with triangular sections with clumsy animal art. He walked over, holding a Styrofoam cup.
“My name is Garrett. Folks know me as the game warden. Looks like you’re going camping.”
“Yes,” I said, “we’re going to spend a little time camping.”
“Which island,” he said, easing the cup to his lips and spitting.
“Sapelo.”
“Forbidden Island? Is that right?” He spat into the cup again. “You like primitive camping?” His voice had an edge of contempt.
“Sure. Plus I’ve got some work to do there.”
“Like what?” asked Garrett, his stomach hanging over dark green trousers.
“A magazine article to write.”
“Really. Now just what’s on Sapelo you’d write about?”
“An article on island medicine.”
“Well, you’re going to the right place then,” he said, spitting once again into the cup which dr
ibbled juice the color of overcooked coffee.
“We thought it’d be nice to get away from civilization, and I hear Sapelo is like going back in time,” I said, nodding at Tyler.
“Well, guess what? It ain’t got no real name. You ain’t gonna find it on a map. Course that don’t mean it ain’t out there,” he said swinging his arm in an arc that swept over the marsh. “Folks in the know call it Forbidden Island and the ignorant natives, well, they call it Sapelo. Don’t you know that? What kind of damn writer are you?”
Garrett walked over to me, a bit too close for comfort.
“No names,” I said, holding my ground. “A rarity and a blessing in an age when every freeway is named after a politician.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Garrett said. “This island … it’s different. You can bet a place off the map ain’t civilization,” he said laughing. “But, okay, you look like the kind of man who could learn something from a wild island. Just be prepared.”
“For what,” I said, feeling challenged.
“Like … like mosquitoes,” he said, pausing. “They’re pretty bad once you get out of the wind, mainly on the marsh side. Mosquitoes and ticks are bloodthirsty culprits,” he said.
“Well, they’re small,” I said.
“You won’t think they’re small when a thousand of ’em get aholt of you,” he said, pulling his belt over his stomach and turning to point at the starving dog. “That cur ain’t yours I hope. If he is, you won’t have him long. Watch out for ’gators. Those rough backed bastards love dogs but they’ll eat anything—you and the lady there—other gators, birds, frogs, anything. I’ve heard stories about people walking into snake nests too,” Garrett said, “and it ain’t pretty. Summer on the island is hotter than Hell and muggy. The sun heats that place up like a stovetop, and it’ll climb over 100 degrees easy. You gonna need lots of drinking water. If you get thirsty, you done already waited too late,” he said, breaking into laughter again.
“We appreciate the advice,” I said. “There’s a lot to watch out for.”
“Yep, watch your step. Wild hogs roam the island too. Some are pretty mean, with long, razor-like tusks. It ain’t nothing for them to rip open a man. Tell me something, do you have a gun?”