by Tom Poland
“These ought to last ’till you leave,” I said, plucking one boll free. “They may not seem as pure as the others, but they’re purer. Swab your face with wild cotton … still grows as it did before farmers bred the color out of it: khaki. That’s Indian for dust, by the way, East Indian.”
“The seed makes a nice little handle,” she said, pinching the boll and rubbing it across her face.
As she rubbed the cotton across her forehead, beautiful women behind cosmetic counters in Atlanta floated into my mind. Perfume, painted lips, shaded eyes, carefully tended faces, and white smocks flooded over me. The city beyond conquering rose before me with all its memories. Balloons and heavy traffic, Murphy rolled around, spying in his wheelchair, and Brit surfaced connected to tubes and monitors. My wife’s funeral came to me in a kind of fog where polished granite gleamed in the Georgia sun and the heavy scent of a spray of red roses filled the air.
I recalled why I left the city and returned to my mission—breaking Brit’s trance, finding two men, writing a magazine feature, and delivering the mysterious package. So far, everything suggested Mallory was crazy. If he were, what would I do with the package? Give it to a crazy man I suppose.
Tyler tossed the boll overboard. The package was one thing; she was another. She distracted me. There was no doubting that.
***
This alleyway of wild rice and cotton dead-ended, and we backtracked to the main creek. We paddled onward and saw floodgates—remnants of the rice culture—standing across a creek. The books had said tidal gates of cypress still regulated the creeks and that old plantations still stood. One book—a university press publication—had a hand-drawn star marking an ancient map where a most unique Lowcountry plantation had stood. It was octagonal and open in the center with a glass roof beneath which an elegant garden had prospered. The book said an old garden rose specimen, Champneys Pink Cluster—a Charleston discovery—once flourished there. The plantation had a simple name, The Marshall House.
A famous evangelist-indigo-rice planter of the time, Reverend Daniel Marshall, had built the house for lavish weddings. Guests left the house after the wedding and the newlyweds spent their first night in a four-post bed amidst the garden, with its headboard to the north, the Atlantic to the east, and the mainland to the south. The first night of love was spent beneath the stars, surrounded by roses and tides of desire not unlike the crashing green sea beyond the forest.
I wanted to see the old house, which sat midway our campsite and the village, an ideal point from which to explore the island’s northern end. Using my compass and the map reproduction to get a bearing as to where the old home might be it seemed we should enter a creek heretofore unexplored. We did and soon spotted oyster-encrusted pilings. We tied up to the pilings and stepped ashore across muck into some grasses.
We walked inland until we came across a sandy path where a deer, unused to humans, stepped from the shadow of an old oak. He turned, looked at us, leaped high-legged-like into shrubs, and disappeared. Walking on, we came to a field and an old home place—the legendary Marshall House. The old house was in ruin, boards pulling away from corners, with shutters hanging at odd angles from nails whose rusty heads couldn’t bear the weight much longer. The roof still seemed good and we could see the octagonal architecture.
We peered through a window and saw an open area where an ancient but untended garden—rich with blue-green flowers, strawberries, and tangled roses—grew beneath what remained of a glass roof where shards jagged as shark’s teeth serrated the roof line. This eight-sided house stood at the edge of a field where an encroaching forest advanced like infantry. The house would be a good place to camp and not far from the village where blacks murdered whites for violating their sacred code.
So, it was settled. We left, agreeing, to establish an outpost here. The minute we put out in the canoe, a barred owl’s haunting call floated over the marsh, resurrecting an old superstition, that an owl’s hoot foretold death, and I was grateful July 2nd had passed.
That night, after dinner and drink-laced conversation, we took our aching arms and backs to the tents and crashed hard. Summer’s heat had hit us full force, sapping our strength, and the day’s canoeing had produced exhaustion akin to that of wandering through the desert beneath a brutal sun.
That night a magnificent storm rumbled over Sapelo, soaking the land, filling the solar shower. At the height of the storm, the camp security perimeter went off.
I walked into the rain with my rifle as lightning lit up the night. Wild hogs stood on the edges of dunes overlooking camp. With each burst of lightning, their tusks shone blue-white. Tyler came out into the rain.
“Get back in your tent, ” I shouted and shot over the hogs but they stood unmoved. I rushed them, firing into them, and they scattered squealing and snorting. Tyler ran back into her tent and came out with her sleeping bag, basket, and suede bag.
“God, did you see those tusks?” she said breathing hard.
“Yes, they looked like scimitars, blue steel in the lightning. Garrett told us wild hogs roamed the island. He was right.”
Tyler was soaked and I gave her a shirt of mine, which she took and then turned her back to me, removing the wet T-shirt and slipping mine over her head. For the remainder of the night she stayed in my tent, she on one side, I the other. She had one thing to say. “You don’t seem the type to own a gun.” Then she lay quiet and still for so long I was sure she was just lying there, not sleeping.
A familiar fragrance filled my tent, the scent of a woman. It had been five years since a woman lay close to me. I lay there listening to her breathing until at last it slowed, deepened, and fell into rhythm, then she turned in her sleep, moaned and threw a slender leg atop the bag. I lay awake in the dark a long time thinking of all that had passed me by.
***
Dawn, the air cool. The tent damp. I awaken before her. She sleeps. I ease the tent’s fly down, go to the fire, and stir up live coals for brewing coffee. I pull a few charred limbs over the coals. Soon flames burst forth.
The earth sheds its darkness. Stars fade, and the Atlantic horizon reddens. I have a moment to myself, a time to reflect. I am thinking of her. In the short time I have known Tyler, a weakness has seized me. Without trying, she is breaching the walls of self-defense I have built with such care. Also, I have fallen into a bad habit: underestimating her will to find her daughter.
The aroma of brewing coffee invades the sea air, and Tyler awakens in a sullen mood and joins me by the fire. She shatters the majesty of the night before with a hateful attitude. She felt we should forget Cameron’s advice and go into the village unescorted. I disagree. When it comes to putting yourself in position to be killed, argue fails to describe our differences. We clashed. We had a hot exchange over breaking the principle we had been warned to observe—entering the village unescorted. Tyler didn’t give a damn anymore.
“I say fuck the village.”
“Did you say ‘fuck’ the village?” I asked.
“You’re damn right. Fuck the village. You have a gun. We go there armed. What do they have? Spears?”
“Just about every time I decide you’re level headed, you go off half-cocked. You know that? You let a bunch of wild hogs scare you but now you’re ready to invite death.”
“I thought the pigs might trample me in my tent. That’s all.”
“Well, they could have trampled my tent as well as yours. Forget the hogs. Let’s say we go into the village and find they have guns, lots of them. What do you hope to accomplish? You won’t learn anything about Lorie going in there armed.”
“Either a young white woman lives here or she doesn’t. And if she does, I intend to find her and take her back home to North Carolina. No one or anything will stop me.”
I had a point but so did she. Her time here was getting shorter, a matter that concerned me. I hoped we would stumble across someone we could talk to, someone who could provide an entrée to the village, but so far we had come up
dry. If something didn’t break our way soon, to appease Tyler, we’d go to the village, but I didn’t have my heart in it.
My own missions were wanting though I had all the time in the world compared to Tyler. I had little to write about so far except Rikard and the porpoises and that was not voodoo or was it? We could enter the village with a white flag affixed to a walking stick though going in unannounced invited suicide. The smart thing was to find someone who could take us into the island—but who?
Tyler calmed down a bit and came over to me.
“I come on a little strong, don’t I?” she said.
“A little, but I understand where you’re coming from. Well, you could be in my shoes, know where your daughter is and it not make a damn difference in the world. Would you like that any better?”
“No, not really.”
“Then consider yourself blessed.”
Sipping coffee, we reviewed our maps, checking the creeks and surrounding areas we’d searched. We were making a little progress but not nearly enough. The vast majority of the island awaited exploration and time was slipping away in a routine of rising early, taking care of camp, securing water, exploring the island, and resting in the evening. By day we were eager explorers, by dusk, uneasy homebodies. Time was changing that though. If time heals all wounds, it also spans the abyss separating strangers. We cooked together, ate together, drank together, argued, bathed in the sea, and shared memories and feelings. We had begun with small talk, and our conversations had grown intimate, impossible as it seemed considering our clashes. A sense of belonging—a connecting—grew along the edge of my soul terrifying me. Of all human hurts, wounds of the heart take the longest to heal.
Isolation and mutual need had forced us together and soon she would leave. I would have the solitude I sought when leaving Atlanta but I wouldn’t have her anymore and that bothered me. And it bothered me that it bothered me.
Outside stressing over lost days—we had, after all, three people to find—these first weeks had been a furlough from the city and memories where people were the main source of unhappiness.
Life on Sapelo and the day itself ran truer than any day in the city. Nothing false marred life—in particular, meddling people. Unvarnished reality made life genuine and it made death what it was—a noble and inevitable end to all things, a reward and relief for having done nothing more than survive.
Sapelo provided for us but we had to earn our existence here with sweat unlike the city where you barter your soul for money. The backpacker food grew unbearable and more and more we gathered wild rice, broke off oyster clusters, and I cast the creeks in the late afternoon for shrimp.
Each day was hard and at day’s end, we rewarded ourselves with a dip in the sea, drinks, a dinner of wild rice, boiled shrimp, and oysters, and true conversation but Tyler began to change as her time ran out.
She no longer talked or ate as much. One night I had slipped into a deep pool of sleep and was dreaming of the Atlanta office when crying entered my dream, but it was a dream, nothing more. The next night, while reading about the island, I heard crying again. I went over to her tent and stood outside, unsure what to do. Soft sobbing came through the tent.
“Tyler, what’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m all right.”
“What is it?”
“Go back to your tent. I’m fine.”
“No. What’s wrong? Can I come in?” I asked.
She unzipped her tent’s fly. I stepped in and sat down at the end of her sleeping bag. She had on a long T-shirt and her eyes were reddened.
“Now tell me what’s got you so low,” I said.
“Everything. Everything that happened to Lorie was my fault.”
“Tell me what you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Get it out,” I said. “It’ll do you good.”
“It was my fault Hines had sex with Lorie. After the honeymoon, so to speak, wore off, I did anything to avoid sex with him. Anything. I’d fake being sick. Be too tired. A lot of nights I pretended to be asleep. You name it; I did it. And that’s not smart when you have a daughter who was emerging sexually—and believe me, I knew she was. Oh and he knew it too.”
“A lot of married couples go without much sex,” I said. “It’s common. What was the problem?”
“Not long after Caroline died I lost all feelings for him. We had no, no…. There just wasn’t any….”
“Chemistry,” I said.
“Exactly. No attraction.”
“Did you ever have it with him?” I asked.
“No, not ever.”
“Then why didn’t you just leave him?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question a thousand times. I just didn’t want to be known as a divorcee, I guess.”
“So, you chose to be known as a murderess,” I said.
“Well, that’s how it worked out. It was my fault either way you cut it.”
“What he did was wrong. He could have turned to other women instead of a child. Maybe he did.”
“No, but I wish he had,” she said.
“Maybe you expect too much from love.”
“No. You can never expect enough from love. We didn’t have love. The thought of sliding beneath the sheets with him made my skin crawl.”
“So, he preyed on a child, your child, and you blame yourself.”
“Yes.”
“Even if you’d slept with him, he may have taken advantage of Lorie. He got what he deserved and you shouldn’t beat yourself up over this. Move on. We’ll find Lorie. I promise you that. Please don’t cry.”
Tyler reached over and placed her hand on mine.
“Just try to get some sleep,” I said. “Tomorrow will be a hard day. Nothing is easy here.”
I returned to my tent and lay there a long time trying to imagine what this woman had gone through. Somehow we would get through the summer; somehow we would find ourselves and carry on. Somehow.
The days passed and Tyler’s moods came and went like the summer storms. At times, she could be tender, at times argumentative. I gave her my word we’d try to reach the village and find Rikard before she had to leave. I had to do something to help her find Lorie or prove beyond a doubt Lorie just wasn’t here. It always came back to Rikard. He held the key to everything and we had to find him. The village, I hoped, would give us some answers, if we survived going there.
The next morning over coffee, we planned a desperate move. We decided to paddle back to the old plantation and set up an overnight camp near the village. From there, we would try to find some passage into the back of the village.
As I slid the canoe through the break between the dunes, Tyler ducked into her tent. At the channel, I tied Voodoo to the canoe for safekeeping and began loading the canoe with my sleeping bag, lanterns, and enough gear to last a night at the old plantation. Tyler put her sleeping bag and a few personal possessions just outside her tent.
I packed just enough supplies to last a night and a day and took care that the canoe was balanced, water jugs on both sides, essentials in the middle. The canoe sat steady in the water. Then Tyler brought a few more things to the canoe forcing me to do some rearranging. I reworked the canoe’s content and walked back to camp with her.
“We should have whatever we need tonight,” I said.
“What about camp? Do you think it will be okay to leave it overnight?”
“We’ll find out when we return. Maybe your protective spirit will watch over it,” I said, thinking of her amulet, which hung still on her tent.
Tyler went back into her tent and came out with tissue and her precious basket and headed for her latrine, which despite a strong offshore breeze, soon would need a new, more distant location.
“Meet me at the canoe,” I said.
I walked down to the beach that looked like no other beach. Toppled trees, like armaments, gave the beach an eerie Omaha Beach-like appearance. The white sand,
emerald water, and frothy white line of falling surf awaited invasion.
I returned to the canoe and again checked it for balance. It sat a bit low but not too low to be a problem. Tyler was taking her time, and Voodoo lay by the canoe sleeping as the minutes went by.
Gulls cried and waves crashed and the wind whispered in the palmettos. The day seemed good for an adventure, and I was eager to set out. Waiting on a woman was one thing that had not changed in five years. When you wait for a woman ten minutes, it seems like twenty.
I walked through the dunes to Tyler’s tent and called her name. Nothing. I thought about walking over to the latrine but didn’t want to embarrass her. I went back to her tent, just to be certain, and peeked inside. Nothing. I went down to the canoe to wait some more. For what seemed an eternity, I sat waiting on the gunwale of the canoe when restlessness got the best of me. I walked down to the shore and looked up and down the beach. I walked north and south. I went back to camp yet again, hoping she would be there piddling in her tent. No luck.
Patience is no virtue when every second counts. I went within ten yards of the latrine and called her name. No reply. Hesitant, I looked inside. She was gone. I walked to the top of a dune and saw nothing but wilderness. I called out her name and it floated out over the island and vanished, swallowed by the vastness of the marsh and dunes. I went back into camp and checked the sand where so many footprints covered the campsite it was impossible to pick out a clear set. I went up to the latrine to check for footprints, and one set—plain as day—led behind it into grasses where bent blades of grass left a trail. Tyler had gone inland through a stretch of pines to a creek and had done the unthinkable: left her precious basket in some tall grasses and in it sat a .38 handgun.
I tucked the gun into my belt, picked up the basket, and looked around. Her shoes sat at the creek edge. She had swum the creek, which at high tide was wide. I knew I couldn’t cross it. So, I could wait there for who knows how long or I could get the canoe, find the creek, and set out on the other side searching for her. Because creeks stitched in and out of the land like brocade, finding the right creek would not be easy. Tying her tennis shoes together, I hung them on a shrub. She could find them and know that I had been there, plus I could spot the shoes from the water and know I had the right creek.