by Tom Poland
Walking back to the canoe, the island had become a different world, a world of unknowable vastness. My compass and maps meant nothing anymore, and loneliness and fear seized me.
Old Voodoo and I shoved off and set out for Tyler’s creek. The canoe was heavy and paddling by myself was hard. I went up the channel and cut left into a major creek. All the creeks looked the same and after many dead ends and creeks leading nowhere, I kept taking left turns off forking creeks. A lot of time slipped by.
At last, I spotted her shoes and pulled into the grass on the other side of the creek and untied Voodoo so he could track her. Unlike that first day when Tyler had struck out on her own, Voodoo was no help. Some dogs become lazy when they are well fed and Voodoo was no exception. He sprawled out to sleep but I dragged him with me by the rope that had become his leash. The dog and I worked our way through a boggy area to high ground and lush vegetation made the going slow. If Tyler were twenty yards away, I wouldn’t have seen her.
I spent the entire day searching and shouting her name to no avail. Finally when it was apparent I’d never find her, I returned to the canoe and sat for a long time. The woodsman’s cliché that lost people go in circles came to mind, offering hope, but she never showed.
Sitting in the canoe was hot and nerve-wracking, so Voodoo and I headed back to camp. As I paddled out of the creek toward the channel, panic seized me. What if I never saw her again? The possibilities raced through my mind. I tried to think why she had taken off and one possibility always came out on top. She had to have spotted a solitary pelican and tried to follow it—that had to be the answer. I paddled hard and thought—exertion and clear thinking are comrades, as every runner knows.
The long channel back to camp seemed longer than ever and camp itself now seemed large and empty. All the solitude I’d thought was so crucial meant nothing now. I unloaded the canoe and put Tyler’s things back in her tent, except for her basket and gun. I kept those with me.
That night thunderheads rolled in from the west. All evening thoughts of poachers, big gators, and island weirdoes worked me over but I tried not to dwell on the worst. I drank more Southern Comfort than I should and sleep came in fits and starts. I awoke early and my head hurt and I needed water bad.
I walked back to the creek where her shoes dangled from a struggling marsh elder. I canoed back to the creek and spent another day searching but found no sign of her.
As I paddled down the now-familiar channel, I rounded its last great bend beyond which I could see where the channel met the sea, near camp. Someone sat on the shore.
Approaching the putout place, I saw a soggy Tyler sitting by the channel where the canoe had last cut a groove into the sand. She stood as soon as she saw me, a wet shirt clinging to her like skin. As I pulled ashore she waded out to me. Relief washed over me, and my heart came up into my throat.
I jumped from the canoe and she came up and hugged me. For a long time we clung to each other, knee-deep in the water. Then she began to cry.
“I’m sorry. I know I scared you again. I am so sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry,” I said, pulling out my bandanna to wipe away her tears. “Yes, you scared me, but it was an altogether different fear. I am so happy to see you. I was scared something bad had happened to you.”
“I didn’t mean to wander off like that. I saw a pelican, just one. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I’d be able to find Lorie. Of course, I didn’t. Then, I had trouble finding my way back. All these creeks look the same.”
“Yes, that’s for sure,” I said. “I tried to find you. I looked for two days. Tell me. Where did you get the gun?” I asked.
“I keep it on me all the time, right here, she said patting her navel through badly torn shorts. I always have it on me but salt water’s not good for it.”
“I guess it’s good you have it,” I said, not believing that could be the gun. That gun, I knew, was locked up in some judicial chamber in North Carolina.
We waded ashore where she broke down and fell onto the sand. I knelt beside her. Wet hair clung to her slender neck.
“I know you’re mad at me,” she said between sobs.
“Not at all.”
Then she raised and turned to me, wet, a mess, crying, to hug me again.
“I’m so sorry for worrying you. I mean here you are on this island with a woman who does nothing but cause trouble.”
“Yes, you are trouble with a capital T, but believe me, it’s all right. I’m glad you’re here. I really am. What happened?”
“I came out of the latrine and saw a pelican across the creek, flying in tight circles. I had to follow it. I know you understand.”
“I figured something like that had happened. You swam the creek?”
“Yes, I was captain of my swim team in high school. The day you nearly drowned trying to get the canoe, I felt so guilty. I could have made it to the canoe, but I didn’t know if I could get back to land without a paddle. So I kept quiet and watched. When you disappeared and the canoe drifted out, I knew something had gone wrong. I went all the way down the marsh until I could see you in the muck. I backtracked to the bamboo place and was going to swim out and bring you the bamboo to breathe through.”
“Well, it was my stupidity that got me in trouble. I can’t swim a lick.”
“Not at all?”
“Maybe dog paddle, but I wouldn’t make it far.”
“I’m a strong swimmer. I swam the creek trying to follow the pelican. It just hovered over the woods. It flew like no pelican I’ve seen so far, in tiny, tight circles. I knew it was following someone. It had to be Lorie. It had to be. When I got into the woods it had flown over the marsh and then it went into the woods on the side of yet another creek.”
“You swam it too?”
“Yes and two other creeks also.”
“I looked for you, but I couldn’t swim the creeks.”
“After I got across and in the woods, I lost track of the pelican. I swam the other creeks and then I lost myself. I called out Lorie’s name but nobody was there … nobody.”
“So, we were both wandered around shouting,” I said. “I was so afraid something had happened to you. Where did you stay during the storm?”
“Somewhere back in there”—she pointed back toward her latrine—“a huge oak has blown down. I sat under the trunk right where a huge clod of earth had come up with the roots and had a shelter that kept the rain off me.”
“Good for you. I about got a hangover worrying about you. I still don’t feel too swift.”
“I could have used a bottle too last night. I’ll tell you one thing though. I just know the pelican was flying over Lorie. My daughter is here on this island and we’re going to find her.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes we are.”
She had welts from jellyfish stings on her legs and arms and her hair was a mess. Her face was scratched and her feet were badly cut up and in need of attention. My heart ached just looking at her, but not because of the stings and feet. They would heal. The cut in her heart would not close until she made things right with her daughter. I had tasted the fear of losing her and it was not a comforting thing. I wanted her to be happy.
I rinsed seawater over her stings and removed pieces of tentacles from her back and legs. Then while she went off to shower, I went to my tent and got my first aid kit and took out a vial of vinegar for her stings and ointment for her cuts. She came from her tent in fresh clothes, a white oxford shirt and cut-off jeans—like a college kid at the beach—and sat against the driftwood tree we used as a bench, kitchen, and workspace. I poured the vinegar over some cotton bolls and swabbed her stings. She lay back against a massive limb and relaxed as the vinegar did its magic. I worked ointment into her cuts and took my time treating her, more time than was necessary.
We spent the next day and night at camp before leaving at last for the old plantation. We paddled in silence, saying little at all, absorbed in worlds of our own. I could feel her staring at m
y back as I paddled, a stroke on the left then a stroke on the right, onward always. She had stirred something inside me that had long lain dormant.
***
We made it to the old sea island plantation late in the afternoon and pulled the canoe ashore, heavy with provisions. We tied it to an oyster-encrusted piling and walked the sandy lane toward the Marshall House with our first load of supplies.
We made several trips to the old home. Voodoo, dragging his rope-leash, followed us, leaving a trail in the sand like that of a slender snake.
After emptying the old canoe, we pulled it ashore and hid it in some yaupons growing beneath a copse of slash pines and made ready to pitch camp in the old plantation home, which on closer inspection was frail. In places the flooring had fallen in and we walked the planking with care.
We eased through the front door and made our way around the hallway to a step through facing what remained of a small porch leading to the open interior where a garden, wild and luxuriant, rose to meet us. Though long unattended, the garden was rich with strawberries, roses, and flowers, and grew a medley of violet, green, and red plants. Compared to the dunes, seaoats, and scrubby pines, it was the Garden of Eden. Tyler leaned over and plucked a delicate purple blossom from graceful vines arching over the old porch’s warped steps.
“Plumbago, the first plant my mother gave me. Some people call it Sea Lavender.” She handed it to me.
“Sea Lavender. You must know a lot about flowers, working for a florist,” I said, taking the tender bloom from her.
“Oh yes, but it’s not hard to learn about the things you love. From the time I was a girl watching honey bees in clover, I’ve loved flowers—all beautiful things really,” she said, looking up at me.
“I’d better go get our sleeping bags and the lanterns,” I said. “Someone may spot them. We can camp in the garden; no one can see us there. I know this house has been here forever but it looks as if it’s ready to collapse.”
I went out to the crumbling porch where we had stashed our supplies and began bringing them into the garden, the home’s centerpiece. Tyler helped and soon we had a small camp in the garden amid roses, strawberries, and plumbago. It was idyllic and I was certain no one would have a clue we were camping there. We could see the stars above but no one could see us.
“Too bad we can’t stay here forever,” she said.
“Yes, it’s special all right. I’m just glad you’re here. When you disappeared the other day, it scared me to death”
She stood and turned toward me.
“Did it really?” she asked, her eyes a deeper blue than ever though the indigo circle above may have caused the intensification.
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve come to realize just how special you are. You’re beautiful but tough, you and your handgun and killing ways. I’ve never met a woman like you. Never.”
“Funny, I’ve been thinking how special you are too. I wanted to tell you but couldn’t. I’m not very good at breaking the ice. I suppose that’s why I come across so cool. So, do you think we’re different? I mean we do have some things in common.”
“Yes we do,” I said. “We’re different but it’s a good difference.”
“Most men I’ve known worked with their hands, and their hearts were rough, like their hands. You work with your mind and both your hands and heart are soft. I can tell that much. I knew you were special the first time I saw you back at the Last Chance Café.”
“Why did you keep breaking eye contact back at the café?”
“Something drew me to you. I was afraid I would do something stupid, like walk over to you and introduce myself.”
“I wish you had,” I said.
“Well, I mean we were total strangers, but we’re strangers no more,” she said coming up and running her arms around me.
I drew back her hair and kissed her neck, which tasted of salt. Then the most fleeting of kisses at last happened.
Tyler took me by the hand and led me into the garden. Strawberries grew everywhere, but the mandolin shaped leaves of plumbago grew thickest in deep green clusters, with purple streaks scoring the pale violet blossoms. The vines ran thick, a natural mat, cool and receptive. As we stepped into the deep foliage, a fragrance of strawberries filled the air.
Tyler sank to her knees and pale clouds of flowers, some rolled into delicate tubes, spread beneath her. I sank to my knees beside her and pulled a stem of blossoms and one strawberry and held them up to her.
She closed her eyes and breathed in the fragrance.
“Keep your eyes closed,” I whispered.
I bit a strawberry in half. With one half I rubbed her lips, coating them with the juice and then I kissed her. I took the other half and squeezed its juice onto her neck, letting run down her throat, then licking it away.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Nothing, nothing at all,” I said.
Then I plucked plumbago blossoms from the stem, dropping one blossom after another into her open collar. They fell deep into her blouse, out of sight.
She murmured something too low to understand.
I dropped more blossoms into her blouse until a small heap spilled from the opening, tumbling down the oxford cloth. Then I plucked the blossoms from the top of her blouse with my lips. The heat rising off her carried the fragrance of the flowers. I lay her back into the flowers and unfastened her top button. I kissed her until I found more blossoms nestled deeper in her blouse. Then I plucked each one away, pursuing the blossoms deeper and deeper.
I unbuttoned two more white pearl buttons. Mounds of delicate blue petals rose and fell with her breathing and we rolled over into the flowers.
“You are so beautiful—inside and out,” I said, the white-hot words escaping like incandescent vapors.
Pale blossoms banked above her jeans, like windblown petals. I worked my way down and removed them, one by one. I opened her jeans just enough to remove the flowers, one by one, kissing her, caressing the plain around her navel. She pulled me to her.
Now nothing but pale violet flowers clung to her. We lay beneath a circle of blue sky on a bed of crushed, fragrant flowers on an island forgotten by time. Somewhere beyond the trees, one wave after another crashed against the distant Atlantic shore, and a force as old as the surf itself surged through us as well. Beneath a circle of blue sky on a bed of crushed, fragrant flowers, there was no such thing as the past or the future. Only now. The fragrance of strawberries joined her sweet smell and for the first time in years, I felt more alive than ever.
Afterwards, we lay together quietly, saying nothing, holding each other, legs interlaced, on this primitive island with the entire continent of North America to our backs. Atlanta and its loneliness seemed light years away.
***
The next morning, we set out for the village from our new camp and resumed our explorations north of where we had seen the boys crabbing. We paddled the big creek north for two hours, then stopped to study the map. We paddled north a bit farther to explore a long but narrow creek that coiled into a swamp not far from the village. That creek, I hoped, might get us close enough to see villagers from the water but it never did.
After much meandering, the creek straightened and fed us into a cathedral-like lagoon—a backwater breach where light slanted like spotlights onto black water edged with cypress knees. The creek exited on the far side and led to yet another lagoon just visible through a curtain of buttressed cypress columns. The swamp afforded one way in and one way out.
The swamp water was coal black and the trees and moss shimmered on it as if a mirror lay just beneath its surface. Now different breeds of the island’s inhabitants made music. Birds trilled, bullfrogs boomed bass, and a shrill chorus of tree frogs provided swamp violins. The swamp appeared and sounded beautiful in all respects but one: a suffocating smell permeated everything.
All swamps are fetid dank places but this one’s oppression was matchless. A roiling humidity crawled over us, our shirts
stuck to us, and when it seemed it could get no worse, it did. Entering a large, watery cul-de-sac, a miasma took our breath away, and the smell of death overpowered us in the space of a gasp.
“God, that smell,” said Tyler who began to heave over the side of the canoe. Voodoo stood and for a second I thought he would leap from the canoe to escape the rotten air.
I felt sick and the contents of my stomach fought to escape. I held my nose and back-paddled one-handed to escape the stench when a thick slab of mud slid into the water. A gator twenty feet long came right at us. We had barged into a monstrous gator’s meat locker where carnage rotted until ripe for eating.
“Keep the dog down,” I said. Backstroking stone-blind, I rammed the canoe into some cypress knees, bouncing us back toward the gator who came straight for us jaws agape. She was right on us and I had my paddle ready to smash her between the eyes when two shots ripped into her open mouth. A third shot broke off a massive tooth, turning her away. Stung but hardly hurt, the primeval gladiator headed back to the muddy bank.
Tyler had both hands on her pistol ready to fire again.
“Jesus,” I said, “If you hadn’t had that gun ...”
“We’d be in the drink,” she said, holding the gun on the retreating gator.
“You saved us, you really did. She was going to turn us over and then we were history.”
“You’re pale as a ghost, Slater.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
I turned the canoe around and headed back out of the swamp while the gator crawled onto the muddy bank. I kept looking back and so did Tyler.