by Tom Poland
Brit continued to improve, though it was slow. She would never be normal as girls are. She would never marry and have a girl of her own, but she was still here with me. I told her the truth about her mother but it didn’t register. Every once in a while, she’d ask about her mom … what she had been like. She had a memory like an aged woman and sometimes would ask the same questions over and over. I loved her all the more.
Cameron made a fortune from his rainbow shot and it won just about every award a photograph can win. He had been in the right spot at the right time for sure. The South Carolina Tourism Department adopted it as the quintessential beach poster, and once I was driving in another state and saw a billboard with the image promoting an island resort. It was big and sat near the Interstate and I could make out the bubbles beneath which Murphy’s chair rested.
And then there was me—Slater Watts—journalist and writer. Sapelo gave me a kind of illness, a melancholy feeling that never did relinquish its hold on me. I decided to never live in the city again but to live near it, an hour’s drive away. I moved north of Atlanta toward the mountains where I had a home overlooking a small lake. I returned the dusty voodoo book to the old black lady and she gave me a knowing look. She never asked anything about Sapelo and I said nothing. Molly Augustine’s killer was never caught and Detective Morton, I heard, took early retirement. I lost my fascination with the need to know if I could kill, for Sapelo had given me the answer.
I had written something real, something that would last. A Hollywood studio offered me a lucrative contract to write a screenplay about my summer on Sapelo, the last wild place in America, and I signed it. I had achieved everything I ever imagined: success, wealth, fame to some degree, and the love of two beautiful, two different women. I placed Ann’s ring in a drawer where it remains to this day.
Once it was clear Murphy would never return, I was promoted to the chief editor’s position at Southern Escape, and an impulse hit me—that I should call Tyler up in Apex and share the news, but I didn’t. I told her in person.
The magazine, restored to its original mission, began a slow but steady climb into profit again. Everyone was happier except for Pauline. She left to take an art director’s position at a technology company and soon tired of designing layouts filled with schematics and smiling, overweight executives. She quit and soon disappeared into the workday world without a trace.
And Mullet Man? He was glad to rid the island of the poachers and he was pleased to help us document their deadly trade. He wasn’t pleased that the truth eventually came out about Sapelo. As he had feared, the stories we published opened a Pandora’s box, and humanity’s ills rushed onto the island but some of it remained as he wished, the best part probably. The part that held his beloved sanctuary, Conjura, his arboreal retreat.
And at last there was Sapelo.
In the oddest moments, a luncheon, a presentation, or in the shower, my mind would drift to the old plantation garden. I could smell the strawberries and see the plumbago and Tyler in all their glory. The alligator’s den, the phosphorescent sea, the bamboo forest, nesting turtles, and star-filled sky all became possessions to me.
The Sapelo I knew remained with me forever—tropical, forbidden, beautiful, and dangerous, the surf crashing as if nothing had ever changed nor would change. But it did.
As the years unfurled, the island changed as Rikard had predicted and it remained unchanged in ways that neither Rikard nor I could predict. Cameron and I published our story all across the nation and a great deal of interest surfaced. As Rikard predicted, an army of do-gooders flocked to the island. The Red Cross rushed in, and the National Park Service wanted complete control of the island to preserve its Gullah and voodoo heritage but Georgia and South Carolina stopped that.
In the States, an uproar ensued and the United Nations stepped into the fray. South Carolina’s wildlife department was investigated and massive resignations resulted. Georgia and South Carolina at last agreed to split the island between them. South Carolina opened the northern half to development with the provision that the village remain untouched and it did, although the people there now qualified for free medicine and social services.
Georgia elected to keep the southern half wild and that part of the island—the best part—remained pristine, a resplendent sanctuary where Jackson and Voodoo lay buried, where Murphy had drowned, and where I had seen miracles and nearly died myself. In the ensuing years people talked of a legend—the voodoo priest and his son who lived like primitives somewhere on the south end.
Locals continued to call the island “Forbidden Island,” but the rest of the world came to know the island as Georgialina. I had referred to it as Georgialina in my articles and that name was adopted for the new, governed island. South Carolina had wanted to name the island after a deceased senator, but the name didn’t fit and besides his name was all over bridges, streets, and buildings.
In the ensuing years, I never saw birthday balloons or Cameron’s rainbow that a chill didn’t run down my spine. The photograph made its way to calendars, book covers, magazines, and became a staple of the stock agencies. Every time I saw it I could feel the surf against my legs, the rain pelting me, and I could see Murphy’s wheelchair spinning and reversing, the saltwater sending its motor out of control, storm clouds rushing toward the mainland.
Once I dreamed Murphy rolled in from the sea alive and I awakened in a cold sweat, but the dream went away and as the months went by, I thought of him less and less. Then not at all until I saw a short article one Sunday.
The Atlanta Constitution reported that South Carolina had a bridge in the works that would connect the mainland to the northern half of the island. An annual bridge run to benefit the villagers was planned as well. The bridge would be six lanes wide with a special pedestrian walkway with ramps. The law required it be accessible to people in wheelchairs in case they wanted to make their way over to the island, to Georgialina.