He settled Sophia and Mark on the Harley and eased off down the driveway, slowly now, to take them back to Dayclear, where Sophia’s car was. Luis and I sat on the steps, watching the night come in from the west. It was not coming fast, but it made me want to leap to my feet, to run for my car, to be away and gone. Lita slept on in Luis’s arms. He looked down at her, and then at me.
“I left the truck a half-mile or so down the road where we saw the ponies,” he said. “If you need to go, maybe you could drop us off there. I think I’ve lost the princess for the night.”
“I will in a minute,” I said. I sat, listening to the night wind that was ruffling the water far out, to the sleepy twitters of the birds as they settled down off in the hummocks. To the soughing of the great oaks over our heads. To the tiny scratchings and rustlings that meant the small night creatures were waking up, to hunt or be hunted. There was nothing untoward, nothing I had not heard a thousand times before out here. And still I listened.…
“Let her go, Caro,” Luis said softly. “Just…let her go.”
I turned my face to him, feeling the color drain out of it.
“You mean…just forget her? Just…throw her out?”
He shook his head.
“Of course not. You won’t forget her. How could you? I mean…stop calling her back with your need and your hunger and your pain. It’s too big a burden for one little ghost to carry. Send her off with your love and pride and all the things you laughed at and all the tears you cried together. You won’t lose her. It’s like the old saying, ‘Hold a bird lightly in the palm of your hand and it will always come back to you.’ And maybe then there’ll be some room inside you for…other things. Other people.”
I started to protest that there were other people in my heart, many of them, but then did not. There was a great grief rising in me, like a storm.
“How will I live without her?” I whispered.
“I’ll tell you. It’s a game I know. It works for me. Just close your eyes and think of what you’d be willing to die for, and then—live for it. It’s very simple, really.”
I just looked at him.
“The only rule of this game is that whatever you choose has to be alive,” he said very gently.
I dropped my eyes. The heaviness of tears was near to overflowing.
“Go on,” he said. “Try it. Close your eyes. Say to yourself, ‘What would I die for?’ and grab the very first thing that comes into your mind. No thinking about it. The very first thing.”
I closed my eyes. Behind them, red and white lights arced and pinwheeled.
“What would I die for?” I said soundlessly to myself, and saw, not Clay’s face, not even that of my lost child, or Carter’s…but today. The day just past. The island, the dock, the low sun on the water, the dolphins, the ponies pounding down the sandy road, a small child who was not my child clinging in joy to one of the stumpy necks. My house on its stilts, its head in the moss and live oak branches. The island. My island.
I looked back at him.
“Yes,” he said, and now he was smiling.
“Well, let’s get you going,” he said, struggling to his feet with the sweet, limp weight of the sleeping child in his arms.
“No. I’m going to stay,” I said.
He studied me gravely.
“Are you sure? There’s lots of time for that. Today was…a very full day for you.”
“I’m sure. You said it yourself, not long ago. There’s no more time. Now is it, for me.”
He stood quietly in the dusk for a moment, and then he shifted the child to one shoulder. She mumbled sleepily, but did not really wake. I leaned over and kissed her swiftly on the top of her head.
Luis Cassells put out his hand and touched my hair, very lightly.
“Don’t drink, Caro,” he said.
He turned and went down the steps with his granddaughter, and in a moment was lost to my sight in the darkness under the trees.
Presently, I heard the distant motor of the Peacock Island Company pickup catch, and then it faded, and the great quiet came down again.
And I did not drink. I sat sleepless before my fire all through the night, and I saw the dawn of New Year’s Day born red behind the live oaks, but I did not drink.
10
It was a curious time, the first hours of that new year. I should have been bone-tired, but I was not. I felt, instead, light and hollow and empty, but in no hurry to seek whatever it was that would fill me. I was content to sit on the dock in the little wind off the ocean, warm and heavy with the fragrance of things blooming far to the South. I felt that I was waiting there for something to come, but I did not know what, and was not particularly threatened by its prospect, not even curious. I was just…waiting.
Quite clearly my heart told me that it would not be my child who came, not again to this place, and somehow that was all right. I still had her at the core of my being. The morning was still new. Whatever was coming, it would emerge.
It was Hayes Howland who came. I was surprised by that. I had not seen Hayes at the island house since the days just before Clay and I married. But here he was, in his growling little Porsche, dressed in his customary disheveled but well-tailored khakis and apparently-slept-in cardigan sweater. He picked his way through the wet, mossy grass as if to spare the Gucci loafers, but they were already beyond salvation. He wore sunglasses and had his hands thrust in his pockets, and grinned up at me, the old Hayes grin.
“I thought you might be out here,” he said. “Got a hair of the dog for a sinner?”
“Nope. Got coffee, though,” I said. “Come on up. Did you sin egregiously last night?”
“I did. I sinned so grotesquely that I may not be able to put my head back into the Carolina Yacht Club again until the millennium. But if I can’t, at least sixty other people can’t, and I don’t think the club can stand the loss of revenue.”
He took off the glasses, and I saw that his eyes were indeed reddened and pouched, with bluish shadows in the thin, scored skin underneath. Like most redheaded men, Hayes was aging early. The punishing Lowcountry sun was not kind to him. There were splotches and raised patches on his face and forearms that would need medical attention before long, I thought. The little white circles of scar that mean treated skin cancers are a hallmark of the Lowcountry male.
“Who all was there?”
I did not much care, but this was obviously a social call, since he showed no signs of having business to transact or news to relate. He leaned against the deck railing, his eyes shielded against the glitter of the sun off the creek, and drank the coffee I brought, and looked around, sighing appreciatively.
“Oh, the usual crowd. You know. This is really something out here, isn’t it? I can see why you run away from home so much. It’s a pity more people don’t realize how beautiful the marshes are. They only want oceanfront.”
“Well, let’s hope they never learn,” I said, annoyed by his remark about running away from home. “You know I don’t run away out here, Hayes. Clay knows where I am. He’s out here with me when he can be. And I’m really serious about this painting, whether or not you think it’s worthwhile.”
He lifted a propitiatory hand.
“Badly put. I know you’re serious. You ought to be; you’re really good. I was just admiring your view. It could make people change their minds about the ocean.”
“Yes, well,” I said shortly. I was not going to be baited into a discussion of the Dayclear project. My bubble time was not up yet. Technically I had until tomorrow. And when I talked of it, it would be with Clay, not Hayes Howland.
“So, did you see the New Year in all by yourself?” he said, dimpling at me. I thought I knew where he was going with this.
“I did. Absolutely nobody but me and a gator or two. Best company I’ve had in ages.”
“Not what I hear,” he said in a schoolboy singsong that made my jaw clench.
“And just what do you hear, sweetie pie?” I said, grinning n
arrowly at him.
“I hear that you’re getting boned up on subtropical landscaping, if you’ll pardon my pun.”
“You didn’t have to explain it, Hayes,” I said, rage running through me like cold fire. “I get the allusion. And where on earth did you hear a thing like that? The only person I can think of who would know is our friend Lottie. You been calling on Lottie, Hayes?”
He flushed, the ugly, dull brick color of the redhead. Hayes disliked Lottie Funderburke even more than Clay, so much so that I often wondered if he’d made a move on her and been rebuffed. Lottie would not have had Hayes on her property. He kept the grin in place, though.
“Okay, truce,” he said. “I was out of line. I didn’t come to pick on you.”
“No? Then why did you come?”
“I came to give you a message,” he said. “And to put a proposition to you.”
I looked at him wearily.
“Hayes, if this has anything to do with…you know, the new project, I don’t want to hear anything about it now, and when I do, I will hear it from Clay. He said it was going to be spring at least before we were ready to talk again.”
He studied me for a moment, and then set his coffee cup down with a thump.
“Well, things have escalated,” he said crisply, and I knew that our pleasantries were over and the skin of my bubble had burst. I wanted to howl with desolation and betrayal.
“Whatever it is, I want to hear it from Clay.”
“Clay is somewhere so deep in the wilds of Puerto Rico that they don’t have phones,” Hayes said. “And it can’t wait. If it could, do you think I’d be here? Do you think this is my idea of a terrific New Year’s Day? I’m missing four Bowl games and a brunch.”
I sat staring at him. He returned the stare for a long moment, and then he dropped his eyes. Two hectic red patches of color bloomed on his cheeks.
“Okay. Here’s the deal. The government is washing its hands of the horses. They had a ranger out here in December to try to make some kind of assessment about their condition, and he couldn’t get close enough to the herd to even see them, except for an old mare and a colt. The mare kicked him. They’re not going to maintain them anymore; not that they’ve been doing much for the past five years or so. I don’t know what they’re eating, but it can’t be much of anything. The guy said the hummocks are pretty much grazed out. Caro, they’re going to starve if you don’t let the company step in and do something about them.”
I was having a hard time keeping the glee I felt at hearing that Nissy had kicked the ranger off my face. I straightened my twitching mouth and regarded Hayes with as much intelligence and interest as I could muster.
“What is it that the company wants to do, Hayes?” I said.
“Well, it all fits in with the proposition,” he said. “If I promised you that we weren’t going to try to round them up and…cull them…would you listen?”
“I’ll listen to anything except the idea of anybody shooting them. I promise you I’ll shoot the first person I see near them with a gun.”
He shook his head impatiently.
“No. There are a couple of options. One, we could round them up and capture them and sell them to some sort of wildlife preserve outfit, seeing as they’re bona fide marsh tackies. There’d be some interest in them. Two, we could sell them to people for their kids, or whatever. Then there’s three. They can stay here and be maintained in comfort, some might even say luxury…”
“If.”
“Right. If. If you’d be willing to entertain the new proposal for the Dayclear project that we’ve come up with.”
I sagged down slowly onto the top step of the deck and looked out over the sunny marsh to the creek. Over it a line of ungainly, prehistoric shapes lumbered against the sun. The wood storks, out fishing in the mild morning.
“Tell me about Dayclear, Hayes,” I said dully.
He sat down beside me.
“I’m going to leave it to Clay to tell you the whole thing,” he said. “The nuts and bolts. He knows how to talk about densities and site usage and such better than I do. But what I want you to know especially is that, with this new plan, the settlement is virtually untouched. It stays just like it has been for…oh, a hundred years, I guess. The bulk of the project’s…amenities will be downriver about two miles, nearer the waterway. We’ve ditched the idea of having the harbor there completely. All that, and the housing and the tennis complex will be sheltered with berms and heavy new planting. The Gullahs won’t see anything when they look out their windows but what they’ve always seen. And the golf course will be a nine-holer, and it will be near the bridge, so it’s isolated from the settlement, too. There’ll be a quarter-mile of untouched woods around it.”
“Wonderful. No idiot in a full Cleveland yelling fore and driving a Titleist right into the middle of your supper or your prayer service.”
He frowned.
“It’s a hell of a lot better from your standpoint than it was the first time, Caro,” he said. “And that’s just the beginning. We can divert the creek a little just where it swings close by your house and deepen the new tributary, so that boat traffic in and out to the ocean won’t come by your dock. You shouldn’t see a thing from here. You’ll scarcely hear it. This place and the settlement will be completely isolated and set apart with plantings and earthworks.”
“And the ponies? Do they get a berm of their own?”
He took a deep breath.
“What we’re proposing is this. Not only will we preserve Dayclear itself, but we’ll restore it. We’ve got some wonderful stuff from Sophia Bridges and there’s a lot more coming; we’d recreate a Gullah settlement of a hundred years ago, with authentic clothing and housing and the old crafts, and young men and women plowing and harvesting and making baskets and circle nets and growing a little specimen cotton and indigo and rice, and the old folks telling stories and singing songs, and the children playing the old games. We’d have a sort of educational complex, with a little rustic building for films and dioramas, and a little crafts and artifacts museum, and shops, and docents to take people on tours, and special seasonal activities. Sophia has some great stuff about Christmas and New Year’s services, and songs and shouts and such. A regular story program for kids, with a Gullah bard to tell the old ghost stories. A petting zoo. Maybe a simple little café, with ethnic specialities like yams and hoppin’ John and crabs…”
He stopped and looked at me expectantly. When I did not speak, he went on.
“We’d buy out the village and pay each family a handsome annual salary to stay and take part in all this. We’d provide the clothes and the tools and craft materials, and of course we’d offer insurance and health coverage, maybe get them on some kind of regular medical and dental services from the county. Oh, and we’d electrify the houses that didn’t have it…Sophia says some of them don’t…and keep the houses and outbuildings in good shape, and see that everybody has plumbing and heating and television.…It’s more than they could aspire to in their lives, Caro, and the best part is, they won’t have to move and they won’t have to scrabble for a living anymore. How can they lose?”
I looked at him. Black spots wheeled before my eyes.
“The ponies…” I whispered.
“We’d like to make a kind of wild, natural island out in the river where the two creeks run into it, dredge it there and build it up and landscape it and put some picturesque little lean-tos on it for shelter, and keep it planted in grass, and put the ponies there. They’d be fed grain and hay on a regular basis, and we’d have a vet look them over periodically, and if they tame up a little, maybe even curry them once in a while.”
“You think they’ll go for condos?” I said. My ears were buzzing. “I think they’re more the timeshare types myself.”
He ignored that.
“We thought we might have a kind of monthly pony swim, from the new island over to Dayclear and back. Like they do when they bring the wild horses in from Chincoteague
and Assateague, on the Outer Banks. They’re a big favorite with families. That way the ponies would be healthier and better cared for than they’ve ever been in their lives, and they’d be a real asset, instead of parasites.”
“I thought Clay was kidding,” I managed to whisper through lips that felt blanched and swollen. “I thought he was teasing me. He laughed when I called it Gullah World.…It’s a theme park, Hayes. How can you even think of it?”
“I can think of it because it’s what your husband thought it would take to get you to agree to this, Caro,” he said. There were mottled white spots on his clamped jaws now. “I can think of it because it’s the only way either of us can see to save that goddamned flea-bitten settlement and those goddamned mangy horses, and Clay says we do that or we forget it. I wonder if you know what would happen to all of us if we forgot it, Caro?”
“Clay’s told me about all that.…”
“I wonder if he’s told you just how bad it could be? But the important thing is that SouthWard loves it, and we took an awful chance by insisting on revising the first plan. They didn’t even want to listen to any changes at first. If you knew what Clay and I and everybody else has gone through to work this thing out for you…”
My hand flew to my mouth.
“SouthWard! My God, Hayes!” I cried.
“They’re going to save your ass, Caro,” he said. “All our asses, plus some black ones and some hairy horse ones. Nobody else would even listen. Clay and I have been all over the country with this. Nobody else even gave us an appointment.”
SouthWard…
Once, when Clay and I had been newly married and the children had not yet come, we took a driving trip through the lower Southeast, so that Clay could show me other resort communities and tell me how his vision for the Peacock Island Plantation Company properties differed from anything yet in existence. We saw some well-done properties and some merely rather ordinary, and a few that I thought were ghastly in concept and execution. Of these, one or two were unique to me in their sheer bizarreness of taste.
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