Desperate, he was making his way in the only direction he could think to—a path his feet had known from childhood.
Back in the direction he’d sworn he would not go.
But the blood was still flooding from under the hand he held to his mangled arm, his head already dizzy, feeling unloosed from his neck. He stumbled once. And then again.
At the edge of the rice fields of Drayton stretching ahead in shimmering grids of gold, Tom swayed forward and back, barely righting himself. Only a matter of time now before he collapsed.
He heard the workers approach before he could see them. They were singing, not in the flooded rice fields now that it was dark but for the moon, but in the patches behind their own cabins, the bit of earth where they grew their own food to add to what scraps they were handed. Some of them bent over a fire and a common pot, some of them bent over their gardens, and some bent over nursing babies, but their song rose from the quarters:
Deep river, my home is over Jordan.
Deep river, Lord, I want to cross over . . .
Closing his eyes, even as he forced one foot in front of the other, he let the mournful current of the tune wash over him.
Hoes smacked into the mud, and mothers rocked in time with the song.
He staggered forward through an irrigation ditch.
Then a sharp cry.
He had been seen.
His legs gave way, the pain in his arm and the loss of blood taking him down as he crashed backward through a wooden barrier that held in the freshwater pushed there by the ocean’s tides. Landing on splintering boards, he rolled himself with effort onto his uninjured side and lay still.
Now came her voice, its scream muffled by age and her own hand over her mouth.
“Tom!” She dropped down beside him. Cradled his head. Her cry then was something ruptured and raw. “My baby, my son!”
Chapter 32
2015
Kate grabbed Scudder’s hand and positioned his fingers on the stone’s letters. “Tell me what you think that says.”
He traced the letters a moment. Then murmured, “Mary.”
Swallowing, Kate sank back from her knees to sit on the grass. “That’s what I thought, too. In the archives, I found a Mary who was the mother of Tom the blacksmith, the one who made weapons for the Vesey revolt. The name Mary wasn’t as common among slaves in the American South as you might think—as opposed to, say, Tom or Jim or Lucy or Phillis. Sometime before 1820, this particular Mary was sold away from the Russell house out to Drayton Hall—where she’d been purchased from originally. Sent back to the fields, I guess. For”—she made quotes with her fingers—“‘insubordination.’”
Scudder looked back at the stone. “So all we know of the Mary here is first, she was respected or loved or something enough by the people here to be the only one with her name on a marker.”
“And second, she died somehow in 1822. The year of the revolt.”
Scudder’s gaze swung out over the swamp. “I have to tell you I had my doubts about your theory that Tom Russell might’ve tried to make it out here to escape. But what if he knew something of the terrain out here because he’d lived here as a kid?”
Kate nodded, her eyes on the name. “And what if he knew for certain that she was out here?”
They climbed back into the truck, the gray silk of evening blurring the live oaks and the Spanish moss into shadows. Scudder flashed on his headlights against the falling dusk as the truck wheels crunched over the crushed shell of the road.
For a time, neither spoke.
“It’s hard to shake the feeling of that place,” Kate said at last. “The sorrow. The beauty, too. Thank you, by the way.”
His head ticked toward her, then back. “Hard to shake the feeling, you’re right. Which is probably the way it should be.”
“Those were Draytons who owned that place. And thought they owned those people in that burying ground.”
Scudder glanced toward her once but said nothing.
Which was right, Kate thought. Not to try to make it feel better.
“So,” he said at last. “You’re needing to know about the swamps, sounds like. I’m no expert, but I’ve been out here a lot. And read a good bit about them.”
“Which makes you my current primary source for swamp study.”
“Yeah, that’ll knock their socks off in the bibliography: contractor for Restoration Inc., page one.”
She laughed. “I’ll find some stuffy, old scholarly source later to document whatever you show me in person. I’m just grateful to be outdoors for a change.”
“All right then.” Hardly taking a breath, he described in vivid detail the creatures who lived there: the yellow-bellied slider and the brown water snake, the redbreast sunfish and the striped bass, the spotted sucker and blackbanded darter, the white-tailed deer and the great blue heron. “All of whom,” he concluded, “live among the cypresses and the tupelo gum trees and call it home. But as far as your question about whether Tom Russell could have made it past the blackwater, maybe. Although it’s hard to imagine.”
“That,” she said when he’d finished, “is a far better lecture than I’ve ever managed to give.”
“False modesty again.”
“Not this time. Trust me—I have witnesses.” Tugging at the skirt of her little black dress, she shifted toward him, then quickly away.
No attachments, she reminded herself. None.
“So, Scudder Lambeth. Dan said you moved back to town not long ago from the West Coast. Was it a shot at the dream of starting your own business, the restoration work, that brought you back here?”
“Hardly.” His voice, hard and sharp, startled her. “It’s a long story.”
“How long?”
“Longer than you want to hear.”
“I doubt that.”
His eyes left the road to look her full in the face before swinging back. “How ’bout longer than the miles we’ve got left to the pull-off where we’ll see how much you can make out in a blackwater swamp at dusk.” He gave her a crooked grin. “How ’bout we start with you?”
Kate drew a circle in the condensation on the passenger-side window, gave it eyes and a crooked smile. “Bunking out with a mountain of musty books in a one-star motel in the Deep South wasn’t exactly plan A for me.”
Another silence.
“So, Kate Drayton, how ’bout we trade longer versions one of these days?” Across the cab, his left hand on the wheel, he offered his right. “Deal?”
She shook it, his hand rough and calloused, and pulled hers quickly away.
In the distance, a long, low roll of thunder.
“Kate, this might be a bad idea, me bringing this up, but maybe I should be honest with you about something.”
A shard of lightning split the sky now, and they both jumped. A spattering on the windshield followed, slow at first, then harder. Something in his tone, too, made her brace for what was coming.
“Look, it’s not your fault, but some folks in town—nobody I’m close to, and probably nobody who’s actually met you—think your showing up all cozy with Rose Pinckney, and your being a Drayton, is part of some bigger plan to influence her decisions.”
“Her decisions? What decisions?”
“It’s the timing of things, you got to realize. Rose Pinckney is rewriting her will—which everyone South of Broad knows—except probably you. She’s got loads of charities she supports here: foundations, museums, you name it. And, conveniently, no heirs, so far as anyone knows.”
Incredulous, Kate stared at him.
“And here you come. Part of the old blood—way back at least. Probably even a third cousin once removed, if anybody sketched out the tree. Here you are suddenly, Miz Rose’s shadow.”
“Unbelievable. So you’re implying I’ve been conniving to get into the will?”
“Nope. Hear me now: it’s not what I think. Just how it could look.”
Glaring out the window, then back at him, sh
e crossed her arms. “My God, the Low Country and its rumors!”
The windshield wipers beat time as she glared through sheets of rain.
His shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, the muscles of his lower arms flexed, he was gripping the wheel so hard the veins on the backs of his hands bulged. “Shouldn’t have brought it up. I’m sorry. Guess I thought you should know at least what everyone else does—about Miz Rose rewriting her will and deciding where the money will go. But no one who knows you would think—”
Kate held up her hand to stop him. “That I’m a con woman with a whole lot of nerve and really good timing? Although that sure is what it looks like to plenty of people.”
The truck’s headlights showing a still frame of cypress and Spanish moss above an ebony gloss of water, Scudder shut off the engine. “This is a favorite pull-off of mine. Best angle of the swamp.”
“I ought to be getting back.”
“Kate, look. I upset you. Understandably. It was stupid of me.”
“I just . . . suddenly, I’m just tired.” She sighed. “I feel like I spend every day trying to get answers to my family’s questions and secrets and rumors and how that fits with the past. And meanwhile—great—I’m creating more Low Country rumors.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m just discouraged. I’d like to go back now. If you don’t mind.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He rammed the key back into the ignition and turned.
A click.
And only that.
Again, he turned the key. Again only a click.
Muttering under his breath, he made his way to the front of the truck, then wrenched open the hood.
Kate joined him. “What is it?”
“Starter’s gone bad is my guess.”
Her face must have said what she was thinking.
“Must look pretty suspicious. The old broken-starter ploy, right? Only notice how old this Chevy is and how many miles I’ve put on her.”
More than three hundred thousand on the odometer, Kate saw.
He closed the hood, pulled out his cell, and dialed. “Dan,” he said into the phone. “Sorry for the hassle. Wonder if you could come pick us up on Ashley River Road out toward Drayton Hall, near the Audubon Swamp Garden. Problem with the truck. Yeah, you did tell me so.”
He gave specific directions. “Thanks. What? Oh. Us would be just me and a friend. Of yours, too.” He lowered his voice and turned his back to the truck. “No, I didn’t arrange the breakdown, idiot. And if you weren’t laughing so hard, you could already be headed this way.”
Slipping the phone into his jeans pocket, he leaned through the passenger-side window to punch the truck’s radio on—it was tuned to an R&B station—then scrambled up onto the hood. “Worst of the storm’s passed, and it’ll be a while ’til help comes.” He extended a hand. “View’s better from here.”
Kicking her sandals into the cab, Kate navigated the climb onto the hood in her little black dress.
Scudder settled himself against the windshield. “I approached it all wrong before. For some reason, it just seemed like you deserved to know what people were saying so you could fight back if Botts or anyone else got nasty.”
“Botts,” Kate repeated. “So he’s part of the chorus that thinks I’d try to con Rose?”
“Best I can tell, he’s just been poking around, asking questions, trying to see what you’re doing—but that’s enough to make people talk. Truth is it bothered me, what I overheard. Not because I believed it. Bothered me because from what I was seeing of you and hearing through Dan and Gabe, you’re somebody who’s smart and determined and kind. Didn’t seem fair.”
Kate looked back at him. The arms she’d folded across her chest relaxed. “You left out one of my strongest traits: a good arm. And not just for a girl.”
He laughed. Glanced shyly away. “But if I added anything else to that list, like saying that you were nice looking or something like that . . .” He shrugged, his eyes still fixed out ahead. “You’d think it was only part of the whole evil plan: trapping you out here against your will.”
“In the middle of a blackwater swamp.” Kate nodded. “You’re totally right. Tonight, I would not believe you.”
No attachments, she reminded herself. None.
Not even if a guy seems trustworthy at first. Lots of people seem trustworthy at first. But nobody comes through in the end.
His fingers drumming along to the beat of the music on the hood, he pitched his face up toward the sky. He looked absolutely at peace as he was—a little pensive, maybe, but quiet and calm and listening to the sounds of the swamp.
Leaning toward him, she tipped back her head at the same angle. And listened.
Ahead in the truck lights, a great blue heron spread its wings and lifted up from the water. In the distance, a marsh owl called.
Chapter 33
1822
Tom lay on his back in the rice trench, the mottled sky and its moon above him spinning and spinning like a kaleidoscope in a restless child’s hands. He shut his eyes.
It must have been the loss of blood from his arm. He tried sitting up. Tried lifting his head. The mottled blue overhead spun faster.
“Stay low now!” a man’s voice whispered. Panicked. “Your mam coming back. Went for some food. Stay low.”
Tom was sure he was dreaming then, swept back to childhood. Delirious from the loss of blood. From hunger.
A face swam into focus, its skin darker under the cheekbones where it was hollowed. And darker under the eyes. Only the eyes were young still, as soft and as deep as he remembered. The brown of the eyes blurred, though, above him, and he realized she was crying.
“My baby,” she said. “My son.”
Tom reached for the face before the world went blank.
When he opened his eyes again, she was lifting his head. Pouring water a few drops at a time into his mouth.
“Get some water into you. Some food. Then see can you walk.” She cradled his head on her lap, her palms resting on either side of his face. Whatever blessing she gave, whatever prayer, Tom felt strength flow from her small, weary form into his.
From behind her, she pulled a small ceramic plate piled with rice and peas and corn and ham mixed together, the scent of it wafting around him. “Hoppin’ John. This still your favorite, Son?”
He saw the decades of grief hammered into her eyes. She ladled the food into his mouth.
He tried to push himself up to sitting. But fell back. His left arm she’d bandaged with wide strips of blue calico—the bottom hem of her skirt. The strips were red through, but she’d stanched the bleeding.
His tongue was nearly too swollen to speak. “You can’t let yourself get seen . . .”
She held his face in both hands. “Now you listen to me. You hang on to hope. Don’t matter what trouble come roaring in. No buckruh, no gun, no kind of cruel can take that away.”
She gripped his face tighter now, the fingers of her left hand jutting crooked from the middle knuckles as if they’d been broken and healed back at an angle, the palms calloused and blistered, but something fierce—powerful even—in the clasp of her hands. “We got to see can you walk.”
What Tom knew for certain was this: the baying of bloodhounds was coming closer again.
Her body bent over his own, defiance—strength, even—somehow in the grip of her arms, palsied and wasted. She bowed her face to his, her words coming steady and strong.
“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”—shouting now—“I fear no evil.”
The quake and rumble of hoofbeats.
“No evil,” she said again, as if the quake of the earth as the horses approached had shaken an echo from her. “I fear no evil.”
The hoofbeats stilled beside them, the ground quieting. A horse pawed the sand.
“Well, hell,” said a voice. And the speaker spit, the juice landing on one of Tom’s legs. “Looky here what we got.”
On the bank of the rice ditch, two bloodhounds lunged and spun and barked, their paws churning a crater of mud.
A voice from the bank called: “Well, this here’d be a real shame, you getting protected by an old hag. Her not knowing you was a man with a price on his head. A real hell of a shame.”
The world over Tom’s head unsteady, its colors and forms sloshing as if he were underwater, he kissed his momma’s hand and attempted to rise. But fell back, legs buckling, the world above and beside and below him nothing but water.
Tom felt his mam throw her body over his as a shield.
Heard the swell of her voice.
“Fear no evil. No evil. For thou art with me.”
Then a gunshot.
Her arms going limp around him.
And now the water around him was going red. His mam slumped, unmoving, onto his chest. Ripples and ripples of red.
Tom’s cry of anguish rose over the tops of the cypress trees and was carried away by the wind.
In the swamp, a great blue heron lifted its head, its long, slender neck stretching up to its full height. Listening. The cry that the wind bore troubled the waters, stirred the dangling moss.
The heron unfolded its wings.
Chapter 34
2015
Kate sat up straighter on the hood of the truck. “Something about this place. I keep thinking about the headstone back in the burying ground. I keep picturing what it would have been like if Tom—or any slave—tried to escape through here.”
Scudder lay against the windshield with his arms behind his head. “I know what you mean.”
She pointed down through the glass to a dog-eared book wedged between windshield and dash. “You know, you can tell a lot about a person’s character by the paperback classics he carts around in his pickup.”
Scudder’s eyes followed hers to the book. “So what exactly does The Sound and the Fury tell you about me?”
“Well, let’s see. That you have an interest in Southern lit.”
He held up a finger. “That’s one.”
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