by Clara Hume
"Well then, see?" Clinton insisted.
I didn't know what to think of this Clinton. He was loud and funny and even spoke eloquently despite his backwoods nature.
"And why don't you talk, girl?" He said to me. "Cat got your tongue? What a strange bunch you have, missing toes and arms and voices."
Joe gave him a look that said to be quiet, and Clinton got the hint and said, "Well, we gotta get going. But you should visit if you come to Columbia. Or if you're headed down to Beaufort way, maybe pop in to visit Pastor Gregory in Savannah. Real hoot of a guy. He'll feed you a feast. He's got real running water and a pretty woman too. But he'll talk your ear off about the Lord and salvation if you don't watch it, and he's got some crazy ideas about the world. Me and Turner, we listen to him because we get a good meal out of the deal and he gives us the opportunity to run the oranges."
Turner nodded solemnly. He was just a slight man who was going bald and had meek, hazel eyes and thin lips. I got the feeling he never got a word in edgewise.
Fran arose finally and ask if they'd heard of her mother. "She's a pretty French blond lady, older, but you'd remember her if you ever saw her. Barbara Herrera."
"We've given lots of people rides, lady. I do recall a very talkative blond at one point. Don't know if she was French, but she was 100% southern belle."
Fran looked hopeful, but confused. That would describe most women in these parts, I thought.
Clinton started to walk away, and Turner followed him. Everyone stood to wave good bye and thank them for their fruit and hospitality.
"Oh, one more thing," said Clinton before climbing into his wagon. "Beaufort, Savannah, all those towns and their suburbs, their shorelines are plum washed out. Anyone right on the coast has come inland. I hope your mother didn't have similar problems."
It occurred to me that Fran's memory of where her mother lived was about as good as Maisie's had been. Fran had an address, though.
I sat down after the strangers with oranges drove away. I looked at Joe, who abruptly turned away, because he had been looking at me. I couldn't help but look away and then smile. I knew he wasn't like Mike. What's more, I think I'd seen nearly everyone here drunk at some point, and none of them were mean. Joe just laughed a lot and then fell asleep.
I knew so little about him. He grew up outside Silver City most his life and ran horses there. His biological mother was from India, and Joe never said anything about his dad. He was real quiet and shy. He seemed too gentle for a cowboy, and he was so soft-spoken sometimes I had trouble hearing him. I got the feeling he had once had the hots for Maisie. Amazing what you could read on people's faces or just put together by tidbits of gossip. But she was always hanging about Caine, and Joe didn't seem to mind.
I felt someone sit beside me, and it took my mind off of Joe. It was Elena. Behind her I could see Daniel putting Kristy to bed in the wagon.
Elena was the beautiful one of all of us, I thought. Her long hair managed to be silky, her dark skin creamy, her eyes always alert and large, her eyelashes long, and her face pleasant.
"I think you should talk to him," she told me as she placed her arm on my shoulder.
I just smiled. I looked at Joe, but he was talking with Leo, who had picked up the guitar for a nightly serenade.
"Yes, him. Joe." said Elena.
She went on. "This no talking thing is getting old. I have trouble believing you are mute. Face it, Mei. You are missing out on a lot of potentially good things by not communicating with those who care about you, including that gorgeous hunk of a man over there who you could really have something with. How would he ever know unless you tell him? It's been weeks now since we found you."
I just couldn't stop grinning like a fool. I'd need to find my voice again if it meant having something with Joe.
Daniel—Chapter 25
We rode into the coastal Beaufort area months after having left our home in Idaho, and during the last leg of the trip felt badly about having used any fuel at all to get here, seeing how similar dependencies had turned the world upside-down. My dear Elena pointed out that once we got back home we should never take on such a trip again.
"People weren't meant to travel far into space. We should keep our family together and admire distance from afar."
South Carolina, once a land of mansions and old literature, wide green pastures, and stately old trees—palmettos, willows, dogwoods, magnolias, sycamores, oaks, cypress—that swept through the land, and Spanish moss crying down to the ground, was now dry and parched with only small pockets of green. Closer to the coast we began to feel some breezes, the first real refreshment in weeks.
During our first night in the state, Leo started strumming a Spanish-sounding song by someone from the far past, some bloke named John Frusciante, who had crooned about hope disappearing.
Fran felt fidgety and paced around our camp, with Floppy following her. I thought something was different about her. But there was something different with us all. Here we were, getting closer to the end of our journey, and instead of feeling excited, we missed our home. We were lost at sea, but our sea was dry. The mournful song set the tone for reaching our destination.
Two days later we were heading in to the Coosaw area and saw that the parts of the Saint Helena Sound's outer inlets and bays, which had once streamed inland from the Atlantic, were now gone, forcing the city of Beaufort westward. I imagined aged homes, churches, and industries beneath the coastal seabed, hauntingly entwined in seaweed and kelp. Maybe they'd composed a new habitat for fish and other marine life.
I saw a seagull fly high and squawk, and then gracefully soar away. I was looking out the wagon flap, which was now open without our fan, and said to Kristy, "Look, a seagull."
"Seagirl?" she replied.
This prompted us to laugh. Seagulls and three-year-olds: these things gave us impetus for the future.
Caine was driving the wagon and pulled over. We were near the city limits and could see the sprawl of abandoned buildings below the higher elevation.
Fran said her Aunt Reece's house was in the Mossy Oaks area, a place west of the undersea parts of the current city. The neighborhood had once been a greenway full of beautiful Charleston cottages. Fran said that when she was little, the grass had still been there. Now it was mostly brown or just plain gone, revealing the red clay underneath. The houses were dramatically listless, abandoned, and had peeling paint and sagging porches. At this time of the evening we saw no sign of life.
Fran had figured out the directions from here: south on Ribaut Road until we reached Mossy Oaks Road and then a few blocks west from there. She wanted to drive in, but as we changed drivers, one of the tires we'd been hearing clunk along finally gave way to a complete flat.
"We get this far," Caine said, "And look what she gives us."
As Caine and I went to work on fixing the tire and reinflating it, Fran and Leo took stock of guns and ammo. My daughter suckled her mother, but I sometimes got the feeling even Kristy was learning it was time to let go.
An hour or so later, we were set to go and Fran took the wheel. Buddha drove his bike, this time with Caine in the sidecar. Buddha said they needed real dudes back there who knew how to use a gun, but Joe said, "Mei is our best shot."
This got a snicker, and we were off, south on the road that used to run through neighborhoods of picturesque cottages with soft, verdant grass, but which were now silent and falling apart. The trip seemed slow. We all had our ears and eyes open to any movement at all, except for Fran who was looking straight ahead and not paying attention to anything but the idea of seeing her mother.
Elena stopped feeding Kristy and asked Mei to hold her, "I want to be with Fran if our parents are here," Elena told me.
I watched Elena talk Leo into moving, and then she sat with her best friend up front. Even Maisie was tense. She didn't want her friends to find their parents gone and missing, like she had her mother. I tried to concentrate on the surroundings. Joe and I were seated
near the back of the wagon, armed, and ready. Ready for what, we weren't sure. We had the back flaps partially open in order to be able to see our surroundings better. But all we saw was the sad, gray sky hanging over dilapidated houses. No more infamous trees, just some shrubbery. No more flowers or green lawns. Even Athens had had some life, but we also knew that some cities had been completely devastated by storms, while some had fared better.
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, and I shifted uneasily. Joe caught my drift, and I could see his grip tighten on his rifle he had propped up with only one arm. Fran stopped the wagon and called out. Into view came a little boy riding an unpainted tricycle. He looked to be healthy and happy but had a dirty face and torn jeans.
"Hey!" Fran yelled while scrambling off the wagon. I jumped out too, to cover, just in case. The boy saw my gun, hopped off his trike, and ran the other direction yelling for his mama. Fran and Elena chased after him, and Maisie took over the wheel to follow slowly down the street.
A big woman come out of her home with a shotgun, but when she saw Fran, that's all it took to lower her gun. Fran had a way about her. She might be tough and firm, but she was innocent and most creatures knew it.
"Is this your boy?" Fran asked.
The woman said, "Yes, and who are you?"
The little boy ran behind the comfort of his mother's flowered dress and was peeping out now and then. "I told you not to go far," the woman told her son.
"My name is Fran. I have relatives here in this neighborhood and came down to see if they were still here."
The woman looked at the wagon, and at Elena. "You got a lot of people with you."
Fran explained, "Yes, we picked up some along the way." She pointed to Elena and added, "She is looking for her father too. Our parents both came down here to visit my Aunt Reece after my dad died, and well, I guess we do have a wagonload, but it's our partners and this one's child and…"
"Reece Gillet? The French lady?"
"Yes!"
"Oh, well, I know her. Or knew her."
Fran didn't say anything for a moment.
"Reece, she's been my neighbor for years. You aren't Barbara's girl, are you? Why, I hear her speak of you often. I may remember when you visited long ago. A little blond pipsqueak of a girl, you were."
Fran smiled nervously.
The lady gave Fran a big bear hug. "Honey, maybe I shouldn't be the one to tell you, but your aunt passed away a few months ago. They think it was cancer. Right now, your mama and a couple gentlemen she brought down from Idaho are up at that house."
Fran broke down crying. I’d never seen her cry before. She sat on the grass. Leo went over to kneel down and hug her. We all breathed a sigh.
I went to Elena, relieved her father was still alive. Elena was crying too, though, and I went to hug her and Fran at once. But Fran wasn't going to sit there much longer, and neither was Elena. They took off running, and Maisie followed with the wagon. Even the lady we'd just met and her little boy, the only other signs of life in this city so far, ran too, to witness this reunion.
When we followed Fran and Elena into a two-story bungalow up the hill, there was a series of screams and hugs and a very surprised mother, father, and fellow rancher, Johnny, who couldn't believe we'd come down in that old wagon that had been sitting on the Idaho ranch for so long.
It took us a while to let it settle in, before Fran's mother said that her sister had indeed passed away in May, and since that time they'd all been talking about coming home, but they'd run out of gas getting down here and had had to ditch the car on the side of the road like so many others had. They'd gotten a ride from a couple guys transporting oranges.
"Don't tell me, Clinton and Turner?" I asked.
Barbara turned to me, astonished. "How did you know?"
"We met them along the way."
"I can hardly believe that you ran into those fine gentlemen," said Barbara. She was fanning herself and was wearing a patterned dress as if everything was normal in the world. Her eyes looked a little crazy. Maybe she had gone mad, after all, which had prompted her to leave the mountain. "I doubt they'd remember us, but they were such charitable men for giving us a lift like that."
She was indeed a fine lady of grace, and I could see why Fran adored her, even though the two women were very unlike each other. Barbara suddenly said quite loudly, "Remember how we promised to drink sweet tea, Fran? Well, I think it's time to do just that." She arose and went to a dim but well-furnished kitchen and put some water on the fire.
Elena and her father awkwardly hugged, but then she broke down as she told him about Cameron. Willy had to sit down but pulled his daughter down with him on the sofa, where he hugged her endlessly, telling her he was so sorry.
The helpful lady down the road finally introduced herself as Elizabeth Sands. Her son was named Nathan, and he became more outgoing instead of hiding behind his mother's dress, finding a new friend in Kristy, which gave Elena and me a nice break for the evening—to see our daughter find occupation outside of us was something new and surprising.
We had to make introductions, and Barbara was charming as a proper southern gentle-lady would be, complete with a drawn-out accent and eloquent speech. I felt something was off, though. I'd known her my whole life. She had been that way up at the ranch to some extent, but not as much as now, in her dear old home.
Meeting Leo was something else, though. She'd recognized him the moment he had walked in the door but didn't have time to compute why a famous Hollywood actor from more than a decade ago had walked in with her daughter, Elena, me, and some other scraggly, road-worn people she'd never met.
"He's my partner now," Fran stated. And though it would be a while later in the evening before she would announce her pregnancy to her mother and the rest of us, Barbara gave instant approval of Leo and took him by the arm to speak to him privately about whatever mothers do when they meet their daughter's first man, and also to tell him how fantastic he'd been in Macondo's Solitude.
We had tea on the back veranda near a browning weeping willow tree. The tea was warm with no mint or lemon. Tonight was windless, and the scene was gray instead of green how it used to be when Barbara was younger.
Fran told her mother. "I told you we would drink sweet tea again someday."
"And is that why you came all the way here?" There were tears in Barbara's eyes.
"Yes, though the tea is bitter and the land is dying." Fran sounded off too, happy but curt.
Then nobody spoke. Our early reverie had now been broken by a silent interlude with the sullen realization that in our lifetimes we would not see this country like it had been before. Not ever. We didn’t want to see the consumer wasteland it had been, with shallow ideals and disposables and processed foods and plastic thingamajigs that made no sense—what we missed were the growing things, the fresh water.
Later, I glanced around the house and saw that Elizabeth was preparing us a meal. She also brought out a couple of bottles of various booze for later. The house may have once been a grand one but now was run-down. Barbara explained that Johnny and Willy had fixed the roof, which had been ripped off in a hurricane a few months prior, and they had also repaired some flooring that had rotted through.
Of course, this house was off the grid like everyone else's, and later, candles and torches were lit. The women of the family had tried to keep the home as classy as possible, but their efforts were in vain only, as the home had no running water or fine furniture anymore. Its structure had been kept up, however, and Aunt Reece had kept her fine China, antique books, and dainty candlestick holders.
After the initial flutter from this reunion, I noticed Elena still sitting with her father. I listened.
Elena said, "Daddy, are you going to come back home?"
He had tears in his eyes when he spoke. Willy Shay had once been a handsome man, but now he was poor and unhealthy looking—his skin pallid and his body a shadow of what it had once been. "I feel like such an assh
ole for leaving you," he finally sputtered out to his daughter. The words erupted like vomit that he had been holding in.
"You were trying to figure out the best thing to do," Elena told him.
"I kicked myself for leaving you and Danny behind," he said. "And little Kristy and Cam." Tears were pooling in the corners of his eyes as he thought about Cameron again.
"It's okay, Dad. I'm proud of you for seeing Barbara down here safely."
"I felt I had to," he admitted. "But I'd planned to come back too. I just had to see to it that she would come back too. And now here we are. And little Cam—"
Elena cradled her father in her arms and ran her slender fingers through what hair he had left. "You love Barbara, don't you, Dad?"
He couldn't admit it at first but finally said, "Yes. I do." His voice was meek and sorrowful.
"Do you think she'll come home?" Elena said.
"I think she will now. If you're going back and we have a way, then, yeah."
I felt like a voyeur and broke my silent witness to embrace them both, feeling for once that our ranch family would be united and also thrilled and relieved that bandits, disease, and nothing else had gotten Barbara, Johnny, or Willy.
Johnny was quiet. He'd been happy to see us, but wasn't the emotional type. He helped Elizabeth in the kitchen instead. I patted him on the back and told him it was nice to see him, and he echoed the thought.
Soon, night fell around the house and we settled into a candlelight dinner with fancy China. We ate beans and broth as well as sliced tomatoes that Elizabeth had grown.
During dinner you would think the world was right and that nothing had changed from the old days, but Barbara sullenly warned us that most people in the city had been hit by a wave of flu before they'd arrived from Idaho.
"I say we all head back home," Barbara announced as she plinked a spoon on her glass of wine. "What do you say?"
There was a resounding yes, and as I looked around the candlelit table, I saw that we were all, despite our weary trip, revived and motivated to do this.