One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  He turned off the highway, finally, onto a paved road that zigzagged past towns and churches and fishing shacks, then through wetlands and woodlands where blue herons rose with a great beating of wings to the safety of ancient trees, and Spanish moss hung like remnants of tattered curtains over dark, mysterious pools. Eventually, he turned off that road, too, onto a gravel track that wound through woods so deep and dense the Spanish moss swished against the roof of the car, and the only sounds were the cries of birds and the crunch of their tires on the gravel. Even the children seemed to have been awed into silence, just a little too nervous, Summer thought, to risk a question.

  “We’re here-everybody out,” said Riley at last, halting the car in a grassy clearing. “End of the road.”

  And indeed it was. Ahead through the trees, Summer could see blue sky, the green of marsh grass, the glint of sun on water. She could see a house, too, at the edge of the marshes, a small wood frame house with wide porches and a faintly ramshackle look about it in spite of what appeared to be a fresh coat of paint. After seeing to the unloading of the car and making sure everyone had everything they were supposed to have, however, Riley struck off, not toward the house, but along a footpath that led past it to a long wooden jetty, which angled off across the marsh to where a tiny fishing shack sat on the edge of a landing jutting into a broad inlet.

  The children were delighted with the jetty. Liking the way their footsteps sounded on the wooden planks, they stomped along it with restored confidence, running on ahead until their noise brought a man out of the fishing shack to investigate. He was a tall man, thin but muscular and slightly bent, and wore overalls and a light-colored, short-sleeved shirt. He had a frosting of white whiskers on his weathered face and a bald head that shone like polished walnut. Seeing him, both children froze like guilty miscreants and waited for the grown-ups to catch up.

  With one hand on David’s shoulder and the other on Helen’s head to steady them on the narrow jetty, Riley stepped between and then past them. Summer, moving up behind the children, saw the old man’s face blossom with his smile.

  “Hey you, boy,” he called out, in thickened, lilting cadences that were unfamiliar and difficult to understand.

  “Hey, Brasher,” Riley called back as he went to meet him.

  After a moment Summer followed, herding the now-shy and tongue-tied children, and was in time to see the two men clasp each other’s arms with the restrained affection of old, old friends. She could see them talking, see nodding heads and gesturing hands, hear the murmur of conversation she couldn’t quite make out. As she drew closer, though, she heard clearly the words boat, island and tide. And last and unmistakably: hurricane.

  “What’s this about a hurricane?” she asked as she and the children joined the two men, with a smile to take away the rudeness of the interruption.

  “Brasher, here, says we’re gonna have one,” Riley drawled as he turned and with a casual sweep of his arm made them part of his company. And as she listened to him make the introductions, Summer felt a prickling behind her eyes and an ache in her throat, because she realized that with that single gesture, Riley had made them sound more like a couple, and with her children, a family unit, than she ever had in all the twelve years of her marriage.

  The black man’s name, she learned, was Brasher Kemp, and she liked his smile, the feel of his warm, leathery hand, the look of honest appraisal in his wise old eyes. She liked the way he took each of her children’s hands in his two big ones and bowed over them as he repeated their names with great solemnity.

  “A hurricane?” said Summer, using a hand to shade her eyes from the bright sunshine while she scanned the pale summery sky, the typically hazy and undefined horizon. “Oh, surely not any time soon.”

  “Not today, for sure,” said Brasher, his eyes twinkling. “Today be good beach weather.”

  “What’s a hurry-cane?” Helen asked, squirming with uncharacteristic shyness.

  David snorted and rolled his eyes, clearly mortified by his sister’s ignorance, but Brasher put his hands on his knees and stooped down so that his face was nearly on her level. “That’sa bi-ig ba-ad storm, little missy,” he said in his thick, deep voice, in that strange-sounding cadence. “Wind howls like ten thousand demons, an’ the air turns to water, an’ waves come roll ovah the land-blow down trees an’ blow ’way houses an’ blow all the boats up on the shore. Hurricane comes, you don’ wanna be down here, child.” He straightened with one gnarled hand on Helen’s soft curls to wink at Riley. “But don’ you worry, this boy here been through the hurricane, he’ll take good care of you. He knows what to do. You be safe with him. You go on to the island now, have a good time on the beach. Be a good day for the beach. Been some nice shells this summer…” He threw them a wave as he walked back up the jetty toward the house.

  “Island?” Summer asked in a low voice as Riley ushered them through the fishing shanty and onto the landing. “We’re going to an island?”

  He answered her with a nod, his focus on getting them all into the small wooden rowboat equipped with an outboard motor that was tied up to the landing. He felt curiously detached as he lowered their gear into it, then climbed down and braced himself with feet planted wide apart in the bottom of the boat and one hand on the ladder, but he knew it was a protective kind of withdrawal, a shield against vulnerability.

  “Okay, David, you’re next…there you go. Life jackets are under the seat in the bow-that’s the pointed end. Put one on and get one for your sister while you’re at it.” Then came Helen, her mother handing her halfway down the ladder, Riley lifting her the rest of the way. And it was Summer’s turn. He tried not to watch her as she came down the ladder…first those long, tanned legs of hers right at his eye level, then that fanny, nicely rounded and firm in blue denim shorts…but his breathing quickened, anyway, and his body stirred with natural and unavoidable responses. When he put his hands on her waist to steady her into the boat, he knew he had to pass her on and release her quickly-too quickly, almost as if he’d found touching her unpleasant-or he would be in grave danger of lingering too long and giving himself away.

  “Do you row?” Summer asked him as he was stowing the oars out of the way in the bottom of the boat. Her voice was casual, if slightly breathless, but when he glanced up at her he saw that her eyes were focused on his arms and shoulders, and with a look that gave him a sudden and rather adolescent urge to take off his shirt and flex his muscles.

  “I do when the tide is right,” he said, turning his concentration upon the outboard motor instead. “It’s less intrusive, and-” now he couldn’t resist acknowledging that feminine appraisal with a frankly masculine grin “-I like the exercise.” He was inordinately pleased at the blush that spread across her cheeks. And even more pleased that she did not look away, but instead held his gaze with an acknowledgment of her own, clear and plain as the light in her sky-blue eyes.

  It took all his willpower, that time, to turn away from her and back to the motor. And when he had it started up and throttled down to a throbbing growl, he was well aware that the vibration he felt inside did not come from the engine.

  He cast off the line and headed the boat into the channel on a course he’d followed countless times before-and yet now it seemed different to him somehow, as if he were seeing everything for the first time. What would she think, he wondered, if she knew she was the first living soul he’d ever taken to his island? What did he think?

  Once again the veil of detachment settled around him, protecting him. He did not want to think.

  “Is it really an island?” Summer wasn’t sure why she was whispering. Riley had cut the engine as they approached so that they drifted into a tree-shaded inlet with the oars and the tide, and there was something a little intimidating, almost sacred in the silence, like being inside a church. The only sounds were the hum of insects, an occasional birdcall, and the shushing of waves on the sand. “And no one lives here?” she asked when he’d replied to her fi
rst question with a nod. “No one at all?”

  “No-and no one ever will.” There was something grim about his smile.

  “Are you sure it’s all right for us to be here?” She was whispering again; she’d seen several Private Property-No Trespassing signs already, posted on the dunes and tacked to the trunks of trees.

  For a few minutes he said nothing while he nudged the boat’s bow up to a wooded embankment, jumped out and snugged the line to a small tree stump, then pulled the stern in close to the bank and held it so that the children could easily hop from boat to shore. But when it was Summer’s turn, he offered his hand to steady her and said for her alone, with that same enigmatic little smile, “It’s all right-I know the owner.”

  “Brasher?”

  He shook his head, the smile darkening. “Brasher takes care of it-chases away trespassers and poachers and such. But he doesn’t own the island. Not anymore.”

  Understanding came as they walked along a barely discernible pathway between banks of scrubby vegetation, and she gave a small gasp. “You do. You own this island, don’t you?” He nodded reluctantly, as if it was something to be ashamed of. “Oh, my God-it’s really yours? All of it?” The idea that someone could own an island seemed incredible to her, the most impressive of all the impressive things she knew about Riley Grogan.

  But he shrugged, and once again a look of discomfort crossed his face. “I hold the deed, but I don’t consider that I own the island. I think of myself as…more of a guardian-like Brasher.” He was quiet for a few moments, watching the children run ahead between seagrass-tufted dunes, then said in a soft, almost musing voice, “It was deeded to Brasher’s great grandmama after the War-that’s the Civil War, of course-by her former master, who was also Brasher’s great granddaddy. That was on his daddy’s side. Brasher was raised in Jamaica where his mother’s people were. I don’t believe anybody ever actually lived on the island. I used to come here when I was a child. It was…kind of a refuge for me, I guess you might say.” His lips flicked briefly with that dark, bitter smile. “Then a few years back, Brasher’s kinfolk got to fightin’ over whether or not to sell out to the developers that’d been circling around like buzzards for years, half thinkin’ they ought to take the money and the other half wantin’ to keep it wild like it is. Anyway, I got wind of it and…I had a few assets I felt I could live without, and the upshot of it is, I was able to make Brasher and his family an offer they could all live with. First thing I did was take the necessary steps to ensure that the island will never be developed, no matter what happens to me. That’s one hundred per cent guaranteed.”

  They had come through the last of the dunes, and suddenly there it was, a pristine expanse of sand stretching away from the inlet to a distant point far to the right-to the south. A glistening sheet still wet from the retreating tide, it reflected the silvery blue of the summer sky and made mirror-like images of the stilt-legged birds that pecked and played tag in the lacy froth of the gently rolling waves. Riley checked suddenly, his brow furrowed with concern and his eyes on the children, who were already far down the beach, dancing and chasing each other barefoot through the shallow surf, their cries and laughter carried back on the warm sea breeze. “Are they-”

  Summer laughed. “Don’t worry about them-they’ve been coming to the beach since they were babies.”

  Riley nodded and started forward again, reaching for her hand in such a natural way that it would have seemed unnatural not to give it to him.

  Natural, yes…but so were lightning, and electricity, and fire. Her hand tingled where it met his; heat raced up her arm and flooded her body, her heartbeat quickened. With a mumbled “Just a minute…” she slipped out of her shoes, one by one, then scooped them up in her free hand while he waited. “Thanks…” Breathless, she straightened, and she could feel his eyes on her, narrowed with a puzzling frown.

  “Someday,” he said on an exhalation as they walked on, leaving their own footprints beside the children’s smaller ones, “I imagine this will be the only wild beach left on the southeastern coast.”

  “It’s beautiful.” But Summer felt a heaviness inside, a yearning ache behind her smile. She could go no farther but instead halted and raked her hair back from her face and lifted it to the sun and the breeze in an almost defiant gesture, as if by sheer will she could hold the loneliness at bay.

  “I sense a ‘but’ in there,” said Riley softly. She glanced at him in surprise and guilt, wondering how he knew.

  She took a deep breath and shook her hair free, letting the warm wind have it-and to hell, she thought, with the frizzies. “It’s funny,” she said with an attempt at a laugh, “but it reminds me of the desert-the Mojave Desert, you know?-where I grew up.”

  He looked at her with curiosity in his smile. “That is funny-our beach reminds you of your desert? How so?”

  She tried another laugh that failed, then gave it up and walked along in silence for a time, smiling at her bare feet making footprints in the wet sand and thinking, How is it people smile most determinedly when they are trying hardest not to cry? But Riley didn’t press her-again, she wondered how he knew-and after a while, when she felt quiet enough inside, she lifted her eyes to the horizon and said softly, “My sister Evie used to say it gave her a case of ‘the wild lonelies.’ The desert, I mean. It’s beautiful, you know, in a wild sort of way, and there are things about it I still miss-the huge, endless vistas, the way the colors change from day to day, hour to hour. You know, the desert never looks the same way twice-the flowers in the springtime…the enormity of the sky. But it can suck the life out of you, too. And the hope. Evie always says the desert is a great place to be from. I’d have to agree with her about that, but about the loneliness, I guess I never really knew what she meant until…”

  “Until now?” She nodded, and once more felt his look, this one more penetrating than curious. “What about this place makes you feel lonely?”

  She shook her head but found it easy enough to answer him-too easy. If this keeps up, she thought, I will have no secrets left! “I don’t know why, really-the openness, maybe. The quiet…the wind…the marshes. And yes, it does make me feel lonely.”

  Riley was silent for a long time, and she was afraid she might have wounded him somehow-as if she were inappreciative of his generosity in bringing her to his special place, for she knew that was what it was. But again he surprised her, when after a while he said in a voice as quiet as hers had been, “Or…maybe it’s not that the place makes you feel lonely, so much as it makes you know you are. There’s an…absence of distraction out here. Nothing to hide behind. No shelter, no choice but to confront who you are…all the things that are inside you-the thoughts and feelings, the hopes and dreams, the lies and truths. As beautiful as it is, this place can do that to you.” And then it was his time for introspective silence and hers for patient waiting, before he drew a deep breath and murmured, “And beautiful as it is, like your sister said, it’s a great place to be from.”

  She threw him a quick, startled look, surprised not as much by the revelation, which she’d already begun to suspect, as by the fact that he’d shared it with her. “You are from here, then?”

  “Well, not from here here, but…around here, yeah, I am.” And his smile grew enigmatic once more. “As I said, this island has sheltered me more than once. Brasher taught me how to drift in on the tide when I was still too small to row very far. He taught me how to fish for crabs…taught me a lot of things, Brasher did.”

  “Is he the one?” Summer asked, casting him a sly, sideways glance.

  “The one…what?”

  “The one who taught you to make biscuits.”

  And he laughed out loud and didn’t answer her. Instead, they walked together, holding hands like lovers, trading surreptitious glances and hiding them in discoveries of shells and sand dollars. Summer understood that they had each come as close to admitting to loneliness as the constraints of pride and personality would allow, and she was c
ertain Riley knew it, too. She felt a trembling inside that was not of fear or exhaustion or excitement or desire, but more like the wobbliness of a vulnerable newborn creature, standing for the first time on uncertain legs and gazing at the world in wide-eyed wonder. The world seemed miraculous to her, and all things new.

  And when she found a whole and perfect sand dollar, showing it to him with a cry of delight, he cupped his hands around hers and gazed down into her eyes as if it were she who were the treasure. She felt it not only possible but even somehow inevitable that he would kiss her…simply the culmination of something that had begun at that moment when he’d first taken her hand.

  He whispered something she couldn’t hear for the rushing in her own ears. She felt his warm breath on her lips, and her own breathing ceased. Her body rocked with the force of her beating heart. Incomprehensible tears pricked her eyes.

  I will remember this moment, she thought. I will remember this kiss, whether it is the first and the last, or the first of ten thousand more. I will remember this place, this day, this moment… this kiss. And treasure it, like the rare and perfect sand dollar she held pressed against her breasts, against her heart, pressed between their bodies as his mouth covered hers.

  Time stopped, and the world retreated. She felt nothing-not even the mischievous waves that ran in to tickle her feet and then run away again-except the warm, firm pressure of his lips, the raw silk texture of his skin. Heard nothing-not the wind, the shushing of the waves, the high, bright calls of seabirds-except the singing of his name inside her head, and the rush and thunder of her heartbeat, like the noise of a storm.

  And then, too soon, she felt him pull away, gently, reluctantly, and the world rushed in like the waves around her feet. She felt the shifting of the sand underfoot, the cooling breath of the wind, and in the distance, like the cries of seabirds, the children’s voices calling to them.