“In all my years, I’ve never been here,” Richard said from the backseat.
Cher leaned against the front armrest. “Does it look different to you, Miss Claudia?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Miss Claudia replied, never looking at the little fishing village outside her window.
I gripped the steering wheel and cut my eyes towards her. But as soon as we passed over the bridge and the town was behind us, Miss Claudia released the grasp on her pant legs. Rows of navy wrinkles were all that remained.
Cher leaned on the back of the seat while Miss Claudia’s Lincoln coasted down the long bridge to St. George Island. Pine trees and sawgrass dotted the edges of the bay side.
“Forgotten Florida,” Richard called the island.
After we picked up our house key from the real-estate office, Miss Claudia asked me to stop at the corner of the main road. Her eyes grew wider when she ordered a bushel of oysters from a man with a red umbrella in the back of his truck. A white sign spray-painted with the words Fresh Seafood propped against the back truck tire.
“Those things are nasty,” Cher said and stuck a finger in her mouth.
“Sugar, you haven’t lived until you’ve tasted an oyster from Apalachicola Bay,” Miss Claudia said. “We’re going to be regular big shots shucking oysters tonight.”
I laughed harder than the situation warranted, relieved that the salt air we had driven hours to find was working its magic.
The island had one main road that stretched from one end of water to the other. Other than three real-estate offices, a convenience store, two restaurants, and a brightly painted pink building that sold ice cream and rented videotapes, St. George Island was made up of homes. We drove to the end, next to the gated state park. Two sand dunes covered with tall brown grass greeted us as the Lincoln pulled into the gravel driveway. The beige stucco building, held high off the ground by four large stilts, was pushed far away from the other homes. Rows of sugar-colored sand dunes were our closest neighbors.
Cher jumped out of the car and headed towards the beach. “Don’t you get your clothes all wet,” I yelled behind her.
We unlocked the door to discover four bedrooms and a large screened porch facing the beach. The home looked like something out of one of Miss Claudia’s magazines. Three big white columns separated the kitchen and living room. “Cher’ll be happy,” I said and pointed to the VCR and library shelf packed with videos.
I placed Miss Claudia’s luggage in the big bedroom that faced the emerald water. She sat on a white chest at the end of the bed and clasped her hands.
“This place looks brand-new.” I pulled back the floral drapes and opened the French doors leading to the screened porch. The tinkle of wind chimes echoed, and a soft breeze made the sheer curtains sway in all different directions.
“Good gracious alive.” Miss Claudia took a deep breath of the salty air. “I don’t know what kept me so long.”
Twenty-three
“The man next door’s from Albany, Georgia,” Richard announced before lunch. “He has a fine boat parked down at the marina. Mentioned us taking a fishing expedition.”
Miss Claudia winked at me and placed the bowl of boiled shrimp on the table. “Did you wash your hands?”
While Richard was sanitizing himself, a thud from outside vibrated the floor. The sound of Cher racing up the steps became her calling card. A red-and-white-striped beach towel was wrapped around her, and her hair was slicked back with salt water.
“I’m going to lay out and get darrrrk,” she said, twirling around in circles.
“Watch out or you’ll knock something over,” I said and brushed the crystal sand from her cheek. Seeing her acting childish was a welcome change to the shell-shocked young woman I first dropped off at Andra’s office.
By the end of the first week, I settled into a spoiled, carefree lifestyle. A way of life I imagined people on the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous lived. But it took another week to lose the nervous edge that I ought to be busy with some household chore. With such a compact house there was little cleaning. Just the daily washing and cooking. Plenty of time was left to sit on the beach watching Cher ride the waves on the yellow-and-black boogie board that she secretly talked Miss Claudia into buying. After the afternoon dishes were washed, I would walk down the white sand beach and check on the progress of the fishermen, who kept their rods nestled inside PVC pipes, hidden deep within the sand.
Miss Claudia originally suggested that we continue our daily Bible study. It was my idea to meet on the front porch just before sunrise.
Miss Claudia stared at the white sand scattered on the porch floor. “Erma Lee, why do you reckon God put a stop to the rescue home?”
I sipped a cup of coffee and ran my fingers through loose hair. Orange rays were rising over the dunes on the side of the house. “When we first got back from picking up Cher, you know, over there.”
Miss Claudia nodded, offering a detour around saying the word Shreveport.
“Lee’s sermon the first Sunday back was on circumstance. He said when you go through bad stuff and don’t have answers, you got to focus on Christ. That’s just how he said it, Christ—not circumstance. We can either let the circumstances control us, or we can ask the Lord to carry it for us.”
Miss Claudia rocked in the wicker chair, and the roar from the waves grew stronger. “But I know the Lord wanted me to move forward with that house. I just know it.”
“Then you did your part. And I know I’m not telling you stuff you don’t already know,” I said and playfully pointed my finger at her. “But we all got a free will. Even those city council people.”
“Free will. Yes, indeed.” She looked through the porch screen. Her lonesome eyes trailed a sea gull flying inches above the waves.
“Now I want to tell you something. Are you listening?”
She glanced at me and half smiled.
“All right. We study this here Bible to know how to live like Christ. And if there’s anybody on this earth who does it, it’s the woman sitting in front of me,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “You make your mark on so many people, I couldn’t count them if I had to. I see how you leave people feeling better. How you let them know you love them.” My voice cracked, and I quickly looked down at the rocker’s peeling white flakes. “I know cause that’s how you done me. And well…I love you for it.”
The creaking floor caused me to look up. The edge of her baby blue duster was next to my rocking chair. Before she walked inside the house, she squeezed my shoulder. I sipped coffee and witnessed the first rays of sunlight easing over the island and into the water. The squeeze of her hand made me feel light. Light enough to step off the porch and join the group of pelicans flying over the beach in a V-shaped pattern.
During the days that followed my pep talk, conversations with Miss Claudia were superficial. She was cheery enough, laughing at Richard’s corny jokes, making over how Cher’s arms were being defined from all her swimming, telling me how good the fish was, but never anything deeper. Even the morning Bible studies seemed rehearsed and stilted.
“Erma Lee, I need you to pack me a sandwich and a handful of potato chips,” Richard said while I scrubbed the breakfast dishes.
“What you got going on?” I asked and turned sideways. Richard was putting Cher’s suntan lotion on his arms and hands.
“What in the world?” Miss Claudia propped her hand on the kitchen bar.
“Matt, you know, our neighbor, is taking me trout fishing. He said this place has the biggest…”
“Well, you can’t do that,” Miss Claudia snapped.
I turned around with soap bubbles still on my hands.
“Now, Mama, we’re just going fishing. I took all my medicine this morning.”
“Have you even been out on a boat in the past twenty-five years? You have no earthly idea how you might carry on.”
“And neither do you.” His right arm stretched out frozen. The white and orange bottle of
lotion tilted in his hand.
“I reckon I know enough. I’m the one who saw you hooked up to those tubes when you fell out in a spasm that day in court,” Miss Claudia yelled. “Liked to give me and your daddy a heart attack seeing you that way.”
“It’s just a boat. A boat,” Richard said. A drop of white suntan lotion fell to the floor.
“You’re special, you know that. You can’t do like other men. That boat will be loud and bumpy. Your nerves will just go all to pieces.”
Richard stormed into his room and came out with a white cap with the word Florida stitched in orange thread across the front. “Never mind the sandwich, Erma Lee. I’ll stop by the store on the way out.”
“Richard, I’m warning you. It’s trouble. I feel it.” Miss Claudia held the door and yelled down the stairs. When Richard’s shoes no longer stomped the wooden stairs, she closed the door.
She stood planted at the door until the awkward silence forced me to speak. “I know you’re probably thinking about what happened to your first husband.”
“What?” Her pained expression made me wonder if she questioned whether the man who just ignored her really was a nerve patient after all.
“You know, with Luther Ranker getting lost at sea and everything.”
She wrinkled her brow and shooed her hands.
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “This man’s boat is probably top dollar. Well, there’s not even a cloud today.”
“After Richard came to live with us, I stayed worried to death he’d have another nerve attack. His daddy even hired a man to put soundproof insulation in the walls of the apartment.” She eased down on the sofa. “We liked to lost him the first time. Oh, Erma Lee, I just can’t bear to lose another child.” Her hand trembled when she shaded her eyes.
I knelt beside the sofa. “He’ll be fine. You won’t lose him over no fishing trip. It might even do him good.”
A steady chime drifted from the porch. The high-pitched toll was too closely akin to a wail of mourning. I blocked the noise from my mind and chose instead to focus on the feeling that my knee was falling asleep.
Miss Claudia’s weak eyes fixated on the black TV screen. “My poor Beth. She was just the tiniest thing you ever did see. So vulnerable to the meanness.”
Her white blouse felt slick when I rubbed her shoulder. “Now, that was a long time ago. Your first baby’s at rest.”
“Oh no, no, no.” Her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped open. She moaned in a way I had never heard before, neither a sound of pain or pleasure. A stream of drool trickled from the corner of her mouth. Thinking she was having a stroke, my first inclination was to call an ambulance. Keeping the wild-eyed stare, she got up from the sofa and drifted to the door. “I can’t stand this mess,” she slowly said, her eyes closed and her hand on the gold doorknob. “I just can’t stand it. Run me up to the cemetery.”
Unsure of Miss Claudia’s mental state, I let Cher stay behind on the beach. Miss Claudia was quiet when we reached the top of the big bridge guarding Apalachicola Bay. She leaned against the car window and stared at the two-block city.
“Over yonder is where Luther kept his boat,” she said and pointed to the spot where a restaurant now stood.
As if the years had rolled back upon our arrival, she called each building by its name known seven decades ago. When we came to the spot where the local bank stood, she tapped the passenger window with her red fingernail. “Old Man Maxwell’s store. Good riddance.”
She never said to pull into the cemetery, but when I saw her point towards the small graveyard across from the gray stone church, I turned on the blinker. Spanish moss from the oak tree branches dangled above the black wrought-iron gates through which we passed.
Slick green leaves from a magnolia tree hung over the area Miss Claudia was drawn to. The edges of the headstones hinted at the white they once were. Age and weather had turned them a sooty black. A simple concrete cross marked the spot where her father was buried. “You know, I still thank God every day for my daddy. If it hadn’t been for that good, sweet man, I might’ve never had enough trust to find Wade Tyler.”
A few steps farther, she stopped and looked up with her eyes closed. I adjusted my sunglasses, trying to watch for any signs of buckling legs.
“Erma Lee, I got something to say. And I want you to hold your tongue until I’m through.”
She pointed the end of her cane towards the tiny headstone. Ranker was the only recognizable word on the black-streaked stone.
“We put my little Beth here, next to Daddy. I always imagined the good Lord sending Daddy for her the night she passed. Luther wasn’t supposed to come home early that night. He said he wanted to take the mullet nets and fish until sunup. But shortly after midnight, I heard him groaning on the front steps, straining to pull the wet rubber boots off his feet.
“Beth was just two then. The poor little thing had been running a fever all day. The doctor was over in Gulf County. I made do the best I could. The wet rag worked for a little while, but by the time Luther got in, she was pulling her blonde curls and screaming at the top of her lungs.
“‘You better shut that young ’un up,’ Luther yelled from the bed. His tongue was never thick from whiskey, just from meanness. I bounced her on my hip and pushed her face into my nightgown, hoping to drown out the screaming. But she’d only gasp for air, throw her head back, and scream louder.
“All I could hear were screams. Luther’s screams. My baby’s screams. And before I could gather my senses, I was screaming too. Screaming that I hated Luther and saying all the foul things I had tried to bottle in my throat in days gone by. I still can see the crooked purple vein in his temple, big and bulging, when he stood over the rocker and screamed into my face.
“That was the one time I thought he’d really kill me. You know it was the strangest thing, I’d prepared myself for death. Even welcomed it. But when the time came, I didn’t give in like I thought. With every ounce of strength I slammed my knee between his legs. He fell on the floor, rolling back and forth, eyes wide open.
“Beth looked like something gone wild. My baby’s hair was hanging in her face and inside her mouth. She just kept screaming while I ran with her into our bedroom. I grabbed Luther’s wallet and slipped on a pair of shoes, still listening to him in the other room moaning.
“The old front screen door hung by one hinge. I remember thinking how easy it was to kick open and wondered why I’d never tried it before.
“We made it to the first porch step when I felt the stinging fire of his work boot against my neck.” Miss Claudia’s hand trembled when she rubbed her neck just as if the bruise was still fresh.
“When he hit me with his boot, I turned just a touch. And when I did I saw the flash of his fist coming at my eye, knocking me sideways down the steps. I landed on the bottom step, and he jumped on top of me. It only hurt for a few punches, and then my face felt numb. I kept trying to arch my back, hoping Beth would crawl out from under me. All I could feel was a lump underneath my spine. Like a sack of flour or something. ‘My baby! My baby!’ I kept trying to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth but blood.”
Miss Claudia took two steps backwards, and I helped her to a marble bench. Brittle, dead magnolia leaves and moss covered the seat. Her glasses had slipped to the end of her nose, and a line of sweat trickled down her temple.
“Accident, they called it. The doctor only found a tiny spot of blood on the side of Beth’s head. I always hoped she died the minute she hit that porch step. The poor old doctor tried to comfort me by saying she probably would’ve died from the fever anyway.
“‘I hope you know you killed her,’ Luther said the day after we buried her. ‘You squashed her like a roach,’ he’d say over and over until I would feel my teeth chattering from nothing but pure rage.
“I spent the next month thinking of a way to end it. I had an idea to stow away on one of the fishing boats. When they were deep in the Gulf, busy working, I’d sneak out
from under the tarp and ease myself into the water. But Luther pushed me before I could ease into anything.
“The night he slapped me in the kitchen for not frying the mullet crispy enough, I got up from the table, barely making a sound. He continued to eat his swamp cabbage and grits and complained about prices paid for grouper. A slap was nothing but a love tap for Luther. I liked to not even flinch when he struck me. Just like I didn’t flinch when I saw the knife lying on the counter.
“I can still see the flakes of silver-and-blue fish scales left on the blade. That’s all I remember, those shiny fish scales. Pretty, like diamonds or something. And the next thing I know, I’m standing behind Luther’s chair looking at the knife sticking out of the side of his neck and listening to him gurgle for air. He tried to turn around, but slipped sideways and hit the floor. Silly the things you remember. The loud thud from the fall reminded me of Old Man Maxwell’s store and how he used to throw sacks of feed on the wooden floor.
“Every light in the house was on when I went running to Missoura and Aaron’s place. They told me later I was beating on the door and screaming that somebody had killed me. If it had been anybody else I’d run to, I’m satisfied I’d be in the nervous hospital, don’t you know.
“Aaron’s forehead glowed with sweat when he looked down at the hateful man who furnished his paycheck. I know most he was studying what might happen to him if any of this hit the streets.
“I helped Aaron wrap Luther in a sheet, trying to make myself believe that the body we rolled was a rag doll. A doll, nothing more or less, with some of the stuffing missing from its neck. I helped load the crimson-soaked sheet into Aaron’s wagon. An hour after the saloon closed, the town was quiet. Aaron headed west with the wagon. When he found the fresh-tilled soil roped off with white cord, he put Luther away for good.”
A Place Called Wiregrass Page 28