The place was dusty, and he wondered why no one had come to clean it after Ned’s death. Heart attack, the death certificate said. Swift, inexorable. He never even made it to a hospital.
Cab came farther into the room, letting his hand touch the back of a chair they had found on the curb one summer, the woodstove that heated the place in winter, which Cab had never even seen lit. The floor was made of wood that had never seen a sander or a coat of polyurethane. It was covered by a big oval rag rug that someone had made by hand.
He went into the kitchen, walked across the faded and cracked roll linoleum, and had the oddest urge to take off his shoes.
Off the kitchen was his little room. The door was closed, and Cab hesitated before he looked inside. He guessed it had been converted to a storage room long ago. Ned would have stopped expecting him to visit.
But he hadn’t. The room was just as it was the first day Cab had come to the house. Same twin bed, the mattress sagging between the brass bed frame. Cab remembered telling Ned that it was just like sleeping on the carousel with the brass poles all around.
Cab walked in and sat on the bed. It groaned ominously beneath his weight. But he didn’t care. He was just beginning to understand what he’d really lost, and he buried his face in his hands and cried.
AT SIX O’CLOCK, Sarah locked the door of the community center. She didn’t know why she bothered. It would be a blessing if someone stole whatever junk they could cart away. There was no equipment, hardly any usable furniture, and the man the county had sent in to run the place had not only absconded with the grant money but taken the only working computer with him.
That’s what grants got you. Red tape and charlatans. Maybe she should write an article about that instead of “The Demographics of the Disappearing Gullah Culture.”
Sarah considered herself a civilized woman. She had a PhD, for criminy’s sake. She was a professor. She knew not to cuss south of Baltimore. But she didn’t know how to inspire kids to make something out of lives that were going nowhere fast.
That was not a part of her article’s premise. But it was a reality that had hit her hard the minute she drove into town. You could talk about demographics, study bar graphs, run statistics, but it didn’t do squat when it came to hunger, poverty, and lack of hope. Hell, the lack of the ability to even imagine hope.
And what the hell was she supposed to do about it? Write an article or three that no one would read except the department heads, who already had too much to read and only knew the Carolinas from Charleston and the Outer Banks.
And now she was stuck here. No resources, no participants, no interest. And Ervina was relentless. The scariest part of it was that the old lady wasn’t crazy. She had the gift. And she was damned and determined to pass it on to Sarah. Hell, if Sarah had an ounce of sense, she’d turn tail and do a demographics of the Harlem Renaissance from the comfort of her Upper West Side apartment—the Upper West Side apartment that she’d sublet until next summer.
She was in no mood to go to the little hovel of an apartment she’d rented in Stargazey and spend the night feeling homesick and depressed. God, get a life, girl. Maybe she’d go over to the inn and hit up Cabot Reynolds III for a donation for the center.
What had she just said about taking grants? She meant government grants. She was looking for a personal donation without strings. She at least wouldn’t take the money and run. She could buy some tape recorders, some books. Or hell, maybe he’d fork over enough for a secondhand computer. And then leave town and Sarah to her own devices.
She picked up the pace and was about to cross the street when she saw the empty parking spot. The fancy SUV was gone. The son of a—was gone.
“Dammit!”
A spotted mutt that had been asleep in a nearby doorway scrambled up and disappeared around the side of the building.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she yelled after him. She marched across the street and into the Inn. Smacked the bell on the registration desk.
“Coming,” Bethanne said from the office. She came through the door the next minute. “Oh. Sarah. What’s wrong?”
“Did that . . . so and so check out already?”
“Mr. Reynolds?”
“What other so and so is registered here?”
Bethanne pursed her lips. “Well, you don’t have to rub it in.”
“Sorry.” Sarah’s shoulders slumped. “I was hoping to hit him up for a bereavement grant. Guess I’m too late.”
“You were going to try to guilt that poor man into giving you money?”
“Not me, the center. And he isn’t poor. That car of his probably cost thirty thou, and the watch, the suit? Trust me, the man’s loaded. And with a name like The Third, his family is, too.”
“You’ve been living up there with Yankees too long to make you so jaded. He’s nice.”
“Uh-huh, blame it on the Yankees.”
“And sad. When he came back in this afternoon, I thought maybe he’d been crying.”
Sarah snorted. “All the way to the bank.”
“Sarah, that’s not fair.”
“I know. I’m just in a rotten mood. But if he’s so broken up, why didn’t he ever visit the man? He was family.” Sarah winced. She’d visited as little as possible since she’d left for college.
“I think we both need cheering up,” Bethanne said. “Why don’t I grab a bottle of wine from the bar, and we go down to Flora’s for supper? Besides, he didn’t check out, just had to drive up to Myrtle Beach. Maybe you can hit him up after he gets back.”
IT WAS LATE afternoon by the time Cab drove away from Stargazey Point. He just needed some respite from the Point and the situation there. He’d have a nice dinner in an elegant restaurant and maybe check out the building site before driving back to Stargazey. Where first thing tomorrow morning he’d consult Jonathon Devry on—Damn, it would be Sunday, the lawyer probably wouldn’t appreciate being called on his day off. Cab should have met with him today.
He hadn’t gone five miles when his phone began pinging. He glanced at it; the call log was filling up. People had been calling him, but he hadn’t had service there. Great. He just hoped he still had a job and a fiancée.
He still had a job, but there wasn’t even a message from Bailey He’d at least called that one correctly.
He put the phone on speaker and redialed Frank’s number. Got the machine. “Sorry, there’s no service here. If there’s an emergency, call the Stargazey Inn, Stargazey Point, South Carolina. You’ll have to look it up. I don’t think they have a Web site.”
He listened to the other messages. By the time he finished, he was driving into the outskirts of Myrtle Beach, the site of the firm’s next big project.
Cab was the main designer. He’d met the developer who was putting up the bulk of the money, but only in Atlanta. Cab had never even come to see where the development would be built. Maybe it was time he did. He gave the address to the GPS and turned left two blocks later.
Like most beach towns, the money was near the water; the farther away you got, the less beachlike the neighborhoods. And Cab had to admit this one was pretty seedy, crammed with check-cashing joints, liquor stores, dives, bars, and Laundromats. Basically an eyesore. He drove past a residential block; the houses were ramshackle, some were deserted. A few had flower beds, even fewer were attempting a vegetable garden. Some kids played in the front yard of one, two men sat on the porch of another. A girl wearing a bright pink helmet rode her bike down the sidewalk. She turned into one of the driveways, dropped her bike by the side door, and ran inside.
Porch lights came on. Cab could imagine people sitting at a kitchen table, home from work, from school, from looking for a job. Where were these people going to go when their neighborhood was razed? Had they all sold out and were just waiting for the money before moving on? Did they all have places to mov
e on to?
At the end of the block was a brick school covered with graffiti and a playground growing weeds. He turned right. He passed a decently kept park before coming into another questionable section. He imagined this all gone, a beautiful, self-sustaining town replacing it, with an ecofriendly place for people to live. But not these people.
It would be better. It would clean up the community and boost the local economy. But what were they going to do with all the residents?
He was relieved when he came back to the main drag. He didn’t want to think about what he’d seen. Or what their future might hold.
He’d lost his appetite for food, especially food in the rarefied atmosphere of a four-star hotel. Crazy, but now that he was here, with so many choices and amenities, there was only one thing he wanted to do. He made a U-turn and headed south.
Several blocks later, he turned into the entrance of the Myrtle Beach Amusement Park. It had gone through several transformations since he’d come here as a boy, but he found a place to park and wandered inside. There were a lot of families and even more couples; most strolled or stopped to buy something, eat something, but Cab only wanted to see one thing. If it even still existed.
He could hear the music before he actually saw the old Herschell-Spillman carousel. Then he was standing in front of it as it traveled round in a whirl of colors and lights. It seemed as if it could go on forever, but after a few revolutions, it slowed to a stop, and the riders climbed off. The music kept playing, and a new group of people took their places, children running to pick out a special animal, an older couple in one of the chariots, a younger couple sitting on horses side by side and holding hands. The carousel started up again, slowly, then faster and faster.
It was a heady feeling watching it circle, and Cab felt his stress and sadness melt away. When the carousel stopped again, Cab bought a ticket and climbed on.
Chapter 8
SARAH SAT ACROSS THE RICKETY table from her great-grandmother, picking at a bowl of crayfish stew and listening to a lecture. She guessed it was a lecture. With Ervina, you didn’t always know if she was talking to you, at you, or just conjuring in your presence.
Sarah would prefer either of the first two. She was an educated woman, knew intellectually that the gift actually had some credence, but only among primitive peoples. She also knew it shouldn’t give her the heebie-jeebies. But here she was, sitting with the gooseflesh broken out on her arms, her neck hair standing on end, and half-expecting the crayfish to crawl back in their shells and scuttle away.
“Would you just say what you mean?” Sarah said.
“You forget how to listen, girl, up there with all those folks not like us.”
Sarah squelched the impulse to remind her great-grandmother that those folks were Sarah’s folks now.
“And don’t you give me that look neither.”
“Sorry,” Sarah said, deciding it was better to apologize than ask what look she was talking about.
“I don’t want you takin’ no money from that man.”
“What man?”
“Ned’s boy.”
“Cabot, III? Why not? He has it; why shouldn’t he share it?”
“Ain’t his journey. Ain’t yours neither.”
Sarah grinned. “Don’t you worry none. He’s not my type.”
“That man ain’t ready for real love, and when he is it won’t be with you.”
“Thank God for that.”
Ervina slowly narrowed one eye.
Sarah quickly held up her hand—just in case. “Fine. I’ll be nice. I’ll leave him alone, but Nana,” she said, reverting back to her childhood nickname for the old woman, “I got nothing to work with here. No fans in the summer, no heat for the winter. No supplies, not one piece of working equipment. You know I’d never take anything from some condescending jackass who’d expect us to fall at his feet and let him tell us what to do.
“But The Third doesn’t give a—hoot—about this town or the people in it. I figure a onetime “contribution” in Ned Reynolds’s memory isn’t going to mean anything. He’ll be gone, and I can do something to help these kids while I’m here. I’ll be gone soon enough, and nobody’s out there looking for my replacement.”
Ervina spit on the floor.
Okay, Sarah had made her mad. Now she was in for it.
“You know I wouldn’t take any money with strings attached, from no one who would put demands on the center. But this guy will be gone by Monday. He’ll forget about us before he’s gone five miles. Though, to his credit, I think he was genuinely fond of his uncle.”
“You tryin’ too hard, girl.”
“You’re kidding, right? How do you think I got through Columbia and landed a professorship there? By being a simperin’ Southern belle?”
Ervina chuckled; shook her head. “You leave young Cabot be. You promise me, you hear?”
“Just one little check?”
“Nuff of your sass, girl. You think you know so much; you gonna mess up everything.”
“Okay, fine. With my luck, The Third would get it in his head to drive up from Atlanta every Friday just to count the pieces of paper we used during the week. Just because he’s The Third.”
Ervina shook her head. “You stop listening to here so much.” Ervina pointed to her head. “And start listenin’ here.” She pointed to the hollow below her breast.
“My pancreas?”
“You so smart. Finish your soup.”
CAB NEVER MADE it to his fancy dinner, but he did discover what might be the best barbecue on the Carolina coast.
He was feeling satisfied, exhilarated, tired, content, and intent on not worrying about what tomorrow would bring. Because he knew tomorrow would bring him home. Atlanta. He had a life waiting there, and a fiancée anyone would be envious of. A great apartment, friends . . . so why was a part of him so reluctant to leave Stargazey Point?
He had good memories of the place, sure, but they were largely centered around his uncle. There was nothing for him here now. Wouldn’t even warrant a visit really.
He was fond of Beau and Hadley. But their lives would go on without giving him a second thought.
He should probably just leave tonight. Except that he’d halfway accepted Beau’s invitation to Sunday lunch. And he didn’t want it to look like he was sneaking out of town without saying good-bye.
It’s not like anyone who mattered will be there.
Bailey had been dead wrong about that. They did matter, and they mattered even more now that he’d come back.
The streets were dark as he drove back into town. It was fall, and the few tourists they’d had had returned to their everyday lives. The locals had gone home to bed to get ready for church or whatever they did on Sundays.
Flora’s was closed and dark; Bethanne had turned off the Inn lights though she’d left the porch light on again. Cab parked in his parking place across from the Inn and trotted up the steps.
A rocking chair creaked just as Cab reached the porch. He turned to see who it was, sitting there in the dark. Part of him instinctively stiffened, his reflexes on the alert, though he didn’t really think someone would mug him on the porch of the Stargazey Inn. Then again . . .
“You.” The voice sounded sepulchral in the shadows.
A chill crept up Cab’s neck, followed quickly by annoyance. Ervina. It had to be; no one else had her flair for the dramatic or could sound like the voice of doom.
He peered into the shadows of the porch. Made out the diminutive figure in the rocking chair. “What about me?”
“First thing tomorrow, you go out Moss Hollow Road.”
“Why?”
The rocker squeaked again. “Take the left fork ’til you come to the bottle tree and turn in at that path. You’ll see a house. You ask for Abraham.”
She rocked forward and pushed to her feet.
“Who is Abraham? Is he real? Or some metaphorical symbol that I don’t get?”
“Huh. He’s real enough.”
Ervina went down the steps to the street and slowly walked away.
“Wait. Moss Hollow Road? How do I get there? What’s a bottle tree?”
“Huh.”
“You better not be sending me on some wild-goose chase.”
He could hear her mumbling to herself.
“Ask for Abraham.”
BY EIGHT O’CLOCK the next morning, Cab was drinking a cup of Penny’s coffee and driving west out of town. Penny had given him directions to Moss Hollow Road and a Danish.
The pastry sat on the passenger’s seat. Cab wasn’t hungry. His stomach was churning, but his brain needed the caffeine. He hadn’t slept well after Ervina’s crazy talk about Abraham. He warred with himself, half-believing, half-hoping there was something that Abraham could make clear and chiding himself for falling victim to her manipulations.
So far, he just saw mudflats and marshland, a few abandoned fishing shacks. It occurred to him he should have filled the gas tank before he left Stargazey Point. There was not a soul in sight. He wouldn’t put it past Ervina to send him to the back of beyond just to teach him a lesson. Though he wasn’t clear on what that lesson could possibly be.
When he was a boy, he heard talk about Ervina, but he’d never seen her that he could remember. If he had been a local boy, he might have joined the other boys doing nothing all day but getting into mischief. He might have gone with them to spy on the old woman to see if she really was a voodoo witch.
But Ned kept him busy and working on the carousel. Looking back on it, Cab wondered why he hadn’t resented being sent here to work. It was hard, sometimes boring, work, waiting for the crowds to come, playing the calliope music over and over again, summer after summer.
At night, when everyone had gone home and the music was quiet, Ned would bring out the store of soft, dry rags, and they’d rub those animals down until they shone, clean away the smudges left by sticky fingers, the spilled soda, the muddy footprints. It was a long day, and it didn’t end with the lights and the music, but Cab fell into bed each night feeling happy.
Stargazey Nights Page 6