by Bret Lott
“Right where we’re standing, home of the Mothers and Fathers. Stumbled upon a few months ago by surveyors I dispatched to take stock of precisely what made up Hungry Neck. Back when I was with the boys, still thinking small: the next Hilton Head.”
I turned back to it, looked at those eyes.
Maybe this was what made me unafraid: his eyes and Unc’s: both empty, both seeing everything.
“As doctors are wont to do, no one of them could make the decision to send out surveyors for fear of a lawsuit from Unc, though we were each of us, I must admit, salivating over this place, with the senate about to plow under the University Medical Consortium, our cash cow about to be sacrificed. And so it fell to me to send them out, unbeknownst to any of the others.” He paused. “Jackson Filliault, my surveyor, reported back to me he wasn’t able to finish the job, that his boy Jimmy Horry slipped a cog or three when he saw what we’re looking at.”
“Jimmy Horry,” Miss Dinah said. “He dead.”
Simons sighed. “As is Jackson Filliault. June twelfth, a roadside accident, two surveyors killed off 17 South, hit and run. This, after I’d told dear Constance of what Filliault relayed to me, and after my late wife, trustee and former director of Acquisitions for the Carolina Museum of History, informed me of who the Mothers and Fathers were, and of the legend of these heads with eyes. And the potential value of such items on the black market.” He laughed. “Listen to me. Legends, buried treasure. It’s as though this were one grand bedtime story for all involved. But there is no bedtime story in the amount of money this bust will bring. Though it appears to be rock, it’s actually black tabby, circa 1690. I’ve already accepted a bid of three and a half million for it.” He laughed again. “On the black market. Yet another bad pun. But a certain West African potentate has placed a sizable deposit on it in the guise of a check made out to the CCRSF in Lucerne. A black West African purchasing with his impoverished nation’s dwindling funds a piece of black tabby made by the first Africans to land here. The first slaves in the Lowcountry.”
I looked back at them. Miss Dinah had a hand to her mouth now, Mom leaned into her. Unc said, “Tell me, Huger.”
I turned back to it. I was quiet, then said, “The head of a black man. On a six-foot pedestal, kind of. And he’s got green glass eyes.”
“My God,” he whispered. “It’s true.”
“Of course it’s true, Leland,” Simons said. “Everything Constance told you Wednesday night on the telephone was and is terrifically true, beginning with her confessing to you her role in fencing our finds through her contacts with curators across the country.” He paused. “A delightful technological toy, the tapping of a phone. Even if it’s your own.”
Unc quick turned to him, said, “She did it only because you, you bastard, drove her to it.”
Simons laughed, his head back with it. He pointed the gun at Unc. “Surreptitiously sock away enough hard-earned dollars to the right charitable foundation without your wife knowing, then blame your apparently decreasing income on the health-care industry and looming senate-committee hearings, and your wife will believe the life to which she has been accustomed is soon to disappear. Next dangle a small temptation—perhaps a mythical plot of ground never before excavated—and the revenues one might gain were one to sell off a piece here, a piece there. Promise her, of course, only a piece here and a piece there will be sold, and promise her as well that all else will be presented to her beloved museum, and there you have it: a sort of archaeological bait-and-switch. She participates in the sale of one item to the black market, I then threaten to divulge this tidbit to the proper authorities, and her life as a South-of-Broad Dupree-Middleton-Simons is over. She must keep her mouth shut while we salvage what we can, or her life is over.” He paused, shook his head, still smiling. “As well you know, Leland, as regards your inability to inform Lord Huger of your sordid soirée with his delightful mother here some sixteen years ago, pride is a frightening thing, powerful unto paralysis. And unto death.”
Mom cried again, let go the shovel. She moved to me, held me. But I did nothing. I kept my hands at my side, let her cry, hold me.
I said, “Guess everybody on earth knows.”
“You imagine true,” Simons said.
And still Unc said nothing.
Tabitha gave out a sharp cry, just one, and Miss Dinah turned, looked at her. Tabitha moved her hands, looked at her momma, nodded now and again at the statue.
Miss Dinah slowly nodded back. That was all, and turned back to it. “Where the rest of them?” she asked. “The other three?”
“I’m afraid the other three have already been crated and shipped out of Charleston Terminal, though of course we don’t cart from here the entire structure, only the bust itself. Deputy Thigpen has the most delightful diamond-bit cable saw that slices through tabby like a scalpel through skin, and uses only the muscles in one’s arms so as not to arouse undue suspicion; no whine of a power saw emanating from a nighttime island. This is the last one, this night’s harvest our last on the island. This particular one,” Simons said, and looked back at the bust, “according to the information Constance, bless her heart, amassed for this project, and as states the lore no doubt handed down to you by your ancestors, Miss Dinah, is the Son, set facing due west. And set exactly forty-two feet due east was the Mother, facing south; forty-two feet due north of her was Father, facing east; and forty-two feet due west of him stood Daughter, facing north. The Family, each statue at a corner of a perfect square, measured in cubits. And, of course, inside the square is—” He paused, turned Tabitha to face him. “Miss Dorcas, can you tell us what’s inside the square these statues make up?”
Tabitha looked up at him. She knew what he’d asked. She looked from him to Miss Dinah, and I thought maybe she’d glanced at me.
She moved her hands.
Simons looked at Miss Dinah. “Translation, please?”
She was quiet, slowly turned back to the statue.
“Miss Dinah?” he said again.
But it was me to answer. “The first slaves here,” I said. “Their burial plot.”
“My dear Jesus,” Miss Dinah breathed out.
“Very good, Lord Huger.” He held the gun out at me. He smiled, said, “We’ve work to do. Let’s go,” and motioned with the gun for me to turn, move on.
There to the left of the statue led that trail, even more a tunnel now the deeper we went on the island.
He’d found the Mothers and Fathers. Here. A story, something just a lie kids told to scare one another, now truth. The place the first slaves were buried, but not just the first slaves—the holy ones, a family of kings, we’d been told.
A family.
“The shovel, Miss Eugenie?” Simons said.
Mom let go of me, stepped back and away, her eyes on me. Then she knelt, picked it up. I could see in the light her face twisted up, her looking at me, and I turned, walked.
But it was only a few feet before the trail ended altogether at a curtain of growth, the flashlight penetrating no farther, only giving me washed-out wax myrtle, thick brown tendrils of wisteria vine.
It looked odd, even given the ugly shadows the flashlight cast. The wax myrtle was dead, I could see, the leaves drooping, some gone brown, and I shone the beam to the ground. No base, no trunk. Only dead leaves, and the bottom of this curtain.
I reached to it, heard Simons chuckle behind me. “That’s right, heir apparent. Just give it a push.”
The curtain fell back, twisted away and to the right to show it was a kind of doorway propped up to keep what was past it hidden.
I leaned in, swept the flashlight beam from one side to the other.
There lay cleared ground, a large patch of low weeds, spread about it wooden stakes driven into the ground, each a foot or so high, and in the play of light across it all I saw, too, strings between them all, strips of cloth hung here and there on them.
Together the strings and stakes made a large, rough circle, walled all
around by the same growth as everywhere, and from the circle led more strings and stakes to the center, like spokes on a wheel. But they stopped at a set of stakes in the middle of the circle, making another, smaller circle in the center, all of it cleared.
“The hallowed ground,” Simons said. “A kind of North American Tomb of Tutankhamen, a burial site untouched for nearly three hundred years, only now yielding its bounty, the spoils most lucrative, though those busts have made the greatest contribution to the lives of the harelipped in Bangladesh.”
I started in, stepped over a string, shone the light on it for the others. “There’s a string up,” I said to Unc once Mom and Miss Dinah were in, “about a foot high. Step over it.”
Unc bent down, touched it, and stepped over, and then came Simons and Tabitha.
I shone the light around again, looking. The ground where we stood was soft, as though we were in a carpeted, hollowed-out cavern, above us the moon again.
“Museums never pay enough,” Simons said, “and demand clean bills of sale as well as germ-free documentation. Of course were anyone, from the National Historic Trust on down to those mewling Wetlands Commission prisses, to find a single potsherd out here, things would be sealed off immediately, grand proclamations made, museums erected. Not what I have in mind.”
“And what you have in mind,” Unc said, “is just to kill us all, haul out what you can, and get away with it.”
“Why, what else, Leland? In a few minutes, Deputy Thigpen will arrive with a second boat. Tonight’s ‘haul,’ as you so trailer-trashedly put it, will prove, I believe, to be an astonishing event. We’ll let you help, of course, as a means of expediting the recovery of our quarry, and then do as the Egyptians did at the burial of their pharaohs: simply kill the slaves who dug the graves. In this case, we’ll kill the slaves who dug up the graves.” He laughed, let go of Tabitha’s arm, the gun on me. “The flashlight, please.”
I looked at him a moment longer, thought to shine it in his eyes, blind him a second.
And then what? Dive for him?
“Your reticence, Lord Huger, at giving back the flashlight signals me you are mulling things over. Let me remind you, I have the gun.” He pointed it from me to Mom. “I’m hazarding you’ll choose not to let me kill your mother, regardless of her wayward past and your questionable lineage.”
“Huger,” Mom whispered, and took in a quick breath. “Don’t.”
“Wise woman,” Simons said.
I brought down the light, handed it over.
“Good boy. Now take a shovel, you and the virgin both, and go to the center of the circle.” He shone the light past me, to where the stakes came together, that small circle. “If Constance’s research proves correct, the center hub is where the Father of Fathers lies, waiting. We’ve saved him for last, though this night was not in our plans. We’re here only because of poor Constance’s gambit, calling you, Leland. For the last five months we’ve been here at new moon, as little light as possible so that no one might see us heading here, Thigpen and myself. But in our last episode, a mere week and a half ago, we brought Constance along, who had, I’d believed, begun finally to warm to the opportunity being afforded us. Unfortunately, we turned up something quite unexpected.” He shone the light to my left now, to a wedge of the circle on the far side. There the ground, I could see, had no growth, only bare dirt.
“Whereas we had ascertained there were twelve sites here, we stumbled upon a thirteenth.” He paused. “That of a child, its rude sarcophagus perhaps three feet long. And when we opened it up, there lay the perfect remains of a female child, interred along with her, as with all the rest of the Fathers and Mothers, her earthly possessions, each crafted by her own hands, items entombed for the long voyage home.”
I looked at the ground. Nothing, only dirt.
“Of course the precious child’s possessions were few, but two pieces—those trinkets I mentioned—captured the heart and imagination of dear Constance: two small, unfinished sweetgrass baskets, resin-encased.” He stopped, filled with himself, I could hear on his voice, pleased at his words, this explanation of all things before he killed us. “In a weak moment, one designed nonetheless to ensure she stayed happy with our arrangement, I gave them to her. Though each might have garnered a contribution somewhere between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars, nevertheless I made the sacrifice. A sacrifice that, as you now know, has precipitated our being here tonight.”
The paperweight I’d thought nothing of, worth that much money.
But it wasn’t the money that mattered, I saw. It wasn’t that at all. It was that she’d thought enough to risk heading into a hospital to give it to me. To give to Unc, the one she loved.
Cherish your mother, she’d said, and I saw even she knew who my mother was, and knew who my father was, and knew something about love, and about death.
She knew enough to give the other to her own mother, upon it the disclaimer of sin, on Unc’s the curse of love.
“Curiously intelligent, these first savages,” Simons said. “We’ve found in each casket—carved out of oak, lined inside and out with pitch—a perfect sort of mummification, both bodies and possessions. Each item with which they have been interred, and believe me there are troves in each casket, has been encased in resin, rendering everything, from the shields and spears the men are buried with to the sweetgrass baskets the women bear, a delightful perfection, yielding top dollar again and again. Ingenious, actually, using this resin, every item intact. Especially considering the capital gains I’m making from their own world of the dead. Imagine that.” He laughed, the beam falling from the bare ground there to the weeds at my feet. “I’ve become a contemporary of theirs with passing through the great veil. And not only am I taking mine with me, but I’m taking theirs as well.”
I heard crying from behind me, turned to see Miss Dinah now leaning on Mom, her hands to her face, shoulders shivering.
Tabitha moved then, took a step away from Simons and toward her mother. But Simons reached out, took hold her arm, pushed her toward me. He stepped to Miss Dinah, the gun still pointed at me, and took from her hand a shovel, with the same hand took the other shovel from Mom’s hand, and held them both out to Tabitha. She looked at them, at him, and took them.
“Lord Huger, the two of you will be our excavators for the evening, and we’ll see what the Father of Fathers himself yields up. A trove beyond troves, I am certain.”
I looked at Tabitha, slowly held my hand out to her.
She looked at Miss Dinah, still weeping, then at me, at Simons. She took a step away from him, put out her hand to me. I took it, then took one of the shovels.
Her hand was cold.
I stepped through the low grass toward that center, Simons shining the beam past us so that our shadows were big enough, it seemed, to move past all this, move away and to some other life. Somewhere else.
Here was the string of the center circle. Only string between two stakes, and a rag. But something else, a circle into which we’d step, and start digging the hole where we’d pull up a coffin, replace it with our own bodies once the harvest had been completed.
Unc said, “Constance came to Huger in the hospital, gave him one of those baskets. Told him to give it to me.”
I stopped, looked at him.
He was facing Simons, his back to me, his head moving, listening. He’d heard something again, something none of us heard. Mom was looking at him, too, Miss Dinah still with a hand to her face.
“And?” Simons said.
“I told him to give it to Mrs. Dupree,” he said. “Your harridan. He did.”
I let go of Tabitha’s hand. She looked at me, turned with me.
“Thigpen reported to me he lost the missus for an hour or so the evening in question,” Simons said, matter-of-fact. “But he rounded her up in time for her reservation at the Rantowles Motel. So, as I see it, no harm, no foul. Mrs. Dupree has them, she can keep them.”
“Someone will see them,”
Unc said. “Evidence of something. Someone will ask one thing, another.”
“Let me kill him,” a thin voice said from the darkness past Simons. “Let me kill the fucker now.”
Thigpen came into the backwash of light off the flashlight, there beside Simons. Unc’d heard him coming up and’d started talking in the hopes of stirring something up.
Thigpen looked dead, his face white, his breathing shallow and small for the broken ribs. His jacket was off, his left arm tied round with an old towel up near his shoulder. A pistol was tucked into his jeans.
Simons hadn’t moved, only laughed. “What, and surrender too soon to the great beyond the love of my late wife’s life? A blind trailerman on social security and policeman’s compensation? The latter-day saint of the redneck set? And besides, were you to kill him, I’m afraid we’d have something of a morale problem in the meantime.” He paused, looked at Thigpen, down and up. “You’re in no condition to work, it appears to me. We need them. But we don’t need them looking at their dead patriarch all the while.”
Thigpen took a couple of breaths, said, “He’s just stalling. Talking about them damned tiny pieces she took off with.” He took a step toward Unc, who tensed up, stood taller, his head weaving, listening.
“Unc,” I said.
But it was too late, and meant nothing besides: Thigpen swung at Unc, his fist buried into Unc’s stomach, and Unc bent in half, met with Thigpen’s knee in his chest, and hit the ground.
I took a step to him but heard the hammer cocked on Simons’s gun, and I stopped.
He said, “You would do well, Lord Huger the bastard son, to dig rather than tend to the weak of eye.”
Thigpen stood straight, his free hand holding his side. He was winded with the effort, grimaced with the pain. Unc lay twisted on the ground, his back to the flashlight so that his face was in shadow, lost. He groaned, coughed out a breath.