by John Darnton
Jude launched into an explanation, but it was quickly aborted. The man jumped behind a console, plugged in his earphones and flipped two switches, just as the commercial ended. The room was flooded with the languid flow of a D.J., caressing his words in honey tones. He was speaking a mixture of English and Gullah.
Through the picture window of a sound booth, they saw the man. He wore large mirror sunglasses, and he moved as he spoke, doing a little shoulder dance around the microphone but never touching it.
"Lissen now—de song comin op dey a good-good one fa dancin'," he said, giving a little shimmy.
When another record was put on, he stepped out of the booth. He was some six and a half feet tall, towering over Jude and Skyler, and his handshake was powerful. He didn't crack a smile.
"Bozman," he announced.
Jude and Skyler introduced themselves.
The man at the console turned the music down several decibels, and they chatted for a bit. The D.J. spoke perfect English.
He kept looking from Skyler to Jude and back again, and finally declaimed:
"Two white brothers, one raised in the North, the other down South. You could have your own little Civil War."
He whooped in laughter.
He slipped back into the booth, gave a peppy little talk, put on another record, and took his chair again, all done as seamlessly as a stage performance.
"Disya one fa all de oomen out deh"—this one is for all the women out there—he said.
When he returned, Skyler handed him a beer and said: "Dat de bes."
The man shot up in his seat and clapped him on the shoulder and came out with a grin.
"Now wheyside oona laarn fa taak Gullah taak?"—Where did you learn to talk Gullah?
"I laarn 'em right down yuh. I taak em only jes a lee-lee bit, dough. I a frien of Kuta, de jazz playa."
"Oh, yeah now, him a great musician."
Skyler translated for Jude: "He asked me where I learned Gullah. I told him down here, Kuta taught me a few words—he knows him, says he's a great musician."
"Ask him... Never mind, I'll ask him."
Jude turned to the Bozman. "Can you tell us where Kuta lives? What's the name of his island?"
The D.J. gave a basso laugh and pointed at Skyler. "But he should know—he was raised down here."
"That's just it, that's the strange part. He was raised here, but he doesn't know the name of the place, and—"
The D.J. slipped away back inside the booth. More chatter, another record.
Another half hour and three more beers and they still couldn't come up with the name. The Bozman, who didn't understand how Skyler could grow up not knowing where in God's creation he was, only knew of Kuta. He admired his playing, but didn't know where he hung his hat.
Then Skyler had a brainstorm.
"Bozman," he asked. "Did you ever hear talk of a slave rebellion—a whole band of Africans who stepped off the boat that brought them across the ocean, then walked right back into the ocean and drowned?"
The question found its mark.
"Why, everyone knows that. They were Igbo. May 1803, their boat pulled up Dunbar Creek. They sang a hymn to their god Chukwu and marched right back into the water toward Mother Africa. To this day, they call that spot Ebo Landing—that's how it got its name."
"But what island is it on?"
He gave them the name as if it were a present: "Crab Island," he said, smiling broadly and opening his hands palms outward. The answer was so obvious, he seemed to be saying.
He even pulled a frayed map out of a drawer and located it for them. It was the outermost island in a group of eight and it was not far, another forty miles down the coast.
What a prosaic name, thought Jude. How perfect as camouflage for an infernal undertaking. He looked at the shape on the map: it even resembled a crab, with a rounded body and a narrow peninsula leading to a smaller island that looked like a pincer.
Skyler and Jude shook hands with their hosts. The engineer sat down at the console, and the D.J. stepped back inside his broadcasting booth. He put both hands astride the microphone as if he were going to sing, but he didn't. Instead, he chattered, so quickly that Skyler couldn't catch most of what he was saying.
But he did recognize a word here and there, and he could have sworn he heard the Bozman utter Kuta's name. And the song that he then played on the air was jazz, hot New Orleans jazz, and Skyler also could have sworn that the trumpet was being played by Kuta, too.
They decided to spend the night at a Days Inn at Exit 11 on Route 95. The check-in clerk gave them the name of the best place to eat in town. They followed a back road, 99, for six miles until it petered out in the parking lot of a tumbledown wooden extravaganza called Pelican Point. It was tucked away in the marshes at the mouth of a snug harbor. Customers walked in the front door, and boats with fish swimming belowdecks pulled up to the back.
They ordered gumbo with crab cakes and extra helpings of fresh shrimp and swilled it down with beer. It was dark by the time they returned to the motel.
Skyler was too nervous to sleep right away. He stayed up late watching old movies on TV and finally dozed off about one in the morning. Jude raided the mini-bar and had two scotches that put him out. He awoke about five a.m. and had trouble going back to sleep.
He thought of Tizzie and felt like calling her. They hadn't spoken since he'd left Washington. But he didn't want to run the risk. He knew she was playing out her role as a spy; they had to be careful and smart. The best way he could protect her was to keep her in the dark about the important things. And this was important.
He let his mind wander ahead to the day before them. They would go to the dock behind the bait shop on Landing Road—Homer's, it was called. That was the best place to rent a boat, the waitress at Pelican Point had told them. They would pay cash. Then they would head out to the island and... At this point, whatever plan Jude had been formulating ran aground. It was impossible to predict what would happen. He felt a gnawing sensation in his stomach.
All this time they had been trying to find the name of the island, without any real thought given to what the hell they would do when they got there. Reconnaissance. Spy upon the Lab. Collect as much information as possible. Fine. But how? Sneak up through the bushes with binoculars? And then what? In the cold light of dawn, whatever grandiose plots he had been hatching over drinks the night before, plots of smashing the Lab and setting free the clones and apprehending Baptiste, or maybe Rincon if he was there—in short, of playing the hero and rescuing the whole situation—began to look like pitiful fantasies. He had to face it: he didn't really have any plan at all, except to get there and play it by ear and find out what he could find out—all that while avoiding detection. What's more, he didn't harbor any illusions that if the two of them were discovered, they could escape.
The gnawing sensation in his stomach got stronger, and he knew it wasn't hunger. He tried fitfully to sleep for another hour or so, thrashing around upon the sheets that pulled out from the under edge of the mattress and got all balled up, and then finally, mercifully, he dropped off.
He awoke with a start and knew immediately from the light blazing in around the curtains that hours had passed. He grabbed his watch. Christ: it was ten o'clock. He leapt up, got dressed and knocked on Skyler's door. Skyler answered with a towel around his waist and steam billowing out of the bathroom behind him; he had been taking a shower.
That was annoying. He had probably been up for a while. Why hadn't he awakened him? They were getting off on the wrong foot, and they hadn't even left the motel.
Things did not improve once they did leave. They drove down to the shore and had trouble finding a place to leave the Volvo. At the first spot, along a wooded stretch of road, the owner of a faded green ranch house across the way came down and told them point blank to beat it. The next couple of places were more deserted, but the car looked conspicuous; sitting there all by itself, it seemed to invite trouble. Finally, they chose a
road that led toward the marshes and drove to the end, where they found a semisecluded area under a grove of pecan trees. They left it near a beat-up Buick with a rusted grille.
It was a longer walk back than they realized, and by the time they reached Landing Road, they were sweating and red-faced. Homer's bait shop faced the road. On the other side was a bay lined with waist-high grass and black needlerush. In the center of the bank, where it was worn smooth, a floating dock was set alongside four old piers that allowed it to rise and fall with the tides. Four boats were tied up. Off to the right, the road continued over a narrow wooden bridge that looked like it had been built from railroad ties. It crossed an inlet that fed the water on the other side, where it branched into channels separating dozens of marsh islands.
Three men sat on wooden chairs out front, under a sagging porch roof. One of them, with a grizzled face and a neck tanned the color of a peach pit, nodded slightly. The other two didn't look up at all or register Skyler and Jude's presence in any way; one was telling a long story about a trip to Mobile and he talked so slowly, with such long pauses, that Jude didn't know if he'd be interrupting or not.
Finally, Jude asked if Homer was there.
The storyteller looked up, let fly a small ball of saliva that formed a bubble in the dust, sized them up again and pointed behind him. Jude walked inside.
Homer was a young man stripped to the waist and wearing frayed blue jeans. On his right biceps he bore a tattoo of Mickey Mouse holding a dagger; from the tip of the blade fell tiny drops of orange-red blood. He was not unfriendly, even offering some small talk about the weather—that last hurricane had been one of the worst in memory, he said—but he became taciturn when Jude asked if he could rent a small boat. And when Skyler stepped inside, he looked from one to the other almost aggressively and acted as if he were dying to ask a question.
"I don't rent 'em," he said.
Jude pointed at a handwritten sign above a barrel of maggots. It said: BOATS FOR RENT. DAY RATE.
"We stopped," Homer explained.
"But we need to get to the island. Crab Island."
Homer was unmoved.
"Can you take us?"
"You want to rent my boat and me, too."
"Something like that."
Jude reached in his pocket and unfurled a bill roll. Probably not a smart thing to do, but he hadn't come this far to be stopped by a coastal cracker.
"I'll pay what it takes."
That seemed to alter the situation. Homer looked down at the money and quickly looked away.
"It'll cost you eighty bucks."
"Okay."
"And you'll have to wait till lunch." Homer gestured around the store. "Ain't no one here but me."
"I'll make it an even hundred if you take us now."
Homer scratched his head and looked at the old clock over the cash register. It was ten minutes after twelve.
"Guess I could close up early. Let me get my stuff."
He went through a door in the back. Jude and Skyler waited out front, but after a few minutes, Jude went back inside. He heard Homer's voice talking, then waiting, then talking some more. He was on the phone. Jude couldn't hear what he was saying. He hadn't heard the phone ring, so Homer had placed the call to someone. But who?
By the time Homer had shut down the place, putting lids on the barrels of maggots and worms, straightening up, puttering around and extinguishing the lights, it was close to twelve-thirty. He carried his fishing pole with him and put it in the boat. They pushed off from the dock at 12:35.
Skyler rode in the bow and leaned into the breeze as the boat left the inlet and picked up speed. He sniffed the air. A small egret flapped its wings and took off into the sky. Everything around him—the sky, the bleached look of the light, the smell of the marsh grass and mud flats—it was all so overwhelming, so familiar.
Jude, in the middle of the boat, was worrying about any number of things, like where they would dock and whether someone would hear the noise of the motor. He was amazed that Skyler was able to take everything in stride. Jude watched him from behind—you'd think he was out crabbing, he thought. Not a care in the world.
But he thought wrong. Skyler was barely able to contain himself. Wherever he looked, he saw something that conjured up a half-buried recollection. As it receded, the shoreline behind was beginning to look exactly the way he remembered it, as if the silhouette of the treetops was adjusting to fit a dotted outline branded into his brain. Everything called up deep and conflicting feelings of childhood—love and fear, desire and helplessness.
Homer broke the spell.
"So how you're gonna get back?"
"You'll have to pick us up," said Jude.
"Aw, I dunno."
"C'mon. You can't just leave us there."
"Depends what time. Maybe after the store closes. 'Course, it'll cost you again."
They fixed a time for a rendezvous—six o'clock. Jude had no idea if they would be able to make it.
They were let off near Kuta's place. They had to wade ashore, unable to tie up because the dock had collapsed, its wooden planks resting half in the water.
Skyler could see right away that something was wrong.
The shack was damaged by a large limb from an oak tree that had smashed into the roof. One window was entirely missing, and through it they could see a broken mirror hanging at a slant on the opposite interior wall. The old outboard engine had fallen from its stump and lay half buried on the ground, and a fishing net had been blown into the branches of a palm, wrapping it tightly. Broken branches and clumps of leaves were everywhere, and the grass was caked in dried mud that had been shaped into small curves and gullies by cascading water.
They were barely ashore, putting on their shoes, when they heard Homer's boat pull away. The sound from the outboard dropped off quickly and then puttered for a long while before it finally disappeared out of earshot, leaving behind a silence so profound that it seemed to be the sound of emptiness itself.
"This was Kuta's home," said Skyler, moving about as cautiously as if he were crossing a minefield.
He pushed open the front door and looked inside. The walls were streaked with water marks, and the floor was thick with mud. The bed was soaked and sagging, but the chest of drawers was still standing, with the old radio on top intact.
"I can't tell if he came back here after I saw the Orderly and left. For all I know, he never returned. Maybe—maybe he was killed."
"No reason to think that. This is all hurricane damage. He may have fled. It's hard to tell if he packed up before it struck."
Jude pulled a drawer, which was stuck. He yanked it hard and it flew open—it was filled with clothes, which he showed to Skyler.
"Well, maybe he left in a hurry," he said.
Skyler saw that the pegs for the trumpet were empty. That was a good sign—his instrument was the one thing he would be sure to take.
They went back outside.
"This way," said Skyler, moving through the trees toward the path to the Big House. He tried not to show it, but his heart was thumping against his chest and he felt his extremities tingling.
The path was blocked in half a dozen places by the trunks of downed trees. They had fallen in all directions, sometimes lying upon the ground, sometimes coming to rest in each other's branches, strange-angled protusions that broke the verticality of the forest and turned it into a jungle. The roots had pulled up giant clumps of rich brown earth that rose up eight and ten feet tall, like trapdoors of subterranean caves.
It took them a half hour to reach the Campus.
They moved into the shadows of the trees and waited for several minutes, watching and listening.
"Something's wrong," said Skyler. "This is strange. There are no sounds at all—just the birds and the cicadas."
Nothing moved. No one was around.
"It looks like the whole damn place is deserted," said Jude, whispering despite himself. "If you ask me, it's spooky as hell."
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Skyler stepped out of the woods and into the sunlight. He felt it incumbent upon himself to be the leader. Jude followed him.
They walked quietly, following the treeline, until they came to the open meadow and the parade ground where Skyler and the other members of the Age Group had performed their daily calisthenics. Here, too, trees were down; huge slabs of earth and twisted roots tilted here and there like tombstones. The field was packed with a layer of dried mud from the downpour. They crossed it, leaving behind black footprints and several streaks where they slipped and almost fell. On the other side was the path leading to the barracks.
"What do you think?" asked Jude. "You think there's no one here at all? You think the hurricane drove them off?"
"Maybe. But I wouldn't bet on it. That never happened before, and there were big hurricanes when I was growing up. This is strange. I never imagined it could be like this."
A large oak tree had been uprooted and fallen parallel to the path. Instinctively, they moved behind the tree, keeping it between them and the Big House.
Skyler walked around to the door of the barracks, the door that he had entered tens of thousands of times throughout his childhood. He pushed it open, stepped up on the cinder block and walked inside. It was dark, but his eyes adjusted quickly. Instantly, he saw that it was the same and yet different. The beds and furniture were where they had always been, but they were stripped down. Everything that could be carried away was gone. In one corner was a pile of dirty sheets, in another socks, shirts and scraps of other clothing. The evacuation—if that's what it was—had been carried out hastily.
He walked over to a bunk and sat upon a bare mattress, which was damp. He saw that the window above was missing glass. How strange to look around and see the objects he had seen so often that he had stopped noticing them—how different they appeared, how rudimentary and crude. Was the difference in him? In his eyes that had now seen the world "on the other side"?
Jude walked in and looked around.