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  Every leader was young once, idealistic, full of hope. I came back to the island from Clemson and two years in the Army, three in law school, and in time, my people made me a judge and I was happy, up to a point. I met Dorcas one night in Savannah— so pretty, but we in the Carolinas come out of a great tradition, and her people didn’t do like we do. Still, I went back to see Dorcas again and again; she was so lovely and so needy, we loved each other so much.

  I rescued her from her sordid life. Voodoo white-trash family, squatting in the Savannah salt marsh; their kind goes in and out with the tides, but my Dorcas rose up out of the mud all glowing and lovely. I brought her home to Kraven, and then. Oh, then … I’m sorry you made me mad, but … I gave you Mama’s diamonds to make up for it, and that other time, I gave you the Calhoun coin silver because I couldn’t erase the scar and you know I loved you so much. Never mind what we said to each other that first time or what came between us or what I did to her later, when I was drunk. You were wrong to leave my offerings behind when you ran, but you.

  It was the pressure. The demands on a great leader are tremendous. You may control your people, but you can’t curb their wants. Blame the pressure of their expectations, Dorcas. It’s huge! Could you not grant me that? Was it that bad between us, certain things I said or did to you? It was an accident! Some, I still remember. Most, I’d rather not, but you have to understand. A leader is a force of nature, like God. In hurricanes, when the eye crosses our island the air is still, but the wind will come, and when that ’cane roars back in on you, there’s no stopping what comes next.

  So wrong.

  Woman, what do you want from me? I carried the weight of all Kraven on my shoulders. Their wants. No, their needs bored into the living heart of me, and if I snapped in your presence and let it all fly, you know I loved you, and you must have known why. So what if I drank to relax and sometimes I flew off, I’ll never forgive you for taking our problems out of the house.

  That night I followed you to his office, you were in there past midnight, conspiring! I didn’t ask and you never said, but I know. And what were you and he doing on all those other nights when you left my house in tears, what were you doing anyway?

  Second …

  “Bitch, what do you want from me!”

  Things you should have said and never said.

  When I die, if the things I said …

  Dear God, here I am with all our lives and safety at risk, with all our futures in my hands, and I’m hung up on a God. Damned. Poem. This is what failure does to you. Can’t talk, can’t argue, can’t get out to raise my army, I can’t even finish this wretched to-do list.

  Instead I sit here pushing words around as though, as soon as they march in order, I can get her back, no. As though I can make certain corrections and move on. OK, woman! I’ll do this thing, and then, and then …

  When I die, sift my ashes for gold.

  No, forgiveness can’t be bought or sold

  but gold pulled from ash can be melted down

  to a medal or a golden crown.

  The best I can do, after years of shit.

  You were wise to run away from it.

  Hours here, and this is all I have? Oh God. Woman, I have responsibilities! So much to do, so many things standing in my way and now, you, whole in spite of certain things I did to you, Dorcas, you’re back again, too big for the space.

  You do what you have to, to get things done.

  I lived in the hour, but Dorcas foresaw. The woman knew what I would become without her to stand between me and her young, but the woman left me— was I that bad, that she vanished with no warning and without explanation? Did she not care what happened to them?

  Winds destroy, survivors float

  Unfaithful women drown and bloat.

  The bitch didn’t even leave a note.

  16

  Merrill

  Now

  Ned comes in, and night and silence blow out the door. After years spent battling Father, after a string of so-so roommates, after all the joy and confusion that came with Davy moving in, I was getting used to coming home to peace and order. I like walking into silence, everything where I left it, nothing to do, nobody expecting anything.

  Now my still, featureless house is filling up with need.

  Neddy slams into me and locks his arms so tight that I gasp. Clamping me in that hug, he twirls us so my back is to the door. I know he’s hiding something, but I’m so glad to see him that I let it play. We’re spinning in the moment, Neddy and me, all, not yet, make it last, it’s been too long! I could swear he’s grown. He’s so strong that I have to run my fingers up under the baggy hoodie and drum on his ribs to make him giggle and let go.

  He smells like my brother but he doesn’t; I catch subtle hints of, what. Men’s deodorant and motor oil and— wait. One other thing. Oh! I get it, but I don’t want to.

  I hold him off so I can study him. Instead of acknowledging the man poised on the sill, neither outside nor in, I draw on recent history. “You were smoking weed.”

  “As if!”

  So much for assumptions. This is not his shirt. Everything we thought before here— before this place— is long gone.

  The intruder speaks. “In your dreams, lady. Hello again.”

  Yes, this is what I have been avoiding. Magnetic, in spite of everything that stands between us. You’re not that person now, leave her back in high school, you’re done yearning after guys you know are bad for you. “What are you, stalking me?”

  Black sweats, black hoodie, same as Ned’s, but it looks better on him because it fits. Look at him, lounging in my doorway with one foot propped on the frame, studying his buffed fingernails as though whatever he came for, whatever he wants from me, can wait. He takes his sweet time responding and when he does, it’s to piss me off. “You don’t like me, do you?”

  “I don’t know you!”

  Rawson Steele backs into my open door, shuts it with one hand and shoots the bolt without looking, as if he knows these buildings by heart. “My point.”

  “What?” I ask him, “What do you want from us?”

  “What do you think I want?”

  Right. The phone. When we rounded that corner tonight the phone was still spinning in the road but the owner was long gone. “So that was you.”

  This makes him laugh, but his mouth twitches and I wonder: feeling stupid because you dropped it? About running away when it was only me and Ray? Embarrassed grin. “Pretty much.”

  “You were out of there too fast. Who knew? It’s not like we could give it back.”

  “It’s not like you wanted to. Now, if you’ll just…”

  The minute Ray scooped up that phone I flipped it open. Its screen was shattered but there was a voice coming out. Expected more from you; that flawless, automated tone threw me into a fit of speculation. Waiting for your … Then it died and no matter how hard we shook it, that was all we got.

  Ray mouthed, Oh. My. God. I nodded. Yes.

  My needy intruder’s phone is useless, but I’m not about to let him know that. “Not yet.”

  He smiles. Nicely, as though this isn’t really an issue for him. “Is there a problem?”

  Shrug like you don’t care. I turn away, playing for time. “Give me a minute.” I go into the bedroom to think. Ray handed the phone off to me as though through some miracle I’d bring it back to life or shake the owner’s secrets out of it. No way.

  Maybe I can use it to shake some secrets out of him.

  I pull the high-end phone with all its broken bells and whistles out from under the mattress and write my opening speech before I open the bedroom door. You’d think I’d walked in on them. The Northerner and my kid brother have their heads together: partners in collusion, laughing like old friends. Something snaps and the speech that I planned to hold until I caught him off-guard roars to the top.

  “What were you doing out in my backyard?”

  It surprises both of us but he recovers with a
surprisingly sweet grin. “What makes you think it was me?”

  “I saw you out there the night before the…” Disruption? Outrage? I can’t find the noun. I can’t shake the memory either.

  We were together on my front porch that weird last night on Kraven island; he lingered, and I didn’t mind; he was vibrant, edgy, attractive, compelled by a need he wouldn’t get time to name. We were poised at the edge of something, I’m not sure what, but for the first time in forever, I caught that old high school vibe: so not good for you. So … don’t go there, girl. Clearly, it was urgent: “story I have to tell you…” implied, story I alone am left to tell.

  Just then Davy pulled in. When I turned back to draw out the rest, he was gone. Davy was shitty about it, me with the devil/destroyer, which precipitated that fight in my kitchen in the dead of night.

  “Why was he here?”

  I was furious because I didn’t know!

  He pressed. “What was that?”

  I fobbed him off with a pat TV line: “Who are you?”

  “I’m your…” He couldn’t find a word! Five years and nothing between us to seal the deal, the jerk. I slapped takeout cartons on the table so we wouldn’t have to fight, but I was fuming. Too disrupted by things I wish I’d said to sleep. Some time after midnight the two of us collided in the dark, Davy foraging, me too distracted to rest, the real problem pending. I put it to him and we had the fight.

  On my way back to bed I thought I caught the glint of a shovel out there underneath the moon, a figure working— what was that? At the time I thought, Tell Davy in the morning. I thought we would wake up together and sort ourselves out. That night the last thing I said to him in the kitchen was, “If you’re that kind of possessive, it’s time to put up or shut up.” He walked away. I didn’t know that was the last thing I would ever say to him. I saw somebody in our backyard and I thought, It can damn well wait ’til tomorrow. It serves you right, but by morning we were all …

  Oh crap, there’s no noun for what we all were, all of us all at once.

  But Rawson Steele is waiting so I start over. “The night before the…” The word comes, and I explode. “… Removal!”

  “Is that what you think it was?” His eyes are clear blue and, this is odd: bottomless. Impossible to plumb. “A removal?”

  “I don’t know what to think!”

  The Northerner came to Kraven island and caught us unawares. He made friends fast, and he did it without explaining what he was doing here on the Inland Waterway. He had that kind of charm. Nice way about him, soft-spoken, strong handshake, black raw silk shirt, open collar, because everyone knows that for such encounters, you show your throat to let the people know you are in their hands, not the other way around.

  Ray brought him into my office that first day. “Merrill, this is Rawson Steele.”

  All he had to do was smile. Chiseled head, but with that smile, and a disarming nick in one of those perfect front teeth. Here researching the “colony,” he told me: finding out about all old families and why Azalea House was the only plantation house left standing. He just wanted to walk the land where the other plantations stood, outlining the tabby foundations of the ruined houses, he wanted to lie down in the remains of the slave quarters and listen to the heart of the island life; he said he needed to find out, but he never said what.

  He was on fire with it, so in love with our island that he couldn’t seem to find the words, and I thought, Sweet. I liked him at once— we all did— well, everybody but Davy, and to this day I don’t know if it was instinct or plain old sexual jealousy, but to my shame I worked it. I did, because Davy and I were at a confusing time in our lives together and I thought … Never mind what I thought. He wasn’t coming out of the house when you found him on our front porch that night, Davy, he just dropped by.

  If you care.

  On his second day in town he came into my office with that great smile. “I’m scouting locations for a documentary on your island and I need your help.” His face was bright with whatever he hoped for, but he never quite said what we have on Kraven island that he is so desperate to have.

  No. What we had.

  I walked him along Bay Street in Kraventown, pointing out this, explaining that. At Ray’s party I introduced him around. He’s a magnet; people liked him, what can I say? Still do. It’s exciting seeing him here, but. God, I am uneasy.

  We let him into our lives because in the tidelands, generations survive on the persistence of good manners. We all make nice to strangers because in our part of the world, you do. We let him into our stores and offices, our houses. We let him into our lives, and now look at us.

  Here.

  I saw you digging in the dirt behind my house the night before it happened. Or not, and I don’t know which.

  He fills my bleak living room, all arrogant and handsome and borderline sinister, grinning like the fox sizing up the chickens that invited him in. Prompting me: “You were saying…”

  I jerk to, jittering. Embarrassed, because parts of me just came alive. How long has it been? “Nothing. I was just.” It’s a sentence I can’t finish, not right now.

  He says patiently, “You called this— whatever, this phenomenon that picked us all up and dropped us here— The Removal. What did you mean?”

  “What do you mean, us?” Is that really me screeching? The noise shames even me. “You ought to know…”

  His eyebrows shoot up— surprise? “Shhh, don’t yell.”

  Furious, I let him have it. “… You fucking caused it!”

  “Is that what you think?” Yes, he is surprised.

  “You bet I do! All this stuff you have, that we don’t.” I try to clarify. “Black sweats, the hoodie. Those boots. This phone.” I throw it at his head. “You were talking to Them.”

  “No.” Instead of ducking he catches the phone and turns it over, flashing its ruined face. “Shit. Busted.”

  “Just the screen. It was working when we found it.”

  “Nope.” Oh, man. Please don’t smile! “Nothing works here.”

  “Then why are you so crazy to get it back?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “I heard that voice.” … acknowledge. If you can’t talk, press 1 to signify … an automated voice, but I could swear I heard other voices rising behind it.

  He continues, “Urgent ones.”

  Helpful Ned says, “Rush call.”

  “You only think you heard it.”

  “Them. In the background, talking to you.”

  “Oh,” he says; he’s so damn smooth. “You mean the recording.” He taps the phone the way you do when you can’t believe your pet has died on you. Is that a sigh? He shrugs. “It was just a recording.”

  If I persist he’ll just deny it, so I attack. “Then why are you so crazy to get it back?”

  “It’s personal.”

  Apologetic grin, but I don’t quit. “And where were you on the day they dumped everybody else in one spot, and what have you been doing out there? Where were you anyway? At some kind of headquarters that we don’t know about? Like, reporting to Them?”

  “There is no Them.”

  “Fuck yes there is. Unless you…” Shit! I stab the air. “You. You did this to us.”

  Ned’s elbow clips me in the ribs. “The hell he did!”

  “Not now, Ned.”

  “Look,” Steele says. “If I brought us here, don’t you think I would get us the hell out of here?”

  “I don’t know what you would do!”

  “I’m trying!” He reaches for my hands.

  “Let go!”

  Ned goes, “Mer…”

  “Look at me.” His lean face is taut. When we are nose to nose, he lets go unexpectedly and backs away with his hands spread— a living signboard that reads: TRUST ME. “I don’t know either.”

  “Merrill…”

  “I said, not now!” Even now I am neither here nor there about Rawson Steele. I don’t know who he is or what he really want
s, what he’s doing here or what we’re doing here or what to do about it, I don’t know, any more than I know what’s going to become of us. We are in stasis here until the wire holding me in place snaps and I attack. “Like hell you don’t! You caused this. You can damn well get us out of it.”

  “MER!”

  “Love to, but I can’t.” Rawson Steele fixes me with his eyes. I look deep. The irises are green at the center, and as empty as ponds. “I told you, I don’t know shit.”

  Then the kid— my brother— cuts between us, spitting like a panther. “FUCK YES HE DOES. I SAW HIM.”

  I wheel on my brother, pleading, “For God’s sake, Neddy, don’t yell!”

  But there is no silencing Ned. “HE GOES OUTSIDE THE RIM, MERRILL. I KNOW IT. I SAW HIM COMING IN.”

  17

  Davy

  Friday, near dawn

  It’s eerie, slinking through his adopted home town like an alien presence— with a third eye, furry antlers, he doesn’t know, just that he is different here— unless he’s a clumsy spy from some foreign country we didn’t know we were at war with. The feeling is strange and terrible. He thought he could make a home here, but flushed out of Merrill’s house by good old boys with down-home drawls, lunging from hedge to garbage bin for cover, he no longer belongs.

  In spite of the commotion on Poulnot Street, all the lights on the Kraven island grid are dead. What’s left comes from other sources. Emergency LEDs set up at the roadblock signify a police presence. One state trooper patrols with his fog lights on, one cop paces back and forth along Bay Street with a pencil flash while the others are, what? Fanning out in Ray’s neighborhood? Still out at the lake, waiting? Waiting for what?

  Empty police cars and the TV truck stand ready to roll into action, but when?

  They were sounding the lake when he went into Merrill’s house, but it’s been a while. Are they still dragging or did they find something? Drowned sailors rising out of the disrupted waters, he thinks, or putrid swamp things, dripping with underwater growths.

  Hideous images come up out of the mud at the bottom of his mind. Stop that. Be cool. They’re still waiting to see whether bodies float up because no bodies have floated up, which means everybody from Kraven is somewhere else and Merrill’s fine.