Low Country (47 page)

beach road and our house. I stepped on the gas when

I got through the traffic circle; I had no wish to meet

the first of the media gathered at the bridge over to the

island. But when I approached it, it lay empty and

dreaming in the first sun, only a couple of Gullah

crabbers tossing their lines over into the black water.

I lifted a hand and smiled, and they smiled back. I

knew them but did not remember their names. I knew

that they lived in Dayclear, though. I wondered how

much longer they would be free to crab in this little

estuary.

I flicked on the radio and found the station in

Charleston that played baroque music in the early

mornings. “Spring” from
The Four Seasons
uncurled

into the Jeep, and I smiled. I turned off onto my dirt

road and swept around the curve to the live oak ham-

mock in a shower of glittering notes.

Clay’s Jaguar was parked under the trees. Even as

my lips framed the word “shit,” my heart leaped like a

gaffed mullet in my chest.

I stopped the Jeep a little way from the Jaguar and

looked around. I saw no evidence that he was in the

house; it was still dark, and no smoke came from the

chimney. I did not see him on the hammock or out on

the boardwalk to the dock,

426 / Anne Rivers Siddons

either. I sat still, trying to decide how I would think

about this, how I would act when I saw him. I could

not even imagine why he was here, on this of all days.

I decided on Dorothy Parker.

“What fresh hell is this?” I said aloud, in what I

hoped was a coolly amused voice, as I got out of the

Jeep.

No one answered me but an outraged squirrel in the

live oak over my head.

I was almost up to the steps when I heard the faint

putt-putt of the Whaler out on the creek. I went down

to the edge of the boardwalk over the reeds and dark

water and stood watching as it came out of the glitter

of the morning sun and glided to rest against the dock.

He got out and stood looking toward me. He was

bathed in the dancing light, as he had been the first

time I saw him, and he was as tall and flame-tipped

and lithe as he had ever been then. This was not fair.

I felt a great, simple, abject grief start in my chest.

“I want that back,” I whispered aloud. “Oh, I want

that back.”

I went to meet him.

I was perhaps fifteen feet away from him before his

face came clear out of the dazzle, and I gasped aloud

and stopped. Clay had been crying. His long face was

as red and congested as Carter’s when he was a toddler

and just coming out of a spell of weeping; his eyes

were bloodshot

Low Country / 427

and slitted, and the silver scum of dried tears glittered

in the silvery stubble on his chin and cheeks. His hair

had not been combed, and was wildly tangled from

the wind on the Whaler.

I had never seen Clay cry. Not like this. I simply

looked at him.

“I couldn’t find you,” he said, and his lips shook,

and his voice broke.

“I wasn’t here,” I said stupidly.

He shook his head hard, and tears flew out into the

warming air. His face contorted and he turned it away.

“I know. I know you were over at Cassells’s trailer.

I went over there, but the lights were out.…”

“He wasn’t there, Clay,” I said. “He went to Colum-

bia. I was staying with Lita.”

“I know. I didn’t mean I thought you…I just…I just

wanted to see your car, to know you were safe some-

where. I thought you’d have called by now.…I came

over here to wait for you.”

As if by agreement, we began to walk back toward

the house. The boardwalk squeaked and swayed under

our weight. We walked side by side, but we did not

touch. None of this felt at all real. I might have been

watching a movie of myself, walking along a boardwalk

on a spring morning with a man who could not stop

crying. A man I knew only slightly, from another time.

“How did…how did you know where I was?” I said,

more to break the silence than any

428 / Anne Rivers Siddons

thing. I simply could not get a sense that this was my

husband.

“Ezra Upchurch came to see me last night,” he said.

“He told me. Among other things. Christ, if that wasn’t

a scene…it’s two in the morning and Ezra Upchurch

is knocking on the door yelling for me to open up. I’m

surprised somebody didn’t call the cops.”

“Ezra?” I said stupidly. “I didn’t know you knew

Ezra.”

“I guess he figured it was time he introduced him-

self,” Clay said, and to my surprise began to laugh. It

was not so far removed from tears, that laugh, but it

was a laugh. I laughed, too. I could not imagine why.

At the beginning of the boardwalk my grandfather

had built a pair of facing cypress benches, weathered

now into a silky silver gray, and when we reached them

he sagged onto one of them and I sat down on the

other. We looked at each other across the boardwalk

where we had met, all those years ago.

“Ah, God, Caro,” he said presently. “So much shit.

So much misery. So much…waste. I don’t know what

I was thinking. I really don’t. Well, I
wasn’t
thinking,

of course…Listen, can we talk a little bit? Will you just

listen to me without saying anything? I don’t mean

you should…change your mind about anything, but if

you’d just listen…”

Low Country / 429

“Clay, I will always listen to you,” I said. “When did

I not?”

“Well, do you think…could you make some coffee?

I couldn’t find the cord to the pot.…”

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to the house.”

All the way across the grass and up the steps my

heart was hammering as if it would explode in my

chest. What was this? What could this possibly mean?

I made the coffee while he took a shower. I saw that

he had slept on the sofa under a welter of quilts. The

fire was cold and sour, and I relit it. It was really too

warm for it, but I wanted the intimate hiss and snicker

of it, and the dancing light. The living room was still

in darkness, from the sheltering oaks. I turned on the

lamps and brought out a tray of coffee and some of

the Little Debbies that were Esau and Janie Biggins’s

sole gesture toward breakfast food.

He came into the room in an old pair of madras

shorts and a sweatshirt. His feet were bare and his hair

was wet and standing straight up in spikes from the

towel. The sweatshirt was a horror of Carter’s that

said, RUGBY PLAYERS EAT THEIR DEAD. I was sure that

Clay had no idea it said anything at all. I felt wild,

braying laughter behind the tears in my chest. I bit my

lips and waited.

“All right,” he said on a long, exhaled breath. “Listen.

The press thing at the bridge…the

430 / Anne Rivers Siddons

march, you know…that’s off. Ezra’s Washington

people have been calling all night. And the project, the

development, you know, the Dayclear thing…that’s

off, too. I pulled out of it. I called the SouthWard guys

at the guest house while Ezra was still at the house and

told them to hit the road. He wouldn’t leave until I’d

given him the deed and he’d torn it up. Burned it, too.

He’s one tough cookie, Ezra Upchurch. And he still

wouldn’t leave until I’d called Hayes and fired him.

That did it, though. After that we broke out the Glen-

fiddich and drank until about four, and then he left to

get things straightened out with the press, and I went

on over to Edisto, and then came back here. I hadn’t

been out on the water for fifteen minutes before you

came.”

He stopped and looked at me. I could not think of

a single thing on earth to say to him.

“Why did you fire Hayes?” I said finally.

“Suspicion of equicide,” my husband said, and began

to laugh. I did, too. We sat in the growing light of this

day I had dreaded and laughed and howled and wept

and sobbed and laughed some more, and pounded

our thighs with our fists, and when we finally subsided,

Clay began to cry again.

I moved over to the sofa and sat down beside him

and put my arm around his shoulder, very tentatively.

I felt that I was trying to comfort a total stranger,

someone I had met on an airplane

Low Country / 431

or something, who had become suddenly inconsolable.

It was almost…unseemly.

“Did you really do those things, Clay?” I said finally.

“Did all that really happen?”

His face was buried in his hands, but he nodded.

I sat back and thought about that.

“Then…nothing is going to happen over here. There

isn’t going to be anything built on Dayclear?”

He nodded.

“Do you mean for now, or ever? You still own it;

will you change your mind somewhere along the way?

Will we go through this again?”

He raised his head and looked at me. It was painful

to look at him.

“Caro,” he said, “Last night, when I finally lay down

to try to sleep, I thought Kylie was here. I could have

sworn on a stack of Bibles that I heard her laughing,

that I heard her walking outside; I’d know her step

anywhere. I thought I heard her…talking, but I

couldn’t hear what she said. And when I got up to see,

I heard…I heard the panther. And I knew then that if

I did anything to this island I would be haunted for

the rest of my life by it. I knew that it was theirs, not

mine, yours and theirs, and your grandfather’s, and

the Dayclear folks…I knew that I never had belonged

here and never would, not the way all of you did and

do. They told me that, that pan

432 / Anne Rivers Siddons

ther and my dead baby. I know it’s not possible, but

that is what I heard. I started crying then. If I’m losing

my mind…then so be it.”

I felt joy and peace flood into my heart like an

artesian well.

“If you’re losing you mind, then I am, too,” I said.

“I’ve heard her here. I’ve talked to her. I’ve thought I

saw her. And Luis and Lita heard the panther the

morning…that Nissy died. I think…I think…that either

that panther must be about one hundred and twenty-

five years old or this island knows what we need to

hear, and somehow…sees that we do. In any case, it

doesn’t matter. If you heard them, then maybe it can

be your island, too.”

He shook his head, no.

“But I’d like…I’d like to stay here on it with you, if

you think you could let me do that. I thought you’d

gone, Caro. I didn’t think you would come back. I

didn’t think I could live with that.”

I reached out and touched a tear track on his face.

He covered my hand with his and pressed it into his

bristled cheek.

“We’ll lose everything, won’t we?” I said, not pulling

away. “If you don’t do Dayclear? The company, the

house…Is that why you’re crying? Surely, Clay, there’s

something else you can do, some other way you can

put your gift to work…and I don’t care about the other

stuff. I can live

Low Country / 433

over here for the rest of my life. I was going to; I

thought that was what I would do. I can sell my

paintings. We could manage.…”

He shook his head and grinned, a small, watery grin.

“We’ll do okay,” he said. “I’ll find somebody decent

to sell the company to, somebody who’ll be generous;

there have been good offers along the way. The Pea-

cock Island Plantation Company is not chopped liver.

I have a ton of stock. We could keep the house if you

wanted to, but somehow I don’t think I could live there

now, and I was sure you wouldn’t want to. Carter may

want to be a part of it, and we can work that out with

the new owners. I don’t give a shit about any of that

stuff; it’s history. I want to see if I can earn my right

to be part of this over here. That will be enough to

hold me a few thousand years. No, what got to me

was…I guess the thought of Kylie, and how she would

feel about what I had become, and then that poor

goddamned horse, and the colt…Kylie loved those

horses…and Hayes. Hayes was my friend, Caro. Hayes

was my first friend in this place, almost my first friend

period.…”

“Did he admit…that he had anything to do with the

horses?”

“He didn’t say he didn’t. He just blustered and

threatened and yelled; he really lost it when I told him

there wasn’t going to be any project.

434 / Anne Rivers Siddons

Said I was ruining him. Said I had betrayed him, after

everything he’d done for me. I remembered what you

said about Becket…I think he did it, or had it done.

God help him for that.”

“There may be proof by now that he was behind it,

Clay,” I said. “That was why Luis went to Columbia.

He has a contact there who’s going to tell him, who

can name names and places and all that. He was going

to bring it back with him for the press conference. You

should have it soon.…”