The Shore (30 page)

I shrug at her and step out the front door.

“I might do, in the morning,” I say.

“No one's been killed around here in fifteen years, so you should be safe.”

She could mean my mom or Bo, but for a moment I get a stab of fear in my stomach that she means Cabel Bloxom. That she knows.

The door shuts behind me for a second time. I look up at the moon for a moment, huge with balancing on the horizon, and I remember sitting on the upstairs porch at night when I was younger, watching the reflection on the marsh. The stars are smeared across the sky, not the pretty scatter that most people imagine, but a crush of millions in the beautiful, pure darkness. I'd forgotten how big the sky is out here, how black it gets at night, how far it feels from the rest of the world.

My feet start walking, past my car, across the gravel road, to the cornfield, and the remains of the oyster-shell road gleam up at me through the stalks, pearlescent in the moonlight. I'm going to go back to my house, and I'm going to watch the stars from my porch again, and I'm going to pretend that Renee is already in bed asleep, that Mama has just stepped inside to get us glasses of soda, that Daddy isn't someone to be scared of, because
he wasn't always. And when I get back to Georgia I might tell Seth who shot Cabel Bloxom, or I might not, and I might make him come back with me, or I might not. It doesn't matter yet. What matters is that I have the stars, the marsh, the smudge of the barrier islands again, that I can trace the Milky Way, that my feet remember the shape of this land. That for right now they're all mine.

2143

T
EARS OF THE
G
ODS

T
ime was, in the byandby days, people came and went across the bay, or around the hook, or through the marsh, just as they wished. And that might sound like a lovely thing, a world so big, but time run along and the oyster beds lay empty, and the sea tossed up great two-headed fish, and all the flitting seabirds hid their sandy nests. About that time we heard whispers from the mainland, about babbies being born dead or not at all, people going hungry or wandering around killing to get what they had to have, and the Bigmen not doing a thing to stop it.

Then the fever came. Some say it was a shivering fever, others say a sweating fever, but when the little ones are asleep, Wink tells it was a sick that rotted a man's parts from the outside in, and a woman's from the inside out. It came with the first chill of year's end, and our luck was no one much wandered over t'the Island when summer was done. Big Island people was dying like baitfish in a bucket, but we was holding steady, certain sure that all would be well, till the healer woman came with her dark wood chest and her follow-afters. She, what was the first Keeper ever we had, ever we needed, kenned what was to
come, pitched her hut far from the village, told us what must be done if we would live. We were ready to hold them off, any that might come to our island with the fever on them, but the rain came first. And with it came the wind, and waves tree-high, and when blue sky came again there was no road back to Big Island. Just rubble speckled across the sucking mud and sunk deep in the reeking water to mark where it had been. People say boats came to find us at first, across the bay or tracking slow through the marsh's paths, which no one could follow lest they'd grown up there, but the tides threw them around and laid them bare on the rocks of Tom's Hook, or else the twisting of the creeks or the snakes'n'spiders'n'other nasties took care of them.

But that's not what this story is about. That's just a goes-to-show. Islandmen are laid out so that they can only see one way to fix a thing, mostly, and are just as hard to bring around as the tide itself. But I did work a bring-around, once, on Trower Bell no less, and this is how it happened.

Now you might think with us being an Island of fishers'n'farmers'n'trapping men, no one'd have a use for daughters, and maybe that's how things were, in the byandby days. A couple of sons is all well, but when they marry up, their hands go to working their own plots. A daughter will be cooing over you an' baking'n'brewing over you till you die, whether or no she's got a man t'home. So it's no secret that an Islandman, when his love grows round, hangs shells on the beach trees and sings for a girl child. A son is useful like an ass or a goat is useful, but you never seen a man delight in an ass, lest there was something odd about him. Too, you can plant and catch all you want, but if there's no one to preserve it, dry'n'pickle'n'pack it away neatlike, you may as well sun all the summer away. So it's no
secret that Islandmen hang the trees for loves as well. Suppose I'm lucky, some men never get a love, and with all this pining after women what we do, sometimes a boy could get to thinking that no one in the world wants him. That's pretty much where I was when I found the copper gourd. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I got born, I was quick in the head but not in body. My right arm was stiff at the elbow so it wouldn't bend all the way, first two fingers stuck together and last two not there at all, with hollow places where some of the muscles should have been so it never got as strong as the other, and the shoulder slumped in. The right leg was off too, the foot clubbed and the hip popped. I could walk on it, but not comfortlike and not pretty, and couldn't do heavy work that took both hands. As I grew the bad side grew with me, not quite keeping up so I had a funny bouncing walk that I was shy of. It wasn't my fault, it was just how I was born, same as how Wink was born with no eyes, just two soft dark bumps where eyes ought to be. Lot of little ones born then had something off about them; it happens more than we would like. I was better off than a lot of them; Wink couldn't see a blame thing, and summa the others didn't live to their teething year. He mends the nets finer than a woman now, and keeps the stories, but there's only room for one Keeper on t'Island. I had the welcome to a piece of dirt and a stretch of corn like every other man that may, and the choice to work it how I could, or else hang on at some other man's hearth until I was turned out, and that was how I thought it would be.

When you're just a slip you don't notice them, think everyone's the same more or less. Then one day you look up and something's different.

We was all splashing in one of those beachy hollows what fills with seawater when the tide's up, not a stitch on and not thinking twixt about it. I'd seed Jillet a hundred times before, but when she skinned off her big loose shift, same as we all wore, and jumped in the water with us, the bottom fell out of my gut. I got right out of the water and nipped down the beach, fast with my sideways skip like I have to, before she could see the red in my face. The first beach tree I came to, one of the little twisted trees all torn by the salt wind, I dropped down and gathered up the holy shells and hung it all about.

My da hung the first tree I saw. Took me up on his shoulder one day and sung out that we was going off, and strode out with me up high through the whispering pines with the hard dirt sliding by so far down beneath his feet. He legged it through the wood and across the little marsh where the wild ponies graze to the sand, where all the little ones play and fishers launch their boats, and the Keeper has his hut of sea-licked wood between the soft hills of the dunes. He nipped along the water edge, till we come to a spindly tree stripped by wind and water till its wood shone polishedlike, and set me down. He picked up a great pile of white shells, all broken, and threaded them onto the bone-fine branches, all the while singing about daughters. Some say it's a prayer, others say it's magic. Wink says though Islandmen been hanging trees since time out of mind, it doesn't do you a lick of good to hang a tree like that and then sit back and not work at the reason you hung the thing. Think he has
it right; we hung that tree 'n' sung the songs, and m'brother Wol came in the winter. So after hanging my tree and singing for want of Jillet, I sat down in the sand, and looked up at that naked little tree all dangling broken seashells, and gave it some thought.

Jillet's Trower Bell's daughter, his only daughter, and from what I'd seed she was his light'n'life'n'loveliness since his love passed on, and before. And if that didn't make it bad enough he was Bigman on the Island, with more chooks'n'goats'n'corn than anyone else. As I thought it, it wouldn't be long before all the young bucks would be looking to snitch her away from him, so he'd be watching doubly close, and not giving her up to just anyone. They'd be offering him gifts, but seeing as he was set comfortlike he'd be above what most of them could manage, untried boys as they was. And they'd be offering her gifts, but he'd brung her up smartlike and strong, and it'd take more than a lapful of roses 'n' the usual boys' empty promises to turn her head. As you might think, these was worrisome thoughts to a man with one side all shriveled and not much more than a herd of chooks to call his own. Hell, I had no knowing even if I could get a babby by her, given the chance.

I walked away from the sand that day heavy in the step, but I couldn't stop thinking about Jillet. Me'n'Wol had a plot of our own way back in the woods, what had been Da'n'Mam's afore us, and all the time I was working our corn, gathering in our clams, scrabbling after plovers' eggs or babbying my little herd of bantie chooks, I was thinking on Jillet.

Wol's a decent brother, as they go, and we worked fine together, but I knew he had his eyes on a lovely of his own. I remember when he was born, and the sad in Da's eye that he
wasn't the daughter he hung the tree for, but Mam just crowed on that he had all'n his limbs. He follerd after me till he learned to run, and got in all manner of things I'd never bothered with, until Mam wondered out loud why she'd ever asked for a sound'n to make up for the Halfman she'd borne, meanin' me. Da had been drowned when Wol was in his walking year, going after fish on the back of the changeable sea. Mam hadn't lasted too much longer, just until Wol got to be some use around the place. Byandby, he became the leader 'n' I the follow-after, and the plot what usual goes to firstborn went to him. I had my little corner what he left alone, and my banties, and my way with finding clams and plovers' eggs, and we got on sweetlike'n'good with each other. Be that as it may, when he finally brought his love home to roost I'd be left hanging on at their hearth, and I never heard tell of a new-joined couple in their honeymonth what didn't deeply need their privicy. Otherwise I could take my chances with my own plot'n'herd, but a one-arm Halfman what can't run down his goats'n'chooks hasn't much chance alone on the Island. You can guess neither future filled me full of glowing.

Perhaps it was all that thinking that led me up to the old light-watch one day, when Wol was off courting his lovely and I had the time to wander. It sits on the highest point of the Island, a big red-white stripe finger rising out of the hardpack dirt and thick clustering trees, what used to warn away the ships back when we wanted them to land safe instead of smashing open on the rocks. Back when there were ships to land. It certainly was all that thinking that made me misstep off the edge of the gully up by the light-watch and go sliding down through the underbrush, and if I hadn't slidden down, I never would have found it.

When I fell, my gut stayed back up top, leastways it felt like it, but when I hit the bottom I landed in mounds of soft skeleton leaves, so wasn't bad hurt. Just lay there a while, watching the light-watch spinning up above me through the wavering trees under a clear blue sky. When it all held still again I flipped over and took stock, and found I wasn't hurt bad, just all banged up. The climbing back up with one strong hand took some time, but as I was going up the face of that gully my right knee fetched up against something that gave a hollow sound, and curiousome I stopped to see what it was.

Dirt had sifted down and mosses grown over, but a tick of scraping showed that the mother of the echo I had heard was a low square door, set into the earth of the gully at a slant. A thick heavy door it was, but no lock, and hauling it open near tore my good arm off. Breath of the grave seeped out of the opening, cold and dry all together. And I dropped inside, dustlight flickering in after me, but what I found puzzled me grievous.

A little cave had been cut in that gullybank, sandy and clean with neat tight-packed walls cut square, as big as mine'n'Wol's hut, with an iron table pushed up into the back. Setting on that table was a gourd, but it rung when I tapped it and shone coppery and spotted with greenish thumbprints. Its copper stem twisted up and over to hang above a little bucket on the floor, its bottom red with rust. The gourd had stubbly little legs, and beneath it was the sleeping bones of a snuffed-out fire. Some dust had sifted down from above, and a scattering of leaves'n'beetle bits littered the corners, but it was a tight'n'neat little place. I thought for a moment, if Wol turned me out when he brought his love back, I could sweep it out and make a tolerable snug
home for myself, or at least a place to die privatelike. But I put that thought away sharpish.

Any idea in the world what that copper gourd was, I had none, but I knowed that it could maybe get me what I was after. That time, we were still finding pieces and bits of the byandby, things with biting edges, that weighed too heavy for their size or were smooth and hard and colored bright, shards of the sky that showed back your own face. Any little piece you could find was worth your while, because any little piece you could find, what was useful, could make you a very big man indeed. So I stood cogitating on that piece for a while, fetched it a clip with my finger to make it ring, and thought some more. The air in that space was dry and dusty, and my eyes began weeping, so I fetched out a little length of rope I kept with me, and fixed the gourd by its narrow neck around my waist, and most careful of its snaking, hollow stem I closed up the door and began the climb to the top again.