Swing Low...

Something of a start...been on my back burner for years. A murder mystery, lowcountry style...

I

Evie met Rufus one wet hot afternoon when the air sang with the whine of blood-bellied mosquitoes. He had been casting for shrimp at low tide, out of Big Bay Creek. She’d watched him as he stood on the bank, the sun making his bare brown back glow. His pant legs were rolled to the knee, his feet bare. He seemed happily lost, lulled in the repetition. He rolled and hefted the round net, his fingers gathering its folds in a come-to-me motion. When he had gathered it just so, he’d tuck his arms in chest high and fling the net out over the green water, his arms tracing the arc of the thrust. Like he followed the curve of the sun. That throw-it was practiced and sweet. The silky net flattened in a perfect circle, seemed to hang for a moment in the air.  Then it would splash down, the weights stitched all around the rim slapping the stilled water like fat raindrops.

Evie was mesmerized. She watched then as he held the net slack in his hands and waited. Rocked up onto his toes, his calves getting hard and round. And then he tilted his head way back like a kid trying to catch the rain on his tongue. Studied the tangled arms of the live oak tree so close there above his head. Evie supposed he traced the paths of the limbs and branches pondering where one began and the other ended.

It seemed he stood there dreaming, only tethered to the earth by those handfuls of mesh. Evie wondered if he might be sleeping standing up, like a field horse. But just then, he leveled his head and reined the net in, carefully closing the circle. He plucked each grayish blob from the strings and gently tossed salty handfuls into a bucket at the base of the tree.

Evie felt a lazy sleepiness creeping up on her. She caught herself smiling and shook her head to chase it all away, to let herself become conscious again of her own hands, the way they danced together with the golden coils in her lap. Evie had her own rhythm going while she watched the man. Making a sweetgrass basket.

She was proud of the way this one was coming along. If Momma were here, she’d hold it up to the sun and say, ‘OOOOH, Baby Gal! Una got dis right! All una coils ‘es jus’ right. So tight and even!  OOOOH, chile!’  And she’d put that basket on the bench and put her hands on Evie’s cheeks and press hard. ‘OOOO, you my gal! Una make dem baskets jes’ as good as yo’ Momma. Das right!’ And then she’d beam like a harvest moon and wave her hands around all crazy like. Crazy for Evie.

Evie could always hear her Momma whispering to her as she worked, ‘Now una starts with da longleaf pine, den una can come along wid’ the sweetgrass. We builds in some mo’ pine needles as yo’ basket grows. And den when we’s done, we gonna make dem love knots, chile, all around da edge.’ 

That was Evie’s favorite part; making the love knots. Tiny fists of knotted longleaf pine all along the edge. Looked like balls of brown sugar. Folks loved to touch them and rub their fingers over the nubs. People would buy a basket real fast, if it had loveknots.

Evie’s Momma made the best baskets on the island. She learned from her Momma and her Momma learned from her Momma, and it was just like that. Evie liked to think of that chain of women from here, on Edisto Island, all the way back to Senegal. Thousands of black hands pulling and coiling and lashing bulrush or sweetgrass after a long hot day in the cotton fields.

Sometimes at night, Evie thought she could hear them all singing to her. Low, sad songs that made the pine needles quiver. She never felt scared; she knew down deep they were just letting her know they were there, perfuming the air with their spirits.

Momma used to have a basket stand, out on Highway 17 North, where she and Aunt Pearl sold their sweetgrass. It was a rickety brown skeleton of a thing made up of old boards and nails that they’d more than likely found in toppled down houses along the road. It looked a sight but when Momma hung her beautiful baskets on those nails, the whole space around would smell like fresh hay. And the tourists would be all over her stand, like bees to honey, all the day long.

Momma’d sit there on a low stool, the one that Daddy made for her, special. It was high on the sides and scooped in the middle, like a saddle. And smooth as a baby’s cheeks. Aunt Pearl sat on a folding chair. She always said, well c’mon now chile, my butt is too wide for no silly old stool like that.

Even though they were always working, Momma and Pearl seemed to be so tickled to be right there together, two sisters weaving and talking, laughing and singing. Evie was always at Momma’s knee and heard all the stories about Momma started teaching her early about making baskets. She’d have Evie hold the sweetgrass coils in her tiny hands and Momma would cup Evie’s hands in her own. She’d move Evie’s fingers, teaching her to hold the coils tight, and then she’d show her how to lash them together with the palmetto leave strips. She always liked to start a basket with that spiral of longleaf pine needles. Seemed like all of sweet Carolina was wound up in a basket.

Evie rubbed her hands together and put her cupped palms to her nose. Inhaled the spicy pine pitch. It made her think of Momma. And Aunt Pearl. She rested her elbows on her knees and kept her hands cupped there. There was a holy silence, there behind her cupped hands, in the orange light coming through her fingers.

There was the crackle of oyster shells underfoot.

His honey voice surprised her. “Excuse me, ma’am. But are you all right?”

Evie’s hands flew away from her face. She straightened her back and pulled at the hem of her calico dress, unsticking the filmy pink cloth from her thighs. She shot her right hand back to her brow, like a salute, shielding her eyes from the falling sun. She was shocked to see the shrimper man standing there, his golden brown eyes all wide with concern.

“Oh, hello. Well, yes. Of course, I’m all right. Now why shouldn’t I be?”

Evie felt a warm rush come to her chest, and then it flamed to her cheeks. He was handsome, by gosh. He stood there with the pail full of shrimp and such a sweet look of care all over his face.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I just thought you sat here looking so sad. Thought maybe I could help. My name’s Rufus. Rufus Wilson.”

Evie smiled. She picked up the basket that lay to her side. “Well, hello, Rufus Wilson.  My name’s Evie Campbell.” Evie fingered one of the love knots on the curve of her basket.

“That’s a fine basket you got going there. Never knew how anybody could figure out all those twists and turns. It’s a beautiful thing,” Rufus said, as he reached out his hand and slid his finger along the curved edge of the basket. “Sure is a beautiful thing,” he said again, smiling. “Now tell me. I’ve seen you here on every Sunday afternoon. You gettin’ some kind of inspiration here on these old church steps?  If you are, I would surely like to know. I could use a little inspiration about now.”

Evie felt the rush again, like birds flushed from the marsh, raising a red veil under her brown skin. “Why, I come here every Sunday. I come after the services, after all the folks have gone home to their red rice and greens. I love the quiet here.”

Rufus was glad to finally hear the little song of her voice. It was even prettier than he had imagined, sweet and simple.  This tiny bird of a girl had been perched here on the church steps every single week since he’d been home to Edisto. He had found chores to do at his uncle’s house, every Sunday morning, so that he could go shrimping by late afternoon. And watch for the girl on the church steps.

 The first time he saw her was about six weeks back, when he had first come from Charleston. He couldn’t wait to shake off the city and went rummaging in his Dad’s shed, looking for the cast nets. It had been years since he’d been shrimping on the banks, but he knew he’d take to it again, quick; his muscles had memorized the motions. He even dreamed about it the night before he got to Edisto. He had woken up smiling.

In his dream, Rufus was high up in that same old tree, straddling one of its huge limbs. He was hidden from view in those monstrous arms, draped in shawls of silver moss. From his perch, he idly watched himself- down below. In the tree, Rufus was a full grown man. He remembered seeing his own hands, hugging the limb, as he peered down through the lacy branches at the young boy below.

Young Rufus and his great grandfather, Papa Joe, stood barefoot in the silty mud. Papa Joe was talking young Rufus through every step of how to cast the net, in that low rumbly voice of his. Sometimes, he’d stand behind the boy and reach his long bony arms around him, so that Rufus could feel the whole motion all at once. He’d hold his hands over the boy’s to grasp the net, and then together they’d lean back on their back leg, turn at the waist and then fling the net wide. It took all afternoon to get it right.

But when they did, it was magic. Standing side by side, the two moved together in a perfect rhythm. When the nets were thrown, the circles hung suspended over the marsh, two meshed eyes looking back at them. Rufus remembered that he hooted at the twosome below, but they never looked up. He watched the old man gather the mesh of his own net, and then reach over, with a salty wet hand, and ruffle the boy’s wooly head. Both Rufuses had smiled.

That’s when he woke up.

And it was just so when he first cast the net six or seven Sundays ago. He could hear Papa John’s gravelly drawl talking him through the toss. And the perfectly- timed letting go.

When he came back to Edisto, all he wanted was to sink his toes in the pluff mud and let his thoughts get caught in those branches. But that pretty girl had done him in. He watched her there, when she wasn’t looking. A lot of times she’d just be staring into thin air with a sad faraway look in her eyes. And the whole time, she’d be wrapping and coiling and stitching away at that basket in her lap. Rufus kept imagining his head lying there.

He was absently staring at her pink flowered lap, when her little voice broke in, “I said I like the quiet here. That’s why I come.” She looked down at her little flat shoes; her eyes wouldn’t stay on his face.

Rufus shifted his weight to his other foot and studied the girl. “I like it here, too. Well, not here. But over there, over by the creek. I can really get lost. I like that. And I like that I get these shrimp, too!” Rufus smiled wide. Evie lifted her chin, peered over the edge of the bucket.

“You do have yourself a mess o’ shrimp, there.” Like she hadn’t watched him trap every one into that net. She cocked her head and looked out of the side of her eyes at him. Couldn’t stop herself.

Rufus scuffed his old shoes in the oyster shells, “Yeah, well, I done alright today. What say you come on down to the beach with me? We can get a little stick fire going and we can cook ‘em up there, here in this bucket. All we need is a little bit of water from my canteen here. What do ya say?”

Evie was so taken with his golden eyes that she couldn’t muster a reason to say no. “Well. I guess I don’t have no place better to be right now, Mr. Rufus. I suppose I could go along. And I got two peaches in my sack. We can have those for our dessert.” Rufus laughed. He liked the way she said, ‘Dee-zert’. Evie liked the way he laughed.  It came from high in his wide chest, but it was low and soft, all at the same time.

Her heart flittered under the calico flowers. Rufus put out his strong brown hand, helped her up. She turned about and gathered her basket makings. Slowly. So as not to look too happy about this little turn in the road.

III

Evie loved the beach at Edisto. She loved the wildness of it. The high tide line was littered with chalky white oyster shells. It looked hard, like its shell and sand face dared you to walk there. And there were groves of longleaf pine and miles of dunes. And sweetgrass. Evie could smell the sweetgrass all around. The best grew there behind the first set of dunes. She could hear Momma whispering to her, telling her to go get some of that. But she shut her ears to Momma for now, and followed the shoes of Rufus Wilson. They were funny looking shoes. Brown street shoes with no laces in them.

“What business you have wearin’ shoes like that out here on this sand?” Evie teased. “Those shoes look like something you might be wearin’ to church.” And right then she stopped on the hot sand, balanced on either foot, and pulled off her old flat shoes. Rufus stopped and put out his arm to steady her. She rested her fingertips on his warm forearm and felt all the muscles twitching there, like little fish swimming under his skin. The tide was nearly all the way out now and the sun looked like a big egg yolk dropping over the marshes, somewhere beyond the dunes, purpling the sky as it fell.

Rufus took this chance to hook his elbow with hers as they walked closer to the shoreline. “Well, now, Mizz Evie, are you this kind to all the young handsome men you meet?” Evie just smiled and dropped his arm and her shoes right there where they stood. And then she skipped away, sidewise like a sand crab, looking back at him and laughing, while she ran toward the ribbon of foam that traced the retreating waves. She couldn’t remember the last time her heart felt this light.

As Rufus pulled off his shoes, he watched her as she skittered to the breakers and then just stood there, looking out at the waves, like they were whispering a story she had to hear. As she headed down the beach, she’d stoop and pick up bits of shell or sea glass.

She came upon a gulley pool, simmering in the orange light, and waded in up to her ankles. With a sudden sideways swipe of her foot, she splashed a tiny wall of water up onto the sand. A hundred silver minnows flipped and popped. Rufus thought she looked like a child the way she reveled and played. Evie bent forward, with her hands on her knees, and watched the glittering bodies as they flipped and popped themselves back into the water.

Rufus laughed out loud and shook his head.  The falling sun was lighting the clouds from underneath, in a burnished gold. As the sun fell, it seemed to pull the clouds and the sky with it, like a woman pulling sheets off the clothesline. 

“I guess I’d best be getting some sticks here or it’s gonna get too dark to see my own hand in front of my eyes.” Rufus laughed again, this time at himself. He called out to Evie and then pointed to the line of palmettos that marched up the beach like a row of soldiers with feathered hats. “Gonna hunt for some wood. I’ll be right back.” But the wind just took his voice and tossed it back into his mouth.

Evie looked up, waved at him and headed back in his direction, searching the sand for the place where she’d dropped her flat black shoes. Oh, damn! My shoes! Evie’s heart nearly cleaved in her chest as she remembered about her shoes. She spied them, two black dots near a pile of seaweed, and ran hard to get to them before Rufus came back from the tree line. The soft hot sand sucked at her feet as Rufus emerged from the tree line with an armload of palm fronds and sticks.

Evie pumped her arms harder and hurtled forward, the sand flying up behind her like she was plowing a field. But it was too late. Rufus was there at the spot where she had dropped her shoes. Her legs burned so from the running, that she fell forward in the sand, the little black shoes inches from her chin. Rufus looked alarmed at first, and dropped the firewood to help her up. “Slow down, now Mizz Evie. I won’t eat all those shrimp by ma’self, if that’s what got you on the run!” Evie just grabbed at her shoes, her hands shaking, and hurriedly pulled them onto her sandy feet.

She could hardly breathe. Rufus had this quizzical look that she didn’t want to have to answer to. So Evie got busy digging a little firepit with the clam shell she’d brought from the shoreline. As she pulled and scraped at the grainy sand, she got to thinking about the last time she dug away so furiously. Evie had the urge to wretch, right there in the hole that she dug.

She tried to recover her wits again, feign a sense of calm. “No, no, Mr. Wilson. I don’t imagine you’d be so bad to go and eat up all them shrimp before I got here.” She hoped he couldn’t see the wide open black of her scared eyes in the dwindling light.

She finished her digging, sat back on her haunches and swiped her hands together to clear the fine sand from her palms. Rufus methodically lined the hole with sticks, using a criss cross pattern. “This is as close to makin’ a basket as I’m ever gonna get!  How do you like my basket, Evie?” Rufus teased. He balled up some dry palm fronds and husking, and nestled the dry kindling under his cupped hands. “Hey, Mizz Evie? Reach into my chest pocket here, and get that book o’ matches I got there, will ya?”

Evie had recovered her wits by now. She reached across the stick pile and slid her fingers into Rufus’s warm pocket. She wasn’t sure if she felt his heartbeat there, or if it was her own heart beating, so hard she could hear it in her own two ears. Evie looked at the matchbook cover in the pink light of the sunset. It was gold with black lettering, with the South Carolina palm tree and crescent moon.

The words on the cover: Sea Island Development.

Evie knelt close to the fire, struck a match and watched the little flame flicker there in the cave of her cupped palm. She tried to get the flame in close to the kindling, but the wind snuffed it out.

“Well, dang! That won’t do!” Evie complained out loud. She struck another match, then cupped the flame and delivered it under the brown arch Rufus made with his hands. The husk spit and glowed orange. Rufus put his lips close and softly blew at the tiny sparks. Two more slow and steady breaths and the flames took hold.

“C’mon, now Evie girl! Quick! Hand me some them fronds. Quick, now girl!” Evie grabbed a fistful and handed them to Rufus, who slowly fed the fire until it danced and crackled. She gave Rufus some fat dry pinewood now and he balanced three sticks over the fire like a teepee. The two sat back on their haunches and smiled, the orange flames lighting up their faces. “For a minute there, I was wishing I had a ball o’ newspaper to get this little fire going,” Rufus said. “But we got it goin’ girl. We didn’t need any newspaper after all.”

At that, Evie smiled a weak, nervous smile, a smile so faint her face didn’t feel it. She hugged her knees, collecting herself against the glowing warmth of the fire.

Rufus sat on the sand, close to the spitting fire, and shifted his hips side to side, making a hollow for his butt in the sand. When he had settled himself, he looked relaxed and oh, so satisfied to have landed here on the beach with the pretty girl from the church steps. He inhaled deeply and asked, on the exhale, “Well, now, Mizz Evie, won’t you tell me something about yourself? What brings you here to Edisto, and those church steps?” Evie held her knees close and scrunched herself up a little tighter. She felt that falling feeling again in her stomach and her head felt all woozy, like she was about to faint. She wished that he wouldn’t talk, that he wouldn’t go on asking questions, like this. She liked him, what she knew of him, which was nothing except how he threw a cast net. And how his eyes looked like melted chocolate.

“Oh, ain’t much to tell. I been here all my life. I was born here on Edisto. I’m the only child. I live back aways from the creek, with my Aunt Pearl. I’ve only been away as far as Mt. Pleasant.”

“Really?” Rufus looked surprised. “Never even been as far as Charleston?”

“No, sir,” Evie replied. “I always did want to go across that big old bridge going over the Cooper River. But Momma always said that Charleston gave her the shivers. So she never let me go there.”

“The shivers?” Rufus laughed. “Now, Mizz Evie, I live there in that shiverin’ old city. What would she think that for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess because of the history there. You know, all those sad places. The streets where they sold our people. I don’t know. She just always said that we belonged in Edisto. And that was that. Only went as far as Mt. Pleasant to make a living.”

“What do your Momma and Daddy do for a living?” Rufus asked.

Evie felt her cheeks getting hot with the mention of her father. “Well, my Momma and my Aunt Pearl used to sell baskets there. In Mt. Pleasant. But not no more.” Evie’s voice trailed off. She wanted to snip the whole conversation right there.  She hated the way her thin little voice flat out invited him to ask the next question. It was like she was throwing stepping stones out there, showing him the way, leading him right to her blackened heart. Her head felt all fuzzy, so she quickly continued with the pretty parts of her life, trying to keep her voice steady and clear against the roar inside of her. “My Momma’s people been here over two hundred years. They were from Senegal.” Evie loved to say that word. Senegal. It was like sugar in her mouth. “Momma’s family came here through Sullivan’s Island. You ever been there?”

“No, no. I can’t say I have, Evie. Been close. But I just can’t bring myself to stand there on that sand. Guess I’m like your Momma on that one. I don’t want to say I believe in ghosts or nothing, but if there was gonna be some souls rooting around, I imagine they might be over there.”

As Rufus talked, he popped the heads off the shrimp with a quick slide and snap motion of his thumb and first two fingers. And then he’d grab the spidery legs and with a twist of the wrist, off came the legs and the shell, all in that one motion. Evie watched the way his hands moved so fluidly.

She remembered how her Daddy used to say that he could peel shrimp in his sleep. She let her eyes stare really hard at Rufus’s hands, till the rest of Rufus got all blurry at the edges. She imagined it was Daddy there, cleaning shrimp on the front porch, while the cicadas hummed in the honeysuckles. He always had a funny story about some old tourist out at the basket stand. Or some old drunk at Blake’s Bar. He’d get to laughing at his own story.  Sometimes he made Momma and Aunt Pearl nearly pee their pants laughing.

Rufus’s deep voice broke through the wisps of memory, like someone passing their hand through a smoke ring. Evie focused hard on Rufus’s face. Looked right into his eyes so he’d think she was really listening. Like her attention wasn’t drifting in and out like the waves. Making her think of Daddy.

Rufus’s voice broke through the thick fog of memories smoking up Evie’s head. “My people come through Sullivan’s Island, too. My great granddaddy, he told me ‘bout that place. Just like his great granddaddy told him.”

Like all the Sea Islanders, Evie knew all the stories. They ran through her blood. They colored the history of all the people on the island. She looked out over the water at the fading horizon.

Rufus shook his head and followed her gaze, like the two of them might see some old ship filled with wailing souls, still floating out there. Evie broke her gaze and looked back at Rufus. For a long, still moment, he just sat there, with his hands resting on the rim of the pail, all greasy from the shrimp he’d been heading. “They say that a nasty ole hurricane came along and washed the biggest pest house out to sea,” Rufus continued. “Pest house.” He snorted. “Imagine that. A pest house.” He almost spit when he said the words.

Evie could see the hundreds of black faces, frightened and sickly, being herded into the pest houses to be cleaned of bugs and waste. She always tried to push the pictures out of her head, but Rufus made her see them all over again.

“They’d scrub their skin with brushes soaked in oil. Guess they wanted it to shine like their fancy mahogany tables. Then they’d be off to Charleston to get sold.” Rufus got really quiet, sniffed and turned his face away from Evie. 

Evie dug her heels into the sand, pushed her legs out straight, then pulled them in again. Then she started to fill the troughs her feet had plowed, scooping the sand in soft handfuls, letting it sift through her parted fingers.

“And then just like that, here we are, Evie. You and me, two crazy people sitting here on this island, headin’ and boilin’ shrimp. What do you know about that, huh, Evie? That’s just something, ain’t it?”

Rufus deftly pinched the head off the last shrimp with one quick motion of his thumb and two fingers. He brushed his hands on his pants and hung the pail over the fire. He rustled around in his knapsack and pulled out his canteen. As he poured the water into the pail, it hissed and sputtered. Tiny unsettled embers jumped from the pit and sent orange stars flying. Evie leaned back, tilted her head up and watched the sparks chase one another, high into the purple sky.

“We can talk about our families some other night. Let’s not waste these stars on too much of that sad talk. I can see some twinkling up there already. Okay, Mr. Wilson?” Evie squeezed Rufus’ knee and he let a smile creep back, a smile that creased his cheeks, and crackled like the fire.

Evie smiled and looked out at the waves which were way out past the sand bar, by now. The surf whispered and the wind died down. Rufus fed the fire and hummed some simple song that came from his belly. Evie’s chest warmed and loosened. She had steered clear of all that talk about Daddy. She was happy about that.

Until she looked down. That’s when she saw a horseshoe shaped pad of newspaper slipping out of her shoe. Her heart nearly stopped, but she quickly reached down, lifted her heel out of her shoe, and pushed the paper back in where it belonged. Hiding it there, away from Rufus.

IV

The stick fire glowed, throwing a circle of flickering light. Evie and Rufus lay on either side of it, their bodies curved like crescents toward the core of warmth.

“I wish I had some hot sauce,” Evie said, as she smiled and popped the last steamy pink shrimp into her mouth.

“Well, I am sorry that I can’t oblige, Mizz Evie. I hadn’t planned on serving up dinner on the beach,” said Rufus. “Next time, we’ll have to have ourselves some hot sauce and corn bread. And maybe some white wine.”

“Ooooh. White wine. You are a Charleston boy, through and through,” Evie teased. “I’ll just have to be careful about you and your wine. In my twenty years, I’ve only had about three beers.”

“Three beers?” Rufus was incredulous. “Why only three?”

“That’s right. I’m not lyin’. Three was more than enough because I got sick as a dog, is why! It was some nasty home made stuff that Harold Jenkins brought to my Daddy.” Evie wanted to bite her tongue. She had thrown out another stepping stone.

“What about your Daddy? You talk a lot about your Momma, but you don’t have much to say about your Daddy?”

“Now I thought we weren’t gonna talk about family,” Evie said, trying to keep her voice from quivering. Rufus’s question echoed over and over in her head. Evie sat up so Rufus wouldn’t see her face all lit up by the fire. He might see through her words, if he could see her face. “But since you asked,” Evie steeled herself to tell her lies, “my Daddy. He’s gone away. Just up and left, that’s all.” Evie stared out at the blackness of the water, the ruffled lace of foam lit by the moon.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Evie. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“This night is too beautiful to go on about all that.” Evie felt a surge of relief. It seemed as though Rufus might back away. Would stop following this path in the conversation.

“Was it the drinking? Too much of that can make a man mean and ornery.”

“Well, it was a lot of things.” Evie searched to find the lies she had spun to satisfy so many other questioning ears. Those lies that she told to all the people who had asked about Daddy and his sudden disappearance. Her head was all fizzy inside. For some reason, the lies that had so easily rolled off her tongue were slow to come to her mouth, tonight. Maybe it was the way Rufus looked at her. Like he really cared. It unnerved her. “Uhhh. Well, yeah. He got mean with the drinking. He was a good man, my Daddy. But he just got too mean. Guess he knew he had to go. So one night, he just left with the clothes on his back.” Evie could feel her cheeks tightening, squeezing out the lies.

Rufus cut in. “I’m sorry to bring up all those bad memories. I’m truly sorry, Evie.” Rufus looked up at the inky sky peppered with a million crystal stars. “Maybe there’s something to it, Evie. Wishing on a star. Maybe that’s what we need to do. Wish your Daddy back home. Sober. You miss him?”

Evie froze and then struggled to find her voice. “Well, of course, I miss him. But he won’t be coming home anytime soon. I’m almost sure of that.” She had to be careful not to sound too sure.

“Well, you can still try wishin’ on a star. Pick one, Evie.”

Evie tilted her chin up and raised her eyes to the stars. “Maybe so, Rufus. Maybe so.”  Evie made her wish, and then quickly stood up in the sand. “I think I best be getting home, Rufus. Aunt Pearl will be worried sick if I don’t get home soon.”

Rufus stood up and scooped sand onto the fire with several sideways swipes of his foot. The sand doused the fire completely and with the fire gone, the darkness closed around them like a blanket. Evie felt comfort in the blackness. As they gathered their satchels and headed down the beach toward the road, the house lights along the beach began to flip off, one by one. Rufus looked puzzled.

“What’s that all about?” he asked out loud. “Why are these folks all flipping off their lights?”

Evie laughed. “Maybe because they see you coming,” she teased. “Rufus, you have been too long in Charleston. It’s for the turtles, silly. The loggerheads. They’ve been laying their eggs. Up there, along the dunes. If they see the house lights, they’ll get lost. Won’t find their way back to the ocean. Mommas and their babies. They need to follow the light of the moon.”

“Well, I’ll be,” marveled Rufus, as he slipped his large warm hand around Evie’s hand, as it dangled by her side. She tilted her head toward the moon, and felt its white light wash her face.

Frozen

In this frozen scene, I confront the moon of his hairless, dying face. There’s only the frame of jaw and sunken temples, too-big teeth in that head that I love, only this skeleton, though the dance is still in his eyes.

Once he was seventeen, cruising the Salem McDonald’s lot in his freshly waxed black Coronet. We parked shoulder-to-shoulder in our parents’ cars and flirted as we slid our blue-jeaned bottoms over the warm hoods.  He had a way of laughing that started in his eyebrows, flared his nostrils, and curled his lips up - as he sucked in the air that would fuel that laugh. You could watch the joy spread to his limbs.

One star-blasted Saturday night, my golden haired little sister wooed him. That night as a bonfire popped and crackled and licked the snow-washed air, they stole away from our sight as we huddled to the heat and passed a bottle of Colt 45 around. As I watched sparks escape the fire, hurrying toward heaven, I felt a hollow in my gut. I knew a page had turned.

A baby came before she turned sixteen.

I remember lying in bed next to her before she told Mom, the moonlight pouring through the dormered windows, illuminating the flowers on the wallpaper. She slept quietly, her even breaths making the round of her belly rise and fall.  How could she sleep so soundly? As I lay next to her in the dark, I thought about them on a blanket in a field somewhere under the biggest moon. I would have been terrified with a man inside of me. But she slept. I would have been terrified with a baby inside of me. But she slept.

Nancy married Kenny on a yellow day in May. The wedding was planned in mere weeks with tissue paper flowers, a borrowed disco ball, and my brother-in-law’s 70’s music mix on reel-to-reel. We made salads and meatballs, cookies and lasagnas, dips and cakes for days. Even the old Yankee ladies, whom we thought would tisk tisk at the disgrace of it all, baked late into the night as the peepers rhythmically pierced the warming night. Somehow a baby coming quieted every acid tongue. On that wedding day, even the lilacs nodded their approval.

In a little more than a year, Nancy and Kenny had another baby. Two perfect blonde children before age eighteen. I remember pictures of Nancy, with one toddler posing in his best Batman stance and the other balanced on her narrow hip. Her eyes looked weary over a weak smile. She had the wealth of a mother in her children, but as it turned out, not the emotional pockets it takes to raise them.

She had an affair with a guy she met at the coin-op laundry, a man who must have charmed her as he smoothed warm towels into neat bundles, folded in thirds. Maybe it was the way he leaned into the dryer, gathering the sweetened clothes with rough hands. Maybe he said something oddly dear that struck a hungry chord as they passed a cigarette between them, waiting on the curb while the washers chugged.

It seems she found that girl from the moonlit field waiting to break free of the ropes and ribbons that tether women to motherhood. That girl with the wild blonde hair motioned her to go. And off she ran through the flowered fields in search of something she could not name.

In time, Kenny found Pam. She and Kenny raised her son with Down’s Syndrome - and Kenny and Nancy’s two children -  in a small apartment upstairs from his Mom and Dad. She did the books for a restaurant during the day, and then came home to weed the garden, stencil a kitchen wall, cook up a meal and get the kids in bed by eight. As Nancy’s sisters, I think we chafed a bit at how deftly she took over the reins of Nancy’s little family. We felt a certain coolness, close to the ground like fog, as she eclipsed our sister’s ability to mother and stay.

A day came with an ordinary ring of the phone on the cluttered table next to my old green wing chair. I checked the caller id, collapsed in the chair and settled in for a chat. Pam’s voice sounded thin and far away.

“Hey. I wanted to…well. Oh shit. It’s Kenny. He has cancer. It’s in his right lung and in his brain.” I heard her inhale, shallow and ragged and fast. “That’s why his face was sagging a little, on the left. We thought it was a virus... or something. But it’s cancer.”

I felt that high-chested panic. The clock clanged as I squeezed my forehead and clenched my eyes shut. “Oh….shit.”

I don’t remember what else I said to her. I’m sure I offered boundless hope, but inside I knew I was just pinking the black.

“If there’s anything I can do…”

I became his Tuesday girl. That was my day to come and sit by the steel-caged hospital bed - and share a strawberry filled Dunkin’ donut. That was my day to walk that line of mortality and brittle conversation as death sucked his body through his toes. He’d say he felt weak, in his arms, and I’d go get cans of stewed tomatoes from the cabinet and we’d practice biceps curls. I brought him clay to squeeze but his hands tremored wildly. I told him that it wasn’t over until the fat lady sang, and that I wasn’t about to utter a single note. He smiled and pumped the canned tomatoes.

Kenny’s Mom lived downstairs. She’d bring him scrambled eggs and toast with strawberry jam and feed it to him in little bites while she teased and laughed too loud, filling the holes in the air, hiding from the truth that haunted his face. Her baby was 54 and bald, eyebrows and lashes gone. As she made her way down the steep stairs to her kitchen, her voice all singsong in the hall, I remember her hand on the railing, squeezing so hard her veins popped up on the back of her hand.

Dad Jackson would come up the stairs, too - with mock groans about his failing knees. He’d listen to me as I tried to fill the uncomfortable silences with stupid questions and funny stories. I’d ask him what was the best fertilizer for tomato plants - was it the chicken poop kind? Should I plant them or hang them? I’d ask him if he really greased the horses’ asses with Absorbine Junior to make them run faster at the Rockingham Racetrack, where he was a horse handler.

He’d muster laughter but it didn’t hold any happy. I’d see him stealing glances at his dying son as we watched Bob Barka chat up the latest bouncing big-boobed contestant on The Price Is Right. He’d take his leave with the excuse that he needed a nap, but in the air I’d feel the tick of minutes passing that could never be recovered.

I heard their muffled sobs downstairs as Kenny napped.

I rested my head on the pillow next to his and tried to dream it all away. “Don’t get too close, pretty Pitty. I might just have to pinch those big boobies…”

He’d get a slap on the chest for that. He’d grin, showing all of his big square teeth at once. But I’d stay resting there, our breathing in sync. More than once, he’d lace his warm hand in mine, our smells mingling with the clean white sheets. On that sad pillow, I felt his peaceful acceptance of his own reality. And I felt a stunning intimacy as he allowed me to treasure him as he lay dying.

And then I drifted into the pink - pretending it all away.

Kenny would wake up and paw at the table for his lighter and pack of Marlboros. His hands trembled, flame overshooting cigarette tip in a cruel portrayal of demise. And so I’d light up for him. I always hated the smell of smoke. But I’d pose with the cigarette pinched in a peace sign. I’d hold it to his lips while he took a deep drag. I was tempted to inhale as I watched the satisfaction wash his face, surrendering.

He taught me to blow smoke rings while the cancer ate at him, tight circles that stretched and faded in the dusty light until all that was left was a blue haze over our heads.

A week at the beach is like the life cycle of a peony bloom. It's so damn lush; but so short- lived.

There's that tight bud with a creamy white explosion at the ready. Such expectation. You pack up the necessities, fluffy towels and sheets and exotic lotions. Then there's the vodka, the tomato juice, the mixers; the sarongs and the flip flops to match.

But most luxurious is that glorious sense  of expectancy. Warm sands and curly, lacy, lazily surging surf with tides that mark the tedious toils of the day.

Tide out? Sun for two hours and oh...move the towels up beach as the lacy wash encroaches. Pickled eggs, cheese and Bloodies will be our delight, as we hide away in the beach tent, the hot gusts buffeting the blue.

We smile like well-fed cats in our deliciously protected half dome of blue nylon and sip our libations. We feel no need to talk, as we watch the waves come and go. We inhale the sea.

In six hour stints, the tides play in. And out. Only a blanket moving ritual for us. No moon pull of Herculean force is going to tear us away from this warm and grainy sanctuary.

My tempestuous Id wants to surrender to another Solo cup potion but I bid myself to stay tethered to the moment and close my eyes, wiggle my toes into the warm sand, and focus on the crash and sizzle of the surf. It regulates your breathing if you let it in.

The flower is in full out bloom when you fall asleep, and then drowsily awaken, with drool from the corner of your lip like a silk worm trail down your chin . And there's the transfer of summer reading ink on your oiled breast from resting there in the bake of sun.

This is when you must fall face first into the open cool of the petals. Inhale and try to get lost for a blessed moment; forget all else that swirls about your ecstasy. For you may only smell pure joy and release for a flying moment;  you may only suspend yourself in this forgetting of your weights for the duration of that involuntary smile that comes with the wash of the world off of your shoulders. It's as brief as a perfect bloom.

And as the days pass, you feel the shrink of time threatening to brown and fall away, with your contentment in tow. There's no stopping it.

On that last night of our stay, I try to squeeze the last moments of peace; I try to savor the dying hours just as I might grab that fading flower, tear it's petals apart and fling them upward, only to land on me like cashmere feathers. Breathe. Deep.

Stop and really look and listen at the ocean's ceaseless presence. Memorize the peace of that final moment in the back of your eyes.

You will come again. And she'll be there.

And then pack up the sad detritus of leaving the sound of falling waves with their steady soothing rhythm that feels like Momma's hand stroking your hair.

And drive away, holding the sweet, scented memories of peace until you come again.

Aint I A Writer?: Sharing the Sunday morning love

Aint I A Writer?: Sharing the Sunday morning love

Lookin' Up

I scrape the bar code of my wine bottle over the laser-robotically push all the right buttons. Going home. American Idol is on tonight. Have bills to pay in the morning. Oh what a day…Can’t wait for baggy fleece jammies and an old tee shirt . Can’t wait to release my boobs from bra bondage. Oh what a day…

I approach the glass doors of the store. Have to pause impatiently for it to register my presence and let me out of here. The air is cold and it smells sort of sweet-like snow on the way. Are New Englanders the only ones who can lay claim to the ability to smell snow? Yeah…I think so.

I walk toward my car at the far corner of the parking lot-wish I had rethought my hair-brained plan to park far away from the door. Sure. Go on. Torture yourself at the end of a long day with that extra walking for your health. Sadistic, really. I walk across the tar lot noticing the way the grease spots reflect the fluorescent lights.

But my eyes are pulled upward. The sky is velveteen black with diamond studs-the stars so clear-so cold-so spiky with intense light. I am suddenly under that soft cloak of blackness-looking at the world from the top down. I feel like one of those old time photographers- who scurry under cover-just before there is a pop and a flash- and an image is magically burned onto the glass plate.

Through that little eye, I see my world again. It reaches out to me, all soft and supple. Wanting to be touched.

Cornelius

I wrote this as an exercise in a writing class with Lorraine Lordi, my dear friend and mentor. I wrote in the POV of my long deceased Uncle-Uncle Putt. Or Cornelius!

That’s me. The handsome dark haired rogue, sitting there with Father O’Malley at my shoulder. If I look a bit tentative, it was probably for good reason. Father O’Malley was well known for his tendency to tweak and twist the ear of a chap for being the slightest bit unruly. I recall one occasion, I believe I was in fifth or sixth grade, when the good Father caught me carving a swear word on the darkened oak wall of the confessional. My Dad had given me a pearl handled pen knife for my birthday-it was a beauty. The gift seemed to me a clear message from my Dad. I was trusted with a knife-sort of a rite of passage for a boy- signaling my glorious passage into manhood. That thin mirrored steel blade just begged to dig and gouge. And my pals had dared me to do it. That was reason enough for me to proceed.

It was a Saturday, I remember. Every Saturday, Father O’Malley took his walk, along Ocean Drive, after having his breakfast at Hathaway’s Diner. He was partial to their eggs over- easy, always with a large side of homemade red flannel hash. In the spirit of temperance, he only allowed himself to indulge in the greasy feast on Saturdays. During Lent, he gave it up completely. As I recall, his sermons were always more heated and caustic when he was not able to indulge in his favorite repast. I had finished up my paper route early that morning and tried to look casual as I straddled my bike under the awning, out there in front of Nelson’s newsstand. The shade, under that awning, served as a kind of a cloak of cover as I prepared to engage in this, my first manly act of defiance. I was blissfully aware that this caper could earn me some big points. I was sick and tired of being the smart kid. I wanted to be-well-the handsome rogue. I figured that Gwendolyn Harrison might even let me take her to the dance if she knew what a daring fellow I was. I could almost smell her- she smelled like soap and apples. And she had hair the color of corn silk, and just as shiny as that too.

I watched O’Malley leave the diner, that Saturday morning, pumping the hands of his parishioners as they entered the diner, like he was the goddamn welcome wagon or something for Hathaway’s. He turned east and headed toward the bay. I remember wondering if my Grampa Phelps might be down on the docks, with the other Patchogue oyster men, mending a net or readying his old boat for another run out to sea. Grampa would hide if he saw O’Malley coming, go down in the hold and busy himself with greasing a gear or two. Gramps couldn’t stand having to nod and smile apologetically while O’Malley scolded him for his poor attendance to Sunday Mass. If I could have whistled, so Grampa would hear, I’d a warned him that O’Malley was on his way. As he disappeared over the hill, I fired my heel back, tipped up my kickstand and pedaled like crazy toward the church. I felt like a cowboy.

I leaned my bike against the tree in the side yard of the church, and slipped through the heavy oak back door. I figured that this way there was less chance of being discovered by one of O’Malley’s church ladies. They were always scurrying about, polishing the pews with lemon oil or sprucing up the altar with huge vases of flowers from their cutting gardens. But this morning-no one was about. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust to the cool darkness inside. Candle flames danced inside of the ruby red votives where folks could light a flame to honor a departed loved one or petition the Lord for a blessing of some sort. I headed to the front of the church, carefully avoiding the cool marble gazes of the statues. As I crossed before the altar, I bowed my head, genuflected and made the sign of the cross. And then I headed toward the confessional booth.

I pushed the heavy purple velvet curtain aside and sat on the kneeler, collecting my wits about me. I could hear my heart in my ears and I had a weird lightness in my chest. This altar boy was about to cash in his halo. I flicked the pen knife open with a flick of my thumb and pressed the silver tip into the wall, just about at eye level if you were kneeling. I had thought long and hard about what word I would use. It had to be short and not so sweet. Fit for a rogue. SHIT. That would be my legacy. SHIT.

The gouging and the digging commenced in earnest, and with each slip of the knife, I could smell the crisp curls of golden pulp as they landed on my lap in the cool darkness. I was just about to cross the T when I heard the back door open and then close with a deadly thud. I lifted my feet up and hugged my knees, trying to avoid being discovered behind that musty old curtain. Footsteps echoed on the cold marble floor. A cold sweat dripped from my eyebrows.

And then- there they were-Father O’Malley’s unmistakable size twelve black oxfords- standing there at the entrance to the confessional- blocking my exit.

“Cornelius?” I heard him whisper. “Cornelius O’Leary? Is that you?”

I wet my pants.

The curtain parted and I stood up quickly, the golden shavings falling from my lap like snow. The pool of piss blackening my trousers. He looked at me confused.

“Whatever are you doing here, Corneil? Confessions are not due to begin until…” O’Malley blinked and arched his eyebrows in disbelief. He pushed me aside and looked in horror at the expletive that I had so deftly carved in my neatest script.

In a snap, he had my ear tweaked and twisted between his thumb and index finger, pinching so hard that I was sure that my ear might rip off. I sort of wished that it would because maybe then I could run away, bloodied but free. I could run away and never go home again. Maybe join the circus as the one- eared boy. Father O’Malley pulled me clean out of the confessional and dragged me down the aisle and out the back door. I thought sure that O’Malley was taking me to the rectory where he would call my Dad-or worse yet-my Mom. But he yanked and pulled me by the ear like a recalcitrant donkey right past the rectory entrance and into the back yard. An old garden shed stood at the edge of the lawn. O’Malley flung the door open with his free hand and pushed me into the shed. I imagined a whooping was about to occur.

“Get the sandpaper from that drawer there!” He motioned to the bottom drawer of an ancient chest. “And some wood stain. There . Over your fool head. There on the shelf.”

I complied with all due speed.

That afternoon, I sanded and stained and oiled the oak walls of that confessional, all the while reciting Hail Marys. I must have said a hundred.

Father O’Malley never told my Father. Or my Mother. But every Sunday, Father O’Malley came to dinner. Every Sunday as Mother laid out her best china and silver and lighted the candles and basted the ham and mashed the potatoes, my right ear would hurt. And O’Malley would smile.

When I Was A Kid...

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, I ate peaches so big that you had to spread all your fingers wide, just to hold them. And they were so full of juice that my sisters and I would take big bites, the fuzzy flesh against our pinked cheeks, and then laugh, leaning forward, as the sweet nectar drained down our faces.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, we would pick fallen pecans off the huge tree. The nuts were mahogany brown with fine little black stripes running the length of the shells. When held in a sweaty hand, the shells would take on the deep hue of the stair rail, that ran from the floor to the sky, in our big house with its wraparound porch and its wide yard. That same pecan tree held our tire swings, her limbs so high, that we could throw our heads back and ride a thousand long slow arcs.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, there was a family who lived in a ply board shack in the woods, way out behind our house. They were black as coal with pink nail beds and palms, white teeth-and the whites of their eyes- so much like moons in their dark faces. The mom washed clothes in a big pot over a wood fire. My sisters and I  thought she was a witch and we would crouch behind a rampant row of honeysuckle bushes and watch her stir and lift the steaming wads of clothes with a stick. She would hum as she worked. There was something oddly consoling in her rhythms.

When I was a just a kid in Macon, Georgia, we would while away the long summer days having tea parties. I remember putting sweet green grass in hot water and sipping it delicately, pinkies lifted. We would pick honeysuckle blossoms and suck the nectar. One afternoon, I plucked a blossom, grasped the delicate stamen and pulled it away from the petals. A tiny drop of clear nectar balanced on the stamen’s end, like the star on a magic wand. I pushed it through the steel diamond of the chain link fence where a black face waited. His tongue was impossibly pink as he licked the drop, smiled…and ran away.