After the soldiers came in their rowboats to rescue us and take us to the fort, after the waters had finally subsided, we returned to search for the dead. But all we could find was the body of poor Agnes Drummond, whose children and husband were lost and not to be recovered, in the ruins of her home, her hair which had been beautiful and rich in color now a tangled gray and matted about her stricken face and shoulders.
And where our home had been there was nothing but a little body of water, a still pond, and the high dunes were gone save the one that saved us. And the only home of the dozen or more that had stood there was the little plank house John Keesler had built with his own hands, and it skewed and bent like a freak house at the fair, you couldn’t stand on its floors and keep your balance.
Some said we should find another place like this and rebuild, all together, those that survived, but we hadn’t the heart to do it, child. This place itself was gone, disappeared, wiped off the face of the earth, and we couldn’t help but see it as a sign that a time and place had ended and we should move on. That’s when the Bateses helped us move up to Mercury. And so it’s been, so it was.
If we have faltered as a family it is my fault, for letting the loss of this life I knew discourage me, so that I lost something of my sense of who we were, and I could not see life clearly from the new place that we came to live. I lived in confusion for some time, and was not wise as I should have been. If we had been here you never would have married Earl, though I think still he was not a bad man, he just had no vision, he plowed headlong into life like a man afraid, and I think most men are afraid. I cannot fault him for that for after we left here I knew some of that fear and lack of vision. It’s the age, it’s the way we live, it’s difficult to overcome. I lost faith for a time in the ability of God to lead us, to give us that vision. I closed my eyes to his sight, and lost mine own.
Nobody faulted you, Pappy.
It’s for no one else to do, Birdie. I fault myself. I don’t condemn myself. I was human, like anyone else.
Where are you going? she said to him then. He was walking down a twilit white sand trail into the dense pine woods east of the house. He only raised his hand and was lost in the grainy light there. She was tired. She was drifting herself with a northern breeze to the Gulf side where gentle waves flopped and crushed themselves against the sand stained wet and draining. Two ladies lay on towels on the beach nearly naked, their skin glistening with oil. They seemed strange and familiar, too, like people she’d once known in a dream, and forgotten. Birdie went down and lay down on sand between them. They were sleeping. She looked up toward the deck of the beach house behind them and a young boy stood there, looking at her. She waved. He merely stared at her, and so she approached him and was there before him in the buffeting Gulf breeze. He was not afraid. He knew her, somehow. He put out his hand, and when he touched where she was he gave a start, and she wanted to say, it’s only electricity, child, but she could not, and she rose away so that he would wonder for the rest of his life about the presence of this angel who visited him as he stood on a deck overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, when he was a just a boy.
Grievous Oscar
THERE WERE CARS everywhere, from the carport and down the driveways on both ends. Finus drove along the grass beside the driveway and parked by the sidewalk to the front door. But he chose to walk around back and go in the kitchen door, the familiar entrance, and avoid whoever might be playing gatekeeper at this event. Didn’t really want to talk to Birdie’s kinfolk or some righteous church woman full of baloney and saccharine goodwill. He went through the little archway between the carport and the kitchen door, opened the screen door, mounted the steps, and pushed open the stubborn door to the kitchen.
It was crowded, even in there, but at least those standing there were eating, occupied, and at best looked around with a chicken leg poised at their teeth and nodded, grinning at him, and kept eating. Howard Feckman did actually take a chicken wing from between his teeth a millimeter from biting in, set it down on the plate long enough to shake Finus’s hand, then picked up another piece and bit on into it. In spite of all the congregated living bodies, which hovered over and around the tables of food, Finus could see and take in the impressive spread: dishes of broccoli and cheese casseroles, French green bean and mushroom soup casserole, apple crunch desserts, a coconut cake, several crusty pound cakes, large plates of cold fried chicken covered with plastic wrap, a massive ham, the cooling meat drawing up around a shank bone big as a severed sapling. Large aluminum pitchers of ice tea frosted with sweat, ice tinkling in tumblers as the tea was poured in. Sweet potato pudding with melted marshmallow topping. Dishes of snap beans cooked down and dark, sweet, and tartish. Baked squash with onion, soft as pudding. And tall slim sweating steel crankbuckets of homemade ice cream, vanilla and fresh peach, beside at least a dozen pies: glazed pecan, lemon icebox, sweet potato, custard, apple, chess, and what looked like a blackberry cobbler. The din from conversation and eating was considerable, almost made him smile.
He felt someone brush his elbow then and saw old Creasie standing there, eyes limpid and tired-looking, looking up at him. She wore a pretty pink dress with a clover print on it, and Finus was fairly sure it had been Birdie’s once.
— Hello, Mr. Finus, she said to him.
— Hello, Creasie, he said. Finus wondered where this old woman would go now, what she would do. Maybe she had family somewhere, he had no idea. He wanted to ask her, but he didn’t think he had the energy to listen, and he was certain she didn’t much have the energy or will to tell him everything she could tell him. Same space, different worlds.
— Missed you at the services, Mr. Finus, she said then.
— Yeah, he said. -I wasn’t feeling too well.
— Yes, sir. Better get yourself a plate, then, Creasie said. She reached over to the counter and got him a plate and some silverware. He took it from her hands, dark and weathered on the backs, light-colored in the palms.
— Thank you, Creasie, he said. -I believe I’m about to starve to death.
He got a plate and put some chicken, beans, squash casserole on it, and came back over by the sink and Creasie to eat it. He set the empty plate in the sink.
— You was hungry, she said.
They looked at one another for a minute.
— I was out to your old house in the ravine today.
She looked up at him as if not understanding his words for a second.
— Yes, sir, you was? What in the world was you doing way out there?
— Just exploring, I guess, he said. She nodded. -Had a conversation with old Vish out there. Was talking to Parnell Grimes yesterday, said some curious things, then Dr. Heath said I might talk to Vish about them.
— Miss Vish still alive, then, Creasie said. She nodded to herself and walked over to the sink and stacked a few small dishes in there. Finus followed her.
— I took the liberty of looking around your old place, he said. -Hope you don’t mind.