Daylight exploded on Sapelo. The sun burst over the dunes, setting my tent aglow like a lantern, and Voodoo barked nonstop. At 6:40, there was nothing to do but give in to the noise and light and get up. An equatorial fireball, the sun blazed in with a fury unknown in Atlanta where buildings and shuttered windows kept it at bay.
I stirred up some live coals from the night’s fire to brew coffee and a flurry of ashes rose and fell onto the sand like black snow. I was looking forward to coffee with Tyler, our first breakfast together, and a chance to go over the day’s plan of attack.
Voodoo barked and pulled at his strap, eager to run loose. I set him free and he headed toward the pass. Coffee perked and the smell was pleasing, something about how it mixed with the salt air, but no Tyler. A sleepyhead, and she had made such a big deal out of making use of every minute.
While coffee brewed, I circled the camp, dropping the monofilament to the ground. In one place, near the dune passage, the line seemed out of place. Something or someone had moved it. Then I saw the footprints. They led from Tyler’s tent. She was gone, something Voodoo had tried to tell me all along. Her footprints headed toward the channel.
The night before, around midnight, the tide had been high, but now it was going out. The sediments had swirled and dried in places as if some god had pressed his thumbprint into the sand. Voodoo sloshed through the channel, then stopped. The dog circled then slanted across the channel toward the sea and came out forty yards away where Tyler had careened across the channel toward the beach’s hard-packed sand where walking was easier.
For an hour, we tracked her. Now and then, she would stray into soft sand where the walking was harder, then she would veer to the hard-packed sand leaving nothing but heel depressions. Her tracks stopped at a tidal pool where shells shimmered as if someone had spilled a chest of jewels into the water. She had knelt here to scoop up a few shells, her knees having left twin ponds in the sand. Fine silt was still settling.
I rounded a spit of land to face a long crescent of beach and saw her seventy yards away. She was wearing blue shorts and a white blouse and had her basket heading north. Voodoo ran to her, barking. She looked back, but walked no farther. She widened her stance and crossed her arms.
In her basket were two water bottles, some crackers, and several seashells.
“Here I am back at camp making coffee, and you’re nowhere to be found. We were supposed to search according to our plan, but, no, you sneak off on your own.”
“I didn’t want to awaken you. You had to be tired. So I left for the village.”
“Didn’t you hear Jackson? Go in alone and they’ll kill you.”
“I don’t buy that. Besides, I don’t have any time to waste.”
“I can’t even start my first day off with a cup of coffee. A fresh cup sure would be nice.”
“I’m sorry, really I am, but you can make another pot.”
“Oh, sure I can, and when the coffee runs out, I’ll just buy some more at the Publix over those dunes there.”
“You don’t have to be a smart ass. I said I’m sorry.”
“I wake up and you’re gone. What am I to do? Maybe you’ll come back, maybe you won’t. And if you don’t come back by dark, then what? Don’t make me think bringing you here was a mistake.”
I turned back to camp. She had nothing to say that I wanted to hear. She had done a foolish thing. Everyone had warned me about the dangers here and she’d been warned too.
Voodoo loped by and I heard her running up behind me. She tugged my sleeve. “I’ve made you mad. I’m sorry,” she said, breathing hard.
“Let’s just go our separate ways. I can stretch my food out. I didn’t plan to have a roommate to feed, you know.”
She made a semicircle in the sand with her left foot and looked me in the eye.
“Let’s don’t. The sun came in so strong I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I decided to see if I could find the fellow who told Jackson he had seen a white woman. That’s the truth. I wasn’t sneaking off. If I were I would have covered my tracks and—”
“—and what? Leave me at camp all day to wonder if you’re okay?”
Silence.
“Listen,” I said, “we work as a team, or we split up today.”
“Let’s go back and make a fresh start.”
“All right,” I said, “but consider today a test. We have to find a way to pull together, not just be two people who bumped into each other on the way to an island. When I tell you I hope you find your daughter, I mean it. You don’t know, in fact, how much I mean it. I doubt we ever see each other again once you leave. Let’s help each other so when we look back on our time here, we have something to hold on to.”
We walked back to camp, and my icy mood began to thaw.
“You can’t stay mad at me for long can you?”
“Long enough to make my point,” I said, though she was right.
While Tyler packed for the day’s hike, I fashioned walking sticks from driftwood limbs with my hatchet and knife. I carved our names on them and on Tyler’s etched “Finding Lorie, One Step At A Time.”
“I’d like to give you this staff as a peace offering,” I said.
She read the inscription and hugged me. “You’re too sweet. You won’t have to worry about me not being a team player again.”
I believed her. The inscription had made contact with her. That’s how it happens, some unexpected small thing bonds people. The inscription had been an impulse, but it had opened some small, special door.
The plan was to head west until we came out on the island’s marshy side. We would then go north before heading back to camp. If all went well, we’d cover two search zones and return with a good supply of pond water.
“I’d hate to see that tender skin of yours cook like a crab.” Tyler’s skin was flawless, like porcelain, and the sun would eat her up. I gave her a tube of sunscreen and she began spreading lotion across her face, arms, and legs. The air filled with the fragrance of coconut oil, a smell of the beaches.
We headed out with backpacks, lunches, two water jugs, walking sticks, and Voodoo. “We’ll walk single-file. I’ll beat a path through the brush to make walking easier for you, plus your following me will be an advantage for me.”
“How’s that?”
“A rattler strikes the second person through.”
She halted. “Are you serious?”
“No, that’s just an old wives’ tail. I’ll thrash the bushes in front of me. The one thing we don’t want to do is to sneak up on a rattler. A diamondback can inject enough venom to kill a quarter horse in four seconds.”
“Trying to scare me,” she asked.
“Educate you. When you hear one rattling, freeze. A rattler only kills what he can swallow and then he swallows it whole, headfirst. Don’t worry. I don’t think you’ll be sliding head-first into a giant rattler’s jaws any time soon.”
“God, what an awful thought.”
“Watch out for the deadliest snake of all though—the two-legged rattler.”
“Two-legged rattler?”
“The deadliest snake of all. Man. We’ve got to watch for him at all times.”
Tyler gripped her walking stick and hefted its weight as if testing its strength. Beneath the perfect skin and beautiful face lived a killer with beautiful legs. A woman scared of the unknown would not have sneaked off this morning, nor would she have come alone to the island. She would smash a man’s head in if she had to. Of that, I had no doubt.
We headed west into the island taking in the sights and sounds of a wild island and saw beauty no photographer could capture, not even Cameron. The land was lush with swaying palm trees and flowering bushes. Brilliant green palmetto fans grew in profusion and live oak limbs, draped heavily with moss, flirted with the earth. We faced a near-impervious forest of imperial pines and immense live oaks, and vultures circled over the canopy breaks in a blue sky paling from heat. Indigo buntings flitted across our path and pileated woodpeckers jackhammered trees as grackles jolted the air with electric cries. The air shook with insects, and cicadas rose and fell with a rhythm borne of the wild.
The luxuriant undergrowth made the going tough, and I hacked away, wondering if finding anyone here was possible. I remembered old jungle movies where explorers hacked away every three or four steps. A thicket of bamboo—a beautiful forest of enormous grass—rose before us and I felt I was on some South Pacific isle.
The island was beautiful, but beyond everything wild and I feared, murderous. The foliage afforded many places for spying. If someone wanted to hide and shoot me pointblank he could. The vegetation was that thick.
The island’s beauty had me in its grip. Trapped by tidal marshes, salt-water creeks, and the Atlantic, Sapelo confined us to a place where nature and primitive ways ruled, and we were here to submit to that rule.
Sapelo was the most beautiful place I’d seen, and at 34 degrees, not that far from the Equator, with a tropical forest reminiscent of Costa Rica’s. It did heat up like a stovetop, and I knew every day would be hazy, hot, and humid. The island had no choice but to steam even when the nearby Gulf Stream, coursing through equatorial waters, would bring storms and their torrential downpours. That majestic river within the sea lay just over the eastern horizon and its warmth flooded the sea and air, Tyler, me, and Voodoo, who panted as if dying. We were exploring an oasis of near eternal summer, an island of shimmering heat waves where mirages crawled over dune ridges like snakes in this land of cicadas, cloudbursts, hazy horizons, clouds of birds, and unquenchable thirst.
For a long time we made our way through the undergrowth, saying little, watchful. We were heading toward the island’s backside, the oldest side. The ponds we sought had once been the ocean’s edge, but now they held freshwater, an accumulation of rain not yet sapped by the inversion.
We came upon a clearing where an old hand-operated pump stood, rusting.
“I’ll be damned,” I said. “A well.”
“An old cistern pump,” said Tyler. “My granddaddy’s farm had one.”
I worked the handle, which creaked. After several minutes of pumping it stiffened up and water gushed forth. “Water. Not that far from camp either. Here, give it a pump or two.”
Tyler worked the handle until water shot out of it and I dipped my hands into the coolness. It smelled brackish—like most coastal water. I drank a few swallows, which tasted sulfurous but otherwise seemed fine.
“Keep pumping.” I took off my cap and submerged my head beneath the flow, drenching my hair. It was cool and wonderful.
“Want to try it?”
Tyler wasted no time drinking. Then she bent over to let the water flow through her hair. Water ran over her head in smooth sheets. I kept pumping and she cupped her hands to splash water over her face. Beads of water sparkled as they fell from her hair and face.
“God that feels awesome,” she said.
“This place is about an hour from camp. Let’s hide our water jugs in the brush and fill them up on the way back. I’d also like to cut some of that bamboo for your latrine. We’ll have to change our plans for going back north of here but it’s worth it to have fresh water.”
“No complaints from me,” said Tyler who trickled water into Voodoo’s mouth from her cupped hands.
We noted on our maps where we judged the cistern to be and stashed our jugs beneath some myrtles. Just beyond the shrubs and undergrowth where we hid our cans, old boards and bricks lay scattered about.
“An old home place,” I said. “No telling what we might find around here. We’ll check it out when we have some time.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Tyler. “There’s an old chicken coop.”
Back in the shadows beneath a massive oak stood an old chicken pen and a fence overgrown with vines and weeds. The coop had outlasted the house that most likely a hurricane or natives had destroyed.
We left discussing what might have happened to the old home place and ten minutes later merged onto a deer path filled with the unmistakable hoof prints of deer. The image of an antlered buck swimming beneath the moonlight came to me.
According to our Landstat maps, we were getting close to the marsh. We stopped for water and a breather and sat against a massive cypress tree. Tyler pointed to an area where shimmering light flashed and brightened the woods. We had come up on a creek feeding inland from the channel. We followed the creek to where it sprang from the channel. Powdery white, flour-like sand banked the creek’s mouth. To the left, the marsh lay green, stretching.
We went inland to the path running through jungle-like woods and soon entered a cathedral of live oaks where massive limbs vaulted green and Spanish moss hung over park-like sweeps of sand. Then we were back in the jungle. I caught the scent of the ponds before I saw them and just as I did, we came upon a dead oak where vultures waited for death to claim something.
The ponds shone like jewels, round and blue, set into a green rim of vegetation, where mirror images of cypress converged at buttressed trunks. Cypress knees rose as if standing upon the surface. Egrets and herons stalked the shallows where water lilies bloomed, and an anhinga spread his wings in a cypress tree. An alligator drifted, like a half-submerged log, through some water lilies far off.
“Hang onto Voodoo for a minute. Let’s put the rope back on him while we’re at this pond. We don’t want him wandering off. If he does, we may lose him to a gator.”
We roped Voodoo up and kept him close by as we edged the pond. Just then we came across the plant science fiction made into a legend in the 1950s.
“Look at this.”
She came over.
“Venus’ flytrap. Hollywood used to fake movies of these plants eating people.”
We watched as a fly crawled into a plant seeking the elixir that would, instead, marinade it. Trigger hairs sprung the trap, snapping the leaves shut around the fly. No escape.
We left the land of carnivorous plants, entered woods, then at last came out at the marsh—the island’s other side. Tidal flats of chocolate muck edged the marsh giving the air a smell of life and a smell of death. The Spartina bent beneath a rippling wind. Everything seemed normal, just another marsh. For a long time, we watched the wind ghost over this green prairie. Then a good ways out, a grassy peninsula erupted with light.
For a long time nothing happened. Then something flashed. And again but this time something held and the flash became a glare. Something gleamed far away in distant grasses, beyond mounds of muck, farther beyond oyster beds glistening with bright sunshine and wetness.
We walked south about sixty yards to get a better angle. An aluminum canoe sat in a cul-de-sac of Spartina. Its rear, heavy with water, sat in the muck, its nose rose into the grasses. I gauged it to be maybe fifty yards out.
“A canoe,” I said. “A god send. If we can get that canoe, we can explore this entire island before you go back. We can wind our way inland in the creeks. We can split off the channel to go from one side of the island to the other. We can go to the village by water, and just maybe we can find your mysterious man who wears the turban and he can put me onto one Mr. Rikard Blackshear.”
“Who is he?” asked Tyler.
“He’s the voodoo priest I need to interview. People say he rules this island like a divine warlock.”
“Would this Rikard know anything about Lorie?”
“Jackson said Rikard considers the island his, so yes, if Lorie is here he would know. We have two ways to get the canoe. Swim out at high tide or cross the muck at low tide. The tide should be coming in now.”
“Can you swim out now?”
“No. A few years back, I waded into a creek to seine for shrimp, and jellyfish ate me up. Besides if the canoe has no paddles, the wind and current will take me where they please. Let’s go back and get our water jugs, then we can grab some old boards from the home place. I’ll carve them into paddles tonight, and we’ll get the canoe tomorrow.”
The truth was I couldn’t swim. I scanned the water. A wind was scuffing its surface. There was no way I’d attempt it. On the way back to camp, the wind picked up even more. It was brisk and the brush and trees moved as if they were alive, which they were, but alive as an animal might move, with purpose. We made our way back through this windswept land and were not far from the cistern when a curious thing happened. Burnt pieces of paper swirled and flew through the brush in a whirling wind, a dust devil of paper. Some pinned themselves against branches and one impaled itself on the spines of a Yucca—a Spanish Bayonet—where it fluttered like a bird. Puffs of ashes clouded the air like spirits and flew through the trees.
We gathered the notes made with care, and I read enough of the pages to know the author was a professor or researcher. The text was stilted and no pleasure to read, but it was written neatly in black ink and quite pedantic—Mallory came to mind at once. We followed the puffs of ashes back to their source—a hastily broken campsite in a secluded clearing. Two tent stakes remained in the ground and a gas lamp hung from a branch. Someone had thrown a hardback journal into the midst of the fire. The charred journal had three words on its cover: “Guaranteed Irish Linen.” It was thick and that had saved it from total destruction. I pulled the journal from the ashes. It was still warm.
We leafed through the journal, most of which was destroyed, then came across a passage in the book’s center that sent a chill down my spine.
Here, I have seen many victims manifesting scars where a kidney has been taken. Some individuals have had both kidneys removed and are murdered in such a manner that little evidence of their bodies remains.
Cameron’s photograph of bleached skulls came back to me. But they no longer stared at Africa. They stared at me, begging for their story to be written.
***
The journal’s revelation jarred Tyler, so I put her to work to get her mind off Lorie and purloined kidneys. At the bamboo forest, I gave her my machete and had her cut four stout culms, as well as several slender ones. They were flexible, green, and strong, perfect for building a latrine. At the old home place, I found two boards to make paddles from. Getting back to camp was a struggle carrying water, the boards, bamboo, and the burnt journal. I had just stepped into my tent to change when Tyler came running over.
“Come look at my tent.”
A talisman dangled in the wind from one of her tent poles.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“An amulet. I don’t know if it’s good or evil. I do know one thing. Our camp is a secret no more. Check to see if anything is missing.”
The mysterious package Murphy had sent his brother was still where I had hidden it. Tyler came out with her basket, and I came out with the voodoo book the old lady had loaned me and looked camp over … no signs of visitors.
“Someone paid us a visit but left no footprints. How odd is that? Let’s see what we have here.”
I thumbed through Voodoo and Its Practitioners, the book I picked up in Atlanta. I compared an illustration in the book to her amulet. The two were close—round, yellow and green, with a circle in its middle and four lines crossing through a black center. Weird squiggles adorned each sector of the compass-like drawing.
“Listen to this. ‘This talisman protects its possessor when away from familiar surroundings. Wear it to avoid physical harm. Gran Siligbo is a friendly protective spirit force who looks over you away from home.’ ”
Protective spirit or not, one fact was certain. Someone knew we were here.
That afternoon I considered the talisman as I worked the bamboo into sharp stakes that could sink deep into the sand. Using a tarp, nylon rope, and smaller pieces of bamboo I made a latrine for Tyler. She tried out her port-a-let and pronounced it a work of art.
We took a swim, which was really no more than wading out and letting the waves wash over us. Our sweat went into the sea with all the other salts. Then, just before sunset, we made dinner. We were tired but a good kind of tired. We had learned a lot, plus we had been discovered, and I knew better than to talk about organ thieves. Sleeping in a tent afforded no protection whatsoever, and the blackened journal’s revelation frightened both of us. So, we talked about the canoe, which we needed in the most urgent way. A plan of getting it had come to me. At low tide, I would catwalk across the muck on two boards from the home site.
Tomorrow morning, first thing, we’d get it while the tide was out. It would be tricky walking across one board, dropping the other, picking the first up and walking across the other one, but it was doable and a risk worth taking.
We ate beef noodles, potato soup, and drank water while we tried out the radio. It caught nothing but static, an immense disappointment that left us vulnerable to storms. After cleaning up the kitchen, we took a bottle and cups and walked to the beach for what would become an evening ritual: talk about the island.
Sapelo was a beguiling mosaic of dunes, swamps, woods, rolling breakers, moss laden oaks, and green marshes flecked white with egrets. Shorebirds filled the air. We saw ibises and other wading birds and alligators cruising through duckweed, and once I saw the rare swallow-tailed kite. Sapelo was, indeed, a beautiful place but—as we had been warned—a dangerous place, more dangerous than we imagined.
We settled onto palmetto logs, and I began shaping the boards into paddles. On the channel’s western end, palmettos and moss draped oaks splintered the sunset and slashes of coral, gold, and red danced across the rippling water. The light, shadows, and textures rendered the evening impressionistic, as if Monet had created it just for Tyler and me.
To the west, cypress crowns appeared afire. The sun was setting somewhere past Apex, past Atlanta, past my wife’s grave, my daughter’s hospital, and the alleyway. Misery lay to the west but so much beauty surrounded us here. Yet danger was everywhere. An intense sense of being alive filled me for the first time in years.
The atmosphere magnified the sun and heaved its last fire above the land, an illusion. For even as it shone it was already gone.
The sun was someone else’s. The night would be ours.
Fireflies blinked in vegetation along the dune line, and the sea oats, golden asters, and grasses fused into impenetrable blackness. Some force drew my eyes to the Heavens. I looked above the eastern horizon to see a shooting star pierce the void, a stitch of silver in an amethyst sky.
Tyler poured cups of Comfort as I hacked one board into a paddle shape.
“I’m getting where I like this stuff,” she said, taking a sip.
“It grows on you, but nothing beats a cold beer.
We talked about simple things … where we went to high school, childhood memories, birthdays. Hers was in November, mine in February. We talked about the stuff life grows from. Oddly, neither of us mentioned our daughters.
“The wind really had those papers flying didn’t it?” said Tyler. “Do you think the journal notes are for real? I mean they seem real enough.”
“Yes, they seem real enough but we don’t know who wrote them. We know that someone—I doubt it was the author—tried to destroy them.”
Nothing good would come of the journal. Did Sapelo conceal dark secrets as everyone implied? You can’t break a law that doesn’t exist, which meant evildoers could do whatever they wanted here.
Tyler crossed her legs, leaned back, and took another sip. I finished the first paddle. The splinters wouldn’t be a problem. Sanding the handles would involve nothing more than shoving the handles into a dune, over and over.
“Do you think poachers cut people’s kidneys out here?” asked Tyler.
“Let’s say the journal is, in fact, a record of what’s going on here. That means black outsiders are coming here to take islanders’ kidneys.”
“It must be pretty simple to do, that is, if you’re a doctor.”
“You and I could remove somebody’s kidneys if we had to,” I said hacking a wedge of wood from the second board. “But here? The island has no electricity. No nothing. A transplant requires a surgical team and a sterile operating room. That is, if you care to see the patient survive. Anesthesia units and operating tables aren’t the sort of thing you’d find on a wild island.
“These organ thieves or whatever they are—if they exist—need to match the tissue and blood types of the donor and recipient. You don’t just kidnap the first person you see and yank out his kidneys. Then again, if you’re an organ pirate why should you care? The person buying the kidney gets a mismatch and dies. Maybe the donor dies. Who’s left to talk? No laws, no regulations. It opens up a world of evil possibilities.”
The breeze picked up, and Tyler shivered. Talk of cutting people’s organs out wasn’t helping. It gave me a chill too.
“Do you want to go back by the fire?” I asked.
She nodded.
Back at the fire, I continued shaping the second paddle as she sipped.
“The key to a successful transplant,” I said, “is to know the donor’s and recipient’s blood type, tissue criteria, and medical circumstances. The journal said affluent Africans were coming here for organs. That makes sense. The villagers’ ancestors once lived in Africa.”
In flickering firelight, Tyler poured a little more Comfort into our cups.
“You’re saying the islanders and the Africans coming here for organs share a common ancestry?”
“Quite possibly.”
Tyler broke in, “Why not just get transplants in Sierra Leone?”
“Things in Sierra Leone are a mess. Government is inept. People live in a state of fear. The Revolutionary United Front pillages the country’s diamond fields, selling them on the black market. They burn people alive and chop off the arms and hands of men, women, and children. I’ve seen photographs of girls with stubs for arms holding babies with no arms.”
“People who amputate babies’ arms will do anything,” Tyler said, holding her arms up to her shoulders as if she were cold.
“The people coming here for kidneys could be RUF leaders. Think about it. They leave the revolution behind for a while, come here for a pleasant trip, and spend black market diamond money on black market organs. A little rest and they’re on their way back home, back to health, and ready to kill some more.”
“Why don’t they just take their victims’ organs?” asked Tyler.
“Probably because of AIDS. They don’t want to risk receiving an HIV-infected organ.”
“It sounds like some movie script,” Tyler said, “where the bad guys always win. They’re terrorizing people on both sides of the Atlantic. No laws here, so it’s possible.”
“Anything is possible. A few years ago, I wrote a story encouraging people to donate organs to the Living Gift Foundation. People were dying waiting for transplants. Still are. Football legend, Walter Payton, died while waiting for a liver. A shortage of human organs exists, and a black market is one solution.”
“It seems you’d hear about it in the news,” Tyler said.
“Stories about organ theft are out there, street talk. I’ll tell you an urban legend. The guy who told me the story swears he knew the victim. This story, incidentally, took place in Atlanta … if it took place at all.”
“A what?”
“Urban legend—a modern-day ghost story. Four businessmen came to Atlanta from Jacksonville, Florida, for a three-day convention. The first night they go to a bar in Buckhead. A good-looking blonde joins a young guy in the group—the only single guy—at the bar. He can’t believe his luck. They start drinking and talking and she’s charming, very. A few hours later, when his friends call it a night, he tells them he’ll see them in the morning.
“The next morning his co-workers go to the day’s first meeting and their friend doesn’t show. They wink, make locker room remarks, and talk about the good old days. Well, their friend doesn’t show up at all that day. He doesn’t show up that night. Doesn’t even leave a message. The convention winds down Friday and it’s time to go home. They’re not sure what to do. Filing a report with the police seems silly. They shrug their shoulder—boys will be boys—and head south to Jacksonville.”
“There’s no way I’d leave a missing friend behind,” said Tyler.
“More likely, they had a tee time to make. Anyway, over the weekend nobody hears a thing. Monday morning rolls around and the guy doesn’t show up for work. Just when his co-workers decide to call the police and file a missing person’s report, he calls. He’s in bad shape, hooked to a slow-drip IV in a cheesy motel. A note is stuck to the phone by his bed. ‘Call 911 or you’ll die.’ The anesthesia has run out. He’s been drugged for six days.
“The blonde was bait. The last thing he remembered was having a drink and sleeping with her. She drugged him, and when he wakes up, both kidneys are gone. The blonde singled him out. He was young, healthy, and easy. Now he’s on life support waiting for kidney transplants, but, like I said, it’s a modern-day ghost story. No law enforcement agency has ever documented such a crime.”
Tyler walked over to the fire.
“God, whether it’s true or not, the thought of that scares me,” she said. “The idea that someone would come on to you to cut out your organs, it’s unbelievable ... well, maybe not too unbelievable,” she said.
“Life’s just the opposite of what you think it is. A beautiful woman flatters you. You think she’s interested in you and, yes, she is: your organs. It’s the world we live in. You don’t discipline your children because you love them, so they go to school and shoot their classmates. Someone cuts you off in traffic, so you shoot him. The world is crazy. Last week, I watched helplessly as a crack addict murdered a young mother on the way to her daughter’s birthday party. The paper’s headline said it all. ‘Birthday Turns Into Death Day.’ Yes, life is just the opposite of what you think it is.”
“God, how awful. What did you do?”
I told her about the alley murder while I finished the other paddle. She couldn’t believe it. “Here’s something you can believe,” I said, holding both paddles side by side. “China executes more prisoners than the rest of the world combined. They ‘harvest’ executed prisoners’ organs. Now isn’t that the ultimate euphemism? ‘Harvests.’ Makes it sound as if they’re plucking a few peaches off the tree. The Chinese execute people for things like tax evasion, take their organs, and sell them. They place a pistol to the back of the condemned’s head and fire. Within five minutes, they collect his organs, kind of like poultry houses, raising chickens to be killed and eaten.”
Tyler stood and walked beyond the fire. She stood there, silent, then walked toward the opening in the dunes. When she turned back, tears glistened in the firelight.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
I’d not seen her this emotional ever. Something had touched a nerve. I didn’t think she was drunk but maybe she was.
“Something is wrong; what is it?”
“Bad memories,” she said, and a soft sob escaped.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know what bad memories are like.”
“Oh God, don’t you just wish you could just forget everything sometimes.”
“Every day,” I said, and I tried to put my arm around her but she pulled away.
“Don’t you wonder why my daughter ran away?”
“Yes, but I’m reluctant to probe someone’s personal life unless I’m comfortable with them, and if I know them well enough, I don’t need to probe in the first place.”
“Well, you’re stuck with me for three weeks. Don’t you want to know me? I mean really know me while you can?”
“You can’t just decide to know somebody. Knowing somebody takes place over time. Besides, I don’t want to come across as nosy. It’s not my style.”
“Then try a new style. Ask me questions. Start with children. Don’t you want to know if I have other children?”
“Well, do you?”
“I did. Another daughter, Caroline, by my second husband, Hines, the son-of-a-bitch. She died when she was four. Surprised? I bet you are. I had Lorie by my first husband, Burt. He died three years after Lorie was born.”
“What happened?” I asked, taken aback—a daughter was dead, another daughter had run away, and she had said she wasn’t divorced but she wasn’t married either. So, she was a double-widow then … a black widow.
“Burt ran a landscaping company and paid his workers in cash. He left for work one morning and never came back. An employee robbed him that afternoon and shot him. We were inseparable. I mourned for a long time, a long, long time. One morning I woke up and there was nothing left to do but get back in touch with life.”
So, like me, the mission to the island was her best chance to regain the sole surviving member of her family.
“Tell me about Caroline,” I said.
“Well, I can’t talk about Caroline without talking about Hines. I married him when Lorie was ten. He, like Garrett, was a damn game warden.”
“A lovely bunch,” I said.
“Two years later, we had Caroline. Hines just knew we’d have a boy. He was full of plans. Teaching the boy to hunt and that kind of thing, but we had Caroline … ” she said, her voice trailing off. She seemed to reach inside for new strength before carrying on.
“From the day she was born, Hines had little to do with her. She died at the age of four. Leukemia. We buried her on a Saturday, the beginning of deer season. It was so hot that day. I almost fainted at the graveside.
“Right after Caroline’s funeral, Hines drove home, lifted his rifle from its rack, and left to climb into a deer stand he’d spent weeks building. That afternoon, God sent one thunderstorm after another to wash Caroline’s footsteps from the earth. All that rain ruined his hunt,” she said, pausing, “and I was glad. I never forgave Hines. With Caroline gone, I held on to Lorie as if the world were about to end.”
She began to cry. Caroline was in her grave, and Brit lay in a hospital bed. So, we had common denominators … terrible losses.
“Let’s walk the beach,” I said and I took her by the hand.
We walked a beach strewn with driftwood and shells and stopped to sit on the trunk of a huge tree between naked limbs spiraling to the heavens. It was like sitting on the skull of some prehistoric beast. The night sky was brilliant and the Milky Way ran through the sky like a luminous river, the river of Heaven. The sea blazed up in phosphorescence.
“Tell me about Lorie. What do you think she looks like now?”
“I’m not sure,” said Tyler, “you know how teenagers change, but I have a photograph of her taken right before she left, the one I made the flyer from.”
She reached into her blouse and removed a school photo, about the size of a business card, wrapped in tissue. I held it up to the sky and could just make out a girl with blonde pigtails that looked blue from the starlight. She smiled a faraway smile, like she was not there. She was pretty like her mother.
“Where do you think she’s been all this time?”
“I think she lived for a while near Charleston, which isn’t too far from Wilmington, where her only letter came from. She loves the coast. After she ran away, I found some letters hidden beneath a liner in a drawer from kids I’d never heard of. Lorie must have been thinking of running away a long time before she, at long last, did. The kids sounded like runaways themselves.
“I ended up in a, well, a situation, where I had little to do but read. I read the letters over and over looking for some clue. Something I might have missed. Some clue. I memorized them.
“This letter is from a girl, Blaze. I too, am tired of this bullshit called the real world. Leave that hell of a home and live off the earth.
“This one is from Jason.” Come be with me, if you want to find a happy place with people that don’t need lots of stuff to survive. Come love the Earth, share energy and true love.”
The kids sounded like hippies of the 70s, full of naïve fantasies.
“And one more, from Dune. A girl or a guy? You tell me.” I have found a place for you. No laws, no police, no government, no religion, nothing. Be yourself. Live and let live. Come to the island. Join me and be free.
“An island,” I said. It’s tempting to think he or she is referring to Forbidden Island.
“It’s another island near Charleston where some kids had set up a commune near a tea plantation but no one knew much about it.”
“Yes, but laws exist there. Maybe she didn’t go to Charleston.”
“I don’t know that she lived on the island for certain, but if she did, she, no doubt, felt safe and accepted there,” Tyler said, pushing a delicate white shell, blue with starlight, across the sand with her toe.
“Why did she run away?”
“She tried to kill her stepfather. I made the mistake of stopping her.”
An awkward silence set in. I thought I should say, well, something, but then Tyler resumed, taking the conversation in an altogether new direction.
“Have you ever driven up behind a truck carrying chickens, feathers flying everywhere?”
“Once or twice,” I said. “It’s like driving into a pillow fight.”
“Lorie and I were following a truck when a chicken escaped through a missing slat in one of the crates. A white puff of feathers came off the truck, and the next thing I know, a chicken glanced off the car antenna and landed in the grass along the shoulder.”
“Dead?”
“No. It flopped all over the grass. Lorie was shouting ‘Go back, Mom. Go back,’ so I stopped and turned around. Well, we had to chase it down. It tried to fly, but couldn’t. It just beat circles in the grass. Lorie threw her sweater over it, and we picked it up. Its leg was broken and so was a wing. The chicken worked its head out of the sweater, and Lorie stroked its head until it settled down. We called a veterinarian who rehabilitates hawks and owls that fly into cars and power lines.
“The vet splinted the leg and taped the wing down. ‘Keep the bird in a dark place,’ he said, ‘and keep water nearby. It’ll eat later if it’s lucky.’ ”
The chicken’s connection with a runaway mystified me but I knew it wasn’t idle talk, not on the heels of such an outpouring.
“Lorie nursed that chicken back to health. She named it Lucky, and wherever she went Lucky shadowed her. Lorie was thirteen then and she and I both were going through a very hard time. Caroline was just getting sick. During her sickness, I realized I had made a huge mistake marrying Hines. I was a wreck. I didn’t give Lorie the attention she needed, and the chicken became her source of love and affection.”
“I’ve heard of pet squirrels, turtles, and snakes, but never a pet chicken,” I said, still uncertain where Tyler was headed.
“Two years dragged by. Lorie and Lucky were inseparable. She made a rhinestone necklace for Lucky. You should have seen it. A chicken wearing jewelry. That bird followed Lorie everywhere, the necklace all a glittering. It’d ride with us to the store, sitting on Lorie’s shoulder. At night, Lorie would put her in a cage and drape a beach towel over it. Lucky would go to sleep, you know, roost.
“Caroline’s battle with leukemia was nearing the end about the time Lorie turned sixteen. I let Lorie double date, movies, that kind of thing to keep her mind off Caroline. At first, she went out with several boys. Then she met Keith. She said that no matter what they did, they laughed all the time. And I can tell you, looking back, if anybody needed to laugh, Lorie did.
“It got where she saw Keith but no one else. He was a nice kid. When Hines learned she was just seeing one boy, he put his foot down. He tried to convince me I was opening the door to a teenage pregnancy.
“He wouldn’t relent. He confronted Keith and told him he was spending too much time with Lorie. He told him not to see her again, that if he did, he’d take it up with his father. So, they stopped seeing each other.
“Lorie cried for weeks. Being a teenager is such an awful time, and I hated seeing her have her heart broken.”
“So, they stopped seeing each other?”
“For a long time. But Lorie had done nothing wrong. I felt the right thing to do was to let Lorie see Keith. He was a nice boy, and it didn’t seem fair to him or Lorie. The bottom line was simple: she was my daughter, not Hines.’ ”
“Ah, the perils of a blended family. What’d you do?”
“I’d drop Lorie off at the mall where there’s a cinema at one end, a perfect meeting place. Lorie and Keith would bump into each other near the cinema. Sometimes they saw the movie, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d go with other couples and just hang out. This went on for months. I’d pick her up at the designated time. She was never late. That was the key. If we were late one time, Hines would raise hell.”
“He had no clue,” I said. “That’s a bit deceptive, don’t you think.”
“I didn’t give a damn. For a long time, he didn’t. Then Lorie told me she and Keith had bumped into a co-worker of his just before he went postal.”
“Crazy?”
“Yes. I dropped her off at the cinema Friday night to see a movie; at least that’s what I told Hines. In fact, she and Keith went to a dance. The next afternoon, Hines interrogated Lorie about the movie she’d seen the night before. He had the paper with all the movies listed. He asked which one she went to, what time it started, who was in it, what was it about, and when it ended. You’d a thought he was investigating a murderer. He crossed her up caught her in a lie. That’s when she confessed she had seen Keith.
“He went into a rage, cursing, throwing things, and threatening to kill Keith. He slapped Lorie three times.”
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“He is the law. I thought I could get through to him. I pleaded with him to remember what it’s like to be young, but he punched me.”
“Where,” I asked.
“Here.” She brought her hand up, with some hesitation, to her left breast. “He knocked me to the floor and went outside. I looked out the kitchen window and saw him take Lucky from the cage.
“He cursed us. ‘Get out here right now, you lying bitches.’
“I begged him. ‘Please don’t hurt Lucky, please. Lorie pleaded with him. ‘I’m sorry, please don’t hurt Lucky. I’ll do anything you want. I promise.’
“Hines stood beneath the Formosa tree, holding the chicken spread-eagled by the legs and said he was going to rip the bird in half. Lorie ran inside.”
“To call the police?”
“No. She came back out with her shotgun, a single-shot .410. The summer before, she had taken a skeet class. She pointed it at Hines.
“ ‘Put her down or I swear to God I’ll kill you,’ she said. He ripped away the necklace and held Lucky to his chest.
“Hines puffed up like a snake. ‘Put that gun down now or I’ll wring its neck.’
“Something in Lorie’s eyes changed. It was like fire burning. I lunged at the barrel just as she pulled the trigger. The shot went into the air just above Hines’ head cutting a branch from the Formosa.
“Well, that did it. Hines slung Lucky by the neck in great looping circles until her head pulled loose. Blood gushed everywhere. He threw the head at Lorie, telling her ‘Give this head to Keith.’ ”
“You should have let her shoot him,” I said. “The circumstances seemed justifiable.”
“Yes, more than I realized even. Lorie would have killed him if she’d had a double barrel. Knowing what I know now, she would not have gone to jail because the system, I am certain, would have spared her. I’d still have her.”
“What happened next?”
“Lucky flapped around the yard in circles, blood gushing from her, and Lorie shoved me away and ran into the house. I tried to go upstairs to her, but Hines pulled me by my hair into the downstairs bathroom and locked me there. He had installed padlocks on both baths and our bedrooms. He always locked us up when he was mad with us.”
“A real son-of-a-bitch I see.”
“After a while, I could smell chicken grilling. It sickened me. Still does. I saw him take two plates, silverware, and some barbecue sauce to the picnic table.
“He dragged Lorie from her room. He said any bitch who tried to shoot him would pay a price. He shoved a drumstick into her mouth and forced her to chew on it. Lorie threw up onto him. The last time I saw her, he was dragging her into the house. Hines came back, ate some more, and left the bones on his plate.”
The venison at the Last Chance Café made sense now. She had endured a murdered husband, a daughter who died before life even started, abuse, and the nightmare of seeing a pet killed and force fed to her daughter. And the remaining daughter was gone, missing, maybe dead. I didn’t see how things could be worse.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You have been to Hell and back.”
“That was Lorie’s last night at home. I slept downstairs in the bathroom listening to her cry. Some time after midnight, the house grew silent. The next morning, my door was unlocked. I went upstairs, and she was gone. She had left through her window and climbed onto the roof sometime during the night. That was seven years ago.”
“You never heard from her?”
“A month later, I received the letter I mentioned, postmarked Wilmington, North Carolina. Lorie said if I had let her kill Hines, Lucky would still be alive. She said she loved me but that sometimes love wasn’t enough. She said she would never come back until she knew Hines was dead. Then she dropped a bomb.”
“What?”
“Hines had been forcing her to give him oral sex. That’s what the thing with Keith was. Jealousy.”
“Where is Hines now?”
“He’s dead.”
“Good, what happened?”
“I killed him.”
***
My campmate was a killer. Good for her. Killing a bad man for a good reason was just. It settled some of the score for what life had dealt her. As Cameron said, the old eye for an eye thing. It felt right, not righteous, but right, and I envied her. I had always wondered if I had what it took to kill a man. Yes, to know you can kill is good. Others will sense it and not bother you. It was something everyone needed to know. So, I was camping with a murderess on an island where people practiced voodoo and doctors allegedly robbed people of their organs. What would happen next?
Tyler hung her cup on a limb. She was through drinking.
“After I received Lorie’s letter, I thought a lot. I wondered if she had made it all up, because Hines had killed Lucky. In the end, I couldn’t go on not knowing. I had to know the truth.
“I called Keith’s father and asked if we could meet. I asked him point-blank if Lorie had ever talked to Keith about any sexual abuse from Hines.
“He said, ‘I don’t know how to put this, Mrs. Hill. He was coercing your daughter to give him oral sex. He said he would kill her pet if she refused or told anyone what he was doing. Keith said she cried about it all the time. Keith told me he and your daughter never did anything. I believe him. I had a hard time keeping him from going to the police. My son wanted that man locked up, but I told him to stay out of it. That sooner or later, it would all come out, and it looks like it has. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for you and Lorie.’ ”
“You knew he was telling the truth, didn’t you,” I said.
“Oh yes, I started putting two and two together and I could see why Lorie had withdrawn, why she had become so attached to Lucky, and why Hines forbid her to see Keith. It all made sense. All the pieces fit. I dwelled on this, obsessed on it. My mind moved in a new direction, a vengeful journey. And then it came to me. I knew exactly what to do. For a long time, Hines and I had had nothing to do with each other … you know … as a man and woman go, but that was fine with me. The honeymoon, so to speak, was long over, I hated being with him … having sex. Sex has never been that good for me anyway but I know its power.”
“So, this new direction … where did it lead?”
“I went shopping and bought some new lingerie … to … I suppose you could say, seduce him. I let a month go by to see if I really wanted to do this. I did. My mind was set, and then I put the plan into motion.
“One Sunday morning, after coffee, with no warning—so it looked like an impulse—I asked Hines if I could “treat” him right there in the kitchen. It was my way of saying … you know, ‘go down’ on him. He was puzzled because we had long quit being intimate, but I told him it was just something I wanted to do.
“I had him going good. He was … you know …”
“Hard.”
“Yes, thank you. It’s not easy talking about this. The words on his … you know … his …”
“How about a street word, his cock?”
“Yes, thank you. You’re making this much easier.”
“Just talk to me like you’ve known me forever. What do you mean the words on his cock?”
“When he was young the egotistical bastard got drunk after he graduated from the Criminal Justice Academy. He had ‘The Big Enforcer” tattooed along his shaft. When we were first married, he’d grab me into the bedroom and tell me he had a warrant for my arrest, that ‘The Big Enforcer’ had a stiff penalty for me. God, I hated that.”
“He had a wonderful bedside manner I see.”
“I teased him. I’d do him a while then stop. I told him to go into the bedroom upstairs, strip, and wait, that I would put on something special for him. I came back in my new lingerie. He didn’t even realize it was new, of course. He lay nude, spread-eagled on the bed. I started again and got him close, real close, then stopped. I had him where I wanted him. I talked dirty to him. I told him to slide down to the end of the bed. ‘I’m going to get on all fours and lick you like the bitch I am.’
“He liked that. He’d call me a bitch in heat sometimes, though that was nowhere near the truth. Beneath the bed was a handgun I’d bought in Fuquay-Varina, a gun made for women. Small, easy to hide, and powerful—a Model 85 UltraLite Titanium .38. Mr. All-mighty law officer, The Big Enforcer, had no idea I had a gun. I’d also placed a small tape recorder behind the headboard, a voice-activated recorder. I wanted a record of all this.”
Tyler started laughing.
“Oh this part is easy. He said, ‘Baby, you’re driving me crazy. Finish me please.’ I told him, ‘Don’t you worry, Hines-baby, I’ll finish you but good.’
“I got down on all fours and started licking him. As I did, I felt beneath the bed. The gun was right where I had put it, beneath a towel.
“I got my hand around the grip, my finger on the trigger, the safety off already, so the click wouldn’t warn him. He was close to … ”
“Coming.”
“Yes. That’s when I asked him a question. ‘Is this as good as Lorie’s blowjobs?’
“He sat up like lightning had hit him. I rose and aimed the gun between his legs. He shrunk away in fear and said he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“I told him Keith and his parents knew and were going to the sheriff that afternoon, that they had her confession on tape. Of course that was a lie.”
“He begged me. ‘You’ve got to stop them. Think of my career. I’ll be ruined.’
“Career?” I said. “What about Lorie? Then I told him he’d be giving blowjobs in prison soon, and the big boys would bend him over. Oh, he was scared to death. I told him I’d call Keith’s parents and stop them on one condition. Just tell me how many times he’d abused her.
“He swore it had been no more than twenty times. ‘Did you screw her?’ I asked.
“He said he tried once, but she cried much so he couldn’t stay hard. Then he started crying. The Big Enforcer was crying.
“All this time, I was recording every word. I had tested it the day before and the quality was good.
“I shot into the mattress between his legs. A puff of smoke came up.
‘Tell me why you did it.’
He said he didn’t know why.’
“That’s not good enough. Tell me why you did it,” and I shot into the mattress again. Another puff of smoke came up.
He said ‘she wasn’t his daughter just a beautiful, sexy woman who turned him on.’
“Well, she won’t turn you on anymore,” I said, “because I’m turning your sorry ass off for good.
“He begged me to think about what I was doing. I told him I’d thought about it a long time, and that I had been looking forward to it.’
“ ‘This is for Lorie,’ I said, “and shot him in the cock. The shot forced him back against the headboard. Blood gushed from him. ‘And this is for Lucky,’ “and shot him square in the neck. Blood spurted like it was coming from a fountain. And that was it. He died with one hand on his neck, just like Lucky had died. It was the best feeling I ever had. Killing him felt better than sex.”
“Good lord,” I said.
“I went downstairs, made a cup of tea, sat down, and played back the tape. Everything was clear. Even now I can smell the gun smoke. It was a sweet smell. I called the police, told them what I’d done, and sipped my tea.
“I was charged with murder, but in time the charges were downgraded to voluntary manslaughter. I was sentenced to six years in prison but released after three years, provided I didn’t leave Wake County for another year.”
“That’s why you couldn’t look for your daughter for four years.”
“Right, and except for that one letter, I haven’t heard from her. That’s why I took off like I did this morning. I’m determined to find her. Lorie doesn’t know Hines is dead. She’ll come home once she knows. And getting her back means everything to me. All I have to do is prove he’s dead.”
“You’re fortunate to get off so lightly. The judicial system doesn’t smile on killing an officer of the law.”
“People knew Hines was violent. He’d pistol-whipped several men. The trial was a joke. His family talked about him being a Christian. His cousin, a deacon, said Hines was a God-fearing man. His sister pointed out he had gone to college but I hadn’t and made a big deal out of the fact Lorie wasn’t there to testify. Then the prosecutor trotted out some of Hines’ fellow officers in uniform who talked about how he cared for people, what a good sportsman he was, and how everyone loved him. It was all bullshit.”
“Birds of a feather stick together,” I said.
“The tape. That helped. Of course, the DA used that as evidence of premeditated murder. He said Hines had no choice but to confess because I had a gun on him. Thank God for Keith and his parents. Still, I went to prison. My sentence came down to the difference between murder and manslaughter. The essential element in proving murder is ‘malice aforethought,’ as the lawyers say, or premeditation.”
“He deserved to die.”
“Yes, he did. I got manslaughter. The essential element for manslaughter is ‘heat of passion with sufficient legal provocation.’ You know the right lawyer can get you out of just about anything. My attorney told the jury that learning my daughter had been molested repeatedly unleashed a long, simmering heat of passion within me. Add her running away and the nightmare with Lucky and you get a passion for revenge.”
“I’m guessing there were moms on the jury.”
“Absolutely, several had daughters Lorie’s age. We put up a manslaughter defense combined with a temporary insanity defense, or diminished capacity defense, as the lawyers call it. I was so devastated by the fact my husband was molesting my daughter, I was blind to reason and logic. That got me a heat of passion verdict rather than premeditation. When Hines admitted it was true, I snapped, snapped the trigger,” she said, laughing. “And I’d do it again.”
“Now I understand why you listen to Dr. Laura. To hear a story like yours.”
“No,” she said with emphasis. “No story is like mine. I get a kick hearing people call in who think their life is rough. They don’t have a clue and neither does Dr. Laura.”
I liked Tyler even more. She was an emasculator and man-killer in the truest sense. It pleased me to know I had an accomplice on this wild island who had killed a man and, no doubt, would kill again, if necessary.
“Did you ask law enforcement agencies to search for your daughter?”
“Yes, but they don’t want to help me. They told me thousands of children turn up missing each year. I don’t have to work, at least not full time. I work part time for a florist. My first husband had a good business and life insurance. While I was serving time, my attorney sold my husband’s business for me. I live off the proceeds and use the life insurance money to search for Lorie.”
“Any insurance from the bastard?”
“No. Because I was convicted of killing Hines, the insurer wouldn’t pay. It was blood money anyway. The only thing I wanted was his death. I got that.”
“You’ve had a sad life, Tyler Hill. I hope you find Lorie and things work out,” I said. “I see why you’re so determined. I really do.”
I poured us another cup of Southern Comfort. I needed a drink and felt she did too. Voodoo was lying quietly, glad to have us both. He had had a rough life too. Tyler took the cup from me.
“Thanks, this stuff isn’t that bad. This morning you said that to work together we needed to understand each other. I agree. I hope you understand me better now that I’ve come clean with you. Why don’t you? Start with your wife. I see you’re married. Not too many women would put up with their husband being on an island with another woman.”
“You mean this? I asked, holding up my ring finger. “My wife is dead. I wear this ring because I can’t forget her.”
“Dead. How long?”
“Five years.”
“Do you have children?”
“A daughter, but she may not live too much longer. My wife and daughter were in a car accident. My wife died at the scene and my daughter has been in a coma for five years now.”
Tyler moved over by my side and placed her hand on my knee.
“So, you have your own sadness. What happened.”
“Five years ago this month, I got a promotion. I left work early that day and on the way home I called my wife to tell her we’d go out and celebrate. She wasn’t home, so I tried her cell. While talking to me, she drove into the back of a flatbed truck carrying steel rods. Ann died at the scene and Brit was unconscious and still is. She was ten at the time. For a long time I did whatever I thought might bring her out. Nothing so far has worked.”
“How long can she last?”
“The doctors say six months at the most.”
“People come out of comas, you know,” she said, gently touching my arm.
Something in her voice lifted me. For five years, I had read medical journals—one case after another—and she was right.
“Yes they do. One woman lay in a coma from childbirth complications for sixteen years. The she snapped out of it and was fine, but I’m afraid it’s a losing battle. One man disconnected his son from life support. He just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Don’t give up,” she said. “Hope for the best. I do. Well,” she said, getting up, “what a day. I’d say we understand each other better now.”
“Yes. Now, there’s just one more thing I need to tell you.”
I told Tyler of my mission to find Mallory. I had the rest of the summer to fulfill my missions, but she only had three weeks to find her daughter. I’d do what I could to help her find Lorie while she was here, and I told her we’d get the canoe in the morning and explore the area near the village.
We had started the day going in two directions but had ended on a good note. Fate seemed to have thrown us together for a reason.
The fire was dying. The surf rose and fell, a hypnotic relaxing sound. We called it a night and retired to our tents. Just as I was settling into my sleeping bag, Tyler came over.
“Slater?”
“Yes.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to know each other a long time. Before I leave, I want your phone number. I want to know what happens to you. Maybe you can come to Apex. It isn’t Atlanta, but it’s nice. Raleigh is close.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m glad you want to stay in touch.”
“I will. I promise,” she said and returned to her tent.
I hoped she meant it. We had shared much in life without knowing it. To not know how the rest would turn out didn’t seem right. We each stood a good chance of never seeing our daughters alive again. And then when we left the island, each of us had a life to rebuild, with or without our daughters.
***
The next morning I awakened to smells of coffee. Tyler was cooking breakfast, after which we went straight to the marsh, stopping only for two wide boards at the old home site. The tide was out but several deep creeks still held water. The muck glistened, and a banquet was underway as plovers, sandpipers, curlews, ruddy turnstones, and oystercatchers probed the silt. The wind was nowhere as bad as the afternoon before, and I felt I could paddle the canoe with no problem, if it was seaworthy.
I was ready to walk the plank, so to speak. I would walk across one board at a time in a leapfrog game that should get me to the canoe. With the paddles tied over my shoulders I set out.
“Here goes,” I said. “Wish me luck.”
“Don’t look back,” Tyler said.
“At my age, you can’t help but look back,” I said, giving her a wink.
I placed the first board onto the muck and walked out on it carrying the other like a tightroper. The plank sank into the muck but held me. I walked to its end and dropped the next board into place. A natural suction formed, and pulling the first board from the muck took some effort, but my system was working. I got about halfway to the canoe, my shoulders growing mucky from the boards. Now the muck was very soggy and an intense suction clung to the boards, making them harder and harder to pull up. I developed a technique that involved dropping to one knee and prying the board up by a corner until the suction lost its hold with a wet sucking sound.
Now the going was slow. What should have taken fifteen minutes took half an hour. Snails in the muck crawled faster than I did. Once I almost fell when the board tilted. I looked back at Tyler, more distant now, and gave her the thumbs up. She returned the salute.
Fifteen feet from the canoe, a terrible thought seized me. As a boy, I had fished farm ponds where a farmer often had an old boat pushed into the grass, and I never moved a boat where a water moccasin didn’t lurk beneath. I didn’t think moccasins were around but perhaps an alligator lay in wait in nearby grasses.
I dropped a board and got within five feet of the craft, a Grumman double-ender. Stagnant water filled the stern. No holes apparently. I didn’t see any paddles. I peeled the other board from the muck and dropped it hard against the gunwale. Nothing happened. I rocked the canoe with it. Nothing.
I walked the final plank and peered over into the canoe. It held rainwater, nothing else. I threw the paddles into the grass. Everything looked good. I stepped through the rainwater into the grass to overturn the canoe. Tilting it to one side, black water flecked white with mosquito larvae spilled into the grass, leaving the canoe light and maneuverable. I turned it upside down to find a coppery algae slime coating the aluminum, but no snakes.
Here in the heart of marsh, the Cordgrass rattled and clattered with surprising noise. The least of winds set it to rustling. From a distance, the marsh had always seemed a quiet peaceful place, but it was filled with struggles. Dead crabs, fish skeletons, and strange unidentifiable dead things were mute evidence that not all things prospered in the marsh. It was a beautiful but deadly battlefield.
A small creek ran close by with nothing but a neck of muck separating it from the canoe. The next move had to be calculated just right. Pull the canoe onto the grass and scoot it fast enough to clear the mud, then leap into it as it hit the creek. From there, I could paddle to Tyler.
I threw in the paddles, pulled the canoe into the grass and rocked it back and forth, like an Olympian set to propel a toboggan over ice and ran with it. The coating of algae greased its path through the grass and it shot away instantly, hurtling across the muck. I leaped a second late, my right foot slipping off the barest edge of stern. My legs went into the muck and I sank to my waist as the canoe drifted into the creek. In seconds, I’d sunk to my hips. Whenever I tried to work my legs, to pull up, I sank deeper. Several times I tried to wriggle free but only sunk deeper. Then I remembered the advice of lying on your back and swimming in quicksand. I leaned back as far as I could and stopped sinking but I was stuck. What seemed like an hour passed but it couldn’t have been ten minutes. Never had I felt so stupidly helpless.
Tyler couldn’t see me because of the high grass but she had spotted the canoe drifting down creek. She and Voodoo walked to where she could see me mired in the muck, and she crossed her arms repeatedly to let me know she understood my plight, not that she could do anything about it.
The tide would come in early in the afternoon and from the watermarks upon the Cordgrass, rise five feet over my head. Meanwhile, a strengthening sun blazed down.
I fought off thoughts that I would drown at high tide, decompose, and contribute to the marsh smells—decay, saltwater, and sulfuric gas—bubbling up through the muck. I shut my eyes to visualize a way to rescue myself but nothing came.
As time passed, the marsh animals came out around me. Worms emerged from burrows, and sandpipers walked past on stilt-like legs. The grasses rustled with unseen animals. Fiddler crabs advanced, an army of scavengers waiting for me to die, their feet crackling around me. A great blue heron landed in the silt twenty yards beyond me and then the tide started coming in. The water lapped against my waist and I could feel the muck’s heat dissipate. The canoe had long drifted out of sight. Slowly the tide rose above my navel, then after a while came up to my chest. Later, the water felt cool against my throat. Now the water was at my chin and I could taste the salt as it splashed against my face. Just before the tide surged over me for good, I’d have one last breath.
The next surge came close to covering my mouth and nose. The strange peace overtaking me vanished as egrets, sandpipers, and other shorebirds wildly flushed around me. Something crashed through the Cordgrass right behind me. A gator? It came closer and closer and was nearly on me, when I heard a whistling breath of air that fell around my shoulders—a rope.
And then the wonderful sounds of cursing filled the air.
“Looks like you screwed up good, now doesn’t it. Slip the rope down under your damn armpits, hang on, I’ll get you out of there. Goddamn, didn’t you know what you were getting into? This shit has been here forever. It’ll suck you into the earth if you step onto it. And it looks like you fucking jumped into it. God damn a mighty.”
I couldn’t see my rescuer but I could hear him cursing beautiful words. The voice came over the marsh, agitated, firm, and magnificent.
“Now hold on. The tide’s gonna cover you. Take a deep breath before you go under. I’m gonna tie this rope to my boat and get you out of here real slow like. Don’t want to yank your legs off but you’ll lose your damn shoes.”
The grass rustled again, losing volume. Then nothing but marsh sounds. I inhaled a great gulp of air, sweet air, just before my head went under. The rope tightened until it could tighten no more. I held it to keep it from cutting into my chest, and the slime began to give just a little. It gave some more and a sucking noise grew beneath the water. Bubbles floated around me as my body pulled free. The rope yanked a bit more and I slid into the grass. I was free, covered in muck and missing a shoe.
My savior came back through the grass, cursing still. If he wasn’t Rikard, he’d do until Rikard came along. He had blue eyes and straight hair gathered into a ponytail. His face had sharp features and a blonde-gray beard that seemed white from the sun. A brilliant white sand dollar on a rawhide string dangled from his neck. He wore faded torn jeans, a white fisherman’s cap, and a T-shirt. He was weathered and tan and could have been thirty, forty, or fifty.
I walked over to him, brushing clay-like muck off my hands.
“My name is Slater Watts.”
“Rikard,” he said, “Rikard Blackshear.”
We shook hands, and I picked up the paddles I’d made.
“How in the hell did you know I was in trouble?”
“I was cutting through the marsh west of here,” he said, pointing, “and saw the old canoe floating off and knew somebody had messed with it. A canoe just don’t free itself, you know. It’s been stuck in this marsh for months. I was planning to get it myself and sell it. I don’t have much use for canoes otherwise or the people who use them—en-viron-ment-alists, as a rule,” he said, stretching out the syllables.
“Where in the hell did you come from? I didn’t see you out there,” I said pointing toward the sea, the only way in I knew of.
Rikard was coiling his rope in easy loops over his shoulder.
“I stay away from the big water. Don’t need the trouble big water brings. The creeks—they’re my highway. I knew a way in here from back there,” he said pointing back over the hummock of grass I had stood on. “I couldn’t get in here at low tide. We were in a death race. Lucky for you the rising tide let me in here just in time.”
“Yes, lucky for me. I have a friend over there at the edge of the island. She’s there somewhere. Can you take me to her?” I asked, pointing.
He shielded his eyes against the sun and turned toward the island.
“We can get only so close since the tide’s not in good, but we can get close enough. She’ll have to walk over to us at the point over there,” he said sweeping his hand along the edge of the island.
“If you can help me get that canoe, it’d be a big help to me.”
“The canoe? Well, it can’t get far enough away. Let it ride.”
It was an odd comment. I walked over the hummock with him, fighting my way through thick grass to a creek where an old beat-up bateau painted in marsh camouflage rocked in the wind.
“I’m gonna take you out into some water where you can jump in and get all that mud off. That okay?”
“Sure. No problem,” and it wasn’t, drowning, jellyfish or not. I hated having all that slime stuck on me.
We stopped and I jumped in, holding onto a short rope tied to the bateau. I allowed myself to sink as if the tide was claiming me but it had not and would not. I came up and went under once more then got into the bateau, which wasn’t easy with the wet, heavy clothes weighting me down.
Rikard started a small Evinrude and we cruised down an alley of water where the grass grew high. We made a slow about-face and worked our way into the little creek where I had nearly drowned. He cut the engine and poled the boat over to where I had been sucked into the muck.
“All right, now,” he said as he screwed a large hook into one end of the pole. He fished around with the pole, then thrust it into the right hole where I had lost my shoe. He fished the pole around and came out with my shoe.
“That’s pretty cool,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Believe me, you won’t go far without shoes here. This island’s got burrs and spurs that will go right through your feet.”
He swirled my shoe in the brine until clean, removed the hook, and put it away. He turned the craft around and headed into the creek, taking forks to the left, and I saw where Tyler had stood. She was nowhere to be seen.
We beached the craft seventy yards from where she had stood and worked our way from low marsh to high marsh into a transition area and then up to maritime forest where walking was easier and eased down to the marsh where all my troubles had started. Then I saw Tyler coming through some trees. She saw us and began working her way toward us. We met on a slender spit of land jutting into a wide meandering creek.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said. “I was going to swim out to free you but if I couldn’t get you loose, I was going to give you this.”
She handed me a hollow bamboo stalk seven feet long. It would have saved me, though spending six hours in all that dark water would have seemed like eternity.
“I thought it was over. Then this fellow came along.”
I introduced her to Rikard.
Tyler put her business on the table.
“My name is Tyler Hill,” she said, pulling the ever-present flyer from her blouse. “I’m here looking for my daughter, a young woman named Lorie. Do you recognize this woman?”
Rikard stared at the flyer, saying nothing. Then he repeated the name.
“Lorie … that would be Lorie Hill?”
“That’s right.”
“No, I can’t help you,” he said returning the flyer to a crestfallen Tyler. “As far as I know, no white people live here at all.”
“You live here,” I said.
Rikard gave me a cold stare.
“Sure do, but I’m black or haven’t you noticed?”
Tyler looked at me and I looked at her. We were too stunned to say anything. Rikard turned and walked toward his bateau. We fell in behind him.
“If I’ve insulted you,” I said, “it was purely unintentional. I’m not in the habit of insulting people who save my neck.”
“You’re not the first person to mistake me for a white man.”
“Look, I wouldn’t insult you. I need your help. If you could take me out to that canoe, I’d be most grateful. I’ll paddle it in.”
“Not in the wind and current. It’d take you all day,” he said, “and you’re gonna be one tired city slicker tonight. Not only did the marsh suck you in, it sucked your energy out too. You’ll see. You’re not going to have much muscle for that canoe, trust me on that.”
“We sure need it,” I said.
Rikard looked at the sun then across the marsh and pulled at his beard.
“Good thing I came along when I did or you’d be crab bait. Well, I’ve done my good deed for the day. I need to go.”
“Hold on. I came here to find you and write a magazine article about you.”
“A magazine article? On me?”
“Yes, you practice voodoo or so I hear.”
“You don’t know nothing about me,” he said, and it was clear he was agitated.
“Just tell me where to find you. I’ll write a story you’ll like. I guarantee it.”
“You guarantee it. Can you guarantee people will leave me alone after they read it? Can you guarantee that?”
“Maybe. We can keep your location a secret.”
“Well, well. You just let me think about that for a while. As they say, don’t call me. I’ll call you. And if you mention me to others, they won’t recognize ‘Rikard.’ They know me by my island name.”
“What’s that?”
“On this island, my island, people call me the Mullet Man.”
“Mullet Man, all right, I’ve got it.”
Then Rikard, this Caucasian who claimed to be black, this ‘Mullet Man’ did something I would take with me the rest of my life. He walked to the water’s edge and scanned the estuary from one horizon to the other. He checked the wind and the angle of the sun. He reached into his pocket and brought forth two smooth, white river rocks, then reached into a hip pocket and pulled out a short section of bamboo with holes cut into it.
He squatted over the water’s edge and tapped the rocks in a rhythmic clicking-tapping code. Then he placed the flute into his mouth and whistled lilting tones that floated away at higher and higher pitches. He clicked the rocks and whistled for fifteen seconds more then quit. It sounded musical, a beautiful harmonic. Then he turned and tipped his cap to Tyler.
“I hope you find your daughter. She’d be a pretty woman by now … just like you pretty lady. A woman like that could make a man happy, real happy.”
He looked at me. “You be careful out here.”
Voodoo stood on his back legs so Rikard could pet him and Rikard rubbed the spot between his eyes, then his ears, one at a time. The dog wanted to go with him but Rikard whispered into Voodoo’s ear and the dog trotted over by Tyler’s legs and lay down.
And then Rikard, the Mullet Man, left through the woods to make his way to the bateau without so much as a glance back. As he disappeared into the marsh, I cursed him for not getting the canoe. It had almost killed me, had cost us most of the day, and we still didn’t have the damn thing. I began dusting the dried muck from my clothes when Tyler spoke in reverence.
“My God, would you look at that.”
Far out in the estuary, the canoe was coming at us. Its bow rising, it came across the estuary straight for us with surprising speed.
“I don’t believe what I’m seeing,” I said.
The canoe never slackened its pace nor veered from its course. As it approached, we could see the dorsal fins of four porpoises, a pair up front and a pair in the back—on each side of the canoe—bringing it to us. The porpoises drove the canoe onto the point where we stood. Then each pair leaped from the water, dove, and raced away, clicking and whistling, surfacing and diving in incomparable choreography, paying homage to the fabled voodoo priest of Sapelo, Rikard Blackshear, the Mullet Man, the man who killed with his thoughts.