Tate bolted from the dining room, but Val managed to grab his arm before he broke into a run.
“Hey, hang on a minute,” she said. “What’s the hurry?”
“You heard what Barry said,” Tate said. “I want to get out and ride around the island, scope out the possibilities for tomorrow. It’s been almost two years since I was here last, you know.”
“It’s an island,” Val said. “What could have changed? It’s not like they’ve opened a new supermarket or restaurant.”
“You’re kidding, right? You haven’t really spent two years on this show without figuring out that everything takes advance planning.”
Val shrugged and gestured toward the door. “Be my guest.”
“You’re not coming with me?”
“Hmm. Let me think. It’s summer, we’re on an island, and it’s Africa hot. There are bugs, snakes, and yes, alligators. No. Thanks for the invite, but I think I’d rather have a root canal. You go do your homework. I’m gonna go sneak a smoke, and then I’m headed for the beach to work on my tan.”
Gina opened the door to her room and tiptoed inside. “Lisa?” she whispered. The room was in half darkness and was now, officially, stifling. Her sister was still facedown on the bed, fast asleep, a tiny trickle of drool pooling on her pillowcase.
Gina set the plate of saltines and the can of ginger ale on the bedside table. She went out into the hallway and brought in the portable fan Sis had loaned her. She set it up on the dresser, pointed it toward her sister’s bed, and turned it on.
The fan hummed quietly, and the fringed edge of the chenille bedspread ruffled in its breeze.
From outside the bedroom window, Gina could hear the raucous calls of a blue jay sitting on the branch of a sweet gum tree, and the thrum of cicadas. A faint floral scent wafted through the room. She was operating on only a few hours’ sleep, and the adrenaline of the food fight was fast running out. She was sorely tempted to join her sister in an impromptu nap.
She stood and stretched. A movement outside the window caught her eye. She went over and peered out, just in time to see Tate Moody careening away on a golf cart.
“Crap!” She jammed her cap on her head, grabbed a bottle of water from the dresser, and was out the door before she did an about-face. “Bug spray,” she chided herself. “Don’t want to go on camera with bug bites.”
She found her golf cart parked outside the front porch, with the promised two-way radio stashed in a cup holder that also held a map of the island. She slathered the insect repellent on her arms, legs, neck, and face while studying the map.
Eutaw Island, she discovered, was shaped roughly like a large thumb with a wart extending on each side. On the inland side of the island, facing Eutaw Sound and, across the sound, the mainland and Darien, the wart held the ferry dock where they’d landed earlier in the day.
According to the map, on the ocean side of the island, the wart was the site of the Eutaw Lighthouse. The cart paths seemed to form a network throughout every part of the island. All she needed to do was figure out where she wanted to go first. Tate Moody had headed east. Gina decided she would go north.
The day was already a scorcher, with the sun blazing down white-hot on the top of her ball cap. She was glad of the insect repellent as a cloud of gnats rose up from the tall grass on the roadside.
The branches of huge old live oaks lined the crushed oystershell cart path on either side, their low-lying branches extending to form a canopy dripping with Spanish moss. Riding down the path, Gina suddenly felt herself in a cool, green tunnel. Squirrels scampered up and down the trees, and twice she saw armadillos scuffling through the fallen leaves and palmettos. She was maybe a quarter of a mile away from the lodge when she spied a woman walking along the path up ahead. She wore a pink T-shirt and black slacks, and a pair of sturdy black shoes were slung by their knotted laces over her shoulder.
“Inez?” she called, coming up alongside the woman.
“I’m Iris,” the older woman said.
“Sorry,” Gina said quickly. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?”
Iris hesitated only a moment. “Guess that’d be awright,” she said, climbing in beside Gina.
“Where to?”
“Up yonder,” Iris said, pointing forward. “They’s a fork in the road. When you get to that, go on to the right.”
“I’m Gina Foxton,” Gina said, groping for a thread of conversation.
“TV lady,” Iris said, nodding in recognition. “You right cute, ain’t you?”
Gina laughed. “Well, my mama and daddy seem to think so.”
Iris studied her for a moment. “Mr. Tate Moody thinks so too.”
“Oh, no,” Gina said quickly. “I’m sure you’re mistaken about that.”
“I know what I seen,” Iris said. “He cut his eyes away when he see you lookin’, but he like what he sees.”
“He’s just watching me because we’re in competition for this network show,” Gina explained.
“You say so,” Iris said, unconvinced. She took a handkerchief from the pocket of her slacks and mopped her sweat-dampened face with it.
Anxious to change the subject, Gina pointed at the older woman’s bare feet. “Don’t your feet get cut up walking on these oyster shells?”
Iris’s laugh sounded like a honk. She wriggled her toes. “Me ’n’ Inez, we been goin’ barefeets on this island our whole life. Shoes is what hurts my feets. But Sis, she want us to wear ’em at work.”
“You and Inez are twins?” Gina asked.
“Yes’m. She’s the older one,” Iris said. “Think she knows it all too. Like I can’t make swimps as good as her!”
“About that shrimp salad today,” Gina said, seizing the moment. “That really was the best shrimp salad I have ever tasted in my life.”
Iris nodded. “You seen Inez actin’ like she made that up her ownself? That swimps was our mama’s recipe. Inez, she take the credit, but Mama the one made that up.”
“The chicken salad looked delicious too,” Gina said.
“It ain’ too bad,” Iris conceded. “Me and Inez, we come up with that. Just use the same dressin’ we put on the swimps, but with some pecans and a little bit of honey and some chopped-up celery.”
“Homemade mayonnaise?” Gina asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Iris said. “Mama didn’t have hardly no money for store-bought.”
They were at the fork in the road. “Right here you turn,” Iris directed. “You could let me off here, if you want.”
“Oh, no,” Gina said. “I’ll take you all the way. Now. About that shrimp salad. Do you catch the shrimp over here?”
“Yes’m,” Iris said. “Up in the creek. My daddy, he used to knit nets, sell ’em over there in Darien. We got a good net he made us.”
Gina handed her the map of Eutaw Island. “Could you show me a good place to catch shrimp in the creek?”
Iris gave her a quizzical look. “You studyin’ gettin’ you some swimps? City gal like you?”
It was Gina’s turn to laugh. “I grew up in Odum. You know where that is?”
“Over there ’round by Waycross?” Iris said.
“That’s right,” Gina said. “My daddy taught me to shrimp too. He didn’t knit nets, but he taught me how to throw a cast net as good as a boy. I didn’t have any brothers,” she added. “Just a younger sister.”
“Yeah, sisters is a trial and a tribulation,” Iris said with a dramatic sigh. She picked up the map and squinted down at it. With a long bony finger she stabbed at a squiggly line. “That right there is Fiddlercrab Creek. That’s da place me ’n’ Inez goes for swimps.”
Gina studied the map. “Is it hard to get to? I don’t see a cart path marked near it.”
“You got a boat?” Iris asked.
“I don’t know,” Gina admitted. “They haven’t told us too much yet. All we know is that tomorrow, they’ll tell us our challenge, and then we have to go out and gather food for a meal and cook it.”
“Hmm,” Iris said. She leaned over the edge of the cart and spit a stream of brown chewing tobacco into the soft sand.
“We never had us no boat neither,” she said.
Suddenly, the golf cart hit an exposed root in the road and nearly bumped then both off their seats.
“Whoa, Nelly!” Iris hollered.
“Sorry,” Gina said.
“Right up here,” Iris said, grabbing Gina’s arm. “Stop the car.”
Gina did as she was instructed and stopped the cart at the edge of a clearing among the oaks and palmettos.
Sitting behind a bleached-out cedar post fence, Iris’s house was a tidy wooden cottage with a tin roof and a tiny covered porch crammed with potted plants. A large tree shaded one corner of the house, and a row of hydrangeas with huge blue mopheads extended across the concrete block foundation. The yard was neatly swept sand, edged with rows of sun-whitened conch shells. A satellite dish poking up from the roof of the house was the only reminder that this was the twenty-first century.
“How pretty,” Gina exclaimed. “Have you lived here long?”
“Me ’n’ Inez lived here our whole life,” Iris said, beaming with pride. “Our granddaddy built this house. We grow’d up here, went to school here. The other chirren went off to the mainland, got jobs and families, but when Mama got sick, me and Inez moved in here and took care of her and Daddy till they died.”
“You never married?” Gina asked gently.
“No’m,” Iris said, climbing out of the cart. “Had me some boyfriends, but wadn’t none of ’em as good a man as my daddy, so I just never did jump the broom. Now, Inez, she was boy-crazy for sure. Had her two different sorry husbands, and buried ’em both a long time ago.”
“That’s too bad,” Gina said.
“Too bad for them.” Iris cackled. “Folks said my sister wore them mens slap out!” She looked over her shoulder at her house. “You like to come in, have a glass of buttermilk?”
“I’d love some. I don’t know when I’ve had a glass of fresh buttermilk,” Gina said. “Don’t tell me you keep a cow here on the island.”
“Not no more we don’t,” Iris said sadly. “We got store-bought.”
Gina edged the cart into the sandy edge of the yard and followed her hostess inside a rusty iron gate. As soon as she set foot in the yard, she was assailed with a cacophony of clucks and cries and flapping wings. Half a dozen large brown-and-white chickens rushed toward her.
“Guinea hens!” Gina cried. “My grandmother always had guinea hens on her farm.”
“Yes’m,” Iris said proudly. “We’ve always had ’em too. Seem like the only old-timey thing left on this island.”
Iris pushed the door to the cottage open. “Well, this is it,” she said, hanging back shyly. “It ain’t nothin’ much, but it’s ours, free and clear.”
It was cool and dim inside. The cottage’s main room was a combination living room, dining room, and kitchen. An ancient brown sofa and a black vinyl recliner with duct-taped arms were positioned in front of a modern-looking television in one corner of the room. The wall above the television held rows of framed family pictures.
The other half of the room was a throwback to the old-timey times Iris had spoken of. An ancient cast-iron cookstove had pride of place in the kitchen. A collection of battered tin pots and pans and cast-iron skillets hung from nails pounded into the bare wooden walls, and a box fan held the only window propped open.
“Sit down right here,” Iris said, pointing to a wooden kitchen table with two chrome and vinyl dinette chairs.
She went over to a rusted refrigerator and brought out a carton of buttermilk, poured a glass for her guest, and sat down beside Gina.
“Now,” Iris said, sighing contentedly. “Lemme tell you ’bout catchin’ you a nice mess of swimps.”