Twenty-two

1983

The Chase girls arrived at the Tammahuskee in late evening, cooking hot dogs on one of the campground’s grills as they listened to the family in the neighboring site sing songs in a circle as dusk bled like ink in the sky. Hannah talked in her sleep that night, muttering some concern—acute but incomprehensible—while Mary drew in the dark, her eyes finding enough light to see the black lines of her pen in the margins of the park’s photocopied map. And as the sun first lifted above the cragged horizon, bleeding red over the water-covered earth, Mary, whose eyes had closed only briefly that night, turned to Hannah, her sleeping face vacant, her curls looking like they were coated with sea spray. “We’ll see if he comes,” she said toward Hannah’s sleeping face.

Hannah made a gasping inhale and rolled her head away from Mary’s words, as if she were being doused with water. Then she blinked, letting her eyes orient to the dim light in the tent.

“Morning, Bunny,” Mary said.

Hannah rolled to face her, moving her tongue inside her mouth. “Where are we going?” And Mary saw that Hannah’s familiarity with leaving had returned, had perhaps never left.

“There are these trees,” said Mary. “They’re famous. But you have to take a boat there.”

Hannah managed to summon a disdain that was beyond her years. “We’re going to take a boat to go see trees?”

“They’re called the Shrouded Trees.”

Hannah rolled her eyes. “That sounds stupid.”

“Bunny?” said Mary. “Only stupid people say stupid.”

Mary had read about the Shrouded Trees when she and Hannah were last in the Tammahuskee. They made up a grove of oaks that circled the perimeter of a small island in the middle of the swamp, their roots digging down so deep that they extended like fingers into the earth, gripping it and holding on, bracing themselves against wind and storm. From their branches dripped long dust-gray swaths of soft Spanish moss. “Anyway. People go there just to see the trees. There are tour boats that take people there like every half an hour.”

Mary had planned it out carefully, knowing about the boats when she called Stefan, remembering them from last time. They departed on the hour, and Mary always imagined them like those slender vessels that ferried beings across the River Styx. On that island, she would be guaranteed enough time to plead her case before the boats once again boarded their passengers and slowly paddled back out into those silent dead-calm waters. On that island, the world would be reduced to a small circle of earth. On that island, she could make Stefan see that all that mattered was her and him. And Bunny.

Hannah and Mary took an early boat that they shared with an elderly couple whose eyes lifted heavenward as they smiled and looked for some of the swamp’s rare birds. Their guide was a man who wordlessly worked the oars with smooth, clean strokes, his muscled ebony-colored arms well practiced. His eyes didn’t settle easily on their destination but remained alert and vigilant, darting to any movement around them.

Mary stared at him as he paddled. “What’s your name?” she asked, when she had his eye.

He let go of one oar and, pointing to his ear, shook his head. He was deaf.

From her jacket pocket, Mary pulled out her clear plastic pen, the end of which was broken off, leaving the ink tube exposed. On her hand, she wrote her name, Mary, and she held it up for him to see. He nodded once and Mary gestured toward Hannah, who had been half watching their exchange, half pretending not to. Hannah, Mary wrote.

The old birdwatchers had now noticed the silent conversation, and Mary saw elbows press into sides as they looked at the girls and the man, and smiled.

“He’s deaf,” Mary said. “So I was telling him our names.”

The older woman pressed her hand to her chest and smiled. “I’m Ethel,” she said, then looked at the deaf man and mouthed her name, as if the absence of sound would somehow bring clarity.

“Here,” Mary said, handing her the pen. “You can write it.”

And so on their mottled hands they wrote Ethel and Joseph, the names lifted up and offered to their guide. Finally, he nodded toward the pen and Mary handed it to him. Their guide once again let go of the oar and, with a slow and steady hand, wrote John, the ink nearly disappearing into his brown skin, before handing the pen back to Mary.

As they approached the island, John’s stroke became more nuanced, as he turned the paddle and let it cut through the water in beautiful sibilant curves. The canoe slid up tightly against the small dock that ran from the island, neither bumping it nor giving it any undue space. And with a turn of the paddle, the boat stopped.

John hopped off the canoe first, standing on the dock and extending his hand to help Ethel and Joseph off, then Hannah, and finally Mary.

“Thank you, John,” she said, meeting his eye. Hannah stood waiting, but her eyes were on the trees. Even in the swamp, she had never seen anything like them before. She couldn’t have. John gave Mary a respectful nod before she took Hannah’s hand and followed Ethel and Joseph onto the island. Halfway down the dock, Mary looked over her shoulder and saw that John, with one foot in the boat, one on land, was still looking at her. And not the way that men normally did. Not with lust or longing or disbelief. But with concern. Each of his hands formed what looked like a peace sign and he stacked one on top of the other and moved them in circles toward his body. Mary knew it must be sign language, but she didn’t know what it meant. When she turned, the end of the dock was nearly upon her and she heard herself gasp as she stopped short to avoid falling. One day, she would find herself in a small town inside a vast state. She would see a small girl nearly step onto the street, her eyes lifted toward a solitary cloud. “Careful!” her mother would say, while making that same motion. Careful.

“Watch your step, girls,” said Ethel, looking over her shoulder as Mary, then Hannah, stepped onto land.

“This is so cool,” whispered Hannah, as she looked up at the giant oaks that stood like cobweb-covered sentinels in an almost perfect circle around the island.

With their clasped hands, Mary tapped Hannah’s side. “I knew you’d like it,” she said.

For the first hour, Mary and Hannah walked around the island, looking up at the giant oaks and finding a unique and finite world underneath each of them. Moss hung from their branches to the ground, so that Mary felt like a child hiding underneath the skirt of some regal gown-clad mother.

In the center of the trees was a clearing, and Mary understood that this was where tour guides would begin their lecture on the history of the Shrouded Trees. The trees were brought in as saplings and planted on the island during the early days of the Underground Railroad by a group of free blacks who hoped to provide escaped slaves with some protective cover so they could make it north to a more organized network. Those who knew about the island said the trees grew quickly there, quicker than they would have naturally, as if the oaks knew they had to link their great arms together in protection. It was said that they reached a height of eighty feet in fifteen years, rather than in forty. That the moss was thicker and longer than on any other trees in the swamp. That the trees helped to provide shelter and rest to thousands of souls, warding off not only search parties but also gators and bears and all manner of threats. It was said that no harm came to anyone on the Island of the Shrouded Trees.

“Let’s watch the boats come in,” Mary said to Hannah.

Hannah reached for Mary’s hand. “I want to walk around more,” she said.

“Okay,” replied Mary, as she lowered herself onto the earth. “I’ll be right here.”

Hannah’s brows drew together as she looked at Mary. It seemed the freedom that Hannah increasingly longed for wasn’t quite so appealing when offered on Mary’s terms. She hesitated for a moment, and then she wordlessly set off, looking back over her shoulder at Mary as she did so.

As Hannah began her tentative exploration, Mary leaned back on her elbows and waited for new boats to glide steadily toward the island. It wasn’t long before Hannah rejoined her, before she wordlessly took her place again next to her sister. And so together they sat studying the faces on each boat as they arrived, though Hannah didn’t understand why.

“Did you know Princess Hannah and Princess Mary were once lost in a swamp?”

Hannah turned toward her sister. “They were?”

Mary nodded. “Not a swamp like this one. It was a cursed swamp. The water seeped poison, and the princesses had to cover their mouths with their skirts. And even then they were gagging and coughing; the air was so terrible they couldn’t breathe.”

“How did they get out?”

“Well,” started Mary, her voice transitioning into storytelling mode. And she spoke of the magical creature who lived there. Who was as black as night, but whose eyes glowed white. “He found the girls near death,” said Mary. “But he lifted them with his mouth, then tossed them onto his back and raced them to his underground lair.”

“Could they breathe there?”

“Yes,” said Mary, her eyes focused on another boat that was now visible on the still waters. “But not until he placed his mouth over theirs and breathed fresh air into their lungs.”

“And then they were okay?”

“Well,” replied Mary, with a tilt of her head. “Then they could breathe.”

“Did he take them out of the swamp?”

“He couldn’t leave the swamp. If he did, he would die. But he put them on his back again and raced them to its edge, and then lowered his head and let the princesses slide down his neck onto the ground. They rolled back and forth coughing and gagging from not having been able to breathe on the ride out of the swamp, but once the fresh air entered their lungs, they were fine.”

“What was the creature’s name?” asked Hannah.

Though her head remained static, Mary’s eyes lifted slightly as if the answer were written in the air above her. “I don’t know,” she mused, her voice lifting with curiosity.

At noon, Mary pulled out two sandwiches she had packed, and the girls ate them under one of the trees, taking shelter from the bright, high sun, but Mary kept her eyes toward the dock.

“Who are you looking for?” asked Hannah.

Mary hadn’t realized Hannah had been paying such close attention. “No one, Bunny,” she said. “I’m just watching the boats.”

And as the sun started to lean toward the west, Mary noticed the glances from the tour guides who were now on their tenth recitation of the history of the Shrouded Trees. Hannah was growing restless; John had guided his canoe back and forth a total of six times now.

“Are we going to go back soon?” she asked.

Mary unscrewed the top of their canvas-covered canteen, took a deep draw of water. “Soon,” she said, as she offered the bottle to Hannah.

Hannah’s body heaved with protest, but all she said was “I’m gonna go walk around again” before she pushed herself up off the ground.

Mary watched until the last of the boats arrived. It was late in the afternoon, and the tours stopped running at four. A small family arrived—a mother and father and two sons. But no one else was with them. Stefan hadn’t come.

Mary stared at the sun feeling it burn her eyes, seeing it blur her vision as the eclipse of its heat made her see only light. She hadn’t realized how much of her believed that he would be there until he wasn’t. She remembered the way the words had felt coming from her lips, the receiver slick in her hand. The Island of Shrouded Trees in the Tammahuskee Swamp.

Mary knew that if Stefan didn’t come, then what she had told him, what she had written down in black and white, what she had spilled on that page like blood, was taken for a lie. And Mary vowed, for the second time, to never speak of it again.

The girls were quiet on the canoe ride back, Hannah from fatigue that was physical, from the hours spent in the sun. And Mary from the exhausting hours of waiting and watching and feeling hope recede further away with each boat.

They rode back from the island in silence, the heavy orange sun beginning to sink in the sky. The canoe docked, and John extended his hand, helping Mary back onto land. Though Mary took it, she couldn’t meet his eyes. And as the Chase girls walked back to the Blazer, Mary opened her mouth to speak, but the words stayed deep. She closed her mouth and tried again. “Just so you know,” she said. “If when you’re older and you wonder, I wanted Stefan to meet us here.”

Hannah looked up. “I know,” she said.

Mary stopped, dust from the dry dirt forming clouds around her feet. “How did you know?”

Hannah looked at her and gave a small shrug, her eyes sad and wise. “I just did.”