The pilings have held, though, so far, even if the floors slant more and more toward the sea. Even if there’s a few inch gap in places between the original part of the house and the porch addition. Even if hermit crabs come up through the cracks and whisper around the mismatched furniture, yard sale bought and dumpster bound.

  The house belongs to one of Padgett’s buddies who’s in the process of losing it in a divorce. The wife, who never used it anyway because there’s no air conditioning, has already contracted to bulldoze the place and build something civilized.

  Padgett thought it would be nice for them to spend time some place different, just the two of them, and Bailey fell in love with the house as soon as she saw it that morning. Padgett warned her when they planned the weekend that it wasn’t exactly luxurious, but he didn’t tell her that instead of being on the beach, the house is in the beach, that people have to detour around it on their search for seashells.

  They drove through the night from D.C. When they got to Edisto Padgett unloaded the refrigerator things while Bailey went for her ritual swim, then they collapsed into one of the dozen sagging cast iron beds scattered around the rambling house and fell asleep as the August heat began to creep through windows, listening to the ocean and flies at the screens.

  They woke soaked with sweat and swam, the water refreshing but the air hazy now with heat. The beach almost entirely to themselves, they fished in the surf for a while, no luck, then followed the creek path to the back side of the island, pulled off their sneakers and dug for clams with their toes in the sandy shallows.

  The tide was already incoming, so that one had to hold the clam in place with a foot while the other dove to get it. They took turns, but Bailey liked diving into the tinkling salt water better than holding the clams, so she let Padgett find most of them.

  When they’d filled the rolled bottoms of their tee shirts they swam to the bank with the first load. It was sweltering on the lee side of the island, away from the sea breeze, but a cooling afternoon thunderhead was building in the west while they played in the creek, he bragging about the culinary genius of his renowned clam chowder, she biting him on the ankles when she dove for a clam he’d marked.

  They collected enough to throw the big ones back, piled them in the tin bucket, and hiked to the cabin in plenty of time to beat the rain storm. After a cool rinse under the outdoor shower and fresh dry clothes, they opened a bottle of freezer chilled wine and drank to Charlie Wilson, Padgett’s pal who’d offered them use of the place.

  He left her on the porch reading, with specific instructions not to interrupt the progress of his world famous, not-made-for-just-any-old-body chowder, and went into the kitchen to get started. He cracked the shells with a screwdriver handle and poured out the fresh juice, cut the clams into tiny pieces, then chopped onions and made a roux.

  She checked on him more than an hour later and found him dicing potatoes, soaked with sweat, there being no cross breeze in the back of the house where the kitchen was enclosed.

  “What are you doing in here?” He looked up with a half-cocked smirk.

  “What can I do to help?” she said.

  “Nothing, I told you. Scram.”

  “What’s this, matie?” She picked up a bottle with a paper bag twisted around its neck.

  “Eye, Captain, the men are in need of a ration of rum.” He grinned wide and winked.

  She pulled the bottle from the wrapper and saw it was already a third empty. She looked to him, but he held his place hunched over the potatoes.

  “Holiday, Captain,” he said. “Splicing the main brace, you savvy?”

  “Sure,” she said, making herself lighten. “By all means.”

  “Then out with you, Captain, and let the crew get on with their duties.”

  On the porch she watched the sky darken from behind, from where she knew another thunderhead was mounting. With the rain coming, the temperature had dropped, so she curled into the corner hammock with a cotton spread and opened her book. When it began she shut the book again and watched the horizon disappear. She pulled the spread closer, chilled from all the sun she’d gotten, and closed her eyes to listen to the sleepy sound of raindrops on the battered tin roof.

  A clap of thunder woke her, dusk coming on, and before she could orient herself she heard Padgett banging around and yelling. When she walked into the kitchen he was pounding the screwdriver against the counter saying son-of-a-bitch over and over.

  “What is it,” she asked, still hazy from sleep.

  “Salt,” he said. “The son-of-a-bitching salt.”

  “Calm down. What about it?”

  “The whole son-of-a-bitching box of it just went in the chowder, that’s what.”

  “How?” she laughed.

  “It was caked in the box, so I had to cut the top off. Sliced my son-of-a-bitching hand doing it.”

  She saw now the blood soaked paper towels wrapped around his palm and reached for it but he pulled the hand away.

  “You don’t give a damn,” he said. “You think it’s funny don’t you, bitch? You think it’s fucking funny as hell.”

  “I didn’t know you cut yourself,” she said. “Let me see.”

  “Fucking funny, huh? You want to see funny. Watch this, you fucking bitch.”

  He shoved her aside, hard into the refrigerator, picked up the empty rum bottle and broke it across the stew pot full of chowder he’d spent all afternoon cooking, sending shards of glass flying everywhere.

  “I hereby christen thee dead,” he said, and slammed the bottle into the pot. Then he picked up the whole thing, stumbled through the house, and hurled it off the porch into the big water below.

  She followed, trying to reason with him, but when he wheeled around to tell her she wasn’t worth the time he’d wasted making it, she saw what was in his eyes, mean and nasty and desperate, and she stopped where she was and watched him through the open window between the living room and the porch.

  When the pot sailed out of his hands he lost balance but caught the railing before he went down. Then he froze. He stood there, holding on with both hands, staring up into the rain that he hadn’t even heard begin, and pulled himself together, his body and his mind, until he realized what had just happened. Still he couldn’t move, insensible to what would happen next.

  Bailey watched him, afraid too, and angry, so angry. When he finally unlocked himself he saw the shape of her through the windows. He couldn’t see her face well enough to tell what to do, so he offered his hand to her and stared into the shadows until she finally came to him.

  Angry, she came. Angry but trying not to be, knowing that if she got him going again things would be much worse, sucking back the cynicism and outrage that did not want to be sucked back. The cynicism and outrage that stood ready to surge, as strong as the tide that ran beneath them.

  He stepped cautiously out of the rain and held a rocking chair for her, then sat in another beside her, no words passing between them at all. Even after he rose to get the blanket when he saw her shivering, even after the storm cleared and stars broke through the darkened sky. Even after the moon woke up and witnessed.

  Sitting there on the porch with her sucked up anger swelling inside, she thought of how it would be if a trap door opened like on some huge stage and down he went into the deep blue sea. She wondered if she would lean over and look to where he and the chair tumbled, or if she would continue rocking back and forth, calmly watching the horizon to see if he bobbed up anywhere in the distance.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I deserve it.”

  “I was wondering what I’d do if a door opened and you fell into the ocean.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “No, you don’t. You know you don’t. You dream up these crazy scenarios when you’re upset.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Sure. You’d throw me a line, right?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure you would.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  They got quiet again, both sensing it was best, and said nothing else until he stood and took her hand and walked with her to the bedroom. “Good night,” he said. “I’m sorry,” and he turned to go to another room.

  “It’ll be okay,” she said, and pulled him into the bed beside her. “But it’s got to stop, Padgett. Something’s been changing in you this last couple of months. You scare me and you hurt me and it’s got to stop.”

  He held her close and tried to tell her something about his boys and clam chowder, but then he passed out before her heart settled.

  Now she lies there in the damp stillness, surrounded by the language of water, watching shadows of the hermit crabs move across the window screens as she listens for sounds of the house falling down around them, funneling all her strength into the hope that the ocean will take it before the bulldozer can.

  For more than a week Bailey has spent nights on the Martin’s dock at Kirk’s Bluff immersed in shooting stars. Skies have mostly been unclouded and she’s counted hundreds each night, dependable Perseids, streaming across in early evening earth grazers and midnight sprints, showers of silver and gold meteors that illuminate sky and sea alike.

  There’s no way around August. In the sweltering dog days of summer in the deep South mornings haze with humidity that doesn’t end with the coming of dark. Cuts don’t heal. Grudges fester. Mold grows on damp sheets and dogs don’t bother to come out from under the house and bark. What would be the point? In more cultivated times people closed the shutters midday and sallied forth when the worst was over.

  The river is a different story.

  And if you are fortunate enough to have a dock with hammocks hanging under it and boats tied at the end of it and all of Jericho waiting to enfold you, not to mention the Perseid meteor showers to keep you company at night, why would you be anywhere else? Especially if you have peaches.

  George Simmons says to Cecil aw she’ll be alright, but Retta calls Ben and says I think you need to come talk to this girl. She hasn’t left the dock since she got here—except to go in the river.

  “Oh for godsakes,” Bailey says when she sees Ben coming across the yard.

  “Boo,” he says.

  “Boo,” she says back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Thinking,” she says.

  “Boo?”

  “Oh for godsakes,” she says again. “Old ladies everywhere—all of you. Cecil comes to drink coffee in the mornings and I see all of them during the day—Retta, Mister George, the Joes. Everybody, every day. I help them when they come in at the big dock.”

  “So you’re just fine?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “What’s going on, Booney?”

  They watch a flock of ibis rise in a curve of ink-dipped wings then settle once more into the marsh flats to peck along for lunch.

  “You want to hear it?” she says. “You really want to hear it?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Oh, I thought you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

  “Funny. You’re a funny girl.”

  An osprey flies too close and the ibis flock tatters. Bailey stretches onto the floor planks of the splintered dock.

  “It’s fucked up,” she says. “All of it’s fucked up. When he’s a son of a bitch but then regrets it, there’s no way to win.”

  She slams the length of both arms onto to dock and slowly shakes her head.

  “Forgiveness, right? Who am I to judge and all that chickenshit. Goddammit. Just when I’m at the edge of fuck it—no more—then he comes back with sorry. Sorry.”

  She rolls toward the outgoing tide, watches circles of finger mullet swirl in the shadows. Ben stands at the fish cleaning sink and slices one of the last watermelons from Retta’s garden in half, a burst of soft-scented pleasantness.

  She says, “I love him, you see. He’s crossed the line and now he matters. I make excuses for him. If he hadn’t crossed that line I’d be out of here, adios. But he crossed it, and here I am.”

  She wraps her knuckles on the plank beside her in cadence with her quickened heartbeat.

  “Unless he crosses back,” she says. “Unless he crosses the line again into nofuckingway.”

  She turns to where Ben has quartered the melon and is flicking seeds in rhythm with her heedless anger.

  “And you know what I can do about it?” she says. “Nothing. Big fat zero. That’s what I can do about it. Here comes the train, and I can’t do a goddamned thing but stand there in the middle of the tracks holding out my sweet lovin’ arms.”

  Ben splits the melon once more but that’s all he can stifle. He drives the filet knife into the rind and says, “Listen to you. Just listen to you. Can you imagine what you’d say to a friend talking like that? No, forget friend. Anybody. You’d be jumping up and down saying fuck that asshole—hit the road—nobody deserves to be treated that way. I can hear you now. Why do you do this? Why?”

  “I’m screwed, Boss. Don’t you think I see that? If I cut out it’s the same old thing. Bailey can’t make a relationship work. Bailey can’t commit. What’s wrong with Bailey? Why can’t Bailey get her shit together?”

  She looks to the river again and he looks beyond her. Oyster mounds become visible as the tide lowers, but it’s too hot for oysters.

  “You don’t know,” she says. “You’ve had no way to know the hide I’ve hacked away sliver by chunk. But every time I’m ready to go I hold myself back, suck it up. And Jesus, Boss, I could roll on without a trace. That’s the easy part for me, moving down the line. I’m great at that—it’s the hanging in there that’s tough.”

  She lays her hands flat, speaks in a lowered voice.

  “There’s a part of me that’s missing, Boss. I let myself get pushed around because he matters, because I’m a hard-headed fool that wants to show I can tough it out. I’m so good at rolling. Why can’t I stick?”

  “There’s a part that’s missing alright, and I’ve kept my mouth shut for way too long. Like I forever keep my mouth shut when it comes to you. I wish I had a tape recorder so you could hear what it is you’re saying. But this isn’t you, Bailey. This isn’t who we are. This isn’t how we were raised.”

  “I do wake up next to myself, and wonder,” she says.

  “Wonder what?”

  “If anybody ever really learns anything.”

  “I don’t know, Booney,” he says, “but we’ve still got to make the effort.” He softens to her, as he will always soften to her, even as he knows that if he laid eyes on Padgett Turner right now somebody would be going to jail and somebody else might be going to the graveyard.

  A quarantine of the heart. And yet there is the way his smile cocks to one side and makes her want to lick his teeth. And when his hair is mussed and boyish and his brown eyes dance.

  It’s Padgett’s birthday and the day after a dinner that the boys help cook, Bailey drives him to the mountains. She’s arranged everything—a cooling getaway—champagne and presents and views to forever. Pleasant in the daytime, downright brisk at night. There’s no water, save a poor dammed lake, but there’s quite a lot to be said for altitude in August.

  She gives him a kite and they’re flying it in the parking lot at the inn when a silver haired woman smartly dressed in a summer weight wool suit that’s still too hot approaches, asks about the kite, tells them how splendid it is that they’re so obviously in love, and says she’s never flown a kite, never had a childhood in Poland. Her husband died last year and this is the first time she’s been back to this, a favorite place of theirs.

  Padgett looks to Bailey and she smiles, knowing what he’s thinking.

  “Are you sure?” he says.

  “It’s your kite, remember?”

  So he gives the string to the lady who becomes a child right there on the side of the mountain.

  And when the lady gets into the big Lincoln with the younger couple who’ve driven her there Padgett once again looks at Bailey and Bailey once again smiles and nods. He hurriedly reels the kite and gives it to the fine-spun lady in the back seat, but the lady says, “What will you have if you give this to me?”

  “I’ll have Bailey,” he says.

  They celebrate in the taproom after dinner and one table, then another and another buys Padgett a birthday round of whisky.

  “Let’s go check out the campground for next time,” Bailey says.

  “Why not tomorrow?”

  “Stars are out,” she says. “Brighter on that side.”

  They hold hands and walk the evergreen road to the campground. It’s mostly quiet and dark but there’s a couple enjoying a campfire who invite Bailey and Padgett to sit when they ask about the bear someone in the bar had mentioned. Bee and Arnelle.

  Their smoke striped percolator is off to the side but warm and Bee insists they share a cup. No worries about the bears. Arnelle holds a banjo, easily picking notes with barely a sound. Bee brags that he picked with Raymond Fairchild earlier that week, Raymond having called him up on stage, venerable elder. Others call him up as well, as he and the missus ramble around the bluegrass countryside. Part of him has gone on ahead someplace, Bee tells them, but the banjo anchors him to this world for now. He’s fine when he’s picking.

  He’s fine when he’s not, Bee says, but people can’t see it that way. She’s good with the what’s left, satisfied that the what’s gone hasn’t gone too far. Since they started sleeping with the banjo he’s gotten on better in the world. He likes picking to the rising sun so they camp a lot, for she is partial to a mountain sunrise. He likes picking to the stars even better but after a while people want to go to bed. They’re glad for the company.

  Bailey can’t get Padgett to bed when they cross back to the inn. She tries so hard for them to just sleep and go for a long walk in the morning. A hike in the cool forest where ferns and purple wildflowers spill around the rocks. Yellow bright daisies and broad winged butterflies. All the shades of berries—pink and red, purple and black and lavender—waiting for the bears. They could hike to the ridge and look across fog draped valleys. Not this time.

 

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