Untying the Moon, page 4
Across the Continental Divide and into her Carolina homeland, she snakes down through Caesar’s Head dodging patches of rain and eats a Murphy sandwich on the side of Highway 11, the Cherokee Foothills Parkway, imprinting the last view of the distant mountains she has just traversed.
At I-26 she pulls onto the eastbound express, ready to make time toward the coast. The bottom falls out near Columbia in a blinding rainstorm and hazard lights flounder in the muted glow of six lane traffic around her—hydroplane hell for lightweights. Beneath an overpass she secures Blue Ruby’s stubborn top and opens the sack of sop-up rags that lives under the front seat. By Orangeburg the front has passed but she lets the vinyl top dry until she stops for gas.
Charleston is a thought—and out to Seabrook Island where she’d summer camped as a kid, but rattling her brain for someone to phone in a clearance pass for the now-gated community she decides never mind. Besides, Miss Ruby has never been fond of interstate highways, so at the Summerville exit they swing over and down Highway 165 to 17 to 174 toward Edisto, an earnest island not yet neutered by gentrification.
The drive out to Edisto is a passage of moss laden tunnels, plantation chapels and shaded cemeteries, shotgun shacks and markers noting only bits of better stories that are still passed down on porches, balustraded or not. The Carolina Lowcountry. Hallelujah.
State road 174 is a direct path to the ocean. In the shade of a rustling palmetto she slips into her still wet bathing suit and dances across the warm beach, kicking up sand with every footfall, through the foamy surf and into the blue brown sea. The sea. For four days she has relished the thought of precisely this, taking in big mouthfuls of the Atlantic, her Atlantic, the warm swaying Atlantic of the south, and tasting the briny deep that is her life blood.
A long swim later she lies in the sand watching dolphins feed and lets the sun seep into her skin, heat the long body that plied those cold cold waters only hours before. Amused with the notion that she herself has come down wet out of the mountains carrying even the slightest particle of nutrient for her beloved coast, she drifts for a while in that half sleep that comes so easily at the beach, then knocks the ground-in sand off as best she can and heads to Docksides for a cold beer and fish tacos. No one minds the beach grit there.
She walks to the back deck, sees the tide has turned, and can’t resist—climbs the rickety rail and dives. When she rises to the air again she sounds Whitman’s barbaric yawp and spins. Nothing could be finer, indeed. To be in these river-rich waters listening to the crunch and crackle of life below the surface. Surrounded by marsh grass and pluff mud, crowning glories of the Southern coastline. Oh yes, she thinks, waving to people on their docks and herons on the flats, sated in the sunshine of Carolina June, afloat in the Edisto and not adrift in the city.
This is it—one of those often wished for and seldom won moments of well wrought bliss. On a nice slick bank with no oyster shells she wallows in the slippery mud like the dolphins of Jericho, and the interval of contentment is complete. By god, she thinks, I may not know where I’m going, but at least I know where I’m not.
At the last dock before river turns to sea she climbs a swim ladder, bums a towel and a ride to Miss Ruby, stops for a tall iced tea and a bag of boiled peanuts and, unshowered and salt crisped, takes to the journey renewed.
Driving Highway 17 in the back yard between Charleston and Savannah she imagines the roadway as arms extended between these comely sisters. And where the hands clasp is a broad green expanse of beauty and pain, ten thousand acres of rice hammocks fed by waters of the Combahee River. Canals remain, many of them miraculously straight, others as swayed as the backs that strained to dig them—the bold engineering vision of aristocratic planters made real by the toil of slaves. Channels dug with the impetus of bondage and bondage alone, for no other enticement, neither love nor greed, could have mastered such marsh.
Containment. Consider trudging and mucking and shoveling hour upon hour, day after month after year, in a ponderous drive to defy God. To reroute the river, retell the tides. To mound and mound and mound the mud that was meant not to be there and make dry land on which oxen could groan to haul wagons around the murky fields of Carolina gold rice, renowned for the delicacy of its honeyed flavor. Consider the whelps of mosquitoes and the whelps of deer flies. Consider the whelps of refusal.
As the highway threads these miles of salt flats, red-winged blackbirds flock in sheets that billow luminous curves across the gathering darkness, and the moon posts itself in the turning sky while Bailey crosses the last of the marshlands and drives onward into the now forested twilight.
Toward home.
Jericho River. Kirk’s Bluff. Just west of the village, their place on a high bank of oaks and magnolias, cedars and palmettos, that had been Martin land only before the war but for these more than hundred years has been Simmons land too. When Cecil Martin and George Simmons, current patriarchs, returned from service in the Pacific each had skills enough to earn a fatter money roll in the farther world but neither was of a mind to seek it. Once they found themselves wives—Cecil’s Merissa in Alaska, George’s Henrietta in the West Indies—Cecil came home to work the sea, just as George came home to work the land.
The truer story: Merissa’s Cecil, Henrietta’s George.
Tiny Merissa, delicate child bride. Tall Retta, exotic older woman. Each dauntless in her own spirited way.
Bailey Martin and Ben Simmons, children of the bluff.
Neighbors.
Friends.
Family.
More.
As she drives, Bailey’s thoughts turn to childhood, Ben’s and hers, where laughter tosses above the drone of outboard motors. Where offshore charter boats hustle to the Gulf Stream and sailboats tack this way and that. Where pendulums of slalom skiers swing past party cruisers and old timers wet a line toward the trout. Where diesel trawlers chug out to big waters and in again with their catch. Always the coming back, the pull of homeport. Wakes and cross-wakes slosh the shore—dolphins and herons, egrets and barking dogs fill the marsh flanked memories. The occasional yelp from some kid with a crab-pinched toe.
They were part of it all, she and Ben. If it moved in, on, or around the water it was a portion of their realm. In the lingering years of their youth they created each of those wakes, over and over—as skiers, fishers, and pleasure crafters, on rafts and trawlers and boats of all size and purpose between—sailboats, runabouts, kayaks, and canoes.
Most of their wake was made swimming, though. So much swimming that if every ripple could be harnessed from every jump off a pier head, every race to the buoy, every shrivel skinned hour treading water or lapping dock to dock—if all that energy could be contained in one swell it would surge over the high banks of Kirk’s Bluff.
Then there was the tender wake that only the river knew, the wake of them drifting. How many hours had they spent suspended in a slow sweep of tide. Sometimes upriver, other times down. Maybe in one of their rafts, maybe on inner tubes—sun blistering rubber that made for constant cupping of water to cool thighs and shoulders. With inner tubes they mostly wandered along with their heads inside the rings, teasing one another into fear that something might get them—namely a shark. They maintained diligent respect for sharks.
Many times they simply floated along with their scrawny little selves, then adolescent selves, teenage selves, other selves. They brought oranges or tangerines to float alongside them and studied what path the fruit might take through the current. Sometimes they tossed the orange balls ahead and lunged underwater in attempt to surface dolphin-like exactly where the citrus bobbed. Once in a while the dolphins themselves would play the game, nudge the oranges with their long curved rostrums. Groovy, the dolphin with the double nicks on her dorsal fin who often hung out around the oyster factory, was especially keen to join the game if there wasn’t much boat traffic. Fast boats don’t make for friendly dolphins.
When the tide turned or they edged out-of-bounds, Bailey and Ben peeled the sweet fruit and slaked their salty thirst with each ambrosial section. Spit seeds at each other and watched as shingles of citrus peel meandered on, maybe attracting gulls, maybe not.
If there wasn’t time to ride the tide home they’d climb out at somebody’s dock and walk back wet and dripping, a salt and pepper staple to everyone around the village. And if the day called for it, they’d leave their boat at somebody’s dock as casually as other kids leave their bikes in a neighbor’s yard. Of course they left bikes too, and fishing poles, and cast nets. But it all came home to roost—when they needed it and remembered or were scolded and remembered. Around the Bluff everything eventually comes home to roost.
They knew every board on every pier head, every ramp on every dock, which boats had their bottoms painted and which boats needed it. Attention was paid to that kind of detail because over the years they operated small businesses offering various maritime services, from scrubbing guano to chipping barnacles to varnishing teak to baiting crab traps.
During high school when they weren’t striking for Cecil or working Mister George’s fields they catered a fair share of shrimp boils, crab cracks, and oyster roasts. Always had money to go where they wanted to go, do what they wanted to do. When her parents told her they’d spring for college Bailey said thank you very much and bought herself Miss Ruby, the convertible land yacht that has cruised her these years through waters calm and stormy.
Now, as she drives south along the inland perimeter of home territory, Retta and Mister George would be in their house watching Matlock and her father Cecil, across the field at her own house, would soon climb the stairs to bed, past the gallery of wedding and baby, recitals and swim meets, shrimp boats and trophy fish, birthday parties and graduations. An empty house without Merissa. If Bailey turns toward home she’ll be there before Retta and George or her dad, before any of them turn off the last light. Maybe. . . . Maybe not. Hard to say if either of them—she or Cecil—is ready for it. Hard to know if they ever will be.
MERISSA
(1962)
Merissa was so very tired and wanted only to let go and sleep, but she kept hearing Bailey’s small voice calling Momma, Momma. There was such a pull to let go, but she had to get to Bailey. She was confused because the voice seemed to come from above and below and she didn’t know how to reach her, to reach Bailey. Merissa could hear her everywhere but didn’t know where she was. I have to find her, she kept calling as the colors folded in on themselves. I have to find her. And then she could find nothing, not even herself.
There were people everywhere, none of them known to her. She looked at her hands and feet but they were unwilling, and the touch of her skin was not a touch she knew. Every sound was excruciating ricochet and there were distorted faces, mouths moving but disconnected from the noise. It was cold and there was no air and the smells burned acrid and unnatural.
Then she was in an empyrean place of childhood—mossy rocks jutting up from the bay and her mother calling. The pounding stopped and she tried to reach but had no arms and the pounding began again and she was lost.
And then Retta was there and found Bailey. This time the water settled and Merissa could tell where her voice was. They went home to Merissa’s family on the Kenai Peninsula and there she found pieces of herself as well. Cecil waited for them in Carolina and Retta never minded the time for miles so they drove east from Seattle. Merissa and her beautiful fragile daughter nested in the back seat under Retta’s Morning Star quilt and meshed their hearts once more in the shelter of Retta’s safekeeping.
Two years later, on that odd feeling Good Friday, the eleven o’clock news broke with announcement of a megathrust earthquake near Anchorage measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale. Cecil was sound asleep and Merissa rose from their bed and went into Bailey’s room. There she sat watch over her child through the night and hummed silent prayers to her loved ones. All weekend intermittent broadcasts brimmed with news of aftershocks and tsunamis, ground fissures and rock slides, collapsing structures and death tolls.
On Easter morning Cecil filled the sweetgrass basket Retta had made for Bailey, but Bailey hid it in the back of her closet and returned to her mother’s vigil. It was Tuesday morning before Merissa heard her own mother Adèle’s sweet voice on the other end of the telephone line. The call was brief, but her parents were alive. They had been in the hills looking for a missing dog when the earth shook and a wave nearly thirty feet high washed Chenega into the sea. The only other survivors had outrun the wave to higher ground.
For weeks details of this most powerful earthquake in North America unfolded. On that Saturday between Good Friday and Easter eleven shocks over 6.2 were recorded. Tsunamis were reported not only in Alaska but also in British Columbia, Oregon, California, even Hawaii and Japan. Land around Kodiak was raised thirty feet and other land southeast of Anchorage dropped eight. Major aftershocks registered for three weeks and evidence of motion directly associated with the Great Alaska Earthquake was felt all over the planet for a full year. A full year for mother earth to settle.
Bailey flat out refused to leave Merissa’s side and missed so many days of school she was placed in first grade once more that fall. When Merissa began planning for the trip home to see her parents Bailey stopped speaking again—to anyone but Ben. It never gets dark so the moon can’t follow me there, she told him. Merissa overheard and at bedtime assured her the moon will come with you wherever you want. You simply untie it and take it along. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Cecil went with them to Alaska that summer, and the three of them spent a month in efforts that were miniscule—the child’s and the parents’—given the work to be done.
The myriad ways in which we are deficient.
Now, at the Yemassee train station, Bailey sits in the far corner of the parking lot and debates going home, wishes she could face Cecil, but her uncertain thoughts vanish when the tracks rumble news of the leviathan’s approach.
Every train thundering into every depot is a brief apocalypse, deafening and deadly massive, and this one has just let up from a pounding 70 mph to the slow coast that allows a gaggle of recruits bound for Parris Island and a few locals home from visiting family up north to disembark as Bert Simmons with lightning efficiency offloads the ladies and luggage. Before the last bag touches the platform the clacks resume and off the beast roars toward Savannah. Bert’s smile widens at the sight of Bailey, but she knows well to step aside the flurry until he’s done.
Within five minutes the passengers have cleared and she follows Bert into the antique but air conditioned office where he’ll wait for the next train, sometimes playing chess or his harmonica or the radio. Most days some fellas stop by to play checkers and shoot the breeze, and he’s forever selling raffles for the church ladies. Crocheted baby blanket, gift certificate to LaWanda’s House of Beauty, toaster oven. If you’re in the market for a raffle ticket, Bert Simmons is the man to see. Always with a smile, always light on his feet, never without a pressed white handkerchief in his back pocket, a custom he’s passed on to his nephew Ben. Bert is taller than his brother George but they both have that small rangy frame that belies the strength and stamina within.
Bert has only been manning the station for four, going on five years since he retired, under considerable pressure, from his duties as steward. Seventy-five, said the folks at Seaboard Coastline, was time to quit riding the rails. Bert didn’t see it that way.
He’d lapped the east coast so many thousands of times, and the west and midwest, in his 58 years on board he hardly knew. No, he didn’t know how to stop moving. But he learned, and although his instinct when every single train pulls in is to hoist himself onto it instead of hoisting baggage off, he’s come to appreciate the quiet times between arrivals. Tells himself he does, anyway. It’s nice when people stop by.
“Lobster, eh? Where’ve you been?”
“Maine,” Bailey says. She and Bert have walked into the parking lot and stand before Miss Ruby’s open trunk. Tops of the battery cooled bait wells open with rubber grips like the soda machine.
“You hauled those boys from Maine?”
“Yessir, she says.
He lifts a lobster, pronounces it sure enough still alive, and says he’s never seen such a rig as the trunk of Miss Ruby.
“Mister Bert,” she says, “whoever designed the refrigeration system for this beauty of an automobile is a genius, flat out.”
It’s a conversation they’ve replayed many times. Bert Simmons paced train corridors since he was 17, but there was a time in his twenties, newly married, when his bride had borne down on him to go to tech school and get a trade, one he could ply closer to home. He dutifully attended classes in electrical engineering that included heating and air conditioning and refrigeration. He compliantly got his certificate then he thankfully resumed his full time duties on the train once more. By that time his wife had seen the light and eased up on the bearing down.
“I was about to call and see if anybody at home might be coming this way.” She squints in speculation.
“You need me to call?” He cocks his head and his eyes dance a smile. They all—Retta, George, Ben, and Bert Simmons—do what they can about the standoff between Cecil Martin and his daughter Bailey. Step aside when there’s nothing to be done. Stubborn lays its own tracks. Anger too. And grief rides along the top with a schedule all its own.
“Would you?”
“You know it.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
“Can’t help myself.”
“When Mister George gets here, please tell him to cook them tonight,” Bailey says. “I dawdled on the way down so they’re pushing it.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Keep one for yourself, Bert. Oh, and there’s fresh mountain honey too.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Alright. It’s always good to see you.” She hugs him and walks to the driver’s door. “Tell Mister George I’ll get that way soon.”
