Last Light over Carolina Read online

  Bud lowered his gaze to pick at the label on his beer bottle. It was a lame offering, and they all knew it.

  Pee Dee wagged his head and smiled amiably. Born of a father who’d deserted him, raised by an indifferent mother and her harsh boyfriend, Pee Dee was eager to please.

  “Aw, no, Cap. That’s not for me. I like being a striker on a Morrison boat. But thanks anyway.” He brushed a hank of hair from his eyes as he brightened. “Anyways, I got my eye on a sweet li’l bateau. I can get her fixed up for oystering right quick.”

  “Oh, yeah? Cool,” Bobby exclaimed. He loved to get oysters, maybe more than shrimp. “Can I go out with you?”

  “Sure thing,” Pee Dee exclaimed, head bobbing.

  “You’re not talking about Charlie Pickett’s old bateau, are you?” Oz said, his eyes squinting. “Hell, boy, that thing’s older than I am!”

  Bud saw Pee Dee’s face fall, and he could’ve kicked his father.

  “No, that’s a good little boat,” he exclaimed.

  Bobby nodded in agreement. “You’ll do great.”

  “Yeah,” Pee Dee exclaimed, gaining heart. “We’ll do great.”

  Bud tilted his chair on its hind legs to lean against the wall of the pilothouse. The men fell into a complacent silence as they motored through the dark maze of creek and marsh toward McClellanville and home.

  September 21, 2008, 6:40 a.m.

  On board the Miss Carolina

  Bud blinked as he looked out over the sea. It was bright now with morning sun. He’d remember that December day for the rest of his life. He’d been surrounded by the three men he loved most in the world—his father, his brother, and his cousin. None of them went to church with any regularity—weddings and funerals mostly. A night like that was as close to a service as they came.

  Oz was right that time changed things. Thirty years ago he’d been a lion. Today, Oz was too infirm to captain a boat and spent his afternoons sitting on the dock with the other old captains, retelling stories of the sea. Pee Dee was the same aimless, sweet-natured, hardworking guy, but he had no future. And Bobby…

  Lord, he missed his brother, Bud thought. After all this time, his stomach still grew tight in pain remembering him. The day Bobby died, he’d taken a good part of Bud’s soul along with him. He’d lost more than his brother. He’d lost his best friend. There were days when he was alone out on the sea, like now, that he felt Bobby’s spirit on the deck with him. It was said a dead seaman returned to haunt the sea where he’d died.

  Bud shook his head. Fishermen were a suspicious lot. They needed—and took—all the good luck they could get and were careful to ward off the bad. Oz had passed on secrets to Bud that his father had shared with him, and likewise Bud had passed them on to Josh and Will: That shrimping was best under the light of a full moon. That a fisherman never washed his hands before going to sea. And that a fisherman never, not ever, whistled on deck because it scared the fish away. Bud’s favorite was that a naked woman was lucky on board a ship. He liked to remind Carolina of this one.

  One thing he knew for sure, though, was that sitting on board the Miss Ann that day with the best damn captain on the southeastern sea and the boat’s belly full of booty, the men had felt proud. They were the hunters returning with their kill. Thousands of little critters were nestled on ice. Back then, they’d felt like kings of their world. And for a shining moment, they were.

  Today they were paupers. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how many hours, he couldn’t make it. He was sick of the boat, sick of the shrimp, and sick of scraping by. This morning’s order from Lee Edwards canceling his credit was a new low, and it still burned in his craw. What would Bobby have made of this turn in the business? Would he have quit it and turned to oystering? Taken a land job like so many of his friends? Or would he still have been as drawn to the open sea with her salty scent, the cries of gulls overhead, and the feel of her swells beneath his feet as Bud was?

  “Hey, Bobby,” he called out. “If you’re out there today, I need your help. I’m heading back to the honey hole. Our secret spot. Help me get one good haul so I can pull myself out of debt. I’m gonna pay back every damn penny I owe. Then”—he gritted his teeth—“I dunno, brother. I might sell this boat and get out of this godforsaken business for good.”

  A short while later, the water changed to a murky green. Bud sat up and tossed the empty coffee cup in the trash. Dead ahead, a series of hammocks clustered in a semicircle resembling an island. A brisk wind was rustling the palm fronds. He recognized his markers. Bud looked at the screen of the depth recorder and checked his radar, then slowed his engines. This was the spot he was looking for.

  Alone, Bud had to work twice as fast. He tied the wheel in place and hurried out on deck to the winch that rolled cable around a steel drum. Slowly, he lowered the try net into the water. The net blossomed like a flower, bellowing out in the slow drag.

  Now he had nothing to do but wait. Bud walked across the deck, checking the ropes, cables, chains, and nets that were neatly stacked. A gust of wind rocked the boat and he grabbed for a rail. Bud grimaced as his knee twisted and the old injury flared up. He cursed his luck and, ignoring the pain, limped back to the winch.

  When the try net rose dripping water from the sea, he hurried to reach out with a long metal pole to retrieve the bag and pull it to the deck. Bud untied the knot at the bottom, and with a whoosh, the catch spilled out into a squirming mess on the deck. He quickly bent and sorted through the pulsing mess of jellyfish, bottom fish, sea slugs, a small shark—and the precious shrimp.

  Bud kicked the bycatch to the side with his rubber boot and anxiously counted the shrimp. He sat back on his haunches and whooped. Ninety-two! He pumped the air with his fist as his face broke into a grin. The honey hole had come through for him! This could be one of his best hauls of the season. Bud rose and, looking out over the sea, laughed out loud, congratulating himself on his decision to go it alone this morning.

  Now it was time to lower the big nets.

  He moved quickly, eager to begin trawling. The sun was getting higher in the sky. More clouds were moving in. Every minute counted. He shoveled the bycatch over the edge of the boat. Instantly the gulls’ screams crescendoed and they began diving and vying with the dolphins and each other for the free meal.

  Bud moved to the main winch, and his thick, calloused hands gripped the lever and shifted. He smelled the pungent grease and heard the whine as the cable rolled around the drum. The great steel outriggers slowly lowered. He smiled, thinking how Carolina always said they looked like folded butterfly wings opening up over the water.

  Maybe it was his eagerness, or perhaps it was because lowering the big nets was usually a two-person job. And just maybe it was because his mind had drifted for that instant to Carolina. But when the wind suddenly gusted, Bud’s gimp knee gave in and he lost his balance. His hand slipped into the drum.

  Bud instinctively jerked his hand back, but it was too late. His world became a crushing vortex of pain, shattering his thoughts, shooting up his arm to his brain where it exploded—white, blinding, incomprehensible, hot. He threw back his head, stretched his mouth wide, and bellowed like a gored bull, a horrendous, gut-wrenching, primeval howl ripped from his lungs. It echoed over the ocean, scattering the gulls, then vanished into the vast loneliness.

  4

  September 21, 2008, 7:45 a.m.

  White Gables

  Carolina stood in her garden resting against her shovel. The early morning was the best time to work outdoors, before the sun rose high. It was also the best time to catch the small white worms that fed on her kale. Three clay pots sat one on each step of the porch, each filled with a red geranium. The green, ruffled leaves held fat droplets from her watering. She reached to pluck the dead heads and the brown, curled leaves, releasing the distinctive peppery scent.

  She had tomatoes in her garden and a few vegetables. Herbs, of course. But she came outdoors each morning to see the flowers. Perenni
als mostly, and of these she was partial to the common but cheerful echinacea that called the bees into her garden and came back, year after year, like an old friend. She patrolled the garden every morning, checking leaves, pulling weeds, watering. Like most things, a good garden took consistent tending rather than fits and starts.

  In the south the summer sun beat down mercilessly, turning the ground hard and the grass brittle. The rains weren’t regular, either. It took a commitment to each plant to see it through the season. Yet no matter how much mulch she spread or how much water she offered, the summer garden always seemed spindly. It limped along without vigor or showy blossoms like it was just hanging on till fall.

  She wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. Maybe that’s what was going on in her marriage, she thought with a short laugh. She and Bud were just in a dry season. She just had to hang on and hope for better times.

  Wasn’t that the way with a long marriage? she wondered. After thirty-three years, she could look back and say they’d gone through their seasons. There were good times and bad times, like the Bible said. Days of blessings. Days of sin. She felt a shadow cross her face as she remembered those bitter cold days of winter.

  She had to keep the good memories close, to remember spring during winter. The fall garden always seemed like a second spring. At some point in September, right about the time the ducks and hawks came migrating through, the flowers in her garden sprang back to life. The cooler weather and the rain brought such promise it set her heart to blooming.

  Carolina looked out over her lawn. The brittle, brown grass was parched, more weed than grass. The rain barrel was dry. Please, God, let there be rain today, she prayed, shading her eyes with her hand as she checked the sky.

  The dull blue overhead was laced with wispy cirrus clouds. Lizzy had said rain was coming. She turned toward the sea. Even after all these years, she felt uneasy whenever Bud was at sea in stormy weather. She couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that something was wrong. She didn’t believe in fortunetellers or horoscopes, but she absolutely believed in a woman’s intuition. Ask any wife or mother and she’d tell you she had a sixth sense about her loved ones.

  And she loved Bud. God help her, for better or for worse, he was the love of her life. She’d told Lizzy that it was love at first sight. A slight smile spread across her face as she remembered in a flash that zing of attraction she’d felt the minute Bud Morrison turned his head and locked gazes with her.

  Though a distant memory, some days it still felt so fresh.

  September 1974

  McClellanville

  The first time Carolina saw Bud Morrison, she fell in love.

  On that fateful September day, Miss Carolina Brailsford was sitting on a bench overlooking Jeremy Creek with Judith Baker and Odelle Williams, fellow schoolteachers who boarded at White Gables. Carolina’s great-uncle, Archibald Brailsford, had passed on ten years earlier, and to make ends meet her great-aunt, Lucille Brailsford, had opened her home on Pinckney Street to unmarried, respectable schoolteachers.

  Carolina was sharing histories with the two women who were fast becoming her friends. She and Judith were doing most of the talking. An instant friendship had sparked the moment Judith had willingly relinquished the front bedroom and moved to the small corner bedroom at the rear of the house. The front bedroom of White Gables with the black iron bed and the white lace curtains had always been Carolina’s when she’d visited White Gables as a child.

  Odelle was reserved compared to Carolina and Judith. Not that she was shy. Odelle could be very firm and free with her opinions. Rather, Carolina had the impression that Odelle preferred to listen carefully rather than join in conversation. “Collecting ammo,” Judith had succinctly summed up when Carolina had mentioned this to her.

  It was Labor Day, the first holiday the three young women had enjoyed since beginning their duties at the local elementary school. Within a few weeks, the fresh, dewy-eyed college graduates had been smacked with the realities of being elementary teachers in the South in August, when the sun mercilessly blistered the earth and the enormous ceiling fans twirled noisily in a losing battle against a haze of humidity and an army of mosquitoes.

  “Tell me we’re still in McClellanville,” said Judith, wiping her brow. “After last week, I’d swear we were in the Belgian Congo and I was teaching a bunch of savages. Rotten little pygmies who shoot spitballs like poison darts.”

  Judith Baker had graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in physical education. Of average height and weight, she wore her thick brown hair short with shaggy bangs that fell over blue eyes so bright Carolina always thought she had a joke to share. But as Carolina and the fifth-grade class had quickly learned, her sweet face masked the heart of a drill sergeant. In the two weeks since school had opened, she’d marched an army of children to the principal’s office, and two boys caught in a fistfight were made to drop and do twenty push-ups.

  Carolina lifted her thick shank of hair from her neck to savor the breeze. She was proud of her hair, its fiery color and shine. She’d been the first at Clemson to wear the Farrah Fawcett hairstyle. “Lord, it was hot in those classrooms!”

  “The little monsters,” said Odelle, fanning herself with a copy of Glamour magazine. “I was a breath away from throwing my books into the air and walking out. I’m not even kidding!”

  “They’ve got your number,” Judith pointed out. “You let them get away with murder. You should be more like Carolina. I didn’t hear a peep from her room.”

  Odelle bristled at the comparison. “I’ll have you know I didn’t become a teacher to be a warden.”

  Carolina turned her head to look at Odelle. While teaching, Odelle pulled her long brown hair back in a ponytail; with her horn-rimmed glasses, she was the very picture of a prim martinet. But on weekends, she let her hair flow long and straight to her shoulders and wore miniskirts so short Aunt Lucille didn’t think it was decent.

  “I tell you,” Odelle added, “the first decent proposal I get, I’m accepting and giving up teaching forever. What was I thinking?”

  “Don’t you dare,” Judith warned. “If you quit, Carolina and I will have to divide your class.”

  “If you hate it so much, why did you become a teacher?” asked Carolina.

  Odelle shrugged. “It’s a respectable profession. And to be perfectly honest, I’d hoped to get a job at Ashley Hall in Charleston, teaching proper young ladies Shakespeare and Blake and Byron.” She sniffed and shifted in her seat. “I need to have more experience before they let me through those illustrious gates. So here I am, teaching first-graders how to spell their names.” She turned to Carolina. “What about you?”

  “It was the only way I could think of to come back to McClellanville.”

  Judith scrunched up her face. “Why would you want to do that?”

  “I always knew I’d come back here to live someday. The happiest, most treasured moments of my childhood were spent right here.”

  “But I thought your family was from McClellanville,” said Odelle. “Didn’t they practically found this village?” It both irritated and fascinated Odelle that Carolina’s family could trace its lineage to a plantation family along the Santee River and that her forebears had helped establish McClellanville.

  “Yes and no. My ancestors were here early, but my daddy grew up in Mount Pleasant. He spent summers here with Aunt Lucille and Uncle Archibald. Then he went north to study at Clemson, and after he graduated, he married my mother and stayed in Greenville. That’s where I was born. Now he loves banking, and shrimping is just some distant memory. But every year he’d bring us back here to spend two glorious weeks at White Gables.

  “We had such good times! My parents would be so stuffed with shrimp and groggy from gin and tonics they’d hardly know or care where we kids were. My brother and I ran wild through the village from sunup to sundown. Aunt Lucille used to call us her own Sewee Indians. I’ll never forget this little jon boat we had—
the Moby Dick. We went everywhere in it. It’s a miracle we didn’t get lost in the marsh.”

  She paused, lost in a vision of the winding creeks that spread out like arteries through the thick green marsh. They were never afraid of the funny, darting fiddler crabs that scurried across the pluff mud, each with its oversize claw raised in a threatening stance. She’d point out the serene white ibis resting among tall green fronds and the proud blue heron with a fish in its beak. They’d lie on their backs and search the sky for the soaring ospreys that, from time to time, tucked in their wings and dove into the water, shattering its stillness to emerge victorious with dripping fish in their talons.

  “I knew I belonged here, and I cried every time we had to go back to Greenville. I counted the days until I could return. So when I graduated from Clemson, the first thing I did was look for a job teaching in McClellanville.”

  “You haven’t had much time to go swimming or to gorge on shrimp since you got here,” Odelle said ruefully.

  “No,” Carolina groaned. “More’s the pity.”

  “I’ve got a jon boat,” Judith interjected.

  “You do?” Carolina sat up. “Where?”

  “Right over there.” Judith pointed to the marina at the end of the park. “While you two were arguing over closet space at White Gables, I was finding myself a slip to dock my boat at. We all have our priorities.”

  “Can we go see it?” Carolina asked.

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “We’re not going out on the boat now, are we?” Odelle asked, adjusting her straw hat as she rose from the bench. She looked down at her Bermuda shorts and Villager print blouse. “I’m not dressed for it, and I’m not going out in those creeks without lots of bug spray. I’ll get eaten alive.”

  Carolina was already walking toward the docks with Judith. She couldn’t wait to see the boat, and if Judith was willing, she’d go right out into the creeks today. So what if her clothes got wet? She’d been dying to get back out on the water since she’d come back. Her eyes were shining with excitement as she and Judith walked at a fast clip across the sunburned grass to the brittle gray wood of the dock.