Osler's Razor

Chapter Seven: Winter

Winter in South Carolina is brown; in Chicago it had been gray and white. I liked the way brown winter looked at Sedalia: The trees standing against the evening wind, the ground turning to mud under the rain, the slickness of the wet road, the bare branches in front of the window. Brown in South Carolina wasn't death, just dormant life.

The river ran into the bay near our house, and it was there that I stood just before dawn, the ax heavy in my hands as I raised it again to pierce through the log leaning on the stump. The ax head came down with a satisfying feeling and sound when hitting the wood. I picked up the pieces and threw them onto the pile at my side, checking the accuracy of my cuts in an attempt to get three pieces from each chainsawed section, before seizing the axhandle again.

My hands had grown rougher. I cut down dead trees on the property with a chainsaw, split the wood into logs, and sold the wood to people in town with many fireplaces in their expansive homes. Some days I worked alone, and some days, when school was not in session and Ennis was not at home, my cousin helped me, strong for his age, which turned out to be eleven.

My first encounter with Whit had been a shock; but soon I had found an affinity for the child, who knew the island so much better than I. Whit was related to me through my (and Whit's) great-grandfather, Ewell Trigg. Ewell was the son of E.B. (Whitcomb) Trigg and the father of the first David Baxten Trigg, and had run the estate at the turn of the century. This was a time when the blacks were nearly reduced to sharecropping, but for the fact that the Triggs could not afford to buy their land, and could only maintain hegemony over them by maintaining themselves to be the only traders through which Trigg Plantation-grown cotton could be sold to market. Whit had descended from one of Ewell's forced or unforced liaisons with one of the plantation's women.

The children and grand-children and great-grandchildren of such pairings had existed on almost every one of the plantations, and often these children were afforded special status by the more honest of the not-completely-dispossessed white planters. Whit Trigg's line had, on their scalp, the proof positive of their lineage, but it had bought them little favor in the big house. Whit, however, had found other benefactors in his own parents, who every morning took him into Beaufort to attend an integrated private school.

On the afternoon of our meeting at the Chapel of Ease, I had sat down with the boy next to the wall of the ruin, which Whit explained was made out of tabby, a building material composed of ground oyster shells. The boy was articulate and loved to talk; he quickly came to see himself as my guide to the plantation outside of the big house. His extended family became used to seeing me in the area with him, and a few even called out to us, inviting us to join them on the porch. Whit had always politely declined such offers and lead me past. Once, the men on a porch were drinking out of metal cups a drink which they poured out of a small bucket, and I had been curious as to what it was. As I edged closer, however, Whit had taken my hand firmly in his own and lead me away from the men as they laughed at the spectacle of a grown man being lead around by a boy. I did not tell Ennis about these adventures.

One morning, Whit took me down a neck of land sticking out into the river, the path well-trodden. At one point, the boy had hunched down, listening. I watched him and tried to hear something unusual, but only heard the sounds that seemed to always emanate from the swamp: insects and birds, vague rustlings. Whit pointed, fascinated, into the brush. Following his finger, I saw what it was that had attracted his attention. Deep in the brush, a crocodile lay behind a wounded bird, only its nostrils and eyes penetrating the surface of the water. As we watched, the crocodile moved swiftly and violently, seizing the bird whole and wrestling its large and writhing body into submission with its teeth.

That distraction past, Whit took me the rest of the way down the path to a clearing containing a small, exceptionally clean white building with a window on both ends. "This is the praise house," Whit instructed, "the church they had back before Brick Baptist was built. People came back here nearly every day, still. Old people, mostly, who come here when they was little and just never stopped doing that. They just keep coming back every week, every day, some of 'em. Never had a preacher there, just people would stand up and talk if they felt like it. Well, maybe they did have a preacher, a long time ago. I wrote a story about it for school, and got an 'A'. Lots of people die at the praise house, too, old people. They come in here and they pray and they die, and then they look happy when they get buried. I seen it. My Grandma died back here, and I found her. She looked so old, but she died happy."

Had I been driving I would have flashed past the praise house in an instant and thought nothing of it, but now I looked into the window nearest me. There were three simple, long benches, and in the front of the room, a small pulpit, with a white necklace strung across it. It looked like a good place to die, simple and warm.

* * *

On a cold morning, I had made a city-boy mistake while chopping wood. Leaning the log against my leg as well as the stump, the log gave way as the ax made contact, and the freshly-sharpened axhead sliced into my leg just above my ankle. At first, I just touched the blood as it ran out of the dirty gash, then tried to stop it by pressing my hand on the wound. Until Whit came over, I didn't feel the pain, and felt distanced from the blood, as if it wasn't mine.

Whit had been entertaining a friend a few feet away by demonstrating my swiss army knife, and the two boys ran over to me when they heard my cry. The pain was by then intense and overpowering, and all I could do was lie on my back and writhe. Whit touched the blood then tasted it on his finger before looking in my eyes.

"Wait here, Buddy" he said calmly as he and his friend turned and ran down the road. I heard their footsteps on the road, but didn't watch them-- the pain kept my eyes clenched shut. I began to feel weak, and my grip began to weaken.

A short time later, an older boy pulled up with a truck, and together with Whit and his friends helped me get into the bed. As the truck pulled away from the woodpile, Whit yelled, "don't worry 'bout it, we'll get you to Doctor Micah's."

The pain was excruciating, and only exacerbated by the bouncing of the truck along the rough road. Joining the main road, the truck travelled briefly along the main road before turning through an old schoolyard onto another dirt road. At the end of the road was a small, precisely square white building. To the side of the building, an older black man and woman worked in a garden, pulling in the last of the year's vegetables. The man straightened up as the truck approached, and walked over to meet it. Through my right eye, I saw him approach the truck.

"What'd you do, white boy?"

"He chopped up his own leg with an ax," said Whit, "and then he tried to walk on it."

"Did you put pressure on it?"

I nodded.

"And it didn't hurt no more than without?"

I shook my head.

"Then we got a good leg there, boy," said the old man, motioning to Whit to help me over to the porch. Silently, the old man took a hose and washed out the wound, sending Whit back to the truck to get the ax. "How recently did you sharpen this thing?" he asked me.

"First thing this morning, before I started working," I replied.

"Probably low risk of tetanus, then, but you should go into the hospital this afternoon and get a test," the Doctor instructed. He then turned to the two boys while looking at the ax which Whit had brought. He spoke quickly to the two boys, pointing to the woods, in a Gullah accent that I could understand no more than the Latin which I had studied for two years in high school. The boys ran out into the woods, and the Doctor went into the house briefly, returning with a small bowl and a mortar. For several minutes, while the children foraged in the woods, the old man looked at me intently, silently. He seemed to be placing me, and several times on the verge of speaking, but refraining. Finally, the two boys returned, each holding a root and some leaves. The Doctor beat this into a paste with the mortar, adding a small amount of mud which he took from the ground near the side of the house. When the paste was of an even consistency, the Doctor took out scissors and cut off the bottom of my pant leg, well above the cut, and placed a sterile bandage over the cut itself. Over the top of the bandage, he spread the paste around my leg in a thick lather which began to dry almost immediately. "That keeps down the swelling and stops it from getting infected. Trust me, I've been doing this for forty-five years, since your Daddy was a boy. He wasn't too good with an ax, either."

I nodded appreciatively. Doctor Micah turned, looked at me briefly and knowingly, then returned to his gardening. His walk was slow, but strong, and he rejoined the woman, who had never looked up.

"Doctor Micah fixes everybody," said Whit, quietly. Feeling the pain go out of my leg, I touched his shoulder and he turned to face me. I tried to hug him, but it did not work; he was sideways to me, and I could only squeeze his shoulder.

"That's okay, Buddy. You're okay," he said, before helping me back to the truck. "That's no bad hurt."

* * *

The next day, the clay paste fell off, and the wound was nearly healed. That morning, Ennis saw the cast. "Saw Doctor Micah, did you?"

I nodded.

"Only guy on the island who could do that, that's for damn sure." Ennis smiled a little, looking at the clay on my leg. "He ruined your pants, though."

I did not tell Ennis that I had befriended Whit; some instinct told me that it may be worthwhile to maintain some secrets from him. He certainly had his own secrets.

Ennis and I had the house to ourselves and spent at least part of each day together, until Ennis would speed off to locations and projects that he declined to discuss. I had eventually given up on pressing him as to his destination, and decided that it would be better if I did not know. My own days were filled with arguments and discussions with him, chopping wood, and reading my way through the library in the den.

I had initially begun to chop the wood for use in the big house's own fireplace, but as winter approached, I decided to place a small advertisement in the Beaufort Gazette offering a face cord for $70, with the buyer picking up the wood at the house. Most of my customers were northerners and retired military people who had settled in the area; a few of the old-timers who had come by expressed a certain amazement, much as Amanda Trayn Woods had, at the fact that the Triggs were back living in the big house, which they had imagined was vacant.

Neither Ennis nor my father had made an appearance in town for several years, at least not at a social function, and the family name had fallen from sight if not from the memory of the town. To the blacks that I met, however, there was an instant recognition, and a certain amount of deference or disdain.

After the months together, I felt closer to Ennis than I had to any other male in my life. We disagreed often and violently, at least once almost coming to blows, but these arguments brought out a side of me that I had not seen before, one which was capable of arguing a point with velocity and volume as well as conviction. In fact, there were only two participants in my daily life, Ennis and Whit, and I learned from both.

The December days were cool and misty; sometimes a soft rain fell, but no snow. This morning, there was a frost, and I awoke before dawn. I started the day, as usual, by chopping some wood in the cold air to get my blood flowing, the crack of the ax-head on wood clearing my dreams from my head. I carried in several logs and lit a fire in the two major fireplaces on the first floor. The heat coming from the yellow flames was dry and warm, and quickly flooded the room with dancing shadows. I began to prepare a large breakfast for us, breaking eggs into a earthenware bowl and slapping long, fat strips of bacon onto the surface of a black frying pan. The sun came up, lazily, over the road on the far side of the house, casting shadows over the water and frosty grass. It was almost Christmas.

Ennis came down the stairs, his boots resounding on the hard wood of the steps. Pulling back a chair, he sat down heavily and contentedly. He was in a talking mood.

"Buddy, I'm not telling you what it is I'm doing, but I'll tell you two things about it: It's legal and it's going to make the both of us rich enough that we can spend the rest of our lives in the duck blind if we want."

"That's pretty much what we do anyways," I replied, as Ennis grabbed the bacon and headed for the door. He seemed in a hurry, and I simply waved as he backed out the threshold, his hands full of bacon.

The thought of simply living in the house for the rest of my life appealed to me, as each day came as easily as slipping on a sock, passing with simple accomplishments: cutting the wood, walking in the woods, hunting, cooking. In the back of my mind, I knew that the lifestyle that we enjoyed was built on a willing suspension of disbelief, a blindness to the realities that supported our existence.

I didn't understand fully the relationship between myself and the big house and the people in the small houses and trailers, but I was becoming more aware of the historical reality of the relationship by reading the books that I found in the den. Many of the books were tracts celebrating or defending the institution of slavery, books I had never seen or heard of. The ideas were laughable to me, but the language itself reflected a conviction so deep that it could only be founded upon a sort of Ponzi scheme of belief: So many people believed in it, lived under it, that their continued existence came to literally depend on it, though only those at the very top, those in politics and Southern letters, were fully aware of the political effect of the myth and the power and wealth it created. I had read about such writings, but had never read the works themselves. The myth, so strongly but unsoundly articulated, might well have been what my father had fled.

Suddenly, the door slammed again, a full half hour after I had finished my breakfast. "Buddy, I got to show you something," said Ennis upon finding me in the den and rising from his chair. I had never actually seen him in the den, and it seemed that he avoided the room. He walked over to the den now, however, and pointed to the television, which I had never turned on.

Looking at the television, I looked back at Ennis, confused. "What? What about the television?"

Ennis laughed. "It's not a television, Dave. It's a safe. What you do is pull the dial off, and there's a keyhole. My will is in there. If anything happens to me, get the key off of my body before they lay me up. There's some other stuff in there, too, but you'd find it then.

"All right. I don't figure that I'll have to worry about it any time soon, though, right?"

"Probably not. Just thought you should know. Some people..." Ennis paused and looked around the den before continuing. "You spend a lot of time in here, Dave. What you reading?"

"I dunno," I replied, "Just reading. There's a lot in here that explains about the family, though. Sort of an indirect way to learn about it all, but I learn."

"Never been much for reading, tell the truth," Ennis said, looking somewhat disdainfully at the books, "though I don't say that to knock you down. I just know that all the philosophy I needed my Daddy taught me; he taught your Daddy the same stuff too, and he's followed it, though you'd never know it 'cause he hides it. First you gotta know who you are. Second, you gotta decide what you want. Third, you gotta go get it. That's it, little man, that's the philosophy that got me this happy life. See, most people screw up on the first or second point and never get to the third. The problem isn't that they don't get what they want, it's more that they don't know what they want, or don't even know who they are or where they're standing. Think about it, think about the messed-up people you know. Most of them are stuck on points one or two."

Quickly, I applied the three-stage analysis to some of the people I had gone to college with who had attempted suicide or had found even less professional success than I had. Most were the children of alcoholics or divorce, leading to failure on point one, or spoiled children searching for meaning, sabotaging point two. The recipe seemed too simplistic, however, and I probed further. "Nothing's that easy."

"Well I think the hardest part is part one. That's your problem, or it was your problem. Part two is pretty tough, too. But don't count on no one else to do it for you, 'cause you have to do it yourself or you end up living someone else's life. Don't count on the mercy of humans. Nobody is ever forgiven, and no bad deed forgotten, not one thing."

I mulled the last point. "No forgiveness?"

"Nope. All that crap you did in High School, it's still a part of you."

It was a terrifying thought, and brought Sarah's little monologue in New York to mind. Rocking back and forth as I stood in the doorway, I felt fear at the thought of all of my sins living within me, tactile and pungent. My father had always simply ignored those wrongs, refusing to judge them or label them, which was a lot easier to take. For the first time, I felt as if I missed my father; I wanted him to take up the gauntlet and rebut his brother's point.

"Ennis, why're you so different from your own brother? I know you both and, trust me, you two are very different. I mean, it's hard to believe you even are brothers."

Ennis spoke sharply. "Because your Daddy can hide it all, hide all of the contradictions, while I have to ride them around in the front seat of the car. That's why I'm the hard-ass and he seems to nice to everybody; he never has to explain this." Ennis swung his arm to encompass the house, the yard, the plantation outside and beyond the porch. "He left."

I pushed further. "So do you and my Dad get along, or what? I mean, it seems that you've spent some time together and all."

The question softened Ennis' mood, and as he began to respond, he crossed his arms in front of him and leaned back in the chair. "We're brothers. You can't get away from that. We had the same parents, we got the same history, we just treat it differently. He hardly ever walks on this dirt, and I just want to push my hand into it. He been down here, though. He knows I'm out. He doesn't know what we're doing, though, that you're here, what my plans are. He doesn't care. His money fixed the place up, you know. He pays people direct and they come in and redo the plumbing or whatever. Only one time did he ever come down for very long, though, and that was when your Mom died."

Mother. "Did you know her? Did you know my Mom?"

Shifting his weight and looking off to the side, Ennis paused before answering. "Sure, I knew her. We all got along great. Back then, your Daddy and her and me would do all kinds of mess. A few times they came down here, but usually I would go up there and hang around with them and their friends. That was before I went off to the war. Your Momma was the only person who was smarter than your Daddy, according to him. She would explain to people what she was doing in a painting, but she was the only one who could understand it. You wanna see a picture?"

I nodded, and Ennis walked up to his room and returned with an old black-and-white polaroid, which he handed to me. In the photo, Ennis and his brother stood on either side of my mother as she held a football aloft over her head. She was striking, if not beautiful; a sort of self-confident air was apparent even in the photograph. In the background was a reed-filled river. "Where was this?" I asked.

"Here. She got to like it, I think. She used to sit on the porch and paint. She loved to paint the reeds. There must be dozens of paintings by her of the reeds. She used a lot of green and brown and blue in those. I remember the way those paints used to smell. She was all right."

Unconsciously, I pulled at the lock of white hair. "Too many secrets, Uncle Ennis. My Dad didn't tell me anything."

"Hate him then," said Ennis, looking disgusted again. "Look, I gotta go, but don't let all this shit throw you too much. Just your life, that's all."

I smiled. "Right, it's just my life. Step one, right?"

Walking out of the den with quick and heavy strides, Ennis turned, looked at me with a conspiratorial smile, then left the house.

After Ennis had departed, I sat on the porch for a few moments in the cold air, remembering the February wind off of Lake Michigan and the finger of ice rising over the edge of the seawall. The lake had been frozen that day, and the way that the ice had looked piled up near the shore came back to me graphically, the blue of the ice melding with the sunlight to form the coldest of winds.

I heard Whit coming around the side of the house.

"Gotta come, Buddy, my Grandpa wants to talk to you," the boy said, "and he wants to do it now, so long as Mister Ennis is gone."

Whit was bundled up against the winter cold, wearing an old coat which had been handed down to him prematurely and fit him poorly. Whereas his face had often looked playful or friendly before, today it had a somber, serious cast. I was in no mood to rush this day, however, as my thoughts lingered on the wealth of new information that I had gleaned from Ennis. I turned to the child, who maintained his somber expression.

"Whit, you know that I'm not from around here, don't you?"

"Sure you from here. You got the hair," Whit said, pointing up at the white on my temple. "We gotta go, really, Buddy."

"No, I'm from Chicago, lived there my whole life, up until now. That's where my friends are, and my family, and my girlfriend, and my house. It's all in Chicago, and I work in the biggest building you've ever seen..."

"Quit it, Buddy, we gotta go," the boy urged, now pulling on my arm. "I told him I'd bring you over. We gotta go."

I was toying with him, teasing him. "What's wrong with you, Whit, don't you care about me? I could tell you all kinds of stories about the restaurants alone. People in Chicago, they almost never eat at home. They're just always going out to do things like eat. They go out to the skyscrapers, take an elevator to the top, and sit down for a fine meal. You ought to see it, Whit, really."

Whit's impatience was turning to quiet fury. "I can read books, too, Buddy. C'mon, we gotta go."

Rather than further upset my cousin, I followed him out the door and down the path. The chill in the air was unmistakably that of winter, though not nearly of the ferocity to which I had become accustomed in Chicago. Our breath was visible as we hurried down the main road to the old school, where Whit lead me down the dirt road we had followed when I had hurt my leg. Whit seemed single-minded in his impatience to reach the end of the road.

I soon realized that we were returning to the house where I had been treated by Doctor Micah. Slowing Whit down by seizing his shoulder, I stopped to catch my breath. Panting, I asked Whit, "hey, is your Grandfather Doctor Micah? Is this the same guy?"

Whit nodded furiously, looking down the road anxiously. "yeah, same guy. That's Doctor Micah. He's my granddaddy."

"Which grandfather is it?"

Whit turned around, the frustration on his face. "It's the one that's related to y'all, the one with the hair like you."

Again, I hurried after the small boy, who had grabbed my hand again. I had not noticed that the Doctor had any white hair, but I had been in pain. In the distance I saw the small, square house, a wift of smoke rising out of the chimney at one end.

When we arrived at the door, Whit pushed it open without knocking. Sitting in a chair wearing a dark blue suit and a tie was Doctor Micah. He rose as we entered, and crossed the small room to greet me. We shook hands with a certain air of formality, and the Doctor pulled up a solid wooden chair. The room was dominated by a wood-burning stove, which gave off the yellowish glow of the fire within through the slits cut in the bottom for the intake of air.

The Doctor spoke first, with the controlled intonations of a professor addressing his class on the first day. "It's good to see you again, David. How's your leg?"

I looked down at my foot. "Great, Doctor. It's all better. Healed right up. How are you? How's your wife?"

Doctor Micah straightened up slightly, looked puzzled briefly and then melded his features into a look of understanding. "I think that you may have mistaken the woman in the garden the day you were injured for my late wife. That, in fact, is my sister, who lives further down the road but helps me with my garden. My wife is deceased. She died in church, a happy woman."

Chagrined at my error, I stumbled for the words I could use to recover from my faux pas. "I... I'm sorry about your wife." I remembered looking into the Praise House with Whit.

"Well, I'm not. We all die, David. Doctors learn that quickly. She lived a good and noble life, and died secure in her faith and surrounded by the people she loved. Few can say that."

Stuck for words again, I simply nodded. Whit had retreated to the corner of the room, where he sat on a wooden bench beneath a window through which the sunlight poured over him. He looked at his grandfather reverently, and I turned back to the older man, still curious about his mission in calling for me.

Leaning forward, the Doctor spoke again, in the formal tones of a professor. "David, I don't need to tell you that the low country, the islands, have long memories and many voices. I knew you were out there and that you'd come back. Does that surprise you?"

"No sir," I responded, "nothing much surprises me any more."

"It shouldn't. Shouldn't at all. We're kin, Buddy. I've got my little bit of white hair too, only I color it to match the rest of me. I'm not proud of being related to you people."

"Yeah, well my Father colors his, too. Colors it brown. I don't know why; actually until pretty recently I never knew that he had it at all. My Uncle told me."

"We have that in common, me and your father, and I remember him, too. I'm a little older than him, but I remember him running around this place. He had the hair, then. Where'd you go to school, David?"

"I went to Williams, sir. It's a small..."

"I know the place," the Doctor interrupted. Up in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Home of the Purple Cow. Beautiful little town, but it looks like it would be pretty small by the end of four years."

I laughed. "It was, it was. Went to Boston a lot." He reminded me of a professor, an older man with tenure and enough confidence to be forthright and eccentric.

"I spent my time in Boston, too. Went up there after medical school. See, I'm a real doctor, not just a witch doctor like you might think, with my mud paste. I just keep using those things from the island, the old remedies, that work. And lots of the them do-- you'd be surprised. That's one reason I came back."

"Do you know my Uncle?" I asked.

"Sure," replied Doctor Micah, "known him since he was little. His Momma died when he was born, you know. They went right by me, of course, to the hospital in town. They didn't do much to help her in there, but medicine didn't know then what we know now. Maybe they couldn't have helped her. Sure, I know your Uncle."

"He's teaching me a lot, I know that."

The Doctor sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "So what is it that you do, Buddy?"

It was a Chicago question. "What do you mean, what do I do? Do you mean, professionally?"

"Sure, professionally. Tell me about that."

"Well, I worked in D.C. for a Congressman, then back in Chicago I worked for a law firm."

"That so? A law firm, is that it? Are you a lawyer?"

I shook my head. "No. I drove around and delivered things for the lawyers. It was sort of like delivering flowers, only no one wanted to get what I had to deliver."

"So you were a delivery boy."

"Well, okay, I guess you could call it that." There was no escaping the truth.

The Doctor leaned forward again, his elbows resting on his knees. "So is that what you do down here? You're a delivery boy?"

"Well, no sir. I don't do that here."

"What is it that you do, then?" asked the Doctor.

"I chop wood, and sell it to the people in town. Old army people, mostly. Sometimes Whit helps me. I put an ad in the Gazette, and a lot of people seem to need some wood."

"So right now you're a woodsman? Would that be a fair assessment, David?"

I nodded.

"Well, what else do you do? Church activities? Volunteer work?"

Shrugging, I felt my tension level slip up another notch. "No church stuff really, not down here. I don't know, really... I read a lot. My Uncle has an incredible library. I've read a lot of things that I didn't get a chance to focus on in college, and some novels, things like that. I do some hunting, too. That's new for me."

"So you do some reading and some hunting. Do you have children? Are there children at home?"

"No, it's just me and Uncle Ennis."

"Are you married? Supporting a family? Is there a special woman in your life?"

"No, nothing like that. I was dating a woman, but things got really messed up a few months ago, and I haven't heard from her at all. So, I guess the answer is no, nobody."

The Doctor looked carefully at me, evenly. "What do you want to do with yourself from here, David?"

He had the air of a psychotherapist about him, especially in the way that his questions appeared open-ended but in fact implied the conclusion he already knew to be true. "Well, I feel like I'm really learning a lot about myself and my family just by being down here. I mean, I never even realized that my family had such a history, not at all. Now I'm learning about where my family's been, what we're like."

"Well, it's my family, too, Buddy," said the Doctor gently. "How does knowing about it make you feel?"

"What do you mean, 'feel'?."

"Is it surprising to you?"

I shrugged. I knew the answer was yes. It was, in fact, a shock to me. I had felt so removed from the blacks in Chicago; suddenly, they were my family.

The Doctor unrelentingly went on, as Whit sat to the side, his eyes transfixed on his grandfather, his mouth slightly open. "How do you feel about that house, that big old house?"

I was beginning to feel panic. "That house is incredible. It just is beautiful, inside and out. I've never seen anything like it. I'm sure you've seen it-- the detailing and everything is fantastic."

"Actually," said the Doctor authoritatively, "I've never been inside of that house. It does seem quite solid and well-built from the outside. It's large. Tell me about your house in Chicago, David."

I began to speak more quickly. I hated the squeekiness of my voice when this happened, and cringed when I caught myself mid-sentence. "Well, it was pretty big, too. We lived in Kenilworth, which is out North of the city, it's a suburb out there by the lake. Anyways, it was brick, too, and fairly new. We had lots of room, that's for sure, but the yard was sort of small. Great garage, three-car garage, and a workbench. The breakfast room, it had a breakfast room, and that's where most of the family things happened, the real core of the house. So that's what it was like, I guess."

"A three-car garage, you say. That sounds quite impressive," said the Doctor, slowing down his speech as much as I seemed to be rushing mine. "Did you have a car?"

"Oh, yeah, an old one. It's a junker. Sort of a hand-me-down."

The Doctor nodded slowly. "Tell me, did you enjoy College? Williams, that's a very good school, a very expensive school. Did you have to work in college to pay the tuition?"

I felt myself shiver, like the cold wind off the lake had hit my bare cheeks, but responded to the question quickly. "Actually, no, I didn't have to work or anything. My Dad had the money, so I didn't have to work. He told me that college was for learning, and that I shouldn't have to worry about money all the time, that I should concentrate on my studies instead of having to earn money at night. Not many people there worked, actually, because you are more or less out in the middle of nowhere."

There was a long pause as the Doctor crossed his arms in front of his chest. "You know, I would have liked that, if our family had done that for me. Of course, it was a long time ago that I went to school. I went to the Penn School here on the island, and then to what was then Hampton Institute. Went there first and then to Howard for medical school. You want to hear something funny? I had to walk most of the way to Hampton. Part of the way, I took a train, but the train picked me up in Charleston and let me off in North Carolina. Second-class ride at that. I walked to Hampton, just like Booker T. Washington did a long time before I got there."

I sat back, my heart racing. I saw him gathering steam. "So I walked to Hampton, and worked every day. The Triggs didn't see to it that I didn't have to worry about money. I worried every day. And you know what, David? It's true, it does make it hard to get that paper written when you have to leave it behind to go work in a shipyard to make the money to see you through. I went to work every day, every day, and so did every other man at Hampton. So here we are, the same blood, and I can guarantee you that what our family money bought you was a good thing, because I saw what it was like the other way.

"I got lucky, too. I got good grades, and I applied to medical school. I got in, but I didn't finish on time because the bursar said I hadn't paid my bills. It was true, I hadn't, and I couldn't, even though I was working forty hours a week and could barely keep my eyes open. I wanted to be a surgeon, David, because I had the hands. So I had to leave Howard, because that Trigg money wasn't there for me. I finished up, later, and came back down here a doctor. I was the first Doctor on the island. I delivered babies, I set broken bones, and I saw a lot of people die. A lot of people, I held them when they died. That's part of the job out here. They never did give me hospital privileges in town, but when you walk around this plantation and the rest of the island, you'll meet the people I saved. They're all around you."

Silently, aghast, I sat in the chair and watched the quiet fury of the man roll out. I wasn't getting enough air; I closed my eyes in the hopes that the man would stop, but he did not.

"I came back here because this is where my people are from, just like you did. I understand that. I came back, and I'm glad I did. Trigg plantation is and was and will be my home. Welcome to it. But if you are going to be here, if you are going to say you know your family, you better know me, too. Know that I don't live in the big house, even though I'm the Doctor, the healer. Know that I don't get to have that three-car garage, even though I worked hard every day for my community. Know that I don't have the room to entertain guests, no guest rooms here, even though I had a long and fruitful marriage, and children and grandchildren. Know that, David. It's easy to ignore in Chicago, I'll bet, out there in Kenilworth, and it's easy to ignore down here the way things are now. It used to be that the difference in the houses of brothers like us was so clear and obvious everyday that the whites had to make up a whole mythology in order to support it. Now that's gone, but you, Mr. Woodchopper, are still living in the big house while I'm in my shack on the plantation. Ever the same, Mr. Trigg."

The Doctor looked down at the floor, his chin set, his dissection complete. I spoke again, finally. "Look, I read a lot of that racist mythology, and I don't believe it at all. Black man, white man, whatever, so long as you go and do good things with your life, I think it's the same, morally."

"So," asked the Doctor, "you don't buy the myth of the dumb nigger?"

"No!" I said, flinching at the term.

"Then how do you explain this, our lives? Even with the same blood, the same hair even, you the woodcutter live in the big house while I, the doctor, live out here. The same blood, David. If you give up the myth, the story of God's order, white over black, how do you justify this?"

"I..."

The Doctor stood, his face red. "Don't say it to me, say it to him," he almost shouted, pointing at Whit, who sat stone-still on the board.

"I... I'll tell you..." my face welled up with frustration. The Doctor sat back down, and the two black faces turned towards me. All I could see was our house, our breakfast room with my father seated, drinking coffee. After a few minutes of silence, the Doctor spoke again.

"I wouldn't have said anything if I didn't have a reason, David. There's a reason. Believe me, there's a reason. Things are going to get a lot worse. You're going to have to find out what it is that your Uncle is doing, David. Just do that, all right? Just find out what it is that he is doing, and come back."

With that, Doctor Micah opened the door and nodded towards the outside. Whit lead me from the house and down the road. He walked next to me the entire way to the big house, silently, turning back and waving when I stepped onto the high, wide white porch. I was alone in the house again in the late afternoon, and I knew that Ennis would not be back that evening. Giving up the fight, I walked up the stairs and fell asleep under the heavy quilt.

* * *

"Hunting day," Ennis announced as I trudged down the stairs at dawn the next morning. I simply grunted and went past him, walking outside to split a few logs in the cold air. The ax cracked sharply a few times, then I was back inside.

"What the hell are we going hunting for? Duck season's over, deer season's over, what's left to shoot at?"

Ennis scoffed. What the hell's wrong with you, boy? Pheasant, quail, dove! They all out there for us, out there in the woods. Just a few hours, Dave. That'll do us for the rest of the week."

"Whatever," I responded, waving my hand toward the outside.

"What's muddying your waters?" Ennis said sharply. "You all of a sudden in a foul mood? Maybe there's just too much stress for you down here. I know that you Chicago people are always having problems with stress. Too much stress for you, Dave?"

"No, not too much stress. I don't know. Maybe just too much weirdness down here. Know what I mean?"

Still sitting at the table, Ennis showed little patience. "Quit bitching and eat breakfast," he said loudly, pointing at my full plate set at the opposite side of the table. "We're going hunting today, and that's enough to keep you happy. What's gotten into you? All of a sudden, you want to go back to the big city?"

I shrugged at the suggestion. "So it's not perfect down here. Big deal." I began to eat, Ennis staring at me pointedly across the table.

"Hey, it used to be perfect enough around here for you," he said, as he pushed back his chair and went to the gun case. "We got a good life here, don't forget it," he continued, more calmly. "Let's go."

Hurrying to finish breakfast, I wolfed down the last few bites and ran upstairs to put on my boots. Out front, I took one of the shotguns from Ennis and followed him out to the edge of the woods down the road.

"Once we get in there, what we do is get in position, back to back, near an open space where the birds will come out. That way each of us can watch 180 degrees. If you see something, nudge me before you blast; I'll give you the high sign. Shoot high, because the bird will run straight away from you and up, every time."

Taking the cartridges Ennis handed me, I turned to face him. "Where do you go every day, every night? How am I supposed to not wonder where the hell you go?"

Angry, Ennis' face flushed hot. "Don't give me this, nephew. I don't need this. I told you the two things, man. It's legal. We'll be rich."

"Somehow, I don't suspect that whatever it is, it's going to be legal. You never made money doing anything legal in your whole life, and I don't think that you're going to start now. Whatever it is, I want out of it before you drag me in."

Ennis suddenly turned profoundly sober, and addressed me in thick tones, staring me straight in the eyes. "You can't get out of it. You can't. It's what we do." Warming slightly, Ennis put his hand on my shirt. "Whatever it is I'm doing, it'll be more productive and interesting than anything your boring-ass father ever did."

I could feel the heat of Ennis' anger, and followed my instinct to back off before pushing him to the next level of confrontation.

"All right, Uncle Ennis, you do what you have to do. Just don't expect me not to be curious, all right? I have a mind too, just like you," I said, backing away from Ennis' hand.

"All right then, let's go," Ennis commanded flatly. We walked several hundred yards into the woods before Ennis looked at the terrain and motioned me to stop. In front of us was a large stump, and we sat on it back-to-back as Ennis had instructed earlier.

We remained that way for perhaps fifteen minutes, our backs touching one another as we sat ramrod-straight and surveyed the terrain for movement. To my immediate left was a dense thicket, while the rest of the area was relatively clear save for the large trees, now bare of leaves, whose large branches formed an elegant spiderweb overhead. A field is never soundless, and this one was no exception. The rustling, however, was caused by a snake on Ennis' end, and by a wandering dog on mine. I knew that the birds would not approach or flush from the thicket until the dog had departed, and waited patiently until it wandered off. I had to resist the impulse to shoot at it to get it to move.

Sitting in the cold, my mind raced as to what the plot was that Ennis, a bare inch behind me, had been working on. I suspected that it was something not too different than what Ennis had tried before, and that Doctor Micah had caught wind of it. Though Ennis was clever in his own way, he was not as intelligent as my father, and I did not credit him with the ability to come up with a plan more complicated than the truck hijacking that had landed him in jail the last time.

Suddenly, a bird lifted into the air directly in front of me, less than three feet before my seat. Instinctively, I raised my gun and fired.

The small bird was completely demolished by the shot, reduced to a bloody mass at such close range. Lying in the brush, the tiny body was turned inside-out; only a few feathers seemed to stick out of the oozing blood and internal organs. Looking at the devastation, I felt nothing.

Turning around quickly, Ennis shoved me hard on the shoulder. "What the hell was that? What the hell are you doing? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Angered at my shot and Ennis' reaction, I wheeled quickly around, the barrel of my shotgun spinning in front of me. "What the hell am I supposed to do, Ennis? A bird runs right in front of me, three feet in front of me! Give me a break!" With that I started to walk out of the woods, following the path we had taken in. Behind me, I heard Ennis' voice.

"Where are you going? We just got here! What is the matter with you, Dave? I'm just trying to teach you this!"

I heard his gun discharge behind me.

I kept walking, finally reaching the main road, ignoring the sound of his shot, wherever it may have been aimed. I wasn't angry at Ennis so much as at myself, for shooting so stupidly. The anger was mine, though, and it was satisfying to walk off on my own.

Back at the house, I walked quickly from room to room. I waited in the house for an hour, but Ennis did not return. Finally, I went out to the woodpile and began to chainsaw a tree trunk I had dragged over two days before. I divided the trunk into even sections, and then set one of the long sections onto the old stump to chop. Before I could raise the ax, however, I heard Ennis return and the screen door slam on the far side of the house. Putting down the tool, I walked quickly to the front door, and found Ennis just outside of the kitchen.

"Hey, I'm sorry I stormed out of there, Uncle Ennis. I was mad at myself for taking that stupid shot. Sorry I acted like such an asshole, okay?"

Ennis seemed to be in a gentle mood, and nodded his head concilliatorily. "Beginner's mistake, Dave. No harm done. Except to the bird. I did the same stupid thing once. Don't worry about it." Ennis' wan smile eased my fear of retribution. "Besides, like I said before, business is going well and that's good news for both of us. Trust me, Dave."

Looking him in the eye, I returned his smile. It was clear that Ennis had thought about the incident, and concluded that I was guilty only of lack of experience. I did not want him to suspect the much deeper undercurrents of doubt that I was feeling, and did my best to keep the conciliatory mood alive.

"Dave," asked Ennis, "did you ever read Plato's Republic?"

"Sure, just about a month ago, here."

"What's it about? What was the most important part?"

I realized that this was probably a trick question, and pondered it thoroughly before answering. "Probably the whole analogy of the people living in the cave and being able to see the light outside, but being too dumb to go out into the light. It's about knowledge, really. Lot's of people know that the light of knowledge is out there someplace, but they don't do anything to get to it."

"What else is in there?"

"I don't know; some lame theories about different strata of society." I still was not sure where this was headed. I couldn't imagine him reading the book.

"If that's it, then, why should I read it? You just told me everything that's memorable, right?"

Shrugging my shoulders, I gave up trying to decipher him. "It's my hobby, Ennis. You clean the guns, and I'll read the books." We both laughed, and then Ennis rose from his seat and walked out the door with a wave. As his car roared down the drive, I walked out the far door towards the reassuring wood of the ax-handle.

* * *

I decided to return to the Doctor's house, in a week. The week of waiting was uneventful. My Uncle and I treated one another with wary cordiality. We both seemed to sense a change in our relationship after the hunting incident, and tread carefully.

Later in the week, I awoke to find that Ennis was gone. I had heard the car leave before dawn, which was highly unusual in that Ennis nearly always adhered to our ritual of sharing breakfast before starting our activities of the day. Though I was used to having the house to myself, something seemed very odd about having it to myself this early in the day; there was a strange loneliness in eating breakfast by myself. After breakfast, I sat by the fire and read before going out to the woodpile. Outside of the closed window, a single bird sang on a palmetto on the lawn.

Carrying my ax to the woodpile, I heard the sound of running feet on the driveway, the faint scraping of tennis shoes on gravel. It was Whit, whom I had not seen since the meeting with his grandfather the week before.

"Where you been, little man?" I asked, smiling, as the boy came to a halt nearby, panting. I sat down on the side of the woodpile and set down my ax. "I haven't seen you in a week. Man, have I got some stories for you. Last week I went out hunting with my Uncle..."

"Buddy, we gotta go. Doctor Micah wants you over there again."

I was in no mood for another surprise. "Whit, that little encounter last week was mighty strange. I don't know what you thought of it, but I didn't like it. You tell me what your grandfather wants, and then I'll go."

Whit frantically looked behind him. "It's not just Doctor Micah, Buddy. There's 'bout eight men in there, and they're talking about your Uncle. They say they're going to do it this time. They want to see you."

I had no idea what he was talking about. "Look, Whit, my Uncle has done nothing wrong. Nothing. He treats me well, and I see what he does, and he's not doing what he did before."

"Well," said Whit, "go tell them that."

I could not argue with him.

On the way to the Doctor's house, I tried to engage Whit in a conversation, but the boy would have none of it. He seemed to be on a single-minded mission, and would not so much as turn to look at me.

Approaching the house, I felt a tinge of fear rise up within me, and tried to drive it out. It had occurred to me that the men may be looking for a scapegoat of some sort, and were going to blame me for whatever had happened. In the moments before we reached the door, I wondered once again what it was that Ennis had done to draw such attention; if it was another crime, it apparently was quite public.

Packed inside the small room were eight black men, most of them contemporaries of Doctor Micah, though two younger men sat to the left of the door. As we entered, Whit again disappeared into a corner and Doctor Micah rose to greet me.

"Good to see you again, David. I'm glad you could come."

I smiled despite my anxiety. "Your grandson is persistent, Doctor. I have to say that I had second thoughts about following him this time."

The Doctor waved off my worries with his hand and proceeded to introduce me to the men in the room, who were arranged on a variety of chairs. Only two of the men besides Doctor Micah stick out in my memory of it: a Mister Johnson, an older bald man in overalls, who seemed to be accorded more respect than even Doctor Micah by the other men, and Willie Trayn, one of the younger men to the left of the room. The stove was lit and loaded with wood, and the room was a little warmer than was necessary for comfort. I sat in a chair which had been set out for me, a low wooden rocker.

"First thing is," said Mister Johnson, "we don't want you calling nobody 'Uncle' anything. I don't think Ennis knows how bad that is."

I was perplexed. "Uncle? Ennis is my Uncle. What do you mean, 'Uncle'?"

"Maybe you don't know about that," said Doctor Micah protectively. "See, a lot of the white people here don't have enough respect for us to use proper honorifics. Never have, not since slave days. They call you 'Boy' until you're old enough to be a grandfather, and then they call you 'Uncle'. Same for the women; a man like your Uncle won't call them anything but 'Aunt' Thus-and-so, never 'Ma'am' or Mrs., as is proper. Uncle Ben's rice, Aunt Jemima Syrup. It's the South Carolina White Man way."

I did recall my Uncle referring to older blacks on the plantation in just such a way. Shrugging my shoulders, I explained, "hey, I'm from Chicago."

The men laughed, except for Mr. Johnson and the young Willie Trayn, who glared at me intently.

"It's not funny. We're gonna kill your Uncle," said Willie Trayn purposefully, breaking the laughter.

"Shut up, Willie," said Mr. Johnson. "We're not killing nobody. We're going to tell David Trigg here what it is that's happenin', then we'll see if he can help us."

"The thing is," said Doctor Micah, "that your Uncle Ennis, your family, is fixing to get us all out of here, get us off the plantation, even though we own this land. That's what your Uncle Ennis has been up to all the time, is checking everything out and surveying it so that it will all be ready to go once he gets us out."

I did not understand what it was that they were trying to explain. "What do you mean, 'take over'? We already have the big house, and we're not farmers, so we don't want all that land. At least I don't," I explained.

Mr. Johnson leaned forwards in his chair and pointed at the floor. "You don't know, do you?"

Doctor Micah leaned forwards between the two. "No, he doesn't get it. See, David," he said, turning towards me, "what your Uncle is doing is tracking all of the tax liens on people's property, and buying up the land when people can't pay. He doesn't tell them or do anything about it, because he wants to get everyone all at once, once he has a deal with a developer. That's how we found out, the developers. They did Fripp Island, Dataw Island, Hilton Head, all of it, and now they want this."

One of the other older men cut in. "The man from the land company come by the big house one day when no one was up there, looking for your Uncle. I was walking by, so he talked to me. Stupid guy, he told me what he was there for. So then I told Doctor, and he went in to check the tax records. Sure enough, every one of the assessments has gone up six or seven times, and hardly anyone pays them. Once the liens get big enough, Ennis buys the lot. He already got most of the plantation, but he just doesn't tell anyone."

"The problem, much as anything," said Doctor Micah, "is that the people don't want to open and read, if they can read, anything from the government. Lot of bad experiences there, you know. So they throw out the assessment papers and never know what happened. Most of the people never did pay land taxes, even before the assessment went up, because they never opened the bill, just threw it out, and those that did can't afford it. See, the city people are with Ennis. They'd rather he just develop the damn place and put old, rich, white golfers in. Black landowners scare them. So they jack up the assessments every year, and most people just stop paying it, if they ever did. Most folks never even got their land zoned agricultural. That's the one way to save it. But people don't plant like they used to, so it all gets zoned as residential, which is a higher rate."

I didn't quite get it, yet. "How much of it does he have, now?" I asked.

"About sixty percent, and another thirty is in arrears on the taxes. He's going to just buy the rest out, probably, and then sell the package." The Doctor, while finishing the explanation, reached under his seat for a metal box, which he handed to me. "There's copies of the records, David. I copied those down in Beaufort, of the current titles on Trigg Plantation."

The copies were barely readable, but I could see the names, legal descriptions, and, on most of them, a mark of transfer to Ennis Trigg at a tax sale.

The plan became whole to me now-- the days Ennis went missing, the days I found him huddled over papers, the secrecy as to his project. "Can't argue with this, but there's two things I don't get," I said. "First, Uncle Ennis is usually gone in the afternoon and evenings."

"Title office is open noon to five," said Doctor Micah, "and the rest of the time he's been out surveying land. He must think we're really dumb, not wondering why he's out there with surveying tools in the dusklight."

Growing anxious, I set the box of titles back on the ground. "The second thing is, what am I supposed to do about it that y'all can't? I don't know anything about it, and I don't have the money to stop him."

Mr. Johnson leaned forwards again. "But, it's your family's money that's buying all this; don't tell us that you can't do nothing about it..."

Willie Trayn pounded his hand on his knee. "See, I told you he couldn't do nothing! He's nothing! We gotta get the man ourselves! No one'll know. It's what they say, 'By any means necessary', you do what you gotta do..."

"Shut UP, Willie," shouted Mr. Johnson. "We're not killing nobody. This man here just has to think through how it is that he's going to help us. His family's doing this."

"It's not my money!" I protested. "I cut wood. Ennis got the money from my grandfather, and I didn't get anything, I wasn't even born yet. All I got was his name. Look, I can talk to my Uncle, and maybe my father, but I don't know what else I can do..."

Doctor Micah calmly said, "Maybe it's your father that's feeding him the money."

It did make some sense. My father had made at least one surreptitious visit to the area, and never had discussed with me how he used his considerable salary. My father obviously was an expert at hiding things.

Willie Trayn began to yell again, and was again hushed. I leaned forwards, hoping to still the argument. "I'll talk to my father. If Ennis is getting money from the outside, he's getting it from my father in Chicago. If that's where it is coming from, I can probably stop it. I'll do that." There was resolve in my voice, I hoped. I wanted to get out of the hot room.

"You do that, then you talk to me," said Doctor Micah, nodding somberly. "He hasn't got enough of the property yet to sell the package. If you cut off his money, there might be a chance." With that, Micah moved his hand slowly, from palm down to palm up and towards the door. It was my signal to leave.

As I walked out the door, shaking slightly, I heard Willie Trayn shouting "this is bullshit!" Whit lead me away from the house, silent again. I had gotten myself out of the situation, though I was not sure that I had done the honest thing. I was almost certain that my father would not feed Ennis money for such an enterprise; he was moral as to his own actions, and I knew that he would not trust Ennis.

The somber Whit stopped briefly on the road to watch a pair of young men slaughter chickens. I stood behind him on the road, silently, as the two men in the clearing laughed and told stories as their axes fell onto the stump.

Forgiveness. Could I forgive my father if he had, in fact, been funnelling money to Ennis? Could I forgive Ennis? Should I?

Back at the big house, I slumped down into a big chair. Whit, who had followed me into the house for the first time, stood by the side of the dining room table. "This is some house," he said, wide-eyed.

"I guess so," I said tiredly. "Been here a long time. They put a lot of money into it, that's for sure."

Whit stepped around the side of the table and went to the door. Before leaving, he leaned on the door and looked in at me. "Don't think everybody's mad at you, Buddy. They think you're the best guy they can get to talk to. They're mad, but not at you." With that, the boy disappeared down the driveway between the perfectly aligned rows of trees.

I hoped that he was right.

Knowing that my promise to check with my father in Chicago was only a stalling maneuver, I tried to imagine what my next move would be. The scene was beginning to unfold for me. My father had run from these problems, but was Chicago, Kenilworth, really that different? Slowly, slumping in the chair, I fell asleep.

I began to dream. The vision, however, was startling and jolted me suddenly back to consciousness. It was the little girl on the South Side, looking up into my face insistently, asking he single harrowing question again and again. I felt again the terror the tiny girl had caused me that day. Closing my eyes again, I could not escape the haunting vision; I saw her clothes, smelled the warm air, felt her tug.

Feeling dizzy, I got up from the chair and went into the kitchen. Pulling out an old sandwich, I ate it right out of the plastic wrap, standing up. Leaving the house by the front door, I walked and then started to run towards the main road. Still I saw her, her small face in tears, pleading for an answer. Running, I turned down the trail to the duck blind. Finally arriving, exhausted, at the wooden hut, I threw myself down on the wooden plank, panting. In my exhaustion, the voice was gone, but once I sat up on the bench her voice was back with me, insistent.

I clutched the wood in my hands, my fingernails clawing splinters from the boards. I had to exorcise myself of her, now that she had found me in this new place. My frustration reaching a pinnacle as I put my fist through the thin wood, screamed in pain and exaltation and release, and was left alone in the quiet bay, picking splinters from my wrist and wiping my face with my palms. Calm returned to me and the girl was gone.

Late in the evening I returned to the house and retired to my room with a book. Lying in bed with the book on my chest, around 9:30, I heard Ennis arrive downstairs, the sound of his boots loud on the wooden stairs as he clomped up to bed. Before dropping off myself, I felt the wound on my hand, the lacerations that the wood had made, and compared them to the scars on my other arm from the broken glass on the South Side. Still, there was strength in those arms. I clenched each fist in turn, gathered my resolve, and knew my course. I had only one true choice.

* * *

The next day I set off to town, walking. It was a good ten miles into Beaufort from my part of the island, but I was in the mood for solitude and wanted to check the land titles myself. As I walked, I played over in my head the meeting with the men at Doctor Micah's the day before. Their problem seemed so stark to me, trees in the winter. Were I in their position, of losing land their great-great-grandparents had bought after the Civil War, I would have felt the same way. The urge to destroy when cornered was strong in me, as it was in my Uncle.

The faces of the night before were new ones to me, and it made me realize how little human contact I had on the island. The blacks, except Whit, avoided the big house, and the only whites who came there were the unannounced visitors from the developments who came to buy cut logs from me. They would pull up with a station wagon or borrowed pick-up, chat for a few moments as I loaded their vehicle, and then be off. I gave most of the money to my Uncle to buy groceries, though I had saved some. In isolation, my biggest craving had been for soft-serve ice cream, and I planned to get some when I arrived in town.

Traffic on the road off of the island, leading across Hunting Island and Lady's Island, was heavier than I had remembered. Looking into the car windows, I saw white men and women the age of my father, heading out onto the resorts of the islands with golf clubs and tennis rackets. The sight of mainstream culture startled me out of my dark thoughts- the size of the cars, the speed at which they travelled. I had not wandered off of the Trigg Plantation until this moment, and now the rest of America hurtled towards me in Cadillacs, Oldsmobiles, and Acuras. Walking along the dirt shoulder of the road, some of the cars slowed down as they passed me, the occupants looking at me as if I must somehow be lost.

The bridge into Beaufort off of Lady's Island promises much. The view reveals the homes on Bay Street facing the water, grand porches proudly pushing towards the sea. On the other side of the bridge, the small downtown is separated from the water's edge by a small, green, elegant park punctuated by swinging benches along the quay. As a still figure on the top of the tall bridge, I must have looked quite distinctive. Watching the water and the boats beneath me, I put one foot up on the pipe fence that separated the road from the water, each of my hands resting on a strand of metal cable which stretched upwards towards the top of the suspension span. Watching the water below made me dizzy, and I stepped down onto the pavement again, turning to face the traffic passing three feet away.

Twenty feet from where I stood, a car stopped in the right hand lane closest to me, a small red sedan. The brake lights came on, and the cars behind it began to honk and swerve around the stopped vehicle. I turned to watch the maneuvering as the other cars worked their way around the red car. Traffic! I did not miss it.

The car jolted forwards slightly, and edged toward the side of the bridge, so that its nose was now covering the sidewalk. With this, the traffic behind stopped en masse, and the line of cars now stretched back to the mainland. The driver was turned away, looking over the water.

Walking down the slope back towards the islands to offer my help, I leaned down to look through the passenger-side window. Inside, her arms crossed and her gaze set firmly straight ahead in an angry glare, sat Lisa Diamond.

Like most lovers that one has not seen in some time, Lisa looked better than I remembered. Even the anger in her stare into nothing added to my amazement as I opened the door and stepped into the car. It came back to me in a flood, how much I loved her.

Finally, I reached over to touch her shoulder. "My God, Lisa, I can't believe you're here. I've got so much to show you," I said, trying to look into her eyes.

She continued to refuse to react, keeping her gaze set straight ahead and her mouth clamped shut. I had forgotten how beautiful her hair was, the way it fell so that a bit would hang over her shoulder. I reached over and touched that tiny bit of hair, the texture of it between my fingers bringing everything back.

"Buddy, I don't care if we die." The cars behind us were beginning to honk.

"Look," I tried, "why don't we just drive down off of the bridge and off the road, and then we can talk, okay? This could be dangerous." She did not respond. For what seemed like an hour, we sat that way in the car. The crescendo of horns, as heard behind the rolled up windows and the muffled roar of the air conditioner, lent a bizarre calm to the event, as if our reunion was being held in the eye of a hurricane.

Finally, still looking ahead, Lisa spoke. "Buddy Trigg, you should know that I have no desire to be here, really. I hate the South. I've been to Charleston, and I did not like it. I came here only because you disappeared from everything and your father would not talk to me about what had happened and I worried that you had come down here and killed yourself or something. You asshole."

"Lisa," I said softly, twisting a bit of her hair around my finger and pulling more over her shoulder and into my hand.

Furiously, Lisa turned and hit me in the ribs with her balled fist, hard. Her anger piqued, she battered me as I tried to protect myself with my hands and arms, the blows hitting me more quickly as I tried to curl up on the seat. As she hit me, her foot came off of the brake and the car began to inch forwards down the slope of the bridge. Unrelentingly, she continued to pound on me, punctuating her blows with cries and grunts of anger as the car slowly bounced over the curb, crossed the walkway, and came to rest against the pipe railing on which I had just placed my foot.

Lisa's punches finally subsided as she began to cry, covering her face with her hands. My lip had been split and was bleeding and my ribs were sore from the initial blow she had landed. I sat there, incredulous, as she cried loudly, swearing occasionally. As her crying subsided, I put my body sideways on the seat, facing her, and tried to catch her eye. "What the hell was that for? What did I do to you?" I asked loudly, inches from her tears as the blaring of horns continued around us.

"That," she said defiantly, "was for not telling me where the hell you were, and for treating me like dirt, and for forcing me to come to this God-forsaken hellhole, and for your father refusing to tell me where you were."

"Yeah, well, I'm sorry, but beating on me... what would happen if I beat on you?"

"You've got sixty pounds on me, Buddy. You know I couldn't really hurt you. Trust me, the fly hitting the elephant is a lot different than the elephant hitting the fly."

"Whatever. But, how was I supposed to call? There's no phone out here..."

"Buddy, I really don't want to hear any of your lame excuses about how for three months you weren't within miles of a phone. What was I supposed to be thinking? Just that you moved away to Timbuktu? You can run away from a lot, but you're going to have a tough time running away from me."

"Hey, I thought you ran away in New York..."

"I bailed because you were not dealing with the problem. You just dumped all the guilt and anger on me, so I took off. I'm sorry, I really am, and I was when I did it. I went back to the apartment the next night, but you were gone. I only found out where you might be, down here, because Tenerife told me about the assignment she sent you out on, and that she got the interrogatories back. So I just came down to call you an asshole to your face, basically."

"You're not glad to see me at all?"

"God, Buddy, don't torture me."

"You missed me. You came back for me."

Lisa smiled at me, slightly, shook her head, and finally began backing the rented car out of the diagonal between road and water and back onto the highway.

Driving down off of the bridge Lisa looked off to the city behind us in her rear view mirror. "Where the hell were you going? You looked like you were going to jump."

"Jump?" I laughed. "No, no, I was just looking down at the water and got dizzy. Then I saw you and figured you were some old tourist with car trouble. I was actually going into town to look at some legal records. Of course, I'm not doing that professionally anymore, but I had sort of a personal interest in some things. It's been a weird week. I need to get out of here..."

"So you would go into town for things like that, but I imagine that they don't have phones there, either, huh?" asked Lisa pointedly.

"You probably won't believe this, but I haven't been back into town since the first day that I got here. Not once. I lived back in the woods with my Uncle, and there's really not a lot of need to go in to town. He did the shopping. We ate a lot of bacon."

There was a long silence as Lisa stared off over the road in lieu of reacting to my stupid explanation. Before us, the road opened onto broad fields of reeds as a river passed under us. I saw her look off into the marsh, a slight smile on her lips. "Your Uncle must be a real mountain man, living out in the woods all of the time and teaching his nephew how to survive without a phone. He should be interesting."

"Mostly, he went out hunting."

"Hunting!" exclaimed Lisa. "Mark L. would have killed you if he'd known that. Really, he would have just given up on you."

I shrugged my shoulders and stared off into the reeds outside. "It just sort of goes with everything down here, I guess. It's really a different life altogether." I looked up at the road and then at her. "Where are we going?"

"How the heck am I supposed to know? I just drove. I don't know anything about this state, and personally, I'd rather not. Where do we go?"

Looking around at the surroundings, I realized that we had long ago passed the turnoff for the Trigg Plantation. "We're sort of past it," I said, "but there's a good place for lunch up here, I think, the Shrimp Shack." I had never been to the place before, but Ennis had described it as the last place to eat before leaving the island and crossing onto Hunting Island. We were approaching it, on the left, and Lisa turned into the dirt parking lot. We ordered the only thing on the menu, shrimp, and sat on the primitive wooden deck overlooking the river where the shrimp boats docked.

"See, this isn't so bad," I implored.

Lisa was not responding, ready to launch into a new topic. "Buddy, my father found out about us anyways, and he had a bird. He said he was going to kick me out of the house before he realized that I didn't live there anymore. Your Dad met him someplace and mentioned it, and he gave me a real going-over. In the end, though, I told him that he could go screw himself, that I knew my values and what I was going to do. The funny thing is that I didn't even know where you were then, and there I was telling my Dad to just go ahead and write me off. In the end, he called and said that my life was my life, and that you can only disown sons, not daughters. Sexist to the end, but I took it. Anyways, he probably thinks that we've been scrumping our way through the last three months when I thought that you were dead, and he's been civil to me. That's one reason I came down here, I guess."

I really had not considered the fact that things could work out in the end with Lisa, barely recognizing the dull throb that was my loneliness for her. Pulling at my whitlock, I stabbed a shrimp with a toothpick and raised it to my mouth. "I have missed scrumping," I said, laughing at the new word.

There were other events discussed as we watched the shrimpers ready their boats for the evening's trip: The business at the firm (down, way down), Tenerife's case for Ennis (looking good), my father (seemed upset about things, wouldn't talk to Lisa), the Bears (fair to middling year, need help at quarterback). After two hours sitting over the empty platter, the tension and violence of our meeting was behind us, and as we walked to the car, I took her hand and kissed it gently. Just as gently, she withdrew it. It was not time for that.

As we drove back towards the Trigg Plantation, I was careful to point out several of the subtle highlights of the island and its culture. We stopped in front of one house, where I pointed out the delicate shell perimeter which had been laid around the garden, at a small roadside praise house, and at a stand where a woman was selling baskets she had made from the reeds and grasses of the rivers. I was stalling for time. I knew that taking her back to Sedalia would make it all real, everything I had done on the island and in that house, suddenly.

Once we were near the road which lead to the plantation and the big house, I began to tell her of the conference with the black men at Doctor Micah's. I was unsure of how to tell the tale without making it seem overly apocalyptic, and gave up after describing my encounter with Whit. "My, Buddy," Lisa commented, "miscegenation. How very Southern of your family."

"Actually, I think that the way it worked out is sort of interesting. I mean, it really brings out the ironies of the whole system when you have the same blood on both sides of the racial line. Most of the families have relatives on both sides, but for most of them they can just deny it, because they don't have the congenital feature that my lineage comes with," I explained, again pulling at my hair. "We can't do that."

Lisa sighed. "I hate the South," she said again, "everything moves so slow and is so laden with meaning. You can watch a guy sit on a porch all day and nothing happens, and then Walker Evans comes by and takes a picture of it and it's symbolism. I just feel like I'm missing the point. In Chicago, you get in a fight with a guy, you go back and kill him. Here, the hate just sort of mutates back and forth and gets weird."

I directed her past the old school, the Chapel of Ease, and finally down the long driveway surrounded by the straight lines of trees marching towards the big house. She parked to the side of Ennis' blue sedan.

"Aren't there supposed to be big white pillars?" Lisa asked.

I shrugged and stepped out of the car. As we approached the house, I became silent as I thought about the place, and her, and her in this place.

"Great, Buddy, I was looking forward to some more angst."

Shaking my head, I looked at her nervously. "You sure that you're ready for this? I mean, if you hate the South, this is really going to do you in. This is my family worse than you ever imagined."

"I'm a trial lawyer, Buddy, they train us not to show fear. I'm ready."

We walked slowly up to the door, and for the second time in my life, I got the feeling that time was slowing down, that our steps were plodding in a sort of time-lapse. I heard nothing, but only saw the interminable slowness of our limbs as they climbed the three steps to the porch of the house. For a full minute, it seemed, my arm reached up to open the door, finally gripping the handle.

There was terror there, even before we looked. Looking in to the house, Lisa, barely moving to follow my eye, turned her head to the side, looking ill as a slow, deep scream erupted from her. I met her frightened eyes as they turned towards me, and as I moved, slowly, slowly, to put my arm around her. As I touched her, I turned my head and saw the demolished body slumped near the wall on the far side of the room. Two loads of shot had ripped into Ennis, one of them tearing into his face at close range, and his drying blood lay at our feet, a full four yards from the body, the congealing liquid drying into the wood of the floor. Near the body lay one of the shotguns, thrown aside near the door. The vulgarity of the corpse was unimaginable, and I turned Lisa around, feeling sick to my stomach. Moving, slowly still, out of the house, each of us fell to our knees on the dead grass outside, our insides heaving with disgust and fear at what we had seen.