Read Online Low Country by Anne Rivers Siddons - Free Book Online
Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
Tags: Fiction, General, Islands, Domestic Fiction, Large Type Books, Real estate developers, Married Women, South Carolina, Low Country (S.C.), ISBN-13: 9780061093326, Large Print Books, HarperTorch
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eagles and the
men who came so late to it. I believe that. I do.
It was out into all this that we took Clay Venable,
my grandfather Aubrey and I, on a July afternoon in
1972, and none of us came back unchanged. You often
don’t, in the Lowcountry.
Alligator Alley is a straight stretch of Wappinaw Creek,
one of the secret black-water creeks and inlets that cut
the island like watersnakes. From my grandfather’s
dock you could reach it, in the Whaler, in a few
minutes. In the canoe, however, it took about a half
hour, and we passed that in near silence, broken only
by the slapping of hands on mosquito-bitten flesh.
They were mostly Clay Venable’s hands, and his flesh.
I had slathered myself with Cutter’s before I left the
house, and my grandfather, for some reason, never
seemed to be bitten. Finally, after watching Clay endure
the ordeal in silence, I relented, and reached into my
pocket and brought out the tube of repellent, and
passed it up to him. I sat in the rear of the big canoe,
and my grandfather in front. Clay was our middleman.
He took the ointment from me and turned and gave
me a level, serious look from the pale blue eyes.
“I forgot I had it,” I found myself saying
Low Country / 63
defensively, and felt myself flush red. I would be all
right, I thought, as long as I did not get the full bore
of those eyes.
Clay still did not speak, but I noticed that his head
was always in slight motion, turning this way and that,
as he looked at everything we passed. An osprey took
off from a nest on a dead bald cypress at the edge of
the creek and Clay tracked it. An anhinga dropped
from a low-lying limb of a live oak when we turned
from a broader stretch of creek into Alligator Alley and
he noted it. He marked and measured a turtle sunning
on a reed-grown bank; the flash of a whitetail far off
in a lightly forested hummock; the brilliant green ex-
plosions of cinnamon and resurrection ferns; the vast,
rippling green seas of cordgrass and the great,
primeval towers of the bald cypresses, dwarfing all
else. I had the notion that he was somehow photo-
graphing all of it, so that he would never lose it, but
could replay it at will on the screen of his mind
whenever he chose.
I learned later that this was not far from true.
Something within him, some sort of infinite receptacle,
must fix, store, catalogue, file away. It was my first
experience of his disconcerting, now-legendary intens-
ity. When he brought it into play, it precluded whimsy,
idleness, pensiveness, even the sort of comfortable,
unfocused dreaminess in which I and most other
people pass a good deal of our time. He can suspend
this thing, whatever
64 / Anne Rivers Siddons
it is, when he wants and needs to, and often does, but
I know by now that it costs him something; that the
effort is to drift on the moment, not to focus and record
it, as it is with most of us. That, of course, accounted
for the impact of those extraordinary eyes, and the
force of the smile was the sheer relief and exuberance
you felt when he freed you of it. The smile was his gift
to you. All this I saw in one great leap that afternoon,
from watching the back of Clay Venable’s head. The
knowledge did not sit comfortably on my heart.
The banks rise higher along Alligator Alley, as flat
on top as manmade dams, overgrown with reeds and
slicked with mud. Over them, far away, you can see
the tops of the upland forests, but in the near and
middle distance there is nothing but reeds and sky and
creekbanks. Stumps and broken logs punctuate the
reeds and grasses on the banks and in the edge of the
black water, and more stumps protrude from the water
at intervals. It looks for all the world as if heavy logging
had gone on along this creek. It is not a particularly
beautiful or interesting stretch of water, and the sun
beats relentlessly onto the tops of heads and shoulders,
and if you are in a canoe, your shoulder muscles
men who came so late to it. I believe that. I do.
It was out into all this that we took Clay Venable,
my grandfather Aubrey and I, on a July afternoon in
1972, and none of us came back unchanged. You often
don’t, in the Lowcountry.
Alligator Alley is a straight stretch of Wappinaw Creek,
one of the secret black-water creeks and inlets that cut
the island like watersnakes. From my grandfather’s
dock you could reach it, in the Whaler, in a few
minutes. In the canoe, however, it took about a half
hour, and we passed that in near silence, broken only
by the slapping of hands on mosquito-bitten flesh.
They were mostly Clay Venable’s hands, and his flesh.
I had slathered myself with Cutter’s before I left the
house, and my grandfather, for some reason, never
seemed to be bitten. Finally, after watching Clay endure
the ordeal in silence, I relented, and reached into my
pocket and brought out the tube of repellent, and
passed it up to him. I sat in the rear of the big canoe,
and my grandfather in front. Clay was our middleman.
He took the ointment from me and turned and gave
me a level, serious look from the pale blue eyes.
“I forgot I had it,” I found myself saying
Low Country / 63
defensively, and felt myself flush red. I would be all
right, I thought, as long as I did not get the full bore
of those eyes.
Clay still did not speak, but I noticed that his head
was always in slight motion, turning this way and that,
as he looked at everything we passed. An osprey took
off from a nest on a dead bald cypress at the edge of
the creek and Clay tracked it. An anhinga dropped
from a low-lying limb of a live oak when we turned
from a broader stretch of creek into Alligator Alley and
he noted it. He marked and measured a turtle sunning
on a reed-grown bank; the flash of a whitetail far off
in a lightly forested hummock; the brilliant green ex-
plosions of cinnamon and resurrection ferns; the vast,
rippling green seas of cordgrass and the great,
primeval towers of the bald cypresses, dwarfing all
else. I had the notion that he was somehow photo-
graphing all of it, so that he would never lose it, but
could replay it at will on the screen of his mind
whenever he chose.
I learned later that this was not far from true.
Something within him, some sort of infinite receptacle,
must fix, store, catalogue, file away. It was my first
experience of his disconcerting, now-legendary intens-
ity. When he brought it into play, it precluded whimsy,
idleness, pensiveness, even the sort of comfortable,
unfocused dreaminess in which I and most other
people pass a good deal of our time. He can suspend
this thing, whatever
64 / Anne Rivers Siddons
it is, when he wants and needs to, and often does, but
I know by now that it costs him something; that the
effort is to drift on the moment, not to focus and record
it, as it is with most of us. That, of course, accounted
for the impact of those extraordinary eyes, and the
force of the smile was the sheer relief and exuberance
you felt when he freed you of it. The smile was his gift
to you. All this I saw in one great leap that afternoon,
from watching the back of Clay Venable’s head. The
knowledge did not sit comfortably on my heart.
The banks rise higher along Alligator Alley, as flat
on top as manmade dams, overgrown with reeds and
slicked with mud. Over them, far away, you can see
the tops of the upland forests, but in the near and
middle distance there is nothing but reeds and sky and
creekbanks. Stumps and broken logs punctuate the
reeds and grasses on the banks and in the edge of the
black water, and more stumps protrude from the water
at intervals. It looks for all the world as if heavy logging
had gone on along this creek. It is not a particularly
beautiful or interesting stretch of water, and the sun
beats relentlessly onto the tops of heads and shoulders,
and if you are in a canoe, your shoulder muscles