Forbidden Island an Island Called Sapelo Read online

  FORBIDDEN ISLAND

  An Island Called Sapelo

  By Tom Poland

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Tom Poland

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Escape

  The Continent’s Edge

  The Crossing

  Miracles

  Through The Heart

  Marooned

  Solo Flight

  Something Happened

  Insanity’s Edge

  The Crucifix

  Farewell To Sapelo

  Dedicated to the memory of John Mitchell Poland

  Thanks Mom for your poetry

  Special thanks to James Dickey and the dead Peach Farmer

  Encouragement from Beth Shugg and her Apex Book Club

  Encouragement from Lorie Kirby Knowlton

  &

  Faye Moskowitz

  “Every unpunished murder takes away something from the security of every man's life.”

  ESCAPE

  All through the long Fourth of July weekend, Detective Morton’s words haunted me. “When you’re a murder witness, remember one thing. Some creep’s life depends on what you say.” And then there were the balloons, silver birthday balloons with red hearts. They haunted me too. Tuesday morning, still tangled in the metalwork, they drooped in mourning, and a cross lay in the alley where the young mother had fallen.

  For twenty days, relentless heat had baked Atlanta. An inversion trapped the South, spawning a crime wave that swept over Atlanta like a plague. Pushing against the old 50’s window, it opened with a groan and burning air rushed into the room. A Styrofoam cross and flowers marked where the young mother had fallen.

  I looked across the great, sprawling city. Satellite dishes sprouted like mushrooms from rooftops bristling with transmitters. Cell towers blinked, the air awash in conversations. People were connecting.

  Traffic signals flashed and cars dutifully observed. An ambulance shimmered through town, detouring around a barricade where orange-clad utility men fed fiber optic cable into the earth. City noises floated up as I leaned out, way out, to free the balloons. Suddenly a hand shoved me and the city spun crazily.

  “Need some help jumping?”

  Southern Escape’s latest art director, Pauline, pushed against me.

  “Damn, woman, what the—“

  “You’re fifteen stories above the city. Is that enough to reach terminal velocity?”

  “I just wanted to get rid of those.” The balloons lazed through a slow-motion bounce over the alley where Friday’s murder had set them free.

  “Where’d those come from?”

  “You didn’t see the news.”

  “The news depresses me. I never watch it.”

  “Read this.” I gave her the story I’d clipped from Saturday’s Atlanta Constitution, ‘Birthday Becomes Death Day.’ ”

  “My God,” you witnessed this, she said, leaning out, looking at the alley.

  “Yes, some thug knifed a woman, Molly Augustine, to death down there. I couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t even see the killer’s face. Get something to cut those balloons loose. I’m through looking at them.”

  “I guess so,” she said. Pauline left then returned with an X-acto knife taped to a ruler. Leaning out, I sliced the ribbons and the balloons drifted from my window.

  Pauline fell into my chair, her eyes deepening. She was the latest of the art directors, all of whom Murphy had fired. She twisted a strand of auburn hair.

  “I know you pretty well. Agree?”

  “If lifting a few beers together does it, I guess you do,” I said, though she didn’t know me at all.

  “I hear you’re going to quit, Slater.”

  “We used to publish stories on canoeing in the San Blas archipelago, whitewater rafting the Chattooga, trekking through Iceland, rock climbing in France, and cave diving in Mexico,” I said. “Now we publish crap about the Governor’s mansion and the city’s newest CEO, some kid who’s got some wacky Internet get-rich-scheme. It’s time I quit.”

  “To do what?”

  “Freelance. Freedom with a price. It’s bad to get too comfortable, you know.”

  “Comfort is good I think,” she said, settling deeper into the chair. “A lot of writers would love to have your job.”

  “Well, it’ll be available soon.”

  “You just need a vacation.”

  “I need to forget July 2nd. Every day here reminds me of the past and the murder last Friday just adds to it all.”

  Pauline’s eyes narrowed and she got a fresh grip on her hair.

  “You blame yourself for what happened to your wife. Talk to me. You can tell me anything, you know that. They say you hate cell phones now.”

  “Just what, exactly, do ‘they say?’ ”

  “One of the writers, I won’t say who, said you walked out of a meeting the other day when a cell phone rang. He said you freaked. That you have cell phone phobia. That you refuse to use or take calls over a cell phone.”

  “Leaving a room isn’t what I call ‘freaking out,’ but it’s true I don’t use them. There was a time when I did but never again.”

  “Please, you can tell me,” Pauline said, twisting her hair anew.

  “Brandt, Murphy’s predecessor, recruited me to join his staff. Six months after coming on board, Brandt promoted me to senior writer. The promotion was good for my family. I thought it called for a celebration. I was on I-85 going home when an impulse hit me. I’d take my wife and daughter to dinner. I used my cell phone—I never went anywhere without it in those days—to call her cell phone.”

  Pauline looked ill at ease, as a person who knows bad news is coming.

  “She and Brit were on the way home from the supermarket. I told her about the promotion and that I was taking them to dinner. She was happy for me. She told me to tell Brit the good news. Just after my daughter said hello, the call dropped, or so I thought. Ann had run into and underneath a flatbed truck carrying rebar construction rods. Brit was in the back seat. A steel rod crushed the side of her head. My wife died as they rolled her to the ambulance.”

  “So, that’s how it happened,” Pauline said, uneasy and quiet for a long time. “How’s your daughter?”

  “Brit’s in an institute. She’s been in a coma ever since the accident. A stomach tube keeps her alive.”

  “How long can she stay that way?”

  “The doctors say the end is coming … no more than six more months barring a miracle.”

  With hesitation, Pauline touched my hand, just barely, as light as ash settling.

  “Don’t blame yourself anymore.”

  “I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about my big promotion. If I don’t pick up that cell phone, then I would still have my wife and my daughter would be in high school, thinking about college. You don’t know how many times I’ve regretted picking up that phone. I had two exits to go when traffic came to a dead stop. I heard the traffic chopper fly over. I could see the helicopter swing into position and hover close to what had to be my exit. When they described the truck and a burgundy Honda Accord over the radio, I knew it was Ann. I left my vehicle on I-85 and ran to the accident.

  “I
t was a nightmare. The paramedics got there fast. I held her hand as they loaded her into the ambulance. Then she died. A trooper found Ann’s phone in the floorboard of her car and gave it to me. It was still on. I locked it away in a drawer. I’ve not touched one since.”

  Pauline moved close to me, then stopped dead. A soft whirring sounded and Murphy rolled through the doorway. Pauline made a show of getting busy, grabbing papers off my desk.

  “Well, well. Mr. Slater Watts, aspiring freelance writer, see me in my office. Right now.”

  Murphy rolled away, leaving a wake of double creases in the sand-colored carpet.

  “Maybe I won’t have to quit,” I said for anyone listening.

  Pauline shot me a pained look and turned toward the Art Department. I followed Murphy into his office, which smelled like a nursing home.

  Murphy wheeled and faced me.

  “Shut the door.”

  Murphy gasped for air and wheeled back and forth, his paralytic version of pacing. “Talking to the detective and trying to be a hero Friday made you miss my deadline.”

  “Yes, but I’m a witness, the only witness.”

  “A piss-poor witness fifteen stories up. All you saw was the top of a cap. Then you missed the deadline trying to save an illegal immigrant of all things. Suppose I tell you to clean out your desk. You won’t have any insurance to take care of your darling little girl will you?”

  “Suppose I roll your wheelchair down an elevator shaft? You won’t be around to fire me will you?”

  “Shut up. I’ll do the talking. Your problem is you think you’re smarter than I am, and you think I’m brutal, cold, not much of a person. Well, you’re wrong on all counts. As for missing Friday’s deadline, we can push the printer to cover the time we’ve lost.”

  “So what? Nobody cares, Murphy. Nobody cares if you even print your damn rag. We haven’t done a real story in two years.”

  “A r-e-a-l story,” said Murphy, steepling his fingers and drawing out the words. “Tell me, what’s a r-e-a-l story?”

  “Well it’s not about some mayor’s fat wife chairing the United Way. Let’s do a story on Friday’s murder and tie it to the single mother’s plight, illegal immigrants, and the city’s drug problem. When Brandt promoted me to senior writer five years ago, he told me to write stories that had meat.”

  “Don’t bring Brandt into this. Brandt’s gone.”

  “Yes he is and so is the magazine’s soul. Let’s cover that poor woman’s murder.”

  “Get off your damn soapbox, Slater. Our readers don’t care about that woman. They want stories about themselves. Southern Escape is a magazine affluent people show off on their coffee tables. Success, Slater, Southern Escape celebrates success, not death and poverty.”

  “Then change the magazine’s name since you’re here to glorify Atlanta’s aristocracy. How about Affluent Atlantans? That has a nice ring, don’t you like that?”

  “About as much as I like your sarcasm. Now you listen to me, Slater. This will surprise you, but I asked you to come in here because I agree with you. It’s no secret the magazine’s losing money and subscribers. What would you say if I gave you an assignment, a real story, that means working alone on a wild island through the summer into fall?”

  “Talk on,” I said, though believing him was hard, hard indeed.

  “Suppose I sent you some place where there’s no laws, no cars, no government even—a land as wild as old Africa, right here in the Southeast.”

  “No such place exists.”

  “Oh yes it does. I have an assignment for you where you can camp alone on a primitive island. It’s nothing like Atlanta.”

  “That sounds too good to be true. What’s the story?”

  “There’s a man called Rikard on a large barrier island who commands wild animals and kills people with his thoughts.”

  “A shaman?”

  “A genius in primitive medicine, you could say.”

  “Where is this island?”

  “America’s last true wild place, a hell of an island, Forbidden Island, the last undeveloped island along the East Coast. Natives know it as Sapelo Island. Ninety square miles of tropics. Twice as big as Hilton Head, bigger than Staten Island, and four times larger than Manhattan. No roads, no electricity, and no phones. Just wilderness and danger at every turn.”

  Sweat popped out across Murphy’s forehead, and that strange powdery frost that cursed him began to dust his skin again.

  “No one really owns Forbidden Island. Look out the window and you’ll see a powerful group that wants it bad.”

  The gold dome of the Georgia Capitol glinted in the morning light.

  “The Georgia legislature?”

  “That’s right. The politicians are under pressure to annex the island. Their bedfellows, the developers, want it bad. Four hours east of here is the South Carolina Capitol’s copper dome where other politicians and developers lust for Sapelo. It’s about gold and copper all right—money—and lots of it. Each state’s Tourism Department craves Sapelo, but no one’s cooperating. Each state’s game wardens hate each other, and the poachers love it. Drug runners, too. It leaves everything as it is—a lawless, savage island no one governs. And the islanders like it best of all.”

  “Islanders?”

  “Natives, you could say. Sapelo, Forbidden Island, or whatever you want to call it straddles the US territorial boundary where the Savannah River splits Georgia and South Carolina’s offshore waters. During Reconstruction, the federal government granted the island to ex-slaves. Their descendants have controlled it ever since. Kind of like Indian reservations. South Carolina and Georgia can’t agree to joint ownership, and that’s a shame. It could be the quintessential resort.”

  “An ungoverned island ...” I mused aloud.

  “Lawless. You can kill a man there and no one will prosecute you. But I’m not asking you to do that,” Murphy added, with fresh sweat breaking out on his forehead. “At least, I don’t think so.”

  “How is it you know so much about this island?”

  “My brother, Mallory, and I grew up in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Our grandmother told us stories about the island when we were kids. She called it Sapelo so I prefer that to Forbidden Island. That sounds like some corny Disney movie. We thought Sapelo was the scariest place in the world. Turns out, it may well be. Doesn’t scare me though. Not a bit. When you live in a wheelchair, nothing scares you. If things were different, I’d go with you. It would do us a world of good to work together, but I’d have a hard time wheeling this rig over the dunes. But you’re a runner I hear. Tell me, Slater, how many miles a week do you run?”

  “Maybe 35 miles a week.”

  “You have strong legs, nothing like these,” he said running his hands over withered, famished bones, like a skeleton’s. “Come feel my leg.”

  “That’s okay. I can see.”

  “No. Come here. Do it.”

  I felt his right leg above the knee. Hard, thin, and calcified, it felt like a knife blade.

  “See what I mean? Sapelo is 18 miles long and at places more than six miles wide. You can get around the island on foot with no problem. Me? Swimming through peanut butter would be easier.”

  “Running on sand doesn’t compare to running on a street.”

  “I know that, damn it. I was like you once. Strong, lean, with thick brown hair like yours, blue-eyed, and full of piss and vinegar. That was before this sickness took over me.”

  “What, exactly, is wrong with you?”

  The question hung in the air as Murphy leaned back in his wheelchair and more sweat popped out upon his freckled brow. That peculiar frost glistened on his mottled skin. As the dust of death powdered him, he aged before my eyes.

  “I’m not sure and may never know.”

  “So you’re sending me, Slater Watts, writer, to Forbidden Island to …”

  “… To profile Rikard the medicine man. You could say unconventional medicine interests me more than ever. So, le
t me lay out the facts. You’re strong enough to do this, and you don’t have a family anymore. My other writers do. Their wives would raise hell if I sent their husbands on this assignment. Besides, you’re a damn good writer and pretty good at primitive camping, or so I hear. So you’re perfect for this assignment. It’s karma, your destiny to go to Sapelo.”

  “I have a daughter, but, yes, a challenge sounds good. It’d be nice to escape the city of murder and memories.”

  “Here’s your chance. Spend a summer on Sapelo. But remember, no power, no phones. Perhaps cell phones work there, but you’ve learned your lesson about those haven’t you.

  “I don’t have one and if I did, you’d be calling me every day.”

  “No, I’m going to Europe this summer.”

  “Europe?”

  “Yes, there’s a doctor in Paris who may be able to treat me.”

  “Then you must know something about your illness.”

  “No. This Parisian doctor … his specialty … is mystery diseases.”

  “I see … Well, an article on a medicine man seems out of character for Southern Escape. We’re going to publish a story about a man in a place no one can travel to. It has no resorts, no golf courses—imagine that. Who’s going to buy ads based on this piece? Witch doctors?”

  “They call them root doctors,” Murphy said, fire in his eyes. “As you yourself say, every now and then you have to do a real story. This one’s real and it’s yours, if you want it. Sleep on it, then give me your answer in the morning.”

  ***

  In the last five years, I had experienced personal tragedy of the worst kind. I had been corkscrewing into depression and the psychological whirlpool Molly’s murder sucked me into didn’t help. I was sick of the city, sick of crime, sick of traffic, and sick of writing pointless stories for the afflicted, spindle-legged Murphy. I had been dying in my own private way, but life had sent me a wake-up call: a bouquet of balloons from a dead woman.