Forbidden Island an Island Called Sapelo Page 6

  An instinct urged me to lie.

  “No. We don’t have a gun, so we’ll be careful. I can promise you that. The place sounds more like Africa than the United States.”

  Tyler walked over. Garrett ran his eyes up and down her, stopping at places where a man’s eyes like to rest.

  “This island ain’t got nothing to do with the United States,” said Garrett. “I figured you knew that. But you’re right about one thing. It’s a hell of a lot like Africa. Who’s taking you over there anyway?” asked Garrett.

  “A fellow by the name of Jackson.”

  “I figured so. That’s his boat. He’s bad given to drink, you know.”

  “I just saw him about an hour ago. He seemed sober.”

  Garrett made ready to leave then turned back to us, looking Tyler over, up, down, and around again.

  “How come you two came in two trucks?”

  Tyler stepped between Garrett and me.

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “We have a lot of supplies … too much for one truck,” I said, stepping between her and Garrett who stepped around me close to Tyler.

  “Not married I see. Well, let me give you some advice, ma’am. You’re heading to an island that ain’t like no place you ever been. It ain’t something; it’s something else. I don’t know why you’re going to the island …” he laid a hot stare upon Tyler’s breasts … “but you don’t know what you’re getting into. Nobody much goes to Forbidden Island unless they got a real reason to. He’s going cause he’s writing something,” he said looking at me, “but you ain’t cut out at all for a place like Forbidden Island. You just need to go back where you come from.”

  “We’ve come too far to turn back now,” I said.

  “Well, let me tell you one thing, fellow. A primitive island ain’t safe. There’s rattlers, poisonous plants, and shit like that. The island has ponds where bull gators have dens and mama gators nest. A mama gator’ll kill anything that gets near her babies. Drag it under the water and stuff it under a log. After the body ripens, she eats it. Me and another fellow gutted a ’gator once. When we ripped open the stomach we found a set of brass keys soft as putty. And I ain’t even talked about hurricanes.”

  “We have a radio,” I said.

  Garrett turned west and shielded his eyes against the horizon. He looked at his watch and dug his boot into the muck.

  “If you’re thinking of staying on the island tonight,” Garrett said, “I’d think again. You could hole up in that old trailer there maybe, or sleep in your trucks … maybe sleep in one truck,” he said, sizing up Tyler yet again.

  I turned to look at the old trailer. It was too bad to consider. We’d pitch camp in the dark. I turned to respond to Garrett but he had already disappeared into the scrubs, much as he had appeared.

  ***

  “That guy’s a jerk. You kind of get the feeling that Sapelo is Devil’s Island,” Tyler said, walking over to her truck.

  “For sure. He didn’t show any identification. Garrett. Could be his first name or last. No one has said anything good about Sapelo yet,” I said, “you and I had better be tough. We have to take whatever it dishes out.”

  “We’ll be fine.” Tyler said unloading the last of her gear. We began unloading mine, stacking everything on the dock.

  Taylor walked down to the dock, giving me a chance to hide Murphy’s mysterious package beneath backpacking food, and then I put Brit’s voodoo spell ingredients and Mal’s photograph in a storage bin. While we waited for Jackson, Tyler got some smoked meat and a can of tuna for the starving dog who gulped it down whole, then flopped at her feet to nap.

  We heard Jackson long before we saw him. He was driving a rusted out, salt-air-eaten truck that had no muffler. Compared to the truck, the battered Boston whaler was a cruise ship. Jackson walked over, smelling of whiskey.

  “You didn’t say you had no woman. That’s twenty dollars more.”

  I gave him a twenty. It was simpler to pay than explain.

  “Will everything fit in your boat?” I asked.

  “I reckon,” said Jackson, “but we’ll sit low in the water.”

  “Will it be okay here while we take care of the trucks?”

  “Ain’t no one around to steal it, but you got so damn much stuff the dock might fall in,” he said, grinning with missing teeth.

  “Good enough,” I said. “If it falls in, it falls in. Daylight’s about gone. We’d better get moving.”

  We followed Jackson through woods and open land before driving through a pasture to a dilapidated barn that stood at the edge of a field. The barn, listing to the west, was dry, dusty, and smelling of manure after God knows how many years. The barn had settled low into the earth and the roof sagged.

  I backed my Land Rover in and Tyler drove her pickup in next to mine, bumper to bumper. We squeezed both vehicles in a space surrounded by ancient cow stalls. We locked the vehicles and went back outside. Tyler slipped me a twenty.

  “Keep it. Money won’t mean a thing on the island.”

  “Do you think the trucks will be all right?” she asked.

  “I hope so. At least, they’re out of the weather. Is there anything in your truck you need … something you can’t do without?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, nervously tugging at her waistband.

  Tyler and I crowded into Jackson’s old truck and bounced and jostled our way back to the landing. When Jackson wasn’t eyeing Tyler, he sipped from a brown bottle with no label. Tyler remained unflappable, and I liked her for that. Once we skittered across the hard sand just missing an oak at the road’s edge. No one said a word nor did anyone flinch.

  Close to the landing, we passed a pale, ghostlike cypress where vultures perched. We were about to leave the mainland, to lose contact with the continent. A sense of finality clawed its way into my mind. Everything I loved, everything I had fought for, and everything that had defined me was on the mainland. But everything that had hurt me, disappointed me, and depressed me was there too. I was ready to give it up.

  My mind was racing backwards, back down the backroads to the Interstates and into Atlanta. I looked across a broomstraw field to a distant edge of darkening pines, but all I saw was a young mother soaked in blood and my daughter hooked to tubes and monitors.

  ***

  We stowed our tents and provisions in Jackson’s battered Whaler, which held more than I thought possible. Still, it was full up to the gunwales and a makeshift anchor—a concrete block tied to a rope—equipment, water jugs, miscellaneous containers, and human cargo made the craft ride low. Tyler and I hunkered down amid gear in front of the console. When the dog jumped into the craft and lay near Tyler, I thought Jackson would toss it out, but he didn’t.

  “You got enough gas?” I asked, anxious about the prospect of paddling the burdened craft against Atlantic breakers.

  Jackson walked to the back, cigarette dangling from his lips, nudged two jury-rigged old rusty tanks with his boot, and gave me the thumbs up. He turned the key over and the engine churned away for half a minute without starting. He went to the stern and fiddled with greasy gassy-smelling hoses.

  “Get rid of that cigarette,” I said, “or you’re going to blow us all to pieces.”

  He gave me a go-to-hell look and flipped the cigarette into the estuary, which extinguished it with a spitting sound. He tried the ignition again and the boat sputtered to life. Dense blue smoke—the concentrated vapors of burnt oil—floated over the creek and little by little disappeared as the engine found its pace.

  We left the dock, shaking and rolling and I remembered reading that the Whaler could support ten people even when filled with water. That it would float even if it took one thousand rounds of fire. I hoped so, for we sat low in the water. Jackson turned the wheel hard and headed toward open water.

  We negotiated the estuary, that legendary source of all sea life. In the distance, a wedge of Eastern Brown pelicans floated on outstretched wings. The lead pel
ican would flap, then all would flap, then glide. Glittering fish leaped ahead of us. The creek arched before us, each turn revealing yet another turn, and green stalks of Spartina grass closed out everything but the darkening sky. On either side, smaller, dense blue, meandering creeks lost themselves in lush marsh grass. We made our way past channels and outlets that threaded their way through a labyrinth of spits, hummocks, and small marshy isles. Weaving through this intricate maze of vibrant green marshes, we left the mainland in humidity so dense the distant shore grayed out.

  A hot gust off the mainland, a farewell wind, kissed me goodbye, ghosting over the dying-sun-struck salt marsh. For me the island promised deliverance from the city, memories, and Brit’s revival. For Tyler, it promised life with her daughter. I couldn’t guess why her daughter had turned her back on her, but it must have been something dark. I hoped things would work out for her on the beautiful, wild island where waves toppled trees, where human skulls stared at Africa.

  Jackson gave the craft more throttle and sea spray kicked up over the bow. It was rough, very, and once I thought the dog would jump overboard. Jackson’s eyes continually darted to Tyler, but she pretended not to notice.

  The Mercury engine hummed along now, sending us toward the island. We rode over swells, sliced through crests, and crashed into others on our way to the last wild place in America, a verdant isle, thin at its ends, thick in the middle, that lay on the horizon like a disc. Far off, the island rose from sea mist, a mirage, as daylight’s vestiges bestowed it with a surreal radiance.

  The crossing was a rite of passage, and an extraordinary feeling took over me. When I returned to the mainland, I knew I would be a different man. If nothing else, my summer on the island would be like a sojourn to Africa.

  Sapelo’s descendants of former slaves clung to their African heritage and their roots ran deep into the past. Ancestral traditions endured and their language would be like nothing I’d ever heard. Gullah was said to possess a musical resonance, a Creole blend of European and African tongues that sprang to life in holding pens along Africa’s Slave Coast. Gullah was a way of life and the richest vestige of that life lay before me in the dying light.

  I pulled out some Landstat photos I gotten in Atlanta. The island stepped into the Atlantic like a woman’s high heel shoe, with the heel closest to the mainland and the toe farther into the Atlantic. Midways, a strap cut across the island, the channel cut by a hurricane.

  Satellite imagery revealed creeks, forests, dune ridges, and wetlands. The forest’s trees stood in close rank, thick and strong, and strings of freshwater ponds ran north to south. A cluster of huts, the village, lay to the north.

  The beautiful thing about the island was its network of waterways. Creeks ran all through the island, branching out into thin veins. They looped, double backed, and lay across the green isle, blue capillaries nourishing a verdant land.

  I decided we’d pitch camp—not in the southern dunes as Cameron suggested—but farther around the island where the channel cut through to the Atlantic. That would place us close to the island’s geographical center, and camping there would save miles of walking. A boat would have been a great advantage for with it, we could work the creeks and gain easy access to many parts of the island.

  We’d have to make camp without delay. Dark was on top of us, and I knew the sun would wake us early—what my father called “bird thirty.”

  All during the passage, Tyler never said one word. She did not ask where we were going nor suggest where we should go. She had come into this blind but she seemed to trust me and I liked that. We would have to depend on each other, and trust was essential, especially if trouble developed.

  About 300 yards off the island, Jackson cut the engine. An incessant shrill crossed the chop, shaking the air. The dog jumped up and Jackson grinned.

  “There’s millions of mosquitoes singing for you. ‘Welcome to Sapelo.’ ”

  Tyler looked at me, alarmed.

  “They’re on the marsh side,” I said. “We’ll be on the Atlantic side. The wind will save us,” I said, placing my faith in the onshore wind’s ability to keep mosquitoes at bay.

  Jackson started up and minutes later a pair of porpoises surfaced on the port side. They barked, whistled, and clicked, and the dog stood, cocking his head to an angle. Tyler watched them too.

  “Looks like we have an escort,” she said.

  “It’s as if they’re leading us to the island. Sailors considered porpoises a sign of good luck, you know. I hope that’s true,” I said.

  Jackson veered the wheel hard trying to hit them and the pair broke off and disappeared beneath the water. Tyler and I eyed one another and communicated without saying it.

  “Jackass.”

  The island’s marshes and Atlantic shore rushed up until they were right before us. Maritime forest grew into the sea where the surf undercut its roots. Toppled trees littered the beach, their sun bleached limbs white as marble, monuments to the sun and sea. Other trees, soon to topple into the sea, tottered on exposed roots. Stripped of foliage and bark, whitened and smooth, the trees were about death, the end of things. Inland, ranks of pine, cedar, holly, and palmetto waited their turn.

  To the north of the swells and breakers, we spotted the channel. Jackson negotiated the craft through breakwater and eased into the broad channel dividing the island that held such fascination for Georgia and South Carolina.

  We turned into the channel. Magnificent dune systems rose fifty feet high, marvelous dunes, like scenes from desert movies. Jackson cut the engine and we drifted onto the island with a begrudging, scraping noise. Jackson tossed out the cinderblock, and I stepped onto the island struck by its tranquillity and beauty. A good wind came off the Atlantic, and as I’d hoped, no mosquitoes bothered us.

  “Well, here we are,” I said. “Explorers in a new world, a world I christen “Georgialina, land of voodoo and disputed boundaries.”

  “Georgialina,” said Tyler. “I like the sound of that.”

  I rummaged into a bag and pulled out a bottle for Jackson. We wasted no time carrying our equipment and supplies ashore. The old dog leaped ashore on shaky legs and followed Tyler, who vanished into the dunes carrying an armload of supplies and a small bag.

  I asked Jackson what he knew about Rikard.

  “Enough to know he don’t like me,” he said, wiping his lips. “He lives somewheres here but I don’t know where. Some folks say here on the south side, but nobody ain’t been able to find him. No one knows him ’cept for a black fellow who wears a white dress and wraps his head in a towel. That feller lives near the village. You go there and you won’t come back. That’s for sure.”

  “I’ve heard about the village.”

  “They treat whites like trash there,” said Jackson.

  “Maybe they should.”

  Jackson drew on the bottle and looked me dead in the eye. “Listen, this Rikard guy, the island’s his. He’ll find you and you won’t even know it. But you will when he wants you to.”

  “Good. I look forward to meeting the man. It’ll be dark before you get back to the mainland,” I said. “Can you make it back okay? You got no running lights.”

  “Don’t want no lights. I’ll make it fine. Been doing this for years.”

  “Do you know of a professor here by the name of Mallory?” I asked.

  “Yep. They say he went crazy.”

  “Crazy?” I asked.

  “I ’spect so, this place being what it is.”

  Tyler returned from the dunes carrying a flyer and walked over to Jackson. She handed it to him.

  “Have you heard if a young white woman lives on this island?”

  Jackson looked at the flyer, then held it away for a better look, letting it catch light from the western sky. Tyler tilted her head toward Jackson to hear with absolute clarity what she pulled from him.

  “I ain’t seen no white girl on this island, but I hear one comes here sometimes, from Charleston maybe. The colored fellow
who wears a towel—he’s got a weird name—told me there’s a woman here that no matter where she goes a pelican flies around her.”

  “Yes, why, of course, a pelican makes perfect sense,” Tyler said, taking back the flyer. “What color is her hair? Is she blonde?”

  Jackson inched closer to his boat. He was eager to get back to the mainland. It was minutes from pure dark and the tide was getting rough. A stiff wind was setting in.

  “I ain’t ever seen her so I can’t say what her hair is like.”

  “You can’t remember the man’s name who told you this?”

  “He lives near the village, ma’am, that’s all I can tell you.”

  “A pelican makes perfect sense …” That sounded mysterious and I made a mental note to ask Tyler about it. I had never seen her so focused. She folded the flyer and placed it into her blouse as I walked Jackson over to his boat.

  Jackson promised he’d return three weeks later at 6 P.M. sharp, but I had my doubts he’d show up.

  Springing into his boat, Jackson leered at the dog. “You gone keep that dog?” He tilted the bottle up. “Ain’t no problem to drop him out there,” he said nodding toward the Atlantic.

  “We need to do something about the dog,” I said. “Should we keep him?”

  “Of course, or he’ll drop him in the sea.”

  “That fat game warden said alligators love dogs. We could lose him.”

  “And if we send him back, Jackson will drown him or sharks will eat him, and even if he takes him to the mainland the poor old dog will starve.”

  “Maybe we can train him to be a watchdog,” I said. “But we’ll have the problem of feeding him.”

  “We’ll manage,” she said, and just like that we had a dog. Tyler, the dog, and I walked over to where Jackson was hauling in the cinderblock anchor.

  Tyler led the dog back into the dunes and I waved Jackson off. He shook his head, as if I were making a huge mistake, took another draw off the Southern Comfort, started the engine, and turned seaward. The sound of the Boston Whaler faded, then died beneath the surf and wind.