“Tolitha,” I said, totally embarrassed.
“You’re such a child sometimes, Tom,” Savannah said. “You act like you were snake-bit every time the subject of sex comes up.”
My grandmother laughed and continued. “I stirred him up good when I was a girl-child, and I never heard nothing much about Jesus when I had him beneath the sheets in those early years.”
“Tolitha, please, for God’s sake,” I begged. “We don’t want to hear all that.”
“Yes, we do,” Savannah disagreed. “It’s fascinating.”
“Who but a weirdo like you wants to hear a play-by-play description of sex between their grandparents?”
“Then, as the years passed, he got tired of me as all men do and he started praying to our Lord on what you might call a twenty-four-hour basis until he got kind of soft in the head about it. Never made a decent living in his life. Just cut hair, sold a few Bibles, and ran his mouth about heaven and hell and everything in between.”
“But he’s such a good man,” I interjected.
She turned and gazed out the window at my grandfather. There was no ardor in her gaze, but there was softness and an abiding affection. He was still hunched over his cross, attaching a rubber tricycle wheel to its base. “People ask me all the time what it’s like being married to a saint. Boring, I tell them. Better to marry a devil. I’ve tasted a little bit of heaven in my life and a little bit of hell and I’ll take hell every time. But what you say is true, Tom. He is a mighty fine man.”
“Why did you leave him during the Depression?” Savannah asked, encouraged by her openness, the guileless spillage of old secrets. “Dad won’t even talk about it.”
“I guess you’re old enough to know,” she said, turning toward us, her voice suddenly despondent, almost dreamy. “In the middle of the Depression, he quit his job and started preaching the Lord’s word down in front of Baitery’s Pharmacy. That paid even less money than barbering. He got it into his head that the Depression was a sign that the world was going to end. It was easy to think that. A lot of boys got the same idea about that time. We were starving or close to it. I didn’t cotton too much to starving. I told Amos I was leaving him. Of course, he didn’t believe me because folks didn’t divorce in those days. I told him to take care of your father or I’d come back and kill him, and I hitched a ride and headed for Atlanta. I got a job at Rich’s department store the same week. After a while, I met Papa John and married him a couple of days later.”
“That’s horrible, Tolitha,” I said. “That’s the worst thing I ever heard.”
“That’s the saint out in the back yard, Tom,” she said, her eyes narrowing behind the glasses, her eyebrows touching like two slightly mismatched caterpillars. “The woman is here in the kitchen. I’m not proud of everything I did, but I’ll tell you everything I did.”
“No wonder Dad’s so screwed up,” I said, whistling.
“Shut up, Tom. You’re such a traditionalist,” Savannah said archly. “You don’t understand a thing about survival.”
“I did the best I could under the circumstances. Seemed like the whole world went a little crazy around that time and I didn’t get no exemption.”
“Go on,” I said, “before Grandpa gets in here.”
“Don’t worry about Grandpa. He’ll be playing with that cross until dinnertime. Well, it was hardest on your father. I’ll admit that. He was only eleven or so when I brought him up to Atlanta, and he hadn’t seen me in maybe five years. He hardly even knew me and couldn’t understand either why I had left or why he had to call me Tolitha and not Mama. He used to cry out in his sleep, ‘Mama, Mama, Mama,’ and Papa John used to hear it and it liked to break his sweet heart. He would go in and sing Greek songs to your daddy until he went back to sleep. Your daddy didn’t know no Tolitha and didn’t want to know her. I’d do it differently now. Honestly, I would. But now isn’t then. And there’s no returning to then.”
“It’s hard to see Dad as a tragic figure,” Savannah said. “Especially a tragic child. I can’t even imagine him as a little kid.”
“Did you have other husbands, Tolitha?” I asked.
“Ha,” she laughed. “Your mother’s been talking again.”
“No,” I said quickly, “I’ve just heard rumors around town.”
“After Papa John died I was half crazy with grief. I took the money he left me, and it was a fair sum, I mean to tell you, and lit out for all these places I heard about. Hong Kong, Africa, India. I went around the world, traveling by ship. First class from port to port. And I had this problem. Everybody’s always loved me. Especially men. I’m just that kind of person. Men just love to buzz around me like there was a sweet smell coming from me. I just sat there and watched ’em line up trying to make me laugh or buy me a couple of drinks. I married a couple of those old boys. The longest lasted about six months. That marriage lasted exactly the time it took to sail from Madagascar to Capetown. He wanted me to do unmentionable, filthy things to him.”
“What unmentionable, filthy things?” Savannah asked breathlessly, leaning toward my grandmother.
“No. No. Don’t ask her that,” I pleaded. “Don’t ask her.”
“Why?” Savannah asked me.
“Because she’ll tell us, Savannah. She’ll tell us and it will be something horrible and embarrassing.”
“He wanted me to suck the area where his legs met,” my grandmother explained, rather primly for her, I had to admit. She always told you a bit more than you ever wanted to hear.
“How disgusting,” Savannah said.
“He had animal appetites,” Tolitha said. “It was a nightmare.”
“Why did you come back to Grandpa?” I asked, wanting to steer the conversation from animal appetites.
She turned her gaze toward me and lifted her glass of tea to her lips. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer, or couldn’t.
“I got tired, Tom. Real tired. And I was starting to get old, to look old, to feel old. I knew Amos would always be here by the river and always be waiting for me. I knew I could light down here and he would never say a word to me. He’d just be thankful I came back. Your Daddy’s the same way about Lila. He’s only been interested in a single woman his whole life. Just like his father. It just goes to show you that it’s easier for blood to carry a fanatic down to a new generation than whatever it was that made everyone love me.”
“But everyone loves Grandpa, too,” I said, suddenly feeling sorry for the man in the background.
“They love him because he’s a fanatic, Tom. Because he picks up that cross each year. But I say who needs a saint? I’d rather have a drink and a couple of laughs.”
“But you love Grandpa, don’t you, Tolitha?” I insisted.
“Love.” She turned the word over in her mouth like a flavorless lozenge. “Yes, I suppose I do love him. You have to love what you can always come back to, what’s home waiting for you. I was thinking about time the other day. Not love, but time, and they’re related somehow but I’m not smart enough to know how exactly. I was married to your grandfather and to Papa John for about the same amount of time. But when I look back at my life it seems I was married to Papa John for a few days. That’s how happy I was. Seems like I was married to your grandpa for a thousand years.”
“This is an adult conversation,” Savannah announced proudly. “I’ve been waiting for a long time to have a truly adult conversation.”
“Your parents are just trying to protect you from things they don’t think children should know, Savannah. They don’t approve of the life I’ve led. But since it’s an adult conversation, I don’t think they need to know anything about it.”
“I’d never tell,” Savannah said. “But Tom can be such a child sometimes.”
I ignored Savannah and asked Tolitha, “Do you think Dad ever got over being left when he was a little boy?”
“Do you mean do I think he’s forgiven me, Tom?” she said. “I think so. In family matters you can g
et over anything. That’s one thing you’ll learn as an adult. There’s a lot you have to learn which is a lot worse than that. You’d never think of forgiving a friend for some of the things your parents did to you. But with friends it’s different. Friends aren’t the roll of the dice.”
“I need to help Grandpa fix up his cross,” I said.
“Yeah, and I need to get to the liquor store,” Tolitha said.
“You plan to get liquored up again on Good Friday?” I asked.
“Tom, you are so rude,” Savannah said.
Tolitha laughed and said, “That’s the only civilized response to his walk I can think of. It also reminds him that he doesn’t own me and never will. It’s my way of telling him how ridiculous the whole thing is. Of course, he talked it over with God a few days ago and got the go-ahead, so there’s no talking sense into him.”
“He’s just being a good Christian. That’s what he told me,” I said. “He said if the world was acting right, the whole town of Colleton would be out there with crosses walking with him.”
“Then they’d lock the whole town up. No, Tom. I’m not saying anything against being a good Christian. Believe me. I want you to be a good Christian man; just don’t take it so goddamn seriously.”
“Are you a good Christian, Tolitha?” asked Savannah. “Do you think you’re going to heaven?”
“I’ve never done one thing in my life that makes me deserve to burn in hell for all eternity. Any god that does that isn’t deserving of the name. I’ve tried hard to live an interesting life and I don’t see any harm that comes from that.”
“Don’t you think Grandpa’s led an interesting life, too?” I said.
“Tom, you ask the silliest questions,” Savannah scolded.
“Remember, Tom, whenever you consider what makes up an interesting life, think of this. When your grandpa was cutting hair and your mom and dad were picking crabs and heading shrimp, I was coming through the Khyber Pass, riding into Afghanistan disguised as an Afghan warrior. I’m probably the only person you’ll meet who’s ever done that.”
“But you’re back here, Tolitha. What good did it do you if you have to end up back here in Colleton? Back where you started?” I asked.
“It means that I ran out of money,” she said. “It means I failed to do what I set out to do.”
“I think you’re the only success our family has produced, Tolitha,” Savannah said. “I really do. You’re the only reason I know I can escape from all this.”
“You got Tolitha written all over you, Savannah. You have ever since you were a little girl. But play it smarter than me. I had the wildness in me. I didn’t have the smarts. It was harder for women back then. Much harder. But try to get out if you can. Colleton’s a sweet poison, but poison nonetheless. Once it gets into a soul it can never wash out. It’s funny. But all the places I saw in Europe, Africa, and Asia, some were so beautiful it would make you cry. But none of them was more beautiful than Colleton and that’s the truth. None of them could make me forget the marsh and the river right out yonder. The smell of this place rides in the bones wherever you go. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”
She rose and lit the fire in the stove. The afternoon was still and the air was cool and silken in the late afternoon. A barge, laden with a cargo of timber, urged upriver, and we saw my grandfather wave at the bargemen. The barge answered with a deep-throated salute from its horn and simultaneously the bridge across the river began its slow, ponderous division in the middle.
“Go out and talk to your grandpa, kids,” she said. “I’ll get us a little dinner, but first, why don’t you go gather a couple of dozen oysters from the river and I’ll fix ’em up while we’re waiting for the chicken to bake.”
We walked out into the back yard and into the very different world of Grandpa Wingo. He was lifting up the cross now and, laying it on his shoulder and walking it across the grass, testing the new wheel. The wheel squeaked slightly as it rolled across the grass.
“Hello, children,” he said, smiling when he saw us. “I can’t quite get the squeak out of this wheel.”
“Hello, Grandpa,” we said, and both of us ran to kiss him beneath the cross.
“How do you think the cross looks, children?” he asked, worriedly. “Be honest now. Don’t be afraid to hurt your grandpa’s feelings. Do you think the wheel looks all right?”
“It looks fine, Grandpa,” Savannah said, “but I’ve never seen a cross with a wheel on it before.”
“I was in bed for a week last year after the last walk,” he explained. “I thought the wheel would make it easier, but I’m worried that folks’ll get the wrong impression.”
“They’ll understand, Grandpa,” I said.
“The cross got rained on this winter, and it’s starting to rot in the center beam. I may have to build a new one for next year. Maybe a lighter model if I can find the right kind of wood.”
“Why don’t you retire, Grandpa?” Savannah said. “Let a younger man in the church take over.”
“I’ve thought a lot about that, child,” he said. “I’ve always hoped Luke or Tom would take over after I’m gone. That’s what I pray to the good Lord for. It’d be nice to keep it in the family, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure Tom would love to do it,” Savannah offered graciously. “In fact, I’ve been praying to the good Lord for the same thing.”
I pinched Savannah on the back of the arm and said, “Tolitha wants us to go across the river and pick some oysters, Grandpa. You want to go with us?”
“I’d be mighty pleased to go, children. Tom, could you just walk this cross over to the garage? I’ve got to find out where this squeak is coming from.”
“He’d be glad to,” Savannah said. “It’ll also give him a little practice for when he takes over the job.”
I took the cross from my grandfather and laid it over my right shoulder and began moving it quickly across the yard. I could hear my grandmother hooting at me from the kitchen.
“Just a minute, child,” my grandfather said. “I see where that squeak is coming from.”
He bent down and applied oil to the wheel from a rusted can.
“I think that might do it. Try it again.”
I resumed my surly walk, trying to ignore Savannah’s grinning face and the chuckling image of my grandmother framed in the kitchen window. My grandfather, of course, was oblivious to all occasions of mirth and humiliation.
“I think that cross looks good on him, don’t you, child?” my grandfather said to Savannah.
“I think it looks divine, Grandpa,” Savannah agreed. “That boy was born to carry that cross.”
“It’s heavy,” I said miserably.
“You ought to carry it without the wheel. It’s a man’s work. But when I think of the Lord’s suffering and all he went through for me,” Grandpa said.
“Yeah, Tom. Quit complaining. Think of what the Lord went through for you,” Savannah chided.
“Just walk it this way one more time, child,” said my grandfather. “I want to make sure I got that squeak.”
After returning the cross to the garage, the three of us loaded into Grandpa’s small green boat. He hand-cranked the motor and I gathered in the ropes and we headed across the Colleton River toward the oyster bank near the Hardeville wreck on St. Stephen’s Island. The Hardeville was an old paddlewheel ferry that had sunk during the same hurricane when Savannah and I were born. Its great wheel lay buried in the mud and from a distance it looked like a half-made clock. Thousands of oysters clustered around the base of the hull and at full tide it was one of the most productive, bountiful fishing holes in the county. A family of otters lived in the brown encrusted hull of the ship, and had ever since I could remember. Tradition made those otters sacrosanct and inviolable and no hunter had ever attempted to trap them. Two otter pups were pursuing each other between the ribs of the foundered ship when my grandfather killed the motor and we slid into the flats exposed by the receding tide
.
“Wasn’t it nice of Jesus to place these oysters so near to the house? He knows how much I enjoy them,” my grandfather said as Savannah and I leaned over the side of the boat and began dislodging oysters from the bank. We pulled up a dozen large singles the size of a man’s hand, then a cluster of ten smaller oysters, which we broke apart with a hammer in the front of the boat.
I got onto the mud, sank to my knees. I made my way carefully across the bank, selecting the largest singles and throwing them back into the boat.
“Oysters always look to me like they’re praying,” Grandpa said. “Two hands folded together, offering thanks.”
They were also sharp and ominous and I walked unsteadily, gingerly, as if I were dancing across a field of blades. I could feel the shells of dead oysters slice the rubber of my tennis shoes as I handled the tongs and brought the oysters up into the dying light.
When we had gathered forty oysters, I climbed over the sides of the boat and kicked us off into the river again. Grandpa couldn’t get the motor started right away and we floated like an oak leaf through waters of soft pearl as otters flashed around us in brilliant circles. Their swift wakes agitated the water into a deeper pearl as Grandpa jerked the starter rope again and again, sweat forming on his brow. In the wreck an adult otter with a silver face climbed onto one of the ship’s lower ribs with a trout still quivering between its jaws. The otter stood on its haunches and studied the fish between its paws, then began devouring it like a man eating an ear of corn. Savannah was the first one to see the Snow.
“Snow,” she cried aloud, rising and nearly capsizing the boat. I steadied the boat with both hands, shifting my weight back and forth until we settled into the tide again. Grandpa quit trying to start the motor and looked downstream in the direction where Savannah’s finger pointed. Then, two hundred yards away, we saw the white porpoise break through the waves as she made her way toward us.
I was ten when I first saw the white porpoise known as Carolina Snow following our shrimp boat as we returned to the dock after a day dragging the beaches along Spaulding Point. It was the only white porpoise ever sighted along the Atlantic seaboard in the memories of the shrimping brotherhood, and some said the only white porpoise ever to inhabit the earth. Throughout Colleton County, with its endless miles of salt rivers and tidal creeks, the sighting of the Snow was always cause for wonder. She was never seen with other porpoises, and some shrimpers, like my father, surmised that porpoises, like humans, were not kind to their freaks and that the Snow was sentenced by her remarkable whiteness to wander the green waters of Colleton, exiled and solitary. That first day, she followed us almost all the way to the bridge before she turned back toward the sea. Snow lent to the county a sense of specialness, and all who saw her remembered the first moment for the rest of their lives. It was like being touched by a recognition that the sea would never forfeit its power to create and astonish.