The Marsh Bird

The Marsh Bird

a novel

ANNE BROOKER JAMES

The Marsh Bird

by Anne Brooker James

© Copyright 2021 Anne Brooker James

ISBN 978-1-64663-366-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. The characters are both actual and fictitious. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialogue and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

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FOR

GLADYS ROBERTS OLIVER

1904—1994

GEECHEE

Author’s Note

In the middle of the eighteenth century, ships with cargos of African women, men, and children arrived on the savage beauty of the lowcountry coast. These enslaved people brought the skills needed by plantation owners to cultivate rice, cotton, and indigo. The planters, fearing uprisings against them from a race they considered bestial, separated families and tribes. But the Africans developed powerful means of survival and crossed plantation boundaries to join with different ethnic groups to maintain their rich culture and spiritual tradition. Together they fostered music, herbal crafts, oral history, spiritual practices, and mystical beliefs. They developed an English- based creole language, the only distinctive African-American creole in the US today.

They named their language Gullah in the Carolinas and Geechee in Georgia and called themselves by those names. When the Union army invaded the lowcountry during the Civil War, plantation owners fled, leaving thousands of slaves to fend for themselves. Some travelled north, but those who stayed began a new life in the wild beauty surrounding them, with the lush marsh grasses abundant with sea life and crawling and winged creatures, where sunsets and sunrises swallowed the sky with outrageous color and where lagoons, streams, inlets, and rivers flow through the marsh to the sea. For many years they remained relatively safe, secluded on the multitudes of coastal low country islands. But trouble was never far away.

This story is inspired by the remarkable Gullah Geechee people who live on the coastal lands of their once-enslaved ancestors. In writing this book, I have used dialect suggested to me by Victoria Smalls, a respected Gullah native of Beaufort, SC. Victoria has written about the Gullah Geechee language in the last pages of this book. That is fitting. It is theirs. Not mine.

During the winter of 1993, I lived with my mother in her warm, sunny Florida home away from the mountain snow. I planned to begin the novel about a story I had always longed to tell. However, except for a few short stories, I had only written non-fiction for publication. The Phantom of the Opera was playing on the stereo, and I had recently attended the Gullah Festival on St Helena Island in South Carolina. I began a tale of unrequited love, two orphans who grow up in a Gullah community, fall in love and come to a sad ending. I named it The Monkey Vendor. It was for practice never intended for publication. I married soon after I began the story, and it went on and off the shelf for many years. At last, with many changes, it has come to life as The Marsh Bird.

I once lived on an island shaded by ancient live oaks and surrounded by a great tidal marsh. My island was one of hundreds on the South Carolina lowcountry coast. A coastal plain rich with wildlife and webbed with tributaries running into rivers that run to the sound and the sea. Where sunrises and sunsets over the golden marsh grass and blue water are unworldly with brilliant colors that engulf the sky. I called upon memories to create the settings for The Marsh Bird. The map below will show you the entire area I worked—from Savannah to the Beaufort complex of islands. I pulled together parts of Savannah and Beaufort for the town, Belleview.

The Gullah community and its close environs is predominantly drawn from Spring Island, a rare treasure of natural beauty that has been wisely preserved by its developers. It is here that I wrote of primordial oak forests, one so dense and old and crooked that I would not drive through it at night alone when I lived there. The tabby ruins of the antebellum plantation are on Spring Island, much as I described it. The magnificent three-hundred-year-old oaks still line the road to the ruins.

1912—1920

It was white. Everything was white. The white house, the white columns, the white men shrouded in white cloaks whirling around a white cross. And thunderous. Howls of laughter, screams, the hateful outrage, unthinkable cruelty. And then it was red. Everything was red.

CHAPTER 1

The mist hovered over the great marshland and then rose with the first pink edge of dawn. Flushing life to flight, it rolled over the mudflats and tidal pools, over the scrawny arms of creeks and estuaries that reached through the reeds and tall marsh grass, until it came to rest where the river curved against the stone-cobbled banks of the town. There it left the wild beauty behind and crept into the strange, haunting beauty beyond the shore, mingling with the heavy scented air of jasmine and magnolias, and the ancient live oak, their crooked arms draped with moss like mourning shawls. It trailed over wide green lawns and columned mansions and then settled into the mystery of the Lowcountry. Here the Gullah lived along the coastal shores where their ancestors were once enslaved.

As the early morning light moved across their treasured land the Gullah market was coming to life. Gaily dressed women in turbans and long cotton dresses and men in white shirts and black pants held up by suspenders gathered jovially, glad for a new morning, dayclean they called it. The vendors began to set up neat rows of fruit and vegetables brought from the nearby fertile fields. Tables were iced to hold the mounds of clams, crabs, shrimp, and fish so fresh their eyes were still clear with surprise.

One of the vendors, stacking second-hand clothes, called out, It’s gonna be a beautiful day, Aunt Letty. We’re goin to be busy today.

Mebbe, the woman called back. If those uppity town cooks take a notion to shop.

The vendor laughed. And just when ain’t the town’s Missus’s sent for your pies and cakes?

Humph! Aunt Letty said and put her attention back on wiping off the morning dew from her table.

The vendors all laughed. You’re not goin to spoil our fun today. What’s got you so ornery, anyhow?

Aunt Letty ignored them. She didn’t feel ornery. But she was upset, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She threw oil cloth over the long boards of her table and leaned down for a basket full of buns and biscuits still warm from her wood-burning ovens. She was still able at middle age to do that with ease. Though not tall, she could seem so when she rose to an occasion. She had a well-rounded figure and a comely face with lips as plump as a ripe peach, which she was fond of bunching up. Her large brown eyes were keen and took in all around her, and her posture was of one who had gotten her way long enough for it to show. She was aware of this and used it to her advantage as often as needed. Nevertheless, she was loved and respected, and she knew this as well.

She looked out over the sound to the river where a small bateau brushed through the lush shoots of spartina, being paddled by a boy not more than twelve. Baggy short pants, the color of his sun-bleached yellow hair, hung on the notches of his bony hips, and mud from the oyster flats clung to his legs and arms. He steered through the crooked finger of the tidal creek where it emptied into the great river, then pulled his boat onto its muddy bank.

The boy sat on the bank and watched other flat-bottomed boats return from the creeks, their nets laden with the small shrimp gathered from the spawning fields amidst the marshland islets. The catch would be sold at the daily market, or at back doors of fine houses, or hawked along the shell roads.

Swimps, swimps. Raw, raw swimps.

A small, square sail caught his eye as a boat skimmed by. He would like a sail like that and meant to have one soon. He thought of the schooners that made their way gracefully along the river, their huge white sails billowing in the warm salt air. Someday, he dreamed, he would captain such a ship and leave behind the oyster flats and small fish that brought only pennies at the market stalls, or occasionally a breakfast of hominy and fish cakes or bacon from a Gullah cook at one of the great houses on Washington Street. He would sail the tradewind islands where there was sweet fruit or to Africa where King Oosafella lived with wild animals, haunting music and magic.

The air was already thick, and he wiped away the rivulets of grime and sweat from his forehead, swiping at the mosquitoes that hummed in the marsh grass. He slid from the bank into the cool, amber water and rolled with the wake from the paddle wheelers that steamed the local ports. He watched it churn by and sighed. He loved this river and all that flowed with it. He spent his days on the river, foraging along the ebb and flow of the marshland, attuned to the rise and fall of its heavy breath. And, at night when the screaming of the gulls had quieted and the cicadas had begun their incessant chatter, he slipped into the ruins of one of the old warehouses stretched along the wharf, climbed the rickety stairs to the top floor where he had made his home, and imagined the groans and cries of slaves who once slept there.

He had no family, none that he knew of. He had been left behind, it was thought, by sharecroppers and was found in the marsh on a mud flat by Ben Clary, a white drifter, who gave him his name for want of a better one, cared for him the best he could, and taught him all he knew of the rich low country until the day he wearied of life. The boy stayed in the old slat shack until the rats and water took it over, then moved to his present home where the rats were larger but left him alone.

The boy washed the mud from his body and paddled across the murky channel. Long Robby and his men, the best fishermen anywhere around had pulled into the docks. Long Robby was the strongest man he knew. He didn’t look like any of the other Gullah. Tall and dark as a moonless night he always wore a shirt, black vest, coat, and pants held up by a cord above his ankles. And he never wore shoes. Not winter nor summer.

When he cleaned up his boat after a haul, he piled the nets in a bucket and balanced it up on top of his tall black hat. Long Robby was a show all to himself. He made Ben’s bateau for him a couple of years earlier and that was one of the reasons the boat was so special to him. Long Robby told Ben the enslaved people brought the knowledge of making the bateau with them from West Africa and was used to navigate these rivers and creeks at low tide. He loved Long Robby as much as anybody. Maybe more than anybody. And, even though Long Robby never talked about it, he was kin to Bones.

Ben had never seen Bones, and he was not alone there. But Bones was out there somewhere. He started to stop and see what they brought in, but hunger gripped his ribs as he smelled the scent from Aunt Letty’s tables. He had a few pennies in his pocket for a hot cross bun from the baker.

As he got to Aunt Letty’s booth, Ben saw something move under her white cloth-draped table and fell to his knees. Staring, unblinking with feline assessment were the largest, darkest eyes he had ever seen. At first, he thought he was looking into the sooty face of a panther cub, but as he leaned closer, he saw it was a child, a very dirty child with long black hair tangled hopelessly around its small face and crouched on bare feet like a marsh bird prepared for flight. One of her grimy hands was gripped a sugar roll from the colored woman’s mound of golden-crusted breads, raisin-filled cakes, and juicy pies.

So jealously did Aunt Letty guard her wares and so keen a trader was she that Ben, who was fairly certain of her favor, had only managed after considerable cajoling and the best of his catch, to part from her a coveted bun. And even then, if the crabs were too small, there was often an extra chore that if not done to her liking brought forth her famous wrath. No one, he thought, dared steal from Aunt Letty. For despite of her round frame she could run faster than a barnyard hen about to be plucked. Once he had seen her take to flight when some of the little Gullah children had sneaked a biscuit from behind her back. He had bent double, choking with laughter at the sight of her voluptuous body, its ample parts bouncing in every direction like a vendor’s balloons on a windy day.

Ben raised his eyes in wonder of Aunt Letty as she loomed above her stall. Unprepared for the threatening storm he saw about to erupt, he jumped to his feet, confused as to just where this fury was directed.

Aunt Le . . . Letty, Ben stammered, backing away.

Wrap up your mout, boy.

Ben quickly pointed to the obvious culprit and saw to his increasing dismay that the child was gone. B . . . but. There. He pointed.

Aunt Letty, her kindly face once more smoothed out, beckoned to him, took his hand, and placed upon his palm a warm sugary bun. Surprised, he looked up at Aunt Letty, who pulled her generous pink lips in such a formidable bunch that he blinked.

You ain’t seen nothin. You heah me boy. Now, come sit over heah by me. I want to talk to you.

Surprised, Ben sat on the ground and leaned against the oak tree.

You didn’t fish today, did you, Ben?

Ben stared at her. How’d you know that, Aunt Letty? He bristled, thinking, What business is it of hers, anyway?

Just thought you didn’t. Don’t look so squirmy. What you do ain’t up to me.

Then why’d you ask, Aunt Letty?

I’ve been thinkin bout you, Ben. You don’t have no friends. All you do is run around in your boat all day it seems like, and when you ain’t out on de water you are at de docks with older men.

Ben squinted his eyes at her. I do too have friends, Aunt Letty. Long Robby, Jimmy, and the fishermen at the wharf are my friends, even if they are older. And Ragbone, when he’s around. And sometimes Rufus when he ain’t with his school friends from the island. That’s all the friends I need.

You need friends your own age is what you need. You been around grown ups too long for your own good.

Aunt Letty, what’s got you onto me bout friends all of a sudden? He frowned. You know the boys from town don’t like me. And I sure don’t like them.

They don’t like you because you live near Gullah an in dat ole tumbling down warehouse. Ain’t there no one else your age, Ben?

You know there ain’t. Long Robby’s kids are younger, and Rufus is older. Anyway, why do you care? I’m happy with the friends I got.

It’s too bad those boys gave you such a bad time at school. Can’t say I blame you for leavin.

Those truant people ain’t never gonna find me and I sure ain’t never going back to that hateful place. Anyway, Pa Clary taught me to read and write since I can’t go to the island colored school.

Aunt Letty chuckled. Well, I guess dat’s de way it be. For now, anyway. She smiled to herself.

There’s somethin else, she said as he got up to leave. Henny told me he was talkin to one of de fishermen de other day bout de yellow fever dat took so many people bout twelve years ago. De fisherman, don’t know which one, said there was a whole family of Swedes livin down de way on de marsh. He didn’t know de family but saw all these yellow-headed kids runnin around when he trolled down dat way. He saw de mama with a baby in her arms once. Then one day there wasn’t no one there. He heard they all died. Dat got Henny to thinkin, Ben. Maybe they was your family.

Ben got up from the ground in a huff. Aunt Letty, what’s got you and Henny so interested in what I do and where I come from all of a sudden?

You’re growin up, Ben. And don’t you want to know somethin bout yourself?

Good golly, Aunt Letty. He rolled his eyes. I dunno. I been getting along fine just being me. I can’t think bout being someone else now.

Aunt Letty chuckled. Well, Henny said he had a mind to go see Miss Becky’s husband. Mr. Morton might know somethin bout dat family, being a lawyer.

You got me all twisted up. Asking all these questions. All I wanted to know was who that kid was under your table.

Dat’s my first customer comin, Ben. You just skedaddle now. You don’t need to know everythin. Git!

For many mornings after that as Ben carried out his trade in the market, he casually searched the under-pinnings of the various stalls, always with Aunt Letty’s words echoing in his ears like a proclamation from God. In fact, encouraged by an already vivid imagination, the apparition consumed his thoughts. As he pushed his small boat around a thicket of tall grass, Ben was sure he saw enormous black eyes watching him. And at night he gathered his arms around his thin body, wide-eyed with bone-deep certainty that through some magic of Aunt Letty’s race, a secret ritual that only she and her kind understood, a beastly thing had been conjured up to do her bidding. Most likely in the dark of the night.

His heart pounded as he saw in the shadows of his room the haunting, gleaming eyes of a creature that could change with unearthly speed to a great black bird that swept down and stole the eyes of children and used them for its own. Or a giant, demon cat that could melt idle boys with its burning black eyes. A plat-eye, he thought, his eyes widening. There were ghosts, and then there were plat-eyes, the most fearsome of all goblins.

With those ominous thoughts in mind, he avoided Aunt Letty’s stall and the sweet buns he cherished. So, it was by chance one early spring morning, when the mist was still heavy on the leaves of oaks, elms, and magnolias, that he saw the child again. Ben was standing under the leafy branches of a dogwood, letting its dewy drops cool his back, when he happened to look to the trunk of an old oak near Aunt Letty’s table. Hiding behind it was a girl, younger than him, but so small in her dirty and torn gingham dress it was hard to tell. Like a rag hanging on a stick. She leaned against the tree and timidly stared at Aunt Letty’s back.

Rooted to the ground, he watched as the child slowly edged her way to the soft, white apron that encircled Aunt Letty’s body. With a small tug on the apron she turned large, luminous eyes up into the disturbed expression of the colored woman and held out to her a twisted piece of cloth. Aunt Letty shot a quick, nervous glance around the market where every vendor was watching and listening as they could. She drew her formidable bulk even taller, thrust her plump lower lip to full extension, swished her skirts away from the waif, and muttered, G’on, chile. Git. G’on from heah.

Undaunted, the girl yanked on the woman’s skirts, refusing to be ignored. Aunt Letty, who expended much effort to hide the loving heart that beat under her ample breast, was genuinely distressed and brushed at the small hands that gripped her white apron.

Git, I said, chile. You ain’t got no bizness heah.

As Aunt Letty’s perplexed pout swelled, the girl grew more persistent, until tears struggled through the grime. That was Aunt Letty’s undoing. She looked down at the child and then fixed a defiant glare upon the market. Slowly, she removed the twisted rag from the girl’s fingers, long and slender for her size, she noted. She would grow like a reed in the marsh. Her face even now showed the beauty to come. Aunt Letty unwound the cloth and stared at its gleaming contents: a simple but lovely gold locket on a twisted gold chain. She looked at the child once more before she opened the smooth top. Without expression she studied the picture of the lovely woman within and saw the same dark eyes as the child’s. She raised her eyes to the river, let them rest upon the reeds and grass of the marsh and beyond to the sound and on to the cerulean sky where the gulls soared over the sea. When her eyes once again met the child’s, she smiled and pried open the small hand to take the locket. The child’s expression crumpled, her eyes fixed on Aunt Letty’s tables.

Aunt Letty, without another thought, dropped the necklace down into the vault of her bosom and began to package an assortment of her pastries, occasionally glancing over at her fellow vendors as she carefully wrapped her wares. The girl took the parcel from the weathered hands and fled away.

In lowered voices, the vendors’ gossip traveled from stall to stall. The child, Ben heard, had come with a white man a while before when the early summer rains and the heat consumed the air. They had come from Louisiana, the gossipers insisted, but no one knew for sure. They drifted in one day so poor it had sucked out their spirit. The man was sick, anyone could see, whether from hunger or the inclement clime. His cough hacked through the air as if it were an omen, like the eerie feared hoot of the screech owl. And then there was the child. The vendors shook their heads and clucked. Instead of the pale hair and complexion of her companion, she was tawny, a golden-skinned urchin tanned from breeding more than sun. They had settled in an old, abandoned shack well behind the square, a squalid area on any account, neither in the colored section nor white trash but off where old rusty metal and broken wagon wheels and other junk was thrown and lived there without notice for awhile. Mr. Trainey, at the compound’s store, took their pennies for food while they lasted and then he gave to them out of pity.

Nothing that Ben could think of had happened like this before. No one just came and took up with anyone here. The Gullah didn’t trust other people—colored or white—just settling into their commune. Henny Findley, the only white person living near the Gullah compound beside himself, didn’t have anything to say about it, which was peculiar to him. Henny almost always had something to say but he just kept his head down knitting the strings in the cast net.

A few days later, Ben was sitting with Henny in a shady area next to the market watching him make his nets. Henny said a Gullah elder taught him how to knit them when he was a kid. It was an art, he told me, brought over from West Africa, and they were proud of that. Most Gullah fishermen used to knit their own fishing nets. They made a needle outta palmetto wood. Like this one I’m using.

Henny, look! Ben interrupted, pointing toward the market. That girl. Looks like something’s wrong.

The child was running to Aunt Letty’s booth, her dirty face blotched red and tear streaked. Aunt Letty took one look at her and called over to Nellie whose stall was next to hers to watch over her table. She threw a linen cloth over the baked goods and walked quickly away with the child.

Miss Emmy, who was hanging clothes in her stall, shook her scarf-bound head. This ain’t comin to no good. No Lawd, this be bad news come to sit on us. Miss Emmy put her hands on her hips, watching the girl and Letty as they left the market. For soul for soul.

Dat ole she-she, Ben heard one of the vendors say to another and chuckled. He knew she-she meant talkety woman in Gullah, the language they spoke. It seemed to him they were all she-she.

Not long after they left, one of Long Robby’s boys ran back with the news that the sick man the girl had come with had died. The buzz of the market stilled for only a moment then hummed on in renewed speculation.

Well, I reckon Letty’s done let herself in for it now, Henny Findley said to Ben as he set down the net he had been working on.

Ben twined his fingers through the webbing of the net and asked, So what’s Aunt Letty in it for?

Well, let’s just say that this time she’s gotten herself in deeper than a bear stuck in a log with a pole kitty at the other end, Henny answered and spat out a stream of chewing tobacco.

Ah, Henny, Ben said and laughed, not believing for a minute Aunt Letty would let herself be in trouble about anything. You’re always talking that way. He looked out toward the river. Ya know, Henny. I never been too far down that river and where the tributary runs off it. I think I’ll go explore a little and see if there are any good creeks for shrimp or crab.

Boy, I thought you knew every stream, creek, and waterway around these parts, Henny said.

Mebbe not all. Not down there, anyway.

Henny chuckled good naturedly. I reckon stories from down the river are a little scary, huh?

Ben frowned. I ain’t scared of nothin, Henny.

Just teasing you, boy.

Ben whistled as he paddled down the wide river toward where a large tributary angled off. Henny had struck a nerve, and Ben still felt it. He had avoided this part of the river with its heavy marshes and dead cotton and rice fields. He’d heard too many stories about the slaves who worked at the plantation farther down the river than where he intended to go. Jimmy, one of Long Robby’s fishermen, said he heard moans and cries all around him every time he went by that place. He’d heard that Junie Savage, the old master, wasn’t there no more, but it was still just too spooky for him.

Ben pulled into a creek that looked promising. He didn’t even see any gators, which was unusual. Just shoots of grass along the banks and woods on either side of the narrow creek. It was so pleasant he lay back against the hull, his arms behind his head, and felt the spring sun warm on his eyelids as his boat gently moved along the still water.

Startled, he jumped up in the seat when he heard dogs barking. Holy mackeral, he yelled to himself. Where in tarnation did they come from? He started backing out as fast as he could as three vicious-looking hounds got closer, ferociously barking. He had barely gotten out of the creek and turned into the river before they were at the edge of the bank, no more than two feet away, looking like all they wanted was to tear him apart.

His heart was beating so hard it shook the boat as he hightailed it back to the docks. Long Robby was sitting on the edge of the dock chatting with the fishermen when Ben pulled in so fast he almost hit Long Robby’s boat.

Whoa, Ben. What’s got into you, boy? You look like you been seein some ghosts. Long Robby’s big grin spread across his kindly face.

Long Robby. Ben struggled to get his breath.

Slow down, son. His laughter faded into concern. What’s goin on?

Dogs, Ben said, the meanest dogs I ever seen came after me. They’d a had me too if I hadn’t gotten outta that creek so fast.

Long Robby’s face was clear of amusement now. Just where was this, Ben?

When Ben told him, Long Robby looked off down the river. Old dread, misery and loathing, drawn back into his senses.

Whose dogs are they, Long Robby? I ain’t never seen dogs like that.

Long Robby’s attention returned to Ben. I’m sorry dat happened to you, son. I know whose dogs they be. I’d just stay a little closer to home.

Ben let out a long sigh. Long Robby, you sure don’t have to tell me that. I ain’t never going back there.

After Ben left,