In Fort White, my nephew Julian Collins had married Miss Laura Hawkins on April Fool’s Day. I never understood what that girl saw in him, for my nephew was humorless, ingrown as a toenail, whereas Laura was fun-loving and lively. Not unpleasantly plain, she had big soft eyes that could drive a man of sensibility and taste to groans of soulful longing. To Kate’s great joy-for she and Laura had been bosom friends since childhood-the newlyweds would travel south with us to spend that summer at the Bend, with a vague plan to stay on for a year.
Lucius met us in the Warrior at Everglade, where he was to pick up his new skiff with outboard motor: he invited his cousin Julian to accompany him and do his first saltwater fishing on the way. Kate and our new baby came with me in the launch, also Julian’s Laura and Jane Straughter, whom the Collinses had brought along as nursemaid-cook. Hope of seeing Henry Short was probably why Jane came.
Leaving the Bay, we met squalls off Indian Key, and fearing for the smaller boat, the girls begged me to turn back. Knowing that Lucius, now seventeen, was an expert boatman already handy with marine motors, I shook my head, being anxious to get home, but during the worst of it, his skiff wallowed with the motor’s weight and took a following sea over the stern that swamped her. Our young women got a terrible fright when they looked back.
I swung the Warrior around in a wide circle. Coming up astern, I heaved the boys a line as I went by, took them in tow: Julian, steering, tried to hold the skiff on course while Lucius tinkered with his motor. The wind was gaining all the time, with both boats taking a godawful pounding: there was such a surge that at moments the skiff dropped out of sight as the Gulf swallowed her and spat her up again. My towline parted off Pavilion Key and after that, there was nothing to do but carry the women and small children to safety in Chatham River and pray that my son got that motor started, because night was falling and the weather worsening.
Learning my intention, Laura Collins spread her wings for balance, pitching forward to the helm, and yelped at me like a gull across the wind: we must not abandon those young men to a watery grave. “Turn back! Turn back! I beseech you!” I told her that if we attempted to turn back, the chances were that nobody would make it; the new bride went down onto her knees and prayed and begged, wailing that if her Julian had to drown, she wished to perish with him. When she threatened to hurl herself over-board, I seized her. “No,” I shouted, “you had better not, because if Lucius pulls your Julian through this, as I believe he will, you might feel foolish up in Heaven all alone.” I ordered Kate and Jane to hold her while I piloted the narrow channel into Chatham River.
Kate was already weeping because her Ruth Ellen, losing her grip on Jane’s frock while Jane helped restrain Laura, had barely escaped going overboard. Exasperated by all the shrieking, I roared at Jane, “I sure hope you can swim, because if that child goes overboard, you’re going after her!” Jane met my glare while making up her mind if I was a cold-hearted rogue or just a coward. But my threat terrified poor Kate, who was weak with sea-sickness. Her one wish, she wept, was to set foot on dry land once more before she died, and when she saw mangrove shadows in the spume and mist, she thanked the Lord. Inland people dread unruly winds and huge, wild waves, when sea and sky rush together and collide in a roaring shapeless chaos without color: once in sight of shore, they feel much safer, not realizing that where sea meets land the danger is far greater. With that onshore wind, at dusk, in such poor light, the Warrior could strike an oyster bar and go aground, get pounded to pieces.
With good timing and some luck, I rode the boat onto the back of a cresting wave that carried us between the mangrove clumps into the estusssary. I wanted to head straight back out to search for Lucius but there was no high ground in the flooded delta to put passengers ashore and the house was miles upriver. If I failed to return for my stranded passengers, they would surely die, unable to swim against the current or crawl for miles through the river jungle on the banks.
Having been here before, Jane understood what I was trying to explain, but because I had threatened her, she was impassive, arms around Ruth Ellen. Her cool eyes mocked me. You sure you’re not forsaking them to save yourself? Desperate to stare the lost skiff into sight, I scanned the waters of the river mouth before the Gulf mists closed behind.
We went upriver. Hearing the motor, Green Waller came down to the dock to take the lines. Somewhere along his rocky road, Green had scavenged some kind of fancy manners, and was raring to try ’em out on the young women. “Howdee do, ladies, and welcome!” he said. I cut off his palaver in a hurry. Lucius was adrift out toward Pavilion Key. I roared, “Light a big fire! Give ’em a beacon!” I gave that order mostly to calm Laura, because in such weather no boat offshore would see a glow over the jungle so far inland, not even if Green set the damn house on fire. He knew this, too, and at once commenced to say so, being insensitive to social subtleties except when in the company of hogs. I stopped him with a fearful glare and he jumped to it.
I was very frightened I might lose my dearest son. I ranged up and down the bank like a caged panther. Toward daybreak, I sagged down on the porch steps. Laura had sat up, too, but stayed out of sight behind me. Even after I took notice of her, she would not speak.
Slowly during that long night the storm had died. At sunrise, when I went down to the dock, she followed. I waved her away when she tried to come aboard, she would only be in the way.
I went ashore at Pavilion Key, asking in vain if anyone knew anything. My daughter Minnie escorted me around, holding my hand. I searched the mainland shore, then the gray and sullen sea for a sign of death or life, knowing the drowned will sink for a few days before they rise again. Unless Lucius had found shelter someplace, those boys were lost.
At noon, with my fuel almost gone, I headed back into the river, leaden-hearted. The day was dark and the roiled water pouring down out of the Glades looked thick as molten iron. Black cormorants like requiem birds swam down the raining river.
Two figures, white and lavender, stood before the house, clutching their bonnets: on the Gulf wind their hat ribbons flew behind them. Seeing the Warrior coming upriver with a lone man at the helm, Laura turned and fled into the house.
“She’s beside herself,” Kate warned as I tied up. “She doesn’t know what she is saying.” Laura ran outside again to scream at me. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you still searching?” When I only nodded, calling to Sip Linsey to refuel the boat, she burst into tears, too exhausted to apologize or protest further. Kate led her back inside.
Lucius brought Julian back that afternoon. Sometime after midnight they had drifted inshore south of the river mouth, where a small point concealed them from the Chatham delta and the Gulf. At daybreak, they had heard my motor to the north, but her loud pop-pop-pop had drowned their yells. Lucius was still working to remove salt water from the carburetor, and toward noon he got the motor to kick over: they came up Chatham River less than a mile behind me. As the skiff came into view, I shouted toward the house. Laura did not dare come look until she heard Kate’s cry at the sight of two standing figures.
I shook Lucius’s hand as he came ashore. “What kept you fellers?” I said jovially. My son gave me that bent smile, but they had come too close and his tired eyes warned me they were not ready to joke about it. Though he loved me dearly, Lucius knew me somewhat better than I might have wanted.
Julian gazed at me over Laura’s quaking shoulders. Stroking her head, he would not meet my eye. His wet dark hair slicked close to his head so that his ears stuck out made him look slight and boyish despite that thin pointed beard; he trembled because he was cold and frightened through and through. On a day warm and humid with Gulf haze, Julian’s teeth chattered. Coddled by Laura, he would languish three days in bed complaining of the ague, and after his return to Fort White, he never spoke again of his Gulf adventure. It was his young wife who suffered most, However: Laura was to lose her baby. Unlike her husband, she forgave me.