Мэри Элис Монро – Sweetgrass (страница 3)

They would not, he concluded bitterly. Then he downed his drink.

Gripping the sides of the chair, he pulled himself out, tottering as a wave of dizziness swept over him. Too much brandy, he thought as he plodded across the porch. Inside, the warmth of the house enveloped him. Glancing up at the tall clock, he realized with surprise that he’d been sitting out on the porch for several hours. It was no wonder he was chilled to the bone. He moved closer to the staircase and cocked his ear, straining to hear sounds from Mama June’s bedroom. All was quiet. She must have fallen asleep, he thought, resigned to the fact that he would not likely be getting a hot meal for dinner this night.

Truth was, he wasn’t hungry, anyway. All that fighting and drinking made his gut feel off. Besides, he was feeling too restless to eat. He never could settle down after a quarrel with Mama June. Couldn’t rest until they’d made peace. That woman had his soul in her hands and he wondered if she even knew it. Some days, it seemed that she hardly even knew he was here.

He felt his aloneness acutely tonight. It was thrumming in his brain with a pulselike rhythm. He removed his slicker, letting it lie on the back of a chair, and wandered restlessly. His damp feet dragged and his blurry eyes barely took in the rooms as he meandered. His mind was fixed on Mama June’s words.

I despise this land!

Could she have really meant that?

From the day I first stepped foot on it, all this land ever brought me was utter and complete heartbreak.

For him, the day Mary June Clark first stepped her tiny foot on Sweetgrass land was forever etched in his mind. His boyish heart had never known such infatuation, and later, much later, that youthful adoration had matured into a man’s utter and complete devotion.

He’d never heard her speak so plainly. She usually kept strong opinions to herself, never wanting to make another person feel uncomfortable. But those words…it was as if they had all bubbled up from some deep, dank well. Very deep, he thought with a grimace. What was it that Faulkner had said? The past is never dead. It isn’t even past. It nearly broke his heart to think that his life’s efforts had been for naught. No man could bear that.

During one circuit of the house he poured himself another drink. After another, he headed toward the small mahogany desk in the foyer and dug out Mama June’s blue address book. His eyes struggled with the letters and he fumbled for his reading glasses, an indignity of old age to which he’d never become reconciled. After a brief search through her feathery script, he picked up the phone and dialed the number in Montana.

His heart beat hard in his chest as he waited. Steadying himself against the wall, he listened to the phone ring once, twice, then two more times. At last he heard a click and the dreaded pause of a machine.

Hi. This is Morgan. I can’t come to the phone right now. Leave a brief message and I’ll call you back.

Preston was unprepared for the impact of his son’s voice after so many years of silence. He fumbled with the phone cord a moment, his tongue feeling unusually thick in his mouth. When the beep sounded he skipped a beat, then blurted, “Uh, Morgan, it’s your dad. I, uh…” Preston felt a sudden confusion and struggled to put his thoughts to words. He gripped the phone tight while his heart pounded. “I called to…to talk to you. Anyway, I—” This was going badly. He had to end it. “Well, goodbye, son.”

Preston’s hands shook as he hung up the phone. He leaned against the desk, panting as if he’d just plowed the back forty. Damn, he was even sweating! What bad luck that on his first call in years he got some damned answering machine.

The sadness in his heart weighed heavily in his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath and he felt as weak as a woman, barely able to bear his own weight. He pushed back from the desk, straightening, then felt again a surge of light-headedness, as if he might pass out. He staggered out to the porch, determined to let a few deep breaths of the cool ocean air balance him.

At the creak of the door Blackjack leapt from the cushioned settee and came trotting to his side, tail wagging.

“Back, boy,” he mumbled, stumbling past him.

The dog whined and pressed his muzzle persistently against his leg.

“Back!” he cried, swinging his arm. He lost his balance and reached out in a panic, searching for something—anything—to hold on to. His eyesight went blurry, and with frightening suddenness, he was teetering in the darkness. The thrumming in his head became a brutal pounding, building in crescendo, louder and louder. He was going down. His arms reached out toward the house as he hit the floor and it felt as if the lightning struck in his brain this time, jolting him, seizing his muscles. Everything went white with blinding pain.

“Mary Ju—”

The white faded to black. Then all was still.

2

Sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia filipes) is an indigenous, long stemmed plant that grows in tufts along the coastal dunes from North Carolina to Texas. This native plant is fast disappearing from the landscape due to urbanization and development of coastal islands and marshland.

THE ENGINE OF THE PICKUP truck churned loudly as it idled before the ornate black wrought-iron gates. Atop the gate, fashioned in the same elaborate scroll, a single word was forged: Sweetgrass. The truck vibrated with the idling engine, but that was not the cause of the quake in Morgan Blakely’s heart.

The truck door squeaked on its hinges as he pushed it open. A breeze of sweet-smelling air rushed into the stale compartment, awakening him from the lethargy of travel. With another push, his feet landed on Lowcountry soil for the first time in more than a decade. He rolled his shoulders, stiff under his denim jacket. Then, lifting his face to the moist, early morning air, he yawned wide and rubbed his face with callused palms. Forty some hours of hard driving sure could make a man’s muscles ache, he thought. He still felt the miles rolling beneath his feet. No wonder. It had taken him 850 miles on I-90 just to get out of Montana.

He hadn’t thought the Road Buzzard would make the journey, but the old Chevy limped along the roads like a dog finding its way home. Nope, they didn’t build them like they used to, he thought, giving the battleship-gray truck a pat of respect. He’d bought it when he was twenty-one and, being young and proud, had pumped serious money into it, adding a hitch, a winch, a toolbox and liner and, of course, a powerful sound system. Back then, he had money burning a hole in his pocket, dreams of adventure blurring his vision and enough anger and rebellion in his gut to fuel his own manifest destiny. He’d roared down this same road full throttle and never looked back.

It had been a long, hard journey. Now, years later, his tires were worn and his speakers were blown. Before leaving Montana, he’d stuffed what little extra money he had into his wallet, enough to get him home.

Home. Morgan surveyed the impenetrable wall of bush and pines that surrounded the family property from the prying eyes of folks zooming along busy Highway 17. A ragged culvert ran along the road—like a moat around a castle, he thought, mulishly kicking the gravel. He walked off to open the heavy gates. A moment later, he drove into his family’s estate.

The sunlight dappled the road as the truck crawled along. In the surrounding trees, birds and squirrels chattered at the dawn, and from the ground, a quail fluttered, squawking, into the air. At every turn, sights brought back memories he’d kept pushed back for a long while. He saw the crumbling ruins of the old smokehouse where, in colonial time, meat was preserved. Not far from it, near an underground stream of water, was the foundation of what was once a dairy. Milk and cheese used to be kept cold in the frigid waters. The spot had been a favorite play fort for the Blakely children.

Farther on by the western border lay a large peach orchard. Morgan frowned with worry at the sorry condition of the once meticulously maintained grounds. Beyond that lay the family graveyard. A little farther up the road, the trees opened to reveal a vast, cleared and mowed space that was used by the parish for Sunday picnics, oyster roasts, turkey shoots and other church functions.

He rounded a final, wide curve in the road. What he saw made him bring the truck to a stop. As the engine rumbled beneath him, he leaned forward on the steering wheel. The wave of homesickness surprised him.

Before him in the misty air of early morning was the long, formal avenue to his family home. Massive live oaks dripping lacy moss lined the narrow dirt road, sweeping low, like ancient sentries from a graceful time long gone. If the road’s culvert was the moat of this kingdom, he thought, then these noble oaks surely were her knights.

At the end of the long avenue, the Southern colonial house awaited him like a charming belle—petite, pretty and eager to welcome him into her warmth. His father loved the house like a woman—its slender white columns, the sweeping Dutch gambrel roof and the delicately arched dormers framed with quaint squares of glass. The low foundation was made of brick and oyster-shell lime, meant to last.