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Back Low Country Save as PDF
Chapters (25)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. CHAPTER 1
  4. CHAPTER 2
  5. CHAPTER 3
  6. CHAPTER 4
  7. CHAPTER 5
  8. CHAPTER 6
  9. CHAPTER 7
  10. CHAPTER 8
  11. CHAPTER 9
  12. CHAPTER 10
  13. CHAPTER 11
  14. CHAPTER 12
  15. CHAPTER 13
  16. CHAPTER 14
  17. CHAPTER 15
  18. CHAPTER 16
  19. CHAPTER 17
  20. CHAPTER 18
  21. CHAPTER 19
  22. CHAPTER 20
  23. CHAPTER 21
  24. CHAPTER 22
  25. CHAPTER 23

“She’s with Darcey,” I said as I stood.

“An’ that don’t make it one bit better,” she replied. “Now give me a kiss, and you clear on outta here.”

I put a hand on the arm of her chair and leaned over. Cyriah lifted her face to mine, placed a hand lightly on the side of my face, and kissed me on the lips. It was the comforting warm kiss of a mother for a child. When the kiss ended I pulled away slightly to look closely into her face.

She held my eyes with hers for several seconds, her brow knit in concentration, and I felt her looking deeply, searching for something, as though she were worried. Then her face relaxed, as though she recognized whatever it was she had sought.

Patting me gently on the face she said, “Come see me again, chile, when this is all over.”

I put my hand over hers and gave it a slight squeeze.

“I will,” I said as I started to leave.

Then, turning, I stepped to the door and parted the beads of the curtain. But pausing a second to glance over my shoulder, I saw Miss Cyriah, with her hand lifted in front of her face, turning her wrist back and forth so as to better study the magical blue stones that gathered and concentrated within themselves the subtle light of the room.

I stepped through the curtain and, behind me, heard the faint click of the beads as they swayed and fell into place once again. Then I went to look for Patricia.

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

THE AIR ABOVE THE SAND ROAD WAS pleasantly warm as Patricia and I walked back to the dock. The small lives in the forest hummed with contentment as we passed by, birds flitted from tree limb to tree limb, and lizards scurried across the track in front of us. We chatted sparingly as we ambled, each of us enjoying the tranquility of the afternoon and thinking of the things we had experienced that day.

Parker was still at the dock when we arrived, and he helped us get under way. He protested slightly, just enough for the sake of politeness, when I slipped him a few bills for watching over Miss Rosalie during our absence. Then, pulling away from the dock, I turned around in the broad channel and headed us back to the Georgia side of the Savannah River.

“The tide is falling and will soon be at low ebb,” I said to Patricia, who stood beside me in the pilothouse, intently watching the shoreline of Daufuskie as it slid steadily by. “And I don’t want to try the channel back the way we came, not at low water. What say we take the Intracoastal back to my dock and I’ll drive you to your car on Lazaretto.”