Low Country

Eric L. Haney

Nobody to Turn to...

I looked closely at the woman. She was slightly built and thin to the point of boniness. She was dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans, and white sneakers. Her hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she held herself rigidly, one arm across her midsection, as she nervously smoked a cigarette. When she inhaled her cheeks collapsed over missing teeth. She stared at me with a fixed intensity as she exhaled a long blue stream of smoke, and said nothing. At first I thought she was Danny Ray’s mother, and then it dawned on me who she actually was.

“Mrs. Causey?” I asked as Danny Ray stepped forward.

She took another drag on her cigarette before removing it from her mouth and announcing, “Yeah, I am,” in a smoke-and-whiskey voice.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Causey,” I said to the sad woman before me. “I wish there was some way I could help.”

“Danny Ray, here, tells me that maybe you can, Mr. Tanner. My daughter didn’t commit suicide,” she said as tears came to her eyes. “She was kilt. I know it, but won’t nobody listen to me. Not the law. Not nobody. I need your help, Mr. Tanner.”

I took a deep breath and then stepped forward. As the woman dissolved into tears, I put an arm around her thin shoulders and guided her toward my boat. “Come with me, Mrs. Causey, and you can tell me all about it.”

Berkley titles by Eric L . Haney

Fiction

LOW COUNTRY
NO MAN’S LAND

Nonfiction

BEYOND SHOCK AND AWE

(written with Brian M. Thomsen)

Title Page

Copyright Page

THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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LOW COUNTRY

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

PRINTING HISTORY

Berkley mass-market edition / December 2010

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eISBN : 978-1-101-44570-9

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CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1

THE DEAD HAVE A MYSTERIOUS WAY of returning. Three weeks ago I was working on the deck of my boat, the Miss Rosalie, when my friend Danny Ray Pledger came roaring up in his skiff, trembling and stuttering, unable to talk, and clearly in distress. He needed help, and he needed it badly.

While fishing, Danny Ray had found the badly decomposed body of a girl cast up by the tide in the remote wilderness of the great salt marsh of coastal Georgia. Not knowing what to do, he had come to me. We jumped in my sea skiff, and I returned with Danny Ray to the site of his grisly find. After calling the Coast Guard and having them alert the Chatham County Police, I sent Danny Ray back to my dock to guide the authorities while I stayed with the body.

Why had Danny Ray come to me first instead of going directly to the police himself? Well, the answer is a pretty simple one. Danny is a constituent part of society that always gets the short end of the stick. Poor as a church mouse, badly educated, slight of build, and with a bad stutter, no real job, and no connections, Danny is the quintessential Coastal Cracker.

Had he gone to the police with his discovery, it’s a sure bet he would have been locked up as a suspect, and there’s a strong likelihood he would have been charged with the girl’s death. The law is applied in accordance with a man’s standing in society, and the police and the court system are always quick to pick the low-hanging fruit. It ain’t fair, but that’s the way it is.

So I took the responsibility of being the official discoverer of the body. I had to answer a few questions about myself concerning my own standing in the community. But when the officer handling the case, Detective Patricia Latham, ran a background check on me, I no longer fit the potential-suspect category.

I thought that was the end of it, and a couple of days later Detective Latham stopped by to tell me the girl had been identified as Tonya Causey, from up in Effingham County, and that the cause of death was suicide by drowning. Turns out that four days before the body was found two witnesses had called in to report a slightly built girl with red hair jumping from the Talmadge Bridge in downtown Savannah. So the case, as far as the police were concerned, was closed.

But I was a little puzzled myself. It seemed to me the body should have been washed directly out to sea rather than lodging in the tidal marsh; but then again, the currents and the wind have strange patterns. Then I had taken an urgent job out of the country, and the matter had slipped to the recesses of my mind. Until tonight.

I had just returned home and was walking across the darkened parking lot to the boardwalk leading down to the dock when Danny Ray drove up with a visitor in tow, a woman. They got out of the car, and both stood hesitantly.

“Mrs. Causey?” I asked as Danny Ray stepped forward.

She took another drag on her cigarette before removing it from her mouth and announcing, “Yeah, I am,” in a smoke-and-whiskey voice.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Causey,” I said to the sad woman before me. “I wish there was some way I could help.”

I cast a glance over my shoulder to where Danny Ray stood waiting. “And you, too, Danny Ray. You’re a part of this thing, too.”

We sat on the aft deck and talked until well after midnight, or to be more accurate about it, Joree (as she bade me call her) talked and smoked, while I listened. I demonstrated my interest in her tale with frequent nods of the head and “uh-huhs,” but that was all I had to do by way of encouragement. Joree gushed words with the physical force of water blasting forth from an uncapped fire hydrant. Most of it was only casually related to her daughter’s death.

It seemed she talked about every other topic that came to her: about the sorry no-count men who had drifted in and out of her life; about the difficulty of making ends meet; about caring for her own mother and watching her die for lack of decent medical treatment; and on to a dozen other trials and tribulations she had ever suffered. Taken in total, it was a depressing tale of life at the bottom of the social scale. The only time she smiled and spoke in a positive manner was when she talked of her daughter, Tonya, as a child. Those seemed to be the few moments of joy and happiness in the sad litany of Joree Causey’s life.

I let her talk until she ran out of steam. And as I listened I realized that more than anything else, she just wanted someone to pay attention to her. Someone to treat her with courtesy and respect. Someone to listen sympathetically, and not tell her how she should or shouldn’t act, or feel, or speak. Someone to treat her as a fellow human being of worth and substance. This is a thing most of us take for granted, but something exceedingly rare and in short supply in the lives of the very poor.

And then, sending a last cigarette butt hissing overboard in a glowing red arc to the silent black waters we floated upon, she suddenly ran out of words and sat quietly, rocking back and forth in rhythm with the subtle movements of the boat, staring out across the darkened expanse of the great salt marsh.

While she talked I had held her with my eyes, never taking my gaze from her face as she poured forth her tale of hardship and sorrow. And I held her with my eyes still, as she quietly retreated into herself, her face softening as it relaxed, and becoming younger-looking, while her eyes took on the vacant emptiness of a thousand-yard stare. It seemed to me that she had gone someplace else, somewhere completely private, reflecting on memories old and new, and possibly seeing things that could have been but never were, and now, would never have the chance to be.

I left her alone in that place and we sat silently for many minutes, the quiet broken only now and then by the splash of a feeding fish out on the dark water or the lonesome cry of a passing nighthawk in unseen flight. At length, I saw her body shiver slightly beneath the wool blanket I had wrapped about her shoulders, and she came back to the here and now. Her face reassumed its hardened defensive set as she turned her eyes to me once again.

“You’ve been mighty kind, Mr. Tanner, to sit here and listen to my story. I ’magine you must think I’m about the sorriest piece a white trash you ever did come across.”

“Joree, my name is Kennesaw, and that’s what I want you to call me. My granddaddy is Mr. Tanner, and if I ever become half the man he is, then I’ll be about as pleased with myself as a man can be.”

She looked at me quizzically for a moment and then smiled for the first time tonight. It was slow in coming at first, as though it were an unaccustomed act. Her mouth relaxed just slightly, turned upward at the corners, and then a full smile blossomed across her face. She put a hand over her mouth to cover it and averted her face in shyness. I reached across the space between us and, gently putting a finger on her hand, pulled it away from her mouth and guided it to her lap. She looked up then, the smile still on her face, but also a look of wonder in her eyes.

“You have a pretty smile, Joree. I hope you get to wear it more often; it looks good on you,” I said as I held her eyes.

She leaned forward, put a hand on mine, and gave it a squeeze as tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

“Thank ye,” she whispered. “Thank ye for listening to a heartbroke old woman. If nothing more comes of it than that, it’s been a blessing to me.”

She gave my hand a final squeeze, and then, squaring her shoulders and sitting up straight, she shrugged off the blanket and stood up. She looked over at Danny Ray, asleep in a deck chair, and then glanced at her wristwatch.

“Lordy, Mr. Ta . . . Kennesaw,” she said with a start, “it’s long past midnight and I’m a-keeping you up.” She nudged Danny Ray with a foot. “Come on, Danny, I got to git home, it’s late.”

Danny Ray sat up, instantly awake.

“Joree, why don’t you stay here tonight? I have two spare cabins; there’s room here on the boat for you and Danny Ray both.”

“I ’preciate the thought, but no, I got to git home,” she said with determination. “I have people depending on me. ’Sides it ain’t all that far from here, only ’bout forty-five minutes this time a night. And don’t you worry ’bout Danny Ray having to drive me up there. My car’s parked over at his place.”

She stepped close and extended her hand as she looked up and swept my face with her eyes. I took her hand, and then as I put an arm around her shoulders, she leaned her face against my chest and gave me a firm hug. As she stepped back and looked up again I saw that her eyes were wet once more, but the smile was back on her face.

“I’ll do what I can, Joree. I don’t know what that will amount to, but I’ll do my best,” I said.

“You done plenty already,” she said in a soft voice as Danny led the way to the gangplank.

I stood at the rail and watched as Danny and Joree made their way up the ramp to the parking lot. I lifted a hand as the car pulled away and saw, through the mist that had begun to settle over the land, a fleeting view of Joree’s face, and the palm and fingers of the hand she had placed on the passenger window as a parting salute. Then the red taillights turned on to the street above and were rapidly swallowed by the quiet folds of the night.

I stood in thought for several seconds, looking at the empty street and listening for—I don’t know what. I turned to go below to my waiting bunk, but hesitated for a second at the companionway as my nose detected a shift in the breeze. A front’s coming through, I thought. I wonder what change it will bring. Then I descended the six steps to below, closed and locked the hatch behind me, and turned in for the night.

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

SOME PEOPLE SAY THAT THE TRUTH is a fixed quantity, unchangeable and permanent, but I don’t think that is so. I think of it as something entirely mysterious and fragile. In my experience it is like the wind and the ocean currents, ever moving, swirling and dancing, now here and then somewhere else again. Try as we might to pin it down, it eludes us, floating and shifting shape, changing according to the viewpoint and position of the beholder. What is true to me may not be the same for you. And what you believe to be fact may be something else entirely to me, or another person.

Perceptions are filtered through the sieve of the experience of our conscious and unconscious lives. Even when a person is doing their utmost to relay the facts of a situation, it is never complete and never absolutely correct. That doesn’t make it right or wrong, it just makes it the way it is. What Joree Causey had given me was a starting point, a place to begin.

And what Joree had told me was the truth of certain matters as they appeared to her, and nothing more. Again, what I had heard was a place to start, and for that I was grateful. I had heard the first notes of a song, but there was more to come, and I needed to listen to the music for a bit. In my mind the tune was still off-key and had not yet found its rhythm, and I was not quite ready to dance.

In all that Joree had said she had never once spoken of Tonya in the last year. Where she lived, what she did, how she supported herself was never mentioned. Either Joree had no idea concerning the missing portion of her daughter’s life—that critical year prior to her death—or it was something that she just couldn’t bring herself to speak of. Maybe it was a mixture of the two, a compound of willful ignorance and reticence. Perhaps she knew a bit but found it too painful or embarrassing to think about, much less tell to a stranger.

I intended to sleep in that next morning but awoke at dawn with a restless energy kicking me out of my bunk. I put on a pot of Mexican coffee, and then, as I shaved and readied myself for the day, I played Joree Causey’s story to myself one more time. After that, I purposely put it away in a corner of my mind, where my subconscious could chew it over until I was ready to bring it to the light once again, and examine it with a new and critical eye.

Joree’s belief that her daughter was killed by an unknown someone could be correct—but it could also be the case that the girl had indeed decided to end her life by taking a plunge from the Talmadge Bridge into the all-embracing and uncaring waters of the Savannah River. Only one thing was certain at this point: Tonya Causey was dead, and she wasn’t about to become undead anytime soon.

In the galley, I opened a can of Spam, the staple food of refugees everywhere. I love the stuff. I fried a couple of pieces until it had a dark crust, and sliced some hoop cheese. Putting that delicious twosome between a couple of pieces of bread, I poured a fresh cup of coffee and went up on deck to enjoy my breakfast al fresco.

The morning air had a pleasant crispness to it that had cleared the atmosphere of all haze and made for a startling clarity of vision. The wind was dead calm, and as I looked across the unmoving immensity of the salt marsh, it appeared as though it were a still life, a painting done by a master’s hand. Then the sun, rising from its watery bed of night, lifted its face above the treetops of Tybee Island, and cast a wave of golden light in a westward arc, enhancing and illuminating the sublime beauty of the natural scene until it was almost too much for mortal man to bear.

I stood mesmerized by the sight and thought, If it all came to an end today, if life has run its course and I were to breathe no more, the gift of being here, right now, would have paid for the trip in full.

Then the full body of old Sol heaved himself well above the green horizon, and the day was on. As I ate, the silence of the morning was broken only once by a boat full of sport fishermen. They waved in greeting as they passed by, and I returned the salutation. Soon they were out of sight, headed in the direction of Bull River and Wassaw Sound. I silently wished them good luck.

Finishing the last bite of sandwich and washing it down with a final slurp of coffee, I went below to the galley to wash and put away the pan and other utensils. While taking care of that chore I remembered that it was a Saturday and then determined what I would do with the day. Miss Rosalie had been tied to the dock for a while, and no self-respecting boat can stand that for very long. I would get her ready for action and treat us both to an excursion.

In the engine room I checked oil, transmission fluid, and engine coolant levels. A diesel engine will run almost forever if you give it clean air to breathe, clean fuel to burn, and clean oil to keep everything properly lubed. But diesel fuel loves water, so I drained several ounces from each of the three fuel filters to make sure there was no H2O in the system.

Happy that no liquids were where they shouldn’t be, I gave the engine and transmission the once-over, looking for leaks, drips, and loose hose fittings. The absence of any of those indicators of trouble made for a comforting feeling. The pre-ops check finished, I gave that magnificent Gardner engine a fond pat on top of the number three cylinder valve cover and went back above.

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