Stuart Woods - Palindrome

A moment later, he was following a faint track through the dunes, headed toward the interior of the island. They drove along quietly, Angus occasionally pointing out some place of interest. They passed black workmen running an old road scraper and doing other maintenance jobs.

Shortly, they pulled to a stop among a group of deserted-looking wooden houses.

"The old slave settlement," Angus said. "I built some more modern houses at Dungeness a long time ago for the workmen and their families, but I never pulled down the old slave settlement." He nodded at an elderly black man who was coming out of a tiny church. "And here comes its only resident." He raised his voice. "Good morning, Buck," he called. "Come over here and meet somebody."

The old man shuffled across the few yards that separated them. "Hey, Mist' Angus," he said.

"How you doing'?"

"Pretty good. Buck, this is Miz Barwick. She's staying down to Stafford Beach. Miz Barwickthis is Buck Moses, who worked for my daddy and me for most of the past century. Buck is our only officially retired citizen. I still work."

Liz remembered having seen him in his truck. "Hello, Mr. Moses," she said.

"Now, you call me Buck, just like everybody else," the old man said, with a toothless grin.

"Buck is the only man alive who knows more about this island than I do," Angus said. "He taught me what I know, but he kept a few secrets to himself, didn't you, Buck?"

"Now, Mist' Angus, you know I can't hide nothing from you. You see right through me."

"That's a laugh." Angus snorted. "Well, Buck, we've got some territory to cover. We'll be on our way." With a wave, he drove on.

"How old is he?" Liz asked.

"Nobody knows; not even Buck," Angus replied. "I'm ninety-one my last birthday, and the first time I remember Buck he must have been twelve or thirteen. That'd make him at least a hundred and five, but he might be older. He was my best friend when I was a boy; taught me everything. My son, too, and my grandsons. My daddy spent most of his time in New York, so I didn't see much of him. Buck took up the slack. Then, when my boy was killed in that plane crash in 'sixty, old Buck was right there with the twins, too. I expect Buck believes he owns Cumberland Island, and in a way I suppose he's right. He's going to outlive me, I know it."

Angus drove on in silence for a while, then pulled off the road and drove along a track for a way, ducking tree branches. Finally, he stopped and waved an arm. "Lake Whitney," he said. Liz saw a lake nearly covered with water lilies. As she watched, a doe waded into the water on the other side, a hundred and fifty yards away. "We're downwind," Angus said. "Go ahead and take your picture."

Liz quietly got set up and had the deer framed when a commotion broke out in the water on the other side of the lake. She snatched her head from under the black cloth, away from the upside-down image, and looked.

The deer was screaming, thrashing about in the water. Then it went down and disappeared, while the water continued to churn.

"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch," Angus said, wonderingly, almost to himself.

"What happened?" Liz asked weakly, too stunned to move.

"It's Goliath," Angus said. "Miz Barwick, you're a lucky girl. You could live on this island for nearly a hundred years, like I have, and not see a thing like that."

"Who's Goliath?" Liz asked.

"He's the biggest alligator I ever saw, and the last time I saw him was a good fifteen years ago. He was a twelve-footer then; God knows how big he is now."

Liz stood, looking at the spot where the doe had disappeared. The water was glassy smooth again. She suddenly realized that she had not pressed the shutter release.

"Let's get going," Angus said.

"The poor deer," Liz said, climbing into the jeep.

"Gators got to eat, too," Angus said with a shrug. He got the jeep going again and pointed it away from the lake. "See you don't take any swims in Lake Whitney, nor any place around it. Gators can walk, too."

They were on what passed for a main road now. Angus swung around a sharp bend and drove down a straight stretch. They passed through a gate and came to a flat lawn.

Ahead of them sat a gracefully designed Palladian mansion, gleaming white in the sun, framed by giant live oaks. Angus stopped the jeep.

"That's Plum Orchard," he said. "I built it for my boy, Evan, after the last war."

"It's beautiful," Liz said. "Who lives there now?"

"Nobody," Angus said, swinging the jeep around. "I keep a roof on it, keep it painted. I wouldn't want to see it fall down. Maybe one of my grandsons will come back and live in it one day. I'll be gone by then." For a moment the old man looked stricken; then he looked up and paid attention to his driving. For the remainder of their drive they talked about the island and its history and how Angus Drummond had shaped it. It seemed to Liz that, in a couple of hours, they had covered more ground than most new acquaintances did in weeks. They warmed to each other.

When the jeep pulled up at Stafford Beach Cottage, Liz climbed out and retrieved her tripod. "That was a wonderful tour," she said. "I hope I'll get to see Dungeness one of these days, too.

"I'd be honored to show it to you," he said. "You're a young woman of some substance, Miz Barwick." He grinned. "If I were fifty years younger, I'd do something about it."

"Thank you for that," she said. "Call me Liz."

"I'll call you Elizabeth," he said. Then he put the jeep in gear and drove away.

Liz watched him go, then trudged into the house with her gear. It occurred to her that Angus Drummond, at ninety-one, was the most attractive man she had met in years. She wondered if that was a comment on him or on her.

Germaine Drummond was at her desk off the kitchen at Greyfield Inn when she heard her grandfather's jeep. She got up, opened the screen door, and stuck her head out. "Hey, Grandpapa!" she called. "You want a cup of tea?"

Angus sat in the idling jeep and looked at her for a moment. "Germaine," he said, "you call my lawyer and tell him to come over here and see me. Next week will be soon enough." Then he drove on. Germaine stepped out into the drive and ate a little of his dust. He was finally going to make a will. She felt weak with relief.

Liz stood naked before the mirror and, for the first time since she had struggled into the Piedmont Trauma Center, looked deliberately at her reflection. At first it was something of a shock. Her hair was still short enough to be spiky, and she was still thinner than at any time since prepubescence, but the Cumberland sun had given her color, and the last of her bruises had faded, taking their yellow tinge with them. The person who stared back at her seemed a reasonably healthy woman. Her thoughts returned to the couple she had seen on her first visit to the inn. How long since she had leaned against a man in that way? How long since she had made love? She laughed at herself. A reasonably healthy woman, indeed! She slipped into a favorite cotton nightshirt and padded barefoot, into the kitchen to fix herself dinner. She put a steak under the grill and, while it cooked, opened a bottle of California Merlot and poured herself a glass. She took her meal out onto the deck and ate it greedily while the light died and the blue sea beyond the dunes faded into a slate gray. She had an appetite at last, and the wine was good, too. She poured herself another glass and sat on a chaise, hugging her knees, sipping the wine while half a moon rose from the Atlantic Ocean. She was dug in, now, and that day she had taken a good photograph, the one of the pelicans on the beach. Except for her loneliness, this felt very much like contentment.

A fresh breeze swept in, bringing with it the promise of autumn, though that season comes late on Cumberland. She shivered a bit, then walked through the darkening cottage to the kitchen, where she washed her dishes. When the kitchen was neat, she returned to the living room and stretched out on the sofa. She sipped the last of her glass of wine and watched the moon swing across the sky, turning the room white and leaving her in shadow. She did not remember falling asleep; she only knew how good it felt. When the noise woke her she knew exactly where she was, in spite of the wine, and she knew where the noise came from: the kitchen. There was the closing of the refrigerator and the scrape of a chair on the linoleum floor. She lay still, trying to keep her breathing steady, wondering what to do. Then she became angry. This was her house, and intruders were not welcome. Quietly, she felt for her large camera case, found what she wanted, and moved toward the kitchen, weight on the balls of her feet, afraid to breathe. She stopped at the kitchen door and tamped down her fear for a moment. Then she eased her head around the doorjamb. A man was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking something. The moonlight through the window was weaker at the back of the house, but even in the dimness she could see that he was naked. For some reason, this made her even angrier. She brought her hand up, shut her eyes tightly, and fired the strobe light. "Jesus Christ!" the man yelled. There was the sound of furniture overturning.