Free Low Country by Anne Rivers Siddons

that you wear
    the air of the Lowcountry somehow. It is not thin like
    other air.
    Clay thanked my grandfather seriously and politely
    for the afternoon, but he made no move to go. He did
    not even look at his borrowed boat, bobbing in the
    settling wake our own had made. He simply stood
    there, tall in the falling darkness, his mouse-fur hair in
    his eyes, the angry splotches made by the mosquitoes
    glowing on his arms and legs. I knew they must itch
    fiercely by now, but he made no move to scratch them.
    A new squadron came in from the marshes, level and
    low, and sang around our heads. I shook mine angrily.
    Mosquitoes make me childish and stupid.
    My grandfather swatted the back of his neck and I
    looked at him in surprise. I did not think mosquitoes
    bit him. He did not look at me.

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    “Let’s get on in the house before they take us off
    clear over to Edisto,” he said. “Clay, you need to put
    something on those bites, and then I think you ought
    to have some supper with us and forget about going
    back till the morning. We’ve got a guest room, such
    as it is, and I got a mess of crabs this morning. Cleaned
    ’em before you came. Some beer on ice, too. You don’t
    want to try to feel your way back over to Edisto in the
    dark. Levi might get you if Shem doesn’t.”
    I waited for Clay to demur, to say that he wouldn’t
    think of putting us out, but he did not.
    “I’d really like that,” he said. “There’s an awful lot I
    want to ask you about the island. Both of you,” he
    said, looking at me as if remembering I was there.
    “Granddaddy’s the historian,” I said shortly, and
    went to take a shower and anoint my own bites. I was
    annoyed with Clay Venable; he had said hardly a word
    to me all day. I would, I thought, have supper with
    them and then excuse myself and go to bed. Let them
    sit on the porch and gab the night away.…
    But I pulled out a new pair of flowered bell bottoms
    and a pale pink T-shirt that I knew would look dramat-
    ic against my tan, and sprayed on some of the Ma
    Griffe my stepfather had given me for Christmas. I
    knew that my mother had told him what to get, but
    still, I liked the cologne. It smelled both sweet and tart,
    like sum

    72 / Anne Rivers Siddons
    mer itself. I twisted my heavy hair up off my neck and
    pinned it on the top of my head. The day’s humidity
    had turned it to wiry frizz, and if I had let it fall loose
    it would have stood out like an afro. For not the first
    time, I considered ironing it and then shook my head
    angrily at myself and simply twisted it up and skewered
    it with hairpins. I did put on some lipstick, though,
    something I almost never did on the island.
    “You look pretty,” my grandfather said when I came
    out onto the porch. He and Clay were sitting in the
    old wooden rocking chairs, their feet up on the rail,
    drinking beers. Clay smiled at me.
    “You really do,” he said. “Like a Spanish painting,
    with your hair up. Velázquez or somebody. One of the
    infantas.”
    “You like art?” I said. “As well as alligators?”
    “I like lots of things,” he said, “art among them. I
    had four years of art appreciation at Virginia. They do
    pretty well by you. Your grandfather tells me you’re a
    real artist, though. I’d like to see some of your work.”
    “Maybe sometime,” I said, and then, because it
    sounded so ungracious, “If you still want to, I’ll show
    you some of the things I’ve been doing this summer
    before you go in the morning.”
    We feasted on boiled blue crabs, then sat while thick,
    utter darkness fell down suddenly, like a cast net, and
    the stars appeared, hot and

    Low Country / 73
    huge and silver, and fireflies pricked the darkness. They
    talked of the island, Clay and my grandfather, or rather
    my grandfather did, mostly. He talked of many things,
    slowly and casually, anecdotally, spinning his stories
    out judiciously like a tribal bard. He talked some more
    about Levi and about the