Adelaide Piper
P
RAISE FOR
B
ETH
W
EBB
H
ART
“[I]ntelligent and promising.”
â
Publishers Weekly
referring to
Adelaide Piper
“[W]ith humor and a nice southern accent . . . [
Adelaide Piper
is] a fine follow-up to her highly praised first novel, Grace at Low Tide.”
âBooklist, starred review
“Filled with sensitive and skillful writing . . .
Adelaide Piper
is a song from the heart!”
âinthelibraryreviews.net.
“Hart's characters are well developed and true to life. I will look for more books by this author.”
âMarie DisBrow from theroadtoromance.com
“It really speaks to the heart while tackling tough issues.”
â
www.epinions.com
referring to
Adelaide Piper
“[E]njoyable, contemporary reading that is entertaining . . .”
âJodi Kuhrt, Christian Book Previews.com
“[
Grace at Low Tide
] is unabashedly about the presence of God in the midst of pain and hopelessness. It is a gentle coming-of-age story with a warm, tender slant.”
â
Sonia Coffin,
The Charlotte Observer
“
Grace at Low Tide
, Hart's first novel, is an aromatic bouillabaisse of Southern manners, island life and God's redemptive love. Readers who love Oprah's book picks will find this title in keeping with the best contemporary fiction.”
âLynn Waalkes,
CBA Marketplace
“Beth Webb Hart's storytelling is as rich, complex, and detailed as the intricate Southern landscape she describes [in
Grace at Low Tide
]. Mercy and grace flow from the pages of this coming-of-age novel. A glorious debut.”
âPatti Callahan Henry, author of
Where the River Runs
Adelaide Piper
Adelaide Piper
Beth Webb Hart
Copyright © 2006 by Beth Webb Hart
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâelectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherâexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
WestBow Press books may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Scriptures quotations are taken from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. The King James Version of the Bible. The New King James Version, copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.
Publisher's Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hart, Beth Webb, 1971â
Adelaide Piper / Beth Webb Hart.
p. cm.
ISBN 10: 1-59554-027-X
ISBN 13: 978-1-59554-027-0
1. Young womenâFiction. 2. Women college students--Fiction. 3. AuthorsâFiction. 4. Campus violenceâFiction. 5. Southern Statesâ
Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A78395A34 2006
813'.6âdc22
2006011841
Printed in the United States of America
06 07 08 09 10 RRD 8 7 6 5 4 3
This book is dedicated to my tenacious cheerleader
and devoted father, Joe W. Jelks III.
Contents
Swimming Lesson
I
had just turned six the afternoon my father peeled off my water wings to show me I could swim. We were spending the last week of summer on Pawleys Island, and the August tide had built a gully four feet deep and almost twenty yards wide that was flanked by a sandbar on the ocean side and beds of crushed shells along the beach.
“Come on in, Adelaide,” he said, motioning with his good arm as I stood at the edge of the gully, fingering the dime-sized mole in the center of my forehead. My jewel, Daddy had named it, and because of him I believed it was a precious stone that marked my distinction.
As I stepped ankle-deep into the warm, salty water, I glanced back over the dunes to the front porch of the beach cottage where my paternal grandfolks, Papa Great and Mae Mae, were already sipping their gin and tonics while Mama spooned pea mush out of a little jar that Dizzy, my younger sister, refused to eat. And I imagined the pop and sizzle of Juliabelle frying up shrimp and hush puppies in the kitchen, though I knew she was watching me out of the corner of her eye.
“If you make the swim, I give you a piece from the secret stash, eh?” she had said. She hoarded bubble gum in a brown paper bag beneath her bed, and I hounded her for a piece whenever I got the chance.
Daddy was near the middle of the gully now, the murky green licking his washboard belly. He dived under for several seconds before turning over and floating on his back, his broad chest rising out of the water. He spit a fountain of green from his lips and said, “Sure feels good!”
I would have splashed right in after Daddy if I'd had a flotation device. A few days ago he had shown me how to paddle in my water wings over to the sandbar at low tide, and I had filled my bucket with bachelor's buttons, hermits, and a horseshoe crab that was shuffling across the surface in its heavy armor. But yesterday Papa Great dared me to go on my own (no Daddy and no life jacket), and I had sunk into the dark, soupy depth at the center of the gully, swallowing what felt like half the Atlantic Ocean until Daddy caught hold of my ponytail and yanked me to the surface.
Now I moved in to my knees and planned to take every second of the time he was giving me to get my courage up. There was a quick drop-off after the next bed of crushed shells, and I knew that in a few short steps the water would cover me whole.
“Don't push her too hard, Zane,” Mama called from behind the screened porch. There was a murmur among them that I couldn't make out, but even at that tender age I could guess that Mae Mae was saying, “Let her try,” while Papa Great concluded, “Fear's got her by the scruff.”
Fact was, I wasn't afraid of what was
in
the ocean. Why, a man-of-war had wrapped its tentacles around my second cousin Randy's calf two mornings ago, leaving thin red burn marks, as if he had been caught in one of the wild hog traps Daddy set along the swamp. And even after Mama numbed Randy's leg with meat tenderizer and let me touch it, so I could feel the heat rising off his seared skin, I still jumped right back into the gully that afternoon.
And just this morning, Papa Great had caught a sand shark longer than my leg on his fishing line, and I had touched its leathery belly with the tip of my big toe as he held it between his knees and pulled the hook out of its snout. But right after, I went back in with Daddy to venture to the sandbar and collect my treasures.
No, it wasn't fear of what was in the water. Seems to me I just didn't want that dark and covered feeling. Not knowing which way was up. Not knowing if Daddy would find me.
The water wings were swirling in the breeze along the beach now as I stood knee-deep in the gully, and since I prided myself in keeping track of my belongings, I stepped out to chase after them. To pin them beneath Daddy's beach chair.
“Don't worry about those, gal!” he said as he stood back up in the water and shook his head so that his soaked hair looked like two fins above his ears. “Now,
come on in
.”
The water was a gray-green broth, and when I stepped back in, I could feel the sand and shells stir up for a moment, but I couldn't see through the clouds to whatever was swirling around my legs now.
All of a sudden, Daddy moved forward and pulled me out by my elbow with his only hand. He smelled like sweat and coconut suntan lotion, and I had to paddle quickly with my other arm beneath his fiery pink stump to stay afloat. The stump was wrinkled at its very tip from where a doctor had sliced off his forearm in an army hospital in Than Khe, Vietnam. Sometimes I asked him what the hospital had done with his other arm, and he winked and said they fed it to the dogs before admitting that he didn't have the foggiest idea.
Now I was flailing my arms and gasping for air as we reached the gully depths, and he said, “I'm going to let go, all right? I'll be here if you need me.”
He released my arm, and I tried to touch bottom just to get my bearings. To get a nice shove up and out of the water. Some momentum. But as my foot searched for the sharp shells that lined the floor, I was already sunk, and when I breathed in the water, it stung my nose and throat.
“Easy now,” Daddy said, lifting me above the surface for a moment so I could cough it out. Then, “Here we go again, gal.” And he dropped me down and stepped back fast.
I tried whirling my arms and legs into a motion that would buoy me, but before you could say “boo!” I was covered in the dark soup again and holding my breath.
One Mississippi.
Two Mississippi.
Covered in darkness.
Water rushing into my nose.
He found my shoulder this time, pulled me up, and dragged me onto the shore, where I coughed for dear life and rubbed my burning eyes. My heart was pounding like the wings of the hummingbirds that sipped from Mae Mae's feeder most afternoons. And the tiny bits of crushed shells were clinging to the backs of my legs and gathering in the folds of my bathing suit.
“You're my little fish, Adelaide,” Daddy said.
Papa Great had given him the month of August off so that he could vacation with us, and as long as I had his hand and a float, I'd go way out beyond the waves and let the current push us down the beach toward the pier.
“I know you can do it,” he whispered now.
“Dinnertime!” Juliabelle called from the screened porch. I could see her long, thin neck craning to check on me. She never went near the ocean. Her younger brother had drowned in the surf when she was a girl, and she said it would do me good to know how to keep myself afloat. But I guessed even she was concluding that I couldn't do it. Not this year, anyway.
The porch door slapped once as Papa Great ambled out onto the boardwalk to holler down at us.