The Elementals (28 page)

“Shoot! And don’t I know it!” cried Luker’s mother. “And I don’t want to know it either! But I tell you something. India knows all about it. She’s been talking to me—we’ve gotten real close in the time we’ve spent here together—and times are she starts to say something and then she holds back. That child has probably seen things and heard things that you and I never even read in those magazines you look at under the hair dryer.”

They had wandered out on to the porch, but found that all the furniture there was filled with sand. Pools of it had gathered in the seats of the rockers and the glider and no amount of shaking and tilting could get rid of it all. “Yesterday that rain washed all the sand away, and it was so clean this morning! Now look at it! We’re leaving prints everywhere we walk on this porch! Mama, let’s walk down by the lagoon, and see how high the channel is now.”

Big Barbara assented to this and mother and daughter strolled along the level shore of St. Elmo’s Lagoon, their conversation reverting to the limitless ramifications of Big Barbara’s divorce and Leigh’s pregnancy. When they reached the point where the houses were small and indistinct behind them and the channel was just visible before them, growing wider and deeper as the tide rose, Big Barbara pointed suddenly at the surface of the lagoon.

“Law have mercy!” she cried.

“What, Mama?” said Leigh. “What is it?”

“Look there, Leigh. Don’t you see it?”

Leigh shook her head, and her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her a few steps over. “You can’t see anything from there because of the reflection on the water, but look here, look what’s under there!”

What Leigh could see when she moved nearer her mother was a submerged truck. All they could actually make out was the top of the cab: the windshield, back window, and part of the door frame. The rest was buried in the sandy bottom of the lagoon.

“I never!” exclaimed Leigh. “Mama, have you ever noticed that before?”

“Well of course I haven’t! ’Cause it wasn’t there before! I would have noticed a truck in the middle of the lagoon if it had been there, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. Except, Mama, it must have been there a long time to get buried like that.”

“Then we would have noticed, wouldn’t we? ’Course maybe it
was
buried a long time ago and that storm yesterday disturbed it and it came floating up.”

“Oh, I bet that’s what happened,” said Leigh. “Listen, why don’t I swim out there and look inside?” Leigh was already in her bathing suit.

“Oh, no!” protested Big Barbara. “Don’t do any such of a thing! What if there’s somebody under the dashboard, you don’t want to be diving under the water and then run into a dead body or something. Maybe long time ago somebody got drunk on the Dixie Graves Parkway and lost his way and drove right in the lagoon—the highway’s not more than a few hundred yards on the other side—drove right in and sank in and drowned. And nobody ever found out about it. If somebody drowned in that truck he’s probably still in there.”

“Then I sure am
not
gone swim out there and look in!”

“But I don’t imagine that’s what happened, really. It was probably kids, some kids from Gulf Shores getting drunk on Saturday night and driving a truck in the lagoon because it was a fun thing to do. It could have happened on July Fourth for all we know. I always suspected that bottom was soft. Poor old Martha-Ann! No wonder we never found her!”

Half an hour later the entire population of Beldame was standing on the edge of St. Elmo’s Lagoon, peering into the water at the submerged truck. As soon as they had returned to the house, Leigh and Big Barbara had sought out the others and told them what they had seen. The discovery of a submerged truck in the lagoon was of more than sufficient novelty to draw them all out. The six of them in concert could make no better sense of it than Big Barbara and Leigh alone had managed. The truck had been there a long time, or it had not; there was a corpse in the cab, or there was not; someone had best swim out to look inside, or they had better remain on the shore. In any case, further investigation was put off until tomorrow—or the day after.

To India’s eye, Odessa appeared disturbed by the discovery of the vehicle in the lagoon; and India then partook of some of that discomfort. However, when India asked Odessa if the truck
meant
anything, Odessa replied, “
Mean
, child? Trucks don’t mean nothing to me.”

“But wasn’t it just an accident-like? What else could it be?”

Odessa whispered so that none of the others heard her words: “D’you see, child, how far out that truck was in the lagoon? Didn’t nobody drive it out there. Somebody had, it would have gone down a lot nearer the other side—and it’s right out there in the middle! Something
put
that truck there, put it where we’d see it and know it
wasn
’
t
no accident—”

“But
why
?” demanded India.

Odessa shrugged and would say nothing more.

The curious discovery provided their conversation through most of supper—smothered steak and little white peas and fried okra. These were Dauphin’s favorites, prepared in honor of his birthday. It was only toward dessert—a German chocolate cake with thirty candles that Odessa had baked before they left Mobile—that they returned to the infinitely interesting topic of the dissolution of the marriage of Lawton and Big Barbara McCray. They were all for it, and even Odessa, as she brought out a tray with five cups of coffee on it, ventured her approval in this manner: “Miz Barbara, I tell you, we sure are gone be glad to have you at the Great House. It was always a happy place when you was visiting Miz Marian there . . .”

Luker and India drank their coffee black; Big Barbara and Leigh and Dauphin took sugar and milk. Luker and India sipped at theirs and repeated the family litany of gratitude, “Sure was good, Odessa.”

To which Odessa replied invariably, “Glad y’all enjoyed it.”

Leigh took a swallow of her coffee and immediately spat it out all over her cake. “Good lord!” she cried, opened her mouth wide and energetically wiped the back of her hand across it.

“What’s wrong?” cried Dauphin.

“Leigh?” said Big Barbara.

“Don’t taste that coffee!”

“Nothing wrong with it,” said India. “Mine’s fine.”

“So’s mine,” said Luker.

“It’s got
sand
in it,’ said Leigh. “I got a mouthful of sand! It’s all over my teeth and my gums and I hate it!” She got up hurriedly and ran into the kitchen. In another moment they heard the running water from the sink.

“Ugh!” said Dauphin, tasting his own coffee, “it
is
full of sand.”

“Must be in the sugar,” said India, and they all stared suspiciously at the sugar bowl. Luker reached over and stirred the sugar with a wetted finger; he brought it to his mouth and tasted. “Almost all sand,” he said with a grimace and wiped his tongue on his napkin. Beldame sand was
that
pure and white, that it could be easily confused with sugar. “Who’s the joker?”

They looked at one another silently. Odessa sat in a chair against the kitchen wall; in a moment Leigh reappeared in the doorway. With no one speaking and everyone still for the first time that evening, another sound came to the fore.

“What’s that?” whispered Big Barbara.

“Shhh!” said Luker.

They were silent again. There was a hiss, irregular and not loud, and it seemed to come from all sides of them.

They had begun supper when it was still fairly light out, but now it was deep dusk, and the room was dark and shadowed around them. At Luker’s request Odessa switched on the overhead light.

From all the corners and moldings of the room fell a fine spray of white sand. It had piled up in a white line all around the baseboards. From the doorway Leigh looked up, and grains of sand spilled painfully into her eyes; sand spilled from the ceiling into Odessa’s hair and she vigorously brushed it out again. When they hurried toward the table in the center of the room their sandals scraped across the glaze of sand that coated the floor.

Chapter
29

Sand had got not only into the sugar bowl, but into all the cabinets of the kitchen and spilled out when Odessa pulled open the doors. Even closed canisters of coffee and tea had got sand into them and the sink drains were stopped with sand. It was mounding at the ends of counters. Coffee and Dauphin’s cake were abandoned on the table, and it didn’t even seem worthwhile to clear the dishes.

Leigh and Dauphin went upstairs and found that in their bedroom, where the windows had been opened, sand had blown through the screens and left everything gritty and white. Leigh was glad that she had not yet unpacked, for all the clothes that had been left in the closed drawers of the dresser and chifforobe were filled with sand as well. In the other bedrooms sand had blown against the windows, leaving them opaque as with frost. They did not get up to the third floor at all, for the sand was falling so thickly there it proved an absolute shower down the staircase. The sound of falling sand, never letting up as they went room to room, was disheartening.

Luker moved around the first floor, shutting the windows and closing the doors. He stood on a tall chair and examined the ceiling all around, but could not discover how the sand gained entrance. It spilled from everywhere, and seemed to increase in intensity with every passing minute.

India and Big Barbara sat together very still on the wicker sofa in the living room, pulled away from the wall, and looked about them with distress. At last India stood, placed a newspaper over her head to protect her from the pure white and heavy sand that spilled from the molding and went to the window that opened onto the verandah. “It’s piling up fast out there,” she said quietly to Big Barbara.

“But how
can
it?” demanded her grandmother. “Like the house decided to fall apart just
bang
! And it’s not like there’s wind outside either.”

“The house isn’t falling apart,” said India. “It’s just beginning to fill up with sand, like the third house.”

“But that was natural,” argued Big Barbara. “That happened natural-like. The dune built up and took over. Look round India, the sand’s coming out of everywhere here! How’d sand get in the sugar bowl when it had a cover on it? Where’s all this sand coming from?”

India shrugged. “You think it’s just this house, or is it the other one too?”

“Oh, lord!” cried Big Barbara, considering this dreadful possibility for the first time. “But we ought to go see!” She rose, but India took her hand.

“No, don’t go yet. Don’t go outside until . . .”

“Till what?” demanded Big Barbara.

India hesitated. “. . . Till we ask Odessa if it’s all right.”

Big Barbara considered this, then to India’s surprise, agreed without demur or discussion. “Odessa!” she called out, and in another moment Odessa appeared from the kitchen.

“Odessa,” said Big Barbara, “something awful is happening in this house—” As if in ironic emphasis there was a loud electric sputtering from the kitchen; when Odessa opened the door, they discovered that some of the electrical wiring had been short-circuited.

“Luker! Dauphin!” called Big Barbara. “Leigh! Y’all come on down here! Don’t stay upstairs!” Big Barbara feared electricity.

“Something awful is happening,” said India, repeating her grandmother’s words. In places the sand was two inches deep along the baseboards. However, despite the sand’s falling from the ceiling to the floor all around, there was no dust in the room: the sand was of uniformly heavy grains. “It would probably be best if we got out of here, but I don’t know if it would be safe to leave. Odessa, is it all right to go outside?”

Luker and Dauphin heard this question from the staircase. Leigh just behind them asked, “What’d India say?” But for Leigh the question need not be put: she carried her suitcase in her hand.

Odessa said, “Ain’t safe nowhere tonight.”

The other lights on the first floor sputtered out, and their only illumination was from the bulb on the landing above.

“Y’all come on,” said Big Barbara, and went for the door. Luker grabbed India’s hand and dragged her forward. Dauphin and Leigh clattered down the stairs and followed after, brushing the sand from their hair. “Odessa,” cried Leigh, when the black woman appeared to hesitate, “we need you, come on!”

There was a shower of sand spilling off the roof like rainwater, and they held their hands above their heads when they jumped through it. The six ran to the other side of the yard before turning to look back at the house they had just abandoned.

The night was dark, the waning moon hid behind a cloud. The Gulf waves broke behind them, but louder than that was the sizzle of falling sand before them. A single light was on in Leigh and Dauphin’s bedroom, shaking and dim behind the curtain of showering sand. Soon it too shorted out and the house sizzled in darkness.

“I don’t understand what’s happening there,” said Big Barbara. “Where’s that sand coming from? It’s not blowing in or anything. It’s falling down from everywhere, it’s like it’s being poured down from the sky. Maybe if there was more light we could see something. If it was day maybe we could see what’s happening. Is our place all right, you think?” She turned toward the McCray house.

“Yes,” said Luker, “I don’t hear anything. All the sand is at the Savage house, thank God.”

“What’s causing it?” said Leigh. “I mean, this is . . .” She trailed off in consternation.

Dauphin ran into the McCray house and fetched a flashlight. When he came out again he advanced across the yard and shone its feeble beam over the back porch and kitchen doorway. The sand was falling more heavily still but because it now accumulated on its own hills and mounds, rather than on bare wooden surfaces, it was quieter than before. “Y’all, I’m gone walk around the other side, and see—”

“Don’t!” cried Leigh and “Don’t do that, Mr. Dauphin,” said Odessa.

“All right,” he said, and retreated. “Maybe we ought to go inside.”

“Maybe we ought to get the fuck out of this place altogether,” suggested Luker.