Chapter II. Not a Ghost, But an Echo

The stranger sped them on in short strokes, stabbing the creek with his paddle like a heron spearing fish. The tide was rising, but water still ran only in the creek’s center, slowing their progress as they inched around sharp bends, past muddy banks teeming with snails and fiddlers hiding in their countless tiny holes.

Devin watched and kept still. Her foot throbbed, held crossed over her knee and above the water. Her back was to the stranger but she could feel his nearness even so.

“I’m glad you were there when you were,” she said. She wanted to say more but none of her words felt right.

“Me too,” he murmured.

She wanted to turn and look at him, but knew the motion would upset her balance. Instead she stared ahead, watching shadows mingle in the marsh grass. Dreading what might be hidden there.

The creek broadened and joined onto a wider branch of marsh where the water was deeper. He rowed faster now. A line of houses stretched their docks over the spartina grass, and the stranger paddled toward one of them: a low pier rising to a gazebo and a boardwalk, and finally to the screened-in porch of a majestic blue two-story. She measured the distance with every breath, eager to set foot on land.

The paddleboard bumped up against the pilings and the stranger grasped her hand, helping her onto the dock. She shivered again, making eye contact with him for the first time since he’d helped her away from that place—that thing. His glance was sharp though not unkind. It was golden hour, but his smooth skin reflected the cool of a gloaming sky. Devin swallowed.

A dog barked as they approached the house. Inside the screened-in porch she spotted it, a drab-colored hound lying kenneled in the shade, still yet alert.

“Hush, Taurus!” the stranger called. The dog huffed, recognizing him, and panted happily.

Devin watched as he pulled the screen door open a crack and used a dried palm leaf to lift the hook latch inside. “Casey showed me that when we got locked out once. We, uh—I used to date her. Back when she lived here with her daddy.”

“Are you sure…?” Devin looked around. The last thing she wanted was to be spotted by a neighbor and have the cops called.

He caught her glance. “Don’t sweat it. We be all right,” he said, then scanned the nearby houses, too. “Probably.”

They knocked on the door to the house itself. No one answered.

“Didn’t think so. But he’ll be home soon. Probably just getting off his shift at the hospital.”

They sat in the worn rattan chairs and let silence fall over them. The air was humid yet pleasant in the porch’s shade, yet the longer she sat the more nervous Devin felt. Had she done the right thing, coming here with this boy? She glanced at him. He too seemed anxious, head bent and fingers twitching. She glanced at the dog: its drooping brown ears and brown back, the rest of its color melting away to the pure white of its belly. It stared at her, whimpered, brown eyes squinting and soulful. Both food and water dish were empty.

The stranger opened his pack took out another bottle, pouring water into the dish through the kennel bars.

“Do they always leave their dog outside?” Devin asked.

He nodded. “Even when it’s hot out. Casey told me her brother fed him and walked him before he died in Iraq.” He shrugged awkwardly, then crossed his arms. “Guess Dr. Holbrooke never really liked Taurus.”

“That’s sad.”

“It is.”

They only waited there fifteen minutes, but it felt like hours. Finally they heard a door open inside the house and Devin stood, watching a man appear in the kitchen through the windows and sliding glass door. The dog began to whimper. The man halted, seeing them, and frowned deeply. After a long moment he turned his back to them, opened the refrigerator, and grabbed two beer cans. He slid the glass door open and wordlessly set down one of the beers down in front of the stranger, then opened his own and drank deeply.

“She ain’t here,” the man spoke at last in a friendly tone that didn’t match the squint of his eyes. He gave a wry smile. “So what do I owe this visit, Lamar?”

“Uh—Dr. Holbrooke, this is…” He trailed off; Devin realized that neither of them had given each other their name.

“Devin,” she offered. “Devin Smoak.”

Holbrooke made eye contact with her for the first time.

“She, uh. She cut herself. Her foot. On a oyster. In—in the marsh.”

The doctor drank again. “So you brought her here. To me.”

“Well…yeah,” Lamar finished.

“Uh huh.” The doctor sighed. “Well, tell you what. How about I take Miss Smoak inside and get her fixed up, and you can keep Taurus here company.”

Taurus panted happily. Devin stood and met Lamar’s eyes briefly, took in his nod and pressed lips, and followed the man into the kitchen.

* * *

Her eyes swept the room as a curtain of near-frigid air billowed over her. The kitchen was clean and white with tile walls, in an open layout with the dining and family rooms, their walls lined with books on sporting and hunting. The décor was smart, sharp, understated, though it somehow felt out of tune with her host. It made her want to live in a place like this, though with less dust and more light. Much more light.

“Ron Holbrooke,” the doctor turned and offered his hand once he had closed the door behind them.

“Good to meet you,” she said.

“You a friend of Lamar’s?”

“No, I…we just met, actually.”

“Well, how about that? You want a soda or something? Afraid I’m fresh out of sweet tea.”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” She winced in pain.

“Let’s get you off that foot,” said Dr. Holbrooke. “We’ll let you sit on Casey’s bed.”

She followed him back into a narrow hall where he waved her through the second door on the right. Here, as in the rest of the house, thick curtains kept all but a tithe of light from streaming in. What little made it through lay diffused on the gloss of the hardwood floor, played on the colors of a fringed rug, shone dimly from a single round mirror hung on the wall, framed by postcards and photos clipped around it.

She sat on the bed. Ron slipped back into the hall. He soon returned, switching on the desk lamp and kneeling, holding a bowl beneath her cut foot. He poured cold water over it. “We need to flush out any sand and silt, any bits of the shell still in there,” he said. He cut his eyes up at her. “I need to open up the wound a bit. It’ll hurt.”

She nodded, not daring to look away, and winced as the man pulled the skin on each side of the cut apart. A cool feeling dulled the pain, but only a little, as he applied cream from a blue and white tube. “There. Now it needs to stay open a while.”

He stood and gave a wry grin, then leaned forward as if sharing some grand joke. “Well,” he said. “Now you can call yourself a true pluff mud pro! You ain’t lived in the Lowcountry till you’ve had a run-in with an oyster or two.”

She forced a laugh. The man’s smile faded. “He dated my daughter, you know. Didn’t sit right with me. He didn’t. Don’t know what it was, but I could tell there was something. Just so you know.” Ron glanced over his shoulder, as if half expecting to see Lamar in the hall, watching and listening. He shook his head. “I don’t judge people, you know? I work with a bunch of them. I know plenty of them. But some of them just don’t make the best decisions with their lives.”

Devin gaped, not knowing what to say.

“Just be careful with that one, is all I’m saying. I got lucky when Casey dumped him.”

He turned and left abruptly, then reappeared a minute later with a glass of ice water for her. She heard a door open and close at the other side of the house, and Taurus’ mournful voice whined.

“I sent him off to run for his car. He said he’d come back for you, but if you want I can give you a ride home.”

“No, thanks,” she said quickly. “I never thanked him. I should wait.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. That cut needs to breathe a while anyway. Ideally, a couple hours, then bandage it. I’ll give you one before you leave. Keep weight off it if you can. It’ll take a good week or two to heal. Well…I’ll leave you to it till your chauffeur gets back.” He arched his brow, winked, and flashed another smile.

Devin was alone now. Alone in this strange place, a comfortable oasis on the marsh, yet surreal somehow. It felt artificial, held in limbo, as if lacking something. Far too big for one man alone. It reminded her of her uncle’s house east of the harbor, of staying there while she was in school. The loneliness she’d felt there in her first semester, missing her own home and the girlfriend who’d chosen to stay in the upstate to attend the local college, who’d never called back after the second week. She could almost hear the lonely music again, the quiet, downhearted languor of Band of Horses’ “Part One.” It pierced her chest in a heavy stab: incurable yearning, the dreamlike quality of the memories. Devin breathed in deeply, and waited.

* * *

“Sorry,” Lamar sputtered, spilling into Casey’s room some forty-five minutes later, now wearing a dark blue t-shirt. “Had to walk to the public boat landing where I parked. You feel any better?”

She nodded, slipping out of the reverie she’d sunk into in his absence. It was nearly dark now. The streetlight glowed faintly in through the closed blinds.

“Good,” he smiled. “See, I told you we’d take care of you.” His face fell. “He wasn’t, uh…he didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”

“No.”

“Good.” Lamar smiled, relieved. “Didn’t think he would, but…” He chuckled. She didn’t press the matter.

They left the house and climbed into his blue Rio, the paddleboard and oar already strapped to the top. Ron had vanished somewhere upstairs, not bothering to say goodbye. She felt almost relieved. They pulled out of the driveway, Lamar turning down the volume on his stereo.

“Not my first choice of where to take you,” said Lamar. “But I didn’t want to leave you alone there in the marsh with—that thing.”

“It’s okay,” she said. She shivered, thinking of the dark shape in the marsh. It made her feel better to hear him speak of it, proving that, whatever it had been, it was not just in her own mind, rattling around anxiously. That was why she’d gone with him, she realized now—though it hadn’t been clear to her at the time. Because he, too, had seen it. If not for that she might have limped all the way back through the forest, alone, to her car.

“He was kind of a douche,” she said after a while. “But not really to me.”

Lamar chucked. “You know, it’s crazy,” he said. “Ever since I saw your foot bleed like that, I kind of felt that pain, too. Thought it was a visceral thing at first, like revulsion, you know? But it’s still there. Like a ghost, or—no, more like an echo of yours.” He laughed loud. “Sorry, I don’t know what I’m saying.”

She laughed herself. “That is weird. But it’s all good.”

They listened to the muted, earnest beats of Childish Gambino a while, driving slow till Lamar pulled out of the subdivision. “Where’d you park? Or should I take you home? I don’t know if you want to drive on that—it got your right foot, too, didn’t it?”

Devin thought. She hesitated a moment, then bit her lip, heart pounding, and spoke. “Do you…want to get some food or something?”