'I know this is awful for you. It is an unapproachable horror. But I understand.'
'No one can understand,' he said.
'Please let me try.'
'There's no good to come of it.'
'There is only good to come of it,' I said. 'I am here to do the right thing.'
He looked at me with uncertainty. 'Who sent you?'
'Nobody. I came on my own.'
'Then how'd you find us?'
'I asked directions,' I said, and I told him where.
'You don't look too warm in that jacket.'
'I'm warm enough.'
'All right,' he said. 'We'll go out on the pier.'
His dock cut through marshlands that spread as far as I could see, the Barrier Islands an infrequent water tower on the horizon. We leaned against rails, watching fiddler crabs rustle across dark mud. Now and then an oyster spat.
'During Civil War times there were as many as two hundred and fifty slaves here,' he was saying as if we were here to have a friendly chat. 'Before you leave you should stop by the Chapel of Ease. It's just a tabby shell now, with rusting wrought iron around a tiny graveyard.'
I let him talk.
'Of course, the graves have been robbed for as long as anyone remembers. I guess the chapel was built around 1740.'
I was silent.
He sighed, looking out toward the ocean.
'I have photographs I want to show you,' I quietly said.
'You know' — his voice got emotional again — 'it's almost like that flood was punishment for something I did. I was born on that plantation in Albany.' He looked over at me. 'It withstood almost two centuries of war and bad weather. Then that storm hit and the Flint River rose more than twenty feet.
'We had state police, military police barricading everything. The water reached the damn ceiling of what had been my family home, and forget the trees. Not that we've ever depended on pecans to keep food on the table. But for a while my wife and I were living like the homeless in a center with about three hundred other people.'
'Your son did not cause that flood,' I gently said. 'Even he can't bring about a natural disaster.'
'Well, it's probably just as well we moved. People were coming around all the time trying to see where he grew up. It's had a bad effect on Rachael's nerves.'
'Rachael is your wife?'
He nodded.
'What about your daughter?'
'That's another sorry story. We had to send Jayne west when she was eleven.'
'That's her name?' I said, astonished.
'Actually, it's Rachael. But her middle name's Jayne with a y. I don't know if you knew this, but Temple and Jayne are twins.'
'I had no idea,' I said.
'And he was always jealous of her. It was a terrible sight to behold, because she was just crazy about him. They were the cutest little blond things you'd ever want to see, and it's like from day one Temple wanted to squash her like a bug. He was cruel.' He paused.
A herring gull flew by, screaming, and troops of fiddler crabs charged a clump of cattails.
Peyton Gault smoothed back his hair and propped one foot on a lower rail. He said, 'I guess I knew the worst when he was five and Jayne had a puppy. Just the nicest little dog, a mutt.' He paused again. 'Well' — his voice caught — 'the puppy disappeared and that night Jayne woke up to find it dead in her bed. Temple probably strangled it.'
'You said Jayne eventually lived on the West Coast?' I asked.
'Rachael and I didn't know what else to do. We knew it was a matter of time before he killed her -which he almost succeeded in doing later on, it's my belief. You see, I had a brother in Seattle. Luther.'
'The general,' I said.
He continued staring straight ahead. 'I guess you folks do know a lot about us. Temple's made damn sure of that. And next thing I'll be reading about it in books and seeing it on movies.' He pounded his fist softly on the rail.
'Jayne moved in with your brother and his wife?'
«And we kept Temple in Albany. Believe me, if I could have sent him off and held on to her, that's what I would have done. She was a sweet, sensitive child. Real dreamy and kind.' Tears rolled down his cheeks. 'She could play the piano and the saxophone, and Luther loved her like one of his. He had sons.
'All went as well as could be expected, in light of the trouble we had on our hands. Rachael and I went out to Seattle several times a year. I'm telling you, it was hard on me, but it nearly broke her heart. Then we made a big mistake.'
He paused until he could talk again, clearing his throat several times. 'Jayne insisted she wanted to come home one summer. And I guess this was when she was about to turn twenty-five, and she wanted to spend her birthday with everyone. So she, Luther and his wife, Sara, flew to Albany from Seattle. Temple acted like he wasn't fazed a bit, and I remember…'