The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd Read Free Book Online Page A

see one this time of year, but if you do, keep in mind that you can’t outrun an alligator. Just be sure you can outrun whoever you’re with.”
    The tourists chuckled and nodded at one another, the whole business of venturing onto a Carolina barrier island suddenly thrust into a new and slightly dangerous light.
    As the ferry slipped into the narrow waterways interlacing the marsh on the island’s back side, I got up and walked out onto the deck. Swells of water glided past, the color of darkly steeped tea. Looking back at the wake, at the distance we’d covered, I realized how isolated I’d been growing up on an island without a bridge. I’d been thoroughly caged in by water, and yet I’d never felt lonely until I started high school on the mainland. I remembered Shem Watkins taking all of us kids, probably fewer than half a dozen of us, across Bull’s Bay each morning in his shrimp boat, then picking us up in the afternoon. We’d called it the “shrimp bus.”
    Mike and I had imagined ourselves like the Swiss Family Robinson, he rowing his bateau through the creeks, stopping to bog for fiddler crabs, which we’d sold for bait at fifty cents a pound on the ferry dock. We’d known every channel and sandbar, exactly where the shell rakes might snag the boat’s bottom during low tide. The summer I was nine, before everything collapsed, we’d been dauntless, scavenging for turkey tracks and alligator drags. At night, with the palmettos rattling wildly around the house, we’d slipped out through the window and gone to the slave cemetery, where we’d double-and triple-dog-dared the ghosts to come out.
    Where had that girl gone? Staring into the tannic-looking waters, I felt a terrible craving for her.
    I was surprised by the weight of memory, the awful contagion of family, of place. I remembered my father steering his twenty-foot Chris-Craft, the meerschaum pipe I’d bought him clamped between his teeth, and me tucked between his chest and the wheel. I could almost hear him calling, “Jessie, the dolphins are here,” see myself racing for the rail, listening for their breath to spew, the slit of darkness as they broke the surface.
    When the northwest side of the island came into view, I was already thinking about his boat exploding. About the clipping in Mother’s drawer. “Police speculate that a spark from his pipe may have ignited a leak in the fuel line.” I let my eyes sweep over the the water, remembering where it happened, then looked away.
    I walked the length of the ferry rail and watched the island draw closer. It was only five miles long and two and half across, but it seemed even smaller from the boat. The rooftops of the shops behind the ferry dock came into view, laughing gulls looping over them, and beyond that the live oak, palm, and myrtle thickets that filled the green heart of the island.
    The engine throttled down as the pontoon approached the dock. Someone threw a rope, and I heard the creaking of old wood as we were hitched tightly against the pilings.
    On the pier a few people in beach chairs dangled rods over the side, fishing for channel bass. But no Kat and Benne. Kat had promised they would meet me. I went back inside the boat, collected my suitcase, then stood at the window as the other passengers debarked.
    A few moments later, they came hurrying up with Max trotting behind them. They were holding hands, and Benne appeared to be half dragging Kat, who was wearing her high heels with the thin socks. Her hair was pulled up into a dark red top-knot, a color my mother referred to as “port wine.” Pieces of it were starting to unravel around her face.
    They stopped at the edge of the dock and looked up at the boat. Max sat between them, wagging half of his tail as if it were jointed.
    When Kat spotted me at the window, her chest rose visibly. “Well, don’t just stand up there! Come on down