The Letter Keeper Read online

  Which made meeting your mom such a surprise.

  We met at the curious age of nine. I was digging for whatever I could find in a mound on the northwest side of the island when I heard, “What’cha doing?” echo from above my head. I’d been digging this particular hole for the better part of two days, so my head was a foot or two below the surface of the mound. When I looked up, I saw a girl. Freckled nose peeling from the sun, cutoff jeans, bathing suit top, flip-flops, and neither one of us anywhere near puberty. Just two kids.

  I looked around, wondering if she’d brought anyone else to my gold mine. “Just digging.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

  I reached in my pocket and pulled out an intact arrowhead, which I handed to her.

  She turned it over in her hand and handed it back. “You found that in there?”

  I nodded.

  “You think there are more?”

  I pointed to the pile of broken heads at her feet.

  She said, “Can I dig with you?”

  I was the solitary sort and didn’t like giving up the location of my best find, but two diggers might be better than one, and she’d already found me. Plus, I’d have somebody to talk to. “You got a shovel?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well . . .” I stepped aside, making room in the hole, and handed her mine. “You can use mine.”

  We dug till dark, and she was a good digger. Strong. Didn’t mind sweating. And unlike a lot of other girls I’d met, she didn’t talk incessantly about nothing. She was curious like me and talked about stuff I liked. Like shells. Arrowheads. And what life must have been like for the Indians. She said her mom was a nun who had moved to the island to escape the shame of sin, which her birth had brought upon her.

  I asked, “What do you mean?”

  She shrugged. “Nuns don’t marry. They’re not supposed to have kids.”

  “Oh.” That didn’t make sense. “So how’d you get here?”

  She shook her head. “She won’t tell me.”

  “Are you a mistake?”

  Another shrug. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “My mom tells me I was a mistake caused by strawberries and champagne—whatever that means.”

  She considered this. “My mom doesn’t like champagne. Says it itches her nose.”

  “Oh. How’d you end up here?”

  “I walked.”

  “No. I mean, how’d you two end up on the island?”

  “Not quite sure.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Parson’s house. Mom helps plan the events at the retreat center. She’s the director.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Italy.”

  “Italy?”

  She nodded. “But I don’t really remember it. We left when I was a baby.”

  I was no geography whiz and I couldn’t quite place Italy on a map, but I knew she had to cross the Atlantic to get here. “That’s a long way from Florida. What’re you doing here?”

  “Not sure.”

  While she loosened the dirt using the long-handled shovel, I lifted it out of the hole with the hand shovel. We made a pretty good team. “You got many friends?”

  She shook her head.

  “You want one?”

  A nod. “Sure.”

  “Okay.”

  We dug all summer.

  The rumor among the old-timers at the bait shop was that you could find huge shark and whale teeth if you looked hard enough. Especially after storms. Bordered by a river, the Intracoastal, and a spiderweb of tributaries, the island’s location made it prime for teeth. They could wash up anywhere. And if they could wash up anywhere, that meant they had to be in the ground to begin with. Which meant we might stumble upon one at any time.

  I routinely found teeth. That was nothing new. Had several jars full at home. But anything bigger than two inches was out of the norm, and I’d never found an intact megalodon tooth—a really big one about the size of your hand. I’d found pieces, but never a whole.

  A couple weeks into our dig, Marie had learned how to handle the shovel so as not to crack or crush whatever she was digging into. It was a feel thing, and she’d developed the feel. One morning she sank the shovel into the base of our ever-enlarging hole and struck something that didn’t want to move. The sound caught my ear so we knelt, began digging gently, and next thing I knew she pulled out this intact tooth some five inches across. It was perfect. And it was ginormous.

  We stared in dumbstruck disbelief as she held it in her hand like a fine crystal bowl. Afraid to move. Afraid to touch it for fear of breaking it. Then we started dancing around the hole like Peter Pan pretending to be an Indian and singing, “What Makes the Red Man Red?”

  We couldn’t believe our luck.

  Out of breath, and delirious from our good fortune, we climbed out of the hole and sat on the riverbank. Just smiling. Talking about how much we thought it was worth. She asked me, “You really think it’s worth something?”

  “Oh yeah, the ads in the back of my comic books advertise those things at ten thousand dollars each.” I nodded, trying to act like I knew what I was talking about. “I’ll bet that one’ll go for twenty or twenty-five. Easy. We could take out an ad in Thor or Superman and probably get more than that.”

  She stared at it a long time, holding it in both hands. Finally, she held it in the space between us. An offering. “Sell it for us and let’s take the money and run away. Together.”

  It was the first time I had any idea of the size of the hole inside Marie. And when I heard her say it, the depth of the pain in her voice convinced my nine-year-old mind that I’d spend the rest of my life and all my money trying to make it go away.

  Before summer’s end, we found six more. Together. And each time we danced and sang like a couple of idiots. But we didn’t care. We were just a couple of kids, digging into possibility and out of pain.

  If that summer taught me anything, it was this: girls need their father. Period. And I couldn’t really tell you why other than it’s the father who tells them who they are. Until he does, they’re just floating in the earth like that tooth. Buried in some trash mound. Waiting to be discovered by somebody with a shovel who won’t crack it or crush it.

  Last day of summer, the sun falling over our shoulders, we leaned on our shovels and stood in silence. Neither wanting to talk. Finally, I broke the silence. “We can dig on weekends and maybe after school some.”

  “Yeah.”

  More silence. “You been to the store yet?”

  “Went last night. Pencils and notebooks and stuff.”

  I shrugged. “We’re going tonight. Maybe.”

  She stared at her shovel a long time. And at the bottom of our hole. “Where do you think this goes?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know.”

  She talked without looking at me. “I have this globe in my room. Opposite us is China.” She pointed matter-of-factly. “We’d end up in China.”

  I’d never given it much thought. “Never been there.”

  She tilted her head. “Maybe Australia.”

  I considered this possibility. “I’d like that.”

  A tear broke loose from the corner of her eye and trailed down the side of her nose. “Me too.”

  I held out my hand. “Can I show you something?”

  She took it. “Sure.”

  A couple of weeks ago, I’d found something that I’d been keeping a secret. I didn’t know who owned it, which meant the minute we stepped foot on it we were trespassing. And because I didn’t want to get shot, I’d been snooping around by myself. But I really wanted to show it to Marie.

  We rode our bikes to the north end of the island and ditched them in the palmettos where the trees grew thick and tall and the Spanish moss draped six feet down. To me, the northern end was a no-man’s land. I’d always thought of it as the “dark” end of the island, and I didn’t venture up here much. Virgin timber, thick undergrowth, nev
er developed, it had been left as Florida had been created and much like the Indians last left it. Or so I thought.

  We wound our way through the undergrowth and vines and then popped out onto the bank that overlooked a small creek connecting the Fort George River with one of its tributaries. The creek was maybe thirty feet across, the bottom was hard-pack sand, and at low tide you could cross in ankle-deep water.

  One of the amazing things about this area is that the land melts into the marsh and vice versa. It’s often difficult to determine where the land ends and the marsh begins. The two bleed together. Seamlessly. This means it’s tough to tell one piece of land apart from another, unless you’ve been there. It can all look the same.

  Marie’s eyes widened. “I didn’t know this was up here.”

  I took her hand. “Me either.” And led her across the creek.

  We climbed the bank on the other side into a world unlike any I’d ever seen. Marie’s reaction suggested the same. The island was smaller than Fort George. Some of the oaks were as big around as the hood of a car, and the magnolia trees climbed fifty feet or better. Spanish moss hung from spidery oak limbs and fell like hair some six feet to the earth. There was little undergrowth because the canopy was so high. This meant you could see a long way through the trees and there was little to trip over. Few to no weeds. It was also cooler and slightly darker. But not eerie. The light was softer.

  We had walked maybe a hundred yards into the heart of the island when Marie tugged on my shirt. “Have you ever been here?”

  “Couple weeks ago.”

  She stared upward. “It’s like a . . . sanctuary.”

  Sanctuary was a good word. I tugged on her hand again. “Just wait.”

  We wound through shell mounds, muscadine vines, acres of ferns, and what can only be described as a grove of unkempt citrus trees—overgrown, sagging with fruit, and planted in neat rows. We exited the grove into neatly planted rows of live oaks that formed a road of sorts. The tops of the oaks had overgrown the road and the limbs on the right had intertwined with those on the left, like fingers of opposite hands. The road wound through the island a quarter mile and emptied onto the highest section, where we found the Tabby remains of several old buildings. Tabby means small crushed shells and lime used to produce a concrete-like building material a couple hundred years ago. And as a testimony to its durability to withstand hurricanes, the walls were still standing—though the roofs had long since rotted or blown away.

  Marie was silent. She let go of my hand and tiptoed through the remains, afraid of disturbing the memories. The Tabby had been bleached by the sun and worn smooth by both human touch and weather. The ten buildings had been built in a cluster, which suggested they were living quarters for someone maybe two hundred years ago. Set across a small yard and situated beneath ginormous oaks were the remains of a larger rectangular building. The walls were thicker, taller, and inside lay the remains of what looked like old hand-hewn benches made from cypress or cedar—both of which don’t rot and are impervious to bugs.

  Marie turned in a circle. “What is this?”

  “I think it’s a church.”

  “Who built it?”

  I pointed to the remains just across the yard. “I guess whoever lived there.”

  “How old is it?”

  I led her to one of the remaining exterior walls and allowed her eyes to adjust. When they did, her jaw dropped. Carved into the wall were names and dates. The dates started in the 1700s and continued until the mid-1900s.

  For a long time, we stood silently. Staring. Unwilling or afraid to disturb the peace we found there. When the sun went down, leaving us in the dusk of the afternoon, and the cool and breeze replaced the heat, I sat on one of the benches and ran my hand along the smooth wood, darkened from generations of hand oil and sweat. And maybe tears.

  When Marie spoke, she was staring where the ceiling once hung, now replaced by cloud and star and Spanish moss. “I’ve never been anywhere like this.”

  “Me either.”

  She sat alongside me, shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, and whispered, “What do you feel?”

  I spoke the word that came closest to the feeling. “Safe.”

  She nodded, staring at the walls around us. Rising up like whitewashed tombstones standing in defiance against the years and waves that threatened to wipe them off the face of the planet. Somehow, despite Septembers in Florida and the hurricanes that raked the shoreline, this place was still standing.

  As the shadows fell and a mourning dove cooed somewhere above us, answered by an old owl farther off, we walked to the walls and stood in unmoving silence. Marie ran her finger through the grooves of the names, retracing the letters. A single phrase had been etched above the names: “Even the rocks cry out.” Finally, she placed her palm flat against the Tabby, as if she were listening to the story it would tell her.

  Looking back, I felt a sacred holiness I’d never known. A quiet, unspoken reverence. This wasn’t just an island, not some unforgotten map dot. It was a stake driven into the surface of the earth. A declaration. It was one voice that became two that became ten thousand, and they were shouting at the top of their lungs. To this world. And every other. A one-word chorus.

  As the last whisper of daylight crept down the wall, Marie asked me, “If these walls could talk, what do you think they’d say?”

  I stared at the names. The benches. The worn floor. Just before I spoke, the breeze filtered through the moss above me, which waved like a hundred banners in unison. I whispered, “Freedom.”

  We walked off the island in silence. Like two people leaving a graveyard. Standing in the creek, the tide having raised the water level to mid-shin, I turned and spoke boldly for a nine-year-old kid. I don’t know how I knew it then, but I did. Something in me knew. “I’m going to buy this island one day.”

  Marie stood next to me. Staring up. Stars had poked through a silver heaven and shone down on us.

  I continued, “That way if one of us ever feels unsafe, we can come here.”

  She stood alongside me. Two kids washed clean by the river in which they stood. She hung her arm on my shoulder. Steadying as much as connecting. “I’d like that.”

  We never told anyone about our island. Because that’s what it was. It was ours.

  By the time I finished, Ellie was curled up next to me, her right arm across my chest. “You should write that story.”

  I shook my head. “No. I think maybe I’ll just keep that one between us.”

  She liked that. “Dad?” She also liked using that word. Like she was trying to make up for all the time she hadn’t said it. Which was perfectly fine with me.

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  Chapter 11

  Later that week I gave Ellie her first lesson. We started with the safety talk. “One, we always treat these things as if they’re loaded, even when they aren’t. Two, we never point it at anything we aren’t willing to destroy. Three, we never touch the trigger until we’re on target and ready to fire. And four, make sure of your target and backstop.”

  She had followed me until then. “What’s that mean?”

  I held up a .45 ACP cartridge and placed my fingertip on the bullet protruding from the casing. “When this comes out that barrel, it’s going to hit something. Hopefully, your target. It’s then going to travel through that and into something else. And possibly something else. Think about those something elses. Life isn’t a video game, and you have to consider collateral damage if you touch this thing off.”

  She nodded knowingly.

  Earmuffs on, I taught her how to hold, load, and—equally important—unload a handgun. Then we moved on to aiming, sight picture, trigger control, and trigger reset. She learned quickly, and once she realized the fire-breathing part went away from her, she settled a bit.

  After an hour, we turned out the lights and began walking out of the basement. Noticing a light at the end of a long tunnel, she said, “What
’s that?”

  “Bones’s darkroom.”

  “His what?”

  From the first day I met him, Bones had carried a camera. But don’t think “sideline photographer at the football game with the latest and greatest.” In the age of the iPhone when everyone was an instant photographer, Bones was a dinosaur. Luddite. Ansel Adams in a Luke Skywalker world. Bones had a penchant for black-and-white, color slides, and medium format, which meant he couldn’t care less about digital photography. More importantly, he developed his own pictures. Always had. A tedious and time-intensive hobby. When I asked him why he didn’t transition into the modern era and shoot digital, telling him it was much easier and much less work, he looked at me like I’d lost my mind.

  Over the years, I’d learned he was actually quite an artist, and film was just the canvas on which he painted. I also learned that whatever he did in his darkroom was really just therapy. If I wrote my way out of my own pain, then Bones developed his way out. The pictures he captured with his old-school, clunky cameras replaced some of the painful pictures that life had imprinted on the backs of his eyelids. The ones he had a tough time forgetting. And even though I’d known him half my life, I was pretty sure he’d never shared with me the deepest and most painful. Whatever the case, his art produced some of the more beautiful pictures I’d ever seen.

  I’m no judge of the value of a picture, but if Bones had a talent in taking pictures, maybe even an eye, it was in his ability to capture moments that housed emotion. His knack for doing so was uncanny.

  I knocked on the door. Bones swung it open, and Ellie’s jaw dropped slightly. Dean Martin sang quietly in the background and the smell of chemicals hung in the air. The room was actually several rooms. A smaller one off to the right served as Bones’s actual darkroom where he developed his pictures. Evidently, he’d just exited there, as several black-and-white prints hung drying from a line strung across the room.