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Chapter One
On a Thanksgiving eve, just before sunset, Emily and Elvissat on the bank of a hummock where it slid down into SweetwaterCreek. Autumn in the Lowcountry of South Carolina isusually as slow and sweet as thick tawny port, and just as sleepilyintoxicating. But this one had been born cold, with frostssearing late annuals in early October and chill nights so clearand still that the stars over the marshes and creeks bloomed likewhite chrysanthemums. Sweaters came out a full two monthsearly, and furnaces rumbled dustily on in late September. AlreadyEmily was shivering hard in her thin denim jacket, andhad pulled Elvis closer for his body heat. In the morning, thespartina grass would be tinkling with a skin of ice and rime andthe tidal creek would run as dark and clear as iced tea, theopaque, teeming strata of creek life having died out early orgone south with migratory birds. Emily missed the ribbons of birdsong you could usually hear well after Thanksgiving, but thewhistle of quail and the blatting chorus of ducks and other waterfowlrang clearer, and the chuff and cough of deer come close.Emily loved the sounds of the winter animals; they said that lifeon the marsh would go on.
They sat on the bank overlooking the little sand beach wherethe river dolphins came to hurl themselves out of the water afterthe fish they had herded there. The dolphins were long gone towarmer seas, but at low tide the slide marks they wore into thesand were still distinct. They would not fade away until manymore tides had washed them.
"There won't be any of them this late," Emily told Elvis. Elvisgrinned up at her; he knew this. The dolphins were for heat andlow tide. Girl and spaniel came almost every day in the summerand fall to watch them. Elvis's internal clock was better by farthan the motley collection of timepieces back in the farmhouse.
They sat a while longer, as the gold and vermillion sunsetdulled to gray-lavender. They would go back to the house soon,or be forced to stumble their way home in the swift, dense dark.Emily hadn't brought her flashlight. She had not thought theywould be gone this long. But the prospect of the dim kitchenlight and the thick smell of supper, and the even thicker silence,kept her on the marsh. This night would not be a happy one,even by Parmenter standards. Already words had been flung thatcould not be taken back, and furious tears shed, and the torturouswheel of Thanksgiving day loomed as large as a millstone.No, there would be silence now, each of them drowned in theirown pools of it. The speaking was done. It was not the Parmenterway to go back and try to mitigate hurt and anger. Bysuppertime it would simply not exist anymore, except in Emily'sroiling mind. Her father and brothers would be deep in theireating and drinking, and her Aunt Jenny would have gone quietlyhome to her own silent hearth. Tomorrow she and Emilyand old Cleta would prepare the ritual dinner for the returning hunters. Weather or catastrophe, sickness or grinding grief, theThanksgiving hunt was sacrosanct. Walter Parmenter had institutedit long before Emily's birth.
"All the big plantations have them. It's an old sporting tradition,"he said often, to anyone who might be listening. "We, ofall the plantation families, should have one. We have the besthunting dogs in the Lowcountry, and some of the best bird land.The other planters talk about our dogs and our land. People tellme they hear about them all the time."
That there were now very few planters left on the huge riverand tidal creek plantations around Charleston was, to Walter Parmenter,beside the point. He lived far back in his head, in the glorydays of the family-oriented plantations. But most of the propertiesnow were owned by northern sportsmen or hunting clubs, withmanagers to oversee day-to-day life. In this new millennium, theywere largely weekend plantations. It was a point of immense prideto Walter that he had lived and worked Sweetwater Plantationalmost his entire life. He scorned the holiday planters.
"Not one of them knows the woods and fields and marshesand the game and birds like I do. I could show them thingsabout these parts that would pin their ears back. I could outhuntthe lot of them, too. Me and the boys and the dogs, we'llshow them a thing or two about that one of these days."
Emily thought that unlikely; Walter had never been invitedon the great Thanksgiving and Christmas hunts that were traditionalwith some of their landed neighbors. They visited only tolook at and buy Sweetwater's famous Boykin spaniels. Theywould smile and speak admiringly of the Boykins, and usually gohome with a pup or leave an order for the next litter, and then retreatto their fine old houses at the end of their long live oakallées. Her father was right about one thing, though. Sweetwater'sBoykin spaniels were among the best in the Lowcountry, bredfrom strict breed standards and long lines of legendary hunters,and trained meticulously. If you took home a Sweetwater Boykin, whether started or broke, you had yourself a hunting dog thatwould be greatly admired in the field and house by every visitorwho came. Elvis was one of them. Emily had trained him herself . . .
Excerpted from Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
