path: root/lbh.txt

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“On either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class.” – Eric Beck
"Hi Bruce;
Very nice to hear from you. Here's the story. It is raining and many of us are sitting around Yosemite Lodge. Roper is reading Thorstein Veblein, THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS. In my usual smart ass manner, I happen to remark that there is a leisure class at both ends of the social spectrum. That's it, apparently this caught on with climbers. --Eric Beck

# Prologue

They were two. Blood covered the sheets. Even the midwife was whimpering and pitiful by the end. "A night and day," their father would say later. Their mother never corrected him. And they were born, one the night, one the day. 

People remarked on this for a long while afterward, though no one knew which was born at night, which the day. Nor would they have been able to tell you what difference it might have made if you pressed them. Still, the story of it followed them. It followed them like the whispers that had always followed their parents ever since they'd arrived. The whispers were a wind, one that blew them sometimes where they wanted, sometimes not. Seafaring people must live with that.

The whispering wind followed them out of the town where they spent their winters, across the sea, running the easterlies to the mouth of the river, the wide open flood plain where they spent their summers on the shore, amongst the great pines. The whispers came with their neighbors working the cod offshore and it came on shore like the August winds that whistled the pines. A whisper that blew harder every year, as if a storm were gathering. 

Their father spent all summer, a cold summer, sitting in the evenings, outside the tent, stroking his thick black beard and studying the wind and waves. There are storms worse than the sea he said. That year, when the last the southerlies blew out and before the northerlies turned fierce and cold, they loaded the small boat and slipped out of the old story.

They kept to the coast, giving wide berth to the places men gathered. When they came upon the marshy lowlands of London town, they put in for a time, of which the twins retained no memory, but the mention of which still made their father shudder and their mother turn quiet. The left again, hugging the coast until they found a buccaneer ship that offered passage. And they were gone again. To a new world where people said the soldiers were fewer, the winds warmer and the possibilities wider. 

By the time they arrived all they had left was the memory of the trees. The deep darkness of the forest floor where they would lie, staring up at the trees, the trees reaching like thick fingers to scratch at the light of the sky above.

# Spring

## Among the Stumps

She was named Linnea for her father's friend in the old country, but her mother called her Lulu from the day she was born. 

Like her twin sister She'd been easing mainsheets and tightening lines since she could walk, crossed an ocean before she'd seen five north winters, and survived the burning sun and flaming fevers of the Carolina swamps to reach her eighth year. Her skin was brown from long days in the sun. She was thin, but strong. Her body all bone and taut ropy muscle. Her hair was brown bleached to blond by the summer sun.

She licked her lip, pulling the beads of sweat into her mouth and savoring the salty flavor. *You are the sea, you sweat the sea all day every day.*

Lulu hopped from stump to stump. Crouching down, her knees bent like coiled springs and then sprong, she exploded toward the next stump, landed, teetered, stopped there. There were plenty of stumps. The whole forest was gone. 

"Cut em down for the Guvner's mansion," her father had grumbled earlier in the boat. In the bow Tamba rotated his powerful upper body, careful not to let his weight move side to side, and smiled knowingly at her. "Rice lulu. They cut em down for rice. They sell the timber to the city." Tamba smiled again, rolling his eyes toward the sky. They both knew her father, who was standing in the stern of the boat, pushing them through the marsh with the long pine pole, could not see Tamba's rolled eyes beneath his hat. But the both waited and heard him grumble again, stop rolling your eyes at me Tamba. They all laughed. "The rice will give us food, we won't have to buy it."

Lulu heard her father grunt. Tamba turned around again the boat slid silently along the edge of the marsh, where a thin line of trees still stood, offering some shade from the already brutal mid morning sun.

The water ran out right before the line of great oaks started. There were clumps of prickly, fan-leaved palmetto trees growing beneath the oaks. The muddy bank of the marsh quickly gave way to the dark coloured clay, mixed with sand and hundreds of years of leafy hummus. This was the soil, rich in nutrients that would grow rice. "For a time at least," her father had said as he dragged the small pirogue up onto the muddy clay bank, next to stand of palmetto and tied the pirogue to a tree. But you take away the pine and it all goes, nothing will hold this soil."

"Rice will hold the soil." Tamba stood under the shade of an oak, arms crossed, nearly invisible in the darkness of the shade.

"You know this?"

"My people know this."

Her father shrugged. "I'll take your word for it then." He climbed up the bank and reached down to lift Lulu up as well. "I tell you what won't hold it. Potatoes. Turnips. I've seen that."

"Turnips?"

"Like a potato, thin skin, waxy, but bitter."

"Ah, like you."

Her father smiled at Tamba. "I am not bitter."

"No, not you." Tamba shook his head slowly, a sly look crossed his eyes, "But you are waxy. Skin like tallow. So white."

Her father laughed. They walked through the oak and palmetto forest toward the bright clearing ahead. Lulu decided that, while she loved her father and looked to him for many things, Tamba was probably the better farmer. But it puzzled her a little why they cared, since neither of them farmed. Her father hated farming and made no secret of it, though he was happy to live by farmers. The Geechee were good farmers. But most of them were not free. A few like Tamba were. But he too was no farmer. 

Tamba and her father were still arguing as they stepped into the clearing. "Mind the gators Lu," her father called over his shoulder. "And the snakes. Fresh cuts and all." 

Stirring up the forest stirred up the animals of the forest. The plant eaters lost their homes, the insects lost their homes. The animals that ate the insects lost their food. Only the animals at the very top stood any chance. The snake might get the homeless mouse, but eagle got the snake. Nothing got the alligator though. Nothing ever got the alligator. Her father always said not to fear the alligator, but to respect it. Give it a wide berth and do what you can to make sure it doesn't see you as meat. She sat down on stump and wondered what made you look or not look like meat.

Tamba and her father walked out into the field, leaving her at the tree line. They stopped every so often to dig at the roots of the stumps with their sharpened staves, marking choice stumps as they went.

Three hours later the sun was directly overhead. Lulu could just barely see her father on the far side of what had once been a forest of broom pine. Slash pine the sailors called it. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was gone. No more tufts of green above to filter the harsh clean light of day, no more long thin needles to whistle in the wind when the onshore breezes started. It was a dead still afternoon. The world highlighted in a glare that made it difficult to see. It was hot, humid. The air felt like a wet wool blanket wrapped around you. Lulu decided she would not like to be a rice plant or anything else that tried to get along in this place. She liked it better back at camp. By the sea, in the wind. What was life without wind?

She jumped to another stump and looked down. It had her father's mark on it. A square inside a diamond. "Two squares really," he had once told her and her sister, "one is just rotated 90 degrees. It's easier to draw than four interlocking circles, which is what I used before."

Lulu shielded her eyes from the sun and lifted a gourd of water to her mouth. It was bitter and hot, but it coated her throat for a moment and kept her tongue from feeling so swollen. She was hot and bored. She wished she'd stayed with her sister and her mother, tending the kiln fires. Looking after Henri or even cleaning and drying fish would better than this stillness and heat. Anything to escape this relentless sun. At least at the beach, at camp, there was a breeze. 

Lulu wore a straw hat that a woman had given her the year before when a ship had come to careen on the beach where her family spent the summers making tar. Despite repeated soakings, stretchings and pullings, it was too small for her now. "At least your head is growing," her sister, who was nearly a head taller, teased. Lulu wanted to punch her in the mouth, but instead she took of her hat, hit her sister over the head with it, stuck out her tongue, bared her teeth and growled at her. Then she ran before Birdie could retaliate. Sometimes it was intolerable to have a twin. Usually though these moments were just that, moments. And then they were gone as quickly as she felt them, though she was not above drawing them out for a while to get at her sister, who rarely seemed to feel this way. 

Sometimes Lulu needed to get away, to be alone, so she had come today with her father and Tamba out into the scorching midday sun to find stumps for the winter's drying time. Her father made carvings in each stump, a square within a diamond, the beginning of wisdom he told her when she asked what it meant. 

Others would mark their stumps with their own marks and then all of them and their wives and children would come out together every night for a week, maybe two for this field, thought Lulu as she glanced around at the vastness of the clearing. They'd come for a week on either side of the full moon, to work in what light could be had, digging stumps and hauling then back to the beach, to the dunes just beyond camp where they would be piled in great heaps and lie there drying like great white bones bleaching in the sand until they were so weathered they were gray and then in spring, before the heat got too bad, the kilns would be built and lit and the great dry stumps chopped and piled in. 

Lulu and Birdie and Henri and two other families worth of children, their cousins and friends, would gather moss and dry grass to feed the slow heat of the kilns. As the wood burned the dark pitch drained down to the bottom of the kiln and dripped into barrels set below the catch it. This was the Arkhangelsk tar. The archangel tar that kept the ships afloat, the rigging tight, the sailors safe and bought Lulu and Birdie and Henri a place in the world, clothes to wear, food to eat and sometimes even peppermint treats or dolls or new ribbons for her hair. These stumps were the reason Lulu's life was possible.

But that didn't make the day any cooler or her patience any greater.

---

Birdie sat in the shade of the last sago palm. It was the edge of camp. After the palm was the beach. She watched the ocean from the top ridge of the dune, squinting in the bright light of the midday sun. Birdie's real name was tk, after her mother's sister, who was down at the shoreline, pulling in a fishing net with Birdie's own mother. Birdie had helped them cast out the net and secure it to their buoys earlier in the morning. Now she was waiting. Waiting for her brother to play, waiting for her sister to return, her cousins to be done with their chores. She glance up the beach toward their camp but there was no sign of Charles or Samuel. She sighed and plucked at a sea oat, slowly breaking up the stem.

Down the beach she would see the single mast of the Arkhangelsk. She was a 22ft Bermuda sloop that had been taken by the Whydah and put ashore with a small crew to careen and re-tar. Unfortunately for the Ave Marie, as she was known at the time, her hull was too worm eaten and split even for the quality of tar Birdie's family was know for. 

The captain of the Ave Marie had disagreed. While the rest of his crew shrugged and went off hunting the wild boar that were forever rooting in the jack pines, the captain stewed, drinking all afternoon until finally he'd strode into camp shouting for her father, who eventually appeared. There was a good bit of quarreling in several languages until at some point Birdie remembered the captain drew his sword and her father had gone very quiet. Her mother had pulled all the children inside the thatched hut that was their summer home, but Birdie had found a crack in the palm fronds and watched as her father walked very slowly forward until he had placed his neck against the captain's sword, a move that had been so unexpected that the captain did not appear to know what to do. He stammered something Birdie could not hear, though she heard her father's voice quite clearly, I know how I will die and it is not by your hand. The captain had dropped his sword, spun on his heell and marched right out of camp in the direction of Charles town.

A few hours later the crew of six returned from the woods with a wild boar so huge they staggered under the weight of the pole it was slung out on. Birdie's father had informed them of their captains departure, the news of which they barely acknowledged, bent as they were to the task at hand, namely butchering and roasting the boar. There'd been a great feast in camp that night, with music and dancing that didn't stop until long after Birdie was asleep. The crew had stayed on for a quarter of a moon, until the rum ran out and they too headed off down the road in the direction of Charles town. 

Birdie had been worried that the angry captain might return. For several nights she refused to sleep outside until her mother finally coaxed the problem out of her. "Sweet girl, you don't need to worry," her mother had said, "he's gone."

And indeed he never came back. The Ave Marie had been left where she was when the family departed for their winter camp in the south. When they came back this year they found a storm had pushed the ship high above the tideline, and filled her hull nearly full of sand. She listed considerably to port, but was plenty straight enough to climb about what was left of her decks and bones. 

She had been commandeered by Birdie, along with Lulu, Henri and their cousins from up the beach, Charles and Samuel, and Tamba and Kadiatu's boy Cuffee. They'd spent the summer in her, every free moment they had, sailing the sands of the island, re-christening her the Arkhangelsk. Birdie was captain. They had voted, as free sailors did, and she had been elected, and only voted out once, when Lulu called a new vote after Birdie had ordered all the boys over the side to raid an enemy ship for the hundredth time, holding Lulu back. But Lulu's term as captain had lasted only a few days before Henri called a vote that put Birdie back in charge, and set the boys, along with Lulu, over the side to attack the forts and towns of the coasts they sailed.

---

Lulu hadn't been able to see her father or Tamba for at least an hour. They were resting in the shade on the far side of the clearing she guessed. Which meant another hour before they'd be back.

When they finally did return, both were pouring sweat and no longer bickering about farming or anything else. They drank the gourd of water and sat a while in the shade in silence. Lulu sensed that asking anything at that moment would only have earned her grunts. After a few minutes her father motioned with his head and Lulu set off, back through the trees to the pirogue. 

Her father ruffled her hair as he stepped over her in the boat. He pushed them out again, following the trail through the reeds, back to the deeper waters of the marsh, toward the river, which would lead them back to beach where Lulu and her family currently had their camp. In two more moons they'd head south, down to Savannah for a moon or two, depending on how much work their father found in the shipyards, how many clothes her mother could make or repair for the townswomen. Lulu and her sister would go to school. The thought of it even now filled her with a burning anger that made the backs of her ears itch. She tried to focus on the little black snails, which had climbed ever so slowly up as the tide had come in while they were ashore, which meant the tide was with them to return, but the thought of school kept intruding, pushing the snails down into the water. She hated school because she had to wear a dress. She hated town because she had to wear a dress. All of the spring and all of the summer and all of the fall she wore the clothes of the Edistow, a deerskin skirt that reached midway down her shins and was fringed with shells Lulu was extremely proud of and forever changing when new shells washed ashore. Unlike her sister she often wore a cotton shirt if she was going to be in the sun all day, but she had not today. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a single braid that reached nearly to her waist and had shells woven into it. She looked, aside from her slightly lighter skin, like everyone else on the island they called home.

The Edistow have lived here for hundreds of years, probably more, her father said. There were few of them left, but enough still that her family traded with them and helped them harvest rice in the fall. Fine clothes her father had boasted not long after he built on the circular pole structures he'd seen in their camp and taken to wearing a deerskin loincloth, which made for no end of jeering from sailors, though few of them would say anything to his face. Why mama he said when she blushed at his attire, they've lived here longer than us, I expect they know what's best to wear. 

They might know best Lulu thought, but he did look a little ridiculous with his thick black beard and hairy chest and then the little flap a deerskin which reached right above his knees and looked, no matter how long it might have been, too small on his rather large body. At nearly six feet their father towered over almost everyone on the island, save her uncle who was about the same height. 

Lulu liked it better when he wore his sailing britches, as he had today, which was how he looked in her earliest memories and how she preferred he look all the time. Lulu looked back at him now, pushing them slowly along, still sweating, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Lulu loved her father, but often felt lost around him. He could be stern, or even cross with her or Birdie or Henri, at times, but more often he just seemed to be elsewhere, lost in depths of thought no one, not even her mother seemed to be able to plumb, though he often returned from wherever this place was quickly with startling bursts of temper.

Mama had a patience her father did not. And she still wore the calico dresses and skirts Lulu barely remembered from the old country, a different river, a different marsh, a different shoreline with the cold smell of wet mud and salt brine, the barnacle crusted rocks that had cut her feet tile they bled. She could still feel them sometimes when she starred into the fire in the evenings or when she watched the stars at night, lying under her sheets in the soft cradle of sand. She did not miss it exactly. She did not remember enough to miss it. But she did think of it sometimes on the edge of sleep, she'd hold it in her thoughts, turn the memories over and around, looking for details she'd missed in all the times before. Though it had been a long time since she'd found a new detail she didn't already hold in her memory, still she did it most every night, letting those old visions usher her into sleep on the hot summer nights when the mosquitoes dove at her all night long, even through the smoke of the smudge fires her father tended all night long.

Lulu could feel the water pulling them now, partly the tide of the marsh, partly the current of the river it was drawing them to the sea. The boat rocked slightly as her father laid the pole down and took up the paddle he used to steer. She looked back and he was sitting, smiling now as they drew nearer to home. Stern and distant though he might sometimes be, her father was almost always smiling when his face was turned toward the sea and the wind was on his cheek.

The shadows of the moss dangled like fingers form the oak trees when the pirogue finally nosed onto the sandy shore of the island, not more than half a mile from their home. She hopped off the side into the water and waded ashore. She glanced back at her father who nodded once and she needed no further encouragement, taking off down the path that led back to camp.

Lulu rounded the corner at full speed, through the tall field of sea oats that formed the southern border of their camp, bursting out of the grass like a lion. She smelled the warm sweetness of fish stew. Her mother was stirring a kettle over the fire. Her sister and Henri came running from the other side of camp, calling her to come to the dunes, but she was hungry. She ran over and hugged her mother, who pulled the stray hairs from her face, tucked them back behind her ears and scooped her up a bowl of stew with a piece of cold fried bread. Lulu slurped at the hot stew, earning her a frown from her mother.

"Did you mark stumps?" Birdie watched her eat.

"Papa did." She took another bite of bread. "Squares." Her sister did not seem to care. Birdie had never liked stumping.

"Mama gave us a pot for the kitchen in the Arkhangelsk."

Lulu stopped chewing. "Really?" A smile came over Birdie's face, all she could do was nod faster than Lulu had ever seen a head move before. "It's the best" blurted Henri.

"I started to carve spoons for it they aren't done yet but do you want to see?" Birdie was already pulling on her arm, dragging her away from the fire.

Birdie was always making things for them to play with, she'd fixed the wheel, carved a pole for the flag, made a tk, and was always helping Papa repair the fishing nets. Sometimes Lulu hated the way Birdie was so good at making things, but mostly she loved to use the things when they were finished. She scooped up some sand and wiped her bowl out. She dumped it all at the edge of the fire and handed the bowl back to Mama. "Going to the ship," she blurted as the three of them ran out of camp.

They slowed when they reached the dunes, they all knew from experience that running in the dunes was a waste of effort. "How come Mama gave us the pot?" Lulu had been trying to come up with reasons for a gift in her absence ever since Birdie had said it, but she had come up empty.

"Mama said we could use it if we her left alone." 

"Were you bad?"

Birdie nodded at Henri, who scowled. "Was not!"

Henri was only four, but was, as their father said, clever as a Lynx and innocent as the doves. Henri had a way of twinkling his eyes when he smiled such that adults were immediately less angry at whatever had attracted their attention in the first place. It did not, naturally, work on Lulu or Birdie, though they both secretly and not so secretly, admired this ability of Henri's. In fact Lulu and Birdie had practiced this twinkle for hours, Lulu thought they were pretty good at it. But it never seemed to come off right when they tried it on adults. 

Despite his twinkle, Henri never got away with anything. He was too naturally mischievous and yet sneaky. If something was amiss in camp, some prank played, some calamity caused, Mama always came looking for "my little brown imp." The only other possible culprit was their cousin Charles, but he was a year younger, actually quite sneaky, and lived a quarter mile down the beach with their aunt and uncle, which generally absolved him.

They crested the last dune and from the top the Arkhangelsk came into view, lying as she always did in a gully just beyond the beach, listing slightly to port, her mast pointing nearly due north, marking time nearly as well as the sundial her father kept in this tent. The three ran down the slope of the last dune in great bounding leaps, sinking deep into the soft sand and leaping out again great whooping war cries rising from their lips.

Lulu ducked under the crumbing beam of the tk, following birdie down into the hold where the new pot sat on their makeshift stove. It was a world of black and white, dark shadows punctuated by bleach white light streaming in the occasional holes in the deck. The damp sand under the shadows was a cool luxury after the heat of the swamp. Lulu sat down and Birdie passed her the pot. She felt it cool and smooth in the darkness. She ran her finger along the lip feeling the nicks where Mama's metal tongs had banged it. She passed it back to Birdie who put it on the stove. They all went out to gather crab shells and seaweed for a stew.

It was nearly dark by the time they walked back to camp. Their father had spread out the coals of the fire on the side of the dune just behind the pole lodge which the only really used for sleeping when the weather forced them indoors. Her father buried the coals under a few inches of sand to give them a bit for warmth for it still turned plenty cold by early morning. Lulu brought out her blanket and lay down in the sand pulling it over her. 

She lay for along time whispering with Birdie about plans for the next day, watching the thing sliver of moon drag it's light across the shifting ripple of the sea.

## Fire

Birdie woke early, before first light. She sat up and looked off toward the sea. She saw the silouete of her father down by the shore, his back to her. His hand wen up and pulled down to his head with a movement so sharp and sudden she felt as if the starlight itself bent down to him. She watched at he turned to each direction, and then back to the center where he stood still, facing east.

She lay back in the sand and stared up at the stars. They began to fade as the pre dawn blue crept up from the edge of the world, turning black to blue to pink to orange and then they were gone. A new day. A groan escaped her. It was going to be a long, hot day made even hotter by the fires. IT was time to start making tar, a task Birdie loathed, though truthfully there weren't any tasks she didn't loath. She wanted to spend all day at the Arkhangelsk, with the new pot, with her sister, even her brother, even her cousins and her brother combined would be better than fetching wood and dried reeds all day and feeding them into ovens.

Her father came walking up from the ocean, swinging his arms and stretching his back. He saw that she was awake and plopped down in the sand next to her. His beard was still wet and droplet of salt water sprayed her as he sat down. They did not say anything, the just sat together and watched the dawn paint the sky in front of them. 

Birdie's people were sea gypsies, Alban, was what her father called himself. Got lost on our way to the old valuta grounds her father would say, chuckling. Birdie still wasn't quite sure what this meant. He never elaborated. He was a man of few words, comfortable with silence and he expected everyone else to be comfortable with it as well, especially his. The low landers, as he called anyone who wasn't of the sea, which made no sense to Birdie, but did apparently to at least to her father, talk to hear something, talk about what they don't even know until their half way through talking about it, he said. I know I am the only one of my people you have to judge by, but we are not that way. If there is something to say, say it. But mark your words Birdie, pay attention to them, think on them, choose them well, find the best ones you can and don't speak until you have found them. The low landers think they can learn by talking, by asking questions, but you must listen first. Listen and watch the world around you. If you have a question, ask it first of yourself, see what answers you can come to and once you have those ask someone else and see what answers they have. This is how you learn.

Her father sat silent now beside her. She wondered where he was. Was he here, next to her? Was he on some other shore? As if reading her mind he turned to her and smiled. It will be good day, he said in a whisper. And then he rose and walked down and ducked into the hut. Lulu sat up. I was dreaming of pine trees. Birdie glanced at her. She too had dreamed of pines. She wondered if they both were thinking of burning stumps or if there was something more. Birdie still remembered the northern forests, or thought she did, or perhaps her parents stories had worked their way into her head until they became her memories and dreams too, lodged there as if she had seen them with her own eyes and now she dreamed of her imagined memories, layers and layers of story peeling back to reveal at the end... what?

She stood up. I'm going to get some food. She skipped down the slope, feet squeaking in the dry sand. Memories of cold salt air, oceans crossings, fog and pines, where it was always cool, and soft breezes blew did not help her here, in this land of swelter and storm and slow burning kilns. What she wouldn't give for a cool dry breeze stirring the pines of some rocky northern shore. 

She stood up and wiggled her feet, letting them sink into the sand up to her ankles. She stood, rooted like a sago, feeling the first warm orange rays, savoring the brief moments when it seems like perhaps it would not be murderously hot by mid morning. Then she uprooted herself and walked down the slope toward the thatched hut into which her father had disappeared only moments earlier. Inside it was dark, she blinked as her eyes adjusted to reveal the thin slivers of light from the windows, the rathers, hung with dried fish and herbs, roots and tubers she and Lilah had dug weeks before. Plants Tamba had shown them that he and his people had learned from the Edisto. There was plenty to eat in the mashes and pine forests if you knew where to look. Still the hutt smelled as it always did, of the sea and fish. There was fishy smell inside that rarely left since most of what the family ate came from the sea, fish, clams, mussels, oysters as bit as Birdie's head, seaweed and tk, tk and tk, there was always a bit of the sea in the stew pot. This morning it smelled of dried fish and onions. Her mother smiled at her, asked about her dreams while she ladled the leftover stew into Birdie's bowl, a coconut shell sanded and polished smooth, carved with a scene of mermaid rising from a clam shell, something her father had seen in London. It was in fact the one and only story of London he had ever told her. 

She took her bowl and stepped out into the shade of the porch her father had built. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long whe went back inside for anoter bowl. That's my firl said her father, ladeling another bowl for her. Lilah stepped in fater her . Henri still pretended to sleep in the far corner of the hut where he slept with his mother. He was still very much a Mama's boy, probably always would be Birdie figured. 

"You girls ready to tend some fires today?" Her father raised his eyebrows at them, but it was not a question.

"Yes papa," they mumbled between gulps of stew. The bolted a soon as they were done, walking together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf and sand. 

Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knlt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she though she saw something white on the horizen, someting that might be a topsail coming into view. 

"Lou, what is that?"

Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?"

They looked at each other and smiled. A way out of tending the lins. Birdie quickly washed her bowl and they turned and ran back up to camp. Laughing and shouting sail. Her father turned and squinted out at the sea. He hnned and went inside, returning with he spyglass. He trained it on the speck still wavering at the norizen. 

"Topsail, moving southeast." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look.  Southeast was no good, that meant it was headed away from them, but that made no sense, they should have spotted it earlier if it was coming out of Charles town. They've have seen it well and clear when she rounded cape and turned north, headed for London or tk or tk. The only boats that ever headed southeast were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, closely, she could see him smile, she watched him watch her figure it out. Raiders. It was a coasting ship that had drifted too close and, probably unbeknowst to its captain and crew, had been spotted. Word would spread south. Not from there camp, her father never passed sea gossip on as he called it, it was one of the reasons raiders came to their shore, but this one obviously wasn't, which ruined Birdie's hopes of something to do other than feeding kilns. She walked back over to her father and passed the glass to Lulu.

"We'll wait a bit on the fires. We've nothing to trade, don't want to send up anything that might be taken as a signal." 

Birdie nodded. She screwed up her courage inside and said quickly before she lost her nerve, "Papa, can Lulu and I play at the Arkhangelsk until you need us?"

Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are jouned at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his left and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her alone with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."

Her father stopped and took the glass from her.

"Hey." 

He stared for a while. "Indeed she is. Okay girls, you may play, I will fetch you when it's time."

Lulu and Birdie tore down the slope and through camp, startling the still half asleep Henri, sitting by the fire, groggily spooning fish stew in his mouth. To the Arkhangelsk they cried as they race past him. Henri looked up, but they did not wait. 

Eventually they realized he was not coming, he and samuel and charles and gone off hunting in the woods. They sometimes managed to bring back a rabbit, or a partiage or woodcock, but usually the returned empty handed with hard to believe stories of their nearly amzing feats. Lulu and Birdie usually just nodded and went on with whatever they were doing, though henri was ndid not otherwise tend ot exagerate or make up stories, which always made Birdie wonder if at least the stories he told might actually be true. Especially the stories about Tamba's people living deep in the woods. 

Tamba was about her fathers age she guessed, perhaps a few years older, the hair at his temples was whiter than her father's, thugh he had no beard to it was hard to say what color it miht have been, her fathers tended closer to silver every time she looked closely at it. Tama and his wive lived deeper in the woods, ten minutes further up the river and then a good walk from the shore. We are not water people he told Birdie when she ased him why they did not live near the beach. We come from jungles hotter than this he smiled. His arms were strong under the shite cotton shirt he always wore. This Engilish was stiff around the edges, acquired from many sources, including her father, who had aquired his from many different people. Birdie liked hearing Tamba tell stories though because his voice and the way he pronounced them made English words sound more beautiful, more thoughtful, more important than when other people talked. 

Her father nodded when she told him this once. "Tamba is like us. He is the Alban of his place. Highlanders always speak less. We put more thought into what we are going to say." 

Birdie wasn't so sure any of them would qualify as highlanders, living as they did, so low, near to the sea. Even Tamba, though he claimed not to be water people, lived by and survived mainly from the water that was ever-present around all of them.

Tamba's skin was near black. Light seemed to disappear when it landed on him. She noticed that he used this to his advantage, sometimes to disappear into shadow, sometimes by wearing a white shit that provided such a contrast he was impossible not to see. She noticed one day that he used clothes in a way that most people did not, they were not simply things that hund over his frame to keep the sun off, they were tools that helped him navigate the world. And Birdie new that it was harder for Tamba to navigate the world than it was for her. Many Africans were slaves. And those like Tamba that were not, that had arrived here free men aboard ships they helped to sail were always in danger of becoming slaves. Englishmen are devils her father said once in her hearing. Tamba had nodded with a sad smile Birdie still remembered it was a smile of defeat, the smile one had when everything else has already been tried and defeated, a smile that protects agaist a hurt to large to look at otherwise. Birdie knew this smile because she herself used it at times though she knew not where it came from, how she had aquired it or what it was she did not want to look at, only that it was there, available to her when she need it.

Details on the day of lighting the kilns, games the kids play, treats they eat, the last bit of gum chichle. Then the fishing 

When you drink or eat something you do not just drink the liquid or eat the flesh of the thing, you consume it's spirit as well. Different things have different spirits. The spirit in the rum, it is not a good spirit. Some it comes to very strongly, it takes them and makes them do as it wishes, sends them nowhere but in search of more of itself. Others it visits and then leaves, it all depends. Some days it visits me and leave, some days it visits me and wants to stay even after I no longer want it, so I decided one day to let it in my no more. It is not the way of our people I do not think. I do not know, we did not have it back home. There was Vodka, but that was a think of the lowlanders. We did not drink it. It we knew had a strong spirit. For us there is the sea, it has the strong spirit of anything, I would rather stand on it's shore for one minute and task it's salt air than have a lifetime of rum. That is the spirit I want to spend my time with.

Her Papa was a quiet man, prone to grunts and nods in lieu of the sort of comforting, I heard you type of comments most people make. He was often absorbed in a task to the degree that he seemed utterly unaware of the world around him and yet sometimes Lulu would notice that he was also watching her, watching her sister and not in fact missing anything that was going on around him at all, that he was in fact more aware of what she was doing than she was. She would pause and think about this sometimes and try to focus herself more fully on what she was doing, if she sould not take in the whole world around her like her father she could at least, she reasoned, pay closer attention to what she was doing.

Thsi time of year that meant gather grasses and helping tend the fires of the kilns. The family had three kilns which burned around the clock for weeks as the stumps slowly burned down and the sap dripped slowly down to fill the buckets below. It was a hot, dangerous time of boil liquids, burning fires and other hazards which Lulu dreaded. No one had ever been burned too badly, though her father had once scalded his hand badly enough that the skin had come off. He made sure that the children did not handle the sap until it had cooled to a less scaulding temperture.

The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charles town.

He father pulled the sail in tight, the boat heaved away from them, but her father leaned back against he gunwale slightly until to reached a balance point that balanced speed and awkwardness, the boat lept across the waves and out beyond the surf line of the sand bar to smoother water. The wind was blowing offshore, a storm from the west would be here tomorrow her father said. 

Her father spun the little boat into the wind, dropped the sail and walked toward the bow to get the net. Birdie sprang up and followed. They heaved the net over the side, letting the drift of the current carry them away from it, spreading it out. Once it was out her father used and oar to bring the boat about to where he wanted it and then he yanked the tk line , shooting the halyard and the sail back up. It caught the wind the minute it was up and tighted the lines of the net, pulling them and the net back toward shore. Birdie leaned over the gunwale and watch as fish swam by and were pulled into the net. 

By the time the neared the surfline again the net was choked with fish. She helped her father pull it in, though it became so heavy that eventually her effort was of little use. Her father wrapped the line around the mast and pulled the net, chock full of writhing fish up against the hull, fell off the wind as the boat came into the break of the sand bar and then, timing it with a wave, surfed the craft expertly over the sand bar and into the more sheltered inner waters where he began to paddle it in the shore.

Hoisting the net, cleanign the fish and drying them. more description of their time at sea, her father smoking, talking of the sea, the old country perhaps, some kind of tradition.