Dang, thought Dolores Simpson, the former Bunny Ann Mc Intyre. Why was it taking that little
gal, Dora Witherspoon, so long to meet up with her exhusband and talk some sense into the man?
When was she going to come back here and tell me what in tarnation is going on? Dolores was not
accustomed to feeling impatient. Living in her fishing shack all these years meant she had none of the
stresses and deadlines of ordinary life. There’s no reason to be in a hurry when you have nowhere to
go. The fish would bite, or they wouldn’t. The night heron sat stoically on her messy ol’ nest. Five
minutes could have passed, or five years. “Hey,” she called, “how many eggs you got there, anyway?
Three? Four?” The small heron stared back. Sometimes, she’d shake her head just like a person but
today she wasn’t going to be bothered. “I wonder when yer ol’ eggs are going to hatch,” Dolores said
half to herself. “I hate to break it to you,” she added, calling over to the bird, “but in case no one told
you, your little night heron chicks are going to be ugly as a toad’s hindquarters. Now, don’t take it real
personal; that’s just the way it is. If this is your first nest of eggs, I don’t want you to be surprised,
that’s all. But Lawd knows there ain’t nothing uglier in this world than a night heron chick.” The bird
stretched its neck and let out a sharp squawk. “Oh, you didn’t like that, huh? Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t
mean to upset you. Just teasin’ you, is all.” Dolores swallowed a mouthful of porch-brewed tea from
an old canning jar. Beside her on the st ep was a basket overflowing with swamp reeds. Marylou, a
Seminole Indian, had taught her how to make baskets years before. It was a miracle, watching
Marylou turn reeds into a work of art—a usable work of art that the tourists would buy. Marylou had
died a long time ago—ten years? fifteen?—and ever since, Dolores didn’t have the heart
to make baskets. But with all this mess going on with new development, something made her start
again. Maybe it was the easy rhythm of weaving the reeds. Worst thing in the world, waiting for news.
And maybe even harder when you’re all by yourself, ’c ept for a night heron to ke ep you company. She
remembered how quickly Marylou’s hands moved when she was making a basket. Why, she could
make one in a few hours, d epending on the pattern. Of course, Marylou had been making baskets from
the time she was four years old, maybe even younger. She worked for about an hour, then rested. Was
she getting lazy, or was it just old age comin’ down the pike? Hard living catches up to a person real
fast, Dolores thought. You think you’re doing purty darn good, next thing you know you look like
somethin’ that washed in with the tide. When she’d gone into town and sent that telegram to little
Dora Witherspoon, she’d been shocked at her own reflection in the big plate glass window at the five
and dime. Who the heck is that? For a second she thought someone was sneaking up behind her but it
was time—just time—that had caught up with her. Well, one good thing about getting older was that
the men didn’t bother her anymore. Whenever that thought passed through her mind, she got religion.
“Thank you, Jesus!” she’d say aloud. She didn’t miss men—at least, the bad behavior of men—one
bit. Funny thing was, her nearest human neighbors were men. Billy and Marco were brothers of
undetermined pedigree who shared a pickup truck and several bad habits. Because of their antics,
usually fueled by moonshine, the area was called Gun Rack Village by the uppity types who ran
Naples nearby. There was a fellow who never spoke a word and wore clothes like Tarzan. Dolores
k ept her distance from him, especially once she’d learned that Billy and Marco called him Sing Sing,
after the prison up north from which he’d got loose and swum across a big river—the Hudson, maybe.
More recently, an older man had set up camp near a huge clump of mangrove trees. He told Dolores,
when she’d encountered him on the river one day, that he’d had enough of the modern world and
intended to live and die right there. She’d agreed to bury him if she came across his body. And then
there was Weird Sam. He lived in an old trawler that had washed up the river in one of the bigger
storms and had stuck fast between
two cypress trees. No one knew the details, but according to the grapevine, Weird Sam was from
a well-off family that had him put in an institution. At some point he either es caped or was let out;
regardless, his family wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So he lived back in the swamps with a
cat named Fish, a dog named Freedom, and a parrot called Mrs. Roosevelt. He did not entertain
visitors. But he did reach out to Dolores when his cat st epped on something sharp and got a de ep cut in
its paw. He showed up crying with the parrot on his shoulder, the dog by his side, and the injured kitty
in his arms. For some reason he thought Dolores could help him, and she did. He held the cat tightly
while she poured some moonshine down its throat—just enough to make it woozy—and then stitched
up the poor little paw. The cat was right as rain in no time, and Weird Sam started to consider Dolores
a friend, or something close to it. Scattered among the ragtag white residents were Seminole Indians,
though how many there were, and exactly where they were, Dolores did not know, even after living on
the river all those years. Dolores had only known Marylou, who had taught her how to weave baskets.
Further south on the river was the small village of colored folks. There was one spot on the river
where they were known to gather on a Sunday once or twice a year. The first time Dolores had seen
them there, she thought she was seeing haints. She hid behind a small grove of mangroves and
watched as Negro women, dressed in white robes, walked single file toward a natural clearing by the
river. What was most startling to Dolores was the women’s absolute silence. They paused while a
group of small boys dashed ahead, poking sticks into reeds and banging drums up and down the
water’s edge. No doubt they were scaring off gators and snakes. Not until Dolores saw two preachers
wade out into the water, with one holding a Bible high in the air so it wouldn’t get wet, did she realize
this was a baptism ceremony. The women were dunked under the water one at a time and came up
spluttering. There was much hugging and joyful we eping as each newly baptized woman joined the
others on the sand. Only after they were all baptized did they begin to sing. Their voices were lush and
glorious as they sang their praise music in perfect harmony, accompanied by the ’ Glade’s own
peculiar sound, a constant, low droning that seemed to come from de ep within the earth.
Dolores didn’t have any de ep love for the Negro race, but witnessing their ceremony seemed to
soften her a little around the edges. It was hard to stay angry and brittle in the presence of such joy and
beauty. She was raised with the firm belief that was hard to shake, though, that white folks without a
bank account or an education had it just as hard in life as Negroes. She did not see any advantage in
being white if you were, as she was, at the bottom of the pile. Yet Dolores had to admire the gumption
of this particular group; they weren’t any different from her in one respect: All they wanted was to be
left alone. They’d refused to move to Mc Donald’s Quarters. The Negro “renegades,” as they were
sometimes called, included Priscilla Harmon— before the miracle of her going off to college—and
her grandma. Robbie- Lee had mentioned once that Priscilla’s grandma worked in the fields for one of
the families that grew sugarcane and watermelons. Most of those colored children did not go to
school, but Priscilla had taught herself to read and write by studying an old Sears catalog and an
illustrated Bible, according to Robbie-Lee. The girl was so smart that the teachers at the Negro high
school enlisted the help of the town’s librarian to find her new and challenging books to read. This
was how Priscilla came to know about Jackie’s book club, which met at the library. She had just
finished high school and was working as a maid for mean old Mrs. Burnside. Then she let everyone
down by getting pregnant, a disaster that Dolores understood only too well. White girls who were poor
like Dolores were in the same boat as colored girls. All it took was one mistake and that was the end
of your dreams, assuming you had any in the first place. Meanwhile, white girls who came from
money simply disappeared for a while, came back home, and were allowed to act like nothing had
happened. They’d been taken out of state—“gone to Georgia” was the phrase—to bide their time at a
maternity home, and their babies given away to a well-to-do Protestant couple, or sometimes kinfolk.
As for the young man or boy who helped create the heartbreaking situation, he usually got off
scot-free. Once in a while, some irate daddy would insist on a shotgun wedding—marry my daughter
or else. But the better off the family, the more likely they were to try to hide the girl’s mistake.
Much as Dolores disliked Jackie Hart, there was a small part of her that admired her for figuring
out a way to help Priscilla. But Dolores felt something else, too: a flash of envy. No one had helped
her, back in her time of need and confusion. Now she found herself in trouble again—a different set of
circumstances, of course, and yet familiar in the way it made her feel. Once again, she was treated as a
person who didn’t matter, who had no say. Once again, the world wanted to take what she had and
give her nothing in return. She was forty-seven years old and all used up; some of it was her own fault,
some wasn’t. Regardless, all she really wanted was peace. Was that so much to ask? This is why she
had to fight to protect the river. For herself and her way of life, yes, but it was more than that. This
place—the ’Glades—felt eternal. In its own way, it was sacred, like the Grand Canyon, or that place in
California with the giant trees. Unfortunately, since the ’Glades featured gators, snakes, bugs, and
poisonous plants, folks didn’t always recognize its beauty. Outsiders seemed to think it was a
wasteland. If that was where your people were from, you got used to strangers acting like you crawled
up out of the swamp yourself. You felt cursed being born there. Only once had she heard anyone say
anything nice about the ’Glades, and it had stuck with her. Her family was not churchgoers. But once,
curious as a cat, she’d sneaked over and hid in the bushes near the tent revival at the Colored
Adventist Church, just to have a listen. At the end of the service, the preacher gave thanks “for the
’Glades and the life that sprang from it.” This got her attention. “We sometimes don’t appreciate this
here swamp,” he’d said, “and we be skeert at some of the things that live in it and around it. It ain’t an
easy place to live. But thank you, Lord. The swamp be worthy because you designed it, Lord. You put
the swamp here at the same time you hung the sun in the sky, and for this we are grateful, Lord.” She
memorized those words and they came to her often over the years. This was not a wasteland. Far from
it. She would fight for the little night heron, the mangrove trees, the flowing water, and the wild
grasses. Surely, the river had a right to survive.