As they pulled up next to a cyclone fence, Jude and Skyler could hear a distant steady thud, the beat laid down by a drum, coming from inside the building. The walls were practically vibrating, and as Skyler stepped outside the car, he imagined one of those anthropomorphic houses from the days of black-and-white cartoons, huffing and puffing and dancing so recklessly its shutters shook off.
It had been a quick trip. As they drove down Route 95 past Savannah and turned onto the old coastal road, Route 17, it was like moving back in time. The air had grown heavy with humidity and thick with the scent of magnolia and peach and, as they'd approached the coast, the pungent odor of the salt marshes. Skyler relaxed into the sounds and smells of a lifetime. He felt better now that he was back where there were peeling shacks raised on stilts, where Spanish moss draped from the branches and people moved as if they had all the time in the world.
They walked to the radio station. Skyler carried a cold six-pack they'd purchased from a convenience store behind a Texaco station. They had to bang on the front door for some time, and only then they were heard because a commercial interruption came along. The black man who opened it, in a loud printed shirt and with padded earphones hugging his head and leading to a cord that dangled by his side, peered at them from top to bottom and stepped aside to let them in.
Jude launched into an explanation, but it was quickly aborted. The man jumped behind a console, plugged in his earphones and flipped two switches, just as the commercial ended. The room was flooded with the languid flow of a D.J., caressing his words in honey tones. He was speaking a mixture of English and Gullah.
Through the picture window of a sound booth, they saw the man. He wore large mirror sunglasses, and he moved as he spoke, doing a little shoulder dance around the microphone but never touching it.
"Lissen now — de song comin op dey a good-good one fa dancin'," he said, giving a little shimmy.
When another record was put on, he stepped out of the booth. He was some six and a half feet tall, towering over Jude and Skyler, and his handshake was powerful. He didn't crack a smile.
"Bozman," he announced.
Jude and Skyler introduced themselves.
The man at the console turned the music down several decibels, and they chatted for a bit. The D.J. spoke perfect English.
He kept looking from Skyler to Jude and back again, and finally declaimed:
"Two white brothers, one raised in the North, the other down South. You could have your own little Civil War."
He whooped in laughter.
He slipped back into the booth, gave a peppy little talk, put on another record, and took his chair again, all done as seamlessly as a stage performance.
"Disya one fa all de oomen out deh" — this one is for all the women out there — he said.
When he returned, Skyler handed him a beer and said: "Dat de bes."
The man shot up in his seat and clapped him on the shoulder and came out with a grin.
"Now wheyside oona laarn fa taak Gullah taak?" — Where did you learn to talk Gullah?
"I laarn 'em right down yuh. I taak em only jes a lee-lee bit, dough. I a frien of Kuta, de jazz playa."
"Oh, yeah now, him a great musician."
Skyler translated for Jude: "He asked me where I learned Gullah. I told him down here, Kuta taught me a few words — he knows him, says he's a great musician."
"Ask him… Never mind, I'll ask him."
Jude turned to the Bozman. "Can you tell us where Kuta lives? What's the name of his island?"
The D.J. gave a basso laugh and pointed at Skyler. "But he should know — he was raised down here."
"That's just it, that's the strange part. He was raised here, but he doesn't know the name of the place, and—"
The D.J. slipped away back inside the booth. More chatter, another record.
Another half hour and three more beers and they still couldn't come up with the name. The Bozman, who didn't understand how Skyler could grow up not knowing where in God's creation he was, only knew of Kuta. He admired his playing, but didn't know where he hung his hat.
Then Skyler had a brainstorm.
"Bozman," he asked. "Did you ever hear talk of a slave rebellion — a whole band of Africans who stepped off the boat that brought them across the ocean, then walked right back into the ocean and drowned?"
The question found its mark.
"Why, everyone knows that. They were Igbo. May 1803, their boat pulled up Dunbar Creek. They sang a hymn to their god Chukwu and marched right back into the water toward Mother Africa. To this day, they call that spot Ebo Landing — that's how it got its name."
"But what island is it on?"
He gave them the name as if it were a present: "Crab Island," he said, smiling broadly and opening his hands palms outward. The answer was so obvious, he seemed to be saying.
He even pulled a frayed map out of a drawer and located it for them. It was the outermost island in a group of eight and it was not far, another forty miles down the coast.
What a prosaic name, thought Jude. How perfect as camouflage for an infernal undertaking. He looked at the shape on the map: it even resembled a crab, with a rounded body and a narrow peninsula leading to a smaller island that looked like a pincer.
Skyler and Jude shook hands with their hosts. The engineer sat down at the console, and the D.J. stepped back inside his broadcasting booth. He put both hands astride the microphone as if he were going to sing, but he didn't. Instead, he chattered, so quickly that Skyler couldn't catch most of what he was saying.
But he did recognize a word here and there, and he could have sworn he heard the Bozman utter Kuta's name. And the song that he then played on the air was jazz, hot New Orleans jazz, and Skyler also could have sworn that the trumpet was being played by Kuta, too.
They decided to spend the night at a Days Inn at Exit 11 on Route 95. The check-in clerk gave them the name of the best place to eat in town. They followed a back road, 99, for six miles until it petered out in the parking lot of a tumbledown wooden extravaganza called Pelican Point. It was tucked away in the marshes at the mouth of a snug harbor. Customers walked in the front door, and boats with fish swimming belowdecks pulled up to the back.
They ordered gumbo with crab cakes and extra helpings of fresh shrimp and swilled it down with beer. It was dark by the time they returned to the motel.
Skyler was too nervous to sleep right away. He stayed up late watching old movies on TV and finally dozed off about one in the morning. Jude raided the mini-bar and had two scotches that put him out. He awoke about five a.m. and had trouble going back to sleep.
He thought of Tizzie and felt like calling her. They hadn't spoken since he'd left Washington. But he didn't want to run the risk. He knew she was playing out her role as a spy; they had to be careful and smart. The best way he could protect her was to keep her in the dark about the important things. And this was important.
He let his mind wander ahead to the day before them. They would go to the dock behind the bait shop on Landing Road — Homer's, it was called. That was the best place to rent a boat, the waitress at Pelican Point had told them. They would pay cash. Then they would head out to the island and… At this point, whatever plan Jude had been formulating ran aground. It was impossible to predict what would happen. He felt a gnawing sensation in his stomach.