Seagulls – Maddy Goldstein

On the Bluff

Ellene Warner

It is May 22nd, 2021. COVID-19 has turned the world on its head and driven me into the wilderness.

I clench my arms around the exposed drain pipe, stumbling down the steep bluff beside the causeway. Its eastern end, where Myrtle Island slopes into a culvert-turned-saltmarsh, has no forgiveness for an unathletic loner of 13 years. Sweat plasters my raggedy t-shirt to my stomach as I grapple for a foothold among the thicket of sea ox-eyes. 

I have a photography project due tomorrow. Down in South Carolina, and far away from the prying eyes of my virtual Raleigh teachers, I have not ventured out for my photos once. 

I strain a foot to the bank of the hill, where the brush thins into glistening pluff mud. The sea breeze has settled into a sweltering low tide, and I wrinkle my nose at the distinct odor of rotten eggs. It smells, and in the muggy depths of May, the air is briny and thick on my tongue. 

Tiny bubbles balloon out from the mud, betraying buried mollusks, who take refuge from the roseate spoonbills hunting at low tide. Rustling spartina grass forms a mosaic over the marsh’s exposed basin. Further ahead, a cusp of palm trees stands at attention, casting a shadow over a great white heron. 

Backed by the spartina, the bird’s bottomless eyes bore into mine. 

I wipe my palm on my shirt and pull out my phone. I need four photos of local fauna–the heron rustles its feathers, and as my camera flashes, it bursts into flight. 

II

In 1902, Robert T. Wilson Jr. built a manor on the bank of the May River, spanning the land of 21 plantations. He called those grounds Palmetto Bluff. In 2023, the resort of the same name converges in a town square, where spotless white porticoes shade a bike rental shop, a restaurant with a speakeasy in its wine cellar, and a real estate office. All of these buildings frame a sprawling green; in its center, facing the May River, sit the charred ruins of Wilson’s Palmetto Lodge. A stone staircase comes to an abrupt end, flanked by asymmetric columns. Further west on the green, live oaks with dripping Spanish Moss crane over a smaller staircase and the detritus of a tile floor. 

Today, stanchions cordon all of these off, and signs ask that guests be respectful of the historical site. I still have a photo from when I was younger, however, and my sister and I held hands at the top of the stairs, smiling for the camera. We wear blue dresses with stripes of red bows for the 4th of July. Behind us, a row of foldable chairs stands vigil over the oncoming parade. There’s one every year; people who live on the resort decorate golf carts, and throw candy from buckets for the horde of children. The most extravagant floats win prizes.

The last couple of years, I’ve taken an iced coffee from the restaurant beside the green and sat on its shaded porch. I abhor wallowing beneath the South Carolina sun for the parade–the resort members endure it only by flooding the roads immediately afterward, heading to the pool down the street. They buy piña coladas and lounge on Spartina-brand towels.

After the daytime celebration ends, my family drives back across the causeway to Myrtle Island, where we watch the fireworks from our dock. I sit with my nana on the wooden rocking chairs. I tell her about the parade.

III

A cacophony of barking scatters egrets into the sea, billowing out like clouds on the spotless blue sky. 

Reuben scuds across the sandbar with incredible noise. Barely older than a puppy–and no bigger than one–the dachshund tears through shallow puddles and drags his leash through their shells. 

My mother laughs from far behind him, cast in Savoy-blue shadows from her sunhat as she hoists a pail over her shoulder. It’s summer, and I can feel it beneath my skin, simmering and salty off the Calibogue Sound. 

We stand on Grenadier Shoal, a broad sand strip off the east of Daufuskie Island. Captain Boo, the son of our neighbor and a distinguished excursion guide with the Palmetto Bluff resort, drives us down in his bowrider every once in a while. He ties an inner tube to the back of the sun-bleached boat and sends forth my younger sister and me, where he slings us into the verdant waters of the Cooper River. We doggy-paddle with dolphins and chase darting fish in the shade of the Daufuskie boscage. 

I stand unmoving on the shoal, feet submerged in a placid tide pool. The wind tangles unkempt hair around my face and drives goosebumps through my frigid swimsuit, whistling like a wild songbird in my ear. I prod a lump of sand with my toe. It disperses out into the murky water, and the corner of a sand dollar peers out. 

I nestle it in-between the towels in my pail, to be brought back with any others I find. My mom and I will lay them out, and in the morning, they will be washed white by the searing summer sun. 

IV

At night, the vintage gas-lamps around Palmetto Bluff come on, one after another to light the sprawling web of streets. The breeze slows as the sun dips beneath the horizon, and when the final colors of sunset are flushed from the sky, the world is perfectly still. 

There’s the taste of smoke from the smore pits, the rustling of Spanish moss overhead. An eastern gray squirrel on a branch idles in a bed of resurrection ferns. The floating docks bob on the high tide, swaying on the quiet waves, which effuse onto the driftwood-littered beaches and erase the tracks of foxes. 

Then–the tsss of a snare, the twinkling high notes of a piano–“Night Dreamer” pours out into the frozen night. 

I hold my phone in my hand as I stroll through the rows of Southern houses, mother and sister close behind. We always walk after dinner, and over time, I’ve become adept at navigating my stiletto heels across the pockmarked brick sidewalks. The saxophone breaks into the melody, and the jazz renders the world in shades of winking orange and abyssal indigo. 

The three of us pass homes bright and houses dark, hanging seats creaking in the wind, untamed wisteria vines dripping from window-panes and rows of geraniums arranged in white-fenced gardens. We pass blue bicycles resting against garages for the night and cats who monitor us from second-floor balustrades, we pass open windows and families relaxing over iced tea in screened porches. We pass anoles asleep on gutters and overflowing mailboxes and ivy on ivory walls. 

Cling. Cling. The song goes quiet as the piano relaxes into two chords, the second higher and softer than the first.

We pour onto a small bridge, which connects the riverside square to the rest of Palmetto Bluff. 

My mother rests her hand on my shoulder: “Do you see that? It’s Ursa Minor.” 

I follow her gaze, and together, we count the stars. 

V

It is April 11th, 2023. I am still unathletic. 

The sun beats down on me as I heave myself onto the causeway, gasping for air after jogging the length of Myrtle Island Road. It’s a cloudless, unbearably muggy day, and the raised concrete edge of the road looks an awful lot like an oasis to me. 

As I lug my legs over it, I drag the bottom of my shirt across my face, scrubbing at the sweat that coats me like a second skin. 

Dear God. 

I lean back on my hands, and exhale from the pit of my stomach. 

My feet dangle over the saltmarsh, where low tide has exposed the basin of oysters and familiar mélange of spartina grass and pluff mud. 

Out on the river, a white buyboat crests the horizon. A man sits on the shaded part of the deck, and his thick oyster gloves are discarded beside him–he watches a pod of bottlenose dolphins chase minnows into a tidal creek. 

I rub my nose, shifting my gaze to the docks that extend over the marsh. On one of them, an ice chest and a pile of towels are at the ready, prepared for an outing once the tide rises again. A siege of egrets perch on a nearby dead tree. When I take my glasses off to clean the lenses, the silhouette of the birds looks like a constellation.

Alright. If I don’t head home now, my mom will be worried. 

I shift my weight to the side, turning my head over my shoulder–

A great white heron and I make abrupt eye contact. 

I hold my breath, not daring to look away. 

From the other side of the causeway, the heron steps towards the edge of the barrier, arching its neck away from me. 

It watches the bluff. In its eyes, I can see reflected the entirety of the marsh, and beyond it, the boundless sweep of the sky and the May River.

A sudden wind overtakes us, and the beating of the heron’s wings becomes indistinct from the rustling spartina grass, the movement in the canopy of live oaks on the shore, the ripples in the water far beneath us. 

I breathe it all in, and it tastes like salt.