The Hunt Club_ A Novel - Bret Lott [102]
His hand stayed in mine then, and we sat.
“We built this one together,” Unc said. “Your daddy and me. And we never hunted off it. Only came here, to sit.”
I said nothing for a moment, only took in a breath, whispered, “I remember you two talking about this place one time. When I was little.”
It was all I knew to say, but it seemed enough, because now I saw what he was giving me by taking me here on this new day, in a new year, the next one of a new life I’d been given:
Before us lay the land, daylight coming up, a perfect daylight that gave color to everything.
They’d built it, brother and brother, for what they could see: land thick with palmetto and loblolly pine, oak and hickory, dogwood and wax myrtle and wisteria vine.
And there, through a curtain of two ancient live oaks it seemed spread open just for us, lay the Ashepoo, maybe a hundred yards off, the wide cold blue of it, past it the spartina and yellow grass and salt-marsh hay, all the way to Edisto.
Spread across it islands with no names.
I closed my eyes, felt the tree move in the small breeze up here, smelled the marsh, heard a squirrel bark from somewhere behind us.
“Huger Dillard,” I whispered. Two words, brand-new.
Unc held my hand tighter, my eyes still closed, and I watched this all, watched colors rise, the marsh now a green I couldn’t name, mixed in and down inside it browns and reds and a color like bone. Miles of color.
I watched it all, there with my father.
This book is for
Jeff Adkins, John Astles, John Astles, senior,
Jeff Deal, and, especially, Joel Curé.
And this is for Melanie and Marian,
with thanks for your faith.
ALSO BY BRET LOTT
The Man Who Owned Vermont
A Stranger’s House
A Dream of Old Leaves
Jewel
How to Get Home
Reed’s Beach
Fathers, Sons, and Brothers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BRET LOTT is the author of the novels Jewel, Reed’s Beach, A Stranger’s House, and The Man Who Owned Vermont; the story collections How to Get Home and A Dream of Old Leaves; and the memoir Fathers, Sons, and Brothers. His stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and magazines, among them The Southern Review, The Yale Review, The Iowa Review, the Chicago Tribune, and Story, and have been widely anthologized. He lives with his wife, Melanie, and their two sons, Zebulun and Jacob, in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and teaches at the College of Charleston and Vermont College.