and we were always pulling up strange things from the bayou. If I saw something nice, I would bring it home and add it here,” Edison says, his gray hair going haywire in the wind. “But that was forty years ago.”
Back when there were more people on the island, men would gather by the altar, drink a couple of beers, and talk over the daily catch. They might even go down to Antoine Naquin’s Dancehall, which was also the church and the five-and-dime, to listen to the local zydeco band. “I get mad when people leave,” Edison tells me, lifting objects from the altar. Each, I imagine, triggers a memory. “You know, the more people on the island, the bigger the island.”
I let his words sit in the dense air. I know they seem illogical; people can’t make the island larger, and in fact its diminishing size is what leads most to leave. But there is truth to what Edison says. After a month of listening to the islanders’ stories I have come to think of the community as a kind of organism. The more people there are, the more robustly this organism can organize and reconstitute itself. With more people on the island, post-storm recovery is fast; with more people on the island, gas lines are repaired. With more people on the island, you don’t have to drive so far to get what you need.
Edison’s father lived all of his ninety-one years on Jean Charles, Edison tells me, and his father’s father spent his whole life here too. “We’ve been down here a long time,” he says. “It used to be that you could catch four hundred pounds of shrimp a night in the little inlet right there. I still bring in enough to eat now, but not much more than that.” Later he will pull a five-gallon bucket out of his refrigerator, with about fifty shrimp squirming in the bottom. Two big whites and the rest brown, probably no more than two pounds total, or one two-hundredth of what he caught in a day when the fishing was good.
Before we leave the altar he hands me a flare of oyster shells, growing out of and on each other. “When one oyster dies,” Edison says, “the next one builds on his shell, and the next one builds on him. Me? I plan on dying right here, on the island.” I try to hand the shells back but he refuses. “You take that with you,” he says. “A souvenir.”
I run my thumb along the shiny inside of a shell, where the oyster’s belly once fit snug. It is a gift the land gave to Edison and that today he is determined to pass on.
Edison is opposed to Albert’s relocation strategy. He fears that if the islanders all agree to leave, the land will be sold off to the highest bidder. This anxiety may seem irrational, but it is, at least partially, informed by half a millennium of Western wrongdoing to Native communities all over the Americas. It is also a sentiment that I will encounter regularly in vulnerable coastal communities throughout the United States. Those who have the least are often the most reluctant to give up their small share, especially if others will turn a profit from their sacrifice.
Together we work our way through the roseau cane back toward the house, stopping at what remains of Edison’s garden. Instead of planting directly in the ground, he uses a couple of bathtubs that he salvaged from homes abandoned nearby. The plastic barrier keeps salt water out of the roots. There are three cantaloupes and five yellow cucumbers. Out front two persimmon trees Edison planted to replace those lost during Hurricane Andrew swim in the wind.
The long arms of the trees are laden with round fruit ready to fall. The air is heavy with the smell of vegetal ripeness and coming rain. “Each tree you have is good protection during a storm, plus the fruit is pretty tasty too,” he says, plucking one from the branch and handing it to me. I think of Li-Young Lee’s poem “Persimmons,” and recite the first few lines aloud. Edison chuckles.
How to eat:
put the knife away, lay down newspaper.
Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.
We walk together back to his workbench, and I cup the persimmon in my palms. Lift it up and down to better sense its density. The shiny globe is full of sun and the little freshwater that still snakes its way along the island’s stubborn spine. I lift it to my face, breathe in deeply, and smell the land giving of itself to make a musky sweetness. Before digging my nails into the skin I pause, wondering if I shouldn’t eat it—there are so few, and the one that I hold in my hands plays no small part in Edison’s ability to stay. But not eating it would be rude. So I take a bite, and the fruit’s thick pulp runs down my chin, luxurious and strange. It is a taste I have never encountered before. And in that moment I think I know why he and the others do not leave.
On Gratitude
Laura Sewall: Small Point, Maine
I WAS WORKING IN MY HOME OFFICE THE DAY HURRICANE Bill hit. It was a hot August day. Perfectly calm, perfectly clear. But I could hear big waves. I looked up from the desk, out the window and across the marsh, and saw these huge waves crashing on the other side of the dunes. The water was coming into the marsh really fast because there was suddenly so much of it to move within the twelve-hour tidal cycle. I ran over to my sister’s and she and her husband were up on the roof photographing these big whirlpools swirling in the marsh. It was somehow so magical I jumped in. But I got scared immediately—and I never get scared swimming. I remember thinking, This is not any pretty water.
So I came back here, got my kayak, and paddled out into the marsh. It was completely, utterly covered. It looked like a big solid mirror. I remember floating past patches where just a few inches of grass stuck out. Because the rest of the stalks were submerged, the tips of the blades were absolutely covered in bugs. As I floated by they tried to jump into the kayak. I realized then that there is so much life in these marshes that is not prepared for higher waters. I mean, I never even thought about the insects. Where are they going to go?
After that I had a real spike of something like fear. I thought if I were to be honest with you I would admit that I don’t know what is going to happen to the marsh in front of my house. I don’t know whether some big surging wave is going to spill over that little peninsula and come pounding through my windows. I don’t know if the marsh will be able to keep up with the rise. I actually think it is years away, but I am not so sure that someone buying my house could say it is a generation or two away. And that is how the houses down here are thought of, in generational terms. So what is scary, in an immediate sense, is that I may not have the retirement funding I thought I had by virtue of selling this house. I don’t know what is going to happen with that. I have no uncertainty about the climate science, but I do have a lot of uncertainty about what to do.
I have watched a brand-new pool form on the marsh; I see the land being eroded. Right on that edge over there, eleven feet have been lost since 2004. Some people say I am in denial. But that is a really ineffective and inaccurate way of referring to a particular psychological process. Living here is not denial. It is a choice. I am sixty years old right now. I could watch some really amazing change in the time I have left and I could stay until it gets washed away. I would be, I don’t know, say eighty-five by then. It just might be perfect. I don’t have kids so I don’t need to pass anything down. It is a very self-centered perspective, I know that. But it is not denial.
These decisions are complex because there are a lot of factors to take into account. For one, I have to take into account my incredible love for sitting right here. I feel so privileged to be observing these changes so immediately. It is frightening but it is also incredibly interesting, awesome really. There is something magical and enlivening about seeing how dynamic life is on the planet. You think of animals running around but you don’t think of plants moving. See that big patch of brown grass over there? It is migrating uphill because it is not super salt resistant and where it used to be is a relatively low part of the marsh that now gets flooded more often than before. So I am seeing a different kind of grass, Spartina alterniflora, come in behind it. I
