The Water Is Wide by Pat Conroy Page B

benediction of an itchy-palmed justice of the peace, and returned to Bluffton to begin the second act of his life in completely new surroundings. In fourteen years in Bluffton he had sired two sons and managed to worm his way so completely into Bennington’s life and make himself so indispensable that he sometimes seemed like Bennington’s third leg. When Bennington was in power, Zeke’s position was enviable, but now that Bennington’s career was in its eclipse, Zeke was beginning to feel the pressure of insecurity again.
    My relationship with Zeke Skimberry and his family started slowly and inauspiciously but gathered momentum and intimacy as the year passed. He was impossible to dislike. He loved to tease, to banter lightly with all who crossed his path, and to mimic the supervisors who ruled him. At our first meeting he told me, “People over here think you are crazy for teachin’ at that school.”
    â€œPeople over here are exactly right,” I answered.
    â€œOf course, all these people are crazy themselves, so there’s no tellin’,” he said with his eyes dancing, mischievous, and very blue. Then he said with great seriousness, “Course, the niggers on Yamacraw have needed something for a damn long time. I sure hope you can help those little nigger kids.”
    The most fascinating thing about Zeke Skimberry, however, was his irrepressible wife, Ida. She was a poetess of profanity, an oracle of epithets who could outcuss a bathroom wall. Unlike most women I have known, she placed no value on shallow pretensions or hypocritical displays of gentility. Her first words to me as I drove into her yard on a Sunday afternoon the first week in September marked her as a person to be handled gently and with caution. From the screened-in porch of her tiny house, she yelled, “What in the hell are you looking for?”
    â€œMa’am, I’m looking for Zeke Skimberry, the janitor.”
    â€œHe’s not a goddam janitor. He’s the maintenance man. Everybody’s always calling him a janitor. Well, who in the hell are you?” she asked with eyes ablazing.
    â€œI’m Pat Conroy, ma’am. I teach over on Yamacraw Island, and I was supposed to get in touch with your husband, Mrs. Skimberry.”
    â€œHe ain’t here now. Come on inside and git yourself a cup of coffee.” As I got out of the car, she startled me again by saying, “Hot as a bitch, ain’t it?”
    â€œYes, ma’am, it certainly is.”
    In no way had my mother with her air of gentility and fine breeding prepared me for the Ida Skimberrys of the world. The coffeepot, positioned in honorable perpetuity on the stove, was the center of the tiny Skimberry universe, and over the year we consumed gallons of the steaming, hot brew as Zeke rambled on about the idiosyncracies of his work or the insecurity of his position. Or Ida would curse fluently at the lack of money, at her husband’s lack of status, or at her inability to find a decent job.
    During the week I parked my car in the Skimberrys’ yard under Ida’s vigilant eye. After my second week on the island, after Zeke had picked me up at Alljoy Landing, and after consuming three cups of coffee while describing the events of the week, I walked out to my car to discover that Ida had washed the car and cleaned out the inside during the week. She had also found a sack of dirty clothes in the backseat. She had washed and ironed all the clothes and neatly folded them in a cardboard box. I was overwhelmed by this kindness. I thanked her with genuine emotion, but all she said was, “Shit, the goddam car needed washin’ and the goddam clothes needed a good cleanin’.” Then her face, which could be hard as a callus, softened into a magnificently warm smile and she said, “I enjoy doin’ things for people.”
    It did not take me long to warm to this kind of people. And just as I had entered a