The Secrets of Cuckolds Creek Landing: Part 1
Serial crime fiction inspired by the South Carolina Lowcountry.
When the moonlight reflects from just the right point in the South Carolina sky, one can almost see the stain of sin floating atop the waters of Cuckolds Creek, while betrayal - and death - lurk beneath its surface.
“When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.” – Sacha Guitry
Author’s Note: This is the first of a three-part series. Part 2 will publish Wednesday, following by the Part 3 finale on Thursday. I sincerely hope you enjoy, and more great stories are ahead. Please consider a subscription to enjoy this content in full, as well as future short stories, humor and serial fiction from Michael DeWitt. Your readership and support is greatly appreciated by this S.C. Lowcountry author.
When the moonlight reflects from just the right point in the South Carolina sky, one can almost see the stain of sin floating atop the waters of Cuckolds Creek.
The first time the doctor’s wife committed adultery in front of him was there at Cuckolds Creek Landing. They thought it was funny, the two of them, what with the name and all.
We passed it every week on our visits to the specialists and physical therapists at Charleston’s MUSC. But one night, when I wasn’t there to care for him, they pulled over at the landing exit on a last-second lark. They started tearing away clothes in the driver’s seat and left him strapped in the rear, as the Cadillac Escalade rocked, the windows fogged. Then they took the time to set up his wheelchair on the dirt and pea gravel driveway of the landing, positioning him where he could face the action and they could stretch out in the back seat: his wife’s lover standing on the ground before him, rutting, door open, her ivory legs askew and pointing skyward out the door as if signaling to the night heavens, daring the gods to judge them.
I don’t know if he was in his right mind that evening, or somewhere foggy and far away. I don’t know if he watched, saw, felt and hurt, or tried to look away and pretend it wasn’t happening, that it was someone else, that it was all just a wicked dream.
Cuckolds Creek Landing. You know the place, or at least you’ve likely seen the brown sign along Highway 17 between the soul-sister cities of Savannah and Charleston, and became curious. A public boat landing near a nowhere place called Green Pond, in Colleton County, the self-proclaimed Front Porch of the Lowcountry. How many people have picked up phones making that long ride along Highway 17 and Googled it? Made jokes about it. Perhaps you? What happened to lend this place such a name? Did some scandal go down here? What poor, cucking husband is this crazy, backwoods creek named after?
What dark secrets lurk drifting here, just beneath its tidal, brackish waters? I know a few.
Like any other Carolina Lowcountry river, there is darkness afloat even among the natural beauty, like the body of the occasional drowned fisherman found floating adrift in the peacefulness of the lovely, lush lily pads.
The evil of Cuckold Creek goes way back, even earlier than the dark deeds I must confess to you now. Even earlier than the days of smugglers making midnight runs up the channels with speedboats full of pot and coke, even earlier than the old-time rumrunners paddling wooden skiffs heavy with moon liquor.
This ACE Basin creek flows toward a bridge named after Harriet Tubman, the conductor of the Underground Railroad who once led a bloody raid at a ferry not far from here. Our people were once bought and sold to rice plantations up and down this river, and its sisters, the Ashepoo, Edisto and Combahee, to toil their lives away. How many of my ancestors drowned here, scrambling for freedom, or almost found salvation, only to be snagged by the dogs and the slave hunters, or taken by the gators? Even after the slave trade was supposedly ended, how many more were trafficked in, stashed away in the dank, gloomy confines of a ship’s hold?
I am called Marah, a special name among our tribe from generations ago, but this isn’t about me or my people. This is about a man shadowed by evil and a dark history of his own.
When the failing neurons fired properly, Dr. Walter Durham could remember the second time the bastard openly slept with his wife, and the sick sounds they made in his bedroom, right down the hall from where his dead children once slept. It was also the day he knew his wife would soon dispose of him and his broken body.
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