Swamps and Soirees: A Summerbrook Novel

by Vicki Wilkerson

  Turning his gaze slightly, he lowered his head and said, “Do you mean that you don’t know where I could find any, or that you don’t wish to help me?”

  Suddenly, she felt bold. “I don’t want the swamp exploited.” To her, the sinker loggers were kind of like scavengers. They vandalized the rivers and swamps and left scars where all the old logs had been. And then the roads and construction people would come. But Furman didn’t look like a scavenger. Quite the opposite. Still, she’d seen what others had done.

  “Me either. I’d never stand for that. Track home builders are ruining thousands of acres of wetlands as we speak. It’s a tragedy.”

  “How could I be sure?”

  “My word.” He took a grape Nehi out the chest, used the bottle opener on the front and took a sip.

  Could she trust him? She hardly knew him.

  “And all that beauty is lost under the water.” He peered into the meat case again.

  If her father and grandfather had never responsibly sourced the old wood, she wouldn’t have the beautiful furniture she had.

  “And then there’s the investment thing.”

  “What investment thing?” she asked.

  “The one we talked about last night. Moving forward with what you said you wanted to do.”

  “How’s that?” She was confused.

  “You could make enough money on the old logs to get quite a tidy sum to turn a major profit and start that…strategy you talked about.” He looked at her sleeping uncle.

  She could? Her little savings account would help, but this sounded like a real financial opportunity. But what about the environment? She didn’t want to harm or disturb it for any amount of money.

  “Think about it for a while, and we’ll talk particulars later.”

  She would consider his proposal, but she needed more details, and she would have to make sure the swamp was protected first.

  “Think about what?” Uncle Marion woke from his morning coma and propped himself up beside the meat counter.

  Furman extended his arm. “Furman Laurens, sir.” He shook the old man’s hand.

  “The Charleston Laurens?”

  Furman nodded. He put the Nehi beside his Moon Pie on the counter.

  “Been hearin’ about your family all my life,” Uncle Marion said all sleepily.

  Yep. The Laurens name went all the way back to the founding fathers. But she was sure her uncle didn’t know or care about all of that.

  “Marion Rudder. Pleased to meet you. My niece takin’ care of you?”

  “Well, I was just asking whether she knew of some old cypress wood for the boat I’m building. You know, sinkers.”

  “Bubba, I got just the person for you.” He took in a huge breath. “Our friend Cubi-Jack knows everything about everything in this neck of the swamp.”

  Furman looked at Hanna while her uncle washed his hands.

  She tried to shoot her uncle the eye, but he wasn’t looking. “Uncle Marion, I don’t know that we should even harvest the old logs.” She walked behind the register, crumpled the misspelled sign and slipped it in the trash.

  “Don’t be silly, child. They ain’t doin’ nobody no good at the bottom of the swamp.”

  She turned to Furman. “I’ll discuss this with my uncle later, so if that’s all you came for, I really have to get back to—”

  He cut her off. “That isn’t all I wanted. I also came to ask if you’d accompany me to the Jasmine Society’s Black and White Ball on Saturday.”

  Holy City! She knew the look on her face had to resemble one of the dead animals on her wall.

  ⸙

  Furman was confused. Did he just say something insulting? By the look on Hanna’s face he had. He’d merely come to apologize, look for unique wood for his antique yacht business and his one-of-a-kind boat and ask the lovely young lady for a date.

  “Hanna, I believe that nice man just asked you out on a date. Your aunt and I didn’t bring you up to be rude. Say somethin’, darlin’.”

  She broke out of her deer-in-the-headlights look. “I’m sorry, but I’ll be busy.”

  Hanna’s uncle stepped from around the corner and looked at his niece. “Hanna, you know you can have off any time you want. I’ll just get Della to help me out here.” Long as it don’t interfere with her afternoon stories, and there ain’t no stories on television on Saturday.” Marion hugged Hanna’s shoulder with his right arm. “Girl, you been fightin’ with that side of ribs? Looks like you lost with all that blood all over you.” He chuckled.

  Furman thought it was funny, too, but reserved any comment because Hanna apparently didn’t find anything humorous about the meaty remark. “If your niece doesn’t escort me to the gala Saturday night, I’ll have to stay at home. And a lot of people were counting on me being there.”

  “Darlin’, you wouldn’t want this nice young man to disappoint his friends.” The old man smiled. He was missing a couple of his teeth. His own father had lost a couple of teeth, but they had the finances to make it right again.

  Furman could tell that she respected her uncle. Any other woman would have been chewing him out and telling him to stay out of her business. What a kind, compassionate woman she was. But he had already known that. In fact, that was one of the reasons he was drawn to her—and here. There were other reasons, as well, and he had to make sure they were pure. For her sake. He didn’t want to take her out just because he felt bad for the way his mother had treated her—though he did feel awful. And he didn’t want to take her out just because she was forbidden—because he suspected she was for many reasons. Evelynn had pointed many of them out when Hanna had left last night.

  He wanted to take her out to gaze at her uncomplicated, striking beauty, to breathe in her innocence, to discover the depths of the intelligence he had recognized almost immediately and to find out what lurked beneath her dark eyes and unassuming demeanor.

  ⸙

  Hanna stood there in amazement. Couldn’t both men see that she didn’t want to go to some…party? With Furman? In Charleston?

  “What time you want her ready?” Uncle Marion smiled his imperfect grin.

  “Wait a minute—” Hanna started. But she didn’t really have the rest of the sentence in mind.

  “Seven would be great.” The handsome man was grinning like Mavis Bell when Pastor Vines let her sing in church.

  Hanna’s uncle’s compliance to whatever a customer asked for had merely been a nuisance to her before now—a nuisance and the reason he practically stayed broke all the time. She wasn’t some side of beef that could be bought or traded. Her uncle had just stepped way over the line of polite compliance. He’d just ruined her chances at making a clean getaway from Furman Laurens. And had actually arranged a date for her! Was her mouth still hanging open from disbelief?

  “One more thing. I’d like to buy a pound of your liver pudding.” He smiled at Hanna. “I’ve had something similar before in France. They call their version boudin. Boudin blanc and boudin rouge—no rice in theirs, though.”

  Uncle Marion cut and wrapped the liver pudding. “They make a lot of these meat puddin’s over there in England and Europe. Use to have me some customers from there who came in all the time when Hanna was a baby.”

  “What?” Her uncle had never told her that before. And Furman. Was he ordering the rural meat sausages because he was trying to make up for his mother’s rude behavior in some bizarre way? Maybe his apology continued with his invitation to the gala or ball or whatever it was going to be.

  “Yeah. I tasted a number of meat puddings on a trip to Europe right after college. And I’ve always wanted to compare the American versions with the English and French. Boudin rouge is France’s blood pudding. Pork, blood and sometimes milk and eggs, and black pudding is the English version, but they use grains instead of rice. I like the Southern and Cajun versions better, though, because they contain rice. And as everyone knows, we Southerners love our rice.”

  He and Uncle Marion ch
uckled.

  So he was just doing a little research when he was asking about the blood pudding. She never knew the butcher shop’s meat puddings were international dishes—that they had French roots and British ties. To her, they were just plain, country food. Sometimes the isolation of her rural location gave her myopia—perhaps she lacked discernment of the big picture because she was so wholly focused on what was in front of her. Working hard to make a living out here could make a person that way. Maybe that was one of the reasons she knew so little about her heritage. Her ancestors were simply too busy struggling to survive to take the time to record such unnecessary information.

  While Furman paid her uncle at the register, she finally remembered her manners and asked about his father.

  “He’s much the same. Thanks for asking, though.” With a grape Nehi and a Moon Pie in one hand and a pound of liver pudding wrapped in butcher’s paper under his arm, he opened the front door and reached down to pet Sinker, who always waited outside for scraps.

  Furman didn’t have to say it. She was like Sinker, and he was stroking her with his dinner party invitation out of pity—the same way he was stroking Sinker’s head.

  He straightened. “I’ll pick you up at seven on Saturday then.” He walked to his car and Hanna sprinted to the front window and peered out, careful not to let him see her.

  Finally, after making a call on his cell phone, he pulled away in his black Volvo.

  How on Earth could she possibly get out of this? But that wasn’t the only question that ran through her mind. Did she even want to get out of it?

  The meat saw buzzed a shrill spitting sound as she sliced the side of ribs her uncle needed. As she cut, she watched the numbers at the bottom of the television screen. It wasn’t a pastime now. It was work and research and information. Deep inside, she knew it was time to get out of the butcher shop—for her aunt and uncle—and for herself.

  And all the while she cut meat and watched the numbers, she wondered what she was going to wear to the ball.

  At around eleven-thirty that morning, Aunt Della came through the door. “Got you guys some sea crab soup for lunch.”

  Hanna’s brain corrected her aunt, but she’d never do it aloud for fear that it would embarrass the old woman. She-crab soup was a Lowcountry favorite with claw meat and row from a female crab.

  Aunt Della was always mixing up her words and terms—after an emergency that had left her with a tracheostomy when Hanna was in high school. She had watched as her beloved aunt got chocked on a piece of pork chop while watching her soap opera one day when her favorite villain got shot. Thank goodness Four Hole was just outside the town limits of Summerbrook. The EMS truck got there in less than five minutes. Hanna watched as the technicians tried in vain to clear Aunt Della’s airway, only to give up and perform a tracheotomy. It had saved her aunt’s life, but the ordeal left her aunt—who’d been as sharp as the scissors she’d used when she sewed every day—with a crossed wire in her speech. And sometimes it showed up in her reasoning. The bloody scene was burned into Hanna’s memory.

  If nothing else, “sea crab soup” was apropos. Hanna smiled. At the edge of the swamp, her aunt’s misappropriation of words didn’t really much matter. Everyone knew what she meant.

  Aunt Della walked up to Hanna. “What’s wrong, honey? Looks like you got a whirl on your shoulders.”

  More like blood and ribs.

  “She’s just worried about what she’ll be wearin’ to some fancy party she’s goin’ to on Saturday night. Our brand of customer is comin’ up in this world, Della. And our Hanna is a goin’ places.”

  “You’re going to a party?” Aunt Della asked.

  “It’s a black and white gala—party,” Hanna explained. “I really don’t know much about it.”

  Aunt Della took a faded yellow Tupperware bowl out of her basket. “Must be one of those unity things them fancy city folk is always trying to rig up. Trying to mend the fences of all that segmentation when they kept the races apart years ago. You know before the immigration of the school districts.”

  “I don’t think that’s it at all, Aunt Della,” she said, hoping that she didn’t offend her aunt. “I believe the people wear black and white formal attire to the gala.”

  “That can’t be. Doesn’t even sound right. Fact, I saw one of them ball things on my soap opera just last month, and everybody had on brightly-colored fancy frocks.”

  “Well, I’m going to have to call and cancel because I don’t have a thing to wear to something like that,” Hanna said.

  The old woman ladled the she-crab soup into two large cups. “Leave that to your Aunt Della. Instead of watching my stories this afternoon, I’m going to Hazel’s to get some fabric to whip up a dress for you. By tomorrow afternoon, you’ll have the prettiest dress at the whole holla.” She paused and a quizzical look covered her face.

  “That would be lovely, Aunt Della, but I’d like it if you’d stick to either black or white fabric.”

  “Oh, sweetie, we’ll just have to see what’s prettiest when I get there.” She pulled out an old milk jug that she’d washed and filled with sweet tea. “Y’all are going to have to pour your own. I don’t have time to stand around here mish mashing. I’ve got work to do.”

  What was Hanna falling into now? Aunt Della had a mind of her own—that didn’t always follow…protocol. She’d just taken the reigns and was in charge of ensuring Hanna’s social respectability at the party. That could be disastrous. And Hanna still wasn’t able to call her down, to say no. What was wrong with Hanna? She had a clue—it was a strange mixture of manners, respect and her lack of a spine. Her spine had turned yellow with cowardice.

  For twenty-four hours, she paced around the little shop and in her apartment, thinking of Furman, the way his clothes draped on him, his strong hands, his rich Charleston accent, his perfect golden hair. The only productive thing she’d done was to set up her Omnitrade account. As soon she read the prospectuses and finished her research, she’d be punching in the numbers on her old computer that had been a leftover from her days at college.

  To occupy her time, she picked up around her one-room apartment and placed some bank statements in her files. One of the folders popped open, and she saw a paper from her elementary school file that Aunt Della had saved for her. She giggled. Hanna Marks was written at the top. Rudder was written smaller, underneath She paused to think of the little girl who’d written it—shy, trying to mitigate a name she knew had…associations to it. But she was not that girl any longer. She was who she was, but who she was wasn’t appropriate for some guy from Charleston’s aristocratic class.

  She heard a knock at her door and opened it. “Hey, Charlene,” she said and let out a breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Charlene stepped inside. “I could tell from the sound of your voice on the phone when we last spoke that something was wrong.”

  “Everything.” She explained as best she could. “I can’t imagine how I’m going to survive an evening in downtown Charleston at some society ball. What if they play some kind of music where I’m supposed to know how to dance the waltz or something?”

  “Come here. You need a hug.” Charlene hugged Hanna.

  “I need more than a hug. I’m completely out of my element.”

  “Well, you’ll never find your future in the swamp,” Charlene said. “No matter how comfortable you feel there.”

  “Yeah, but alligators are way safer than aristocrats.”

  Charlene chuckled. “Hanna, you’re just letting your silly fear and self-esteem thing get the best of you again. That’s ridiculous.”

  Hanna paced. “You can’t imagine, and you haven’t seen his house. Or know what I did in their yard. I pretty much made a fool of myself, and I think he feels sorry for me.”

  “That’s no reason to ask someone out on a date.” Charlene plopped down on the couch.

  “Maybe he’s asking me because his date cancelled on him at the last minute.” He couldn’t possi
bly be interested in her in any other kind of way. Yeah, that had to be it.

  “That’s funny, Hanna. You were one of the prettiest girls in Summerbrook High. Still are. Of course, he—or any other dude—would be interested in you. Now, if you were a no-frills woman like me, no one would ever be interested in you.”

  “What about that Aiken dude that keeps hanging around your office? I bet he’s checking you out every time he stops by.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” Charlene shook her head like she was shaking off the idea. “What are you going to wear?”

  Hanna started pacing again. “That’s part of the problem. Aunt Della is making something. I told her to stick to black or white. We really didn’t discuss anything beyond that.”

  “Well, it won’t matter. You’d look great in either. And your Aunt Della can really sew like a Hollywood designer. So, I don’t see what you’re worried about.”

  “You are no help. At all.” Hanna stopped her pacing.

  “Well, no, I’m not. First of all, if you think I’m going to give you an excuse to back out, you’re talking to the wrong person. You know I’ve always thought that we could do anything we put our minds to, right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “So strike one. And if you think I can help you with fashion, well, strike two.”

  Hanna chuckled. Charlene was right. She probably didn’t even own a dress.

  “You should have called April Church if you wanted a reason to be scared, and you should have called her friend, Jenna, if you wanted fashion advice. I’m the tomboy friend who thinks she can build houses, remember?”

  They both got a good laugh out of that. All her Summerbrook girlfriends had just been summed up in a few simple phrases. Hanna knew the only two titles she could claim—the numbers queen, or, perhaps, swamp girl. Neither went together, but both fit.