Swamps and Soirees: A Summerbrook Novel

by Vicki Wilkerson

  “No, you haven’t. I attended only once. Between the boat building and Father in the hospital, I haven’t had much free time.”

  The pretty lady leaned down to Hanna and whispered. “It is kind of you to sit with him, dear.” Her diamond earrings dangled and swayed about her chin.

  Hanna smiled. She was right where she needed to be—even though she knew it would have helped her career to be up and about, mingling and beating the bushes for potential customers. Beside Tillman Laurens was where God wanted her.

  The well-dressed couple made excuses and quickly departed.

  Hanna could hear the faint notes of chamber music coming from the formal dining room, and she could smell the heavy mixture of expensive colognes and perfumes that weighed down the parlor. It would take weeks to get the echoes of each out of the old house. She preferred the sounds of the frogs and crickets in the woods and the scent of cypress from the swamp.

  “Would you like some planter’s punch? It’s Mother’s signature drink and has been a Charleston favorite since the early 1800’s.”

  “Planter’s punch?”

  “You must have heard of the concoction. Plantation owners used to come to Charleston for the winter, and many would stay at the Planters Hotel. That’s where it became famous.” He paused. “Or would you like some lemonade? Or something else yellow?” Furman asked.

  Hanna smiled and looked around. Mrs. Laurens had taken this Jasmine soiree to the edges of the yellow abyss. Even most of the drinks were yellow. “Punch, please.”

  “Will you be okay with Father until I get back?”

  She nodded, and he left.

  The old man’s neck bobbed, then he dropped his head, and just as quickly, he lifted it.

  “Mr. Laurens? Are you all right?” Hanna could see there was something going on with him.

  As she looked into his face, his eyes seemed glazed over.

  Hanna stiffened with apprehension as Mrs. Laurens approached, blindly conversing with an older couple. “Tillman, the Foshees are here to see you,” she said as a look of embarrassment fell over her face. “Tillman,” she whispered. It’s rude to doze off at your own party. Do stay awake, please.”

  “Sorry, dear.” His head moved unsteadily, like a cork floating in Four Hole Creek.

  She turned back to her guests. “Don’t mind him. Hanna, here, is with the caterers. She’ll take care of Tillman’s needs. Anyway, when did you say you plan to return to Edisto Island?” With her back to her husband, Mrs. Laurens conversed once again with her guests.

  How dare she! Hanna was not with the caterers tonight. Well, not really. She figured it was just Mrs. Laurens’s way of getting back at Hanna for standing up to her the way she did the other night at the revival at the church’s camp meeting grounds. Though the words came out of her own mouth, she still couldn’t believe she’d stood up to Mrs. Laurens the way she did.

  “Hanna, there’s no air in the darkness.” Mr. Laurens lowered his head again. His breaths were labored and jagged.

  She didn’t have time to think about herself or her career or social position tonight. “Mr. Laurens, would you like to lie down?” Something strange and different was going on with Furman’s father. Hurry, Furman, hurry!

  He shook his head. “The roses…and the—” He seemed to struggle to breathe. “Air.”

  Where was Furman? She looked around. Probably detained by everyone he knew here at the party. The parlor was stuffed with people. Hanna could hardly breathe herself. The help Callie had hired barely had room to circulate their yellow hors d’oeuvres in their yellow service uniforms.

  Mrs. Laurens was just a few paces away, and when she saw the help come near her with his tray, she grabbed a few bites, turned and placed them in Mr. Laurens’s lap. “Tillman, eat this. You’ve hardly taken a nibble all day.”

  Hanna needed to speak up for him. “Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea. He’s not looking well, at all.”

  “Excuse me? I know very well what my husband needs.”

  “But—”

  Mrs. Laurens turned her attention again to her guests.

  What was she to do? She gazed all around the room—nothing but yellow flowers. Except for the remaining crystal ones on the table next to the old man. She leaned past Mr. Laurens and saw the people-clogged hall and adjoining dining room. Callie said there were going to be at least two-hundred guests here. Maybe more. But where was Furman?

  Definitely more. Hanna moved her purse aside.

  Mr. Laurens took one of the bacon-wrapped shrimp and tried to put it in his mouth, eventually getting it there.

  She hoped he’d be okay. “Are you sure you should eat that right now?”

  “Evelynn—” Mr. Laurens leaned on her shoulder and coughed a little and out came the food.

  Where was Furman? “Mr. Laurens?” He attempted to pick up his head and opened his mouth like a fish struggling for oxygen.

  Just then his body seemed to turn to jelly and he toppled forward, hitting his face on the coffee table with a loud thump. “Mr. Laurens!” she screamed as she followed him down to the floor. “Someone help him! He’s not breathing!”

  Mrs. Laurens quickly came to her husband’s side and whispered, “Tillman, not at my soiree!” She grabbed her skinny throat and turned pale. Her friends helped her to a chair and helped her sit.

  Everyone near them took a step back. The room quieted.

  “Does anyone know CPR?” Hanna looked around the room, but it appeared that the guests drew even farther away. She had seen CPR explained on one of those informative cable channels at work. Maybe she could do it.

  She helped him to rest flat on the floor, tilted his head back, checked his airway, pinched his nose and tried to breathe into his mouth. Nothing. He was turning blue around the lips. “Someone help him, please,” Hanna cried. Surely there had to be a doctor or a nurse at the party.

  “Call an ambulance!” someone yelled. Two men scuffled out the room.

  She did a few chest compressions. Duskier still. She tried again and again to breathe into him, but no air was going into his trachea. It was obstructed or closed. And no one was helping. And Mr. Laurens was dying!

  Everything was surreal and moving in slow motion. Mrs. Laurens was seated across the room and two women were fanning her with their expensive little bags. Everyone else had glued themselves to the wall—like…like…like wallflowers. But this was no time for Hanna to be a wallflower. She had to do something. Fast.

  After unsuccessfully trying to push another breath into the lifeless man, she looked around again. No help was coming. And it had been minutes since Mr. Laurens had stopped breathing. She had to do something. Then she remembered. She grabbed her purse, tore it open and took out her pocketknife. She’d seen the paramedics save her aunt’s life this way. And she’d carved up enough animals to know where to cut. Counting the bumps on his throat with her fingers, she found her spot and inserted the blade.

  “What’s she doing?” someone yelled. “She’s killing him,” someone else called out.

  Hanna heard a body hit the floor.

  “No, she’s saving his life,” another voice returned.

  Blood spurted everywhere—on her face, on her beige dress, on the yellow flowers on the table. She held the hole open and grabbed at the crystal roses. They tumbled onto the floor, some crashing and splintering—just like at the last gathering.

  Some of the guests squealed, and others ran from the room. In the crush of the exit, she saw Furman and Mr. Sterling pushing through the double parlor doors.

  She slammed a crystal rose against the coffee table, releasing the petals from the stem. She had her tube.

  Mr. Laurens had his airway.

  Immediately upon inserting the glass, she saw his chest rise. Holding the crystal tube in place she felt the old man’s blood drip from her face. She looked down at the droplets and at her bloodied dress. And at the last remaining crystal rose. It was yellow.

  Then she looked up and saw the
horror in Furman’s face.

  He stared back at her as if she’d just butchered his father. Which she had.

  Claudette halted her step beside Furman. She opened her mouth as if to scream and then buried her head into his chest.

  Mrs. Laurens slumped in her chair.

  It had been Mrs. Filmore who had fainted across the room.

  Mr. Sterling’s mouth was agape.

  Hanna wished desperately to disappear.

  So much for being a wallflower.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Shallowness and Shame

  Hanna arrived early to work on Monday morning. She knew she’d have some cleaning up to do on her image—the calm, squeaky clean wallflower image that Mr. Sterling had told her to maintain. The easy, non-threatening one.

  Furman’s father had pulled through—after an ambulance ride and some emergency medical care at the hospital. But who in Charleston would ever forget the sight of the paramedics feverishly working on the old man on the parlor floor as she stood over them like some dark-haired version of Carrie in the film by the same name?

  Several voice mail messages were already on her machine when she arrived at her office Monday morning. Mrs. Filmore wanted her account closed—even though some of her stock had begun to take the downturn Hanna had warned her about. She started the paperwork. If only the woman would hold on. In a few weeks she’d be ahead tens of thousands instead of behind thousands. But it was her money.

  Hanna listened to the rest of her voice mail. Furman had left a few on her work phone, as well as her cell phone. His father had been asking for her. She never wanted to see Furman or his mother for as long as she lived. How could she?

  She would, however, love to see Mr. Laurens—to explain and to apologize to him for butchering him. Maybe she could think of a way to get to him without facing Furman or Evelynn Laurens.

  All morning long as she worked alone in her sparsely furnished office, she half expected Mr. Sterling to call her in and give her some kind of lecture or reprimand. But the call never came. Her isolation did, however. Hardly anyone in the building said a word to her the whole day.

  Except April. She stood in the doorway of Hanna’s office. “You okay?”

  Hanna nodded. She looked up at the light fixture and took in all that she’d done in one breath. “You wouldn’t have believed that night. It was a bloody mess.”

  “I’ve been through some pretty bad stuff, too.” She paused. “But it all seems to go away. Eventually.”

  “And what do I do in the meantime?”

  “Breathe.”

  Hanna nodded.

  “I’ll be in my office in the back if you need me.” She turned to walk away, then turned back. “You’re doing a good job with the spreadsheets and reports. It makes things really clear for me.” She hesitated. “So, I have this favor to ask…”

  “Anything.”

  “Could you put your number magic to work on this…project I have outside of work. It’s for a charity. For a special little boy.”

  “Of course. Let me know the details when you’re ready. I’d love to help.”

  She nodded and left.

  Charlene called during lunch. “I heard about the…party.”

  “That’s being kind…calling it a party. It looked more like a…murder scene…without the actual murder.”

  “You’re being hard on yourself. What did Furman say?”

  “Who knows? I left at the same time he left in the ambulance.”

  “Well, I’m here for you if you need me.”

  “I know.”

  Hanna worked through the rest of her lunch, watching the tickers on her computer as her favorite OKRA stock continued to fall—as expected. Good thing Mrs. Filmore pulled out when she did. She probably didn’t have the nerves—or the stomach—for watching the falling stock. Hanna’s other clients were just going to have to trust her that it was a healthy long-term investment. It was. In fact, she had put a large part of the money she’d had into the stock, as well.

  After she placed a call to Uncle Marion and found out that he could do without her that evening, she devised a plan to visit and apologize to Mr. Laurens. She’d work through visiting hours and slip in after 8:30 tonight. Furman and Mrs. Laurens never stayed after visiting hours.

  Hanna worked at her desk, listening to television analysts’ accounts of today’s financial events. The market was abuzz with the fear of certain indicators. She was not. She had done her research. Waiting was everything.

  So she waited until 8:30 and drove to the hospital. Furman and Mrs. Laurens would be gone. Once indoors, she walked like she belonged in the halls until she found herself inside Mr. Laurens’s room. The room was cold and sterile—like his life at the big mansion.

  He was alone. And sleeping. She sat beside him and said another prayer. If anything further happened to the old man it would be her fault. Because it had been her knife that had sliced the old man’s throat. He had to be okay.

  He woke and reached for her hand. “I knew you’d come.” The hole she had carved in his neck was patched and he could talk.

  Closing her eyes, she lowered her head and said, “I’m so sorry about—. But you weren’t breathing. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I think you might have saved my life.” He touched the bandages on his neck.

  She lifted her head. “I don’t know if I did the right thing or not. It just seemed right at the time.”

  “You did, no matter what Evelynn says.” He seemed so lucid. Nothing like he’d been the night at the party.

  “What does she say?” Not that it mattered now.

  “Silly things, like you sabotaged her bid for Heritage Rose Queen this year, like you bloodied up her Jasmine Soiree on purpose.” He laughed. “Imagine that. I wish we had pictures.” His face grew serious. “I’ve spent a lot of time in my life on silly things like fancy parties and rose competitions. And now I see that none of that matters.”

  “Those things matter to certain people.”

  His eyes seemed to settle on the clock on the wall. “People with time. I’ve run out of it. I think I attended my last Jasmine Soiree Saturday night.”

  “Why do you say that?” She looked him over. Despite his apparent brush with clarity and insight, his complexion had turned sallow. It was yellowed beyond healthy. Because he’d been touched—no, butchered—by her.

  “I can tell I won’t be around much longer. I’m just glad you came to pray with me one last time.” He paused. “Because you bought me this little piece of time, I’m going to be fine now. No matter what.”

  His words hung with meaning beyond the apparent. And she knew he had just made his final peace with God.

  ⸙

  Furman looked at the face of the clock that hung above the entrance to his workshop and turned out the lights. His business building custom wooden heritage boats was booming. He’d given four estimates today alone. But it was bad timing with his father so ill. And once again, his own boat was on the back burner. The work detained him in the shop all day. At least he had Butch to keep up with the custom renovations he was doing for some clients.

  Throughout the day, he’d been in touch with his mother and the doctors on the phone about his father. He was not doing well. His white blood cells were up and it seemed that an infection was setting in around his wound. The wound that Hanna had inflicted.

  It was all his mother could talk about yesterday and today. “That country butcher and all the blood,” she had said. All but one of her crystal roses ruined. Father split open like a common pig.

  If ushering Hanna into his world before had been difficult, now it would be nearly impossible. Even while he dealt with all the shop’s problems with the back-up work, friends and associates called him and pretended to commiserate with him about the bloody incident. In reality, they just wanted the gory details.

  Everyone was supposing this and that about Hanna and the necessity for her to take her pocketknife to his father’s t
hroat. The doctors had not made a comment about the homemade procedure. They said they were conducting tests—x-rays, cultures, whatever.

  But it was already too late for Hanna. His mother had seen to that. Her insipid backbiting had spread all over town. And Hanna was the villain. The bloody butcher of blue-blooded Charlestonians.

  Even though it was nearly nine, he was going to try to make it by to see his father. Sometimes the nurses turned a blind eye. And by this time his mother should surely be gone. He couldn’t take another word that came slicing from her sharp tongue today.

  He pulled out of the gravel parking lot at the shop and toward his home in downtown. He’d walk to the hospital to clear his head.

  As he strolled the several blocks to the hospital, he noted the increasing warmth in the air. Summer had settled in early upon the Lowcountry. The warm breezes brushed the limbs of the crape myrtles against the lean stalks of palmetto trees as he strode.

  A decidedly different breeze had blown across his relationship with Hanna—chilly, coming from some far away remote place—remote like the swamp was from Charleston. He had not spoken to her directly since the ambulance took his father away. What was he eventually going to say to her?

  He made his way through the hospital corridors until he reached the old man’s room.

  He halted. Hanna was beside his father. Furman still didn’t know what to say to her.

  She stood. “I came by to check on your father. I just had to see him for myself.”

  He nodded and took a few steps into the room. Now he wished he hadn’t come by. He should have known she’d be concerned about the man on which she’d practiced some brand of swamp medicine.

  She moved aside.

  He nearly froze at the appearance of his father. Everything he’d heard over the phone hadn’t prepared him for the color of his father’s skin. How could it be gray and yellow at the same time? He should have dropped everything and sped to the hospital. “How are you today, Father?” He gently placed the old man’s hand in his.

  “Better now that you and Hanna are here. Your mother has been driving me crazy.” He tried to sit up a little more in his bed, but he was weak and didn’t make much progress.