Swamps and Soirees: A Summerbrook Novel

by Vicki Wilkerson

  Toleman continued. “What I was calling about was that smart little friend of yours. Hanna. All her old clients have been asking for her. Would you know how I could get in touch with her?”

  “Like I’ve been telling everyone who has called me about her, she’s not interested. This place hit her pretty hard.” He glanced out the door toward the Charleston Harbor. The Holy City can hit the most seasoned social gladiator pretty hard. He couldn’t even imagine how devastated Hanna must be.

  “She belongs at Sterling.” Toleman cleared his throat. “I would apologize you know. And she can name her salary. I just want her back.”

  So did Furman. And he’d apologize every day if he thought it would do any good. “I don’t think there’s much chance in her stepping back onto the streets of our beloved peninsula city. But if I see her, I’ll tell her you called.”

  He hung up and walked over to the antique wood that reminded him of Hanna. It was time to have it milled, but he needed it…whole…to remind him of his raven-haired Four Hole beauty.

  But she wanted nothing to do with him or his Charleston society.

  And he didn’t blame her.

  ⸙

  Hanna finally decided to cash out a small amount of her OKRA stock—to buy herself a red silk pantsuit and matching shoes—and to pay a past due debt.

  The thought of returning to downtown Charleston didn’t bother her like it would have weeks ago. Though she had endured much there, it had served to embolden her. In fact, the experience had substantially fattened her purse, and now new opportunities awaited her.

  Cubi-Jack was drying off her old El Camino. A few months ago she could have paid cash for a brand new Cadillac. A few weeks ago she could have paid cash for a brand new Mercedes. But she had let her money ride. If things continued as she expected, in a few more weeks she would probably be able to pay cash for a new Bentley and have change to spare.

  “You about finished, Cubi-Jack?”

  “Yep.” He folded up the towel and took a look at Hanna. “You don’t look so…sad anymore.”

  “I’m not. I was just all…destroyed after all that had happened after I got my job at the Summerbrook office. And with Furman.”

  “Hanna, hearts are like broken bones.”

  “Broken bones?” she asked

  He nodded. “And that china I saw in a book once that they glue back with gold.”

  She couldn’t see where the two had anything in common. “How?”

  “They are stronger in the broken places.”

  She placed her hand on his face. “How’d you get so smart?”

  “Hanna, I told you that already.”

  She nodded. “I know. God.”

  He smiled and opened her car door.

  She drove Cameo into downtown Charleston, like the old gentleman who started Walmart used to drive his old red pick-up truck all over the country, checking on his vast empire of stores. She, like him, didn’t have a thing to prove to anyone—except herself.

  When she arrived at the docks, she opened her matching red bag to make sure she had her checkbook with her. Beside it was her pocketknife. Who knew when it was going to come in handy again?

  She looked above the door to the warehouse by the docks. Laurens Classic Boat Restoration and Construction. The bell sounded as she walked through the door. Furman was bent over, fastening a gold screw to a beautiful piece of wood on a large vintage boat. He turned. “Hanna?” He walked toward her. “Come in. Please, come in.” His stare seemed to drink in her face like the damp earth around Four Hole drank in the dark waters of the surrounding black cypress swamp. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to pay you back.” Her words felt bold as she locked eyes with the handsome man.

  “It’s so good to see you. You look great.” He stared at her like she hadn’t said a word. “But that won’t be necessary.”

  “I insist.” She walked to a table just behind her and took out her checkbook. As she wrote the check, her hands shook. Not because she was nervous about the money. She just couldn’t think of any good reason that she’d be seeing him ever again after she signed her name.

  “It looks like your information regarding the OKRA stock was gold,” he said.

  She glanced up at him. “Yeah, it’s why I was able to come to pay you back.”

  “Everyone in town is asking about you. Mr. Sterling included. He’d rehire you if you’re interested. At any price.”

  She smiled as she pushed the check toward him.

  He looked at her check and then at her. “I have something for you, as well.” He walked a few paces. “Will you come to my office?”

  She followed him, taking in all of him as much as she could—for one last time.

  He pulled something out of his drawer. “This is the profit from the money you gave me after the Black and White Ball. I put it all into OKRA.”

  “I won’t take this. I owed you that money at that time.” For being so ignorant about Charleston society.

  “I figured that. That’s why I took out the thousand dollars from the profits. So you wouldn’t have an excuse.” He pushed the check at her. “You have quite the reputation as the financial advisor who knew something before anyone else.”

  She stared at the numbers on the check and could barely believe them. “I did my research. I told everyone they needed to sit tight for a while. The technology was in the pipeline. It just burst through a little sooner than I had expected.”

  “So what should I tell everyone? If they ask for you again.”

  What should she have him tell them? Jump off the new Arthur Ravenel Bridge? Take a flying leap over the Charleston Battery Wall? Call Toleman Sterling?

  Numbers rolled around in her head. She wished she didn’t love them so much. An idea was forming now that she had the additional money Furman had just surprised her with. But she’d have to think through her idea because it involved breaking a promise she’d made to herself.

  “Tell them…I’m working on something,” she said with hope in her heart. Uncertain hope. Seedling hope. The kind of hope Cubi-Jack wanted her to have.

  He nodded and took a step from behind his desk. “Don’t go yet. I need to ask you something else.” He stepped toward her, a look of unhappiness covered his face. “Is there any way we can work on…us?”

  She closed her eyes, envisioning what us would look like after all that had happened. “We won’t work. Your mother has certain standards for your future. For your intended wife and for your family’s bloodline.”

  His face changed. “What do you mean? Has my mother said things to you about that?” He paused. “You know there will never be any Laurens children. That was Mother’s big hang up. That I form an alliance with another suitable family name for the sake of having children with pedigrees longer than Chanel’s. I’ve dashed all her hopes about all that now that she knows about the near impossibility for me to carry on the Laurens name.” He looked out the window to the side. “And anyway, she’s changed since she’s been incarcerated.”

  Hanna was floored with the information. She did, however, remember seeing the article in the Charleston Post and Courier about Evelynn Laurens pleading guilty to some lesser charge and having to spend a year behind bars.

  “After only a couple of weeks in prison, the Jasmine Society sent a representative to the state facility to inform Mother that her services at the society were never to be needed again. She was crushed.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. That exclusion had started Mother to think in different terms. It wasn’t long after that I had my first real conversation with her—one that didn’t involve roses or pedigrees or parties.”

  “I’m glad.” She was, but she wondered what they did talk about if roses, pedigrees and parties were off the list.

  “I could understand if you still didn’t want to see me. Because I can’t have children and all,” he said. “I’d never want to put you in a situation where you’d have to choose betw
een marriage and motherhood. You deserve both. You deserve everything.”

  Did she really? Maybe everything had just changed with what he’d just told her. It was hard for her to think. If his mother had softened, did that mean that she could have Furman? But how did she feel about never being able to have children?

  She didn’t know for sure, but she did know she needed to get out of there fast because his mother and his responsibilities were some of the last real barriers between the two. That and the fact that he hadn’t truly turned himself over to the Lord.

  All the way home she contemplated everything Furman had said. If he couldn’t have children, maybe his mother wouldn’t mind as much if he were with her. Maybe at next year’s camp meeting, she could lead him to turn his life over to Jesus. Those were the most pressing issues, but she had another, as well. The stir of hope that had begun in Furman’s office.

  If people were asking for her she could dare to hope again.

  In the butcher shop, Cubi-Jack was sweeping the large open floor. “Hi, Hanna. You look so beautiful in that red suit. And you stand out, like them white herons in the swamp. You really are easy to see.”

  She giggled, “Thanks. I think.” Standing out like a white heron in the dark swamp had never been her intention. Blue egrets, with their gray feathers that blended in with their surroundings, seemed more like her. But here she was in red—again. For all of her wishing to blend in, she somehow managed to attract attention by choosing the wrong outfits.

  She straightened up the counter by the register. “Cubi-Jack, you’re the wisest person I know, and I’d like to run some things by you.”

  He continued to sweep. “Okay.”

  “You know how much I’ve always wanted to work in finance. But you also know how much I love the swamp. I don’t wish to always be in the traffic and the hoopla of cities.”

  He stopped sweeping. “I know, Hanna. The swamp is where you and me belong. But I still think you should go for your dreams—as long as your dreams don’t take over your—what is that word—principles.”

  “Then how can I do what I want to do without doing what I don’t want to do?”

  “Simple.” He looked around. “Do it here.”

  “At the butcher shop? In the swamp?”

  He nodded. “Why not? It’s where you feel at home. Here. In Four Hole Swamp. If you don’t give your dream a chance, it would be a sin and a shame.”

  She considered his idea for a moment. If so many people in Charleston were looking for her financial services, could she start a business out of a corner of the meat market? In Four Hole? She was feeling strong in her broken places. If they wanted her help, they would just have to come to her.

  She woke her uncle up from his nap, pulled up a folding chair beside his recliner and ran the idea by him. He was positive and receptive, like she knew he’d be.

  Now she had the money to pay a construction crew to divide the shop. One half would be her financial office, complete with accounting services. And Uncle Marion would still have more than enough room for the market. Could it all work out so perfectly? But there was one thing that still haunted her.

  “Darlin’ what’s wrong? I can see a look in your eyes,” her uncle said.

  “Nothing.” Should she ask him? She wondered for a moment, then asked, “Uncle Marion, how did you and Aunt Della feel about not having any children of your own?”

  His belly jiggled as he laughed. “We did have a child, darlin’. You.”

  “Yeah, but for years…”

  “For years somethin’ was missin’. That was to be sure. Till we got you. Didn’t make no difference who your momma was. You was ours. After that, your Aunt Della was a momma.”

  She ran her hand along the tattered old chair. “You think I would feel the same way? About a child I didn’t give birth to?”

  He reached over and hugged her. “Darlin’ you got Rudder blood in you. We got hearts big enough to love our own and big enough to love that which ain’t ours.”

  She did have Rudder blood in her—good blood. And the lack of a proper pedigree and history behind it didn’t matter, except for the fact that it made little difference in her and Furman’s relationship now.

  “Uncle Marion, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. Would you mind if I took Cubi-Jack and went fishing for the rest of the afternoon?”

  “Course not, honey. It’s slow today, and Cubi-Jack could use a break,” Uncle Marion said.

  She and Cubi-Jack walked the cool, shaded path to the creek and dropped a couple of corks into the dark water that ran through the woods and swamp behind the market. Four Hole Swamp was astir with life.

  After a while of earnest fishing, Cubi-Jack asked, “Hanna, why do you still look so sad?”

  “I have another decision to make. About Furman.”

  “I know I’m not the smartest man in Four Hole, but even I know that you’re in love with that man.”

  “It’s complicated. He has a completely different existence from ours. Our lives are filled with…swamps, and his life is filled with…soirees.”

  “What is a sore A?”

  “I’m sorry Cubi-Jack. It’s a fancy name for a fancy party.”

  “Oh.” He paused. “You know, God doesn’t weigh us up like that—by what we have around us.” He pulled his cork slowly from the water to check to see that the worm was still on the hook, and he gently slipped it back into the black water. “If I was to measure up myself to other people, I might be sad, too, and that would be a sin and a shame because my nonna told me that God made me special, and there was no one in the whole wide world like me but me.”

  “Your nonna knew what she was talking about, Cubi-Jack. She’s always known how special you were.”

  “My nonna also said that anything special I wanted, I jus had to pray, and if it was right for me to have it, I would.” He lifted his pole again. “Are you sad because there’s something that you want? Or something that you don’t have?”

  She thought for a while. “Both…kind of.”

  “I don’t understand. I mean, you’re the most beautiful girl in Four Hole. You got a college paper. You’re finally going to start your money business here. And if God wanted you to have Furman, he will show you.”

  Cubi-Jack had a way of distilling things down to a simple truth. God had bestowed upon her more than she had ever prayed for, and she hadn’t really acknowledged any of her many blessings. Instead, she dwelled on…differences that didn’t matter and things she didn’t have. But there were opportunities that she wanted that she’d never seriously hoped for—certainly things that she’d never prayed for—like Furman…and children that she’d never been promised. Something rose up in her and gave her strength.

  “Cubi-Jack, there is something that I want. And you’re right. I never even prayed for it because I didn’t think I should.”

  Cubi-Jack burst out laughing and put his cane pole beside the old log. “Hanna, we’re gonna pray rat now. I know God will give you the wants of your heart. It’s in the Bible, you know. That God will give his churren the wants of their hearts.” He smiled. “My nonna showed me. I couldn’t straighten out them words, but I believed them.”

  Cubi-Jack believed what he couldn’t see. Hanna knew what that was. That was called faith.

  She took his outstretched hands and he prayed. “God, Hanna is like a sister to me. Please make her not sad. Let her see herself as special as you see her. And Lord, please give my little sister all the wants of her heart. Amen.”

  His prayer was short and simple and perfect. She knew exactly what her heart desired more than anything else in the world. And Cubi-Jack had way more wisdom than most people could ever hope for on Earth.

  The next day Hanna began to pursue some of the desires of her heart. Her best friend Charlene, who’d just signed on with some hunk to run his very successful construction company, Hughes Construction, arrived at 7 a.m.

  “Thanks, Hanna. This is the first job I’ve brought to the table at
Hughes. I’m trying to impress my…um, boss, Aiken Hughes.

  Hanna lowered her head and looked at her slyly. “I just bet you are.”

  “Hanna— Never mind. I’ve come about your office. We’ll talk about men some other time,” said Charlene.

  “Oh, you bet we will. You can count on that.”

  “Okay. Tell me what you envision,” said Charlene as she pushed an errant strand of her longer dark hair behind her ear. She looked about the space.

  Hanna told her the details. New front. Separate entrance. Waiting area and walls for three small offices.

  “This is easy,” Charlene said as she sketched on her clipboard. “We had a crew called off a job in Summerbrook this morning. I can get the materials delivered by this afternoon, and we can get started in the morning—if that’s okay.”

  “That fast?”

  Charlene nodded. “You know I have contacts in the Summerbrook Building Permits Office, right?”

  They both laughed at that. Of course she did. She used to work there.

  “Yeah, this is a simple remodeling job. We’re not building from the foundation up,” said Charlene. She handed Hanna the sketches and the estimate.

  Hanna liked what she saw. And she liked the numbers. She signed the contract and handed it back to Charlene.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Charlene said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I told Aiken I’d ask. We’re both involved with the Humanity Project. It’s that charity that builds homes for underprivileged people in Summerbrook and the surrounding area. And, well, when I told Aiken how great you are with numbers, he wanted me to ask you—”

  “Yes. I’d love to help. In fact, I’ll do all the accounting. Pro bono,” Hanna said.

  “You’re the best.”

  The two friends hugged and said goodbye.

  The market was slow, so she went upstairs and completed the necessary paperwork to begin her business and to withdraw some of her investment monies. She put the letters in the mail.

  In less than a month, everything was in order. Financial work was already beginning to trickle in from surrounding communities, like Summerbrook, Moncks Corner and Goose Creek. Even the farmers and rural residents around her had financial futures to consider and money to invest. The income from them alone was impressive.