The List

by Robert Whitlow

  “This contains what you want to know,” she said briskly, not stopping to ask him the reason for his sudden interest in genealogy. Moving her plate farther out of the way, she unfolded a large sheet of paper on the table at an angle so Renny could see it. “This is an overview of the family tree. The records used to compile this outline are upstairs. I prepared this sheet as a summary using what I learned and information collected by your great-aunt Aimee.

  “At the top is the first known Jacobson to settle in South Carolina, John Worthington Jacobson, born approximately 1630 in Pelham, England, and died in 1679 in Charleston. He immigrated as an indentured servant in 1650. Freed after seven years, he worked for a shipping company, eventually becoming part owner. In 1659, he married Eliza Rea. They had three children.”

  Renny was fascinated. The few bites of food on his plate grew cold as he listened to his aunt skillfully navigate the waters of the past.

  Tracing his finger back and forth across the page in a miniature game of hopscotch, Renny found Jeremiah F. Jacobson, born 1835, died 1874. “Tell me about him.”

  Aunt Margaret pursed her lips. “Well, J. F. Jacobson had a good start. As you see, he was born before the Civil War. He was a rice planter and worked with his father as a factor for other planters.”

  “I wonder if he worked at the old P&M building downtown,” Renny interjected.

  “Could have. He married at age twenty-two, and his first child, a son, Hiram T., was born on April 12, 1861, the day Confederate forces began the bombardment of Fort Sumter. It’s my understanding that J. F. raised his own regiment and fought at Manassas and Fair Oaks. His term of enlistment ended before the war was over, and instead of continuing in uniform he returned to Charleston in early 1863. He was disillusioned with the Confederate cause and became convinced the South could not win the war long before more strident voices were willing to admit the possibility of defeat. The Jacobson family suffered financially during Reconstruction, but did better than most of their contemporaries. The Heywoods, descendants of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, worked as hands in a rice mill. The Jacobsons never had to sell their holdings or work for others.”

  “My boss in Charlotte is named Heywood, but I don’t know anything about his family.”

  “If he wanted to find out, it shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “You said J. F. had a good start,” Renny commented. “It sounds like he did better than most toward the end as well.”

  “Not really.” Aunt Margaret lowered her voice. “He died a hopeless alcoholic, killed in a fight over a high-stakes poker game.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Renny could not imagine one of his relatives in such a scenario.

  “I have a letter written by his widow to a cousin in Beaufort. It’s all there.”

  Renny pointed to Hiram Jacobson, the next name down the tree. “So, he was about thirteen when his father died?”

  “That’s right. Hiram was your great-grandfather. He was forced by his father’s untimely death to assume responsibility for the family at an early age. Fortunately, he had help from an uncle and a man named LaRochette.”

  The mention of LaRochette startled Renny.

  “What is it, Renny?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Go ahead.”

  “Well, by the time he was thirty-five or forty, Hiram was buying interest in banks and some of the textile mills springing up in the South. He and his wife did not have any children who survived infancy until Hiram was thirty-seven. Your grandfather, my father, Philip S. Jacobson, was born in 1897.”

  “How many children died before Philip survived?” Renny asked, thinking about his mother’s multiple miscarriages before his own birth.

  “I don’t know, but my father was so overprotected as a child he could not leave the house if it started to rain even a few drops.”

  “How did your grandfather die?”

  “He died in 1919. In his later years he became very fearful and suspicious. My father told me he put bars on his doors, convinced someone was planning to break into the house on St. Michael’s Alley. One night a neighbor who was locked out of his house came over to ask for help. He knocked on the door and heard a yell and crash. Breaking out a window, he crawled into the front parlor and found Hiram dead. I assume he heard the noise outside, became frightened, and had a heart attack. The cause of death on the death certificate is apoplexy.”

  “Not a lot of joy in Mudville. Why was he so fearful?”

  “He was wealthy, but afraid someone was plotting to take everything from him. As far as I know, his fears were unfounded. After his father’s death, my father, Philip Jacobson, lived in Savannah for fifteen years. That’s where your father and I were born and where I went to elementary school. Not content to stay in port and run a shipping company, he spent about half the year on board ship traveling all over the world.”

  Renny had seen some of the curious objects his grandfather acquired during his travels. Aunt Margaret displayed her father’s knife collection in a glass case in the living room. It contained knives from Africa, South America, the Far East, India, and Europe.

  “I was born when my father was twenty-three and my mother twenty-four. They wanted to have another child, hoping for a son. Over the next ten years my mother had two miscarriages and one stillborn son before your father finally arrived in 1927. My father was so excited I thought he might give me a cigar.”

  Renny knew this part of the story well. “So, did you get a cigar?”

  “I said ‘might.’ We moved back to Charleston and lived on St. Michael’s Alley until World War II. You know the rest, but I brought down the newspaper article reporting your grandfather’s death in 1957.”

  He had not seen the article in years. The small headline read, “Local Resident Lost at Sea.”

  Local businessman Philip S. Jacobson failed to return from a day sailing excursion this past Saturday. Coast Guard authorities were notified and initiated search activities in coastal waters. No signs of Jacobson or his craft, The Aramore, were located and, after three days’ unsuccessful search, the Coast Guard listed him presumed lost at sea. Weather conditions have been favorable up and down the coast over the past week, and the Coast Guard offered no explanation for Jacobson’s disappearance. An avid sailor, Mr. Jacobson was involved in shipping and real estate development throughout the area.

  Renny handed the article back to Aunt Margaret.

  “For months we held out hope he would return. The uncertainty was much worse than facing a known cause of death like heart attack or cancer. All we could guess was that his boat sank and he drowned.

  “Your father planned on going sailing with your grandfather the Saturday of the last trip, but he canceled at the last minute. They ate breakfast together at the dock that morning, and H. L. was the last family member to see your grandfather alive. Your father changed after your grandfather’s disappearance. It was not so much grief as a profound melancholy. He rarely smiled, becoming serious and morbid. If he had not met your mother, I don’t know what would have happened. She was the morning star of his life.”

  Renny’s father was forty-five and his mother forty-one when Renny was born. After three miscarriages, they had given up hope for a family. When Renny arrived, his father gladly endured the Strom Thurmond jokes about having children in his old age.

  “Are you interested in dessert?” she asked.

  No matter how much he ate, Renny always reserved an inner compartment for something sweet. “Sure, I’ll help you clear the table.”

  They didn’t talk as they put the dishes in the sink, their thoughts on the past, not the present.

  Aunt Margaret gave him a generous slice of apple pie capped with vanilla ice cream. “It’s not all happy days, is it, Renny? We just have to make the best of our time here.”

  Renny took another bite of pie. “I guess so,” he responded, not sure of her meaning. “Thanks for the dinner and the history lesson. I’ll call Jay Leno and remind him to eat with you n
ext time he’s in Charleston.”

  “Johnny and Jay eat with me every day. They like Purina.”

  On his way out, Renny saw a fresh tennis ball in the umbrella stand by the front door. Knowing it had only one purpose, he picked it up and, standing on the end of the porch, let it fly.

  “Good throw. I sure wish I could give them a better workout.”

  “Thanks again.”

  As he headed down the long driveway, Renny glanced in his rearview mirror and saw Johnny and Jay bounding up to Aunt Margaret.

  4

  The tables of the moneychangers.

  MATTHEW 21:12, KJV

  Renny decided not to spend another night on the Isle of Palms. A couple of hours after leaving Aunt Margaret’s house, he was packed and on his way back to Charlotte. He didn’t call Charlotte home. Three months in a place couldn’t supplant Charleston in his heart. Charlestonians viewed Charleston much as the Chinese did China; it was the Middle Kingdom, the center of the earth, the focal point of civilization. Situated on a peninsula, the city was bounded by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers. According to local lore, the convergence of the two rivers formed the Atlantic Ocean.

  Traveling away from the coast, the landscape changed. Charleston was steeped in elegance and charm, but a few miles inland the hot countryside was untouched by beauty. Driving fast on two-lane roads, Renny passed house trailers and concrete-block houses baking in the heat. Few people stirred. The residents tended their scraggly gardens shortly after the sun came up and in the heat of the day clustered inside, sitting on couches under the breeze of an electric fan. At sunset they came out to the front porch and watched the cars go by. Much of this area never received the news that the Depression was over.

  South Carolina was not a homogeneous state. The steamy Low Country was as different from the hilly Piedmont as gumbo from grits. Northward, Renny entered textile country. New England textile manufacturers migrated southward and opened plants that created thousands of new jobs in the South within fifty years of the end of the Civil War at Appomattox. By the 1920s, the transition was virtually complete. The reduction of the South’s agricultural base created a pool of unemployed farm workers willing to work for low wages and live in “mill villages,” cookie-cutter frame houses clustered around a central factory. Agriculture and shipping decreased in importance. The economic base of South Carolina shifted from the coast to the uplands. During the 1970s and 1980s, highly sophisticated industry arrived on the scene. Renny’s convertible was made in Germany, but the new BMW Z3 Roadsters were manufactured at a sleek new facility in Spartanburg, a small city in the northwest corner of the state. At Columbia, Renny merged onto I-77 and set the car on cruise control.

  He found it disconcerting that his father had harbored such a significant secret from Renny’s mother. Would he be able to do the same someday? What about the IRS? Renny worried that he might go on a spending spree, attract an IRS audit, and go to jail for failing to report his income from the List. How had his father handled these questions? Could he ask the men on the List about these issues without sounding like a naive kid? In the isolated honesty of the car, Renny didn’t feel comfortable with tax evasion. Maybe a little fudging on business expenses, but not large-scale tax fraud. He looked forward to the opportunity to talk with the other men and receive some advice.

  After a couple of hours, he reached the outskirts of Charlotte, the boom town of the Carolinas. Named after a member of the German royal family who was related to England’s King George, Charlotte had grown big and tall since its founding by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in the 1700s.

  Renny rented the second floor of a seventy-year-old home in the Myers Park area of the city. He pulled the Porsche into his half of the detached garage. His landlady, Mrs. Daisy Stokes, drove a massive Lincoln that barely fit in the old garage and dwarfed Renny’s sports car. He took his luggage out of the car, deciding to leave the old trunk until after he let Mrs. Stokes know he was back. Renny had private access to his part of the house via an exterior stairway, but he often greeted Mrs. Stokes when he returned from a weekend trip.

  True to form, she was in the kitchen. Renny knocked at the back door, which opened into an eating area overlooking the yard. Seeing the elderly woman at the table, he pushed the door open. “Hey, Mrs. Stokes, it’s me. I’m back from Charleston. How’s Brandy?”

  Johnny’s offspring skidded around the corner and rushed toward Renny, shaking and wagging all over from head to tail.

  Renny dropped his bag and grabbed the dog’s head in both hands. “How’s my girl?”

  “We did just fine, although she almost jerked my shoulder out of its socket, wanting to chase a squirrel when I took her for a walk.” Mrs. Stokes smiled and rubbed her right arm.

  Renny never boarded Brandy at a kennel. He had tried it once, and she howled and refused to eat the entire weekend. When he mentioned this to Mrs. Stokes, she surprised him by offering to care for the dog the next time he was out of town.

  Mrs. Stokes, a widow for more than thirty years, was barely five feet tall and weighed a shade over ninety pounds. A retired Presbyterian missionary, she and her husband had served as teachers on a mission compound in Taiwan. Her husband died after ten years overseas, but Mrs. Stokes stayed almost forty years. Her brother, a dentist, left her the Charlotte house and the Lincoln automobile in his will, and she was living out her retirement in pleasant surroundings, supplementing her pension with Renny’s rent checks. At first, her diminutive size and quiet voice led Renny to assume she was scared of her own shadow. But over the past three months, he had learned that she was not afraid of anything and was even willing to allow something new, like Brandy, to invade her routine.

  “How was your trip?” she asked.

  “It was fine. I met with my father’s lawyer. There are still some things to clear up.” Renny scratched Brandy’s favorite spot behind her right ear.

  “Estates can be complicated. The more property you have, the more you have to worry with it.”

  Renny looked up at the small face framed by white hair pulled back in a bun. “That’s the kind of worry I’d be happy to take on.”

  “I’ve seen money cause more problems than it solves. That’s all.”

  “Not me. Anyway, I’m going back to the coast, to Georgetown, next weekend.”

  “I’ll be happy to dog-sit again. Brandy and I had some good talks as we walked over at Queens,” she replied, referring to nearby Queens College, Renny’s favorite place to jog and Brandy’s preferred spot for squirrel chasing.

  Renny could picture Mrs. Stokes happily talking to Brandy as passersby glanced in her direction.

  “Thanks, we both appreciate it. Come on, girl, let’s go upstairs.” Renny held the door open for the dog and followed with his suitcase.

  “Good night, Renny. Good night, Brandy,” Mrs. Stokes’s blessing followed them out.

  Renny climbed the stairs to the second floor, unlocked the door, and let Brandy bound in before him. Dropping his suitcase, he went back to the car and quietly carried the old trunk up to his living room.

  “Here it is, girl, the famous old trunk.” Brandy sniffed it and growled.

  “Hold on, there’s nothing in it but some old papers. This will keep us both in dog food for a long time.” Brandy, eyeing the trunk with suspicion, circled around to the far side of the room and curled up on her bed.

  “Well, tomorrow I’m going to start finding out how much we’ve got. I tell you what—we’ll split it fifty-fifty, if you can keep it secret.” Brandy didn’t move.

  “I guess you liked Mrs. Stokes’s conversation better,” Renny said grumpily. Brandy yawned and closed her eyes.

  Renny’s area of the house was almost too big to be considered an apartment. The living room was connected to a large kitchen, with windows overlooking the backyard. He had an office for his computer, a master bedroom, and a guest bedroom. He had furnished the house with secondhand furniture, so some of the antiques from the Isle of Palms house would b
e welcome additions. The kitchen area was his favorite spot on Sunday mornings; he fixed a huge breakfast of waffles, eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash brown potatoes, drank large mugs of coffee, and read the Charlotte Observer.

  Renny turned on the TV. He had been so consumed with his own news he hadn’t thought about the rest of the world. Watching the images flash across the screen, he decided a story about the List would make a great human interest/history piece. It would begin with scenes from Charleston and a commentary on the lost lifestyle of the antebellum South. Then the reporter would tell how a group of plantation owners banded together to save their families by smuggling gold and silver out of the dying Confederacy. Now, 140 years later, the money set aside by the original participants has multiplied to an unknown but possibly astronomical sum. At that point Renny’s face filled the screen, and he answered questions about his family’s history, expressing his gratitude for their foresight. “No, I’m not at liberty to reveal the value of my share of the List,” he would tell the interviewer. “As J. D. Rockefeller once said, ‘If you know what you’re worth, you’re not rich.’” Renny chuckled. Better stay on this side of the screen. He turned off the TV and went to bed.

  Renny was up by 6:15 because Brandy was up at 6:14. She gently woke him with a nuzzle to the arm. He let her out, and by the time she scratched at the door five minutes later, Renny had the coffeepot percolating and the shower running. After a cup of coffee, he opened the trunk and carefully examined the loose papers. An envelope addressed to his father from a Swiss bank caught his eye. Opening it, he unfolded a single sheet of paper with the name Banc Suisse engraved in small letters at the top and Office de Geneva typed in the upper right corner. In the center it read, “This letter authorizes the holder thereof to funds deposited in account number 23-98730-2, Access Code 8760945-2. Signed, F. Grossman, Clerk.” The bank seal was affixed under the bank official’s signature.

  “Listen, I have a letter from your bank giving me ownership of this account. I want you to straighten this out, and if you can’t do it, get someone who can!”