The List

by Robert Whitlow

  “What do you mean? My ancestors were Christians. You’ll find their graves in the cemeteries of some of the oldest churches in South Carolina.”

  “Where someone is buried is not proof of their Christianity.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Renny said. “You read what it said about God or the Supreme Being in the original agreement. These men established the List for the good of their families. Isn’t that a Christian thing to do?”

  “Maybe. Don’t take me wrong, Renny, but words and substance are not always synonymous. It is not where they’re buried or the sincerity of their motivation that counts. I’m just wondering about the results, or as the Bible says, the fruit of their lives after entering into this agreement. Remember what my father said in his letter.”

  “I don’t think you can evaluate this based on the Bible or your father’s vague fears. He was obviously something of a misfit.” As soon as he said “misfit,” Renny wished he could take it back.

  Jo bit her lip and nodded. “You’re probably right about him. I guess he looks like a bum to a Charleston blue blood.” She handed him the ledger and stood to leave.

  “Wait, I’m sorry. Please don’t go.”

  “I understand. It’s OK. I just need some time alone. Thanks for dinner.”

  Hearing her steps as she hurried down the hall, Renny shut the door and threw the book on the bed. The initial dinner meeting with the members of the List was not until seven o’clock the next evening, and he had hoped to spend the next day with Jo, taking her for a ride up the coast, maybe going for a walk on the beach. Now, he would be looking for seashells alone. He repacked the trunk, berating himself for not watching his words.

  Jo wiped away the final tears that had coursed down her cheeks as she hurried down the hall and climbed the stairs to her room. Renny’s callous comment breached the dam of pent-up emotion that still flowed from grief over her father’s tragic life and death. After splashing her face in the vanity’s sink, she put on her nightgown and sat in bed, leaning back against the headboard. As her breathing stilled, she prayed a simple prayer and waited for the familiar inner calm, the peace that passed understanding.

  After a few minutes she reached for her Bible, read a psalm, turned off the light, and went to sleep. During the night she dreamed she was on board a frigate like the one anchored near the restaurant. She was a passenger, the only woman on board. A storm was brewing, and the ship began to toss to and fro. A young junior officer on the ship came to her and asked if she had seen the ship’s maps because the captain had misplaced them. She said she would look for them. When she got to her cabin, she found a map rolled up under a chair, but when she tried to take it to the young officer, she could not find him. The ferocity of the storm increased, and searching with increasing anxiety, she lurched onto the deck, stopped, and cried out for help.

  Renny tossed and turned for almost an hour. Finally, he switched on the light and found a piece of stationery with the inn’s name across the top. The sheet had a palmetto tree in one corner and a rice plant in the other. He quickly sketched in black ink a seashell and a simple picture of two people walking on the beach. Under the picture he wrote:

  Once again, I apologize. I would like to take you for a ride up the coast. I will be on the back porch at 9 this morning for your RSVP.

  Sincerely,

  Renny

  He looked at the word sincerely as if he had never seen it before. It had so much meaning in that moment; he was sincere—sincere about the apology, sincere about wanting to spend the day with Jo. Honesty equaled vulnerability, but if he was going to be vulnerable, Jo seemed the least likely person he had met in a long while to take advantage of someone’s openness. Folding the note, he put it in an envelope, slipped on a pair of pants, and went quietly up the stairs to Jo’s room. Sliding the note under the door, he started to offer a quick prayer but decided it was not a situation that warranted disturbing the Almighty. Besides, he was probably mad at Renny, too.

  7

  I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit,

  and to temper wit with morality.

  JOSEPH ADDISON

  The air was stirring outside when Renny woke up at seven the next morning. Looking out the window, he saw the trees beside the inn swaying in the breeze and white caps on the waves in the bay. A storm was brewing in the Atlantic, and he needed to check the forecast. Many years of life on the coast made him cautious.

  Putting on shorts and running shoes, he grabbed fifty cents to buy a paper, raced down the steps and out the front door. Heading northeast along the shore of the bay, he ran against the wind for two miles. The stiff breeze had banished the humid heat of the previous day, and Renny, knowing the wind would be a friend not a foe on the way back, enjoyed the invisible wrestling match of the unseen force against his body. The path ended at a marina, and he retraced his route into town, stopping to buy a paper at a rack near the inn. Sure enough, a tropical storm was churning two hundred miles out at sea; however, it was not expected to make landfall in the Georgetown area and, at most, could bring some rain during the night. In the meantime, it would be cooler and breezy— a perfect day for an excursion with Jo. All he lacked was her acceptance.

  It was close to nine when Renny finished his shower. To reach the back porch, he walked down a hall that opened to a large dining room on the right and a smaller dining room on the left. A handful of people in the larger dining room were eating breakfast.

  He looked through a windowpane in the upper half of the door. Jo was sitting in a wicker rocker, her knees under her chin, her toes wiggling in the breeze. A stiff breeze swept her hair back from her face as she gazed at the bay.

  She turned at the sound of the door and smiled. “Good morning! Isn’t it glorious! I love the breeze.”

  “Yes, it’s going to be a beautiful day.”

  “I got your note. I wrote my answer on the bottom.” She held the note toward Renny, who walked over to her chair.

  Renny saw his crude sketch, and underneath was a much more detailed picture of two figures, a male and a female, riding down the road in Renny’s Porsche with the top down. She had simply written, “Oui.”

  Renny grinned. “Great! Are you ready to go?”

  “I’d like to get some fruit for breakfast. What do I need to take with me to the beach?”

  “They probably serve fruit here in the dining room, and we can have lunch somewhere along the coast. You might want a hat, some sunscreen, and a towel to sit on. I wasn’t planning on swimming in the ocean. Is that OK?”

  “Sure. Except for the hat—I’ll need to buy one—I’m set. I’ll be ready in a few minutes. You get what you need while I check on the fruit.”

  “See you here in a few minutes.”

  Renny hurried down the hall and through the lobby. He cheerily greeted an elderly couple creaking down the stairs as he bounded past them. In his room he stopped in front of the mirror to conduct a quick inventory. He was as excited as an adolescent on his first date.

  Renny put down the car’s top, and they drove north on the highway. After crossing the Pee Dee and Black Rivers, they hugged the coast for a short distance, then turned a few miles inland and passed a succession of vacation, retirement, and residential developments. It was a perfect day to enjoy a convertible, and Renny and Jo were like bugs on the back of an elephant, able to see the entire panorama of the landscape for miles around.

  “My grandfather owned several miles of beach north of Charleston,” Renny said. “He sold it in the 1920s, long before the major boom along the Grand Strand.”

  “Grand Strand?” Jo asked.

  “The local term for the beach area from the North Carolina border to Charleston. I can’t guess what the property would be worth today.”

  They passed a sign for Debordeau Beach. Pointing to it, Renny asked, “How do you think they pronounce the name of that beach around here?”

  “No telling. I could probably say it the French way. What do they call
it?”

  “I’ll let a native tell you, and here’s a likely place to find your hat.” Renny turned into the parking lot of a small store advertising beach wares.

  The store catered to the forgotten or misplaced needs of tourists and vacationers who were looking for everything from aloe lotion to inflatable rafts. Jo tried on several hats, finally narrowing the decision to a large, round straw, and a floppy, brightly colored cloth hat. Renny knew better than to express a preference. “They both look great,” he said.

  She opted for straw. “It’s more appropriate for beachcombing.”

  As Jo was paying for the hat, Renny asked the owner if he grew up in the area.

  “Lived here all my life. Born in Georgetown.”

  “What’s the name of the beach just south of here?” Renny asked.

  “You mean Debby-do?” the man replied. “Now that’s a real nice place. They have more deer than you can count and a few alligators lying up in the marsh along the golf course.”

  “That’s the place. Thanks.”

  Walking out to the car, Jo remarked, “Debby-do is a lot easier to say than Debordeau.”

  “Especially if you’re not French. That’s the way down here: Follow the path of least resistance.”

  Jo put the hat behind the front seat, and they continued north for a few miles before turning east toward the ocean and Pawley’s Island.

  Slowing down, Renny said, “Pawley’s was first settled by local vacationers in the 1930s. It’s commonly described as ‘shabbily elegant.’ The beach is open to the public, so I thought it would be a good place for us to hang out.”

  They crossed an earthen causeway flanked by marshes. The island was home to a mix of 1950s-era bungalows. It had a homey, comfortable aura, and they leisurely drove the length of the island, looking at the different homes and cottages. There was one with a pair of faded pink flamingos precariously perched along the narrow, sandy roadway.

  “There’s some of the local fauna,” Renny said.

  “We don’t have many of those in Michigan. Maybe my mother could add a plastic flamingo to her bird list.” Jo grinned.

  Finding a public parking area behind a high row of sand dunes, they unpacked the trunk of the car. As they were walking toward a narrow wooden boardwalk, Jo stopped. “Wait, I forgot my hat.”

  Retrieving the hat, she put it on her dark curls and faced the wind. The stiff breeze blowing off the ocean flipped up the brim of flexible straw, and she put one hand on her head to keep it from flying off as Renny reached out his hand to help her step up onto the boardwalk. Her hand felt cool in his as they walked between two large clumps of dune grass.

  The beach was crowded near the parking area, so they continued on several hundred yards along the edge of the water. Children were playing in the ocean; the smaller ones would run furiously toward a breaking wave, hop over the crest, and dart back onto the dry sand to make sure their parents saw their brave exploit.

  Spreading out their towels on the soft sand, they sat down and watched the people passing by. Jo searched in her bag for the sunscreen and coated her legs, arms, neck, and face while Renny watched out of the corner of his eye.

  “We rarely went to the ocean when I was growing up,” she said, leaning back on her arms when she had put the lotion away. “My parents rented a house on Kelly’s Island in Lake Erie for a month in the summer while my stepdad was between semesters at the university. It took about an hour to reach the island by ferry. We played in the water some, but my best memories are of times curled up reading a book on the back porch. Any book seemed better when read on a beautiful summer day on an island. It was incredibly peaceful.”

  “Have you ever thought about writing a book?” he asked. “You express things vividly.”

  “I keep a personal journal, but after I decided to become a nurse, most of my courses in college were in the sciences. I made a B-in freshman English, but I got an A on a chemistry paper one time.”

  Renny smiled. “It would be hard to make chemical equations vivid.”

  “Do you do much writing in your legal work?”

  “Memos, mostly. A few legal briefs that are anything but brief and an occasional document with a healthy quota of ‘heretofores’ and ‘where-inafters.’”

  “Do you write anything on your own?”

  Renny stared out over the water. “I’d like to.”

  “I thought so,” Jo said. “When you asked about me writing, it seemed more for yourself than for me.”

  “Good insight, Nurse, but I’m a lawyer. Heretofores and where-inafters are not the building blocks of best-selling novels.”

  “You are avoiding the question, Counselor. What have you written?”

  Renny faced her. “Nothing yet. I’ve had no time between school and learning a new job, but I have an idea for a book.”

  “Would you tell me about it?”

  “You won’t laugh?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You know I love barbecue,” Renny said seriously. “So I thought I could write a book about the twenty-five best barbecue restaurants in the South. I’d have to eat at hundreds of places to cull the list to the top twenty-five. It could take years, but think of the contribution to hamanity, I mean humanity.”

  Jo laughed. “And when you were finished, you would smell as smoky as one of the pork shoulders you told me about. Tell me the truth.”

  Renny looked crestfallen. “You promised not to laugh.”

  “I believe there’s more between your ears than a chopped pork sandwich.”

  “OK.” Renny held up his hands in surrender. “I yield to your probing cross-examination. I’d like to write a novel set in the South during the Civil War era. Gone with the Wind has already been written, and I don’t know one-tenth as many descriptive words as Faulkner, but I have an idea.”

  “A concept?”

  “Right. Nothing more at this point. The book would be based on an historical event. Most people don’t know that in 1867 ten thousand Southerners emigrated from the former Confederacy to Brazil and settled about five thousand miles below the Mason-Dixon Line in the jungles near São Paulo. Called the Confederados, they started raising sugarcane and named their community Americana.”

  “Did they have slaves?”

  “No, they were pioneers who worked their own land. Their descendants still live in the area and have reunions where they wear antebellum costumes and celebrate their heritage.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “A historical novel that follows the struggles, failures, and triumphs of a Georgia family. I’d begin with their life before the war but quickly move to the war years, incorporating Sherman’s March to the Sea and the early days of Reconstruction. The father, mother, and five children reach the momentous decision to move to Brazil where they face the challenges of a new culture and the dangers of establishing a new life in South America. Oh yes, my hero, one of the sons, gets the girl.”

  “Is she a Brazilian?”

  “I’m not telling.”

  “I’m hooked already.”

  Renny grinned. “I made an A in freshman English, and the professor encouraged me to take some creative writing courses. When I told him I was going to major in business to please my father, he shook his head and asked me to reconsider, saying, ‘Your time in college is your best chance to develop what is in you. Don’t waste this opportunity.’ I didn’t heed his advice and spent the next four years slightly bored and generally regretting my decision.”

  “Renny, I think you should do it. With your dry wit, I bet it would be funny, too.”

  “Yeah, I would want it to be a little humorous. But what if I spend a lot of time working on it and then it doesn’t get published?”

  “So what? You spent four years in college not following your heart. Why keep making the same mistake?”

  “I’ve thought that the money from the List would give me the option of quitting work so I could spend time writing.”

  Jo looked
out over the water a few moments, then said, “Even if the List doesn’t work out, you should do it. I heard John Grisham used to write on a legal pad while he was waiting in court.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jo reached in her bag and pulled out a tangerine. “Let’s go for a walk down the beach.”

  “Better have a sip of water before we start.” Renny opened a bottle of spring water and handed it to her.

  As they walked along the edge of the surf, four or five sandpipers accompanied them, scurrying in front and to the side, stopping to poke their beaks in the sand for tiny mussels, then running off as Renny and Jo drew closer to them. Jo peeled the tangerine, dropping the skin in the shallow water where the pieces floated like tiny orange boats until capsized by the next wave. She offered the first piece of the fruit to Renny, who opened his mouth to receive it directly from her hand.

  “Best tangerine I ever tasted,” he said.

  It was not oppressively hot, and the ocean breeze cooled their faces. Jo had a small plastic bag for collecting shells, and they walked slowly, hoping to spot unbroken shells or sand dollars in the shallow water. It was slim pickings, but to Jo each find was an individual treasure.

  The farther they went, the more deserted the beach. The northern spit of the island was so narrow residential development was not possible.

  “Let’s walk to the very tip,” Jo suggested.

  As they drew closer to the end of the island, they passed pieces of driftwood that had washed up on the sand. Jo found a tiny piece shaped like a stylized bird and put it in her bag. The beach wrapped around the shore a short distance before giving way to the marsh on the landward side of the island, and finding a large, dry log to lean against, they sat down.

  Jo dug her toes in the sand while Renny put his head back and watched the clouds move slowly overhead. After a few minutes of silence, Jo asked that most personal of questions: “What are you thinking?”

  Renny answered without moving, “I was watching the clouds and thinking they are so random and free, just going where the wind blows them. I feel so tied to the earth, if that makes any sense.”