by Lexi Whitlow
The food is good. The best we’ve ever had. For the first time since Justin was born I’m finally able to bring him really great quality, fresh food with green vegetables. That’s the upside to working at a restaurant catering to people who drop a couple hundred a night for a meal. The leftovers are amazing, and Ronny is generous in sending all of us home with what’s leftover. Who knew my kid liked asparagus? Who knew he’d eat seared salmon? I never knew because these were never options we had prior to bugging out of Indianapolis for the wetlands of South Carolina. I’m learning new things about my son, and he’s schooling me on just how grow-up he is.
I stroll into Flo’s wearing a brand-new pair of the cheesiest black pleather nurse’s shoes anyone’s ever seen. They don’t exactly go with my skinny jeans and waist tied t-shirt, but at least the blisters on my heels aren’t screaming through the duct tape bandages I’ve wrapped them in.
Ronny calls me to the bar as soon as I’ve clocked in. He seems serious.
“I know you’re between addresses,” he says. “But you need to be careful leaving Justin by himself while you work. If social services got wind of the fact that you two are living in an RV in the back lot, and he’s on his own while you work, they wouldn’t look kindly on it. Some of our customers can be real busy-bodies. I’m just letting you know so you can tell him to keep himself on the down-low. He seems like a pretty smart kid.”
“I know,” I say nervously. “I keep an eye on the van even when I’m working. He knows not to go outside or wander off. But I know. I’m trying to save up to get a place for us.”
Ronny nods. “If you get any trouble, let me know,” he says. “But you need to move that RV around a bit. People will get suspicious if you leave it here too long. There’s a campground on Maiden’s Island and another one on Hunter’s Island. Maybe on your day’s off, you could mix it up?”
“I’ll do that,” I say. “I’m off on Thursday. I promised Justin we’d go to the beach. We’ll stay on Hunters Island until my Friday shift.”
Ronny nods. “Good plan. If you need anything, let me know.”
I need twenty-five hundred-dollars for first and last months rent, plus a deposit, plus utility connections. I know better than to ask.
“Thanks,” I say, smiling awkwardly. “I’m going to go start setting up for the tour bus.”
One way or another Justin and I are going to make it. No one is going to take him away from me. If I have to move heaven and earth, I’ll do whatever is necessary to protect us both. If I have to get a second job, I’ll do that. My kid isn’t going to grow up among strangers. I know what that’s like, and I know there’s no way I’m letting Justin get a taste of it.
Chapter 4
Jeb
You know, this would go a whole lot faster if you let me get my nail gun,” Stu says, clenching a hand-forged, black iron roofing nail between his teeth.
“Shut up and hammer gently,” I tell him. “And don’t break anymore slates. These things cost three bucks a piece.”
We’re patching a section of the roof over Blanc-Bleu’s cistern where a tree-limb fell on it during the last storm.
The main part of the house was built in about 1790. It’s beautiful, and historic, and precious, and it’s a money pit of epic proportions. It’s also on the National Register of Historic Places thanks to a lot of work done by myself, a half-dozen volunteers from the local historical society, and an architectural historian from Raleigh, North Carolina. My father and grandfather mostly neglected the place, but it was so well-constructed that even with decades of neglect, it wasn’t hard to bring it back to its former glory.
The thing is, everything that’s done to it has to be done according to the NRHP guidelines, which means if the roof gets patched or replaced, it’s done using materials and methods original to the period of construction. We can’t use nail guns, modern shingles, or anything available at Home Depot. I bought these shingles off eBay from a guy who salvages old houses in the UK. The nails come from a blacksmith in Williamsburg, Virginia who makes 19th century, hand-forged iron tools and hardware for the fun of it.
It’s hot as blue blazes up here, forty feet in the air, perched on top of black slate shingles, trying not to fall off. Stu and I are both sweating on the slates, making them slicker than eel shit. This isn’t fun work, but it’s got to be done.
“You could also hire a roofer,” Stu grumbles, “instead of always being so cheap. ‘Course, there’s not a roofer in the low country who’d work for you, because you’re so damn peculiar about every little detail about this place.”
“And you’re welcome to climb down that ladder and get on your way home,” I snap. “You’re not doing me any favors with your bitching and moaning.”
Stu grins, laughing at my grumpy response. “Son, you need to stop taking every word I say so seriously.”
He says this to me a lot, but it bears repeating often because I do tend to take almost everything to heart.
“And speaking of getting offended,” he says, hammering a nail into hundred-year-old cypress timbers that are almost as hard as the stone slates we’re working with. “Maddie, from Flo’s, asked about you the other day. She said to tell you she wasn’t offended. She said that’s just her naturally charming personality shining through, and you shouldn’t take it so personally.”
Right.
“Yeah, well, she was pissed the other night when I tried to chat her up,” I remind Stu. “I don’t think you were paying attention ‘cause you were so tuned in to Alejandra’s finer attributes. But trust me, if she’s suddenly not offended now, it’s only ‘cause I left her an extra-large tip to remember me by.”
“Hm. Trying to make an impression?” he asks.
“Trying to apologize for making a bad one,” I say. “A girl like that wouldn’t give me the time of day, but it bugs me to think that she’s out there in the world thinking ill of me.”
Stu sits up, thighs resting on calves, perched on the shallow sloped roof pitch. After wiping sweat from his brow with his t-shirt, then gulping water from a shared bottle, he says, “I’d say you made an impression alright. Enough for her to ask about you anyway. I don’t think you’d have left her that extra-large tip if you weren’t trying to make an impression. You should take another shot at chatting her up.”
“Not likely,” I say, driving the last nail into the last slate to finish this job. “I’m sure she’s got a boyfriend, anyway. Girls like her always have boyfriends.”
“She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Stu says. “I asked Ally and Ronny both. They both said the same thing. She’s got a seven-year-old kid named Justin, no living family, and she’s working at Flo’s trying to save up enough money to rent a place in Beaufort.”
Say what?
I sit up, facing Stu, feeling the crease between my eyebrows furrow deep.
“She’s got a kid? And no other family?”
He shakes his head at me, a small smile turning his lip just so. “Ronny says they’re living in a camper. She parks it at Flo’s on nights she’s working and moves it around to campgrounds on nights she’s off.”
It dawns on me then, the little tow-headed boy with the book in the RV was probably hers.
“That’s fucked up,” I observe. “Living in a camper.”
Stu shrugs. “Some people don’t even have a camper,” he says. “At least they have a roof.”
I gaze down at the roof we’ve just finished patching. It’s a six-thousand-dollar roof. (I paid for a complete re-roofing of every structure on the property after we got the Historic Property designation, so I know what each one cost, right down to the penny). This roof is over an unused, 18th century cistern, attached to a house no one lives in; a house that exists only to be admired and to entertain people. The cistern is bigger than Maddie’s RV.
The money I’ve spent restoring and maintaining this property would feed, clothe, and house ten homeless families for years. The idea of my screwed-up priorities makes me a little ashamed.
Stu was right about Maddie, and I was dead wrong.
“Let’s get cleaned up and go to Flo’s for a cold one,” I say. “I could use a drink and a plate of Sweet Maidens.”
“It’s Saturday night,” Stu reminds me. “It’ll be packed.”
I shrug nonchalantly. “So, we’ll hover in line out the door like the tourists. I got nowhere else to be.”
Chapter 5
Maddie
I’m hauling fully loaded trays of succulent seafood out of the kitchen every ten minutes, covering two six-tops, an eight-top, and five four-tops. A kid threw up shrimp and grits on my new shoes an hour ago, and my eight-top needs more pitchers of Margaritas. I’m in the weeds so deep I can’t see my way clear to go pee, which I really need to do sometime this century.
It’s my first Saturday shift. It’s crazy. It’s only six o’clock and the place is packed to the gills, and there’s a line out the front door, stretching into the parking lot. Ronny warned me there would be nights like this, but after all those sleepy lunch shifts, I was starting to think he was exaggerating. Guess not.
“Your bar order’s up,” Ally calls out, passing by with a tray filled with Long Island Iced Teas.
There are six of us on the floor tonight with two bus boys and three runners, and we’re barely keeping up.
I deliver the plates to one of my tables, refill their drinks, then put my head down and dash toward the bar, avoiding eye-contact with the thirty patrons all trying to get my attention. I want to keep that eight-top happy. As it stands now, if they only tip ten-percent (which would make them lousy, cheap bastards), I’m set for a hundred dollars.
I pick up my pitchers and as I’m about to take them away, Ronny calls me back.
“Have a look,” he says, pointing his chin toward the hostess stand while mixing a couple gin and tonics.
I turn to look. It’s the guy, and the other guy, Stuart. They’re in line, waiting to be seated.
“When you get a few seconds, go get ‘em and bring ‘em to the bar. I’ve got a couple tables held for local walkins.”
I check and sure enough, there are two empty two-tops just opposite the crowded bar with “Reserved” tent signs perched, warning trespassers.
I feel my belly tighten. The guy is so tall. And so easy to look at with his big broad shoulders, muscled arms, and sun-bleached, slightly curly hair. And he’s generous with his tips and his unnecessary apologies.
“Let me take these to my table and I’ll bring them up,” I say, moving along toward my loud crew of drunken big-spenders.
A few minutes later I pluck the guy and his friend from the long line, raising some disapproving looks from people waiting ahead of them.
“It’s good to know people in high places,” I chirp with a smirk, showing them to their little booth near the bar. “What are you drinking?”
The guy orders a semi-expensive local micro-brew. Stuart orders a Foster’s and a tray of Sweet Maiden oysters on the half-shell.
“Make it two,” the guy says, not looking at me.
“Hot sauce?” I ask, cause that’s what you ask when people order oysters on the half-shell. Personally, I don’t understand why anyone in their right mind would eat raw oysters. They’re nasty looking, and slimy, and they smell like fish shit. It makes sense that you’d want to kill that flavor with some level-nine habanero sauce and then dry the mucus up with saltine crackers afterwards.
The guy turns to me, looking up with a horrified expression.
“Hot sauce?” he repeats, his tone heavy with incredulity. “If any fucking asshole eats Sweet Maidens with hot sauce on them, I want you to point out that shithead so I can personally kick his ass back to whatever dugout dirt cavern he crawled out of.”
“Yeah,” I say awkwardly. “Alright. Half the damn restaurant orders hot sauce. I think you’re outnumbered.”
His buddy Stuart laughs, but the guy is not laughing. He levels me with a deadly serious gaze. “I’ve taken on worse odds and survived it.”
Somehow, I believe him. He’s a little bit too intense not to believe.
After I grab their beers, get their order punched in, check on all my tables and refill drinks, replenish hush puppies, and take another table’s order, I find myself at the beverage station alongside Ally, both of us vying for the same tap of sweet tea.
“The guy at number three at the bar. Not Stuart, but the other one. You know him, right?” I ask.
She nods, smiling. “Everyone knows him,” she says. “That’s Jeb Ballentine.”
“What’s his deal?” I want to know because I think I kind of like him. He’s gorgeous in a tanned, country sort of way, and there’s something in his personality that’s just different – more interesting, maybe deeper – than anyone else here. But I might be crazy. Or just hoping it’s true.
Ally shrugs. “Old money that’s not got so much money anymore. His family’s been here since there was a here. He owns a spread over on Maiden Island called Blanc-Bleu; an old plantation that been around since before the Civil War. He’s an oyster farmer now. My brother works for him. Manny says he’s a nice guy, but he’s still the richest guy in county, probably in the whole Low Country. That’s what they say, anyway. My brother Manny says it’s not true, but he owns a lot of property and a great big house, so, who knows.”
Shit. The richest guy in the county? That explains the big tip. That explains a lot. Rich guys buy whatever they want without thinking much about the long-term cost.
It’s one thing to flirt with the regulars for tips. It’s an altogether different thing to start something with a guy who’s the ‘big man’ in the neighborhood. Guys like that can make all sorts of trouble when they get their feelings hurt. This guy is used to special treatment; evidence the fact that I plucked him and Stuart out of line and gave them a table while everyone else had to wait.
I need to be nice to him; that much is obvious, but any idea I had beyond just being nice feels unwise. He’s so far out of my league it’s not even worth the risk of entertaining it. Guys like that don’t take girls like me seriously. I’m glad I asked Ally who he was; otherwise I would probably have made a fool of myself.
“Sweet Maidens, bare,” I say, serving up platters to Stuart and Jeb Ballentine. Now that I know his name and who he is, I won’t be making anymore smart comments.
Their beers are drained. I scurry to the bar to refill them, returning before either one of them have noticed my absence.
“Keep the beers coming,” Stuart says, smiling up at me. “And when it slows down, come back. I may still be hungry.”
“You got it,” I promise.
An hour later, when the dinner rush has died out and the only demands on my time are my drunk eight-top and a four-top with an infant throwing crackers on the floor, I check back in with Stuart and Jeb.
“Another IPA,” Jeb requests. “No rush.”
I rush, because that’s what a competent waitress does when she’s hoping for a good tip. I’ve been rushing all night.
When I return, Jeb’s alone. Stuart is out on the floor standing by a table full of guys who look just like him and Jeb; weathered, trim, salty young men who obviously work outside. They’re all laughing like Stuart is a comedian.
“Here’s your beer,” I say, laying it down, picking up the empty. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” he replies a little hesitantly. “You have just a second to talk?”
Oddly, I’m all caught up. My eight-top just got desert, and my four-top just settled-up and cleared out. The rest of my tables are either waiting on food or just got it.
“Just a second,” I say. “I’ll have orders coming out of the kitchen soon.”
He’s nervous about something, which renders him almost cute.
“So… I was wondering if some time you’d like to go out?” he asks sheepishly. “Maybe eat somewhere other than Flo’s? Catch some live music? I know some cool places you probably haven’t had a chance to go yet.”
Oh shi
t. I feel my face flush instantly. He’s not hitting on me passively like all the other guys do. He’s seriously asking me out on a date. I can’t even remember the last time that happened. I think it might have been high school. I know for a fact Joe and I never actually dated. We met, hung out with a group of friends, and after that we were just together. It’s kind of a sad way to wind up married to someone. It took so little effort on either of our parts.
“Um…” I hedge, not knowing quite how to respond. I know I can’t date this guy. He’s too rich and too local. “Um… I really don’t…”
His expression falls, eyes dropping to his hands which are neatly folded on the table in front of him.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I say, trying to make it go down easier. “I would, except I have a kid, and when I’m not working I’m with him. I work most nights and just don’t go out much. It’s just not practical, at least until Justin gets a little older.”
He nods, glancing up at me, forcing a sympathetic smile. “It’s okay,” he says, his disappointment showing through, despite his best attempts at concealing it. “I understand. Had to try.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, not sure why I’m apologizing. “I really am… I like you… it’s just… not the best thing to do for my kid.”
He nods again. “It’s really alright, Maddie. You don’t need to apologize.” He smiles a little again, and this time it seems more genuine. “You’ve got your priorities in order. I think that’s pretty cool.”
If you say ‘no’ to some guys – a lot of guys – you make a lifetime enemy. They turn ugly. I was worried that may happen with him, and it would be bad since he’s friends with Ronny and seems related – whether through business or blood – to damn near everyone in town. I get the feeling Jeb isn’t like that. He’s not fragile like so many guys are. Some guys look tough, but inside they’re as brittle as spun glass. Jeb seems tough inside and out.
“Hey, if you change your mind, you know where I hang out,” he says, hauling in a deep breath, mustering a humble grin. “Bring the check around when you get a chance. I’m gonna see if I can pry Stu out of here before Ronny turns the lights out.”
