The List

by Robert Whitlow

  “That must be quite a job,” Renny said.

  “It is. I always wanted to be a nurse and went into a cardiac OR specialty so I could train with a couple of outstanding doctors at the hospital where I work.”

  Renny glanced at Jo’s left hand resting in her lap. Nice fingers with pretty red nail polish. No engagement or wedding ring. She wasn’t Mrs. Heart Doctor yet.

  Jo made arrangements with the worker at the tire store. It was a small operation, but Jo’s truck wouldn’t be ready for an hour. It was a little past noon, and Renny’s stomach tank was flashing orange for empty.

  “Would you like to get something to eat?” he asked.

  “Sure. I don’t have to get to the coast until this evening either.”

  Renny asked the man at the service desk for a phone book. Turning to the restaurant section, he ran his finger down the modest selection. “Yeah, here it is—Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue. Would that be OK with you?”

  “Sure, I’d like to try some ethnic food.”

  Renny gave her a puzzled look. “I never thought of barbecue as ethnic food, it’s just … well, it’s just food.”

  “I understand,” she said, chuckling, “but to someone from Michigan, it’s as ethnic as German sausage would be to you.”

  Renny asked the serviceman for directions to the restaurant. He wasn’t sure barbecue was an ethnic dish, and it seemed almost blasphemous to compare it to German sausage.

  The restaurant was less than five blocks from the tire store. The low-slung red building looked as if it had grown out of the red clay. Renny pulled into the gravel parking lot and pointed to a couple of red smokers the size of fifty-five-gallon drums mounted horizontally on legs and connected to smaller black boxes.

  “Those are the smokers. The cooks put eight-to twelve-pound pork shoulders inside, build a fire in the adjacent firebox, and smoke the meat for six or seven hours. They slice off the fat, cut up the meat, and cook it inside the building for another thirty minutes. Then it’s ready for the touch of genius, the sauce.”

  “All great chefs are distinguished by their sauces.”

  “Yeah,” Renny agreed. “However, most guys who run barbecue joints would rather be caught riding in a Mary Kay Cadillac than answer to ‘chef.’”

  The Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue Restaurant was the genuine article. The outside walls were decorated with old automobile license plates. A large, pink, plywood pig stood beside the banged-up front door and announced the hours of operation in green letters across his chest.

  Renny and Jo found seats at a bare wooden table under a picture calendar of the local high school football team. The menu, a single laminated sheet, was simple: barbecue pork sandwich, barbecue pork plate, barbecue pork ribs, or hamburger steak. Brunswick stew, like coastal oysters, was occasionally available: “Ask your waitress.” Side dishes included baked beans, French fries, onion rings, and slaw. Peach cobbler was the only option to finish off the meal.

  “I thought they made barbecue from beef, too,” Jo said.

  “Maybe in Texas. Here, some folks refer to barbecue as barbecue pork pig—redundant, but it emphasizes that the only true barbecue is made with pork.”

  An overweight waitress, her Moncks Corner Carolina Barbecue T-shirt permanently stained by dark red sauce in multiple locations, sauntered up to take their order.

  “May I order for you?” Renny asked. “I want to make sure you get a comprehensive ethnic experience.”

  “Sure.”

  “Two pork plates with beans, slaw, and sweet tea, please. Do you have stew?”

  The waitress turned her head and yelled toward the back of the room, “Fred, is there any stew on?”

  A black-haired man with a three-day growth of beard and a completely stained T-shirt leaned out a door and yelled, “Yeah.”

  “Let me have a bowl of stew, too. Thanks,” Renny said.

  Renny grinned as the waitress headed to the kitchen. “Pretty classy place, isn’t it?”

  “Low overhead, I’m sure. I wonder if they have a license plate from every state.” The license plate motif continued on the inside walls of the restaurant. “There’s one from Guam and a military plate from Saudi Arabia.”

  “Michigan is over the cash register,” Renny said, admiring Jo’s profile as she turned her head. “Speaking of Michigan, do you mind if I ask what brought you from Michigan to South Carolina? Most folks from the North come in spring to escape the cold, not in summer to roast in the heat.”

  Jo hesitated a moment. “This is not a vacation. I’m in South Carolina on personal business.”

  The waitress brought their food on large plastic plates divided into three sections. Jo leaned forward and said, “I’d like to pray before we eat.”

  Surprised, Renny simply nodded. Jo closed her eyes and said, “Father, thank you for sending Renny to help me today. Bless his life and your purposes for him. Help me to see my way clearly this weekend. Thank you for this food. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  Renny kept his eyes open while Jo prayed, first glancing to see if anyone noticed what was happening, then watching Jo’s face. It was more like talking than the type of praying Renny was familiar with. After she said amen, her eyes popped open and met his.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I never thought anyone would say that God used me. It’s a novel thought.”

  They both dove into their food. To Renny’s relief, it was a good sample of ethnic Southern fare. The meat was lean, and the sauce was sweet with enough spice to tickle the tongue. “Here, taste the stew before I start,” he offered, dipping Jo’s spoon into his bowl and feeding her the bite.

  “That’s good. I like it.”

  “What kind of business do you have on the coast?”

  Jo wiped her mouth and took a sip of tea before answering. “Actually, it’s a personal matter related to my father’s estate. He died a few months ago.”

  “My father died a few months ago, too.”

  Jo looked up and met Renny’s eyes. Their mouths dropped open simultaneously. “Are you … ?” She started a question, then stopped.

  Renny picked up, “ … going to Georgetown?”

  Jo nodded her head. Renny remembered LaRochette’s letter to Mr. Joe Taylor Johnston, leaned back in his chair, and laughed.

  He put his fork down beside his plate. “So you’re Mr. Jo Taylor Johnston,” he chuckled, emphasizing the mister. “This is unbelievable.”

  Jo stared past Renny’s shoulder at the far wall of the restaurant and muttered, “Incredible.”

  Reaching across the table, Renny said, “Let me formally introduce myself. I am Josiah Fletchall Jacobson.”

  Jo took Renny’s hand, smiled wanly, and continued muttering, “But why?”

  “You said it in your prayer. You thanked God for sending me to you.”

  “That was about the tire, of course. This is just incredible.”

  Renny glanced around the restaurant. No one was seated near them, and the waitress was cleaning a table by the rest rooms. “Well, I guess we can talk openly. No vow of secrecy applies to members of the List.” Saying “the List” cast a sort of curtain around them.

  “But we’re not members yet.”

  “A mere formality.”

  “Maybe for you. But I’m a woman, and they think I’m a man. Plus, I want to know more about the whole arrangement. What do you know?”

  Renny gave her a summary of the past week, leaving out that the only significant bequest to him in his father’s will was the List. “You know,” he concluded, “the papers I read mentioned transfer of interest from one generation to the next based on primogeniture, the right of the firstborn son to receive all the father’s estate. But that was about 150 years ago. Surely things are different now.”

  “Think about it, Renny. If I don’t participate, there is more for the rest of the members, including you.”

  “Surely it’s not that mercenary a group. I don’t know any amounts involved, but the taped message my father
left me clearly implied there is a lot of money. Plenty for everyone, I would guess.”

  “The richest man in the Bible said, ‘Whoever loves money never has money enough.’”

  “Maybe, maybe not.” Renny took a last bite of barbecue and asked, “You don’t have any brothers?”

  “No, I’m my father’s only child. He wanted a boy, and when I showed up with a pink bow in my hair, he gave me a unisex name. Now I can guess one reason why.”

  They ate in silence for a minute, each in thought.

  Jo spoke first, “Well, I agree with you.”

  “Agree with what?” Renny asked.

  “That this is a divine encounter. God is in our meeting. I just don’t know how.” Jo looked at Renny questioningly.

  Renny was not used to this God talk. To him, God was the great cosmic clockmaker, a skilled craftsman who constructed the universe, wound the key, and went off to do his own thing. The thought that God was personally involved in an individual’s life enough to set up a meeting between two people in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, was new. Normally, he would have politely avoided someone who talked like Jo, but he had an immediate attraction to her that overruled his natural response.

  The waitress came to clear the plates from the table. “We have peach cobbler,” she mentioned nonchalantly.

  “Any ice cream to go with it?” Renny asked.

  Turning again toward the kitchen, she yelled, “Fred, any ice cream in the cooler?”

  Fred’s unshaven face made an appearance for a repeat performance. “Yeah.”

  “I’d like some of that, please. Jo?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Since we are not two ships passing in the night, tell me about you and your family.” Renny settled back in his seat. “There is obviously some connection between our families in the past.”

  “OK, but I’d better give you the Reader’s Digest condensed version. My mother’s family immigrated to America from Norway in the 1880s and settled in the lower peninsula of Michigan. With a Scandinavian background, you would think I’d have blonde hair, but my mother and I are both brunettes. My parents divorced when I was two years old, and my mother remarried a couple of years later. My stepfather, whom I consider my real dad, was a physics professor at Michigan State. He died of cancer when I was twelve, and my mom has never remarried. She is an amateur naturalist and bird-watcher, traveling all over the world to sit for hours in hopes of spotting a rare species of bird. I went with her to Africa once.”

  “What about your father?” Renny asked as the waitress set his cobbler on the table.

  “He was a consulting engineer, specializing in bridge building. He was raised in Roanoke, Virginia, and went to Virginia Tech. He came to Michigan on a job, met my mother, and asked her to marry him. I was born within a year. He traveled all over the country in his work and while on a job in California wrote my mother a letter telling her he had met someone else and wanted a divorce. Of course, I don’t remember anything about that time. He filed for divorce, and I didn’t see him for fifteen years. I think he was divorced and remarried five times. Crazy, but it’s true.”

  “Did he have other children?”

  “Not as far as I know. He came to my high school graduation, gave me a check for sixty thousand dollars to pay for my college education, and left immediately after the ceremony. I wrote him several times while I was in college, but he never wrote back. About two years ago he called me at my mother’s house on Christmas Day. I think he had been drinking. We talked a few minutes, and he told me I would know how much he loved me after he died. I asked if I could see him, and he hung up. The next news I received was a call from a lawyer in Chicago. He told me my father was dead and that I was the sole beneficiary in his will.”

  “How did he die?”

  “He suffered a massive heart attack while driving the red truck you saw at the convenience store. He had it at a stoplight; the truck slowly rolled forward and swerved into a small ditch. He was in Chicago and apparently had been to the grocery store because there were several bags of groceries behind the front seat. He was dead when the ambulance arrived. He was only fifty-three and had no record of heart trouble. The lawyer had a copy of an autopsy. I called the doctor who performed the autopsy—”

  “And he said your father’s heart exploded.”

  “That’s right, but … ?”

  Renny shrugged. “It’s like I’m hearing about my own father. Go ahead.”

  “I would have suspected suicide if not for the autopsy report. He had already been buried when I got the call. No funeral, just a simple marker in a Chicago cemetery. My journey here began when I went to the lawyer’s office.”

  “I can imagine. How did it all come up?”

  “My father was not married at the time of his death. It had been several years since his last marriage ended in divorce. All the failed marriages, divorces, and unknown tragedies had depleted his financial resources, and at the time of his death he didn’t have a whole lot except a modest bank account and the truck. The lawyer who contacted me did not prepare the will. A lawyer in Valparaiso, Indiana, drafted it, but he had retired and moved to Florida. The executor was a man who worked at the Chicago bank where my father kept his money. He delivered the will to the lawyer after my father’s death.”

  “Did the will mention the List?”

  “Yes. I met with the lawyer, a nice old gentleman who told me everything was straightforward about the estate except a reference to an organization called the Covenant List of South Carolina, Limited. He wanted to know if I knew what it was. I told him no. He also told me that a copy of my father’s obituary was sent to nine men listed in a separate item in the will. I looked at the list and didn’t know any of the men, but thought that because they all lived in the South they might be cousins or other relatives. The lawyer also gave me an envelope addressed to me from my father.”

  Renny went for the daily double. “Inside was a cassette and a key to a post office box.”

  “Half right. It was a letter and a post office box key. Would you like to read the letter?”

  “Sure.” Renny scooped up the last bite of cobbler and ice cream while Jo picked up her purse. Reaching inside, she took out a plain white envelope and handed it to Renny. Jo’s full name was scrawled in a spindly script across the front. Taking out three sheets of lined notebook paper, Renny read silently, slowly at first, then faster as he adapted to the writing.

  Dear Jo,

  I just hung up the phone after talking with you. I wanted to say yes when you asked to see me, but I believe it is best that you have no personal contact with me. My life has been marked by nothing but tragedy for myself and those around me. I have failed as a husband and father, and my words here are crippled messengers of what should have been said and done.

  Please forgive me for not truly being a father to you. I can do nothing about it now except ask you to forgive me. I am convinced part of my problems come from some deception I perpetrated. I know this sounds strange to you, but it has to do with the Covenant List of South Carolina, usually referred to by its members as the List. Formed in Georgetown, South Carolina, during the Civil War, the List was a cooperative venture of eleven families to preserve financial security in the face of certain ruin near the end of the war. Working together, they were able to transfer gold and silver out of the South before seizure by the North.

  This group has continued to the present time, with membership passing to the eldest male of each generation. The current assets of the List are enormous. I took membership upon the death of my father, but every dollar I have withdrawn has been lost through bad investments and business deals. I now believe I made a very serious mistake by deceiving the members of the List about you. I know it sounds archaic in this day, but I was concerned we would lose our stake in the money if they knew you were a girl.

  There has not been a major distribution of funds from the List for years. I hoped I would live to see my share transferred into my name
so I could give it to you. Then, even if you couldn’t succeed me as a member of the List you would still get something from it. Since you are reading this letter, my plan failed, just like everything else.

  I will let you choose what you want to do. I have left instructions for the members of the List to receive notification of my death. They will schedule a meeting in Georgetown to install you on the List because they will think you are my son. Enclosed is a post office box key for a branch office in Chicago on Ashland Avenue. We communicate only via post office boxes. A notice will be sent to you there.

  The existence of the List is secret. No one knows about it but the members. Upon joining, we all take a series of vows, including ones of secrecy and truthfulness. My mother never knew about the List; your mother never knew either. I don’t know what you should do. All I know is that everyone has always honored the vow of secrecy. I broke the vow of truthfulness. I lied and have paid the consequences. I don’t know if it’s better for you to run from it or face it. Do what seems right to you.

  Goodbye,

  Dad

  Renny folded the letter and put it down on the table, shaking his head. “Crippled messengers. I’m sorry.”

  “I cried off and on for a week. His life slipped through his hands like sand, never taking form, never having substance. The letter explained some things but raised more questions than I had before reading it.”

  “Did you talk with your mother?”

  “Selectively. She knew I went to Chicago and met with the lawyer. She is aware of the known estate, but I didn’t tell her about the letter or the List. I wasn’t sure reopening her pain was the responsible thing to do. I wanted to sort it out myself. That’s what this trip is about.”

  Renny looked into Jo’s eyes again. He saw a steel there he hadn’t noticed before. “It took a lot of courage for you to get in his truck and come down here.”

  “I thought it over from every angle. In the end I decided I had to see what this thing is all about for myself.”

  Renny pulled his chair closer to the table. “I have a proposal. Do you want to hear it?”

  Jo raised her eyebrows. “What?”