Choosing Charleston

by T. Lynn Ocean

  “I don’t think you have to.”

  “Talk to their manager?”

  “I don’t think you have to shut down the store. At least, not without a fight.”

  “But there’s no point to fighting a battle when you already know the outcome.”

  “We can change the outcome.”

  I told him about the research I’d done and revealed my plan.

  By the time we got home after buying Mamma’s spiced rum, Daddy was grinning.

  “What the hell,” he said. “It might just work.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mother Nature smiled down on us as Lori Anne and I walked the plot of dirt across from Mamma and Daddy’s store again. The day was a page right out of a fairy tale book. Sunny, mercury flirting with the low seventies, endless clear blue sky. I wore sandals, a sleeveless tee shirt and a flowing cotton skirt that invited the refreshing breeze to caress my bare calves. Lori Anne was in her usual daytime attire of skin-tight jeans, high heeled sandals and a flamboyant cotton top. Being able to dress however she wanted was one of perks of owning her own business. For that matter, she could go to the salon in a burlap sack and get away with it because people would chalk it up to her being a ‘creative’ type.

  “You want to do a happy hour tonight?” she asked me. “We can dress up. Maybe find someplace with live jazz? I’ll get Britt to bring one of his friends.”

  Lori Anne’s current boyfriend, Britt had been taking her out for nearly two months, which meant he wouldn’t be around much longer. She went through them at the same rate she changed her hair color. And ever since her one attempt at matrimony failed in a few short weeks, she was my only friend who thought of marriage as an ancient ritual serving no present-day purpose.

  “No. I told you I want to hang low for a while, stay out of sight so to speak. If we go to a happy hour, we’re bound to run into somebody I know.”

  “So?”

  “So, I’ll let everyone know I’m back in town… soon. After I get things worked out. But not right now. Besides, I’m not up for a double date kind of thing.”

  “It’ll get your mind off Robert,” she said. “And anyway, you’re separated, woman! It’s time to put yourself out there.”

  I gave her a look. “It’s time? I’ve been back less than a week.”

  Easy to navigate, the land was a beautiful piece of earth with flat terrain, plenty of mature pines and just enough live oaks to give it character. Construction was progressing quickly and the property had changed in just the few days since we’d visited last. Several acres of timber had already been cleared and piles of miscellaneous infrastructure materials, like conduit and culverts, were stacked in neat rows. A construction trailer sat near the perimeter of the property with several trucks and cars parked haphazardly around it.

  I felt good, and not even the rumbling tractor creating construction access roads dampened my enthusiasm.

  “By the way,” I told Lori Anne, “thanks for turning me on to Chief Hatcher. He’s a very cool guy.”

  I’d given my best friend a condensed version of my strategy to stall the Protter development, the same one that Daddy agreed just might work. She’d enthusiastically supported the plan, and even added an idea of her own. Chief Hatcher was an expert in his field and he owed Lori Anne a favor.

  “No problem,” she said. “Now let’s go kick some ass.”

  As we neared wooden steps leading up to the trailer, he walked out. Trent. In a faded black tee shirt that couldn’t conceal the muscled chest beneath it. Wearing the scuffed up leather work boots and the loose fitting denim jeans that pushed my imagination into overdrive. Moving quickly, confidently, his eyes studying something on a clipboard as he nearly walked past me.

  “My, oh, my,” Lori Anne whispered, giving me an elbow in the side. “Look who’s here. He is freakin’ hot!”

  Although I agreed with her assessment, I forced myself to forget about how good-looking he was and remember how much I loathed everything he stood for: Crushing a small business in the name of progress.

  “Good morning,” I said, startling him.

  Seeing me, his face revealed a rapid flip chart of emotions before it settled into a cordial expression.

  “Carly Stone,” he said slowly. “I didn’t realize you were still in town.”

  “I left, but now I’m back.”

  He nodded. “Who’s your friend?”

  Lori Anne stuck out her hip along with her hand. “I’m Lori Anne. We sort of met at your office a few weeks’ back. When Carly was there to speak with Mister Protter.”

  “I’m Trent.” He shook her hand.

  “Yes, you certainly are.”

  He returned his attention to me. “Welcome back. How’s your father?”

  “He’s fine. He’ll be even better if he can manage to stay out of the hospital.”

  “He’s been in the hospital?”

  “Twice, in the past week. But it’s nothing I care to discuss with a stranger.”

  His eyes clouded for an instant and I wondered if my verbal barb stung. Whether it did or didn’t, I was ready to hit him with something more tangible than nasty words.

  “So what brings you here?” he said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Yeah,” I said with some attitude. “You can tell all your boys out here to go on home.”

  “Come again?”

  Before I could elaborate, Mister Protter walked out of the trailer. He looked the same as when I’d met him in his office. Powerful, confident, casually dressed.

  “Well, hello, Miss Stone,” he said. “I see you’ve already met my son.”

  Blood drained from my face and pooled somewhere near my heart, refusing to move. I couldn’t think. For a long few seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

  “Your son? He’s a…Protter?”

  “Yes, my son Trent,” Mister Protter said. “Are you feeling okay? You look pale.”

  “You son of a bitch,” I spat at Trent. “You let me believe you were just a hired hand. Why didn’t you tell me you were a Protter?”

  He smiled. “Most of the time, I am just a hired hand.”

  “Right.”

  “What’s going on, Trent? I take it you’ve met Miss Stone before?”

  “We’ve crossed paths a few times. And I don’t know what going on, Pop. Carly was just fixing to tell me why she and her friend stopped by.”

  Father and son, their physical resemblance blaring now that I was looking at them side by side, waited for an explanation.

  “The wall,” I told them, regaining my composure.

  “What?” Trent said.

  “There’s what may very well be a piece of the original city wall on this property.”

  They looked at me like I had just told them the sky was green.

  “What wall are you referring to, Miss Stone?” Mister Protter asked in the manner of an elementary school teacher humoring a child.

  “Charleston, back when it was called Charles Towne, was the only English walled city in America. It was the colonists’ way of defending their land.”

  The two men continued to look at me in an uncomprehending way, so I continued to share my newly acquired historical knowledge.

  “There are clues from archeological excavations and documentary sources that paint a picture of Charleston beginning as a city completely encircled by walls…similar in appearance to the medieval walled towns of Europe, with a lot of palisades and trenches. See, when the proprietors began forming Charles Town over three hundred years ago, it had to be a defensible town, because it was surrounded by water and quite accessible.”

  I paused to make sure I had my facts right. My historian friend had been enthusiastically thorough.

  “During the late 1600s, border disputes were common and much of the Carolina province was simultaneously claimed by the French, Spanish and English. Everybody wanted to stake claim to our little piece of low-lying paradise.”

  Mister Protter’s eyebrows arched w
ith what may have been surprise, but Trent’s tightened over blue eyes that weren’t amused.

  “I’ve read accounts about Charleston being a walled city, but I thought it was a small area near the Battery,” Mister Protter said.

  I nodded. “The generally accepted view is that Charleston’s walls, bastions, and even some moats were in place by the year 1704, but all except a seawall were dismantled just thirteen years later so the town could be enlarged. It’s merely a blip in the history journals. But the thing is, there’s no evidence to support the notion of such a large-scale effort to remove the walls that enclosed the town. And in fact, there is evidence that demonstrates areas of wall being repaired and improved upon throughout the Revolutionary War years. So, while most of the original defensive wall structures were either torn down or the wooden stakes and palmetto logs that formed palisades rotted away, other parts were reinforced with more sturdy materials, like brick.”

  Trying not to grin in victory, I continued with my announcement.

  “And, according to one of the leading historians in the area, the remains of a section of wall could very well be standing on your property. It appears to be a section that was connected to a small bastion, because there is a layer of oyster shells and cobblestones around the area, about a foot and a half down.”

  I looked around to get my bearings and pointed to an area near the center of the plat, “right over there.”

  The four of us looked at the crumbling wall, barely visible from our vantage point, standing insolently where it didn’t belong.

  “So?” Trent was agitated. “What does a pile of debris that might possibly have been a wall at one time have to do with anything now?”

  “Maybe nothing. But this could be a really big find. A gold mine, so to speak, to a history buff. And historians feel strongly enough about it to keep you from tearing it down and hauling it off to the dump.”

  My historian friend was chomping at the bit to notify the Protters and get a group of experts to the site immediately, because she really did think that the mound of debris could have some historic value. But she’d agreed to let me be the one to deliver the news and I was enjoying every minute of doing so.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Mister Stone said. “It’s a splotch of old bricks and stones and mortar. It could’ve been anything. The history is fascinating, but how do they know it’s a piece of the wall?”

  “The location, and the materials,” Lori Anne said, enjoying the moment as much as I was. Although pushing people’s buttons was a newly discovered activity for me, she had always loved to stir things up, just for the hell of it. Kind of like my sister, but without as much drama.

  “Many members of the society are retired and have a lot of time on their hands.” I shrugged. “Studying and preserving history is what they do.”

  In reality, if the wall dilemma escalated to become a problem for Protter Construction and Development, all they’d have to do was agree to leave it in place and erect a barrier of some sort around it. End of story. But they didn’t know that. At least not yet. And whether or not it turned out to be a historic artifact, the process of finding out would slow them down. In my best imagined scenario, it would require a modification to the master plan.

  “Well, I’ve got a meeting to get to,” Mister Protter said abruptly, deciding to let his son deal with us solo.

  “See you later, Pop.” Trent muttered.

  “Nice to see you again, Miss Stone,” Mister Protter said, to be cordial. “My son will take care of any concerns you have about the…er, alleged piece of wall.”

  He told Trent goodbye and nodded in Lori Anne’s direction before climbing into a Lincoln and driving off.

  Trent turned to face me full on, thick arms folded across his chest. “We will be happy to talk to the historical society to resolve the situation. Is there anything else you wanted, Carly?”

  I stood close, defiantly pushing myself into his space and I had to arch my neck to see his eyes. The crystal blue eyes that had darkened with irritation.

  As he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, sunlight coming from just the right angle created a halo of golden red color at the edges of his short hair and briefly silhouetted a sculpted frame. He smelled of soap, sun and leather. I nearly forgot what I was about to say. Then I remembered he was a Protter. I hated him.

  “No,” I said. “There’s nothing else I wanted, other than to let you know that you won’t be moving dirt in the area of the wall. Well, actually, you won’t be moving any dirt anywhere on this property after tomorrow. At least not for a few weeks.”

  “Oh, really?” The eyes went black. “Why’s that?”

  “Because Chief Hatcher believes a portion of this land belonged to his ancestors and may be sacred soil. A Native American Indian burial ground, actually.”

  “What! You have got to be kidding. Yeah, there’s a pile of rubble sitting over there, that may have been a wall at one time, but there’s certainly nothing to indicate this property ever held human remains. You’re reaching, Carly.”

  It was Lori Anne’s turn to jump in. “He’s a full-blooded Waccamaw Indian, not to mention a historian. And Chief Hatcher knows for a fact there were some burial grounds around Charleston. See, Native American Indians traded furs and skins and navigated the waters of the South Carolina coast until diseases like smallpox wiped a lot of them out. And then, settlers forced most of them west.”

  Trent looked back and forth between the two of us. “Chief Hatcher? You couldn’t have made up a better name than that? Like, say, Chief Running Creek or Chief Rising Sun?”

  “Chief Hatcher is a real man, Trent Protter,” I said. “And for your information, many Native American Indians consider their tribal names a very person thing. It’s something they only share with close friends and family. And besides that, Hatcher is a common Native American Indian name in South Carolina. Just like Norris or Creel or Locklear. Do some research before you jump to the conclusion that I’m conjuring up fake Indian chiefs.”

  I could almost feel the heat from Trent’s glare. “So what does your chief want, Carly?”

  “He just wants to make sure you don’t desecrate any graves. You’d feel the same way if there was a possibility your ancestors had been buried on this property.”

  He unfolded and refolded his arms and his eyes narrowed even further.

  “You’ll be receiving an injunction to prevent you from disturbing the soil any further,” I said, “until experts evaluate the area to determine if it was, in fact, a burial ground.”

  “And you’ve got some sort of evidence to back up your claim?”

  “Yes, we do. Just finding a grouping of broken shards of pottery or flint, or in this case discovering a sloping mound of dirt that looks like a giant bump on otherwise flat terrain can be cause enough for an investigation. The Federal government says so.”

  I pointed to an area on the southernmost section of the plat, where there sat just such a mound. He looked at it for several seconds before taking a step towards me, reducing the already miniscule gap between us. He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it before any words came out. Then, like a caged panther pacing, he turned and walked a short distance away from us before pivoting and walking back.

  “I don’t think he’s very happy to see you, Carly,” Lori Anne said brightly.

  He glared at her, clenched his fists and did another walk back and forth.

  “This is private property. You trespassed when you were out here with your historian. You trespassed when you were out here with your Native American Indian chief. And the two of you are trespassing today. I’d like for you to get off my land. Right now.”

  “We’ve got an appointment for a manicure, anyway,” Lori said with attitude, looking at her nails. “We were just leaving.”

  I tried to keep from grinning as we headed back to my car.

  “What is it that you really want, Miss Stone?” Trent said to our departing backs. He had quit usi
ng my first name.

  We stopped and turned. “I just want to preserve history and protect sacred soil.”

  I could see his jaw muscles clench and unclench as he formulated words.

  “I know you’re angry about the Handyman’s Depot situation, but your childish tactics won’t work. There is nothing you can do to stop this retail center,” he said. “I’ve overseen the development of a lot of different sites, and I’ve never run across any pieces of historic walls or old burial grounds.”

  “You’ve also never run across me before,” I told him, still fuming that he hadn’t properly identified himself. I’d been blindsided by the knowledge that my fantasy man didn’t just work for the enemy – he was the enemy.

  “And, sure, it may not prove to be a piece of the wall. And there may not be any Native American Indian bones beneath this dirt. But you know what? I sure as hell can have a judge slow you down while we all find out.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “No, it’s a fact. The court orders being prepared right now,” I told him. “Did I mention I’m a lawyer?”

  “No,” he said flatly, running a hand through his hair. “I thought you were a mediator from New York.”

  “Well, now I’m lawyer from Charleston.”

  “Then you ought to realize trespassing is illegal. Get the hell off my land.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  As dusk descended on the city known for its gentility, chanting crickets filled the air with a comforting cadence. Daddy and I were stretched out on the back porch, sharing a pitcher of sweet tea and a plate of benne wafers, discussing the Protter project. He was smoking his favorite pipe, the one Mamma’s grandpa had given him, and delicate swirls of cherry tobacco danced above his head.

  Earlier, when I’d confronted Trent, I had been confident and gutsy. But, even with Lori Anne’s moral support, I’d also felt nervous. Afterward, having begun laying the groundwork for a battle, I felt sick. As we were driving home, nausea pounded my gut and I wanted to throw up. But I recovered quickly and the queasiness morphed into exhilaration. A small step toward victory. I’d done it. For the first time in my life, I’d confronted someone with the intention of provoking rather than mediating and it resulted in a natural high better than any drug could have induced. It felt almost euphoric.