Rhett Butler's people (38 page)

The next morning when Taz Watling woke, his headache woke, too. He was lying on a hard deck, surrounded by cotton bales, whose woody, oily smell passed through his nose straight to his stomach, and he crawled backward out of his cotton cave to a ship's rail (where in hell

was

he?) to vomit. His head thumped with each spasm and he opened his eyes wide to relieve the pressure on his skull. He got up. He brushed sand off his knees. He was in a boat on a flat sea. They weren't going fast. A stream of water shot from the bow into the sea. The sun was not quite high noon. Goddamn Rhett Butler. Taz's headache settled into a throb. His stomach was empty, thank God. What boat

was

this? Men climbed from the hold to rig a windlass. After it was rigged, a cotton bale emerged into sunlight. They swung it out and dropped it over the side.

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Taz asked a sailor where they were.

"Day and a half day from Nassau if she floats. Lend a hand. Heave on that rope when I say 'Heave.'"

When Taz pulled the thick hemp rope, his head expanded like one of the pig bladders children inflate and pop at Christmastime. The sailors wore clean singletons, clean duck trousers. Taz was dirty and he smelled bad.

When her belowdecks cargo had been jettisoned, the

Widows

crew breathed easier and the helmsman lit his pipe.

Tazewell Watling felt light as a feather. As he mined the bitterness of Rhett Butler's betrayal, Taz discovered he hadn't wanted to die after all. This expanse of milky green sea was so flat, at the horizons he could see the earth curve. Sandy, dangerous, noisy, doomed Fort Fisher seemed very far away. His head stopped hurting and he was hungry.

He went belowdecks to the galley, where he found a half-carved roast of beef and some bread.

Four men labored at the hand pump in the cavernous hold. Water ran in through bulkhead seams. In the engine room, one of the two engines was cold. Exhausted men sprawled on pallets inches above the water-slick deck.

Nobody questioned Taz; nobody seemed to care who he was.

About three o'clock, the crew started jettisoning deck cargo. Cotton bales splashed over the side and bobbed in the

Widows

wake.

A weary negro captain issued the orders.

Taz cleared his throat politely and said, "I am Tazewell Watling. I am not aboard of my own will."

"I know who you is." Another cotton bale splashed into the sea and scraped along the hull. "This was to be the

Widow's

last run. Me and Ruthie and Nat was goin' to Canada. My father's in Kingston. He says there's no such thing as a nigger in Canada."

The Federal gunboats that tried to stop the

Merry Widow's

flight hadn't hurt her; she'd hurt herself. Her overpowered engines had torqued plates apart, popped rows of rivets, and sprung the vessel's knees. Although

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Mr. MacLeod had caulked and plugged every hole he could, he couldn't reach all of them, and water was within six inches of the fireboxes when they started heaving cargo over the side.

"Are we sinking, sir?"

Another bale hit the water and thumped and bumped along the hull. "Rhett's made arrangements for you, boy. We get to Nassau, I'll put you on a ship. They expectin' you in England."

"Sir, I am a Confederate soldier."

"You a

what!"

The negro captain's mouth worked furiously. "Mercy," he said. He turned to his crew. "That's enough overboard, Mr. MacLeod! Let's see if we can keep a couple to sell." More to himself than to the boy, he added, "One thousand dollars for one bale of cotton. One thousand dollars."

It was a bright day. Taz had been a powder boy in the greatest Confederate fort ever known. He'd done dangerous duty and through no fault of his own his life had been spared. He'd been prepared to die, but he hadn't, and the sun had never shone so bright as it shone on him today. Tazewell Watling was a young man on his way to a new life. The hair on his arms tingled.

Her engine strained as the

Merry Widow

wallowed across the glassy green sea. She had been sleek and beautiful and fast, but she was beautiful no more. If she got to Nassau, the ship breakers would take her.

Captain Tunis Bonneau turned his bloodshot eyes on his passenger. "Boy," he said, "there ain't no Confederates no more."

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Part Two Reconstruction

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Chapter

Chapter Twenty-four

A Georgia Plantation After the War

Charleston surrendered, Columbia burned, Petersburg fell, Richmond burned; the Confederate armies surrendered. It was finished. After four bitter years, the war was over. From the Potomac to the Rio Brazos, grass softened the abandoned earthworks, skeletons of men and horses vanished beneath new growth, and by June's end, when the grass slumped in the heat, only burned plantation houses, shattered cities, and broken hearts testified to what had happened to the South. That spring, the songbirds' bright chittering fell on ears still tensed for the thunder of guns. Gaunt survivors of once-feared armies laid down their weapons and started their weary walk home.

With her moistened fingertip, Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton captured the last crumb of corn bread on her plate. "Mammy, we must give smaller portions to the vagrants."

Plates clattering angrily as the old servant carried them to the kitchen, Mammy grumbled, "Tara ain't never turned folks away hungry, and these boys ain't no vagrants; they's soldier boys!"

Though Tara was off the beaten track, those soldier boys arrived daily. "Jest passing through, ma'am. I'm a-goin' home. Got young'uns I ain't seed since '63. Hope they remember their old pappy." Last night, an Alabama boy had slept on Tara's parlor floor and breakfasted on corn bread before leaving. Tara's remaining cornmeal -- seven precious pounds -- was locked up in Gerald O'Hara's liquor cabinet.

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Tara's dining room wallpaper had been jerked away in strips by Sherman's bummers searching for valuables. Some of the mismatched chairs around the dining room table were wired together. "I'ze no cabinetmaker, Miss Scarlett," Pork had explained. "I'ze Master Gerald's valet."

Melanie rose from her chair. "I'm a little tired. If you don't mind terribly, I'll lie down until we hill the potatoes. Scarlett, dear, you will wake me?"

At Scarlett's terse nod, Melanie produced her sweetest smile. "If you won't call me, dear, I won't be able to rest. You can't do it all by yourself."

"Why, of course I'll wake you," Scarlett lied, kissing her sister-in-law's cheek.

The Yankees wouldn't steal anything more. Tara had nothing left to steal. Of its hundred beef and milk cows, two hundred hogs, forty horses and mules, fifty sheep, and countless chickens and turkeys; one horse, one milk cow, one cranky elusive sow, and two elderly hens survived. What the Yankees hadn't killed, they'd stolen.

Tara's field workers -- even dependable negroes like Big Sam -- had run off. Only the house servants -- Pork, Mammy, Dilcey, and Prissy -- were still at Tara, and sometimes Scarlett wished they'd run too. Four more mouths to feed.

In her dawn-to-dark fight to keep Tara alive, even Ashley Wilkes had faded from Scarlett's mind. She didn't know whether Ashley had died in the Federal prison camp, as so many had, or would be coming home one day. Most nights, Scarlett managed a brief prayer for Ashley before her exhausted mind succumbed to sleep. Some nights she forgot.

A year ago when Rhett Butler abandoned her outside burning Atlanta, Scarlett had been running to her childhood Tara, where her Mammy would warm some milk and her mother, Ellen, would lay cool cloths on her brow. War's terrors would be banished as Scarlett fell into her mother's loving arms.

Her dream had been short-lived.

One day before Scarlett got home -- one irrecoverable day -- Scarlett's mother, Ellen, had died of fever. Ellen died with a man's name on her lips: Philippe -- a French name.

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Now there was nobody left on earth who could teach Scarlett how to live. "Philippe"? She didn't know any Philippe and she had more important things to worry about.

Sometimes, Scarlett believed Gerald O'Hara should have died with his wife. Scarlett's father was a shell of the shrewd, impetuous, sturdy man he'd been. Though Gerald still sat at the head of the table and ate his meager portion without complaint, her father's mind was broken.

Now he rose. "I think I'll rest now, my dear. This afternoon, your mother and I are riding to Twelve Oaks."

"That will be nice," Scarlett said, though John Wilkes was long dead and Twelve Oaks burned to the ground.

Scarlett kept up the pretense because pretense was better than Gerald O'Hara's lucid moments, when he remembered everything he had lost and crumpled in paroxysms of weeping.

Little Wade drummed his heels against his chair rungs, whining he was still hungry. "Wade, you'll just have to wait. When Mammy bakes corn bread, you can have the bowl."

Scarlett tied her bonnet before going outdoors, where Pork waited, wearing the cast-off Sunday coat Gerald had given him years ago. Tight-lipped with determination, Pork began, "Miss Scarlett!"

Pork's too-familiar complaint rolled over her: "Miss Scarlett, when my old master tried to buy me back from Master Gerald, he offered eight hundred dollars, which was right smart of money in them days. Yes, Miss, it were! Master Gerald wouldn't take no money for me account of I'ze Master Gerald's personal valet. I ain't one to brag on myself, but some folks say I is the best valet in Clayton County. And I ain't gonna hill no potatoes!"

"Pork," Scarlett restrained her temper, "if a strong man like you won't help, how can we women do the work?"

Out of the corner of her eye Scarlett spotted her sister leading their only horse to the mounting block. "Suellen! Suellen! Wait!"

Suellen was wearing her good dress and had a plump white peony in her thin, lifeless hair. "Suellen, where are you going?"

"Why, I'm going to Jonesboro, Sister dear. It's Tuesday."

Frank Kennedy had been Suellen's "intended" for years. Although his

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Jonesboro store had been destroyed, every Tuesday Frank brought dry goods and groceries from Atlanta to swap for eggs, butter, honey, and whatever small family treasures the Federals had overlooked.

"Suellen, I'm sorry, but we need the horse today. Dilcey knows where the Yankees threw away a barrel of weevily flour. Think how good biscuits would taste!"

Suellen threw her peony in the dirt as she stalked indoors.

Scarlett held her tongue.

The Yankees had burned $200,000 of Gerald O'Hara's stored cotton. A few months later, they returned to burn the tiny crop Scarlett had gleaned: perhaps $2,000. A month before the Confederate surrender, Scarlett had replanted. If this year's scant crop survived weevils and bindweed, come fall it might fetch $200: A fortune.

Before the War, Scarlett believed only imprudent people ate their seed corn. Now she understood the bitter truth that people ate their seed corn and their seed potatoes and made bread of their wheat seed when they were hungry enough. Scarlett was thankful Tara's people couldn't eat cotton seed!

Scarlett grieved each time they had to butcher one of their sow's thirty-pound shoats -- a shoat who in time would have become a three-hundred-pound hog!

Pretty Scarlett was stark-featured with fatigue; gay Scarlett was always cross. Proud Scarlett would do anything -- literally anything -- for Tara and its people. Gerald O'Hara's daughter did work she'd never dreamed of. Scarlett had hoed until blisters came and weeded until pigweed tore her blisters open. She'd worked until her back and shoulders ached. Scarlett had lost so much weight, she fit into dresses she'd last worn when she was thirteen. The woman who'd come home to Tara to be a child again had become its mistress, distributing food, disarming squabbles, tending the sick, encouraging the weary.

She tied the horse and turned to Pork. "Pork, if you can't hill potatoes, perhaps you'd grease the windlass."