Rhett Butler's people (42 page)

Gar-rick

passed Fort Sumter -- a rubble heap flying the largest Stars and Stripes Tunis Bonneau had ever seen.

The

Garrick

tied up at Government Wharf beside a troopship unloading discharged colored soldiers. These unafraid, skylarking negroes in blue uniforms stirred Tunis's hopes. In mortal combat, negroes had proved they were the white man's equal in courage and love of country. If negroes could be soldiers, why not citizens?

Ruthie was working an oyster skiff. "Tunis, I couldn't just move back in with Mama and Papa. I'm Mrs. Bonneau!"

"The

Merry Widow ...

" Tunis began his confession.

"You hush up about that old boat." Ruthie kissed him.

From Ontario, Thomas Bonneau wrote, "Queen Victoria love her colored children same like she love her white children."

Tunis thought they should go to Canada and start over.

Ruthie said Canada was too cold and too far. Her kinfolk were in the

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Low Country. And things

were

changing. Throughout the South, negroes were allying with sympathetic whites to agitate for negro rights.

"Why fight for rights from men who hate us when Canada got rights already?" Tunis said.

"This is my home, Tunis Bonneau," Ruthie replied. "I'd be sorrowful if we left."

And that was that.

After Tunis delivered his oysters to the market, he washed up and walked to his father-in-law's church, where every evening negroes were shaping the new world a-borning.

Tunis and Reverend Prescott traveled to Atlanta where white Republicans like Rufus Bullock and negroes -- most who'd been free coloreds before the war -- were petitioning the United States Congress. Freedom elixir was in the air. Negroes stood at the gates of the Promised Land.

"Petitioning the United States Congress," Tunis said. "My, my."

The

Atlanta Journal

described this meeting as "Cannibals and Carpetbaggers."

Reverend Prescott was to preach in the city, so Tunis boarded the train home alone.

Twenty miles south, wheel bearings in the wood car went dry, and their train screeched and smoked into Jonesboro for repairs.

White passengers disembarked and went into the railroad hotel. Tunis found shade on the platform, sat beside his bag, and closed his eyes.

Two hundred miles from Charleston's wetlands, Tunis was dreaming about swamp grass parting for the bow as he poled through the shallows. It was such a pleasant dream, he didn't notice the white woman until she kicked his foot. Tunis opened his eyes and scrambled to his feet. "Ma'am?" He removed his hat.

She was white and young. She'd had a few drinks. "Whew," she said, "you're a good-lookin' buck."

"Thank you, Miss. I'm waitin' on the train be fixed."

She shaded her eyes to inspect the station clock. "Won't be for a while."

Tunis extracted his watch and consulted it. "Train be rollin' soon as they hitch up a wood car."

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"We got time," she said. "You want to have fun?"

"Ma'am?"

"You ain't stupid, are you?"

Tunis scratched his head, "Yes, ma'am. Reckon I is."

When she stamped her foot, her bootlace came undone.

"Why don't you kneel and tie up my lace?"

"Ma'am, nigger like me get in trouble touchin' a fine white lady like yourself."

"Well, ain't we par-tic-u-lar? What if I said you could touch any part of me for a dollar?"

"Ma'am, I'ze a married man."

"But all you niggers -- all you niggers want to get a white woman alone and take off her clothes and do things to her. Don't you?"

"No'm."

"Jesus Christ," the young woman said to nobody in particular. To Tunis, she said, "You think I never been with a nigger before?"

"Excuse me, ma'am. I mighty thirsty. B'lieve I'll go down the street and find me a drink of water."

"Boy, you ain't goin' nowhere, till I'm finished with you."

Tunis replaced his hat. He said, "Miss, my wife's name is Ruthie; my son is Nathaniel Bonneau. I'm waitin' for a train to take me home. I got nothin' to do with you and I don't want nothin' to do with you. If you need a dollar, I'll give you a dollar, but leave me in peace." Tunis reached in his pocket.

"Why you hinckty son of a bitch," the girl said. Her eyes wandered over the empty platform. "Help," she said conversationally. After this rehearsal, she said "Help" several times, louder, until the white men came.

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Chapter

Chapter Twenty-seven

The Fastest Ever Was

Although the settees in the lobby of the Jonesboro Hotel had memorized the shapes of old men's bony buttocks and spittoons testified to old men's tobacco habits, there were no old men loafing here this afternoon. Jefferson Davis peered from a picture frame above the stairwell as if Jonesboro, Georgia, were still a Confederate town and Davis still president of a nation.

Despite the keys in the cubbyholes behind him, the hotel keeper looked Rhett Butler straight in the eye. "I'm full up. I ain't got no rooms." The bone buttons on the man's butternut shirt had replaced buttons stamped "C.S.A." and an unfaded patch on his sleeve showed where sergeant's stripes had been. He pulled a tin can from under his counter and spat.

Rhett set his carpetbag down, walked back to the front door, and lit a cigar. The old men were holding down benches in Courthouse Square. Younger men gathered on the yellowed lawn. Every hitching post on the square had a horse tied to it; some had two.

Cattycorner from the courthouse, the bank's new wooden sign declared it was the First National Bank of Jonesboro and possessed Capital -- $75,000. The bank's previous identity, Planters Bank, was carved in enduring stone over the lintel. The bank's new name and new money would be Yankee.

Rhett returned to the hotel keeper. "What regiment, Sergeant?"

The man snapped to defiant attention. "Goddamned Fifty-second Georgia."

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"Stovall's Brigade? Weren't you boys at Nashville?"

"What if we was?"

"Well," Rhett said, "if you'uns had come up a little faster, maybe we'uns wouldn't have skedaddled."

"The hell you say. You rode with Forrest?"

"Rhett Butler, C.S.A., at your service, sir."

"Well, I'll be skinned. Mr. Butler, you sure as hell ain't dressed like one of us. You dressed zactly like one of them."

Rhett smiled. "My tailor is a pacifist. I'll want a clean room with fresh linen.

The hotel keeper piled keys into a metal jumble on his counter. "You can have number three, four, five, or six. I won't rent no room to no Carpetbagger." He cocked his head. "You sure you ain't no Carpetbagger?"

Rhett raised his right hand, "On my father's honor."

The man considered. "That'll be all right, then. Room's two bits. Rooms're all the same, except six has a balcony."

"Uh-huh."

"Room six's over the square, so you can see the fun tonight. Mr. Butler, I thought you was a Freedmen's Bureau spy -- though Freedmen's Bureau don't hardly come into Clayton County without a company of Bluebellies to safekeep 'em."

The second-floor hall was narrow, the necessary was downstairs out back, and the transom wouldn't open, but number six was clean, and when Rhett lifted the coverlet, no bedbugs scurried for cover.

Rhett pulled off his boots, hung his jacket over the chair, and laid back on the bed with his hands behind his head. He'd give the hotel keeper time to let everybody in Jonesboro know the stranger was "one of us."

Rhett hadn't seen a single black face since he got off the train: a bad sign.

His eyes wide open, Rhett remembered Thomas Bonneau shouting psalms into the hurricano. He remembered Tunis explaining how he loved Ruthie: truly and for a lifetime. After an hour, he washed and shaved. He checked the cartridges in his .32 rimfire revolver and dropped the gun in his coat pocket.

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The courthouse's thick cement columns would have supported a structure twice as big. Rust streaked from clock hands seized up at 2 and 4. Wizened hulls hung from chestnut trees. Some of the men had crutches or were missing an arm or leg. Most wore reworked Confederate uniforms. When Rhett turned onto the walk, a one-legged young man on crutches planted himself in his path. "Hear tell you fought with General Forrest."

"I did."

"Mister" -- the cripple rocked back onto one crutch to point with the other -- "that fella wants to have a word with you."

"Goddamn it, Captain Butler!" Archie Flytte stood on the courthouse steps. "I heard you was residin' in hell."

Rhett lifted his arms: alive, alive-o. He shouted, "Flytte, you as ornery as you were?"

After Rhett Butler saved Archie Flytte's life, the ex-convict had attached himself to Rhett. He'd bragged on Rhett: "Cap'n Butler, he's educated."

"Captain Butler, he's seen a bit of the world."

"Captain Butler, he can speak the Latin. I've heard him with my own ears."

When Archie's adulation became intolerable, Rhett told him if he didn't shut up, he'd shoot him; after which, Flytte bragged that "Captain Butler would put a bullet in you for doin' him a kindness!"

"Well Archie," Rhett now said, "what do we have here?"

"Got us an uppity nigger."

"What's he done?"

"Oh hell, he'll tell you hisself. Boy loves to talk. He'll talk your ear off."

The sheriff's office was four steps down in the courthouse basement. "Mister, you tell 'em in Atlanta I had nothin' to do with this. I'm tryin' to do my duty, but what can one man do?" Evidently, the sheriff thought Rhett was from the Freedmen's Bureau. "My deputies have made themselves scarce. Bill Riley, my jailer? He never come back from supper. What can one man do?"

"Mind if I talk to the nigger?" Rhett asked. "You wait here, Archie!" He winked. "You'll scare the boy dumb."

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The sheriff said, "Sure, mister. Sure, talk to him. It's too damn bad he got himself in a fix like this."

The jail corridor smelled of lye soap, chamber pots, and soured lives. One cell was occupied.

Tunis sat with his back to the whitewashed stone wall. An eyeglass lens was gone and the other was cracked. His Sunday suit was ruined. He glanced up but didn't stand. " 'Lo, Captain."

Rhett whistled soundlessly. "They beat hell out of you."

"The sheriff's not all bad. He sent Ruthie my telegram."

"Why you?"

When Tunis shifted, he held his breath until his sore body accepted its new position. "My good luck I 'spect. Your boy -- I got your boy on the English steamer. Boy didn't seem altogether fond of you."

"He's not. The

Widow

sank?"

"Not two miles off Freeport. What possessed you to put such big engines in that boat?"

"Seemed like a good idea at the time."

Half an hour later, when Rhett emerged from the cells, the sheriff asked, "Where'd you run across him?" For a second, Rhett thought he meant Tunis. "That Archie fella ..." Through the low basement window, Rhett could see men's boots and trouser legs. "Only three families up in Mundy Hollow. I reckon I'm kin to all of 'em. Archie was in the penitentiary, you know."

"He killed his wife."

"Hattie was foolin' around. She was my mother's aunt's cousin: The Flyttes never was any account. The Watlings, seems like they couldn't make a go no matter how they tried. And the Talbots -- any Talbot with get-up-and-go got up and got. I'm Oliver Talbot," the sheriff introduced himself. "Next you'll ask my regiment. Sooner or later, everybody does." He revealed his left arm: a stub with a wizened hand. "Born that way," Talbot said. "I got to be sheriff when all the able-bodied men was in the army. Now the Federals want to replace me with somebody who didn't ever hold no office nor fought for the Confederacy, either. Ain't many men around here can say that."