Rhett Butler's people (5 page)

Young Rhett Butler had never imagined he could be so happy.

Every negro on the Ashley River knew about Thomas Bonneau's white "son," but it was thirteen weeks before Langston Butler discovered Rhett's whereabouts and Broughton's launch tied up at the Bonneaus' rickety dock.

Langston Butler towered over Thomas Bonneau, "Many legislators wish to exile Carolina's free coloreds or return them to slavery. That is my view, as well. Should you interfere with my family again, I vow that you, your wife, and your children will toil under Mr. Watling's lash."

On the long pull upstream to Broughton, Langston Butler didn't speak to his son, and when they landed, he turned Rhett over to Isaiah Watling. "He's a rice hand like any other. If he runs or disobeys, introduce him to the bullwhip."

Watling assigned Rhett a cabin in the negro quarters. Its straw pallet danced with fleas.

The stretch flow had been drained two weeks previously and the rice was thriving. His first morning in the fields, the mosquitoes and gnats were so thick, Rhett swallowed mouthfuls. Twenty minutes after sunrise, the overheated air sucked his breath away.

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Thigh-deep in mud, he hoed as far as his arms could reach before, extracting one leg at a time, he shifted to a new stance.

A big man on a big horse, Shadrach Watling watched from the levee.

At noon, the work gang paused for beans and cornmeal ladled from a common pot. Since Rhett didn't have a bowl or spoon, he waited until another man finished to borrow his.

It was ninety-five degrees that first afternoon and red and purple flashes played across Rhett's eyes.

By custom, after a worker finished his allotted task, his time was his own. By three o'clock some of the stronger men left the field and by five o'clock only two middle-aged women and Rhett were still working. At 8:30, when Rhett was done, he and Shad Watling remained.

"Best watch for snakes." Shad grinned. "We lost a nigger in this patch last week."

Rhett's delirium of working, eating, and working again was relieved by fitful snatches of sleep. When Rhett did meet a water moccasin, he watched indifferently as the snake slithered past his bare legs.

On his tall, bony mule, Overseer Watling visited each of his gangs. The handle of the bullwhip hanging from his saddle bow was bleached from the sweat of his hand.

Despite the heat, the overseer wore a black frock coat and his shirt was buttoned to his chin. His wide-brimmed straw hat clasped his close-cropped skull.

At dinnertime on Saturday, he beckoned to Rhett.

Watling had big ears, a big nose, long arms, big hands; his face was lined with hard work and bitterness.

Watling laid his pale, empty gaze on Rhett. "When I was bankrupted and come to Broughton, many stretch flows past, you was an ornery child, but I believed there was hope for you. It is writ that by tribulations we shall one day rise. Young Butler" -- the overseer started his mule -- "our day will come."

By the second week, Rhett worked as well as an old woman, and by the end of the third he could keep up with a negro boy of ten.

In the evenings, Rhett slumped on a chopping block in the dooryard.

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Although Broughton's negroes had been told to shun him, they slipped him food from their own meager stores.

By September, young Rhett Butler was a full-task rice hand on Broughton Plantation.

As Carolina's delegates were boarding the schooner for Baltimore and the Democratic party's convention, Senator Wade Hampton took Langston Butler aside to ask about a rumor that Langston's son was working beside negroes in the rice fields.

"My son wants discipline."

Wade Hampton was a physical giant who owned 3,500 slaves. Now, he frowned.

Hampton explained the Democratic party could not afford a scandal.

"Sir, my son must have discipline."

So Senator Wade Hampton arranged Rhett Butler's appointment to West Point.

When Isaiah Watling rode into the quarters that evening, Rhett Butler was sitting cross-legged in the doorway of his cabin, watching rice birds wheel over the river.

Isaiah Watling dismounted. "Master Butler wants you in town," he said. "Boat's waitin' at the landing." After a pause, Watling added, "For a white boy, you was a pretty fair nigger."

In Charleston, Rhett was bathed and barbered. His clothing was altered for his new musculature. Before all his insect bites had healed, Rhett boarded a northbound schooner.

Young Rhett Butler stood at the rail as the schooner cleared Charleston harbor. He should have been excited about his prospects, but he wasn't. His body didn't feel right in gentleman's clothing. Fort Sumter grew smaller and smaller, until it was a dot on the gray ocean.

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Chapter

Chapter Two

Rosemary Penelope Butler

Rhett's sister, Rosemary, was four years old when Rhett left the Low Country, and afterward, when the child tried to remember her brother, no matter where she tried to force her thoughts, an image crept into her mind: the wolf on the front of her fairy-tale book. The wolf was long-snouted and scraggly, but how sly and what big teeth!

Those weeks Rhett was hidden by the Bonneaus, Langston Butler's anger filled every nook and cranny of the Charleston town house. Servants tiptoed, little Rosemary hid in the nursery, and Elizabeth Butler retired to her bedroom with a sick headache. Rosemary thought Rhett must be powerful and very wicked, since her father hated him so.

Rashes erupted on Rosemary's arms and legs. She woke at the least sound and couldn't get back to sleep. If she just didn't think about that scraggly wolf, if she could picture dolls or dancers or pretty dresses, that wolf wasn't lurking in the dark shadows beneath her bedroom window and couldn't be hiding under her bed.

Rosemary's mother, Elizabeth, had been the beloved only daughter of the very wealthy Ezra Ball Kershaw. A dutiful, pious wife, Elizabeth trusted the Bible to answer her questions and provide eventual justice. She prayed for her children and, without mentioning it to him, she prayed for her husband. Now, Elizabeth Butler took uncharacteristically bold action and asked her friend Constance Fisher -- nobody in Charleston was more

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respectable, or richer, than Grandmother Fisher -- if Rosemary might visit the Fishers for a time.

Grandmother promptly agreed. "Rosemary and my granddaughter Charlotte will keep each other occupied."

That afternoon, Rosemary's clothes and favorite dolls were packed and loaded in Grandmother Fisher's carriage. Afterward, Rosemary slept more nights in the Fishers' East Bay mansion than in her own home. Her rashes disappeared.

Little Charlotte Fisher was a serene, uncomplaining child who thought the best of everyone. Charlotte believed Rosemary's brother couldn't be that bad. Nobody was

that

bad. Charlotte never complained when her older brother, Jamie, teased her. One afternoon when Rosemary was out of sorts, she snatched Charlotte's favorite doll. Charlotte wouldn't take it back when Rosemary repented. Weeping, Rosemary threw her arms around her friend's neck. "Charlotte, I'm sorry, but when I want something, I want it

now."

Three years after Rhett left for West Point, Charlotte's brother, Jamie, burst into the family room.

Charlotte closed her book on her finger and sighed. "Yes, brother ..."

"Yes,

yourself." Arms folded, Jamie leaned against a sofa arm so he wouldn't crease his trousers.

"Jamie ..."

"Rhett Butler's been expelled," Jamie blurted. "He's back in Charleston, though heaven knows why." Jamie raised his eyebrows theatrically. "I mean, nobody -- absolutely nobody -- will receive him. He's living with Old Jack Ravanel. He and Andrew always were thick as thieves."

Rosemary frowned. "What's 'expelled'?"

"Thrown out of West Point. Exiled. Entirely and totally disgraced!"

Rosemary felt sad. How can a wolf not be a wolf? she wondered.

Hastily, Jamie added, "You mustn't worry, Rosemary. Your brother has lots of friends. Andrew and there's Henry Kershaw, Edgar Puryear -- the, uh ... that crowd."

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Which was not reassuring. Jamie had previously regaled the Fishers' supper table with tales about "the Flash Sports." Everything Rosemary had heard about these young men was wicked or alarming.

That evening, Grandmother Fisher scolded Jamie for upsetting the child.

"But Rhett is disgraced. It's true," Jamie insisted.

"The truth, Jamie, isn't always kind."

Rhett Butler's reappearance inspired the Flash Sports to new outrages. Somehow, Rhett slipped two of Miss Polly's pretty, overdressed young Cyprians past the ball managers into the Jockey Club Ball. Before they were escorted out, the giggling girls recognized a St. Michael's vestryman of previously impeccable reputation.

One midnight outside a waterfront gambling hell, two ruffians accosted Rhett.

Rhett said mildly, "I've only one bullet in my pistol. Who wants the bullet and who wants his neck broken?"

The thieves backed down.

Rhett and Andrew brought a dozen horses from Tennessee to Charleston in four days, changing horses on the fly. Rumor persisted they'd barely outrun the horses' legitimate owners.

And all Charleston buzzed when on a two-dollar bet, the blindfolded Rhett Butler jumped his gelding, Tecumseh, over the five-foot spiked iron fence into St. Michael's churchyard. Sunday morning, curious parishioners and an angry vicar inspected the deep holes Tecumseh's hooves had left in the turf. Knowledgeable horsemen shuddered.

Jamie Fisher had a better heart than he liked to admit and he censored that news. "Rhett plays poker," Jamie stated. He lowered his voice to a whisper. "He plays for money!"

"Of course he does," sensible Charlotte retorted. "He has to get money somehow, doesn't he?"

Although the girls didn't know all Rhett's sins, they knew his sins were very numerous. One morning, when the sympathetic Charlotte called her friend "poor, dear Rosemary" once too often, Rosemary smacked her friend

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in the eye. The startled child burst into tears and Rosemary fell into her arms and, as little girls will, they solaced one another.

One special morning, when Grandmother Fisher entered the family room, Charlotte forgot the toast she had been slathering with red currant jelly and Rosemary set her teacup down.

Grandmother Fisher was not quite wringing her hands. She studied Rosemary as if the child's demeanor might answer some question.

"Grandmother," Charlotte asked, "is anything wrong?"

Constance Fisher shook her head -- a little shake -- and straightened. "Rosemary, you've a caller in the withdrawing room."

"A caller, Grandmother? For me?"

"Your brother Rhett has come for you."

That story-book wolf flashed into Rosemary's mind and she glanced at Charlotte in alarm.

Grandmother said, "You are not obliged to see him, child. If you prefer, I'll turn him away."

"Rosemary, he's disgraced," Charlotte fretted.

Rosemary set her lips in a determined line. She was old enough now to face a story-book wolf. Besides, Rosemary was curious: Would her brother's sins show in his person? Would he be hunchbacked, or hairy, with long fingernails? Would he smell bad?

As they passed down the hall, Grandmother murmured, "Rosemary, you mustn't mention this visit to your father."

Rhett Butler wasn't a scraggly old wolf. He was young and tall and his black hair glittered like a raven's wing. His coat was the russet of a newborn fawn and his black planter's hat rested in his big hands like an old friend.

"Who have we here?" her brother asked. "You needn't be afraid of me, little one."

When Rosemary looked into Rhett's smiling eyes, the wolf went away forever. "I'm not afraid," she said stoutly.

"Grandmother Fisher told me you're a spark," Rhett told her. "I believe you are. I've come this morning to take you for a drive."