Rhett Butler's people (67 page)

A grin crossed Will's big face. "Is that gun loaded?"

"No, sir. I thought maybe you could show me."

"In the morning, Wade. I thank you for comin', but I reckon I'll handle this business my own self."

Will was still grinning when he dropped off to sleep.

In the morning, when Will came into the house for breakfast, Suellen pouted. "Oh, here's my husband now. I was wondering if I still had one."

Though she tried to pull away, Will kissed her. "Mornin', Sweet Pea. I got to tell you that sleepin' with a shotgun is a darn sight colder than sleepin' with you." He swatted her behind.

"Please, leave off, Will. The children ..." Yes m.

Will and Big Sam got ready for planting. They checked and trimmed the workhorses' hooves, polished and oiled the plow soles, and inventoried hames and work harnesses.

"Mr. Will," Big Sam complained. "We got to buy some new harness. These lines dried out and cracked."

"Put together harness from what's sound."

Big Sam cocked his head, "Mr. Will, is Tara broke?"

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Will didn't answer.

On the second of February, a full moon sailed across a cloudless sky and Will slept restlessly in the too-bright night. He woke to Boo's furious barking, followed by shots that came so fast, Will didn't know how many had been fired. He backed so quickly down the ladder, he missed a rung and almost fell. In stocking feet, he jogged toward the barking.

That low dark shape speeding toward him was Boo. The dog's ears were flattened against his head.

"S'all right, Boo," Will said thickly.

At the paddock gate in the bright moonlight, Will saw it all. "Christ Jesus," he said. "Christ Jesus."

One foal was blindly racing the fence in a panic. The other stood trembling over her dead dam. The two mares seemed smaller than they'd been when they were alive. The second foal lowered her long neck to bump at her dead mother's flanks. Like all frightened babies, she wanted to nurse.

Tara's neighbors came. Men stood in groups in the paddock, speaking in low tones.The women stayed in the kitchen and said how frightened they were. They asked who would do such a wicked thing. Mammy insisted, "This ain't colored folks' work." Tony Fontaine hunted for tracks, but the ground was too hard.

Mrs. Tarleton took the foals to rear on goat's milk. She said there was a special place in hell for anybody who'd shoot a horse.

When they could stomach it, Sam and Will wrapped chains around the mares' hind legs and dragged them to the boneyard.

The weather warmed, the ground thawed, and though Will still slept in the hayloft, like other Clayton County planters he spent his days plowing and ridging the cotton fields.

Before daylight, Big Sam put hames and harnesses on the big, stolid workhorses. Sam might say, "Right nippy this mornin'," or "Look here, Dolly's got a gall."

Will might say, "Feels like weather coming in."

The two men rarely said much more. Big Sam always fitted the hames. Will always lit the tack room lantern and snuffed it when they went out.

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As soon as it was light enough to keep to their furrows, they lowered their plowshares and plowed until noon, when they rested the horses and ate the dinner Suellen brought them. Will never tired of hearing about Tara before the War, and Sam obliged by describing Tara's barbecues and the time Gerald O'Hara organized a horse race down the Jonesboro road. "All the young bloods was bettin' and drinkin' and it's a wonder none of 'em fell off and got kilt.

"Miss Ellen, she was a good Christian woman. 'Deed she was. But sometimes her bein' so good made everybody else feel bad. Master Gerald, oh he had a temper." Sam shook his head. "Master Gerald jest like a summer rain -- get you wet 'n' gone. Wet 'n' gone."

While Will smoked his pipe, Sam'd talked about Darktown doings. Sam didn't approve of Reverend Maxwell, the First African Baptist's new young preacher. "That boy don't know his place," Sam said. "He born up north. He never been bought nor sold."

After dinner, they'd hitch up and plow until dusk, when they returned to the barn, rubbed down and fed their horses. Will never went into the paddock where his mares had been killed.

One Sunday after church, Rosemary and Beau Wilkes rode to Twelve Oaks. It was a crisp February day and every branch tip glowed pink with new life.

Ashley's grandfather, Virginian Robert Wilkes, had built his plantation in a wilderness. His negroes felled the timber and burned or uprooted stubborn stumps from what became Twelve Oaks' cotton fields. As his plantation prospered, Robert Wilkes added outbuildings, servants' quarters, and, ultimately, his Georgian manor house. The gardens at Twelve Oaks were a project of Robert's old age and his lifelong urge to civilize wilderness.

Huge magnolias had marked the garden corners. Dogwood, redbud, sparkleberry, and crab apple were the backdrop for flowering perennials. Spirea bushes shaded garden paths and the formal rose garden -- fragrant with Bourbon roses -- had been framed with boxwood. An arched Chinese footbridge had crossed a tiny stream banked with camellias, and an iron trellis, covered with abelia, opened on a tiny park where a fountain splashed.

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That was before Sherman came.

The carriage turnaround was black where Ashley had burned brush. More brush, piled higher than Rosemary's horse, awaited the match. She and Beau dismounted and Beau ran down a stubbly path toward the sound of singing.

They emerged into a clearing where a dry fountain was overseen by a rearing, life-size bronze horse. Ashley was stabbing a sword into the earth beside the fountain. Unaware of his audience, he sang, "De Master run, ha, ha." Ashley stabbed a new spot. "And de darkies stay, ho, ho." Ashley dropped to hands and knees and wiggled the sword. "Must be the Kingdom comin' and de day of Jubilo!"

"Daddy," Beau cried, "that's Grandpa's sword!"

Ashley looked up and grinned, "Hullo, Beau. I didn't hear you. Mrs. Ravanel, welcome to Twelve Oaks." Wiping red clay onto his trousers, he rose and gestured at the sword. "I'm probing for its valve box. I never thought to become a plumber."

When Rosemary eyed the rearing horse, Ashley said, "I bought it in Italy years and years ago. They

said it

was Etruscan." He raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Beau freed the sword and wiped it with dead grass.

"Beau, the saber is an excellent tool for splitting kindling or finding buried water valves."

" 'Ye shall beat your swords into plowshares?' " Rosemary suggested.

"Something like that. Here, Beau, try it on these blackberries. Keep the handle free at the base of your palm. Good." The father adjusted the son's stance.

Beau slashed a blackberry cane at the height of a man's heart.

"Excellent, Beau. My saber teacher would have approved. Mrs. Ravanel, how good of you to bring my son. Won't you come to the house? Beau, I'll carry the sword."

Smoke wisped a second, smaller cabin. "Mose is a better Christian than I. Won't find Mose workin' on the Lord's Day, no sir." Lithe as a boy, Ashley sprang onto his porch. "Won't you come in, Mrs. Ravanel? I can offer tea."

"If you'll call me Rosemary."

"Rosemary it is."

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Ashley's cabin was a one-room log hut with a stone fireplace. Its windows sparkled, and the bed was neatly made. Horticultural books lined the table. Cattails stood in a jar on the dry sink.

Ashley said,

"Typha domingensis.

Our red-winged blackbirds nest among them."

Beau stirred the fire, took the wood basket, and went for firewood.

"He's a good boy," Rosemary said.

"Thankfully, Beau favors his mother." Ashley hung a kettle on the pot hook and swiveled it over the fire. "This'll only take a minute." With no special inflection, he said, "I found some letters in Melanie's desk. I didn't know my wife had a faithful correspondent. I'll return them if you wish."

"I think ... at the time ... Melanie's letters saved my sanity. My husband Andrew ... It was ... it was all so tawdry." Rosemary clasped her arms around herself. "Those awful memories. No, I shan't want my letters; please burn them."

Ashley stared into the fire. "I loved her so much. Melly ... is with me always." He grinned suddenly. "She approves of all this, you know -- selling the sawmills, becoming a gardener."

"Why, of course she does!"

Beau set the wood basket on the hearth. "Father, could I call on Uncle Mose and Aunt Betsy?"

"I'm sure they'd love a visit." When Beau was gone, Ashley explained, "Aunt Betsy is a prodigious baker of oatmeal cookies."

When the kettle was hissing, Ashley filled a stained Blue Willow teapot. "I found this half-buried beneath a garden bench. I suppose some Yankee looter set it down and forgot where. It was my mother's."

As she measured tea, Ashley said offhandedly, "Did Scarlett tell you I tried to propose to her?"

"Why, no, Ashley. She didn't."

Ashley's laugh was self-mockery, relief, and joy. "I'd half-persuaded myself Melanie would have wanted us married. I thank a watchful Providence and Scarlett's inherent good sense; she scorned my proposal." Ashley retrieved two mismatched cups.

"Ashley," Rosemary said softly, "why are you telling me this?"

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"Because I am done with deception. I shan't conceal my true feelings ever again."

By the first week in March, Will Benteen and Big Sam had finished plowing the river fields and moved onto the uplands. Like most countrymen, they rarely remarked the beauty about them, but each savored the expansive vista, with Tara stretching at their feet.

At noon every day, Will visited the river fields to crumble soil in his hands and test its temperature.

When the rains came, they quit and put up the horses. The wet clay soil was too heavy to plow.

"We'll fix harness until this lets up," Will said. "We're ahead of ourselves anyways."

Rain turned the Jonesboro road into gumbo, and since they couldn't get to church that Sunday, Rosemary read psalms in the parlor, Big Sam and Dilcey adding vigorous Baptist amens. The children recited the prayers they offered every night at their bedsides, and Scarlett shut her eyes when Ella begged God to bring Daddy Rhett home.

Lord, how she missed him. Not his wit, nor his power, nor his physicality -- she missed

Him

!

Sometimes in her lonely bed, Scarlett startled awake, listening for her husband's breathing. She'd reach across the quilt to pat where Rhett should be.

Her skin was too sensitive, her hearing painfully acute. She flinched at sudden noises and heard visitors in the lane long before anyone else. She would stand for long minutes staring out the window at nothing at all. "Dear God," she prayed, "please give me one more chance...."

Uncle Henry Hamilton arrived after the dinner dishes had been washed and put away. The bad road had turned the hour's ride from Jonesboro into four. Uncle Henry was wet and cold and his rented horse was knackered. He couldn't possibly return to the depot for the last train.

"Sit by the fire and we'll find you something to eat, Uncle Henry," Scarlett said. "Prissy, please make up the front bedroom."

Mammy had an apple pie in the pie safe, corn bread and brown beans in the warming oven. Pork carried Uncle Henry's saddlebags upstairs.

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Happy to do work he'd been trained to do, Pork laid out Uncle Henry's shaving things on the nightstand and fetched a pitcher of water.

Will came in blowing on his hands. The cold was stiffening the road, and if Uncle Henry left early tomorrow morning, he'd make a quick journey.

Mollified by a full belly and warm fire, Uncle Henry folded his napkin in precise folds. "Scarlett, if we could have a moment -- privately?"

Suellen had been hoping for some Atlanta gossip and abandoned the dining room with ill grace.

Scarlett's heart sank. Oh my God, something's happened to Rhett! Henry has some awful news about Rhett! But he was saying something about a fire. "A what?" she asked. "What fire?"