Rhett Butler's people (72 page)

At Will's pistol shot, Scarlett's horse reared and her hat flew off. She dragged the reins with both hands. Her horse backed frantically until its hindquarters crashed into the oak fence. Men were yelling; steers were bawling.

Josie drawled, "Well, I'll be a son of a bitch if you ain't kilt Archie Flytte. I swear to Christ, I never thought Archie could be kilt!"

Scarlett was looking down at Will, at Will's sweat-stained hat. Over the

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bellowing steers, she heard Will's voice clear as day, "For God's sake, don't! I've got two children."

"Well, don't you think ol' Archie mighta had some children? You ever think to ask him that?"

The second shot was louder than the first had been, and Scarlett's ears rang. Will groaned, but it wasn't a groan living men make.

Rosemary was steadying Scarlett's horse as Josie said, "Uncle Isaiah, I got to skedaddle. I ain't gettin' nowhere in this line of work. Leastways with Jesse and Frank, when you shoot somebody, you get paid for it."

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Chapter

Chapter Fifty-seven

Rain

Calloused hands tenderly laid Will and Ashley on feed sacks in the wagon bed. They covered Will's still form with a horse blanket. Rosemary knelt in the wagon, bathing the unconscious Ashley's face.

Some who escorted Scarlett and Rosemary home were farmers who had known Will Benteen or the O'Haras for years, but most were loafers with nothing better to do.

"After he kilt Will, that Josie came toward me with his gun still smokin'. You bet I got out of his way. Spect I'd have give him my horse if he'd asked."

"They had horses, Charlie. A roan gelding and a bay mare."

"Hank, I know they had horses. Weren't I there when Josie Watling bought the mare from Mr. Petersen? Weren't I?"

"Well, they wouldn't have wanted your horse, would they?"

Their inanities fell like dull blows on Scarlett's febrile mind. Why had Will and Ashley come? Scarlett hadn't told them about her plan; she'd claimed she and Rosemary were going into Atlanta. "Bankers," she'd lied. God knows how the men had discovered her true intention and come to their rescue.

When the entourage reached Tara's lane, Suellen and Dilcey came running, and Suellen screamed when she saw Will's riderless horse. "Will! Oh no! Not my Darling Will!" She dashed to the wagon, lifted the blanket from her husband's face, and fainted. If Dilcey hadn't caught her, Mrs. Benteen would have fallen to the ground.

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Men quit jabbering to help the new widow into the house. Children and servants gathered helplessly on the porch. Prissy wailed.

A farrier -- he'd shod Gerald's horses in the old days -- advised Scarlett, "They ought to pay for this. Miss Scarlett, you just say the word!"

A rage at male idiocy blinded Scarlett for a moment. Tight-lipped, she managed, "Thank you. Thank you for your kindness. Mammy, take the children into the house. Prissy, stop your nonsense! Prissy!"

Mammy gathered the children like a mother hen gathers chicks.

"Gentlemen, if you'll take our horses to the barn, and could you four please ... carry this gentleman -- Mr. Wilkes -- into the parlor."

"His ankle's smashed, Miss Scarlett," the farrier observed. "Reckon it hurts like the devil."

"I reckon," she snapped.

They carried Will to the springhouse and laid him out on the cool stones beside the milk cans. "No, gentlemen, no. We'll not be needing more help, thank you. You've done too much already."

Unwilling to see their adventure ended, they milled about for another twenty minutes before they departed.

Scarlett and Rosemary made up a bed for Ashley on the parlor floor. Rosemary said, "Prissy! Find an old sheet and tear it into strips, about" -- Rosemary held her hands four inches apart -- "so wide. Dilcey, fetch warm water and soap."

When she and Rosemary were alone, Scarlett said,

"What

did they think they were doing?"

Rosemary said, "Some of Ashley's ribs are cracked and his throat is swelled nearly closed. I believe his ankle is broken."

After Mammy got Suellen to take a dose of laudanum and put the widow to bed, she and Prissy washed Will's body and dressed him in his Sunday suit.

Young Dr. Bryan was establishing his practice, and he made a point of noting that, although a native Georgian, he'd studied medicine in Richmond.

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He set Ashley's ankle and made a wintergreen poultice for his throat. Diffident while doctoring, he was assertive with his reckoning.

"Ten dollars? My goodness, Doctor. Where did you serve in the War?"

"Mrs. Butler," the doctor replied, "I was thirteen when the War ended."

At twilight in Tara's little graveyard, Pork dug Will Benteen's grave. Scarlett said, "It isn't deep enough. Pork, you're the only man left. Dig deeper."

When Scarlett returned to the house, Suellen Benteen was waiting for her. Scarlett's sister's face was raw from crying. "When my Will told me you were coming home to Tara, I told Will we should go away. 'Tara will be Scarlett's,' I said. 'It won't be our home anymore.' I begged my Will to leave. I told him, 'My sister Scarlett has never been anything but trouble.' You stole Frank Kennedy from me and you got Frank killed. Now you got my Will killed, too." She burst into anguished sobs. "What am I going to do without Will? Dear God, what will I do?"

Scarlett went upstairs, where, still dressed in rumpled finery, she fell on her bed and slept dreamlessly until her eyes snapped open in the stark light of morning and everything came flooding back.

In later years, Scarlett remembered only fragments of the next days: the coffin maker rattling up the drive with his toe pincher bouncing in the wagon; the children whispering past Suellen's closed bedroom door. Neighbor women brought food nobody wanted to eat and neighbor men did Will's chores.

Rosemary tended Ashley behind the parlor's closed door while mourners trooped through the dining room, where Will Benteen was laid out.

An expressionless Suellen O'Hara Benteen received those who would have consoled her. At her side, Scarlett understood vital bonds had been severed; henceforth, she and Suellen would be sisters in name only.

It was hot. The roses heaped on Will's coffin in such profusion didn't entirely disguise the smell.

Will Benteen had been a lapsed Baptist, but since Jonesboro's only Baptist church was the African Baptist, he was buried by the Methodist preacher, who afterward invited Scarlett to next Sunday's service.

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"I'm a Catholic," Scarlett replied.

"That's all right," the preacher said cheerfully. "We welcome every sinner!"

After the burying, Suellen Benteen and her children left for Charleston, where'd they'd bide with Aunt Eulalie. As their wagon rattled down the lane, Scarlett went to the horse barn to feed the horses. With the leather feed bucket Will and Sam had used for so many years, she poured feed into the long trough.

Sleek dark heads bent and chewed as if nothing at all had happened. Scarlett whispered, "How can Tara live without Will?" One horse lifted its head, as if trying to understand. He twitched his tail and went back to eating. Silent, hot tears streamed down Scarlett's face until she could see nothing -- nothing at all.

After Ashley's fever broke, he was too weak to go home. He spoke quietly when spoken to, volunteered nothing, and never asked about Will. Rosemary sat with him in the dim, quiet parlor and fed him broth and weak tea. For reasons Rosemary never fathomed, she told Ashley things. In her quiet, calm voice, meticulously identifying the year, month, and circumstances, Rosemary Butler Haynes Ravanel told Ashley Wilkes about walking out the back door of the little house in Franklin, Tennessee, knowing the body lying in the frozen garden was her husband John. "I only loved him after it was too late," Rosemary said. She spoke about her darling Meg; how Meg had loved horses and been betrayed by a horse. "Tecumseh was afraid. How can you blame a horse for being afraid?" Rosemary told Ashley about finding Andrew's bloody boots. They were English boots and Andrew had once been proud of them. She told the silent Ashley things she had never told anyone -- not Melanie, not even her brother Rhett. She told him how lonely she'd been growing up at Broughton. She told him how much she'd missed her brother Rhett. She told Ashley about her pony, Jack.

Sheriff's Talbot's office was a cool underground den. Scarlett demanded, "Why haven't you arrested them?"

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"Who should I arrest, Mrs. Butler?"

Scarlett wanted to shake the blandness off the sheriff's face. She pushed words past her teeth. "The Watlings! Isaiah and Josie Watling murdered Will Benteen!"

The sheriff rolled his chair against the wall and leaned back to examine the fly-specked ceiling. He grunted, bent, and spat into the spittoon.

"Well?" Scarlett demanded. "When are you going to arrest them?"

"I reckon, Mrs. Butler, I reckon there's two ways of lookin' at this. You got your 'pinion and some folks got 'nother 'pinion."

Scarlett blinked. "Whatever are you talking about?"

"Some folks say Mr. Wilkes started that fight."

"They'd shot my horses, burned my Atlanta home, and frightened off my field workers. Sheriff, they intended to murder my husband!"

"Did they? I always figured Mr. Butler could take care of hisself. Didn't I hear your husband was in Europe somewheres? I don't know that the Watlings ever been to Europe -- leastways they never said they had."

Sheriff Talbot went in his drawer for a leather sap. He got up, plucked his hat from the hat rack, and rolled it in his hands. "Mrs. Butler, some folks b'lieve -- and I ain't sayin' I disagree -- that Ashley Wilkes started that fight and Will Benteen murdered Archie Fiytte once Fiytte was getting the better of Wilkes."

"Ashley was defending Tara. Those Watlings -- "

"B'lieve you mentioned that, Mrs. Butler. B'lieve you mentioned that several times. But you never showed me no proof." He set his hat on the back of his head so it framed his face like a picture frame. "Mrs. Butler, I don't mean to hurt your feelin's, but I am inclined to b'lieve that Mr. Wilkes attacked Archie Fiytte unprovoked and when Archie resisted, Will Benteen shot Archie. Josie Watling killed Benteen trying to save Archie's life. Least that's how I see it. You might see things different." He slipped the sap into his trouser pocket "Now, ma'am, I got to get to Darktown. Another cuttin'. Ain't it peculiar? Niggers cut each other, where a white man'd use a gun. You reckon that's because they're more primitive?"

"The Watlings -- "

"Won't bother you no more, Mrs. Butler. The Watlings done left Clayton

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County. Josie and old Isaiah lit out after the fight and nobody's seen 'em since. Weren't no Flyttes willin' to bury Archie, so the County buried him." He shrugged. "Far as this sheriff's office is concerned, everything's square. Archie's dead, Will Benteen's dead, and the Watlings are gone. Josie Watling was always kiddin' about Jesse James. Said he rode with the James brothers during the War." Sheriff Talbot opened the door to show Scarlett out. "You reckon next time we hear about the Watlings, they'll be robbin' trains?" The sheriff locked the door behind them and peered at the cloudless sky. "Darned if it ain't dry." He added, "Watlings was a good family. Hard workers. I swear Isaiah Watling near worked himself half to death tryin' to make a go of that hardscrabble farm. Sorrowful, ain't it -- how things turn out?"

When she got back to Tara, Scarlett rode into the river fields. Will's furrows between the cotton ridges had been smooth red clay. Now they were greened with weeds. Oat sedge tangled the ridges where her cotton plants, each set eight inches from its neighbor, turned hopefully toward the beckoning sun.

Before daybreak next morning, Scarlett was in the horse barn. The work harness was so heavy, she dragged it over the horse's rump, and the hames were an awkward nightmare. She guessed which straps to buckle and rebuckled what seemed too loose or tight.

When she came into the house, Tara's people were in the kitchen, the children poking sleepily at their breakfast. Scarlett took fried side meat off the counter and ate without sitting down. She said, "Now Will is gone, we'll have to do without him. Lord knows, there's enough work to go around. Mammy, you'll tend Ashley. Ella, honey, stay here and help Mammy. I don't want you taking one of your fits. Everyone else into the fields. Yes, Pork, I know what you're going to say: 'But Miss Scarlett, I'ze been a valet all my life!' " Scarlett's mimicry was so accurate, even Pork cracked a smile.