Rhett Butler's people (73 page)

It was cool at first. Rosemary and the youngest children worked a row. Dilcey, Wade, Pork, and Prissy each had a row. Scarlett took Will's job: plowing up one long row, down another, steering a plow whose tall wooden handles were whitened from strong men's sweat. The horse knew its job and marched forward phlegmatically, but the plow handles jerked and

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bucked and whenever the plow hit a rock, the handles kicked against Scarlett's small hands until her palms ached.

Sun was the enemy.

Leather traces lay across Scarlett's shoulders as if she were in harness with the horse. She stumbled and turned her ankles on the rough ground. Sweat stung her eyes and half-blinded her. The dust the horse raised mixed with her sweat and caked her face.

At noon, they stopped under the shade trees beside the river. When Scarlett knelt and splashed cool water on her cheeks and neck, it ran over her breasts. Rosemary knelt beside her. "Y'all Georgia planters surely do live a life of ease."

In the long afternoon, Dilcey began a chant Scarlett had heard all her life.

"It's a long John," Dilcey sang.

Prissy answered, "It's a long John."

"He's long gone."

"Mister John John."

"Old big-eyed John. Oh, John John ..."

Stumbling behind the horse, fighting the plow handles, Scarlett breathed in time with that ancient African measure.

They placed Ashley on folded blankets, with his plastered ankle propped on the tailboard of Twelve Oaks' wagon. Ashley's fine gray eyes looked into Rosemary's. "Thank you for... talking to me."

"That day at the market," Rosemary said, "you did the best you could." Ashley Wilkes closed up. "I got Will killed."

It clouded over the afternoon they finished hoeing. Big-bellied rain clouds rolled over the horizon.

Tara's dusty, sweaty field hands were on the porch drinking cool water when two riders appeared at the bottom of the lane.

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Scarlett leapt to her feet as if she'd been stung, ran into the house, and pounded up the stairs like a schoolgirl.

In her bedroom, she kicked off her brogans, dropped her sweat-stained dress in a heap, dipped a washcloth into the water pitcher, and attended to her arms, face, and breasts. She snatched a fine green silk gown from the chifforobe, snapped and tied it. She hadn't time for corset or shoes.

Downstairs again, Scarlett emerged barefoot as a grinning Pork took her husband's reins.

There were new deep lines at the corners of his mouth and under his eyes. Scarlett yearned to hurl herself into his arms, but she wasn't

that

easy. "Pork, it isn't the Second Coming. It's only Mr. Butler come home."

Rhett's hungry eyes devoured her. "I thought you might need a Savior."

"You look like you've been through hell."

"There were one or two bad days." His smile was so warm, so

knowing.

He swung down, scooped Ella up and set her on his hip. Scarlett took an involuntary step toward him but dug in her heels. How dare he be so confident, so

sure

of her. Scarlett tossed her head. "And how was Paris?"

Rhett's warm smile became his too-familiar infuriating grin and he laughed. The children -- it had been so long since she'd heard the children laugh -- the children laughed with him.

A raindrop. Another. Raindrops puffed the dry lane.

"This gent is Tazewell Watling. You might remember him."

"My escort at the Quadroon Ball," Scarlett said, even though her heart was rebelling: No. No! What's wrong with me? I should be in Rhett's arms!

Rain splashed her cheeks.

Tazewell Watling turned beet red. "I was a fool, Mrs. Butler. I pray you'll forgive me."

Fool, no fool -- what did Scarlett care?

"You've been in the sun," Rhett noted.

Anxiously, Scarlett touched her tanned cheeks. "My complexion ..."

"Dear brother ..." Rosemary kissed her brother on both cheeks. "You are here and everything will be all right. I know it will." Rosemary turned to Rhett's companion, "Mr. Watling, I am Rosemary, Rhett's sister. I'm so

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glad ... so very, very glad. Come with me and I'll show you where to unsaddle your horses."

Scarlett said, "Dilcey, tell Mammy the prodigal has returned. Take the children and give them a bath. They're filthy."

Louis Valentine was catching raindrops on his outstretched tongue. Wade was grinning like an idiot. When Rhett set Ella down, she clung to his legs until he said, "Go get cleaned up, sweetheart. Your mother and I want to talk."

Rain washed Scarlett's forehead and hair.

Rhett said, "Scarlett, honey, show me your hands."

Scarlett tucked them in her armpits.

"By God, Mrs. Butler. It's good to see you."

The earth was warm and wet under Scarlett's feet. Soaked through, her gown clung to her body like a nightdress. Scarlett was so happy, she thought she might faint. So she lifted her chin defiantly. "Is it now, Mr. Butler? Weren't you in such a tearing hurry to leave me?"

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Chapter

Chapter Fifty-eight

The Glorious Fourth

The next morning, Scarlett stepped onto Tara's veranda and shaded her eyes against the sunrise. Was that a horse in the river fields? Rhett was hunkered over a cotton ridge, examining plants. After some time, he remounted and proceeded up the rise to the steading, touching the broad brim of his planter's hat as he rode by. "Good morning, Mrs. Butler," he said. "I believe we can expect another fine day."

"I expect we can, Mr. Butler." Scarlett's smile was lazy and sly.

Later, with Wade Hampton's enthusiastic help, Rhett visited Tara's hog pens, the meat house, the cotton press, and the weedy upland fields. He checked every harness in the tack room. Wade showed Rhett the post by the milking barn where Ella had found Boo's head and they visited Will Benteen's grave.

After supper, Rhett perched on the top rail of the corral while Rosemary and Taz brought Tara's horses out of the barn one by one.

That evening, Rhett invited Wade Hamilton to join the grown-ups at dinner, which the beaming Pork served in the dining room. Wade was tongue-tied with good behavior. Tazewell Watling proved to be a funny, self-deprecating raconteur. His deadpan descriptions of how sophisticated Parisians reacted to "l'Americain's" Creole French had everyone laughing.

Over coffee and Mammy's pecan pie, Scarlett asked Taz what cotton would fetch in the fall.

"Sea Island middling: thirty cents. Piedmont: thirteen to eighteen."

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"As little as that?" Rhett rose. "Scarlett, honey, perhaps you'll show me Tara's books."

The light glowed in Scarlett's office until very late.

Scarlett woke from a dreamless sleep when Rhett's footsteps hesitated at her bedroom door. His name swam toward the surface of her sleepy mind and she would have called him, but he passed on.

Next morning at breakfast, Rhett asked what everybody wanted from Atlanta.

"I'll accompany you," Tazewell said. "I've gifts for my mother."

Scarlett took a breath. "Mr. Watling, please convey my best regards to your mother. Without Belle's warning, my husband might have ridden into a fatal ambush."

Rhett chuckled. "My, my, Mrs. Butler. How very...

predictable

my life would have been without you."

When Wade wanted to go, too, Rhett said, "Be ready at the horse barn in ten minutes. We won't wait."

Wade clattered up the stairs.

Rhett turned to Scarlett. "Rosemary says the Watlings have fled the county."

"So Sheriff Talbot says. Rhett, Talbot said he knew you?"

When Bonnie Blue died and when Melanie died, Rhett had hugged his sorrow to himself, as if sorrow were all he had left. Now he said softly, "One day, I'll tell you about Tunis Bonneau."

Scarlett and Rosemary waved them off and Scarlett turned to her friend. "My God, has Rhett been here only two days?" Rosemary said, "My brother can be rather ... daunting."

"He's changed, Rosemary. He's the same Rhett he was, but he's different, too. I ... I feel like a maiden again." She paused and in a soft voice added, "I pray life will be good to me!"

"Of course it will, dear."

"Do you really believe so? Oh, please say you do!"

Only Louis Valentine, who had mastered six of McGuffey's seven readers,

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was disappointed when Rosemary canceled school that day. Beau asked to accompany Rosemary to Twelve Oaks, but she said no, he could go after his father was feeling better.

Rosemary packed a hamper with corn bread, Mammy's greens and side meat, and the remnants of last night's pecan pie.

The rain had refreshed the red dirt countryside and birds were twittering. Rosemary smiled when she thought about her brother and Scarlett. As if by mutual consent, they played the long and happily married man and wife, toying with each other, building tension until the air between them crackled. Last night when Rhett escorted Scarlett into the dining room, the rustle of her crisp petticoats had been electric.

Ashley's modest home was disagreeable.

Unwashed clothing heaped a corner and dirty dishes cluttered the dry sink. Ashley's precious books were strewn here and there and his bedclothes were ropes of discontent.

Rosemary threw the door and windows open and hummed as she cleaned. When the room was to her satisfaction, she picked lilac-pink roses for a jar beside her picnic hamper.

She brought

The Gardens of England onto

the porch and sat listening to a newsbee, a swallow's chirrup, the distant tap of a woodpecker.

The sun warmed her face, and Rosemary turned pages slowly, pausing at each hand-tinted daguerreotype. Gardeners impose human values on disorderly nature, knowing full well that nature must win in the end. Gardening is gentle gallantry.

When Ashley arrived he flipped his reins over his horse's head, loosed the crutch tied behind his saddle, pulled his sound foot out of the stirrup, swung it over the horse's neck, and slid down the horse's flank onto his crutch and uninjured foot. "As you see," he said, "I'm not completely helpless." On foot and crutch, crabwise, he clumped up the steps into the cabin.

He hadn't shaved. His trousers were smeared with red clay.

He glanced at the roses, "Old Pink Daily makes a poor cut flower. The petals fall off."

Rosemary said, "Should I regret picking them?"

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Ashley slumped in a chair and leaned his crutch against the dry sink. "I'm sorry, Rosemary. You don't find me at my best. Mose says Rhett is back. That must be a relief."

Rosemary retied her bonnet. "You'll find a pecan pie in the hamper. Perhaps it will sweeten your disposition."

"Oh Rosemary, please don't leave. I'm sorry. I don't mean to drive you away."

She hesitated, "There are greens, and Mammy's corn bread, too."

Ashley said, "I am partial to greens and corn bread. Thank you, Rosemary. Won't you bide for a while?" He massaged his underarm, which was sore from the crutch. "I never knew how ...

convenient

two legs are."

"Ashley, you tried to help, and I am grateful. You risked your life...."

"I got Will Benteen killed."

"Shut your mouth, Major Wilkes. You will not blame yourself."

Ashley grimaced. "Rosemary ... dear, kind Rosemary, you've never been sick of yourself. You've never prayed for the courage to end -- "

"Ashley Wilkes! Need I remind you my husband took his own life?"