The Rebel Wife (19 page)

On top of the counterpane, still in my wrap, I feel like I am drifting away. The feeling is gentle. I lie wrapped in its folds. I abandon myself to it, not fighting the waves as they carry me off.

Buck standing there at the mill waiting for me. Did Judge send him to watch me? He must have. I don’t know what I feel for him. I want to hate him. But that summer after the war. My God, that summer seemed like forever. I never wanted it to end. I wanted it to go on and on because of Buck. He was so handsome. You want to believe someone that handsome. And the sadness in him. You want to heal him, though you can’t see his wounds. If only I could have felt them, like his bullet scars, then I could have fixed him. No, I don’t think anyone could fix him or ever can.

Buck was nothing to me when he first came back to Albion in February—before the war had ended. He wasn’t well. He had been wounded at Franklin and stayed at the hospital until he was moved to convalesce with a family. He was not at the Battle of Nashville. Hill had fought alone, without Buck. Maybe if Buck had been there, Hill would have come back to us.

After Buck had healed enough to walk, he said he went to Pond Spring, where the Union forces paroled him. They even let him keep his pistols. Then he returned to Albion. He told us of Hill’s death on the battlefield south of Nashville. We hadn’t had any word from Hill for weeks. Buck heard the story from another soldier in their company, a man from Marengo County. He gave Buck the small morocco-bound book of the Gospels that Hill carried with him, and Buck gave it to Mama. She kept asking why he didn’t get a lock of Hill’s hair. Mama asked for the soldier’s name. Buck couldn’t remember it for certain. Mama wanted to write him a letter to thank him, and to ask for the soldier’s story of Hill’s death. What were his last moments? Were they painful? Did he say anything? Did the soldier think Hill had been a good Christian—had he been saved?

Buck brought me an issue of
Godey’s Lady’s Book
from the November before. He said he hoped it wasn’t too out of date. A girl in the home where he convalesced gave it to him. For me, he said. He had rolled it up and carried it inside his jacket, so the edges had started to fray and the pages refused to give up their curl.

He stayed in our house and slept in Hill’s bed. Mama loved having him in the house. He eased the pain of Hill’s absence. Mama asked him again and again to tell the story of my brother’s death. Hill was at the forefront of the fighting, he said—as he always was, leading the men of the 26th. The ragged, tattered few who remained, who had survived the slaughter of Franklin and were more or less whole. The man said they were coming out of their earthworks and moving north up the Granny White Pike when the shelling started from Fort Negley. He said there was nothing he could do.

After the surrender, when Buck moved back to Judge’s house, he found ways to meet me. He courted me. It was a true courtship. He waited for me on Allen Street, grinning, leaning against a mulberry tree, holding a bundle of peaches wrapped in cheesecloth. Or bread that Sally had made. The streets weren’t safe, he said, for a lady alone, especially one as pretty as I was.

We went to Three Forks on long rides through the woods, where the forest was so dark and quiet that all you heard was the horse’s breath and the drumbeats of the woodpeckers. That was before the mill was built. We went out alone together, and Mama let us. What could she do? She was so terrified herself with the way Albion had changed. Freedmen and poor whites flooding into town, loitering on the square. Soldiers likely to burst into your house to search it for God knows what. Mama was beside herself with fits. She barely paid attention to anything I did.

Buck brought me flowers. Bouquets of lilacs and cape jessamine clipped from a neighbor’s yard. Nosegays of roses and mountain laurel. He told me how pretty I was. How deep and thoughtful my eyes were. He caressed my chin with his fingertips, ever so gentle, but I knew their strength. All those things he did. He reached for my hand more than once. And I let him take it. When I told Mama what I hoped, she laughed nervously, clucking and moving around the parlor to pick up whatever gewgaws we had left, looking at them to see if they might be worth something.

And that night of the barn dance. That terrible night of the barn dance. Judge decided out of nowhere to have a ball, and it sent Mama into paroxysms. She thought it was imprudent. He used the old barn east of town that had not been used for anything in years. He said though he had sworn off politics, he wanted to do something to welcome the boys home. We could not say openly what the dance was for—the Federals would not have allowed it. We were trying to pretend like things were as they used to be. That was what Judge was pretending, anyway.

The night was clear. The day’s heat seemed to have been swept off the bluffs with the setting sun. My dress was of twice-turned sky-blue lawn, and I wore it with Mama’s black cashmere shawl. I trimmed the dress with blue satin ribbons and flounces, like I saw in the
Godey’s
Buck had given me. I stitched at it for days, tearing up an old silk dress of Mama’s. It was the first time that I had not worn black since Hill’s death. Six months had passed and Mama insisted I wear something gay. The dress was careworn, but I was beautiful. I could see it in everyone’s eyes. My hair was combed up in curls gathered at the back and over my ear. I wore tea roses, and their perfume mixed with the spicy scent of the pine torches that lit up the old barn.

By some negotiation, Judge had guaranteed the men would not bring their weapons into the dance, and soldiers checked the boys’ pockets and coats, taking away for the evening whatever small arms many of them carried. The barn was draped with garlands of honeysuckle and jasmine and wide swaths of blue and white bunting. All the young men in town who had come back from the war were there, such as they were. Some were on crutches or bandaged, nursing wounds that refused to heal. There were as many men missing an arm or a leg as there were men whole and complete. In between us danced the ghosts of the boys who never came back—like Hill. The eyes of the soldiers—paroled and pardoned or not—were not the careless, proud eyes of four years ago, but eyes stunned behind their forced gaiety. The Confederate insignia was forbidden, so they wore their old gray uniforms stripped of braid and with buttons covered in black cloth to hide the embossed CSA.

Mama sat in a corner with Bama Buchanan and the other matrons. She smiled at me as the men came by, asking for a dance. Buck had asked me that day for the opening reel, and we lined up, the sons and daughters of the defeated South, and danced to the music of the banjos and guitars. The fiddler of the little band sitting atop a pile of hay bales whipped up the dancers, and we clapped along.

We danced with a frenzy under the torches, knowing the dark blue uniforms were near. If I narrowed my eyes and blurred my vision, I could see the gray coat of my partner looking new, with epaulettes and bars glittering in the flickering light. The dresses were fresh, and hopes were high, like in ’61. The world had not ended, and the promises that had been made four years ago could still be kept. We could all pretend that for a dance.

Judge beamed from the side, talking with Dr. Greer and Mr. Lilly and the other men. At the supper break, he spoke and brought so many of us to tears. I thought of Hill, buried somewhere in the lonely country around Nashville, lost to us. Mike was gone, too, we did not know where. Mama cried in her corner, and Bama gave her a handkerchief. Buck came over to me and put an arm around my waist and squeezed me so close that I blushed.

Punch glasses were raised and the men whooped and the fiddler jumped up and started playing a tune we all knew, although it was a new song. Someone began to sing it, and soon we were all singing, laughing against each other, laughing sidelong at the blue soldiers.

Oh, I’m a good old rebel

Now that’s just what I am,

For the fair land of Freedom

I do not care a damn.

I’m glad I fought against it—

I only wish we’d won,

And I don’t want no pardon

For anything I done.

Hats flew in the air, and men cheered from all sides as the blue soldiers began to step forward. Judge went to the colonel in charge and talked to him. He waved his hand at the fiddle player, who immediately swept up the crowd with “Sally Goodin.”

Buck took my hand and pulled me into his arms, and I saw Ralph Jennings, his right sleeve rolled close to his shoulder and held with a gold pin. He stood alone against the wall, betrayed by me for the dance. Buck sang the words to me as we hopped around the room, swept along in the heat and swirl of the other dancers.

Had a piece of pie and I had a piece of puddin’

An’ I gave it all away just to see my Sally Goodin.

Well, I looked down the road an’ I see my Sally comin’

An’ I thought to my soul that I’d kill myself a-runnin’

I laughed and sang, too. We skipped and turned, and the torches and bunting spun around blue and yellow, blue and yellow, until I was so dizzy the only thing holding me up was Buck.

I’m going up the mountain an’ marry little Sally

Raise corn on the hillside and the devil in the valley

The music stopped. I couldn’t catch my breath for laughing, my stays were so tight. Buck laughed, too, and his black eyes gleamed. It was so good to see him laugh, to see that sadness leave his eyes. I thought I could make his sadness go away. I didn’t realize how much a part of him it was. He took me out a side door of the barn, pulling me into the quiet night. I looked back to see if anyone was watching. The wide barn doors were empty but for the music of the beautiful, sad waltz “Aura Lee.” The light from the barn cast pale gold shadows on the unmown grass, and the stars glittered. The dew had settled in, and I pulled up my skirts to keep them from getting wet. The night air held a coolness that was like breathing after being underwater a long time. Like some intense desire relieved.

“Do you want me to climb a mountain for you, Gus?” Buck asked and his voice was sweet and low like the music. I blushed and turned from him, walking in the tall grass, but he tugged at my hand, pulling me back to him. “I would if you asked me to. I’ll go climb Monte Sano all the way to the top if you ask it.”

I didn’t answer, just looked up into his face, knowing that as foolish as he sounded, he was trying to make love to me in his sad, romantic way. I laughed and turned my head away.

“Don’t laugh at me, Gus. I mean it.” I knew he did. He meant it then.

He took my waist in his hands, pulling me closer. I could feel the whalebone pressing into my skin, pinching my sides, but I didn’t feel the pain, only breathlessness, like from our dancing. My arms went up around his neck, and he leaned his face to mine. We kissed and the stars seemed to spin and I felt myself fall against him. He was holding me and he kissed me again and I kissed him back for a moment that seemed like my entire life. All the fear of the war I exchanged for that moment. And it was all right. Everything was all right.

He pulled away from me, drawing his head back and looking into my eyes. I could see only a blur, shades of blue and gray shadow fractured by tears.

“I’ll climb a mountain and build a house for us—away from all this,” he said, and it was like a rushing in my ears. I rested my forehead on his chest, feeling his lips on my hair and his nose nestled in the tea roses.

Then there was a sound, someone near us, someone running. I pushed away from Buck for shame, fearing that Judge or Mama was coming outside to scold us. It wasn’t them. A man was running toward the barn. He had a lamp or a light of some kind in his hands, and he threw it into the barn, smashing it through a window into the middle of the dancers. Even outside, we could see the flames leap up from the burning fluid as it spread across the dried old wood. Women shrieked as the wild blaze spread.

The man cried, “That’s what you get, you dirty rebels! You can all burn in hell!” He raced back across the meadow and disappeared into the woods. Buck pushed me aside and went running across the grass and into the woods after him as soldiers followed, shouting.

The cries inside grew louder as people rushed out, chased by the flames. The fire climbed the walls and leapt across the rafters. Soon the roof was on fire, and the thick black smoke bellowed from the building as a hole opened and it began to collapse in on itself. Girls came outside with singed skirts, and the men beat at their feet with coats and blankets.

“Mama,” I cried out, coming close to one of the doors. I was pushed aside by the terrified dancers. I saw the fiddler leap from a blazing bale with his coattails in flames. “Mama,” I cried again, and heard her voice in response.

I ran to her. She was in front of the barn with Bama Buchanan. She was fanning herself and trying to catch her breath. “Augusta,” she said, and put her arm over my shoulder, leaning on me as we moved away from the blaze. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“Did everyone get out?” I looked at the crowd outside the burning barn. The heat was intense, almost singeing us. The soldiers moved us all back, further and further away. The orange light lit up the meadow like daylight, and all around us women cried, comforted by fathers or lovers. Some of the men ran off, chasing the soldiers into the woods. “Is everyone safe?” I asked, looking at Bama, who stood staring at the flames, great wicked tongues of it that leapt up to the stars. Her black dress shimmered in the white-hot glow of it.

Bama said something like “Yes, we all got out, but I would not say that any of us is safe.”

We stood watching those wild flames, dancing and leaping from the barn like demons released from hell fleeing up into the sky.

RACHEL SWEEPS OPEN THE
bedroom door and startles me. She carries a bundle of linens in her arms—my chemises and undergarments, bed linens and pillowcases. It is morning. She must be ironing today.