The Rebel Wife (32 page)

“I think Emma is asleep,” I whisper to Simon. Her heavy-lidded eyes are closed, and her breathing is slow and even.

Simon nods at me. The firelight flickers, throwing flashes of white and yellow off his dark skin. His eyes are unblinking. He looks at my cheek. “How is your face?”

I put my hand up to the tender bruise. I don’t know if it has colored, but I guess that it has. “I’m fine. But I’m worried. That won’t be the last from Judge.”

“No,” he says and looks back into the fire.

Whatever I have suffered from Judge’s hand, Simon has borne worse. And if Judge comes back, it may well be worse for all of us.

“He is not an uninformed man,” Simon goes on. “I think he knew Mr. Eli’s habits. I think that’s why he wants you to get out of the house, so that he can tear it apart for that money—and that list.”

“But we know it’s not here. So it must be at the mill.” His irises are so dark, they seem black in the firelight, with just the faint reflection of the flames deep in their centers that give them some spark.

“Yes.”

“Do you think John told Judge we were looking for something?”

“It’s hard to say. If John was working for Eli and for Judge, I don’t know that he would be a trustworthy source of information. I don’t know anything for certain except that I am worried, too.”

“But you worked for Judge and Eli both,” I say. He is a wonder to me—this Simon whom I know and the Simon who used to be. Like the Eli who used to be.

“Yes, ma’am, I did. Back in the old days.”

“Are they that far behind you?”

“They may not be far for everybody, but they are far for me. I left a lot of myself back there. A lot of myself that I don’t need to go back and get.”

Simon shifts on the floor and moves on all fours to the fire. He takes a fresh log, shifting the red coals with it to make a bed, and then lays it across. His face basks in the glow as he watches the flames burst out from under the new log, bright yellow flames with blue edges.

“What did you leave back there?”

“Too much to tell,” he says as he crawls back to his place near the sofa.

“Why did you stop working for Judge?”

Simon gazes at the fire, at the new log now wrapped in fingers of golden flame. The room is thick with heat and the rank odor of sweat. “Did something happen between you? Is that why he won’t speak to you?”

“Something happened. But it wasn’t between me and your cousin. More so between me and Eli.” Simon draws his knees up under his chin and wraps his arms around them, his eyes fixed on the flames. “I was a child back then. A young man but a child in my mind. And working with Mr. Eli—doing what we did to people—it seemed like nothing to me. I had been a slave, was a slave still, like almost all the colored folks I had ever known. Freedom didn’t seem like something real. It was a sort of lie we told each other to keep going. Freedom up north. Freedom in Mexico or Canada. Freedom in heaven.”

Simon rests his chin on his knees and closes his eyes for a moment. He is squinting them shut hard, not as if he is trying to remember but as if he is trying to block something out. He opens his eyes and blinks at the fire, trying to adjust to the light.

“We’d walk those gangs of people down the old Indian trails through the mountain passes. Walking them steady through the mountains and woods toward Albion and Huntsville and down to Tuscaloosa and Demopolis and those Black Belt towns. Sometimes as far as Meridian, Mississippi, if Eli thought he could get a good price on them. It was what we did. We didn’t make a lot of money at it. Mr. Eli didn’t. But he made enough, and he always planned on buying his own place around here. He had some attachment to the town. That’s what he always intended. For me, I didn’t see much life outside of slavery. I had taken my chance once. And that taught me enough not to risk it twice. I don’t think Eli would have hunted me down. He was never mean to me. That’s what you think. In this world, you always risk finding something worse when you go for freedom.”

Simon nods at the fire, agreeing with himself, as if he needs to show himself that what he is saying is true. I watch him, still and waiting.

“It was springtime, and we were about to Albion. A clear day, good weather. The sun was warm, even though a breeze ran through the woods and carried a chill on it. The trees were just putting out their leaves, soft and tiny and green. New green that’s almost yellow. We were at the ford for Three Forks Creek, lower down from where the mill is now. Closer to the river, where there are some sandbars that let you cross in the shallows. The rains had been hard that spring, and the water coming down from the mountains was heavy and fast. The creek was deeper than we’d seen it before. And these people, seven of them—did I even see them as people? They were slaves, like me. Merchandise with nothing human about them.

“Eli pushed through the ford, and I could see his horse tripping through the water, having a hard time with the footing. Eli looked back at me and waved like he wanted me to bring them through. But they didn’t want to. I could tell they were nervous. Scared like the horse was. There were two women, two children about eight or ten years old, and three men, one an older man with grizzled hair and beard and he was in front. He looked at me and shook his head, and I had to get the whip out. After I cracked it a few times, they were more willing to give it a try. They entered the ford, and the water rushed around the old man’s ankles and then his knees, and the others were tied to him all in a line, inching out into the water. They were like a dam wall, lined up across the creek, which was plenty wide then, and the water was rushing against them up to their thighs and then their waists. Eli watched from the far bank and shouted, ‘Come on, then,’ and they moved. The two boys looked back at me. They were afraid and didn’t know what to be more afraid of, the rushing creek full of water or me. But they kept moving, creeping on out into the middle of the creek.”

Simon pauses and rests his forehead on his knees.

“I don’t know who fell first. Maybe one of those children or one of the women. But once one was down, it was too much for the rest. They fought it at first, grabbing on to the ropes, trying to pull each other back. But they were swept into the current, knocked against the rocks. I jumped off my horse and tried to toss the whip end to the old man, but he couldn’t grasp it. There was nothing to hang on to. Eli and I followed them down to the river. He was on one side and I was on the other. We shouted at them to grab hold of something, a branch or a log stuck on the bank. First one stopped struggling and then another. And soon they vanished under the water. We stood on the riverbank, the two of us separated by the mouth of the creek as it gushed into the muddy river. We watched as a head bobbed up or a limb. Dead-eyed faces. Dead. All of them drowned in that creek for nothing. For what? For money? Because they were nobody to nobody? Maybe to each other somehow, but not to anybody else. Not to me.

“I told Mr. Eli after that, I told him, ‘You can do what you want with me. You can sell me south, beat me until I’m dead, do what you want, but I won’t ever go selling misery again.’ I wouldn’t do it. It was like I had come awake all of a sudden. And Mr. Eli, he was moved by it. I could see that. I could see that he knew what we were doing was wrong. Though he pretended not to. But that was it. He went to Judge, who was hopping mad over the whole thing. Eli had to pay Judge out of his money for the loss on those people. The
loss
of them. Paid to Judge. And Judge was running for the statehouse at the time. He wanted the whole thing hushed up. Eli took the blame. He testified at the inquiry. And then Judge got him a job at the mercantile. And we never spoke of it again.”

Simon’s head is still on his knees. Perhaps he is crying. I turn my head from him and look at Emma and Henry. I should be crying, too.

“This terrible sin,” I say. “We’re all bound to each other in it. And we can’t get out of it, no matter what we do.”

The fire crackles and spits out sparks. Simon’s head is on his knees, and he does not move. The clock strikes the time for us to go to the mill, for us and all the dead who follow us.

Simon holds the reins of both horses as I climb onto the mare. He leads us away from the house. The whole town is unearthly quiet, as if the looters, too, are hiding. The night is moonless and the streetlamps are not lit, but the sky is clear and the stars overhead are like a sparkling veil against an ink-black screen. Once we are on the trail, I will lead, since I know the way by heart. I have traveled those trails in my mind as often as I have ridden them.

Simon walks us past the cemetery, dark and still with its graves abandoned, half dug. He walks between the horses, his hand high on the reins on either side. We turn left at the Patterson farm, its door open and the windows smashed out, then down a cow path lined with trees, and finally, to the large oak where the trail splits.

“Take the path to the left,” I whisper. We vanish into the black woods, and now we are safe. Simon hands me the reins and mounts his horse. He keeps an eye down the trail behind us, his gun in his hand.

I feel for my pistol. It is so small, it gets lost in the folds of my skirts. Leaves and sticks crunch under the horses’ hooves while the branches reach out, scraping at my face, hidden by the deep shadows until they are against me. The path is almost invisible. I must trust the horse to lead us. She stops short, confronted by a wall of bramble. We have gone off the trail.

“I have to lead her, Simon,” I say. I leap down and push the horse back gently, my gloved hand on her nose. “That’s right, girl,” I whisper to her. She is skittish in the dark, too.

We move slowly, but I can see the trail, feel it with each step. The pine needles are cut by two narrow ruts, sand-colored by day but, in this darkness, only shades of black and blue. The branches catch at me and I brush them away. My skirt hem is caked with dirt and dead leaves. The white of the petticoat, pale blue in the dark, is like a shock next to the somber shadows.

“Here,” I whisper to myself. “Right here.” There is a narrower trail that has crossed our path in the close woods. Tall hickory trees tower over us, and their canopy blocks the stars. Thorned vines scratch at the horse’s legs, making her jump. I tighten my grip on the reins, close to the bit, as Simon did. Her hot breath wets my glove. The night is humid, and the sticky wetness clings at my armpits and under my breasts.

I check behind, making sure Simon is there. I hear a rushing, a sign that we are in the right place, Three Forks Creek, but far downstream from the mill. There is a small bridge, mossy and decayed, that we must cross. When Buck and I rode here during the summer after the war, there was no bridge at all. We crossed the creek here, though, in the shallows at its narrowest, where the ridges fall down to a sandy bed.

What must Simon be thinking? Was this the crossing he and Eli used? His face is obscured by darkness, but I wonder if his mind is back there with those people.

I push the mare’s head up so she does not look down into the creek. She snorts, and her hot breath washes over my face. The planks of the bridge feel soft and mossy under my boots. They creak as I lead her forward a step at a time. The trusses are half broken, rough-cut from raw timber. I hold my breath and Simon watches nervously.

I take another step, walking backward with my eyes focused on the mare. She shivers and her foot slips. She whinnies and I can hear it echo through the trees. An owl calls a mournful warning.

My foot feels for the earth. The horse’s front hooves move forward. The boards groan louder. I step more lively, tripping back, pulling the horse with me. We move off the bridge and I nod at Simon, though in the darkness he cannot see me.

He does not waste time in worry but clears the groaning bridge in a few steps, his horse close behind. The lane to the mill is just ahead. We remount and turn in to it, riding slowly. The rushing grows louder. We are closer. I can almost feel the money between my fingers.

The trees part, and we are in the clearing, with the open sky overhead and the blazing stars. Simon dismounts. I am on the ground beside him, and he takes my reins and ties the horses together.

The mill is gaunt and massive in the darkness. The woods seem to swallow it up as it extends into the trees. Down the dirt path I can see the small workers’ cottages, forlorn and empty, each of the doors marked with a roughly painted X. The high windows of the mill are all shut, and the doors and the few windows close to the ground are boarded. The mill pond shimmers faintly with starlight, and far off across the fields in the deep woods behind them is the flicker of yellow light, like fairies in a grove.

“Campfires,” Simon says. “The army is close. We must be careful.” He nods to the mill door, frowning. It was boarded over, but the boards have been pried loose and lay scattered. Some of them are split in two. The door itself is stove in and its window broken. The shards of glass on the ground sparkle like the mill pond.

“They’ve been here already. They’ve beaten us to it,” I say.

“Judge,” Simon says.

“Yes, of course.” I untie the small lantern from the horse’s pommel.

Simon follows me, and we walk through the door into the darkness. He lights a match and places it in the lantern, lighting the wick, which burns with a weak light, fading, then growing, casting long shadows around us. The light fades into darkness above us. The great silent machinery sits abandoned, tangled in webs of cotton threads. Is there a mark on the floor where that woman collapsed?

I lift up the lantern and move to the glassed-in office. The door is ajar, and glass litters the floor. The lamp casts a ring of light, revealing hints of what is here, then darkness hides them. Torn papers coat the floor and hang off the edges of the desks. Ledgers have been ripped off the shelves and torn in two. There was a rampage, like a wild animal let loose to destroy for the pleasure of destruction.

In Eli’s office, the same chaos is pulled from the shadows, chairs overturned, his desk on its side, papers—contracts, ledgers, manuals—shredded and torn, scattered across every surface. Behind the desk, a small well of blackness gapes in the floor. Two floorboards lie next to it that must have once covered it—Eli and his secret compartments. The lantern light is reflected golden from deep inside the hole, throwing watery amber shadows around us. Simon peers down into it. He smiles and looks at me. It is Eli’s secret stash of whiskey. Three rows of bottles sit under the floor where his chair was. There is no money here and no missing saddlebag.