Charleston (45 page)

A remarkable transformation occurred then. Cal's eyes
cleared. He stood without weaving or wobbling. “Why would she do something terrible like that?”

“You know how she hates Yankees. She tried using the poison once before, with a Union officer who stopped by. I prevented her from serving him the tea. Today I was too late.”

Cal lost control, screaming, “What are you telling me?
What are you telling me
?”

“That we have to bury him as soon as he dies, and never tell a soul. I don't think you should blame your poor mother too much. She's not right in the head and we both know it.”

“That sure-God doesn't excuse murder.”

Gibbes didn't answer. The rain abruptly slowed, dripping through the shakes, forming puddles. Thunder rolled distantly as the storm moved out to sea. Plato Hix's head sagged lower on his chest. He moaned again. Trajan kicked the stall, a sound loud as gunshots.

Gibbes and Cal buried the dead man. They spoke only when necessary. A sharp northwest wind was blowing as they finished. They trudged back to the great house under thousands of remote and icy stars. Ouida met them with a lamp. “Be careful of that,” Gibbes said. She wasn't wearing her glasses.

“Where have you been? Where did you come from, Cal?” Neither answered her. Gibbes brushed by and headed for the liquor decanters in the sitting room. Cal started upstairs after an intense look at his mother, whether of anguish or censure, Gibbes couldn't tell.

The house oppressed him with memories of Hix. He slept fitfully, disturbed by Cal ranting and throwing things about in the next room. Once he heard Ouida tapping at Cal's door, speaking in a faint, imploring voice. Cal yelled something. She went away.

Gibbes rose before dawn, woke his sister, and told her that he felt a need to join Snoo in Savannah. He saddled Trajan and took the road to the Ashley ferry. The bridge at Charleston, destroyed when the Confederates left, was not yet repaired.

Midmorning found him near Jacksonboro. He rode Trajan hard, as if fleeing pursuit.
This will pass,
he assured himself.
No one will find Hix and he'll be forgotten, he was a nobody. Cal won't incriminate his mother. The past will stay buried along with Hix and Owen Wheat.

 

The following night Ouida sat in the sewing room with a flag draping her shoulders like a shawl. It was the glorious Confederate battle flag, designed by dear General Beauregard—thirteen white stars in a cross of St. Andrew on a red field. Formerly the flag had waved over the door of Ouida's Legare Street town house, an emblem of her pride and patriotism. It was made of cheap material, thin and brittle, but she loved it and wanted it close to her.

Reflections of the lamp wick shimmered in her spectacles as she tried to sew a new hem on a threadbare petticoat. Age had weakened her eyes; she stabbed her middle finger with the needle. Tears flowed. “I don't know how to do this, I'm not meant for this, it's servant's work.” She flung the bloodstained petticoat into the shadows, threw the needle and thimble after it.

She heard Cal's heavy tread and confronted him at the foot of the stairs. He wore a straw planter's hat, a bedraggled gray cape, and reeked of rum. Like a prosecutor she pointed at his leather satchel.

“What's that? Where are you going?”

“Back to the city.”

“Who are you visiting?”

“I'm moving out, Mama.”

She reacted as though he'd smashed her face with his fist. “
What?
Am I hearing this? What do you mean, moving out?”

“Just that. I wanted to leave without disturbing you.”

“So I'd be frantic when I woke up and found you were gone?”

“I left a note upstairs.”

“Oh, very considerate, Calhoun Hayward, very considerate of your poor impoverished mother. How do you propose to take care of yourself in Charleston? And don't give me sass about cards and dice.”

“I'll work. You must have heard of work, Mama. Most of the world does it.”

“Don't sneer, I hate that. Tell me why you're doing this.” He stared dumbly, his face a study of pain. She shrieked at him. “Answer me, damn you.”

Her cursing made him blush. He could admit only half the truth: “There's a woman I'm seeing, but I can't see her if I'm moldering away in the country.” How could he look his mother in the eye and call her a murderess?

Ouida clutched the flag to her breast. “Who is she? I demand that you tell me.”

“Her name's Adah. With an
h
.”

“Adah with an
h
, an
h
.” Ouida paced on the heart-pine floor. “I don't recognize the name. She can't be from one of the old Charleston families or I'd know her. She must be a newcomer.” She pressed her palms to her white-powdered cheeks. “Dear Lord. She isn't the daughter of some swinish carpetbagger, is she?”

Cal seemed to gather himself. “She's colored. A beautiful, intelligent—”

“Colored? You're infatuated with a
nigger
? My God, what did the war do to your mind?” She paced again, wildly excited. “It's the liquor, all the liquor you pour into yourself. Only a drunken sot would take up with—”

“Mama, this is ugly. Please don't say any more. I'm going. I'm sorry for you, sorry you're poor, sorry you're alone, but I won't stay here and rot away imagining
things that might have been. We were deluded, Mama. Deluded and arrogant. We had no chance to win the fucking war.”

“Oh, you vile, filthy creature.” She threw her spectacles. They hit the leg of a table, cracking one lens into a star pattern. “You can't do this. You're betraying me. You're betraying our family, all we ever stood for.”

“That's gone. That was yesterday. I'll write you soon. Good-bye.”

He lifted his bag and strode past her, trailing fumes of rum. The door closed. Ouida covered her eyes. “Oh, God, why me? Why me?”

She stepped toward the table to find her glasses. She couldn't see where they'd fallen. Her left shoe crushed both lenses.

Sobbing, she knelt and groped. She found the frames, felt the lenses crumbling in little pieces. She twisted the frames, hurled them away, cursing again. She lurched up and ran to the sewing room with the flag clutched against herself.

The lamp was a dancing blur. She navigated toward it but misjudged the distance. Her knee bumped the three-legged taboret, overturning it. She reached to catch the lamp, too late. The lamp struck the hardwood floor. The chimney and the oil reservoir broke. The oil soaked the carpet fringe and ignited.

Ouida tried to beat out the flames with the flag. The brittle cloth caught fire. She cried out, stumbled backward, and lost her balance. She fell against a window, shattering it. She lay on her back, a huge nail of pain in her spine. She'd impaled herself on broken glass.

She clutched one of the draperies. Rings snapped; the smoldering curtain came down, smothering her. She flung it off. The more she writhed, the worse the pain was. Flames quickly consumed the flag, the drapery, spread across the valance to the other side of the window.

“Calhoun. Calhoun, son, where are you? Help me.”

Frightened as a child, she lay still, watching the light grow brighter, panting in the intense heat. The fire ate the dingy wallpaper, the faded carpet, the unpolished furni
ture, engulfed the discarded petticoat. She whimpered, “Calhoun.”

Her hair began to burn, a bright helmet of flame.

 

Cal took the Cooper River Road. A half mile beyond Mont Royal, the plantation belonging to the widow Madeline Main and her late husband, a faint rosy glow appeared behind him. Because of the serpentine curves in the road, and his swift gallop toward the city, he never saw the light of the fire that destroyed Prosperity Hall and his mother with it.

Newspapers reported the destruction at Prosperity Hall. Instead of a great estate, Gibbes now owned burnt timbers, rubble, and outbuildings. Alex took no satisfaction from it.

Ouida's accidental death stunned Alex and generated pity and sympathy not felt for years. Ouida had to be considered family in spite of her aberrant behavior. Ham called her entire life “unfortunate.”

Gibbes arranged for Ouida's funeral to be held at St. Philip's, perhaps to distance himself from his relatives. Richard offered to accompany Alex. She kissed him, thanked him, and said it wasn't necessary. Ham would be with her.

Few attended the service. Over the years Ouida's extremes of temper and opinion had driven off her friends. Gibbes and Snoo sat in a front pew, Folsey Lark across the aisle. Cal wasn't with the family.

A half-dozen elderly black people were scattered in
the gallery. Maudie was among them, with Little Bob at her side. He wore his Christmas shirt and a cravat Maudie had sewn. Negroes were seen less and less in Charleston's white churches. Ham said they no longer wanted to worship where they had during slave days. They were breaking away in large numbers to found their own congregations.

The whole affair depressed Alex. Because of the weather the nave of St. Philip's was gloomy. The organist's renditions of “Abide With Me” and Bach's “Come, Sweet Death” seemed to deepen the mood of melancholy. It was evident the rector hardly knew Ouida; his remarks included few personal details, and many bland generalities about cleansing sin and putting off sorrows of the flesh. She was thankful when “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring” rang out and the mourners rose to leave.

Stepping into the aisle ahead of Ham, she spied Cal in a rear pew with a handsome woman, a light-skinned Negro. Alex saw Gibbes stare stonily at his nephew. There was little doubt as to why.

The mourners gathered under a canopy in the churchyard as rain fell. After the coffin went into the ground, Alex approached her cousin and clasped his gloved hand.

“A terrible thing to happen to anyone, Gibbes. It was an accident, wasn't it?”

“We assume so. A peddler passing by the morning after the fire found her, without her glasses.”

“You know you have my sympathy.”

“Thank you, I'm sure of that.” Stiffly polite, he might have been talking to someone he barely knew.

How terrible he looked. Thin, and sallow, almost jaundiced. He struck her as a man distracted, as though by a wasting disease. She felt sorry for him until he raked her with a look reminiscent of his old, lustful self. She took her brother's arm and left.

On Church Street she saw Cal under a big black umbrella, hurrying away with his companion. “Who is the woman, I wonder?”

Ham said, “I surely can't tell you. From the way she's clutching on, I assume their relationship is more than ca
sual. Folsey must be acquainted with her. He gave her murderous looks in the churchyard. Thank heaven Ouida isn't here or we'd have had a riot on our hands.”

 

At the end of ten days, which was three days longer than his agreement with Plato Hix called for, Ham withdrew Hix's letter from the office safe. He went to the headquarters of the Charleston police and spoke with one of the detectives recently hired. The detective said he knew of no reports of an accident or foul play involving someone named Hix. Ham braced himself for a visit to Prioleau Street.

He loathed the mixed neighborhood where poor law-abiding blacks were forced to live amid the city's worst riffraff. Half-naked children, white, blue-black, brown, and yellow, played around the stoop of Hix's tenement. Ham stepped over the reeking street drain, ignored the grimy children with their hands out, and went up the dingy stair, his leather document case clamped under his arm.

The staircase swayed alarmingly; the risers felt soft as cheese. A grimy windowpane leaked light from above. And the smell! Ham pressed a clean handkerchief to his nose and mouth. Why did a white man choose such a dismal address when, for the same money, he could rent in a less odious neighborhood? The moment Mrs. Hix answered his knock, he understood. Plato Hix had married a woman of mixed blood. Attractive once, perhaps, she was round-shouldered, haggard. Her expression said Ham's arrival boded no good.

He tipped his tall hat as a rat scurried by his toes. “Mrs. Hix? Hampton Bell. I'm an attorney.”

“Yes?”

“I have a letter your husband deposited with me. He asked me to keep it secure while he attended to some personal business. He said he would reclaim the letter within a week but he's failed to appear, so I thought it my duty to call. Is Mr. Hix at home perchance?”

“Ha'n't seen him for days.”

“Will you allow me to come in?” She stood back, though reluctant.

The apartment consisted of two rooms. Amid an assortment of battered furniture a boy of five or six sat on a scrap of carpet, turning the pages of a cloth picture book. The rear room served as a combination sleeping area and kitchen; a girl, younger, slowly stirred a spoon in what appeared to be a bowl of corn meal mush. One small window admitted the flat's wan light.

Mary Hix pushed the boy. “Shoo, Benny, go sit with your sister.” She lifted a damp lock of hair off her forehead. “I'm real sorry for the way the place looks. Plato don't make a lot of money blacking boots. You can sit there.” She indicated an old sofa with a block of wood propping up one leg.

“Much obliged.” Ham took the seat, the leather case resting on his knees. “Do you know how I might locate your husband?”

“No idea. Day he left, he said he had business in the country, and we'd be a whole lot better off soon as he took care of it.”

“You haven't seen him since then?”

“No, sir, nor heard from him. I'm half out of my mind worrying.”

“I can imagine. I visited police headquarters before coming here. They have no information.”

“I thought of going to the police but I know they don't much want to help”—she faltered—“people like me.”

“Did your husband say anything else before he left? Anything that might offer a clue as to his whereabouts?”

In the rear room the girl flicked her spoon at her brother. He wiped a gob of mush from his cheek and yanked her hair. Mary Hix screamed, “You behave, both of you, or I'll blister your behinds.” She twisted her soiled apron. “I'm so sorry. You were asking…?”

“Do you recall anything that might suggest where we could find Mr. Hix?”

“He did mention a Mr. Gibbes Bell. Same last name as yourself. Is he a relative?”

“A second cousin. We're not close. Please go on.”

“Plato said if anything happened to him, it would be Mr. Bell responsible.”

“Those were his exact words?”

“Not exact, maybe, but I remember the sense of it.”

Ham felt a tightness in his throat, a nervous spasm in his stomach. Mrs. Hix's statement was alarming but legally useless. Even with corroboration the testimony of a colored woman against that of Ham's highly regarded cousin would carry no weight with the police, or any court in South Carolina. He believed the same would hold true if Mrs. Hix were poor white.

“I'm scared something's happened to Plato, sir.” She wasn't alone; Ham was envisioning a figure crumpled in an alley, a body floating in a river. He opened the brass clasp of the case.

“This is what your husband left in my keeping. As you see, it's addressed to you.”

Mrs. Hix took the letter, fingered it, as if not sure of its purpose or meaning. “I wonder, would you be able to read it for me?”

“If you prefer.” He retrieved the letter quickly, not wanting to embarrass her by forcing her to say she was illiterate. He inserted a finger under the flap, removed the sheets of cheap paper covered with bad handwriting. He scanned the first few sentences. “My God.”

“Sir?”

“It concerns the war. Allow me to read it silently first.”

He went swiftly through the unparagraphed document. When he finished he was thoroughly unnerved. Surely it was a tissue of falsehoods. But if so, why write it? No adult who thought clearly, reacted rationally, would fear such a wild story. Even setting aside Gibbes's status in the community, a prosecutor would not give credence to the letter without supporting evidence, or another witness.

“There's nothing here to help us locate your husband. What the letter contains is nothing short of…”

Ham wet his lips. How to tell her? The only way was straight out.

“An accusation of murder,” he said.

 

Rather than read the letter aloud he summarized it in careful, evasive language appropriate to a courtroom. By the end Mary Hix was crouched on a stool and weeping. “That man, your relative, he must've killed Plato for writing it all down.”

“I urge you not to repeat that charge to anyone. It's unprovable based on this letter. For your own safety I advise you to keep silent while I consider what, if anything, might be done.” In truth he hadn't a glimmer of what to do, other than throw the letter back in the safe and wish to God he'd never seen it.

She promised to heed him. He fled down the swaying stair. In Prioleau Street it was raining again, a hot, soggy drizzle. At Buckles & Bell he laid the letter on the blotter and stared at it, wishing the words would disappear or magically reveal some hidden, innocent meaning.

At home on South Battery that evening he showed Alex the letter and explained how he'd come by it. He and Alex sat together on a Hamnet Strong settee. “I fear this was written for purposes of blackmail. Mrs. Hix as much as confirmed it. I likewise fear Hix is no longer in a position to realize his expected financial gain. I suspect he may be dead.”

Horrified, Alex reached for the scrawled sheets. “Let me read it, please.”