Rhett Butler's people (74 page)

He dropped his head in his hands and groaned.

Rosemary rapped a spoon against a bowl and said, more tenderly, "Eat, Ashley. It'll put iron in your blood."

He did and muttered, "It tastes like a rusty barrel hoop."

Rosemary smiled at Ashley's tiny joke and thought, It's a start anyway. Thank you, dear Lord.

Ashley wouldn't murder himself. Ashley Wilkes had no dreadful secrets to rise up and swallow him.

When Rhett and Wade returned from Atlanta, Wade was wearing his new hat at the same jaunty angle Rhett wore his.

Taz had stayed in town. "Belle and Taz have some catching up to do," Rhett told Scarlett, adding, "Belle hasn't seen hide nor hair of the Watlings. She thinks they've gone west. 'Poor Poppa ain't got no home.' "

"I hate that old fool," Scarlett said.

"A lifetime of disappointments can make a dangerous man."

That afternoon, after the children finished their lessons, Rhett asked, "Who wants to learn how to ride?"

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The smaller children tried to outshriek each other. Rhett held up a hand and said, "We'll go to the horse barn and I'll teach you, provided you do exactly as I say."

Scarlett blanched.

Rhett touched her cheek. "Sweetheart, remember how much Bonnie Blue loved her pony? Bonnie would have wanted us to remember that."

Rhett set each child on a tame workhorse and led it around the corral on a longe line. "Ella, hang on to the horse's mane.

"Beau, you must look where you want your horse to go!"

Scarlett went into the house to her office. On the desktop, tied with the black silk ribbon befitting important documents, were the deeds to Tara and her Atlanta property. In appropriate places, her loans were declared "satisfied."

Scarlett dropped her head into her hands and cried.

In the morning, Rhett rode into Jonesboro, where he crossed the tracks into Darktown. He reined up at Reverend J. Robert Maxwell's modest home next to the First African Baptist Church. Rhett tied his horse to the picket fence and waited until a plump young man came onto the front porch. "Good morning, Reverend Maxwell," Rhett said. "Do you suppose we'll get rain today?"

The young man assessed the sky. "I don't believe we will. I believe it will be hot."

"It might at that. I'm Rhett Butler."

"Yes, sir. I heard you were at Tara Plantation. Won't you come in? My wife is just making coffee."

The Reverend's parlor boasted one reading chair, three straight chairs, and a New Haven clock on the mantel. The bare oak floor and front windows gleamed. The men took chairs facing each other and discussed weather and crops until Mrs. Maxwell (who seemed young to be married) set a tin tray on a third chair between them.

When Rhett thanked her, Mrs. Maxwell blushed and withdrew.

The men busied themselves with cream and sugar. "Mr. Benteen was a fair employer," the preacher said. "I wish there were more like him."

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"Most planters don't understand free labor any better than free laborers do," Rhett said.

"That's true, sir. That's true." The young man nodded. "It's a new world for us all."

"A better one, I hope."

The young man cocked his head, listening for overtones. "Some white men don't hope so." He eyed Rhett over the rim of his coffee cup. "I've heard about you, Mr. Butler. The Reverend William Prescott preached in my church."

"Reverend Prescott is a powerful preacher."

"Praise the Lord. William told me you shot his son-in-law."

"Tunis Bonneau was my friend."

The young preacher set his cup down. "That's what William said." He ran his hand over his face as if brushing away cobwebs. "I pray those terrible days are over."

The mantel clock ticked.

Maxwell continued: "Reverend Prescott related a curious story. He said you bought a ship from his daughter -- a sunken ship."

"The

Merry Widow

sank in my service." Rhett leaned forward. "What did William Prescott say about his daughter?"

"Mrs. Bonneau has moved to Philadelphia. She has her son, Nat, to think about." Maxwell put down his coffee cup and went to the window. When he turned, sunlight haloed his head and Rhett squinted to make out his expression. "Mr. Butler, you may know we are asking the legislature for negro normal schools so our children can be educated by negro teachers."

Rhett set his cup on the tray.

Maxwell continued. "You have many powerful friends. I'd take it kindly if you spoke to them."

After a moment, Rhett said, "I will."

The young minister steepled his fingers. "Just how can I help you, Mr. Butler?"

At daybreak Scarlett woke to chanting: "Long John. Long John. Be a long time gone." Tara's workers were filing across the sunrise. As they

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had done so many times before, in good years and bad, they went down into the bottoms, spread out, and started to work.

Scarlett hurried downstairs into the kitchen, where Rhett and Rosemary faced an enormous breakfast and the beaming Mammy. "Rhett," Scarlett cried, "they're back. Tara's people are back."

"Why, yes, my dear, they are."

"But how?"

Her husband shrugged. "We've work to be done and they have families to feed. They've no reason to be afraid anymore. I said we'd pay a little more."

Scarlett's stood up. "More? More? Why, they hardly earn what we're paying them now!" But even as she was speaking, her sore back reminded her of hoeing and plowing and stooping. She laughed at herself and said, "I suppose Tara can afford to pay a little more."

After Taz returned from Atlanta, he and Rhett called a meeting of cotton planters. Tony Fontaine and his brother Alex came, and Beatrice Tarleton arrived on the stallion that had sired Will's orphan foals. Mr. MacKenzie, a dour Yankee who'd bought ruined plantations for a dime on the dollar and suspected he'd paid five cents too much, was accompanied by the shy Mr. Schmidt, who asked Mrs. Tarleton if she knew who'd lost a roan gelding he'd seen running loose.

Scarlett and Rhett greeted them at the door, and when everyone was settled in the parlor, Rhett introduced Taz. "Mr. Watling is a partner in a New Orleans cotton-factoring firm."

"Well, I'll be dam -- darned," Beatrice Tarleton said, "At long last, I get to meet Rhett's bastard. I've must say, young man, you don't favor your father!"

Accustomed to Beatrice's bluntness, her neighbors chuckled. The Yankee planters kept their expressions blank.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, madam," Taz said pleasantly. "In fact, my father was Colonel Andrew Ravanel. You may know of him?"

"I'll be damned." Beatrice settled back in her chair.

"Only if the Lord dislikes rude old women," Rhett sang from the back of the room.

Taz explained their crops fetched poor prices because the British market

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was depressed and New England mills wanted well-packed, graded, carefully ginned cotton.

A planter's association was formed on the spot, with Rhett as president and Tony Fontaine as vice president. Tazewell Watling was asked to contract for ginning and warehousing in the association's name.

The field hands hoed the cotton bottoms and sowed the uplands in oats. Tara began to look like Tara again.

Rosemary spent most afternoons at Twelve Oaks.

Sunday, Belle Watling came to visit her son. After dinner, Taz drove Belle to the railroad station, leaving Rosemary and her brother on the porch. The children were playing at red indians on the lawn while fireflies blinked cryptic messages.

"It is so peaceful here," Rosemary said.

"On a summer evening, the countryside seems eternal."

The children's play dissolved into giggles.

"You're thinking about Bonnie Blue?"

Rhett was quiet for a time. "I just wish I knew who Bonnie would have become."

"Yes," his sister said. "My Meg would be a young woman today, worrying if she were pretty enough to catch a beau. Brother, life is too cruel."

Rhett took a cigar from his case. "I sometimes think if there's any purpose for our being on earth, it's to testify about those we've lost." He nipped the end of his cigar. "You're seeing Ashley?"

"Ashley is a good, gentle man."

When Rhett struck his match, his cheekbones were dramatic. "I suppose he is. But is the world good enough for Ashley Wilkes?"

Rosemary rested her chin on her hand. "Ashley is the man he is -- as you are, Rhett."

"I suppose so." Rhett leaned over the railing to call, "Children, time to come in. Time for prayers and bed."

When she woke next morning, Scarlett stretched luxuriously. The linen sheets caressed her like a lover. Waiting for Rhett to come to her was excruciating but so delicious. One day, one day soon ...

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After breakfast, Scarlett carried her coffee onto the front porch, where Rhett was on the porch swing. "Your dahlias are lovely."

"My mother disliked them. Ellen said dahlias were 'all show.'"

He laughed, "Isn't 'show' a flower's duty?"

"Perhaps. Rhett... I ..."

When he touched his finger to her lips, shivers ran down her spine. "Hush now. Don't spoil it."

In the river fields, the cotton blooms peeked like snowflakes amid the green.

Rhett said, "I want to host a barbecue. Just like old times. We'll invite everybody. Do you remember the barbecue where we met?"

"I am hardly likely to forget."

"There I was, innocently napping, and when I sat up, my eyes lit on the loveliest girl I'd ever seen. And she hurled crockery at me!"

Scarlett slipped her hand into his. "I've always been sorry I missed," she whispered. And they laughed at their silly joke.

Preparations began. "But the Fourth of July is a Union holiday," Scarlett objected.

Rhett said. "Dear, we

are

the Union now." Rhett made plans as if no Southerner could possibly object to celebrating the anniversary of the day Vicksburg fell and Gettysburg was lost.

Apparently, Rhett had gauged sentiment correctly, because no one refused Tara's invitations, and Beatrice Tarleton asked if she could bring her visiting grand-niece with her.

Mammy and Dilcey went through the poultry yard like Grim Reapers. Rhett bought hams. Early tomatoes were commandeered from gardens near and far; lettuce and pole beans were picked, new potatoes dug.

Ashley asked the fiddler who had been Twelve Oaks' principal musical ornament to lead their orchestra. "Yes, sir, Mr. Wilkes. Be like it used to be."

Tara's stove roared until Mammy complained that the kitchen was "hotter than Tophet." She and Dilcey baked apple, chess, pecan, and rhubarb pies.

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Rhett set the children to churning ice cream they stored in tall tin canisters in the icehouse.

Since they hadn't played together in years, Ashley's musicians practiced at Tara and barbecue preparations were accompanied by fiddle, two banjos, and a mandolin.

The Fourth of July dawned cool, with no rain clouds on the horizon.

Pork had the buggy at the Jonesboro station for the noon train. Listening to Pork and Peter argue over who should drive her, Miss Pittypat beamed. "My," Pitty said, "isn't this just like old times!"

Although the invitations stated 2:00 P.M., some guests arrived before noon. Of course they asked to help. Of course they got in the way.

Neighbors rolled up Tara's lane in battered farm wagons. Atlanta gentry rented every rig in the Jonesboro Livery.

Aunt Pittypat fretted, "Dear Rhett, do you think ... well, do you think it's entirely proper? It is July Fourth and so many of us recall this date unhappily...."