Carolina Gold (5 page)
Now that she was almost home, she could hardly wait to get started. She began a mental inventory of Fairhaven as she had last seen it: twelve rice boats, a steam-powered threshing machine, two barns for oxen and horses. The cabins in the slave street, no longer necessary. How much, if anything, remained? If the cabins had been spared, perhaps she could salvage materials from them to repair the house. More than likely the pasture fences were down, the smokehouse too. And what of the rice-field trunks, the wooden gates that allowed the workers to flood the fields? After so long, they were bound to be in disrepair. All of it would have to be replaced at great cost.
The peace she’d felt just moments before turned to anger that roiled her stomach. From childhood she’d been taught that it was wrong to hate anyone, even an enemy. But how could any Southerner not hate the Northerners who had decimated every home and field in an effort to wipe the Confederacy off the face of the earth?
The two ferrymen guided the vessel to the dock and held it fast while Trim drove the wagon onto the lane and over a rickety
wooden bridge that spanned a deep tidal creek. In another five minutes the smoke-blackened porch columns and boarded-up windows of Alder Hill came into view. Leaving Trim in charge of the horse and wagon, Lettice led the way up the sagging porch and into the parlor, where sunlight filtered weakly through limp linen curtains.
“Please, my dear, sit down,” Lettice said. “I’ll see to our supper. I’m sorry about the gloom. My husband prefers darkness these days. He says the light hurts his eyes.”
Charlotte chose a chair upholstered in blue velvet and looked around the once-familiar room. In the old days, Mama and Lettice had spent hours here bent over their needlework or reading and talking while the men were out hunting and collecting ricebirds for dinner. The birds gathered by the thousands in the rice fields, a dark cloud against the pale sky, so small that even she could eat half a dozen at one sitting.
The wooden floor creaked as Lettice returned with a tray laden with biscuits, a plate of fried ham and potatoes, a pot of fig preserves, and a small cake dripping with caramel icing. Charlotte dug into her meal, grateful for every succulent bite. During the war when the Yankees blockaded the Southern ports and nearly starved them all to death, sugar and flour had become luxuries. At one time she had wondered whether she would ever again enjoy such simple pleasures.
Lettice ate quickly, her eyes darting toward the darkened staircase.
“Is Mr. Hadley at home?” Charlotte polished off the last crumbs of her cake and blotted her lips with her napkin. “Papa would have wanted me to pay my respects.”
“Charles is sleeping.” Weariness tinged Lettice’s words. “He hasn’t felt well these past days.”
“I’m sorry. Another time, then. Please tell him I’m grateful for his help at Fairhaven.”
“I will.”
Something crashed overhead, and Lettice shot to her feet, spilling her lemonade onto the bare floor. “I don’t mean to rush you, my dear, but the ferry is so unreliable these days—perhaps you should go. You don’t want to be stranded on this side of the river in the dark.”
She hurried to the door and called for Trim. “Miss Fraser is ready to go now.”
She kissed both Charlotte’s cheeks. “Trim will take good care of you. I must see to Charles.”
Trim helped Charlotte onto the wagon seat. He called to the horses and they set off again. From her perch on the wagon seat, Charlotte took in the sights and smells of home. On either side of the river, serpentine creeks crisscrossed the marshes in an endless pattern of blue and gold. The air was fresh from the sea, and the riverbank was covered in new green that in a few weeks’ time would blossom with violets and blue jessamine.
They passed a family of Negro women casting their nets for herring, their children playing in the shafts of late-afternoon sunlight falling across the shallows. One of them called to Trim and he returned her greeting, tipping his hat as they passed.
When they reached the other side, they drove off the ferry, left the road, and turned up the long avenue of two-hundred-year-old oaks toward Fairhaven. Trim jumped down to open the gate and Charlotte’s heart sped up. Here was home at last. Though long neglected, the climbing roses had survived; here and there, new leaves had stitched through the banks of wild jessamine, forming patches of green among the brown thorns.
They continued along the edge of the river past a narrow sand beach where she had played as a child. To the right was a sloping green lawn, now marred with burned-out patches, and the overgrown garden where neat rows of lettuce and asparagus had once
thrived alongside roses and camellias. Charlotte peered through deepening shadows at the burned-out skeletons of her barns and stables, a falling-down shed missing its door. The little schoolhouse where her tutor, Miss Heyward, had taught her to read, the “chillun house” where the older slave women had tended babies, even the chicken coop had been reduced to rubble. Of course the livestock were long gone. As were Papa’s prized peacocks who had ruled the yard with their showy feather displays and haunting calls.
Trim tethered the horses and jumped off the wagon. “You go on in, Miss Cha’lotte. I’ll bring your things.”
The front steps had been torn away. Skirting the gaping hole, Charlotte entered through the pantry steps and walked through the empty rooms assessing the damage. Not a shutter or sash was left intact. The mahogany woodwork around the windows and doors and the magnificent staircase banister were gone. The grandfather clock that for all her life had stood on the stairway landing was gone. The zinc-lined water tank that supplied water for the bathroom, gone—along with the bathtub. In the musty parlor, dark rectangles on the faded cabbage-rose wallpaper marked the places where seascapes and family portraits had once hung.
She continued along the gritty hallway to her father’s study, her steps echoing in the emptiness. She stepped through the wrecked doorway, overcome with memories of countless afternoons reading with Papa or sitting on his knee as he showed her how to make entries in his leather-bound account books. The delight he took in listening to her recitations. The birthday when he’d wrapped her present in a length of muslin and hidden it on a wide ledge high inside the fireplace where the chimney met the firebox. He had left clues all over the house, leading her at last to the exquisite porcelain doll she named Polly. She had slept with Polly every night until the girls at Madame Giraud’s discovered what she was doing and made fun of her.
A fly buzzed about her head and she swatted it away as another memory surfaced. She’d been fifteen the day she returned from a visit to friends at Strawberry Hill to find Papa sitting alone in the study, the contents of his strongbox scattered across his desk. At her knock he’d scooped everything into the box and turned the brass key in the lock. He’d reassured her that nothing was wrong, but even now she remembered the look in his eyes, a look that told a different story.
She moved toward the windows, shards of glass crunching beneath her feet as she crossed the room. She ran a finger along the windowsill. Dirt daubers had built nests in the corners, and thick cobwebs hung from a shattered chandelier. In this room, too, rugs and paintings were missing. Only the remains of a woven rush rug lay crumpled in the corner. Her father’s account books and papers, copies of his articles on rice cultivation, were torn and piled knee-deep in one corner. She picked up a couple of volumes and fanned the pages, reading random entries. It would take days to sort through it all, but the effort would be worthwhile if some proof of her ownership of the barony could be found. She tamped down a jolt of anger. What had Papa been thinking? Surely he had not intended to leave her in such a precarious position.
She moved to the library, surprised to discover a good number of books still lying on the shelves. But the spiders and the dirt daubers had been at work here too. Sighing, she went down the hall and crossed the short covered walkway to the kitchen. Mercifully the stove was still there, and the butter churn. A cracked platter. A creamware pitcher. A frying pan. A scarred table and three battered chairs, one with a broken seat. She looked around for a teakettle and settled for a battered tin pot that had been a childhood plaything.
Trim came in with her trunks, and she directed him to her old bedroom on the second floor. He trudged up and down the stairs, huffing and puffing beneath his burden, until everything
was in place. He placed her mother’s writing desk in the library, then took out a blue bandanna and wiped his face. “Reckon tha’s ever’thing, Miss Cha’lotte.”
“Thank you, Trim.”
He waved one hand toward the kitchen. “I expect you’ll be needin’ stove wood and some fresh water to see you through the night.”
“Yes, please.”
He shifted his stance and focused on a cobweb wafting from one corner. “For such chores, I usually gets a dollar.”
“A—”
“I’m a free man now, entitled to charge for my work. I brung you here for Miz Hadley, but now I got to charge you for extrys.”
She looked at him, confounded. In the old days, he would have gladly looked after her every need. But the old relationships had changed. A dollar for such minimal tasks seemed outrageous, but perhaps in this strange new world of equals it was the going rate.
Trim stood quietly, arms at his sides, looking as uncomfortable as she felt. Perhaps this new way of doing things was not easy for him either. In any case, she was too tired for argument.
“Fine. Please bring the wood and water. I’ll get my bag.”
When his chores were complete, she paid him and followed him outside. “I’m planning to seed that field closest to the road, Trim. I’ll need at least a dozen men to get it planted and someone to oversee things.”
“You way behind schedule, miss. The trunks in that field needs fixin’—they’s rotted out, mostly. And the ground oughta been plowed and broke up las’ month.”
“I know that, but I couldn’t get here any sooner. We’ll simply have to work faster to make up for lost time. Now, can you find some men and see that my field is ready in time for planting next week or not?”
“Don’ know. Tha’s a tall order these days.”
“Are any of Papa’s men still around?”
Trim shook his head. “When the Yankee gunboats come up the river back in sixty-two, Aleck and Hector and Henry run off up north with a bunch of slaves from Richmond Hill. Ain’t had no word of them this long time. Cinda and Molly run off back then too.”
“So I heard.” After the gunboats began their forays up the Waccamaw, Papa had moved her to her aunt Livinia’s small farm eighty miles away. But he had stayed on at Fairhaven until the last possible moment to prepare for Sherman’s arrival, leaving her and her aunt to manage the farm alone. Until then, her place in society had protected her from the rigors of manual labor. But the blockade and the predations of the Union army had left her no choice.
It hadn’t been easy. Aunt Lavinia was old and ill, and the bulk of the labor—planting, hoeing, laundry, and cooking—had fallen upon Charlotte’s sixteen-year-old shoulders. But surviving years of hardship had shown her what she was capable of. How much she could endure.
Trim swatted at a water bug buzzing around his head. “They’s a couple of Mast’ Fraser’s boatmen working down around Winyah these days. And his tailor come to our church las’ Sunday.”
“A tailor won’t do me a bit of good. What about Thomas? Papa said he was the best carpenter in the Lowcountry. He can fix my broken trunks.”
“Maybe. If I can find him.”
“Tell the field hands I’ll give them work on a contract and a share of the profits.”
“Yes’m. I’ll tell ’em. But I can’t make no guarantees. Mast’ Ben Allston over at Chicora Wood hired some freemen to plant his rice the year before las’, but the men run off. I reckon they’s plenty
of black folks ’round here don’t want to set foot on nobody’s plantation. Not even this one.”
He crossed the wide lawn to the wagon and drove away.
Charlotte rummaged in a box to find her tea caddy and a china cup. She brewed tea in the battered pan and took her cup out to the porch. Shafts of golden light slanted through the dark pines, casting long shadows across the avenue and the weathered cypress-shingled roofs of the slave cabins. In years past the slave street had pulsed with the sound of many voices and the aromas of woodsmoke, fried fish, and boiling field peas. Children played among the ancient trees while their mothers, home from their tasks in the fields or the house, swapped stories as they tended their own gardens of corn, tomatoes, collards, and okra. To outsiders those evenings might have presented a picture of perfect harmony. But even at her tender age, Charlotte had realized that beneath the calm facade ran a complicated undercurrent of loyalty and betrayal, affection and hatred, resistance and accommodation.
Of course, none of it mattered now. Everything was in ruins, and the planters were on the verge of bankruptcy—scarcely better off than the former slaves.
She sipped her tea and watched a blood-red sun sink into the mellow spring evening. Sunlight rippled through the ancient oaks and pines, the gold turning to fiery red as the sun went down on the river. But the specter of poverty and ruin cast a pall over everything.
Everyone living on the Waccamaw and the Pee Dee—blacks and whites alike—depended on rice cultivation for their livelihood. If other planters couldn’t survive here, how on earth would she?
