Rhett Butler's people (45 page)

Rufus Bullock talked until he tired of his own arguments. When he rose to go, Rhett gave him his letters to mail. Bullock inspected the addresses. "Rhett, how did you know the Senator?"

"I know a good many people, some less honorable than you, my friend."

"I've a courier going to Washington tomorrow. He'll hand-carry this."

Rhett shrugged. "As you like. The letter to Mrs. Bonneau is more important."

Rufus Bullock left without his new wool overcoat, but that evening, when the private brought Rhett's supper of cold beets and potatoes, he took it away.

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Chapter

Chapter Twenty-nine

The Gallows in the Garden

Despite a starvation diet and temperatures only slightly above freezing, Rhett was neither cold nor hungry. He was not angry or afraid.

The prisoner in the next room coughed and moaned in his sleep. Although Rhett never communicated with him, his presence was a vague comfort.

Rhett thought about Tunis Bonneau. He wondered what became of trunk master Will's wife, Mistletoe.

Except the hours during the warmest part of the day, when he was able to sleep, Rhett sat bolt upright on his iron bed, watching the desolation beneath his window. It was an opera without music. From dark to dawn, scavengers roamed and scurried and fought over prizes. From sunrise to sunset, in this blasted heath, new buildings went up. All the scavengers' ferocious energy changed nothing, but the builders were altering the ruined city's skyline.

Rhett did not count the days and weeks he'd been a prisoner.

One morning, it snowed. Fat, slow flakes softened the wounded landscape. Loud-booted soldiers came for the prisoner in the next room. "Private Armstrong, it's time." The man's fight shook the connecting wall. When the thumping and gasping and cursing ended and the man was restrained, he shouted, "No! No! No!" His denials diminished as the soldiers bore him down the stairs and away still crying, "Noooooo."

That same afternoon, two negroes wrestled a hip bath into Rhett's room and the splotchy-faced young private brought buckets of steaming

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water. "It's going to be all right now, sir," the boy said. "Mr. Puryear's here from Washington. Everything will be all right now."

When Rhett was naked and wrapped in a fresh woolen blanket, the private gave him a bar of French milled soap. "It was in your bag, sir. I hope you don't mind."

As Rhett eased into the hot water, he murmured, "Get thee behind me, Satan."

Peanut, the National Hotel's barber, came to shave Rhett. When the private stepped out of the room, the negro whispered urgently, "Miss Belle says to take heart. Mr. Bullock workin' on gettin' you out. He workin' on it!" What more the barber might have said was cut short by the private's return with the carpetbag Rhett had last seen in the Jonesboro Hotel.

"I'm sorry, Peanut. I've no money."

"That's all right, Captain Rhett. Miss Belle done took care of me."

After Rhett was dressed in his own clean clothes, Captain Jaffery came for him. He winced at Rhett's emaciation. "I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't prevent this."

Rhett clasped the man's shoulder and followed him down the stairs.

In the street, drovers lashed horses through part-frozen mud. Thick red clay coated their wagon spokes and broke off in chunks from the turning wheels.

A skim of snow frosted the headquarters balustrade.

Captain Jaffery escorted Rhett into the guardroom. "Wait here. I'll let Mr. Puryear know you're here."

The small tree in the guardroom was adorned with red and green paper streamers, apples, and harness bells. Rhett warmed himself at the fire. A red-faced, mustachioed captain smacked his fist into his palm. "The Klan is undoing everything we fought for."

But a lieutenant was grinning as he aimed an imaginary rifle and made cocking sounds: "Ku. Klux. Klan."

Jaffery led Rhett up the spur-scarred black walnut staircase. Before tall double doors, Jaffery offered his hand. "Whatever happens," he said, "good luck to you."

The former drawing room's sixteen-foot ceilings were framed by elaborate

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plaster cornices. Undraped floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked what had once been a rose garden.

The gateleg table beside the windows was set for two. The starched linen tablecloth had

L's

embroidered in the corners; the heavy silver was London-made. A bottle of Sillery chilled in an ice bucket.

A gallows had been erected in the garden and footprints, half-filled with snow, crossed the yard and up thirteen steps to the platform. The trap hung open, a dark square hole in the snowy platform. Two sets of fresher footprints dipped under the platform and an outline in snow was where the coffin had waited for its burden: that coffin now propped upright beside the garden gate. The snow that fell on the coffin was melted by fading body heat inside. Its planks glistened.

"Good-bye, Private Armstrong," Rhett said softly. "May you find the next world more to your liking."

The drawing room door clicked open. Without turning, he said, "Hello, Edgar. So you are to be my Tempter."

"Ah, Rhett, I came as soon as I heard." Edgar Allan Puryear's stiff tweed suit was set off by a new vest and a braided-hair watch chain. His smile was supremely confident. "I trust you weren't too uncomfortable. I came straightaway."

"I must thank you, Edgar. I don't believe I ever owed a man a bath."

Edgar pulled back a chair. "Do sit down, Rhett. Please. We'll eat and talk and see if we can't get you out of this mess. Socrates!"

A gray-haired negro houseman answered Puryear's shout. "You may serve us, Socrates." Before the servant was out of earshot, Edgar confided to Rhett, "Judge Lyon's man. I don't know what we'll do when his kind are gone."

"Serve ourselves? So, Edgar. I see you've landed on your feet."

Edgar Puryear rested his elbows on the table. "You and I could see this coming, couldn't we, Rhett? Fools may have clung to chivalric fantasies, but not us businessmen, eh?"

Rhett nodded at the coffin in the garden. "Private Armstrong -- was he a businessman?"

"Armstrong? Oh my, no. Common murderer. Shot his sergeant while drunk." Edgar frowned thoughtfully. "A little less whiskey and he wouldn't

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have done it, a little more and he couldn't. Of such slight miscalculations are fortunes lost and men hanged."

Rhett sat with his hands folded while Edgar Puryear shook out his napkin and tucked it into his vest. Socrates opened the champagne, filled their glasses, and stood impassively against the wall.

"So you're a hangman now, Edgar?"

Edgar Puryear choked on his champagne. "Oh, no, no. I had nothing to do with

that,"

he said, gesturing vaguely at the windows. "Routine military court-martial, customary sentence. No, Rhett, I'd rather men

not hang!

A toast, Rhett, to the future,

your

future."

"I won't drink with you, Edgar," Rhett said.

Puryear's glass was extended in his toast. After the slightest pause, he drank and Socrates refilled his glass. Puryear wiped his mouth. "As you wish," he said. When Edgar snapped his fingers, the houseman rolled the serving cart to their table.

"Will you try the quail, sir?" The houseman uncovered a chafing dish. His serving fork and spoon hovered above aromatic delicacies.

"Nothing, thanks, Socrates," Rhett said politely.

"Captain Butler, we got the fricasseed sweetbreads, the fresh mountain trout, and the Virginia ham General Thomas favors. We got the yams, the fried greens, the wild rice, the beaten biscuits...."

"Please serve Mr. Puryear. He seems ... puny."

Edgar asked tightly, "So Uncle, you know Mr. Butler?"

"Oh yes, sir. All us coloreds know Cap'n Butler. From during the War, sir."

"Then you know he shot a negro."

Socrates shook his gray head. "Yes, sir. We heard all 'bout that. Sure is pitiful when the United States Army can't protect decent coloreds."

Edgar made his choices with a quick jabbing finger. When his plate was brimming, he said, "Wait outside, Uncle. I'll call you if I need you."

Edgar picked at his food. "Rhett, do you really think you can defy the United States Congress by refusing to eat supper?"

"Edgar, thank you for your concern, but I'm not hungry. I have feasted in Federal custody. Delmonico's could not have fed me better."

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The champagne he gulped didn't improve Edgar Puryear's humor. He wiped his hands on his napkin, blew air past his lips, straightened his tie, and started afresh. "Rhett, the United States Congress is very angry. They hanged Mrs. Surratt -- whose worst crime was keeping the boardinghouse where John Wilkes Booth plotted. Dr. Mudd, who innocently set the assassin's broken leg, languishes in prison. The Yankees are in a hanging frame of mind, Rhett. In times like this, it doesn't do to stand out from the crowd. Rhett, you stand out."

Rhett said nothing.

"The sweetbreads are delicious," Puryear said.

Rhett's grin flashed.

Edgar Puryear pushed his plate back. "Rhett, they don't give a damn about that negro you killed."

"I believe I'm the only white man in Georgia who did give a damn about him," Rhett said evenly.

"That girl, that Lisa? I've been to Jonesboro...." Edgar smirked. "I've sported with little Lisa."

Rhett shrugged. "No accounting for tastes."

Puryear extended an accusatory finger. "Rhett Kershaw Butler, did you or did you not hold the blockade runner the

Merry Widow

in Wilmington harbor on the night of January 14, 1865, in order to take on a special cargo?"

"You know I did, Edgar. You know why I did."

"Did you or did you not load the Confederate treasury on that vessel?"

Rhett leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head, and stretched. "Oh, Edgar. You are such a ... such a

painful

person! Is that the best scheme you and your Yankee friends can concoct to steal my money?"

"Do you think we'll let you keep the fortune you made violating the United States blockade?"

"Edgar, I am thoroughly busted. You see before you living proof of imprudence. Though my dear mother preached a penny saved, a penny earned and so on, I was deaf to her entreaties. I am broke, busted, flat as a johnnycake."

Edgar waggled his finger. "Don't underestimate us, Rhett. Our agents

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have interviewed your banker -- what's his name ... Campbell? We don't want all of your money. We'd be satisfied with a ... reasonable portion."

Rhett got to his feet. "Thank you for the best dinner I've had in weeks, Edgar. I think I'll skip the coffee tonight. Coffee disturbs my sleep."

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Chapter

Chapter Thirty

Deception

After this interview, Rhett was given three blankets, ordinary soldier's rations, even the occasional newspaper. Edgar Puryear visited twice but hosted no more gallows-side suppers. Although he insisted Rhett must turn over his blockade-running profits to Federal authorities, Edgar's most persuasive argument -- that Rhett would be hanged if he didn't -- weakened every day. To Rufus Bullock's amazement, powerful senators were acting on Rhett's behalf. By the New Year, nobody, excepting Captain Butler himself, recalled that Rhett Butler had shot and killed Tunis Bonneau.

One brisk January afternoon, Captain Jaffery knocked. "You've a visitor, Captain Butler. Your 'sister' Scarlett is here to see you." Jaffery grinned like a schoolboy.

"Dear, dear Scarlett. How good of Sister to come," Rhett replied, his mind in a turmoil.

"Handsome woman, your sister." Jaffery handed him his jacket.