Rhett Butler's people (66 page)

"Why, I hadn't thought about charging. I suppose ... I suppose I could."

Abruptly, it turned colder. The Flint River froze solid and Tara's stoves glowed red. Rosemary moved the schoolroom downstairs into the parlor. Fog hung above the horse troughs, where warmer springwater flowed.

Four days before Christmas, Tara's people were at the breakfast table when Mammy marched in from the meat house so angry, she could hardly speak. "They's ruint! They's sp'iled! Been some deviltry here!" Mammy propped her bulk against the dry sink and took deep breaths. "Ain't no colored folks done this, neither."

Scarlett was on her feet. "What is it, Mammy?"

Mammy pointed with a quivering arm.

When the children made to follow, Scarlett snapped, "Ella, Wade, Beau -- all of you, stay in the house. Rosemary, Suellen, tend them, please!"

The meat house door had been crowbarred off its top hinge and hung slantwise across the opening. Will Benteen dragged the door aside and cautiously stepped into the building. "Lord have mercy!" he groaned.

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Scarlett cried, "Oh Will!"

Every one of their cured, wrapped hams had been cut down. They lay on the dirt floor like so many slain babies. The casks of brined beef had been overturned and manure strewn over everything.

Mammy was behind them in the doorway. "Weren't no coloreds!"

"Mammy," Scarlett snapped, "I can see that!"

Tail between his legs, Boo poked his head inside the forbidden sanctuary and sniffed.

Meat and manure sloshed beneath their feet. The stink was overpowering.

"Can't we just wash them?"

Will picked up a ham, dropped it, and wiped his hands on his pant legs.

"No, ma'am. See how somebody cut 'em open? That meat's tainted, Miss Scarlett. Pure poison."

Will stepped out of the meat house, walked around the corner, and threw up.

The wide-eyed Mammy trembled. "Them bummers, they come back," she whispered. "I knew they comin' back one day."

"The War is over, Mammy," Scarlett snapped. "Sherman's bummers can't hurt us anymore!"

Although Boo had barked during the night, Will hadn't left his bed to see what the dog was bothering about. Now, growling importantly, Boo led Will and Scarlett to the spot outside the garden fence where horses had been tethered. Will knelt to inspect the tracks. "I reckon there was three of 'em." Will shook his head. "What crazy bastards would -- Scuse my language, Miss Scarlett."

"Goddamn the bastards!" she said.

Will followed the tracks to the Jonesboro road, where they disappeared.

None of the negroes would set foot in the violated meat house -- not even Big Sam, who'd been Tara's Driver under Will Benteen and Gerald O'Hara before. "I never thought you'd turn coward, Sam," Scarlett hissed, "Not

Big Sam."

Her harsh words washed over Sam's bowed head. "Some things it don't do for coloreds to fool with," he said.

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So Will, Scarlett, and Rosemary loaded the defiled meat into a wagon and drove it to the boneyard -- that upland gully where Tara's dead animals were left to rot.

As the hams rolled and bounced down the slope, Will whispered, "Good-bye, Big Girl. I'm truly sorry what they done to you."

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Chapter

Chapter Fifty-two

Warming Soil

Their money might have become worthless overnight and their elected government might have fallen, but their cool, dark, solid meat houses reminded country people that true prosperity came from the work of one's hands, and God's providence.

Neighbors came to view the sacrilege. "What kind of minds would think to do

this?"Men

muttered threats and prowled the farmstead as if the violators might still lurk nearby. Will guided parties to where they'd tied their horses and men knelt to trace the tracks with their fingertips. Tony Fontaine and his brother Alex argued over the size of one horse's shoes.

Mrs. Tarleton slipped around to the paddock, where Will kept his new foals. Normally, she would have asked Will to join her so she could remark -- for the umpteenth time -- how her stallion's qualities were appearing in his foals. Not today.

As if at a funeral, women brought bread and casseroles; Mrs. Tarleton gave Suellen two hams. "So you'll have something for Christmas."

Suellen said they'd keep them indoors in the pantry, where they'd be safe.

Safe. How could they be safe?

Eventually, the neighbors went home. The house negroes were frightened, and by 5:30 winter dark, excepting Mammy who slept behind the kitchen, the negroes were in their cabins behind latched doors.

Boo was excited and too aware of his responsibilities, and that night he barked whenever a fox or polecat slipped through the farmstead. Will Benteen would wake up, pull overalls over his nightshirt, and shove his bare

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feet into cold leather brogans. He clumped down the back stairs and slipped outside with his shotgun.

When he came back to bed, Suellen grumbled sleepily and pulled away from his cold embrace.

In the late afternoon, Christmas Eve, a Railway Express wagon delivered a large wooden crate emblazoned with shipping labels. Will and Big Sam helped the driver unload the heavy crate and gave him a mug of Christmas cheer, which he downed with one eye cocked at the lowering clouds.

Will agreed yes, it did feel like snow.

Big Sam said, "Won't nobody be on the roads tonight."

"I won't be, that's certain." The driver left for Jonesboro at a brisk clip.

After supper, everyone gathered in the parlor to decorate the Christmas tree Big Sam had erected that afternoon. With whispered speculations and many side glances at the mysterious crate, the children hung the tree with apples, walnuts, and paper cutouts. Will stood on a kitchen chair to place Rosemary's newly sewn pink-and-white silk angel at the top. The grownups hung the candleholders higher than little hands could reach.

Boot scraping on the porch signaled Ashley Wilkes's arrival. His hat and coat were dusted with snowflakes, "I'm sorry I'm late. I was pruning crab apples and lost track of time. Happy Christmas, Beau!" He hugged his son. "Happy Christmas, everyone!"

As Rosemary poured Ashley Christmas punch, Will took a nail puller to the wooden crate. When the nails screeched, the children put their hands over their ears.

Rhett had sent Ella an exquisite French porcelain doll, Beau and Louis Valentine got ice skates and, to his delight and the younger boys' envy, Wade received a single-shot .22 rolling-block rifle with a note in the trigger guard. "Wade, I'm trusting Will to show you how to shoot this. If you are sensible and become a good shot, when I come home we'll go hunting together."

There was a gold locket for Rosemary, and for Scarlett a green velvet hat that matched her eyes. Although there was no note for her, Scarlett's heart leapt for joy. Even when Ella knocked over her punch glass, Scarlett didn't stop smiling.

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More snow fell and Louis Valentine and Beau went onto the front porch to slide noisily from one end to the other. Ashley had brought small gifts for the children, and Will gave his Suellen a red wool nightcap. It was nearly midnight before Rosemary ushered protesting children upstairs to bed. Yawning, Will and his nightcapped wife retired.

Ashley sat by the fire. "What a wonderful evening." After a long silence, he said, "Scarlett, do you ever miss the old times, the warmth, the gaiety?"

Scarlett teased, "Like the Twelve Oaks barbecue when I confessed my love for you and you turned me down flat?"

Ashley took a poker, knelt, and stirred the fire. "I was promised to Melanie...."

"Oh Ashley, fiddle-dee-dee," Scarlett said, not unkindly.

When Ashley raised his eyes to hers, they had a new light -- a light Scarlett understood all too well. She sat bolt upright. "Goodness," Scarlett said. "I hadn't realized the time!"

Dear God, what was Ashley taking out of his pocket? Was it a ring box? Scarlett sprang from her chair. "Oh Ashley, I'm simply exhausted. All this excitement! Please see yourself out!"

"But Scarlett!"

Scarlett ran up the stairs and locked her door behind her.

Dear Lord, if Rhett got wind of this, if he thought she and Ashley ... He'd

never

come home!

Although Wade had his new rifle, his mother had kept Rhett's note to the boy, and as she undressed, Mrs. Rhett Butler read it again. Her husband had written,

"when

I come home." Those were Rhett's exact words. As she let her hair down, Scarlett was a happy woman.

Brilliant stars illuminated snow as glossy as unskimmed cream. Ashley's horse trudged homeward. Deep in the woods, a frozen tree cracked like a rifle shot. Ashley snuggled into his buffalo coat.

He whispered to his Melanie, "Dear Heart, I told you it wouldn't work. You think I need someone to look after me, but Scarlett isn't the type to look after grown men. The look on her face when she realized I was going to propose ... Oh Melly!" His laugh rang out. His horse's hooves

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crunched through frozen snow. "Our first Christmas apart, dear Melly. Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. Weren't we the luckiest couple on earth?"

The driver's log house fronted Twelve Oaks' neglected garden. Ashley had scrubbed the heart-pine floor with sand, whitewashed the logs, and hung Uncle Hamilton's Mexican War sword over the fireplace.

He knelt to light a blaze. He would sit up until the fire got going. He had so much to tell Melanie.

Boo didn't bark that night and Will Benteen slept spoon-fashion behind his wife. The tassel of Suellen's new nightcap tickled his nose.

It warmed in January and the snow retreated to the shade. The Flint River ran brown and so loud, they could hear it from the house. When it froze again, the snowmelt became a bright, hazardous glaze, which kept those without outdoor chores indoors next the fire. Every morning, Big Sam split the firewood young Wade carried in.

Will Benteen visited every farmhouse and poor-white shanty for twenty miles around. Who had a grievance against Tara? Had anybody boasted about vandalizing a meat house? Somebody at the Jonesboro market told Tony Fontaine the Klan was involved, but Will thought that unlikely. "The Klan's finished, Tony. Anyways, the KKK never pestered Democrats."

The hayloft of the horse barn was the highest vantage point in the steading, and when the ice melted and riders were traveling the road again, Will toted quilts and an old straw tick up the ladder to the loft.

Suellen told Will he was wasting his time, that whoever had wrecked their meat house had "had their fun."

"Honeypie," Will said, "when Boo barks at night, I plumb hate to keep wakin' you."

Suellen said if anything happened to Will, she'd never forgive him.

That evening, Big Sam stared up at the loft door and called, "I'm sorrowed 'bout this, Mr. Will. But this ain't no business for colored folks."

"See you in the mornin', Sam."

Uncertain about the change in routine, Boo lay in front of the horse

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barn for an hour before he got to his feet, stretched, and resumed his nocturnal patrol.

The moon illumined frozen earth. It was a windless night. Wrapped in quilts, Will slept deeply all night long.

The next night was as uneventful as the first.

His third night in the loft, Will startled awake to scuffling sounds. Somebody was climbing the ladder. Will's hand crept from the warm quilts to his shotgun's icy steel barrels. His finger found the triggers.

When Will felt a tremor in the loft floor, he cocked the hammers:

clack, clack.

"It's me, Will," Wade Hamilton whispered.

Will let the hammers down. "Son," he said as the boy's head cleared the hatch, "you skeered the bejesus out of me."

"I came to help." Wade slid his new rifle into the loft. "It isn't right, you bein' out here by yourself."