The Gamble (I) (42 page)

In their compartment on the train, while Scott stowed their carry-on luggage, Willy demanded, “But why wouldn’t she come?”

“She didn’t want t’ cry where everyone could see her.”

“Oh.” Still feeling blue, Willy continued studying the busy train depot, hoping Agatha would change her mind after all. “She cried when I gave her Moose.”

Scott settled into a seat, steeling himself against emotions he couldn’t afford to feel. “I know.” Though he knew it
was useless, he found himself scanning the people seeing passengers off, and there were many, most of them former customers who came to wave a last good-bye to Jube and the girls.

He hated leaving Agatha this way, taking with him the memory of her tears as she ran into her lonely apartment. Outside, the wind buffeted the sides of the train, shredding the smoke from the engine, lifting the steam whistle’s lonely shriek and throwing it back along the line, an eerie accompaniment to their departure from the place he’d always called a dreary little cow town. He’d never expected to ache so when he left it. But Proffitt had brought him Agatha, and leaving her did, indeed, make him ache. A deep furrow marred his brow as he stared out the window in silence. He saw the conductor stow the portable step, then disappear inside the train. He scanned the crowd hopefully. Just as the train lurched to life he saw her.

“There she is!” he exclaimed, grabbing Willy onto his knee and pointing. “There, behind all the others! See? In her brown cape.”

She stood apart from the others, her gloved hands crossed over her breast. She wore the brown velvet pelisse with the hood up. He’d never seen a lonelier-looking picture in his life.

“Gussie!” Willy flattened one hand against the cold glass and waved exuberantly with the other. “Bye, Gussie, ‘bye!”

She couldn’t have seen them board; she’d only appeared moments before the train began moving. And it was apparent as she scanned the flashing windows that she had no idea behind which they were. But as the wild wind caught at the hem of her pelisse and tossed it aloft, she lowered its hood and waved... and waved... and waved... until all the windows had streamed past and they lost her from sight.

Then Willy was crying quietly.

And Gandy lay his head back, closed his eyes, and swallowed thickly to keep from doing the same.

None of Gandy’s extended family seemed any less orphaned than Willy. Without loved ones or homes, and with Christmas coming on, anywhere they’d have gone would have been chosen against their will. By tacit agreement, they all went to Waverley together.

During the trip, they broke into smaller groups to share seats and berths, so Scott saw little of Jube. He spent much time wondering about her and Marcus, recalling what Willy had said. They didn’t sit together much; Jube spent most of the time with Ruby and Pearl. But in the evening, after they’d been traveling several hours, Gandy needed to stretch his legs and, strolling down the aisle, he passed them sitting side by side. Marcus appeared to be asleep. Jube’s head lay back against the seat but her face was turned toward him, and upon it Scott saw a winsome expression she’d never turned upon himself. She caught sight of Scott in the aisle and flashed him a quick self-conscious smile. Then her cheeks turned a becoming pink. To the best of his recollection, it was the first time he’d ever seen Jube blush.

Later, when he and Willy had retired to their bunks, he lay on his back behind the drawn curtains, one wrist behind his head, pondering the sleeping arrangements at Waverley. It was the perfect time to make the break. Whether or not Marcus and Jube had declared their feelings for each other, it would no longer be right for Jube to share Scott’s bed.

How was it he and Jube hadn’t talked about their deteriorating love affair? Because it had never really been a
love
affair. It had been a convenient arrangement that temporarily suited them both. Had it been anything more, he’d be jealous now, angry, hurt. Instead, he felt only relief. He hoped that Jube and Marcus would find in each other the perfect mate.

Wouldn’t that be something? He smiled in the dark, thinking of it. Jube and Marcus, married. Maybe they could hold the service in the wedding alcove. Wouldn’t that grand old house love to see life revived within its walls?

You’re dreamin’, Gandy. You can’t keep the group there. How will they live? What will they do? Where will the money come from? You’re a fool t’ be goin’ there in the first place. All it’ll do is revive dreams of how it was, how it can never be again. And what about Willy? You promised him things you aren’t sure you can give him. What’ll he think if you inform him that he won’t be livin’ at Waverley after all? And what kind of life will he have traipsin’ along after you and your troop, openin’ saloon after saloon across the country?

Restive, he shifted, trying to get more comfortable. But the clatter and sway of the train kept him wide awake. He raised the heavy felt shade and tied it into place with its braided silk cords, then watched the countryside shimmy away beneath the glow of a winter moon. The train traveled southwest now. All traces of snow had vanished. Beside the tracks black snakes of water reflected the moon, while trees studded the landscape. Missouri? Arkansas? He wasn’t sure. But already the flatness of the prairie had given way to gentle hills that swelled and rolled like a midnight sea.

He thought of Proffitt, the abandoned saloon, Agatha alone upstairs.
She cried when I gave her Moose. A
thick knot seemed to lodge in his chest as he pictured her curling up with Willy’s cat, waking up tomorrow morning and going downstairs with no Willy to barge through the door and break the monotony of her humdrum life.

You did what you had to, Gandy. Forget her. You have enough t’ worry about gettin’ your own life in order, facin’ the ghosts of Waverley again, deciding how to provide for
a family of eight. Agatha’s been on her own a long time. She’ll make out fine.

But no matter how many times he reiterated these thoughts, he could not evict her from his memory.

On the afternoon of the second day the train carried Gandy and company into the town of Columbus, Mississippi, which had been a bustling cotton-trading center on the Tombigbee River before the war. The old cotton chutes were still there, like curved tongues waiting to drop bales again from the empty warehouses along the river onto the riverboats that were dying a slow death beside the railroad tracks, which carried everything faster, cheaper, safer.

“When I was a boy,” Scott told Willy, “I used t’ like t’ watch the slaves load cotton on the riverboats just like you watched the cowpokes load cows on the train.”

“Here?”

“Sometimes here. More often at Waverley. We had our own warehouses and the riverboats pulled right up t’ shore t’ load.”

The comment released a torrent of questions. “How far away is it? How long before we git there? Can I fish in the river right away? What color will my horse be?”

Scott chuckled at the boy’s excitement, which mirrored his own, as his first glimpse of Waverley grew closer.

They bought supplies at Sheed’s Mercantile store. Old Franklin Sheed looked like a dried apple doll with white whiskers. He squinted at Scott from behind corrugated eyelids, withdrew a pipe from his mouth, and drawled, “Well, blezz man soul. LeMaster Gandy, i’n’t it?”

He extended a hard hand and clasped Scott’s.

“Sure is, though nobody’s called me that in a long time.”

“Good t’ see ya again, boy. Y’all back for good?”

“Don’t rightly know, Mr. Sheed.” Realizing Willy listened, he added, “I hope so. Brought my friends here t’ see the old place.” He introduced them all around, ending with the boy, upon whose shoulders Scott rested his hands.

“Well, it’s still there,” Sheed said of Waverley. “Nobody messes with it, ‘cept a few o’ the old slaves used t’ work for your daddy. They’re still out there, keepin’ trespassers
off the place. Be s’prised t’ see you after all these years.”

Something good happened inside Scott, clasping Franklin’s hand. His roots were here. Folks remembered him, his people, his heritage. He’d wandered for so long, lived among strangers who cared little about his past or his future, once he parted from them, that coming back to a place where his name was remembered gave him an immediate pang of nostalgia. And here was old Franklin Sheed, who’d sold Scott’s father cigars and his mother cotton cloth for the very diapers she’d used for his brothers and himself.

“What’s it been now, since your folks passed on?” Franklin wondered aloud. But before Gandy could answer, a pinched-up octogenarian in a tattered gray bonnet limped in with a black cypress cane.

“Miz Mae Ellen,” the store owner greeted her, “y’all remember Dorian and Selena Gandy’s boy, don’t you?”

She lowered her head and peered at Scott for a full ten seconds, resting both hands on the head of the cane.

“LeMastuh, is it?”

“That’s right, Miz Bayles.” He grinned down at the withered woman, remembering how much taller she’d been the last time he’d seen her. Or had he only been shorter?

“Used t’ feed you peaches when your mama came t’ visit me at Oakleigh.”

“I remember, Miz Bayles.” His grin remained. His eyes teased. “And some o’ the tastiest molasses cookies anywhere this side o’ the Mason-Dixon line. But y’all never let me have more than two, and I used t’ stare at the rest on the plate and swear I’d get even someday.”

Her laugh filled the store like the gobble of an old hen turkey. She rapped her cane on the floor, then shot a sly glance at Jube, standing nearby. “And I used t’ look at that face o’ his and think t’ myself, that boy’s too handsome for his own good. He’ll end up in trouble over it someday.” Her shrewd eyes pinioned Scott again. “Did you?”

Scott’s dimples deepened to disarming depths. “Not that I recall, Miz Bayles.”

She glanced from Jube to Willy to Scott. “So you married up again, did you?”

“No, ma’am.” Scott gestured toward Jube, then looked down at Willy. “These are my friends, Jubilee Bright and Willy Collinson.” The others were browsing throughout the store so he didn’t bother to introduce them.

“Willy, is it?” She studied him imperiously.

Scott waggled Willy’s shoulder. “’Member your manners, boy.”

Willy extended a hand. “Pleased t’ meet you, ma’am.”

“Humph!” she snorted, shaking his hand. “Don’t know why you should be—dried up prune like me, doesn’t feed a boy more’n two molasses cookies at a time. But I have a grandson, A.J., and he’s the one you’d like t’ meet.” She jerked a thumb at Scott. “You have this rascal bring you by someday and I’ll introduce you two.”

“Really?”

She poked Willy in the shoulder with the tip of her cane. “One thing you got to learn right up front, boy. Wrinkled-up old ladies don’t say things they don’t mean. They never know when they might drop over dead an’ leave confusion behind.”

Everyone laughed. Then Scott allowed Miss Bayles to make her purchases ahead of him. While she did, he inquired, “Y’all still live at Oakleigh, Miz Bayles?”

“Oakleigh is empty,” she replied with stiff pride, carefully counting out her money from a leather pouch, then snapping it closed. “I live with my daughter, Leta, in town now.”

For a moment Scott had been carried back into the past. Miss Bayles’s revelation reminded him that Waverley wasn’t the only grand mansion left derelict by the war. The turn of the conversation had put a damper on the subject, and when Miss Bayles turned with her purchases in hand, Scott politely tipped his hat.

“Greet Leta for me,” he requested. “I remember her well.”

“I’ll do that, LeMaster. My best t’ Leatrice. I remember her well, too.”

Leatrice’s name brought a resurgence of expectation to Scott. It remained within him as they bought ham and grits and flour and lard—enough food to feed a family of eight
for several days. The good feeling stayed with him while they rented rigs at the livery—where again Scott was recognized and greeted enthusiastically by his given name—and while they set out for Waverley through the familiar Mississippi countryside.

Heading northwest, they rode through thick stands of oak, hickory, and post pine that opened into vast tracts of depleted cotton fields, few of which had been seeded in the last fifteen years. They passed Oakleigh, which appeared as only a faint white blur at the end of a long lane, half choked with underbrush and scuppernong vines.

The sky was clear but the breeze held a bite. The tips of the pines stroked the evening sky the way an artist’s brush passed across a canvas, painting it the hue of a fading wisteria blossom. The carriages traveled upon a gravel road worn smooth by years of mule-drawn wagon wheels that had ground it down to fine silt. The scent of the earth was moist and fecund, unlike the dry, grainy scent of Kansas. Neither the sound nor odor of shifting cattle was anywhere to be heard or smelled. Instead, Gandy’s senses thrilled to the sweet melodic trill of an occasional mockingbird rising from a thicket, and the scent of vegetation decaying now during the brief hiatus between growing seasons.

“Waverley land starts here,” he said. Willy’s eyes grew disbelieving as they rode on and on still farther.

“All this?”

Scott only smiled and held the reins loosely between his knees. They entered the last mile, the last half mile. Then ahead, on the right, a black iron fence appeared. As they approached it, Scott slowed the rig. Beside him, Willy looked up. Then his eyes followed the path of Scott’s.

“Somebody’s buried way out here?” Willy asked.

“My family.”

“Yours?” The boy glanced up again.

In the back seat Jube and Marcus turned to glimpse the cemetery.

“Who?” Willy asked, craning to watch the gray headstones slip past.

“My mama and my daddy. And my wife and our little girl.”

“You had a little girl?”

“Her name was Justine.”

“And what’s that?” Willy asked, pointing to a wooden structure on their right.

“Why, that’s the bathin’ house. Inside is the swimmin’ pool.”

“Wow!” Willy raised up off the seat in excitement. Scott pressed him back down. “Y’all can see it later.” He went on quietly, “And this...” Scott turned left into the drive directly opposite the pool house—“... is Waverley.”