Rhett Butler's People Page 7

  Didi ignored his barrage of reasons. She was wearing a high-bodiced brocade gown and an astonishingly red hat. She ate nothing. She was pouting. Our omelettes were perfectly prepared and our champagne chilled, but Didi was grumpy and objected to everything the General said. No, the Cubans wouldn’t rise up. The Spanish army was more formidable than a few hundred American adventurers.

  López, who is a pompous man, explained how conquering Cuba would make us rich. “It’s the white man’s duty, Butler,” he advised.

  “To become rich?” I teased him.

  “Our duty to transform a primitive, superstitious, authoritarian country into a modern democracy.”

  That theory prompted a torrent of Didi’s angry French, whose precise meaning López may not have understood, but he certainly got the gist.

  He leaned forward and with a condescending smile said, “Butler, are you one of those fellows whose wench tells him what to do?”

  Didi stood so abruptly she knocked over the champagne bucket. She stabbed pins into her bright red hat. “Rhett?” she insisted. “Please …”

  “You must excuse us, General,” I said.

  Didi was rigid on my arm. The St. Louis’s doorman summoned our cab.

  A filthy woman beggar limped toward us, mumbling her feeble entreaty.

  López followed us onto the sidewalk, apologizing, “Señor Butler, I did not intend to insult you, nor your lovely companion.

  “Madre de Dios!” The beggar had come close enough to offend his nostrils. She was one of those desperate creatures that service Irish stevedores behind the levees. Her hand trembled with entreaty.

  “Leave us!” The General raised his cane.

  “Don’t, General.” As I went into my pocket for a dime, I recognized a familiar face beneath her grime. “Dear God, are you… are you Belle Watling?”

  It was she, Dear Sister, a woman I had never thought to see again. John Haynes had financed Belle’s escape from the Low Country. I hadn’t known she’d come to New Orleans.

  Some weeks later Belle told me, “I always loved the sea. I thought things would be different here.” Apparently, Belle fell in with a cardsharp who used her as collateral when the pasteboards failed him. Belle’s son is in the Asylum for Orphan Boys.

  I will try to improve her circumstances before General López and I embark for Cuba.

  Belle begs you not say anything to her father, Isaiah. She is as thoroughly disowned as I am.

  All my love, Rhett

  July 1853

  Cuba

  Beloved Sister Rosemary,

  The beach at Bahia Hondo is the most beautiful I have ever seen. Silver sand and cerulean sea seem as endless as eternity—a destination certain Spanish officers are hastening me toward.

  The Spanish forces were not defeated. The Cubans did not welcome us as liberators. Ah well.

  Fleeing Didi’s arms into a Spanish firing squad was not my cleverest maneuver.

  I’ve set a gamble into motion and may yet escape my fate, but the odds are long and time is short.

  A corporal promises to post this letter. As with the bottle the marooned sailor tosses into the sea, I pray it will find some reader.

  How dear is soft, warm sand. How tender the sandpipers wading in the shallows. Though their lives are only a few seasons, they are no less God’s creatures than we.

  Sister, if I leave you with one piece of advice, it is: Live your life. Let no other live it for you.

  The Spaniards ordered us to dig our graves for the afternoon entertainment. As American gentlemen, naturally we refused. Ha, ha. Let the peasants dirty their hands!

  Rosemary, of all those I have known on this gracious earth, I regret only leaving you. …

  Think of me sometimes,

  Rhett

  CHAPTER SIX

  A Negro Sale

  Rosemary’s head was spinning. “My father burned my brother’s letters? My letters, too?”

  “I sees Solomon in the fish market one day—your houseman Solomon—and we gets to talkin’. Ol’ Solomon, he hates to hand over them letters to Master Langston, but he got to do what he been told.”

  Rosemary felt sick. She asked the question that, as Langston’s dutiful daughter, she had never dared. “Tunis, why does my father hate his son?”

  Tunis Bonneau was a free colored—free to walk the streets without a pass; free to gather for worship services at the First African Baptist (provided one white man was present at the service); free to marry another free colored or a slave he bought out of servitude. He could not vote nor hold office, but he could keep his own money and own property. He could legally learn to read.

  Because they were neither property nor white men, free coloreds made the Masters nervous.

  Hence, Tunis Bonneau didn’t see what he saw, didn’t speak of what he knew, and pretended an ignorance so profound that it defied penetration. When white men questioned him, Tunis would reply, “Mr. Haynes, he tells me to do it.” Or “You have to ask Mr. Haynes ’bout that.”

  Although she knew this perfectly well, Rosemary was too upset to think clearly, and she grasped Tunis’s sleeve as if to shake the answers out of him. “Why does Langston hate Rhett?”

  Tunis sighed and told Rosemary everything she had never before wanted to know.

  While Tunis was informing Rosemary about Will, the trunk master, the hurricano, and that summer, long ago, when her brother became a full-task rice hand, her father, Langston Butler, was losing a horse race.

  The Washington Racecourse was a four-mile flattened oval bordered by Charleston’s oldest live oaks. Its white stucco clubhouse was reserved for Jockey Club members, but its clapboard grandstand and the great meadow were free to all. White and black, free and slave alike, witnessed Langston Butler’s defeat.

  Virginia and Tennessee horses came to Charleston for the fastest track and richest purses in the South. Horses, grooms, and trainers boarded in great wooden stables whose wide center aisles accommodated horse and negro sales.

  The noon race had been a rematch between Langston Butler’s Gero and Colonel Jack Ravanel’s Chapultapec. The horses were evenly matched, betting was brisk, and the pair started to a roar from the stands. Although Chapultapec was behind at the far turn, he passed the tiring Gero in the straight and won by two lengths. In the winner’s circle, Colonel Jack jigged with pleasure.

  At the clubhouse rail, three young sports and Colonel Jack’s spinster daughter relished the Colonel’s extravagant self-satisfaction.

  “Jackie, Jackie.” Jamie Fisher chuckled. “Mustn’t tweak the tiger’s tail. Juliet, your father makes a wonderfully smug bow.”

  Edgar Puryear was an assiduous student of powerful men and noted Langston Butler’s overseer conferring with his master. “Hmm, what might those two be up to?”

  “Who gives a damn?” Henry Kershaw growled. “Lend me a double eagle!” Henry Kershaw was big as a prime young bear and had a similar temper.

  “Henry, it was my double eagle you wagered on Gero. I haven’t another.” Edgar Puryear turned his pocket inside out. “So, Gentlemen—and Lady—how will Langston even the score?”

  “Perhaps he’ll welsh on his bets,” Juliet Ravanel suggested.

  “No, no, sweet Juliet,” Jamie Fisher said. “You’ve confused one Charleston gentleman with another. Rosemary’s father, Langston, is the bully; your father, Jack, is the welsher.”

  Miss Ravanel sniffed. “Why I tolerate you, I do not know.”

  “Because you are so easily bored,” Jamie Fisher replied.

  Although the acerbic spinster and the tiny youth were inseparable, no scandal touched them. Whatever the nature of their attachment, everyone understood that it was not romantic.

  The next race was at two o’clock. Whites and coloreds promenaded the racecourse and meadow, while in the Jockey clubhouse, servants unpacked picnic hampers and popped corks.

  On the racecourse, auctioneers’ men were crying the negro sale: “John Huger’s negroes. Rice hands, sawyers,
cotton hands, mechanics, house niggers, and children! One hundred prime specimens!”

  Edgar Puryear relieved an auctioneer’s man of a sale catalog and ran his finger down the list. “Andrew means to bid on Lot sixty-one. ‘Cassius, eighteen years. Musician.’”

  “Cassius will fetch a thousand,” Henry Kershaw said.

  “Eleven hundred at least,” Jamie Fisher corrected.

  “A double eagle?” Henry wagered.

  “You haven’t a double eagle,” Jamie Fisher replied.

  Though he outweighed Jamie Fisher by eighty pounds and was used to getting his way, Henry Kershaw smiled. Whatever their inclination, given Fisher’s wealth, even prime young bears smiled.

  “Juliet, what does Andrew want with a banjo player?” Edgar Puryear asked.

  “When Andrew is melancholy, music uplifts him.”

  Henry Kershaw drank and offered Juliet his flask, which she refused, shuddering. Henry remarked, “You can’t guess what horse I saw last week pulling a nigger’s fish wagon.”

  “Tecumseh?” Jamie Fisher said. “Didn’t Rhett Butler leave his horse with the Bonneaus?”

  “The best Morgan in the Low Country hauling fish,” Henry Kershaw continued. “I offered two hundred, but the nigger said the horse wasn’t his to sell.”

  “Tecumseh is worth a thousand,” Edgar Puryear said. “Why didn’t you force the nigger to sell?”

  Henry Kershaw grinned. “Maybe you’d try that trick, Edgar, but I’ll be damned if I would. Rhett might return one day.”

  “Where is Butler anyway?” Jamie asked.

  “Nicaragua, Santa Domingue?” Henry Kershaw shrugged.

  Edgar said, “I hear he’s in New Orleans. Belle Watling, Rhett Butler, Rhett’s bastard… isn’t that a brew?”

  Juliet Ravanel raised her eyebrows. “Edgar, you hear the most fascinating gossip. Didn’t the Watling girl go to kin in Kansas?”

  “Missouri. And no, she didn’t,” Edgar replied. “The Missouri Watlings are death on abolitionists. Don’t you read the papers?”

  “Now Edgar,” Juliet said coquettishly, “why should we frivolous ladies read the papers when we have our gentlemen to explain everything?’

  Jamie Fisher coughed to hide his grin.

  “I think,” Miss Ravanel said, “it is far more interesting to ask what Langston’s daughter will do with my dear brother. Rosemary is positively throwing herself at Andrew.”

  “Some hussy is always throwing herself at Andrew. I don’t know why he puts up with it.” Jamie sniffed.

  “For the same reason he tolerates you, dear Jamie.” Juliet smiled sweetly. “My brother needs his admirers.”

  “How long will it take Andrew to catch Miss Rosemary?” Edgar mused.

  “Before the end of Race Week.” Juliet Ravanel wagered five dollars on it.

  Shaded by live oaks across the racecourse, Grandmother Fisher, her granddaughter, Charlotte, and John Haynes were picnicking. Haynes & Son placed advertisements in Philadelphia and New York City papers: “CHARLESTON RACE WEEK: ROUND-TRIP PASSAGE, LODGING, MEALS—ALL INCLUDED!” John booked his tourists into the Mills Hotel on Queen Street, where Mr. Mills set Charleston’s finest table.

  One New York tourist made no secret of his abolitionist sympathies and offended Southerners who boarded the excursion schooner in Baltimore.

  When the Abolitionist learned Mr. Mills was a free colored, he rejected his accommodations and demanded his money back. Since there were no other rooms to be had in Charleston during Race Week, he finally accepted his, but he still wanted a refund. “Yankee principles are wonderfully flexible,” John Haynes said. “Charlotte, you aren’t yourself this afternoon. Where is our Charlotte’s sunny smile?”

  “Charlotte’s mooning over Andrew Ravanel,” Grandmother Fisher said, tapping the picnic hamper peremptorily. “Cook does the finest chicken in the Carolinas.”

  “Grandmother! I am not mooning!”

  “Of course you are, dear. Andrew Ravanel is gallant, daring, handsome, charming, and bankrupt. What young lady could ask for a better suitor?”

  After praising Cook’s chicken, John continued: “I hoped I’d see Rosemary this afternoon. I begged for a waltz last night, but her dance card was full.”

  Despite the efforts of Charleston’s cleverest dressmakers, Charlotte Fisher was not attractive. Her hair was mouse-colored, her complexion unfortunate, and her waist more resembled the bee’s than the wasp’s. Charlotte set her lip. “I’m not certain Rosemary and I are friends anymore.”

  “Charlotte, don’t be a goose. You and Rosemary have been friends since you were five years old,” her grandmother objected.

  John Haynes sighed. “Why must Charleston’s most charming belles vie for the same gentleman? An ordinary fellow like myself doesn’t stand a chance. Though I’ve no grudge against Andrew, if he stumbled and broke his aristocratic nose—a slight disfigurement, I’d wish him no worse—I’d not grieve.”

  Grandmother Fisher said, “John, you do go on.”

  Haynes smiled. “I suppose I do. I must ask you ladies: Don’t you think I would make an excellent husband? … Thank you, Grandmother Fisher, I will try a drumstick.”

  Spectators and buyers drifted toward the long barn that housed the negro sale. Inside, buyers mixed freely with the merchandise. The negro women wore modest cotton dresses and handkerchief turbans, the men linsey-woolsey jackets, their trousers belted with rope. At each wearer’s whim, the men’s slouch hats had been shaped into dashing or practical or disreputable configurations. The negro children wore cleaner, newer clothing than their parents.

  Novice slave buyers had that nonchalant, knowing expression men assume when out of their depth.

  Cassius, the musician Andrew Ravanel coveted, leaned against a stall door, arms crossed and banjo slung over his shoulder. He was a smooth-faced, fattish, very black young negro, with a complacent air some whites thought disrespectful.

  “Let me hear you pluck that thing, boy.”

  Cassius tapped his banjo respectfully, as if it had powers of its own. “Can’t do it, Master. No, sir. Auctioneer say I’m zactly like a fancy wench: I can’t give nothin’ away for nothin’! Who buys me, buys my music. … Master,” he said solemnly, “I can make a Presbyterian kick up his heels!”

  Most negroes made themselves agreeable, seeking kindly buyers and those who might buy a family intact. “Yes, Master, I a full-task rice hand. Been in them rice fields since I was a tad. Got most my teeth, yes sir. My nose broke account of a horse kick me. I ain’t no hand with horses. My wife, she a laundress, and my son, he a quarter-task hand and he ain’t got all his growth.”

  Field hands were commanded to bend this way and that so any ruptures would be apparent. Some were asked to pace rapidly to and fro or prance in place as shrewd buyers evaluated their stamina and wind.

  “How often you get to the dispensary, boy?”

  “You say you bore three live children? Hips like yours?”

  The auctioneer was florid, jolly, and on the best of terms with the buyers. “Say, Mr. Cavanaugh, you needn’t bid on this lot. Lot fifty-two’s what you want: light-skinned wench, fourteen years old, Lot fifty-two. Don’t I keep you in mind? Don’t I now?

  “Mr. Johnston, if you don’t bid more than seven hundred dollars for this prime buck, you ain’t as shrewd as I make you to be! Seven, seven, I say seven. Won’t you help me out, boys? Seven, going once, going twice. Sold for seven hundred dollars to Drayton Plantation!” The auctioneer took a quick sip of water.

  “I remind you, gentlemen, of our terms. The successful bidder pays one half the winning bid in cash and signs surety for the balance to be remitted no later than thirty days, secured by a mortgage on the purchased negro.”

  He smiled broadly. “Now, let’s get on with the sale. Lot fifty-one: Joe’s a prime boy, twelve or thirteen years. Step up on the platform, Joe, so folks can see you. Now, Joe ain’t one of your spindle-shanked boys; he’s already putting on frame, and in a year or so he’
ll be a full-task hand. A sharp fellow”—the auctioneer put his finger to his nose and winked—“could buy Joe cheap, feed him up, and by next planting he’d own a man, having paid a boy’s price! Joe, turn ’round and pull off that shirt. Anyone see a mark on that back? Mr. Huger, he was a fine gentleman, but he weren’t scared of the bullwhip, no sir. Joe never needed no whip because Joe’s a respectful nigger, ain’t you, Joe? Do I hear two hundred, two hundred dollars? Two, two, five, I have five. Do I hear five fifty, five fifty, five fifty? … Sold to Mr. Owen Ball of Magnolia Plantation.”

  Andrew Ravanel leaned indolently against an empty stall. His horseman’s sinewy legs were cased in fawn-colored trousers, his frilled shirt was framed by the lapels of a short yellow jacket, his broad-brimmed hat was beaver felt, and his boots had the deep transparent gleam of frequent polishing. Andrew raised one indolent finger to Puryear and Kershaw as they came near. Andrew had a nighthawk’s complexion, his pale skin so transparent, one could almost see his moods. There was tension under his fashionable languor, as if the fop were a coiled spring.

  Edgar Puryear struck a match to light Andrew’s cigar and nodded at the high yellow on the block. “Fine wench.”

  Henry Kershaw craned to identify the bidder. “That’s old Cavanaugh. I wonder if Cavanaugh’s wife knows she wants a housemaid.”

  “Maid she may be …” Andrew drawled. Henry Kershaw guffawed.

  Edgar Puryear said, “Isn’t that Butler’s man? Isaiah Watling? There, behind the stanchion.”

  Andrew Ravanel said, “One wonders how he could remain at Broughton after Rhett killed his son.”

  “Man’s cracker trash,” Henry Kershaw snorted. “Overseer’s jobs ain’t as easy to find as sons. If Watling wants more sons, he can go to the quarters and make ’em.”

  Andrew Ravanel said, “But Watling is said to be pious?”

  “Supposed to be. Him and Elizabeth Butler pray together every time ol’ Langston’s out of town. Course, there’s prayin’ and prayin’.”

  “Henry, you are a vulgar fellow,” Andrew said without animosity. “Lot sixty-one. That’s my Cassius.”

  Kershaw scratched himself where a vulgar man scratches and said, “My flask’s dry. I’m off to the clubhouse. Edgar?”