The Rebel Wife (24 page)

“But he didn’t—he didn’t sell you, Simon? Or take you back to your master?”

“No, ma’am. I never told him I was a runaway. Although he could see it well enough. I never said where I was running from. I told him I had lost my papers, that I was free and on my way to Nashville. That my father would reward him handsomely if he would return me. He didn’t seem to believe me, but then I showed him I could read and do figures—”

“How could you read? It was against the law!”

Simon laughs at me again. “At my old place, I was about the same age as two of my master’s children, and for some reason, the missus let me sit with their tutor, a Yankee man. My ma was a favorite of the missus and could convince her to do just about anything she wanted. So she got me a little reading and writing and numbers. And Mr. Eli thought—I guess he thought that I might come in handy for him.”

“But you didn’t belong to Eli! He might as well have stolen you!”

“Well, Mr. Eli wasn’t one for the fine points of the law. I can’t say I know too many white folks who paid attention to the law when it came to a colored person. And I was half dead from running and starving in the woods. I guess I gave myself up to him.

“After I realized he was going to keep me, I stopped talking altogether. But Mr. Eli waited. He kept me with him. Kept an eye on me that first trip to South Carolina. The rice country along by Beaufort. Swampy place. Diseased. I don’t know how anyone who labored there could survive it. But they did. And Eli bought them up. Colored people. We marched them down south together, first here to Albion, then down to Montgomery and Demopolis, until we sold them all. Thirteen men, women, and children. Funny number to come up with on my first trip. They talked in ways I never heard before. A whole different language. And superstitions. Mysteries. Some of them cursed me, I believe, for dragging them west, bound together in a line. An old man pointed at me and spoke in his strange language, rolling his eyes back in his head.”

Simon is looking out the window at the garden, with its neat boxwoods and well-tended beds, all carefully maintained by his hand. His eyes are far away. His voice is, too. He’s not really speaking to me. He is back there, in those days, like Greer.

“That’s what we did together. For years. He was almost my father, if you could say someone who keeps you captive can be a father. But he did do good for me. I didn’t realize too much of it back then. Later, he did good for me. What would have become of me if Mr. Eli hadn’t found me?” He pauses again, his mind wandering.

“I guess I didn’t know any better. Better for them all to be slaves than for me to be back on that plantation without my ma. You know why I ran away?” He looks at me. “I had taken a book from the master’s library. I got a good lashing then. The first one of my life, though I had seen it done many times. About the worst—maybe not the worst, but it was bad enough to make me run off. They bound my hands and tied me to a stake in the yard, and Master himself gave me the strokes.” He looks into the garden, and we sit in the hot, still air. Is he thinking of when the Knights came for him?

“Something else you should know, ma’am,” he says. “Something neither I nor Mr. Eli ever told anyone. We promised not to—well, Mr. Eli did. But he’s gone now, and I’m here talking to you, and I think it’s important that you know that back in those days, years before the war, Eli was in the employ of your cousin Mr. Everton Heppert.”

I open my mouth to speak. I stumble over the words. “Eli worked for Judge? What did he do?”

“He worked as a slave dealer on Mr. Heppert’s behalf, ma’am. Mr. Heppert got Eli started in the business of dealing slaves. Eli was his agent. Mr. Heppert provided capital for Eli’s business activities, and Eli split the profits with him. I’ve known Mr. Heppert since I was fifteen years old. Almost longer than you’ve been alive.”

I feel that I have lost my ability to see, the shock comes over me so quickly. I put my hands on the desk and feel the ledger.

“My God.” And after the war, Judge was borrowing money from him. “But Eli worked at Val Heyward’s mercantile.”

“Yes, ma’am, but that was only right before the war. Mr. Heppert helped him to get the position there. He had done with dealing in people at that point. We both had.”

I take my time, not saying a word, trying to understand this story. Perhaps it is a lie. Too much to believe. Eli employed by Judge to trade in slaves?

“I don’t see how any of this is possible. Why would Judge do such a thing? How could he ask Eli to keep such a secret for him?”

Simon is impassive. “Perhaps you can ask Mr. Heppert that when you have the chance. He might actually tell you the truth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mr. Heppert at the time did not want word getting out that he was in that line of business. He was concerned about his political career. He was running for the statehouse back then. But now he doesn’t have a real political career to speak of, does he? Unless he gets sent to the state constitutional convention. By popular demand.”

Simon smirks and pushes the newspapers toward me. “But there are other things that I am sure you wanted to discuss with me, aren’t there, Miss Gus?”

I take the papers and unfold them in front of me. I look at Simon, gauging his honesty. “What do the papers say?” I ask him. He remains quiet. On the front page, a notice of deaths around Pennyacre and Whittle Cove is reported at the bottom of a long column of county news. Families. Poor whites. Women and children employed from the mill. The deaths, it reports, total fifteen. They do not mention Eli. They do not say how they died. They say that Dr. Epaphrase Greer has insisted there is as yet no cause for alarm. That it is a phenomenon of the great heat we have experienced recently. There is no need to suspend the operations of the mill. It is a paper owned by Mr. Lilly,
The Advocate
, a friend of Greer’s.

Simon watches me. My head feels as if it is spinning. I breathe in slowly.

“It’s spreading,” I say.

“Just among the poorer classes, ma’am. That seems to be what the paper says. Although they don’t bother mentioning the deaths among the colored population.” Simon’s voice is low and even.

“Eli wasn’t a part of the poorer classes.”

“He was once, ma’am. They don’t seem to include Mr. Eli, either. Dr. Greer doesn’t, at least.”

“Greer is a part owner of the mill,” I say.

“Yes, ma’am, I know.”

“How do you know?”

“I was there when they signed the contracts. I delivered them.”

“And he’s taking the mayor and aldermen to the mill. Have more people died than the papers say? What else do you know, Simon?”

He looks out the open door toward the carriage house. John has the bay mare out of the stable and is brushing her down. Her name is Helen. That is what Eli called her. “There are other people getting sick and dying. They don’t seem to count for much. I don’t know how many. But people are nervous. If the mayor is going to the mill, people are nervous. Things seem normal. People are still doing business, but they’re tense. You can see it in their faces.”

He pauses as if thinking carefully, then begins again. “They stopped delivering the newspapers here. I checked with Mr. Lilly to see if they had stopped because of Mr. Eli’s death, but he said he didn’t realize the boy wasn’t bringing them by.”

“Why did the boy stop?”

“Because he was afraid of the house, he said.”

“Afraid of the house? Why on earth?” The answer is obvious to me. Why did I bother asking the question?

“Because of the sickness, ma’am. I guess his mama up in the North Ward told him not to come near this house.”

“What? That’s ridiculous!” It’s not ridiculous. How many people must be saying the same thing? Those women at Eli’s funeral. My old friends. They already talked like that days after he died.

“It is an odd thing to say.”

“Let’s just find the money, and then we can go away. Not pay any attention to this.” The mill will make more money. Judge will get his share back. Eli’s estate will be settled. Everything will be fine by the time we come back.

Simon gives a grim smile. “I haven’t had the chance to look in the stable. John said the saddlebags are all in order, but he is very dedicated to those horses. And I want to finish upstairs in the house.”

“Where can I look?” I ask.

“Maybe you can search the attic. You’re planning on going away. It wouldn’t raise any suspicions for you to look through some old trunks in the attic. Miss Gus, if you find anything, please come to me first.”

Simon jumps from his chair, turning toward the garden. His hand moves instantly to his hip, where there should probably be a gun.

Mike is outside on the gravel path, watching us. How long has he been there? His face is pale and his eyes are narrow. He stands watching us, his eyes on Simon, who is looking steadily back at him. Mike is armed, a gun on his belt. I step to the door in front of Simon and turn to him, my back to Mike.

“Please go upstairs. I will talk to my brother.” Simon’s eyes are still over my shoulder, trained on Mike. “I will talk to him. Please leave us.”

Simon looks at me and then to Mike. “As you please, ma’am,” he says. He goes into the house through the small office door, still keeping an eye on Mike.

“What’s going on here, Gus?” Mike calls to me from the garden.

I smile at him through the open door. “Mike, what are you doing here?”

He saunters across the grass and up the porch steps. “I told you I’d be around. I heard you made a visit out to the mill.”

“I don’t have any money, Mike.”

He stands in front of me, smirking. That knowing smile of his, the same one he gave Eli just before Eli gave him money. I never knew how much, but I am sure Eli was generous with him. Certainly more generous than he deserved.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in, sister?”

I turn, and Mike eases past me. His breath is sour, as if his insides are rotten, half preserved in corn whiskey. Up close, his skin is sallow, almost yellow, and his eyes are bloodshot and drooping. My little brother.

He walks behind Eli’s desk and kicks a leg of the chair, jarring it from its place with a mournful scrape. He looks at me again with narrowed eyes. “You taking Eli’s place, Gus? Helping all the niggers in town? Are you going to be their savior now?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? Or maybe you’ve just got one special nigger in mind?” Mike leers at me.

“You’re disgusting. If you’ve come here to insult me, then you should leave right now.”

“Who’s going to make me leave? Your big nigger man? Are you going to sic him on me?” He kicks the chair again, sliding it back, and then he falls into the seat. “Nice chair,” he says. “Feels good to sit here, doesn’t it?” He coughs out a laugh. I won’t answer him.

“Doesn’t it,” he goes on, a curl to his lip. “To sit in Eli’s chair? To have everything he had. I bet you like how it feels.”

“Why did you come here?”

“Just to check up on you. See how you’re getting on. How did things go for you at the mill?” He opens Eli’s drawers, rummaging through the papers. He takes out Eli’s watch and opens the case with a click. His fingers are unsteady, and he has to grip the watch with both hands to open it. “Does this run?”

“No, it’s broken. Unfixable.” Mike clicks the watch shut and holds it in his hand. He must be gripping it tightly to keep his fingers from trembling. My God, what has he done to himself? If Hill had lived, would he be like Mike and Buck? Better that he died than to become this.

“Then you won’t mind if I take it,” he says, and smiles again, laughing at me.

“Fine, take it and go.”

“I’ll be expecting a little more than Eli’s broken toys soon.” He turns the watch in his hand awkwardly, as if he is afraid he will drop it. His hand trembles. He slips the watch into a vest pocket. “You’re a smart girl, though, Gus. You probably already knew that.”

“There isn’t any money, Mike,” I blurt out. The garden door is open behind me, and I lean on it until it touches the wall. My hands reach for the small oval knob, cool metal. My shoulder rests against a pane of glass.

“That’s what Judge told you?” Mike sneers again. “Is that what they told you out at the mill?” Condescending and ugly.

“Yes, Mike, that’s what they told me. Why would they make something like that up?”

“Buck was out there with you, wasn’t he? You two are pretty chummy now, aren’t you? Why do you think he went out there with you? Huh, you ever think of that?”

“I don’t know, Mike. You know more about Buck than I do. Why don’t you tell me?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. For being so smart, you sure do act stupid, don’t you?”

“You’re drunk. If you don’t have anything to say, then get out.” I twist the door handle. I can hear the faint squeak and click of the latch.

Mike stands, his hand on the desk. He smiles again, sly and superior. “Wouldn’t you like to know what I know, sister? It’s worth a lot more than this broken watch that probably works fine once it’s wound up.”

“What do you know, Mike? What is this about?”

“Just about Judge and the kind of fellow he is. I don’t think you want to partner up with him, if you know what I mean. I think you need somebody who’s going to tell you the real story. Somebody who knows the real story.”

“I think I already know all I need to know about Judge. But thank you for your offer of help, if that’s what this is. Or do you need a bribe? Is that what you’re here for?”

“If I learned anything from old Eli, I learned you don’t give away something for nothing. You need me, Gus. You may think you’re smart, but you need me.” Mike steps toward me, and there is something so strange in his face. There’s anger, but there’s hurt, too. Something desperate. I have never seen him like this. He always had meanness in him. Now he’s a shadow of that person. His breath comes quickly, as if he has worn himself out from running.

“Are you ill, Mike?”

“What are you trying to say?” he growls and folds his arms tightly across his chest.

“You don’t look well.”

“Why in the hell do you want to say something like that?” He shudders and looks out at the garden. He wipes the sweat off his forehead with his hand. “There are people getting sick, aren’t there? I hear people talking about it. Is that how Eli really died? Is that what’s happening to everyone?” His eyes are suddenly fearful, darting to the windows and back to me. He wipes his hand on his pant leg.