The Rebel Wife (6 page)

The ice is melting through the cloth. It almost burns, it is so cold. The water streams across my wrist, and I want to scratch at it. I can hardly think for this headache. And this heat, dear Lord, it’s hot as an oven in here.

How can Eli have done this? It cannot be. Judge must be mistaken. He seemed to hardly know himself what Eli did and didn’t have. Eli’s debts? He never seemed to worry about money. Wasn’t that what Mama wanted from the marriage? Wasn’t that what I married him for?

There was more reason than that. Damn Buck. He’s to blame for me marrying Eli. That’s not right, either. Mama wanted me to marry Eli. She didn’t really know about Buck. It wasn’t a baby. No, I did not let it become a baby. But for Emma, I don’t know what I would have done. I was too far along for Eli to ever think it was his. Damn Buck. And Judge, too, he wanted me to marry Eli instead of his own son. He pushed me like Mama did. We always did what Judge said—after Pa died. He decided when Hill and Mike would go to school and where. He treated Hill about like another son. Buck was like his brother. He sent them to the university in Tuscaloosa together.

And then the war broke out.

Weems blames Judge for the war. At least men like Judge. So many men ranted on slavery and secession for so long, there was no room for anything but war. And this is what it got us all. I’m sure Judge believes we would have won but for men like Weems. Judge was never one to compromise. Not until after the war. He went in breathing fire and brimstone, and Weems was scorched by him. Judge was such a fire-breather. He signed the Ordinance of Secession in Montgomery with all those other men. He fired his largest hunting rifle fourteen times from the front yard of his house in honor of the Confederacy. And he outfitted a full company of the 26th Alabama.

While Judge was firing off his rifle, the Weems family was shut inside their house with the shutters closed. They refused to take down their United States flag until someone tore it down and nearly burnt their house down around them. After the secession convention, men came and dragged him and one of his brothers into the street and whipped them like slaves. Calling them yellow dogs and cowards. Eli said Weems thought Judge ordered it, or that Judge’s speeches had incited the violence. You don’t forget something like that.

Eli wasn’t a part of all that. Not then. He was locked away in his counting room. He helped the Yankees, though. That’s what Mama said before he started asking to call on me. He was head of the local Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands by then. Hill was dead. Mike was still missing. It was Eli who came out on top. Out of nowhere he appeared, no name and no family. He had been working at Val Heyward’s store, and when Val died, Eli took it over. Eli was smart. Who could say that he was wrong? How many men back then envied him for his influence? He was a moneylender, too. Mama would whisper across the fence to her friends that he robbed graves. And he was a Republican, which was even worse. An opportunist. Among the first to be called scalawag. He led the men like Weems and all the newly freed Negro men into some sort of political party while Judge and men like him were fairly banished. That was when Eli and Weems became friends. And now Judge comes to tell me that everything Eli has is gone. I can’t believe it.

When Eli asked me to marry him, I refused to see him and sneaked out to see Judge. There were bluecoats on the street corners. They were boys, war-hardened though, and we had heard so many stories of insults to women. Mama said that the commanding officer wanted to make a show of force in Albion to intimidate the Knights of the White Cross. There seemed too few of them to make any difference.

The Knights had appeared over the winter. They dressed in dark red hooded cassocks emblazoned with a white cross and claimed that they were the fallen crusaders of the war come back to take their vengeance on the Yankees and the freedmen. A Negro man had been found dead, shot in the face on the road to Chattanooga with a whitewash cross on his chest. Since then rumors had spread, each day bringing more tales of Union sympathizers harassed, black families burnt alive in their homes, men hanged from trees, white and black, Republican and scalawag and freedmen, subject to some terrifying justice. They would leave notes scribbled with crossed sabers and owls and coffins, telling whole families they had a few days to leave town. Everyone said the war was over, but there was no end to the dead and wounded. They just didn’t print them up on casualty lists anymore.

Judge’s house stood amid bare trees. Late in the war they used it to quarter Union soldiers. They took out their wrath on the house as if it had belonged to Jeff Davis. They slashed the chairs and sofas, shattered china that had been in the family for generations. They pilfered the silver and broke up the dining room chairs and tables for firewood. They slashed family portraits and tore open the sofas, looking for hidden money or silver. The kitchen became their cesspit. They scrawled profanities over the French wallpaper.

When the war ended, Judge came back from Montgomery to all that. The soldiers vacated the house, leaving the damage for Judge and Sally. He was kept a prisoner in his house for months because he refused to take the oath.

Sally showed me up the stairs to Judge’s study. She must have been a young girl when Judge bought her, before Mrs. Heppert died giving birth to Buck. She was a yellow mulatto and pretty—she still is. As Emma remained with me and Mama, Sally had remained at Judge’s side.

“Augusta,” Judge said as he rose from his chair. He looked surprised to see me. It was warm in his study. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. Legal books lined the shelves and a pair of chairs sat before a fire. The logs snapped and spat sparks up the chimney. “What are you doing here?”

“Please, Judge, I need your help.”

“What is it?” He sat down and watched me.

“It’s Mama, Judge. She wants me to marry Eli Branson,” I burst out.

“Yes, I know,” he said. His voice was tender but resigned. He looked at the pages on the small table beside him. “I would find Mr. Branson objectionable, too, if I were you.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

“You must stop it, Judge! You must talk to Mama!”

“I have spoken with Elsie. I understand what she thinks she’s getting. She says she only has your interest at heart. She believes this is best for you. For both of you.”

“Do
you
think it’s best for us?” I had my hands out to him, pleading. I debased myself in front of him.

He only shook his head and stared at his papers. “Here,” he said, picking up one of the sheets. “This is what
I
am being forced to do.”

The page was covered in Judge’s clean, even hand. A letter to General Swayne and President Johnson, seeking a pardon.

“There is no possible way they will give it to me unless some sort of miracle occurs. We gambled and lost, and this is what we are compelled to do. Beg forgiveness when we have done nothing to be forgiven. That is the cost of being vanquished.” His eyes hardened, and he shook his head again. “I understand your antipathy, Augusta, but I am lucky to have my own freedom. You should consider yourself lucky not to face much worse. It is a stroke of fortune that Eli Branson is courting you. What if you were a plain girl? Where would you and your mother find yourselves? Starving, most likely, like half the families we know. The earth has shifted under our feet.”

“That can’t be, Judge,” I said, thinking of Buck and his betrayal. He had left me alone, and even when I looked for him, I could not find him. Not at his father’s house. Not anywhere. I needed desperately to speak to him. He had to know. I had to tell him. I knew if I could speak to him, I could make him marry me. “There must be another way.”

“I’m tired, Augusta. And you are trying my patience. I have spoken reason to you, and you won’t hear me. There is no other way.” He shuffled the papers and picked up his pen, dismissing me without a glance.

“Is—is Buck here?” I asked haltingly.

Judge’s eyes held pity or maybe contempt. I could see it. He remained unmoved. “You must put Buck out of your head. It is an unsuitable match.”

What an effect those words had on me. I abandoned everything I had thought to say to him. Poor broken Buck. Who knows what was in his heart? He was never the same after the war. No one was. A week later, I was married to Eli. February 10, 1866.

And now Eli is dead. Someone must know about his money. It can’t be as simple as Judge says. Judge can’t be the only one to know.

Simon is in the far back of the garden. I shouldn’t bother him, but I have to ask. No one else knew Eli as Simon did. Simon may not have known Eli that well after all. Who knows? I lived with him for those years, but what did I learn from him? Nothing. I didn’t want to learn from him. I assumed the things I knew made me superior to him. Maybe they were. What did that pride gain me? Were they right to make me marry Eli? I don’t know. Maybe Simon will.

He is working at one end of the grape arbor. Though the catalpa tree shades him, it is still so hot. He wears leather gloves and rips at a large weed, pulling it up and tossing it aside. The weeds grow in clusters with hairy stems and spiked leaves. He uproots them and then digs into the soil with a trowel, searching for the pale roots that look like undergrown white radishes. He wipes his arm across his forehead. This heat goes on. It’s too early for this kind of heat. So heavy and damp. The air feels thick, as if you have to drag it in to breathe.

He stands and grasps a bundle of the weeds and heaves back. They snap and leave their roots behind. He tosses the weeds on the pile. They seem to wilt right away. Some of them have small purple flowers just starting to bloom. The grape vines are a tender green.

“These weeds will spoil the grapes if I let them go,” he says. He nods at the pile, his hands on his waist and his face streaked with sweat.

“Simon, you shouldn’t be doing any work today.”

He nods, looking at the weeds. “I’d rather keep my hands busy, ma’am. And this vetch won’t wait for me.”

“Is that what it is?”

“Yes, ma’am. It must have blown in here this spring from across the way.” He nods at the Sheffield garden. Their carriage house is weathered with split boards. Masses of the purple flowers and spiky leaves climb its sides. He lets out a sigh. He is waiting for me, but I can’t speak.

“Is there anything wrong, ma’am?”

“No, Simon.” How on earth can I ask him? It’s so inappropriate. I was Eli’s wife. I should know these things.

“Can I help you with something?” He frowns at me.

I must look a fool, sweating like mad in this black dress. “Yes, I...”

“Ma’am?”

“Simon, were you familiar with Mr. Branson’s business affairs?” This is ridiculous. Asking a Negro man about my husband’s business.

Simon’s face doesn’t change. He kneels at the vines and picks up the trowel, digging into the earth with a sharp stroke. “To some extent. Did you have some questions about Mr. Branson’s business?” He doesn’t look at me. He levers up the trowel, and the dirt spills over his hand. The earth falls away and leaves a bundle of the white radish-like roots. Simon handles them loosely. He brushes off the dirt and throws the waste on the pile of dead weeds. It’s so hot out here. He shouldn’t be working at midday.

“Well, I guess I do. I don’t know.”

He sticks the trowel deep into the earth and lets it go. He looks up at me. “Did you speak with Mr. Heppert about it?” His expression is bland, and his eyes are calm. But his voice. There is something knowing in his voice.

“Yes, I did.”

“He came to you very quickly. Did he have anything to say about Mr. Eli’s business affairs?” He goes back to his work, feeling deep in the earth with the trowel and levering it up, searching for more roots.

“Yes, he did. Some things that I find confusing.”

“What was confusing?”

“He said that—Well, he said that Eli has gone bust.”

Simon separates the dirt from the roots and throws them back on the pile. He puts a hand on the grass to push himself up and stands in front of me. “It’s very warm out here. Maybe you’d like to sit under the arbor?”

“Is Eli—is he in so much debt?”

“He had some difficulties in recent years. What did Mr. Heppert tell you?” Simon wipes his hands on his pants, leaving behind traces of earth. He watches me as if he can see the answer in my features, in the number of times I blink or the pace of my breath.

“He said that Eli’s estate is tied up with debts. That Eli nearly made the bank go bust. Is it true?”

There is no one around. We are alone.

“I don’t know. If it is, I am sure Eli had a good reason for it.” Simon looks down at the holes around the grapevines, looking from one to the other as if he is asking them my question. He doesn’t even say “Mr. Eli.” He is too familiar with everyone. The sticky black earth clings to his gloves.

“I don’t see how Eli could be in trouble like that.”

“Well, ma’am, I guess politics is an expensive business. People spend a lot of money to keep things running.”

“Politics? Judge said it was the panic.”

He looks up at me. “Is that what Mr. Heppert said?” He considers for a moment. “I guess he’s right, too. He knows as well as anyone the cost of politics.”

He goes too far. Is he insulting Judge?

“Judge doesn’t need to spend money in politics. He’s very respected. He always has been.”

Simon almost smiles at me. “Yes, ma’am.” He shows a corner of white teeth where his mouth curls on one side. “I am sure he can answer all your questions now that he has taken charge of things.”

“Judge is a very accomplished man, Simon.”

“Yes, ma’am. You could not find yourself a better adviser.”

Simon is full of sarcasms. His tone is flat, but he means to be snide.

“Eli himself respected Judge. Why else would he name him trustee?” The sun is so hot. The sweat streams down my temples so I can’t wipe it away fast enough.

Simon raises his eyebrows. “Eli made Mr. Heppert the trustee?”

“Of course. It’s in his will.”

“Have you seen his will?”

“No, Judge told me. He said he would bring the will to show me.”