Donald McCaig - Rhett Butler’s People

A raindrop. Another. Raindrops puffed the dry lane.

"This gent is Tazewell Watling. You might remember him.”

"My escort at the Quadroon Ball," Scarlett said, even though her heart was rebelling: No. No! What's wrong with me? I should be in Rhett's arms!

Rain splashed her cheeks.

Tazewell Watling turned beet red. "I was a fool, Mrs. Butler. I pray you'll forgive me.”

Fool, no fool — what did Scarlett care? "You've been in the sun," Rhett noted.

Anxiously, Scarlett touched her tanned cheeks. "My complexion ...”

"Dear brother ..." Rosemary kissed her brother on both cheeks. "You are here and everything will be all right. I know it will." Rosemary turned to Rhett's companion, "Mr. Watling, I am Rosemary, Rhett's sister. I'm so glad ... so very, very glad. Come with me and I'll show you where to unsaddle your horses.”

Scarlett said, "Dilcey, tell Mammy the prodigal has returned. Take the children and give them a bath. They're filthy.”

Louis Valentine was catching raindrops on his outstretched tongue.

Wade was grinning like an idiot. When Rhett set Ella down, she clung to his legs until he said, "Go get cleaned up, sweetheart. Your mother and I want to talk.”

Rain washed Scarlett's forehead and hair.

Rhett said, "Scarlett, honey, show me your hands.”

Scarlett tucked them in her armpits.

"By God, Mrs. Butler. It's good to see you.”

The earth was warm and wet under Scarlett's feet. Soaked through, her gown clung to her body like a nightdress. Scarlett was so happy, she thought she might faint. So she lifted her chin defiantly. "Is it now, Mr. Butler? Weren't you in such a tearing hurry to leave me?"

The next morning, Scarlett stepped onto Tara's veranda and shaded her eyes against the sunrise. Was that a horse in the river fields? Rhett was hunkered over a cotton ridge, examining plants. After some time, he remounted and proceeded up the rise to the steading, touching the broad brim of his planter's hat as he rode by. "Good morning, Mrs. Butler," he said. "I believe we can expect another fine day.”

"I expect we can, Mr. Butler." Scarlett's smile was lazy and sly.

Later, with Wade Hampton's enthusiastic help, Rhett visited Tara's hog pens, the meat house, the cotton press, and the weedy upland fields. He checked every harness in the tack room. Wade showed Rhett the post by the milking barn where Ella had found Boo's head and they visited Will Benteen's grave.

After supper, Rhett perched on the top rail of the corral while Rosemary and Taz brought Tara's horses out of the barn one by one.

That evening, Rhett invited Wade Hamilton to join the grown-ups at dinner, which the beaming Pork served in the dining room. Wade was tongue-tied with good behavior. Tazewell Watling proved to be a funny, self-deprecating raconteur. His deadpan descriptions of how sophisticated Parisians reacted to "l'Americain's" Creole French had everyone laughing.

Over coffee and Mammy's pecan pie, Scarlett asked Taz what cotton would fetch in the fall.

"Sea Island middling: thirty cents. Piedmont: thirteen to eighteen.”

"As little as that?" Rhett rose. "Scarlett, honey, perhaps you'll show me Tara's books.”

The light glowed in Scarlett's office until very late.

Scarlett woke from a dreamless sleep when Rhett's footsteps hesitated at her bedroom door. His name swam toward the surface of her sleepy mind and she would have called him, but he passed on.

Next morning at breakfast, Rhett asked what everybody wanted from Atlanta.

"I'll accompany you," Tazewell said. "I've gifts for my mother.”

Scarlett took a breath. "Mr. Watling, please convey my best regards to your mother. Without Belle's warning, my husband might have ridden into a fatal ambush.”

Rhett chuckled. "My, my, Mrs. Butler. How very... predictable my life would have been without you.”

When Wade wanted to go, too, Rhett said, "Be ready at the horse barn in ten minutes. We won't wait.”

Wade clattered up the stairs.

Rhett turned to Scarlett. "Rosemary says the Watlings have fled the county.”

"So Sheriff Talbot says. Rhett, Talbot said he knew you?”

When Bonnie Blue died and when Melanie died, Rhett had hugged his sorrow to himself, as if sorrow were all he had left. Now he said softly, "One day, I'll tell you about Tunis Bonneau.”

Scarlett and Rosemary waved them off and Scarlett turned to her friend.

"My God, has Rhett been here only two days?”

Rosemary said, "My brother can be rather ... daunting.”

"He's changed, Rosemary. He's the same Rhett he was, but he's different, too. I ... I feel like a maiden again." She paused and in a soft voice added, "I pray life will be good to me!”

"Of course it will, dear.”

"Do you really believe so? Oh, please say you do!”

Only Louis Valentine, who had mastered six of McGuffey's seven readers was disappointed when Rosemary canceled school that day. Beau asked to accompany Rosemary to Twelve Oaks, but she said no, he could go after his father was feeling better.

Rosemary packed a hamper with corn bread, Mammy's greens and side meat, and the remnants of last night's pecan pie.

The rain had refreshed the red dirt countryside and birds were twittering.

Rosemary smiled when she thought about her brother and Scarlett. As if by mutual consent, they played the long and happily married man and wife, toying with each other, building tension until the air between them crackled. Last night when Rhett escorted Scarlett into the dining room, the rustle of her crisp petticoats had been electric.

Ashley's modest home was disagreeable.

Unwashed clothing heaped a corner and dirty dishes cluttered the dry sink. Ashley's precious books were strewn here and there and his bedclothes were ropes of discontent.

Rosemary threw the door and windows open and hummed as she cleaned. When the room was to her satisfaction, she picked lilac-pink roses for a jar beside her picnic hamper.

She brought The Gardens of England onto the porch and sat listening to a newsbee, a swallow's chirrup, the distant tap of a woodpecker.

The sun warmed her face, and Rosemary turned pages slowly, pausing at each hand-tinted daguerreotype. Gardeners impose human values on disorderly nature, knowing full well that nature must win in the end. Gardening is gentle gallantry.

When Ashley arrived he flipped his reins over his horse's head, loosed the crutch tied behind his saddle, pulled his sound foot out of the stirrup, swung it over the horse's neck, and slid down the horse's flank onto his crutch and uninjured foot. "As you see," he said, "I'm not completely helpless." On foot and crutch, crabwise, he clumped up the steps into the cabin.

He hadn't shaved. His trousers were smeared with red clay.

He glanced at the roses, "Old Pink Daily makes a poor cut flower. The petals fall off.”

Rosemary said, "Should I regret picking them?”

Ashley slumped in a chair and leaned his crutch against the dry sink.

"I'm sorry, Rosemary. You don't find me at my best. Mose says Rhett is back. That must be a relief.”

Rosemary retied her bonnet. "You'll find a pecan pie in the hamper.

Perhaps it will sweeten your disposition.”

"Oh Rosemary, please don't leave. I'm sorry. I don't mean to drive you away.”

She hesitated, "There are greens, and Mammy's corn bread, too.”

Ashley said, "I am partial to greens and corn bread. Thank you, Rosemary.

Won't you bide for a while?" He massaged his underarm, which was sore from the crutch. "I never knew how ... convenient two legs are.”

"Ashley, you tried to help, and I am grateful. You risked your life...”

"I got Will Benteen killed.”

"Shut your mouth, Major Wilkes. You will not blame yourself.”

Ashley grimaced. "Rosemary... dear, kind Rosemary, you've never been sick of yourself. You've never prayed for the courage to end — “

"Ashley Wilkes! Need I remind you my husband took his own life?”

He dropped his head in his hands and groaned.

Rosemary rapped a spoon against a bowl and said, more tenderly, "Eat, Ashley. It'll put iron in your blood.”

He did and muttered, "It tastes like a rusty barrel hoop.”

Rosemary smiled at Ashley's tiny joke and thought, It's a start anyway.

Thank you, dear Lord.

Ashley wouldn't murder himself. Ashley Wilkes had no dreadful secrets to rise up and swallow him.

When Rhett and Wade returned from Atlanta, Wade was wearing his new hat at the same jaunty angle Rhett wore his.

Taz had stayed in town. "Belle and Taz have some catching up to do,”

Rhett told Scarlett, adding, "Belle hasn't seen hide nor hair of the Watlings.

She thinks they've gone west. 'Poor Poppa ain't got no home.' “

"I hate that old fool," Scarlett said.

"A lifetime of disappointments can make a dangerous man.”

That afternoon, after the children finished their lessons, Rhett asked, "Who wants to learn how to ride?”

The smaller children tried to outshriek each other. Rhett held up a hand and said, "We'll go to the horse barn and I'll teach you, provided you do exactly as I say.”

Scarlett blanched.

Rhett touched her cheek. "Sweetheart, remember how much Bonnie Blue loved her pony? Bonnie would have wanted us to remember that.”

Rhett set each child on a tame workhorse and led it around the corral on a longe line. "Ella, hang on to the horse's mane.

"Beau, you must look where you want your horse to go!”

Scarlett went into the house to her office. On the desktop, tied with the black silk ribbon befitting important documents, were the deeds to Tara and her Atlanta property. In appropriate places, her loans were declared "satisfied.”

Scarlett dropped her head into her hands and cried.

In the morning, Rhett rode into Jonesboro, where he crossed the tracks into Darktown. He reined up at Reverend J. Robert Maxwell's modest home next to the First African Baptist Church. Rhett tied his horse to the picket fence and waited until a plump young man came onto the front porch. "Good morning, Reverend Maxwell," Rhett said. "Do you suppose we'll get rain today?”

The young man assessed the sky. "I don't believe we will. I believe it will be hot.”

"It might at that. I'm Rhett Butler.”

"Yes, sir. I heard you were at Tara Plantation. Won't you come in? My wife is just making coffee.”

The Reverend's parlor boasted one reading chair, three straight chairs, and a New Haven clock on the mantel. The bare oak floor and front windows gleamed. The men took chairs facing each other and discussed weather and crops until Mrs. Maxwell (who seemed young to be married) set a tin tray on a third chair between them.

When Rhett thanked her, Mrs. Maxwell blushed and withdrew.

The men busied themselves with cream and sugar. "Mr. Benteen was a fair employer," the preacher said. "I wish there were more like him.”

"Most planters don't understand free labor any better than free laborers do," Rhett said.

"That's true, sir. That's true." The young man nodded. "It's a new world for us all.”

"A better one, I hope.”

The young man cocked his head, listening for overtones. "Some white men don't hope so." He eyed Rhett over the rim of his coffee cup. "I've heard about you, Mr. Butler. The Reverend William Prescott preached in my church.”

"Reverend Prescott is a powerful preacher.”

"Praise the Lord. William told me you shot his son-in-law.”

"Tunis Bonneau was my friend.”

The young preacher set his cup down. "That's what William said." He ran his hand over his face as if brushing away cobwebs. "I pray those terrible days are over.”

The mantel clock ticked.

Maxwell continued: "Reverend Prescott related a curious story. He said you bought a ship from his daughter — a sunken ship.”

"The Merry Widow sank in my service." Rhett leaned forward. "What did William Prescott say about his daughter?”

"Mrs. Bonneau has moved to Philadelphia. She has her son, Nat, to think about." Maxwell put down his coffee cup and went to the window.

When he turned, sunlight haloed his head and Rhett squinted to make out his expression. "Mr. Butler, you may know we are asking the legislature for negro normal schools so our children can be educated by negro teachers.”