Rhett Butler's People

by Donald McCaig

  Rosemary and Joshua bucked a tide of ambulances, blank-faced deserters, and walking wounded. Provost officers cursed and flailed at the men with the flats of their swords. The deserters ducked or left the road and kept moving south.

  The frosty Milky Way stretched across the heavens to the horizon, where it drowned in the ruddy penumbra of guns.

  “I am Captain John Haynes’s wife. He’s with General Stahl’s command. Sir, do you know my husband?”

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  The firing stopped.

  “Rhett Butler, my brother, he’s with General Forrest. Do you know Rhett Butler?”

  “Ma’am, I served with General Bates.”

  Joshua stopped on the roadside and took off his hat. “Miss Rosemary, this here horse ain’t goin’ no farther.”

  Tecumseh stood with legs splayed, head down.

  “Me and horse come a far piece with you and Mister John,” Joshua said. “But we ain’t comin’ no more.”

  Rosemary walked into the starry night alone.

  Dim yellow lanterns bobbed where two great armies had fought. Here and there on the gentle rolling landscape, a campfire flared. The air tasted like burned pepper and Rosemary smelled blood: rich and sour and salty.

  The faces of the men tending the wounded were black from powder and some were as bloody as the men they were ministering to. “My husband is with General Stahl’s brigade,” Rosemary appealed.

  The boy’s eyes shone like a minstrel’s in blackface. “Ma’am, I believe General Stahl’s been kilt. They was in the center of the line, twixt the house and the cotton gin.”

  “Where are his men now?”

  “Ma’am,” the boy said cautiously, “I believe most of General Stahl’s men are layin’ twixt the house and the cotton gin.”

  Dawn washed out the lanterns and dimmed the campfires. Wounded men begged for water. The earth bristled with frost.

  Rosemary tried to staunch a wounded officer’s bleeding, tying his belt above the mangled hole in his thigh. Frost glistened white on the blood he’d spilled. He convulsed and gasped and was astonished by death.

  The sun rose. Civilians came from Franklin to help and marvel.

  What was John Haynes wearing? Was he still stout? Had he grown a beard? Rosemary would have recognized her husband instantly by his walk or the angle at which he carried his head, but in the jumble of dead men, she couldn’t distinguish one from another.

  There were more dead on the gentle rise before the abandoned Federal breastworks.

  A wounded boy lifted himself onto one elbow.

  “I’ve no water,” Rosemary said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Some of the dead wore grim expressions, some were determined, others were savoring a joke. Three weeping soldiers knelt beside a dead comrade.

  To another boy, she said, “There’ll be someone to help you soon. I’m sorry. I’ve no water. I’m sorry.”

  Rosemary intercepted litter bearers. “I seek my husband. May I lift the cloth from his face?”

  The Federal breastworks were fronted by a spiked abatis where dead men were impaled, frozen in final attitudes. An elderly woman asked if Rosemary had seen her grandson, Dan Alan Rush. “We call him Dan Alan, account of his daddy was Dan, too.”

  “Mother, I’m sorry. I haven’t seen your grandson. I am seeking my husband, Captain John Haynes.”

  “My grandson was a bright spark.” The woman smiled. “They said he lies hereabouts.”

  Two riders came along the face of the breastworks.

  Rosemary waved frantically. “Oh dear God! Rhett! Rhett!” she shouted.

  The horsemen galloped and her brother jumped down and took her in his arms. “Rosemary! Oh Rosemary, I wish you had not seen this.”

  “Oh Rhett! Thank God! Dear Brother, you are alive!” Rhett’s uniform was torn and filthy, but he wasn’t wounded. Merciful heaven!

  “I haven’t found John. Rhett, do you know where he is?” Rosemary pushed hair off her eyes. “John may be hurt. …”

  “Yes, he may be hurt.”

  “Likely he’s kilt.” Rhett’s companion spat tobacco juice.

  “Shut up, Archie,” Rhett said.

  The leather-faced man beside her brother had the tip of his wooden leg in a makeshift scabbard. He had a poor man’s teeth and the lips of a hard one.

  Rhett said, “Rosemary, this was the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Then you ain’t never been to the penitentiary,” his companion said.

  “Archie”—Rhett pointed—“go through the Federal position and collect any repeating rifles you find.”

  As Archie left, Rhett said, “The Chinese believe if you save a man’s life, you are obligated to that man forever.” He took his sister’s icy hands and rubbed them. “Dear Rosemary, do you have nerve for this?”

  At her nod, Rhett boosted her onto his horse.

  The ditch before the Federal breastworks brimmed with dead men, packed so tightly that some were upright, unable to fall. Soldiers and civilians were dismantling the tableau to get at wounded men underneath.

  Rosemary asked, “Does John have a beard now?”

  “He is clean-shaven.”

  Rosemary had never thought she’d see an exposed human brain or an adolescent boy with a neat scorch mark around the bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Dizzy, she clasped the horse’s neck and pressed her face into its coarse mane. “I despair, Rhett. Dear Brother, John and I were so far apart.”

  “Rosemary, John often spoke of you. He never stopped loving you.”

  Rosemary wiped her eyes as they entered a farmyard where so many horses and men lay in death. It had been a prosperous small farm, but every outbuilding—the corncrib, cotton gin, woodshed, chicken coop—and the farmhouse itself had been perforated by hundreds of bullets. A dead Federal was pinned to the woodshed by a bayonet through his neck.

  When Rhett jerked the bayonet out, the dead soldier crumpled, groaning with expelling gas. “I knew it would come to this. I knew it! What sentimental urge brought me to fight for this ‘Glorious Cause’?” Tears streaked Rhett’s powder-blackened cheeks.

  “General Hood was out of temper. The Federals had slipped his net and he’d be damned if they’d get away. ‘Attack!’” Rhett whispered. “‘Prove you are brave enough to face fortifications!’” Her brother was honestly bewildered. “Twenty thousand men marching straight into the Federal guns, flags flying and officers waving swords, and, Rosemary”—Rhett’s eyes brimmed again—“the bands were playing ‘Dixie.’ ‘In Dixieland I’ll take my stand. To live and die in Dixie.’ Oh Rosemary. I’ve never, never …” Rhett dropped the bayonet beside the soldier it had slain. “More bad news, Sister. Belle Watling’s son, Tazewell, has enlisted. That boy followed my stupid, stupid example.”

  Archie Flytte rode up and said, “Ain’t no repeating rifles. Federals took ’em.” He stuffed his lip and, having settled his chew, said, “Your husband’s shot, ma’am. I met up with a feller from Captain Haynes’s regiment. They carried your husband into town.” He pointed toward Franklin.

  “Oh thank you. How can I thank you?”

  “Let me ’n’ your brother get about our business. Gen’r’l Forrest’s musterin’. We ’uns movin’ out.”

  Rosemary kissed her brother’s cheek. “Take every care, Rhett. You have custody of my heart.”

  Bounded by a gentle arc of the Harpeth River, Franklin, Tennessee, had nine hundred citizens, a fine new courthouse, and three academies, which, along with the First Baptist and the First Presbyterian Church, were now hospitals. Rosemary Haynes stepped around the blood, ignored the moans of the wounded, and inspected the ranks of dead men laid out-of-doors.

  She was directed to a private home on Market Street. The tidy frame house was marred by bloody drag marks across the porch and an amputated forearm in the coal scuttle beside the door.

  The elderly woman who answered Rosemary’s knock was dressed as primly as a schoolteacher.

  “I wa
s told my husband … Captain Haynes … might be here.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know them by name, dear, but do, please, come in.”

  John wasn’t with the four men lying in the front parlor, nor the three in the bed, nor the two on the bedroom floor.

  A surgeon, the elderly woman explained, visited every few hours, and in the meantime she and her sister saw to the men’s needs. “We’ve potato soup. We bring them water. They complain of the cold, though we’ve burned so much coal already. I hope for a mild winter.”

  Her younger sister tugged Rosemary’s sleeve. “My dear, there is one poor fellow out back in our garden. We put him there for the others’ sake.”

  A bullet had shattered John Haynes’s right elbow and that arm was turned backward at an impossible angle. Another bullet had bloodied the breast of his broadcloth coat, the same coat John wore when he left home. His trousers were rough homespun and too big for him. His feet were bare.

  When Rosemary knelt and kissed her husband’s brow, his flesh was warm, and for an exhilarating instant, Rosemary believed John was still alive. “Oh John, oh John,” she said. “I’m here. It’s your Rosemary, your own wife. Oh John, please …”

  The small garden had been neatly put away for the winter. The beanpoles were lashed together, the strawberry bed covered with straw. Wooden buckets were overturned under a light dusting of snow. Even as Rosemary kissed his cheeks, John Haynes’s flesh cooled.

  Behind Rosemary, the old woman said, “I am sorry, child. Your husband did not suffer and was conscious until the end. He believed you were coming to him and yearned to live long enough to see you one last time. When he understood that was not to be his fate, he begged me: ‘Tell my Rosemary to trust her good heart.’ He spoke of a daughter he would meet in Paradise.” The old woman touched Rosemary’s trembling shoulder. “Near the end, he became delirious. Child, your husband’s final words were, ‘Take me to my wife.’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Last Runner

  Just after midnight some six weeks later, Rhett Butler threaded his way through gin poles, drays, and stevedores on the Wilmington wharves, where the Banshee, the Let ’er Rip, and the Merry Widow were moored bow-to-stern. Sweating workers hove, skidded, suspended, and stowed cotton bales aboard the blockade runners. In the southwest, the night sky pulsed where the Federal guns were hammering Fort Fisher. Light off the wharves sparkled the black river.

  In his dark suit and captain’s cap, Tunis Bonneau was checking his manifest when Rhett said, “Captain Bonneau.”

  Turning at the interruption, Tunis’s frown became a grin. “Rhett Butler—I’ll be darned to tarnation!” His glasses gleaming in the torchlight, Tunis clasped his friend’s hand.

  The stacks of the adjacent runner puffed heavy black smoke. Tunis gave his manifest to a crewman. “Tell Mr. MacLeod get up steam.”

  “You believe Fisher will fall?” Rhett asked.

  “The Federals got a mighty landing party and a mighty fleet. Maybe Fisher beat ’em off, maybe she won’t. If she falls while we’re still in Wilmington, they’ll capture my boat.”

  “You heard about John Haynes?”

  Tunis removed his cap. “Ruthie wrote me. Mr. Haynes, he was a good man. All the time I knew him, I never heard him do nothin’ to hurt nobody.”

  “At Franklin…” Rhett cleared his throat. “At Franklin, John wanted to be certain the men in his rear rank saw their officer ….” Rhett swallowed. “So he stuck his sword through his hat and waved it over his head.” Rhett cleared his throat.

  When a burly crewman approached, Captain Bonneau stayed him with a gesture.

  “Tunis, what in God’s name was John Haynes doing charging Federal breastworks with his hat on the tip of his sword? John Haynes? John was the most pacific man on earth.”

  Stevedores skidded five-hundred-pound cotton bales onto slings and eased them onto the Widow’s deck. The smoke that rolled from her stacks settled as a noxious fog on sweating men and cotton.

  “Did Miss Rosemary … did she bring Mr. Haynes home?”

  “Ah, Tunis … John’s buried in Franklin. Things as they are, Rosemary couldn’t get him back to Charleston.”

  Tunis’s crewman said, “Mr. MacLeod’s compliments, Captain. He’ll have steam up in a quarter hour.”

  Tunis dismissed the man with a nod. Rhett wiped his eyes. “Damn smoke,” he said.

  Tunis looked away from his friend. “My boy Nat’s startin’ to talk. First thing he said was ‘boat.’ Ruthie says he calls every blessed thing ‘boat.’ He’ll be a sailor, like his daddy.”

  “Good news, friend. Calls for a celebration.”

  “Some other night, Brother Rhett. I got to be in open water before sunup.”

  “Tunis, I’ve a favor to beg.”

  “Sure, Rhett. Anything.”

  Tunis’s smile vanished when Rhett told him what he wanted. He set his lips and jammed his captain’s cap down on his head. “Can’t do it, Rhett. Can’t chance waitin’ another day. If you had that boy here now, course I’d take him, but I can’t wait. The Federals’re corkin’ the bottle. What wants to be drunk wants to be drunk tonight.”

  Rhett breathed a tuneless whistle. “That’s that, then. Seems a shame a fifteen-year-old boy won’t get a chance to grow up, but I guess boys aren’t worth as much as they once were.” Rhett opened his cigar case but closed it and put it away. “Taz won’t surrender, Tunis. He’ll get himself killed.”

  Beside them, the Banshee’s lines were loosed. Her great paddle wheels revolved as stevedores leapt for the wharf. As she churned into the current, her helmsman saluted Captain Bonneau.

  Tunis clicked open his gold hunter. “Banshee will be in Nassau Monday. If I cast off now, I’d beat her there. Rhett, I… Tarnation!”

  Tunis closed his eyes and his lips moved in prayer. When he opened his eyes again, he smiled; not a big smile. “Rhett, what’s say you and me celebrate my Nat’s first word? I’ll wait on your boy. Might be Fort Fisher will keep ’em off one day longer. Can’t know what them crazy Johnny Rebs might get up to.”

  Near noon the next day, Major Edgar Puryear climbed to the second floor of the Commercial Hotel. At his knock, a barefoot, bare-chested, unshaven Rhett Butler let him in. “Good morning, Edgar, if it is still morning.” At the sink, Rhett emptied the water jug over his head. “Edgar, never drink rum with a sailorman.” He yawned. “I trust Fort Fisher remains in Confederate hands?”

  Edgar Puryear tossed an envelope onto the bureau.

  Rhett opened the window, leaned outside, and listened to the distant guns. “Don’t sulk, Edgar. I won’t forget you for this.”

  Edgar Puryear touched a scar on his nose. “Isn’t he the boy who struck me? Your son.”

  “My ‘ward,’ Edgar. ‘Ward.’” Rhett chuckled. “You’re not the first man ever laid low by Venus.”

  Edgar didn’t share Rhett’s amusement.

  Rhett took the paper from the envelope and examined it. “Taz’s orders, signed by the General himself. Good, excellent. By the way, how do you get on with Bragg?”

  “Braxton Bragg enjoys flattery.”

  “Ah. You’ve a gift for that.” Rhett took a fresh shirt from his carpetbag.

  Puryear cleared his throat. “After the War, you’ll be the richest man in the South.”

  “And this might be a good time for the farsighted soldier to explore postwar employment?”

  “It’ll be a new shuffle after the War. There’ll be opportunities for the right sort of man.”

  Rhett said, “Umm.”

  “You were celebrating with Captain Bonneau? The nigger captain? Rhett, you have some strange friends.”

  Despite the raw January air, Rhett stood at the open window, hands clasped behind his back. He spoke as though Edgar Puryear weren’t in the room. “When I woke this morning, I was remembering a time Tunis and I took a notion to sail his father’s skiff down the coast to Beaufort. Damn fool idea—fifty miles in open water—but we s
et sail without a care. That sky—I do believe the sky was bluer in those days. I remember the sun on my back, the hard seat of the skiff, the snap of the sail. So many years have passed, but I cannot remember a happier day.”

  That afternoon, the wharves were quiet. Smoke wisping from her stacks, the Merry Widow was the only runner left in Wilmington.

  Rhett shook hands with the crew he’d once commanded. Mismatched paint mottled the Widow’s hull where shell holes had been patched, and the starboard paddle-wheel housing was new. In the engine room, new iron braces clamped oversized engines to their frames. Mr. MacLeod, the engineer, greeted Rhett with a reproach. “Your last Charleston run, Captain Butler! My vessel still suffers from it!”

  Just at dusk this 14th of January 1865, the last Confederate blockade runner slipped her moorings and eased into the Cape Fear River. The long gray ship was one of the fastest vessels afloat; some said she was the fastest.

  The Widow hugged the western shore, making just enough speed to maintain steerageway.

  The Federals had landed above Fort Fisher and severed the fort’s land connection to Wilmington. Federal campfires dotted the narrow peninsula between the Atlantic and the river.

  When their pickets spotted the Widow, the Federals gathered on the bank to see the legendary runner. The river was too wide here for their field artillery, and as the graceful boat slipped downstream, these Yankee soldiers threw their hats in the air and cheered her.

  Tunis anchored below Fort Fisher, just above the bar where the river emerged into open ocean.

  The Federal fleet was pounding the great sand fort, and from the Widow’s deck, Fort Fisher was a colossal sandstorm: sand plumes and dirty sand clouds tossed aloft by artillery concussions. Tunis shouted to Rhett over the pandemonium. “Ten o’clock, Rhett! You hear?” Tunis tapped his watch. “You ain’t here by ten o’clock, with or without your boy, I’m pullin’ out.”

  Rhett bowed. “I am obliged to you, Captain Bonneau.”

  “And don’t you ever tell Ruthie I done it!”

  Rowing himself to shore in the Widow’s dinghy, Rhett tasted sand in his teeth.