Rhett Butler's People

by Donald McCaig

  Rhett mulled her idea before breaking into the biggest grin Belle had ever seen on his face. He chuckled. “My, my, Miss Belle. What will people say?”

  Dr. Meade peeked outside and drew the curtain.

  Rhett gestured to the frightened, thoroughly subdued Wednesday-Night Democrats. “Atlanta’s most respectable citizens, dear me. Dear, dear me. Belle, you’re as clever as you are good.” He cleared his throat. “Boys, I sure as hell hope you’re good at charades.”

  After Dr. Meade bandaged Ashley’s shoulder, Rhett fashioned a sling and draped the man in his cloak. Rhett patted raw whiskey on Ashley’s pale cheeks.

  Calm as General Lee issuing battle orders, Rhett spelled out everyone’s roles in the performance. “Wilkes,” Rhett said, “if we can’t convince them, you’re hung. The Yankees will be waiting at your house, so we must be very drunk, falling-down drunk. Elsing, can you play the drunken fool? I know you can play the sober one.”

  When Rhett splashed Ashley’s shirt with whiskey, the reek overpowered the blood smell.

  “Dr. Meade? Mr. Merriwether? You’ll have starring roles!”

  “What about me?” Henry Hamilton demanded.

  Rhett thought for a minute before shaking his head. “Sorry, Henry, all our speaking parts are cast. You’ll have to be stage manager.”

  Rhett and Hugh Elsing supported Ashley down the back stairs and out where MacBeth saddled their horses. The cold air revived Ashley and he mounted without assistance. In the saddle, he swayed for a perilous instant before he straightened to say, “Do or die trying.”

  After they rode away, Belle pressed a double eagle into her bouncer’s hand. “MacBeth, you don’t know nothin’.”

  MacBeth’s eyes were old with understanding. “No, ma’am, I never knew that Miz Kennedy was skeered this afternoon and I never heard no Klansmen was gonna shoot up Shantytown and I never heard no Yankees was goin’ to bushwhack ’em. Never heard nothin’ about Captain Butler savin’ the Kluxers. No, ma’am. I’ze just a dumb nigger. I don’t know nothin’.”

  “You said … Mrs. Kennedy?”

  “Miz Kennedy what owns the sawmills.”

  “Was she … hurt?”

  “Naw, Miss Belle. Two thiefs grabbed at her, but that Tara nigger, Big Sam, he kilt one ’n’ chased the other’n off. Skeered Miz Kennedy plumb to death.”

  “Just ‘skeered’?”

  “In Shantytown, one skeered white lady is a world of trouble.”

  Listening for Federal patrols, the three riders slipped through Atlanta’s dark streets and alleyways. As they neared Ashley Wilkes’s home, the night air seemed to thicken. Wind swirled dust at their horses’ hooves.

  “Sing, my thespians, sing! Make a joyful noise unto the Yankees!” Rhett leaned back and bellowed Sherman’s hated marching song:

  “How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound,

  How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found,

  How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,

  While we were marching through Georgia.”

  “Elsing! Damn it! Sing!” Shouting and weeping Sherman’s anthem, three drunks rollicked up to the house where Captain Tom Jaffery and his men were waiting to arrest Klansmen with blood on their hands.

  At the Chateau Rouge, Belle directed Act Two. Dr. Meade tried to refuse his role. “I’m to brawl in a … a sporting house? I’ve never been in a sporting house!”

  “More’s the pity. You’re in one now. Might be you’d druther hang?”

  When Meade patted too little whiskey on himself, Henry Hamilton doused him so thoroughly, Grandpa Merriwether pocketed his pipe. The thoroughly respectable Henry yanked their shirts out of their trousers, popped Grandpa Merriwether’s top vest button, and tugged Dr. Meade’s collar askew.

  Hands on hips, Belle surveyed them. “Gents, you sure look the part. I spect you got hidden talents.”

  Shortly afterward, two of Atlanta’s first citizens, apparently drunk as lords, tumbled into Belle’s parlor, punching each other ineffectually. Belle yelled for MacBeth to fetch the provosts. Since some officers in the parlor were supposed to be searching for Klansman, this occasioned a general exodus as, getting into the spirit of things, Meade and Merriwether punched and slapped each other, shouting invective rarely heard in the Chapeau Rouge.

  The provosts found two gentlemen rolling in Belle’s flower bed. Their muffled threats and curses were indistinguishable from muffled laughter.

  Protesting that hers was an orderly house, Belle wrung her hands as the provosts separated the combatants and arrested them. From the corner of her mouth, Belle told MacBeth, “You don’t know nothin’.”

  “I’ze an ignorant nigger,” MacBeth assured her.

  Two hours after the provosts left, Archie Flytte brought a buggy around the back of the Chapeau Rouge with the bodies he’d collected from the Sullivan house.

  “Rhett fooled the Yankees?” Belle asked anxiously. Archie spat.

  Belle was weak-kneed with relief. “Mrs. Wilkes’s husband … he’s safe?”

  “I reckon.”

  Belle eyed him curiously. “You don’t like Captain Butler, do you?”

  “Used to be beholden to Butler. I work for Mrs. Wilkes now.”

  MacBeth and Archie laid out two dead men in the vacant lot behind the Chapeau Rouge. Archie placed a recently fired pistol beside each man’s cold right hand and doused their uncaring faces with whiskey. He asked MacBeth, “Nigger, you scared of the Klan?”

  “Oh yes, sir,” MacBeth replied. “I mighty scared.”

  “Don’t got to be scared of these two.” Archie nudged a corpse with his foot. “They’s ‘gentlemen.’”

  He tucked the empty bottle into a dead man’s armpit.

  The Atlanta Journal reported that two Atlanta gentlemen had gotten drunk, quarreled, and shot each other. The city was shocked and fascinated.

  Belle and her Cyprians were summoned to Federal headquarters, where they swore on the holy Bible that the suspected Klansmen, Ashley Wilkes, Hugh Elsing, Henry Hamilton, Dr. Meade, and Grandfather Merriwether, had been in the Chapeau Rouge on the night in question, carousing with the notorious Captain Butler, as was their Wednesday-night custom. The group called themselves the Wednesday-Night Democrats to deceive their wives. “They raise hell at my joint, and they’re cheapskates to boot,” Belle wailed.

  The Yankee officers couldn’t keep grins off their faces. The Atlantans who’d snubbed them and their wives had been dramatically and publicly brought low.

  Afterward, when the Yankee officers’ wives smiled condescendingly to the wives of the Wednesday-Night Democrats, those proud Southern women would gladly have seen Rhett Butler hung.

  Rhett Butler had rewritten the story. He’d transformed Frank Kennedy from a Klansman killed during a Shantytown raid to a quarrelsome drunk who died in a stupid fight in a vacant lot behind a brothel. For Frank’s funeral, Rhett Butler dressed in a dark blue London suit and carried a rakish malacca cane.

  “Do you got to go?” Belle asked listlessly.

  “Not go? Not go, my dear? Aren’t I the scoundrel who foiled the wicked Yankees while making Atlanta’s best citizens look like hypocrites? Of course I’m going. I intend to crow.”

  “Miss Scarlett will be there?”

  “Where else would you expect Frank’s grieving widow to be?”

  Rhett had a red rose in his lapel. Belle wondered where he’d gotten it. Her roses were still in bud.

  “Rhett, you’re not going to … Not… again?”

  He kissed her forehead. As a brother might.

  The funeral was at three that afternoon and Rhett didn’t come back to Chapeau Rouge afterward. That evening, Belle sat at her dressing table, staring at the silly, vulgar woman looking back at her. A lady? What the hell had she been thinking?

  Minette stuck her head in. “Miss Belle, chère. It is payday ….”

  “Yeah,” Belle said. She unfastened her blue faille dress and let it fall to t
he floor. She plucked the cameo ear bobs from her ears and dropped them in a little velvet bag. She pinched color into her cheeks, and with her carmine lip rouge, she slashed a whore’s mouth over her own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Some Damn Mistake

  Thett was in England when MacBeth asked Belle if he could store some old furniture in Rhett’s office.

  Belle frowned. “No, you can’t. Captain Butler will want his office when he comes back.”

  MacBeth said, “No’m. Captain Butler ain’t comin’ back here. He be with Miz Kennedy when he come back.”

  “You’re a damn fool. He gave up on her years ago.” MacBeth said, “Uh-huh.” Belle got a strange note from Taz.

  Dear Maman,

  I am so happy for you—and for myself, of course. Captain Butler has invited me to celebrate at the Brooks Club with his English friends!

  Your loving son, Tazewell

  This puzzling message was followed by silence: no explanation and no further letters.

  “Must be some damn mistake.” Belle was whistling in the dark.

  Yankees, Carpetbaggers, and ex-Confederates kept a polite truce within the Chapeau Rouge, but those same gentlemen who used one another’s Christian names in Belle’s parlor led Yankee patrols or rode with the Klansmen those patrols were pursuing.

  In December, Rufus Bullock gave the keynote address at the “Black and Tan” constitutional convention. The convention, which included thirty-seven negro delegates, rewrote Georgia’s constitution. For the first time, women could own property in their own name and negro males could vote. Georgia’s newspapers mocked the delegates, their abilities, speech, and manners.

  “Uppity” negroes and white Republicans felt the lash of the Klan’s displeasure. Only Klansmen and Yankee patrols rode by night.

  The day after Christmas, Belle received a letter from Rhett—the first he’d ever written her. She took it into her bedroom, sat, and poured a large brandy before opening it.

  Dear Belle,

  I can’t say I’m easy or comfortable writing, but it’s best you get the news from me. Taz is in New Orleans. The boy is well—so far as I know—but he’s mad as a wet hen. I guess I can’t blame him.

  The letter rattled in Belle’s hands. Taz, in New Orleans?

  Rob Campbell, my banker, is a Scot who was a junior partner when we met but now heads his firm. I trust him, and when I decided to curtail Taz’s military career, I wrote Rob for help.

  When Taz landed in England, he was taken to Rob’s London office. Taz was still wearing his Confederate uniform. Rob asked, “Whatever shall we do with you, young man?”

  “Why, sir, should you do anything?”

  “Because my friend Rhett Butler has asked me to look after you.”

  “I thank you for your concern, sir, but I would not be more obligated to Mr. Butler than I already am.”

  Rob’s tailor measured the boy for new clothes, but instead of waiting for them, he sent Taz off to Shrewsbury. Rob’s a Shrewsbury “Old Boy.”

  Did I say Rob was clever? Taz arrived at that school in his tattered gray uniform, which did more for his acceptance than a peerage might have. Hell, sons of peers were a dime a dozen at Shrewsbury. But no other boy had soldiered in a war.

  About this time, Federal officials appeared at Rob’s bank with impudent questions about my accounts. I’d forewarned Rob and he was ready for them.

  I came to London, where Rob was stonewalling the Federals. Though there was smoke aplenty, Rob convinced me there wasn’t too much fire.

  When I telegraphed his Headmaster, that gentleman said Taz didn’t wish to see me. I might have forced the issue but didn’t want to upset the boy more than he already was. The Headmaster assured me Taz had made a promising start, particularly in mathematics and French. He speaks Creole, but the mathematics surprised me.

  Fortunately, Rob Campbell had taken a liking to your son.

  Belle whispered, “Course he did. Who wouldn’t love my Taz?”

  At the end of that first term, Rob invited Tazewell to spend his holidays with the Campbells.

  Rob’s got a fine plump wife and two daughters, shy Claire and Amanda, who will be a real head turner when she grows up. Anyway, the Campbells’ home became Taz’s. I suspect Rob hoped he and Claire might form an attachment one day. I know Rob intended to offer your son a place at his firm after he completed school.

  I got regular reports from Rob but heard nothing from Tazewell himself. Although I would have preferred a friendlier relationship, I am not unaccustomed to the villain’s role so long as your son needed me in it.

  Taz is in New Orleans because of me. It’s my doing, my mistake, and I wish it hadn’t happened, but I can’t hold the boy’s hand until he grows up. I had business with Rob Campbell, and afterward, we strolled over to Burlington Arcade to visit London’s fancy jewelers. Since Sutliff’s makes tiaras for the Queen, I figured they’d be good enough for Scarlett. Poor Rob was aghast when I bought the biggest, gaudiest engagement ring he’d ever seen. He swallowed his sense of proprieties, offered congratulations, and suggested a celebration at his club three days hence.

  I telegraphed Shrewsbury to invite Taz down to London for the party, and that’s where I slipped up. Either my telegram was ambiguous or the Headmaster misinformed him. Anyway, dear Belle, somehow Taz got it in his head I was going to marry you!

  Belle put the letter down, downed her drink, and said to nobody in particular, “Rhett Butler and Belle Watling? Married? Jesus Loving Christ!”

  Brooks is a stuffy London Club and Rob’s guests were dusty financial types, but Belle, you would have been proud of your son. I was glad to see him, presumed he’d forgiven me, and we spun yarns about Fort Fisher, playing off each other like Tambo and Mr. Bones. When I said, “Your corporal said you made a better soldier than I did,” everyone laughed.

  Once we were seated, with waiters standing by, Rob rose to offer his toast, but Tazewell interrupted. “Excuse me, sirs. Mr. Campbell, Mr. Butler, honored guests … before festivities begin, I have a confession to make.”

  Belle, your boy nearly broke my heart. He made a heartfelt speech about all I’d done for him, his eternal gratitude. He mentioned my kindness, generosity, and—Lord help us—my wisdom.

  These fathers and grandfathers were all for filial gratitude and heartily applauded Taz’s sentiments.

  Then Rob lifted his glass, “To my friend Captain Rhett Butler and his betrothed, Mrs. Scarlett Kennedy.”

  The color left Taz’s face and I thought he was going to faint. Too late, I understood that Taz had thought I was marrying you, and now felt like the greatest fool on the face of the earth.

  If grown men dread humiliation, young men die rather than endure it. I’ve known young fools who jumped horses over five-foot spiked fences for a two-dollar wager.

  Tazewell set his glass down untouched and ran from Brooks.

  I followed but lost him in the damn fog.

  When Tazewell didn’t return to Shrewsbury, I hired a detective, who learned that your son had booked passage for New Orleans.

  So Taz is back where he started from, sadder, I am sure. I pray he is wiser.

  I’m sorry, Belle. I wouldn’t have had this happen for the world.

  Yours always, Rhett

  On New Year’s Eve, Belle Watling put on her prettiest dress and took a bottle of champagne and her account books to Rhett Butler’s office. That year, Belle drank alone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The Quadroon Ball

  That spring, Republican Rufus Bullock defeated ex-Confederate General George Gordon for Governor. For the first time in history, there would be negroes in the Georgia legislature.

  Atlanta’s grande dames saw the betrothal of the Widow Kennedy to Rhett Butler—Dark Prince of War Profiteers—as one more sign of moral decay. The grande dames vowed they would never forgive Butler for his shoddy trick. The Wednesday-Night Democrats’ wives had received the Yankee ladies’ understanding smil
es: “Boys will be boys, won’t they, dear?” Each smile had felt like a blow.

  Mrs. Merriwether admired Scarlett’s ring too extravagantly: “My dear! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an enormous stone!” Mrs. Meade recalled Frank Kennedy too fondly. “Why, it’s so hard to believe poor dear Frank is gone.”

  Aunt Eulalie penned “the most difficult letter of my life,” begging Scarlett to cancel her nuptials. “Please don’t disgrace the Robillards again,” she pleaded.

  Scarlett wanted a lavish wedding, but Rhett thought better of it. “Why give the old biddies the satisfaction of spurning our invitations?” he said.

  In a small ceremony, Rhett and Scarlett became Mr. and Mrs. Butler and afterward took sherry with a few guests in the rectory. Melanie Wilkes admired Rosemary Ravanel’s toddler. “Cherish these years,” Melanie advised. “They fly away too soon.”

  The kindness in Melanie’s face touched Rosemary’s heart. “My daughter, Meg, was killed in the war, but I pray for her every single night. How silly I am! Praying for a child already in heaven.”

  “You’re not silly at all,” Melanie replied. “Your Meg knows you love her. Can’t you feel her watching over you? Here, take my handkerchief. Your Louis is such a sweet little boy.”

  Thus, Rosemary Ravanel and Melanie Wilkes became friends.

  Rhett had leased one of Mr. Pullman’s newfangled sleeping cars to convey the newlyweds to New Orleans. When the wedding party arrived at the train station, half of Atlanta was gawking at the marvel: a private parlor car that transformed itself into a rolling bedroom. What was the world coming to?

  Rhett pretended they’d come to honor the bride and groom. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Merriwether. So good of you to come. I regret we couldn’t invite our friends to our wedding, but Scarlett—you know how shy she is—Scarlett insisted on a private affair. Ah, Mrs. Elsing! How kind you are to see us off. How is my good friend Hugh?” He winked. “Haven’t Hugh and I had ourselves some wild times!”