Seventeen
ENTERING THE ATTIC is like walking into a fire. Sweat trickles behind my ears onto my neck, soaking the collar of my dress. I unbutton my cuffs and roll up the sleeves. Heat comes off my wrists. I open the top buttons of my bodice and take a handkerchief from my pocket, soaking up the perspiration as it runs off of me. I can hardly believe the things Mike says. He’s so desperate, he’ll say anything. He must be lying. What does he expect from me?
The light from the doorway is diffused and dusty. There’s another thin shaft of light from a small dormer that faces the garden. The ceiling vanishes into the dark rafters over my head, and I can make out the beams where swallows have abandoned their nests. Large objects clutter the uneven floors, trunks and valises filled with I don’t know what. The detritus of my marriage. The cumulative effects of the union are strewn across the room, long forgotten. I find it hard to believe Eli would have come home ill, climbed these stairs, and hidden a fortune in this dusty cave.
But there are interruptions in the pattern of filth on the warped planks. The footprints of Big John and Simon when they came for my traveling trunks. Perhaps Eli’s as well. I follow them, mostly clustered near the door, where the trunks Eli and I used were normally left. There are faint trails of footsteps that lead into different corners of the room. They could just as well be Simon’s as Eli’s—or mine or John’s. What would prevent Simon from coming up here and searching? What am I doing here? Being kept busy so that he can search Eli’s room without my interference?
The dust runs before my feet and chokes my throat, making me cough. Like that horrible dust at the cotton mill.
My head is bent to avoid the rafters. I keep a hand on them as I move, feeling the heat off the wood beams. The cobwebs reach down and cling to me. I sweep at them with my handkerchief. My sweat mixes with them, and the muck smears itself on the back of my hands and forearms. The air tastes like hot coals.
What has been happening here for ten years? Judge setting fire to that barn. He would have to be mad to do that. But Judge said there is still a war going on. He said as much to Eli more than once. And it was a threat. It must have been. Like when they whipped Simon. If what Mike says is true, that was Judge, too. Eli must have known. The Union League hall and the terror that the Knights of the White Cross spread. All Judge. A man who will stop at nothing, Mike said. For what? To keep colored men from voting? To undo what the war did to us? There is no undoing it. We cannot go back. We cannot reverse that loss. The horrible loss. Hill’s death. If only he had not died. He was a good man—a man of honor. True honor, like Pa. But they’re all gone. If only they had not died, I would not be here.
The objects loom at me in the darkness. A large basket with a wicker top is filled with Mama’s old dresses, moth-eaten for having been stored so carelessly. All the colored dresses that she put away after Hill died. Permanent mourning. Not that they were cheerful colors, grays and browns and lavenders. Threadbare, with torn trimmings hanging loose from the fabric.
There is the trunk, the small one that holds the spools of ribbon and mementos from Mama’s funeral. The dust is marked where I knelt two weeks ago, now covered in a fine layer of new dust. Footprints lead to a larger trunk, an old-fashioned cabin trunk from thirty years ago. I lift the lid and peer into the darkness. Slowly, the objects reveal themselves to me. There are old pattern books and piles of magazines. Godey’s and Peterson’s and some old Mrs. Stephens’ Illustrated from before the war. I brought them with me when Eli and I were married. The piles have grown since then. Emma has conscientiously stored them here. The Godey’s Lady’s Book that Buck brought me is in here, too, buried somewhere.
I sift through the yellowing papers, pulling them out and piling them on the floor. There are so many. Years of them. They were something to occupy me. Tatting lace and making tobacco pouches and antimacassars and silly macramé lamp tassels. I would look back to the issue Buck brought me every now and then. To read the poems and stories and to think about that summer after the war.
There it is, edges still curled and frayed. November 1864. He said he had gotten it from a woman in Franklin sometime after he was wounded. Who was that woman? He said he carried it with him to make a present of it to me. The pages are worn. A color plate folds out like an accordion and shows a group of women dressed in the latest fashions. One woman is in lavender half mourning. The fashions of the war. I close the magazine and put it in my pocket. The trunk lid drops with a dull thud.
Buck is his father’s son, isn’t he? Following me to the mill. Trying to take charge of me. Trying to take my hand again. I won’t do it. It is convenient for him to pursue me. It is convenient for Judge. Buck is a boy who does what his father tells him. To pretend with me that he has some influence over Judge. He’s as tragic as Mike, and as ruined.
Mike’s hands. He could not keep them from shaking. He could barely hold Eli’s watch.
The corners and crevices where the floor meets the roofline are dark. Perhaps there is a concealed place in these nooks. But only cobwebs and dirt are here. The heat is almost unbearable. My dress sticks to my back as if it has melted onto my skin.
There are other trunks, smaller ones, banded with wood and leather. And a leather frame valise with buckles and a key lock under the handle. The dust on it has been disturbed. I brush away the clusters of dirt. Faded initials, gold-embossed, are above the tarnished brass lock. H.S. They are my father’s initials. Henry Sedlaw. Mama presented the case to him when he was running for the statehouse almost twenty years ago.
I sweep away more of the dust. The leather is worn and puckered. Pa never traveled with it, but it seems used, exposed to the weather. It never went anywhere. Pa left it in the basement of the house on Allen Street. After he died, when did I last see it? Not since then, I think. It must have been there when Mama died. Did Eli bring it over then and put it in the attic for me? One of the few items of my father’s that was left to me after Mike had sold the house, the books, everything. The novels and mineral guides and atlases. Whatever he didn’t take or destroy—only the bench in the hall and now my father’s valise. I rub the leather and grab the handle, as Pa would have done.
The trunk is heavy. The leather buckles are stiff from years of heat. They are hard to loosen, but I twist them, watching the dried tongues crack, almost splitting and crumbling in my hands. My fingers are damp with sweat. The latch has a small metal button that I press, but the lock does not respond. Maybe I need a key. The ring of household keys is in my pocket. There is a small key that is for a case in the pantry. I insert it, playing at the lock, twisting until there is a snap. The mechanism must be rusted, and I have broken the spring.
I withdraw the key and press the button again. My fingers leave wet prints on the lock. Sweat falls in thick drops from my forehead and makes dark spots on the leather. They soak into the skin of the case almost immediately.
The latch will not move. I pull on the handle, jerking at it. My arms strain. Beads of sweat fall off my nose, spraying the floor around me.
The latch gives suddenly and the case flies open. Papers flutter out and settle over the floor. I gather them up. The valise is full of them. This is no five thousand dollars. This is a fortune beyond that. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. My heart is in my throat. They are denominated in fifties, hundreds, five hundreds.
But they are worthless. Bonds pledged by the Confederate States of America. On cotton. All in Confederate dollars. They are paper covered in worthless words. Many have the coupons attached, unredeemed for interest payments, due in to the Confederate Treasury Department every six months. Two-dollar coupons. Three dollars. Some for fifteen dollars payable to the bearer. Others have coupons missing, neatly clipped with a pair of scissors and a steady hand. This is a grand joke. I gather the papers and pile them back into the case.
My name. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my name. It is written on the back of one of the bonds—my own handwriting. A scrawling fancy penmanship, printed over and o
ver again. Augusta Belier Blackwood Sedlaw. And letters. Rows of S and T. Curves and flourishes that march down the page. On several of them. My handwriting is so even, so studied. The handwriting of a schoolgirl. These must be Mama’s bonds. Mama’s hand clipped them. Some of them, at least. And she caught me writing on their reverse. I can still feel the sharp sting of her hand across my face. She hit me hard and with anger. It was a foolish prank. Silly. Her slap wiped the smug smile off my face.
It had to be in ’65. Mike had been gone for a long time already. What a girl I was. A silly foolish girl. As resentful and rebellious as Mike. We had no writing paper, and I took the bonds, since Mama had said they were good only for letter paper. Her friends who braved the streets to visit us had said it, too. I had written on them. Mama caught me and flew into a rage. She slapped me hard so that tears came into my eyes from the pain. I stood looking at her, sullen and stunned. How dare she hit me, I thought. Pa never would have let her hit me.
“Gather them up, you fool,” she said. “Gather them up. These are going to Judge to sell if he can make any money out of them.”
These are going to Judge. Mama must have put them in the case and delivered them over to him. And now the case is in my attic. Judge must not have sold them.
How long ago? Over ten years? My handwriting is so different now. My name is different. This was written by another person, not me. A person in another life. But it wasn’t, really. Judge was the same person then, wasn’t he? He was someone people looked up to and respected. A man of honor. But he isn’t, is he? Buck, too. Can it be true? Can he really have done what Mike said? Was it all a part of his father’s plan? Like the barn dance.
“Miss Gus.” Emma’s voice comes to me from the open doorway. “Come out of there, Miss Gus. You look a fright.”
I turn and look at her, scowling. The anger is full in me, and the sting of Mama’s slap on my cheek feels as if it just happened.
“What is it, Emma?” I mean no friendliness with my voice.
Emma doesn’t answer me. I close the case and stand up, catching the handle and pulling at my skirts. The weight bears on me, tilting me lopsided. Emma’s face is open in surprise as I walk past her, the case under my arm. The air on the landing feels fresh after the confines of the attic.
The case bumps against the banister as I struggle with it down the narrow stairs. Emma stands above me, outside the open door of her room, her mouth agape. My hair is coming undone, unraveling in loose strands around my face. Dirt spots my hands and wrists, sweaty smears of dust and cobwebs that are hot and wet. Long strands stream off my dress like so much mourning crape.
Eli’s door is open. Simon is in there. The light in the hall seems washed out, it is so bright. The walls seem gray, and the rugs and pictures are monochrome, like a tintype. The hickory bench that was my father’s is dark and hard.
The case slips and slides fast off the railing. It tumbles to the floor with a bang. The broken clasp slips loose, and the lid flies back, dumping sheaves of promissory notes across the hall.
Simon appears. Our eyes meet. He must sense my anger. Voices come from my room, and Henry rushes into the hall with Rachel behind him.
“Mama,” he says when he sees me. “What is it?” Rachel looks at all the papers and then looks at Simon. She can’t know what they are, but she knows there is something wrong. One look at me tells her that things are not right.
“Henry,” she says and puts her hand on his shoulder. “Henry, come away from that.” She holds him back as he grasps at the papers. Little John is behind them.
“It’s nothing, Henry,” I say, trying to control my voice. “It’s nothing. Mama just had an accident, and now she’s got a big mess to clean up.”
“You had an accident?” Henry asks, his blond hair lustrous in the light, his blue eyes clear and sharp. “Can I help, Mama?”
“No, Henry,” I say, still catching my breath. “Mama and Uncle Simon will take care of it. Go back to the nursery with Rachel and Little John.” Rachel’s eyes rest on me. She doesn’t make a face but nods, holding Henry gently and leading him back to the nursery, leaving us in the hall.
“You seem to have a lot of knowledge, Simon,” I say. My voice is shaking, and my hands hurt from the struggle with the case. “Maybe you can tell me what these are doing in the attic.”
“What are they, ma’am?” he asks me cautiously. He leans down and picks up several of the bonds, considering them.
“Don’t lie to me, Simon, or pretend like I’m an idiot.” My voice rises. “You knew the case was up there. You knew that finding it would upset me. You know there’s no money hidden in the attic. Why did you send me up there to find this?”
Simon’s face becomes serious. He stops looking at the bonds in his hand, letting it fall to his side.
“Didn’t you?” I insist. “Answer me.” He stands in front of Eli’s bedroom door, but I can see around him. The wardrobe is open, and Eli’s clothes are piled neatly on the floor. The drawers of the chest are open, too, and papers are piled on top of it. “What was this? Some ruse for you to hunt Eli’s room alone? Did you find it?” I rush against him, trying to get into the room, but he takes my wrists and holds them. I struggle, but he is too strong.
“Shhh,” he says. “Quiet now. Do you want them to hear you?”
Emma’s feet are on the top step. Her skirts shift, and she steps up, out of sight.
“Come in here,” he says. He pulls me into Eli’s room and shuts the door.
“How dare you put your hands on me,” I hiss. “If my brother saw you, he’d string you up for daring to touch me!”
“Shhh,” he says again. “I’m sorry. I apologize, but you are losing control of yourself.”
I suck air into my mouth, my hands on my knees, trying to breathe, glaring at him. “Tell me. Tell me why those bonds from my mother’s house are in the attic.”
“Because they belonged to Mr. Eli.”
“That’s a lie. That case is my father’s. Eli Branson never had that case.”
“Yes, ma’am, he did,” Simon says. He walks away from me, across the room, then turns and begins again. “Your mother gave these bonds to Mr. Heppert, your cousin. He put them together with his own, and he sold them to Eli. Didn’t you know that?”
“That’s a lie. Why would Eli buy something he knew was worthless?” The notations in Eli’s ledger. Those bonds from Judge. And what was I? Did Eli have a special Greek character for me? Loans advanced for goods pledged. No, a purchase. Funds paid for goods received.
“Some people think the state of Alabama may yet have to honor these bonds. And Eli was getting something else he valued.”
His face is quiet, neither angry nor ironic nor condescending. He looks at me in a simple, factual way. My body is something apart from me. As if I can watch myself and listen to myself. As if I am locked outside of my body. A valuable body. Something that I would gladly be rid of. Yes, like the carriages and the silver and the farmlands in the county. Eli collected things of value, and he wanted me. Mama was excited by the prospect of our marriage, almost frenzied about it. And Judge was so adamant. Sympathetic but firm. Of course he was firm. Of course marriage to Buck was unsuitable. He arranged the entire transaction. And pretended that it was all Mama.
“What did Judge get in return?” I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.
“An income for your mother. Cash and other considerations for Mr. Heppert.”
“The mill?”
“No, the mill came later. I believe what Mr. Heppert sought was relief and a pardon. Eli got the taxes on what remained of his property forgiven, and he intervened with Governor Parsons and President Johnson to secure a pardon for Judge.”
“I see.” I feel so far from sight. I am blind, feeling my way along with my hands. “I see,” I say again automatically. “Of course.” I was traded to Eli like the Meissen figurines. I was the only thing of value left in my mother’s house. I have the Blackwood name. Did I prove as valuable to E
li as he thought?
I turn against the closed door. I do not want Simon to look at me, nor do I want to look at him. I put my hands over my eyes. I can see it all.
“Miss Gus,” he says. His footsteps approach me.
“Keep away from me,” I say. I push my hand out at him. “Keep away from me.” Quieter now. My hand out for the doorknob, wiping my tears, not wanting him to see. Not wanting anyone to see.
“Miss Gus, please,” he says behind me.
“You keep away from me.” I shout it.
Emma is on the stairs, coming toward me. She follows me into my room, pushing her way past the door. “What’s the matter?” she says, and I fall against the bed, my head buried in my arms. Emma is near me. She kneels next to me, taking me in her arms and holding me against her breast. We sit on the floor together. She knows how this feels. Of course she knows. They all know much better than I do. It’s supposed to be fine for them. But not for me. It cannot be like this for me.
The laudanum takes effect so slowly. Not like it used to. That’s what they say. The more you take, the more you need. I’ve heard women complain of it. I’ve heard of women who have taken too much and slowly fade away, cold as stone by morning. Mama used to take it. Never often. Sparingly. Mama always knew herself. She didn’t need to take it. Maybe I need it because I don’t know myself. I need it to forget myself. If I could just get away from Albion. This sickness is creeping in around us. It started here. With Eli and Greer. It was Greer who first gave me laudanum. Years ago. I had been married to Eli for two years. Our anniversary. I have not been able to get far away from it since. They keep giving it to me. I must stop this. I must think clearly.
The current is taking me. I want it to take me. I am letting go of the room. The bed and the roses and ribbons seem far away. I feel like I am floating in a river, being carried in its coolness. I drift in nighttime darkness, and I can hear the cicadas with their droning refrain down the whole long, lazy river. Just drifting. They buzz and hum in the high boughs of the live oaks and hickory trees, and I drift away down the river.
The Rebel Wife Page 20