The Rebel Wife

by Polites, Taylor M

  It’s like swimming. My hands feel so cold on my forehead. I feel as if I am swimming against the current. If I just let go, it will take me away. Like Hill and Buck, when they would sneak down to the riverbank to swim in the Oosanatee. I followed them sometimes. A child spying on children. I would go by myself and put my feet in the water, too scared to jump in. Too nervous that there might be someone watching me. Buck and Hill would strip down to nothing, naked and pale. They would climb out on a tree branch, hairless bodies flying out as far as they could over the water. Splashing into it. The waves would ripple out from them with their laughter and shouts. Daring each other to climb farther on the tree, to leap farther. They weren’t afraid of the river or the snakes.

  Hill is dead. The river took him. No, the war did. Judge fired his rifle fourteen times from his front yard. It wasn’t patriotic. It was a warning to men like Weems. To everyone. Judge and his guns and fires and whippings. He said the war wasn’t over. The words stick in my head. It was an anniversary—my second wedding anniversary—and they fought across the table about the Republicans and Negro voting and Johnson’s impeachment. Eli made awful jokes about setting the Richmond pudding on fire. Judge said the war wasn’t over. It’s not over, is it? No, it ended, but badly. It ended in such a way that it will never be over. “The field of battle has changed,” Judge said. He’s still fighting. Buck is still fighting, too, though he doesn’t know why. And Simon fought. Wasn’t the war enough for them?

  Buck has scars from it. Bullet wounds from Shiloh and Kennesaw Mountain and Franklin. He showed them to me that summer after the war. In the house on Allen Street. In my room, sitting on my bed with his shirt off. The sun lit up the dust that floated in the air, holding it suspended as if time were standing still. I traced the scars with my fingers. Two fingers delicately tracing those purple patches of lacerated skin. On his back, under his shoulder, a small ring from a bullet at Franklin. On his belly, under the wiry black hair, a large scar, dark, from a shell at Kennesaw Mountain. Just under his chest, the minié ball that gouged him in the burning pines at Shiloh. He didn’t know he’d been hit until he saw the blood. Mama burst into the room, scandalized. She shamed us, but Buck just laughed and put his shirt on. I had so much need for him then. That was a lie, too. That first time in the woods by the mill with the soft blanket of pine needles under me. The strength in his hands. A soldier’s strength. It all faded away. The itch I got from those scars. Who doesn’t have scars? Greer does, across his face. Eli had scars on his arms from a knife fight. He would sell and buy people. He bought me. Judge sold me to him for a bunch of worthless bonds and a pardon. Who would really pardon Judge? I don’t. I should have listened more to Eli. He never told me where or why he had a knife fight. From the slaves he dragged south? From rough men in highway taverns? Simon must have scars. What does a scar look like on black skin? I’ve seen them, dark ribbons on arms or a back. What must they look like on Simon? Could I touch his scars if he showed them to me? Could I bring myself to touch a colored man’s scars?

  If Hill hadn’t died. Or Pa. What if Pa had lived? Would I still be in the house on Allen Street? Pa on the bench with his newspapers. The sun setting over the Oosanatee, slow and black, winding its way through the trees. The thick clover under me and the warm sun on my back. School in Huntsville with all the girls, giggling, straining for a look at Albert Sidney Johnston. Little flashes like fireworks. All stitched together.

  The room is so hot and my hands are so cold.

  I wonder, would Simon let me touch his scars?

  Eighteen

  THE HEAT IS SO intense, and the smothering humidity, but it may break. Monstrous dark clouds obscure the sun, and shivering breezes sweep across the garden. The trees shudder against them. My head feels so thick. I took too much of the laudanum last night.

  I don’t know why we haven’t found the money yet. Simon is still searching. I don’t know where he is searching, but I feel it like a second sight. Henry leans against me, his head on my knee, and I pat his blond hair. He raises his head when the breeze wakes the curtains. He cranes his neck to peer out the window into the garden. He lays his head back down as I stroke him.

  I don’t know how long this waiting can go on. Waiting to find the money. Waiting for the sickness, this blood fever. Waiting for Buck to come again, or Judge or Mike, to take what little I have. I feel like I am in some sort of nightmare. And yet I move so slowly. I am stultified by this heat. And the laudanum. I do want to get away, but to where? To beg off of Bama for a room at the back of her house until the sickness fades or my fortunes turn?

  There is no sound from anywhere in the house. I am alone with Henry, as if there is no one else in Albion.

  “Let’s go see Emma,” I say. I rise from my chair and take his hand.

  “Where’s Aunt Rachel?” he asks, but he really wants to see Little John. I do not know where they are.

  The door into the kitchen is open. It is not so hot in here. Emma has not lit a fire in the stove. She sits at the table drinking coffee.

  “Emma, can you watch Henry? Where is Rachel?”

  “She said she had to go home for a while. She didn’t say when she’d be back.” Emma peers into the bottom of her cup.

  “Have you seen Simon this morning?”

  “He’s out in the barn.” She looks at me, nothing strange in her look, except for the fact that she is looking at me. “John’s off seeing if he can get some wood for the stove. We’ve run out.”

  “How do you have coffee?” I ask. The pot sits on the stove.

  “It’s from yesterday. Ain’t no reason to start a fire if you can’t keep it going.”

  “They haven’t stopped delivering wood? What do they still deliver?”

  “Nothing.”

  I let go of Henry and head to the garden door.

  “Come here, baby,” Emma says, and Henry walks over to her, mounting her leg to climb into her lap.

  The horse chestnut in the garden is in full bloom, cones of snow-white flowers covering it, shivering in the odd gust of wind. There is the catalpa, trembling with white flowers dotted red as if they have been sprinkled with blood. Blood, too, in the orange-red flowers of the trumpet vine along the carriage house, climbing lush and wide almost to the window of Simon’s room. The garden has not stopped growing. It will grow on long after us, perhaps wild and abandoned without Simon’s hand to keep it in check. It will look like the other gardens after we have gone. I do not know what we can do but leave here, money or not.

  “Simon,” I call into the half-light of the carriage house.

  “Ma’am?” he says. I step into the shadows. Simon stands before a wall of pegs and tack. His shirt is off. He is black and shiny with sweat. Fatigue is in his eyes. When he turns, I can see the wide scars crisscrossing his back, glistening ink black against his dark skin. A shiver courses over me. I should stay away from the laudanum.

  “What are you doing in here?” I ask.

  “Still searching. John’s gone to gather firewood where he can. I wanted to look here before he came back.”

  “Have you found anything?”

  “No.” We look at each other. Sweat drips down my forehead and from my nose. I feel for my handkerchief, but I don’t have it. I wipe the sweat off with my hand.

  The air is thick with the rich pungent odor of hay and manure, and you can almost feel the heat rising to the rafters as if it’s coming out of the hard-packed earth. The space is wide and high with stalls for four horses, though we have only two, the bay, Helen, and the thoroughbred, Paris, whose glossy black coat is shiny with sweat. There is the gig, and a phaeton that Eli bought for me, but that I never drove, and the old rockaway that we took on our wedding day. There are pegs and broad shelves over a work space where the harnesses and gear are stored.

  “Ma’am, yesterday—” he says.

  “No, Simon.” I want to speak first. I look him in the eyes. They are brown, deep chestnut brown, like mine. “We will not speak about what h
appened yesterday.”

  “I just want to say, I didn’t mean—”

  “No,” I insist. “We will never speak of it again.” I can’t look at him. Not in his eyes. Nowhere near his face. I don’t want him to look at me. I walk to a stall and lean against a post.

  He looks at his feet, then back to me. His face has turned to stone again. “All right,” he says. “All right.”

  He turns back to the shelves and saddlebags. Jagged scars course across his muscles, smooth purple-black ribbons. Sweat beads on their raised surface. It is like Braille. I could read his life if I touched those scars. He takes his shirt made of stiff, cheap cotton and pulls it on, wet still with sweat. He doesn’t mind that I watch him as he goes through all the drawers and cubbyholes. He is meticulous in his work, an orderly process from an orderly mind. But he bangs tack against the walls and kicks at the saddles. He pauses, looking at the wall of pegs lined with reins and leads and leather pouches.

  “What will you do when we find the money, ma’am?” he asks, not looking at me.

  “I don’t know.” I scratch at the dirt with my boot. The heat seems to have turned liquid, like a warm bath. “I guess I just want to go away. I don’t want to go to Monte Sano. It’s too near here. But the money won’t last forever. I’ll have to come back eventually. I wish there were enough to go away forever. Maybe to White Sulphur Springs. Or Philadelphia. Have you ever been to Philadelphia, Simon?”

  “No, ma’am, I have not. Not at this point in my life.” He pulls down saddlebags from a long row and searches them. The silence stretches out. I watch his shoulders move.

  “What do you plan to do?” I ask.

  He turns to me. He answers thoughtfully. “We can’t live here. Colored people, that is. Most are too poor or too crazy to move. Pap Singleton has the right idea. Going out west to land of our own—land that we can own. That’s the only way for us to get ahead. That’s what I’ll keep doing until it’s done.”

  I can’t help smiling a little. He is a new Moses. “You brought them from the Carolinas to here, and now you’re going to take them to Kansas?”

  Simon’s eyes lose their thoughtfulness. At first he is incredulous. Then he becomes hard. He doesn’t smile, but turns back to the saddlebags. “Something like that, I guess,” he says.

  How stupid of me. What an ugly thing to say. I should not have said it.

  “There is a saddlebag missing,” he says. He looks at me.

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I am sure,” he replies simply.

  I cannot doubt him. “What does that mean?”

  He is desperate. Looking for meaning in the most meaningless evidence of nothing. “I don’t know what it means. Maybe nothing.”

  “So we should be looking for a saddlebag?” My hands are on the post behind me. I lean my head back and look at the rafters of the barn. Hay dust fills the filtered light, and swallows flutter back and forth. That tingle in my stomach. That itch. It is because Simon is so near.

  “Have you taken your medicine, ma’am?” His face is sideways to me, and he watches me out of the corner of his eye.

  I feel jolted from sleep. “What do you mean? What medicine?”

  “The medicine you take, ma’am. I’m asking if you’ve taken any today.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  He turns back to the shelves and squats to look in the drawers under the worktable.

  “A small amount. Insignificant,” I say. “To calm me. It is necessary.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answers without turning. “I had word that the mill has been closed.”

  “What?” I step away from the post as Simon rises and turns to me again.

  “Yes, the aldermen determined that it was unsafe. It has been closed and boarded.”

  There is something in his eye as he looks at me. I don’t know what it is. I feel paralyzed. The mill is closed. Now what? I turn my head away. I am blushing, I think. “We can’t stay here. We have to go. The mill is closed.”

  Simon takes a step toward me. “Just a little more time. All I need is one more day. I know we’re close.” His eyes are pleading. I want to do what he asks.

  John is there at the wide-open doors. He is pushing a wooden wheelbarrow piled with firewood. He is sweating, laboring with the balance of the wheelbarrow, which he sets to rest just inside the doors. He looks up, seeing us, seeing Simon first and then looking where Simon is looking to me. John’s face relaxes from a grimace into nothingness, but wide-eyed, comprehending. Our eyes meet.

  “Ma’am,” John says.

  Simon turns away from me and walks back to the wall of harnesses and leather thongs and drawers and cubbyholes. He is purposeless. His hands move over the table without being directed to anything. John’s eyes move away from me, scattering glances across the barn, up high to the hayloft, to the drawers and pegs and tables and finally to Simon. My face goes hot.

  “I’ll see if I can find that saddlebag for you, Miss Gus,” Simon says, mumbling under his breath.

  “Thank you, Simon,” I say. My limbs feel numb and unresponsive, but I force them to move. I walk past John quickly out into the light. “I’ll tell Emma there is wood for the stove.” I call it back into the barn carelessly, as if it is the most normal thing in the world for me to do. But this is madness. What was I doing there at all? I’ve lost my mind. Everything is madness. The mill and the sickness and me.

  Henry has his wooden blocks spread out across the brick floor of the kitchen. He watches me when I come in, pausing, his little hand in midair. He doesn’t say a word, just watches me.

  There is a rapping at the front door. Emma and Henry both stiffen, sitting upright and looking toward the front of the house.

  “Stay here,” I say. “I’ll see who it is.”

  Bama’s coachman is in the hall, looking right and left, the door open behind him.

  “Miss Gus, Miss Bama’s outside. She wants you to come with us,” he says. He is an old man and moves with visible discomfort. “Come outside.” He turns, waving his hand for me to follow.

  Bama is in her carriage, her umbrella open, covering her in shade. Emily sits beside her with her two children on the bench across from them. Emily’s bonnet is tight around her face. Sweat streams down her cheeks, cutting through her face powder in dark streaks. Her face is pinched closed, and her eyes are slits.

  “Augusta.” Bama begins talking before I am out of the gate. Homer struggles to climb back on the box. “Don’t dawdle! We’re going to Huntsville, and you’re coming away with us. Get your boy and let’s go. Tell your servants to pack your things and come right away. But you must come with us now. There is no time to waste.”

  “You’re running away?”

  “Yes, we are fleeing. No sane soul is staying. It’s an epidemic. They’ve shut the mill. We must go!” The umbrella trembles in Bama’s hand. Her sense of humor is gone, and under her command is a plea.

  “I can’t go now. The servants—I couldn’t leave them here.”

  “They will follow you,” Bama insists. Emily shakes her head at me. “This is no time for discussion. Get Henry and come with us.”

  “We’ll pack our things. We’ll follow you. I can’t just take Henry and run.” My hands are before me, empty. I should go. We should all go. Bama is here to take me away.

  “You can’t reason with her, Auntie,” Emily says. Her voice is bitter. “Listen to her. She’d rather stay here with her Negroes. She’s as bad as her husband was.”

  “Would you leave Homer behind, Emily? How can you say that?”

  Homer looks back at me. He does not like me bringing him into this. He turns his back, black broadcloth spotted with sweat. The sun is unbearable. How can they sit in the carriage without the top up?

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you, Gus?” Emily leans forward, her eyes violent. Her hands are gripped in tight fists in her lap. Her children, a boy and a girl, shrink into their bench. “I always knew it. The way you threw your head at
Buck Heppert and then married Eli Branson. You should be ashamed.”

  “You don’t know anything about it.” I am trembling, too. My hands are shaking. I feel the vibration in my knees and shoulders. “How dare you spread lies. You’re a vicious woman.”

  “I know why she’s staying, Auntie. I’ve heard the stories.” Emily leans back against her seat, a look of gluttonous triumph on her face. “She loves all the Negroes. Yes, she does. And one Negro man in particular. She lied about him the last time we were here. That Simon. It’s disgusting, Gus. You’re disgusting.”

  Bama’s face is blanched whiter than paper. She looks at Emily with horror and then turns back to me.

  “Let’s go, Auntie. There is no saving her. She’s not worth it.”

  “You shut your mouth up, Emily.” Bama has erupted. She looks as if she will strike her niece. She turns back to me, her lips trembling. “Gus, this is not about Negroes or politics or the war. This is about your life and the life of your boy. Get him and get in the carriage.”

  Emily’s face turns red under her ruined powder. She presses her lips together and sinks into her seat like her children.

  “I can’t, Bama. I appreciate your kindness. I do.” I look back at the house, shining bright white in the sunlight. I can’t leave here. Not yet. “I won’t leave here. Not without the servants.” I look at Emily. “And not with you all. We are too different now.”

  “Don’t be a fool, Gus. We will forget what’s been said here. Just pack your things. Bring your servants if you like, but you must come with us.” Bama slams her hand on the carriage door, fiddling with the latch to open it.

  “No, Bama. You all should go. I am staying.”

  Emily looks across the street, away from me. Bama’s mouth gapes and her eyes are fearful.

  “Goodbye, Bama.” I turn away from them and walk up the path.

  “You’ll regret this, Gus! Think of your boy!” Bama calls after me, but I don’t turn back. “Drive on, Homer!” she finally shouts. “You’re making a terrible mistake, Gus!”