Six of One

by Rita Mae Brown

  "Celeste Chalfonte, you live in another world, a world of cavaliers, courtliness and romance. You don't understand how the world really works nor do you want to understand. You're too good for poor mortals."

  "Yes, I do live in another world, but in any world you'd be considered corrupt."

  "Corrupt? Do you think rubber is made because people like the jungle? Do you think steel is forged because men enjoy the heat? You must drive people to work. People are ignorant, stupid and lazy. The strong man must herd the weak; otherwise there's no progress, no growth."

  "Ah, yes, the industrial, vampire, progress." Celeste was as cold as the blizzard outside.

  "You'd prefer a vague agricultural illusion? Celeste, you and your kind are a dying breed. It's men like me that make America. You people had your turn and lost it at Gettysburg. It's my turn now. What you deem corrupt is the price we pay for progress. Romans thought Caesar was corrupt, too, but he turned a republic into an empire. America is becoming an empire."

  "Alea jacta est."

  "Yes, the die is cast. There's no turning back. Why don't you enjoy your wealth and your woman"—his voice sharpened on that reference—"and leave the business to men? You can't understand it anyway."

  "You might be right, Brutus, but I do understand simple morality and simple responsibility. Perhaps this is the ancient debate between Antigone and Creon. Perhaps nothing is new under the sun."

  A thunderclap outside startled him. When he turned back from looking out the window, Celeste was holding her beautiful German pistol on him.

  Half amused, half frightened, he tried to sound superior. "What do you think you're doing? Put that thing away."

  "This is a matter of honor. I don't expect you to understand that."

  "You're mad." He was now genuinely worried.

  "Precisely."

  A jagged tear of lightning cast a sickly yellow-blue light through the room. A deafening clap of thunder followed. As the thunder rolled away Brutus slumped in his chair, a perfect bullet hole between his eyes. If you didn't look at the back of his head he resembled an Indian Brahman. Celeste stuck the gun inside her coat, walked over to the window, put her gloves on and strained to open the window leading out to the alley. It was frozen shut. Without a moment's hesitation she smashed her fist through it and kicked the frame into the alley. The snow rushed through the opening, already piling up on the floor. Celeste squeezed through the window, dropped to the ground and ran for the square. Blasts of whiteness shrouded her as she made for home. She felt no fear or remorse. What she did feel was pride tainted with disgust, disgust for the human race for producing such machines as Brutus and disgust for the rest of us for allowing them to flourish unmolested.

  "Is that you, Celeste?" Cora called out from upstairs.

  "Yes. It's a tempest out there."

  Ramelle came out of her room and peered over the stairway. "Darling you're a lunatic to go out in weather like this."

  "I know." She looked up at a bursting Ramelle and said, "The fury of it drew me out."

  The next day Runnymede screeched with the news. No one mourned Brutus's death, not even his wife, Felicia. Neither the South nor the North Runnymede sheriff conducted a very thorough investigation. Julius Caesar Rife, in his early twenties and already displaying the cool habits of his father, was to assume command of the family fortune. His father's murder served as a warning to Julius: You can only push so hard.

  Fannie Jump Creighton flew in the front door of Celeste's house with the news. Ramelle had the uneasy sense that Celeste had done it. She kept her thoughts to herself. Cora, hearing the commotion, rambled into the living room to hear Fannie retell her story.

  "They say it must have been a powerful man because when he escaped he ripped the window right out of the frame," Fannie gloated. She had hated him like all the rest.

  "Is that a fact?" Celeste's eyebrow arched upward.

  "No clues?" Ramelle asked.

  "In that blizzard? Besides, it's only respect for Felicia that keeps the whole town from celebrating," Fannie continued.

  "No one can see us, so perhaps we ought to drink a toast." Celeste headed for her supply.

  "Celeste, honey, what are you going to do when your stash runs out?" Fannie was far more worried about prohibition than the murder of Brutus Rife.

  "Buy it illegally, of course."

  "You don't drink, not really. If my supply runs out before yours, let me have your liquor," Fannie pleaded.

  "Fannie Jump, would I leave you in the lurch?" Celeste held up her glass for a toast. "Civilization means you've learned to insult people instead of killing them."

  "I don't get it." Fannie gulped her toast before waiting for an answer.

  "It means we have a long way to go." Celeste laughed.

  Cora always possessed a sixth sense and that sense was telling her that Celeste had ushered Brutus into kingdom come.

  Ramelle observed Cora's silence. "What are you thinking?"

  "Me? Oh, I was thinking of a rhyme my mother used to say: 'Right is wrong and wrong is right. And who can tell it all by sight?'"

  March 6, 1920

  "Julia Ellen, you start up a fire," Cora fiddled with the oil lamp.

  Outside, sleet and wind banged against the windows. Cora and Juts had left Celeste's early to celebrate Julia's fifteenth birthday. Louise had promised to come home straight after work instead of hanging around mooning over Pearlie Trumbull.

  "Do you like Celeste and Ramelle's birthday present?"

  "You bet. That sweater came all the way from New York. Wheezie will get an inflamed bladder from jealousy." Julia enjoyed the thought of Louise's fit of envy. "Mother?"

  "What? Hand me that flat blade. I wanna jiggle this wick a little. Thanks."

  "It's my birthday and I want to quit school."

  "What?"

  "You told me on my birthday we could talk about me leaving school."

  "I did no such thing."

  "You did so, Mother. You forget."

  "There. Got it. A light in this kitchen helps. Now what is this noise about cutting off school?"

  "I'm not like Louise. I got no special talent. So why waste time?"

  "Course you got talent."

  "What?" Juts hoped to be convinced of hidden treasures.

  "You sure can raise hell with what you have." Cora's eyes shone.

  Julia smiled. She knew she was a devil. "Oh, Mom, I don't think I can get paid for that."

  "Don't be so sure. Yesterday I heard Celeste say she's thinking about giving you an allowance to let up a little."

  "She found out about the cigarettes, huh?"

  "What cigarettes?"

  Realizing her mistake, Juts waffled. "Her cigarettes. I spent the money on a nut sundae."

  "Don't crawfish, Julia."

  "I snitched a few and smoked them up with Ev."

  "A few puffs and you're ready to leave high school, a woman of the world."

  "I'm not learning anything. Look here at my history book. Did you ever see anything so dull in your life?"

  Cora opened the book to the place marked for tonight's lesson. "This here looks like some kind of certificate."

  "That's the Bill of Rights." Julia pouted.

  "What's that mean?"

  "It means I got to memorize them by tomorrow and I don't give Jack Shit about them or the Constitution. S'all a bunch of words. Money is all that counts, papers or no papers."

  Straining to make out a word or two, Cora pointed to the First Amendment. "What's this big word here, the first one?"

  Disdaining the subject, Juts glanced at the page. " 'Congress.'"

  "You read me them rights."

  "Mother."

  "I wanna hear them. Only got to hear it once and it's mine." Cora pointed to her head.

  Exasperated, Julia slid her book around and began in a singsong voice: " 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speec
h, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.'"

  "Ain't that grand?" Cora opened her arms.

  "What's so grand about it?"

  "I can say what I want, believe what I want, sit at table with whom I please and nobody dare stop me."

  "You do that anyway."

  "True, but maybe I do it because I grew up in a place where people said what they believed."

  "It's still dumb to memorize this junk."

  "Read me the rest, Julia."

  "Yes, m'am." She resigned herself to her fate. "Can I shorten them and tell you what they mean instead of going through this old-time way of saying things?"

  "O.K."

  "The Second Amendment says we got the right to keep and bear arms."

  "Um-hum." Cora rose and tossed some wood in the stove and put a kettle of water on.

  "The third one says we don't have to put up soldiers in our house; the fourth one says people can't fly in here and look through the house or take things out of it."

  "Crooks?"

  "No, I think they mean the law."

  "Same difference, sometimes. Go on, I'm listening."

  "The fifth one says if we're in court they got to try us by rules and we can't go up for the same crime twice. The end part declares if our land is taken for everyone's use we get good money for it."

  "You mean, they can take our land without our say-so?" Cora put both hands on hips, ready for a fight should the state dare come through her door.

  "I don't know." Julia shrugged.

  "No one's taking my land away from me. Land's all there is. You can't grow corn on a sidewalk."

  "But they gotta give you money."

  "I don't want no money. I know this earth. I know when my morning glories will come up and I can feel the sap rising in the apple trees. Why, land that's yours is like your kin, your mate, sort of. Money can't buy that." Her apron fluttered; Cora breathed hard.

  "Mom, I don't think you have to worry about this. Who wants Bumblebee Hill?"

  "Maybe so, but I'll shoot 'em if they do, so help me, God. You read me these other rights."

  "The next one says we get a fast trial by jury."

  "Which one is that again?"

  "Sixth. The seventh says if a legal battle is over twenty dollars you get a trial by jury."

  "Do you understand that one?"

  "No, but twenty dollars is a lot of money. Maybe you need a jury because you can't trust a judge."

  "That could be. What's the next one?"

  "The eighth says no unusual punishment and no excessive front money if you're in the can."

  "An unusual punishment—people get killed if they're murderers." Her hand on her face, Cora thought this over.

  "Yeah, but that's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That's Bible, right?"

  "Not so fast, Julia. That's Old Testament. Jesus came to teach love, not revenge."

  "He did a piss poor job."

  Her hands over her head, Cora let out a whoop. "Child, do you eat with that mouth?"

  Pretending to be calm and very learned, Julia countered, "As I was saying, taking a life that took a life is an old rule. So what the Bill of Rights talks about is not that but stuff like slitting someone's tongue if they're a gossip, or burning an eye out."

  Cora sighed. "Go on, read me the next one."

  "O.K., this one says if a right is written down in this Constitution it doesn't mean people don't own other rights not written down. That's how I figure this one out. And the last one says any power not spelled out as belonging to the Constitution belongs to the states—you know, like Maryland. Everything else belongs to the people. That's it."

  "Certainly gives a body something to think about." A large hand reached over the stove and poured the hot water over tea leaves.

  "I still say it's boring and I want to quit school."

  "Julia, I can't tell you how to live your life. I think school is good for you, but I'm not you. If you want out, then do it, but at least wait until this year is over in June."

  "Do you mean it?"

  "Yes."

  A door opened. Louise could be heard taking her boots off.

  "Wheezie, that you?" Julia yelled.

  "No, it's Lillian Gish."

  "Smartass."

  Louise sauntered into the kitchen. "Don't turn wise, Juts, or I'm not giving you your birthday present. Hi, Momma."

  "Hello, sweetie." Cora stood still so Louise could give her a kiss.

  "What awful weather. Too bad you weren't born in May."

  "You follow in three weeks, Louise. Don't bitch to me about when we got here. Looks like Ramelle's baby will arrive in May."

  Louise sniffed. "She could at least get married."

  "La Sermonetta the Second." Julia curled her lip.

  "You mean to say you sit there and favor wanton immorality?"

  "The way you are carrying on with Pearlie, you'll soon be in the same boat."

  Louise slammed her hand on the table. "That's not true. Our feelings are much higher than that."

  "I'd better duck before one hits me." Juts dodged under the table.

  "Judge not lest ye be judged," Cora reminded Louise.

  The older girl noticed the history book opened. "Quick, get me smelling salts. I believe Julia was studying." Louise faked a swoon.

  "I was not!" Julia flared.

  "Ha!" Louise gloated.

  "She was reading me the Bill of Rights. Here—how about some hot tea to warm your innards, Louise?"

  "The Bill of Rights?"

  Cora stopped for a second. "All ten of them. It's something, this being an American."

  Unimpressed, Louise mumbled, "I guess so."

  "You sure were hot to be Liberty when you were twelve, Wheezie." A sardonic smile enlivened Julia's attractive face.

  "You near burned me to a crisp."

  "I could have sold you as chitlins."

  "Julia Ellen, I am definitely not giving you your birthday present, insulting toad."

  "Toad! Well, it's true. I'd rather eat a bug than look at you."

  "Settle down, ladies." Cora threw the bread loaf at Julia, who caught it.

  "Come on, Louise, gimme my present. I've got a goody for you on your birthday."

  "No."

  "Aw, Wheezie, don't put a mule on. You know I was funning."

  "You can be so sweet when you want something. Butter wouldn't melt in your mouth."

  "I can't help teasing you. It just means I like you. I tease everyone I like. You always get religious or insulted."

  "That's because I'm sensitive."

  "Gimme my present."

  "All right." Louise went out into the front room and returned with a small, prettily wrapped box. "Here, chiseler."

  "Thanks." Juts unwrapped it in an instant. Inside the box lay a pair of stylish earrings. "Ooo—help me put them on."

  "Now it's my turn." Cora disappeared into the dirt-floor pantry and bustled out with a big hatbox.

  Julia had the lid of! before Cora could put it on the table. "Oh, Mother, just like in Celeste's fancy magazines. And the color goes with my earrings." Juts hugged her mother and kissed Louise, too.

  Louise started "Happy Birthday" and Cora joined in. This made tears in Julia's eyes. Toughie that she was, she fought them back. "I love everybody!"

  June 15, 1920

  Runnymede looked like a brilliant palette as people ran around in thirteenth-century costume. Each year on this day the town celebrated the Magna Carta and reenacted it on the town square. Celeste remarked that King John gave the first expensive autograph. Nowhere was the activity as hectic as up on Bumblebee Hill. Cora, Juts and Louise decorated the porch with garlands; potpourri hung in the corners to spark the air. Cora put out her best tablecloth, many times mended, and its bright pattern added to the mood.

  Ramelle had delivered a healthy girl on May 2. Black hair and electric-blue eyes, and she was named, as prom
ised, Spottiswood. Cora was throwing this party in the baby's honor. Curtis had traveled from Los Angeles to be with Ramelle when she was due. He was to return in a week, so Cora did her best to see that the goings on would be special for him, too.