Gone With the Wedding

by Briggs, Laura

  "It really is beautiful," she told Greg over the phone that night. "You'll love it. There's a view of the water, a weeping willow–"

  "There's a major battle site near there, right?" he said. "I thought I read something about it on the website." She heard the sound of papers rustling in the background.

  "Uh, maybe so," she answered. That didn't sound remotely familiar, but they were reading different things into this experience, she supposed. "That sounds right."

  "I can't wait to see it when I arrive," he said. "It'll be Thursday, probably; I give my last quiz in the makeup course on American History the day before." He didn't specify whether he was excited about the estate or the battlefield, although Amy preferred to think it was the former.

  "Thursday," she said. "I can't wait." For the first time since she arrived, she hope for a romantic moment with a handsome man in this place–although sans sweeping ballgown, she supposed.

  She lay beneath the covers afterwards, imagining the next week's parade of sweet tea and pecan pie, of strolling the landscaped grounds and gazing at the water by moonlight. A week of relaxation in elegant surroundings, capped by herself in a designer Southern belle gown walking down the aisle ... to what? A new life, a culmination of the last year's steadily-growing feelings. Nothing would be the same after that, she supposed, from the way she approached her novel to her morning routine.

  Snapping off the light, she lay in the dark, trying to imagine what existed on the other side of happily-ever-after. Something she had never before pictured after the lights dimmed on the silver screen's picture.

  *****

  When she went inside, there was a distinct change in the lobby's atmosphere since early afternoon. Notably, the lack of cool air, Amy's shirt continuing to cling to her like a damp second skin despite the fact that she was indoors. She glanced in the direction of the reception desk, where Mr. Fairfax was sorting brochures into little piles.

  "Is the air conditioning working?" she asked. He looked up.

  "Is it not?" he asked, after a moment, as if the heat had escaped his notice until now. "I reckon it must have gone out again. That happens a lot, I'm afraid. Well, we'll have to get someone to take a look at it." His head turned in the direction of the darkened passageway.

  "Edward," he called. "Edward, won't you see if there's a repairman who can come out and take a look at that old central unit?" A figure stirred in the dimness, Edward unfolding himself from one of the straight-back chairs on display there.

  "It'll be just a little while, Ma'am," Mr. Fairfax answered, with a pleasant smile.

  "Thanks," she answered, then went upstairs, taking note that hot air tends to rise–and that the few ceiling fans she had noticed in this place were antiquated, silent, and worse yet, completely still beneath a thin layer of cobwebs and dust. Ms. Murray's words returned with a vengeance.

  There was a red sky at dawn when Antonia peered outside. A red sky like the blood which was spilled the night before, the volley of shots which echoed through her dreams like a clap of thunder haunting her child-self long ago. In the midst of these might be Jackson; or he might be laying dead beneath an unmarked stone, an unknown soldier. He might have been hung as a traitor by either side.

  Unbearable thoughts, which were companions to another fear in her mind. It was the fear that he had found another's arms welcoming in a place far from all this suffering. His words as lies, his deeds to shield her only excuses for making his departure from Swan's Nest quickly to save himself from danger.

  It couldn't be true. Not brave, honest Jackson, who would risk any battle, face any danger if his courage would prove his cause to be right.

  The antiquated typewriter had a tendency to stick every third or fourth sentence, slowing Amy's progress. She propped her glasses on her head during these momentary delays and gazed at the twilight garden outside her window, the lawn with its new ornamental tree springing from the landscaped bed–a pussy willow tree, she had discovered, upon closer examination.

  No sign of the shirtless gardener anywhere to be found, however, although she strolled at leisure all afternoon long. Not that she was curious; or looking, for that matter.

  When she reached the end of the page, she pulled it out and added it with a flourish to the stack beside her machine. The heat in the room was not stifling, but without the relief of a breeze, forced her to open the window. Edward must still be in search of a repairman, she surmised.

  Her satin gown clung to her as she lay on the unmade bed, eyes closed despite the relative brightness of daylight's final shades before nightfall. In another day, she would see Greg again. They would spend the afternoon holding hands and admiring the hard work of Elise when it came to the aesthetic appeal of their ceremony and living out her dreams of romance in the antebellum world. This once-in-a-lifetime experience would not be all hers–although she suspected in some strange way that she wasn't nearly as interested in the groom's cake design as she was in the satin dress being planned for herself.

  Greg would understand that. He always understood, even if it was exasperating for him, that she did not remember battle dates or locations, or even the names of major tourist sites or landmarks. That her reason for working with him in the first place was his uncanny eye for minute details which her own brushed over in an effort to reach the big, sweeping picture. Their only problem–and it was a small one, she supposed–was that Greg could hardly ever see the big picture for the small pieces.

  *****

  The distant rumble of thunder invaded Amy's dreams that night. In the early light of dawn, she awoke in the stifling heat of the room, aware that the faint boom and pop in the distance had become louder. It had taken on the characteristics of a gunpowder report in movies–in fact, she could almost smell it as she opened her eyes.

  The sound of human voices yelling, however, was what drew her to a sitting position. Through the open window, she could see a haze–not the mists of the early morning, but a definite veil of smoke.

  The crack of a gunshot just below her window made her shriek with surprise. Outside on the lawn, a man in a blue uniform crumpled on the grass, several more running past him. A tide of grey and blue bodies were rushing in from all directions, accompanied by puffs of smoke from their rifles as they took aim and fired, felling uniformed figures across the grass.

  "Don't let 'em run, but cut 'em down boys!" bellowed a portly general in a bushy beard and grey jacket. He plunged a sword seemingly into the torso of a blue-jacketed boy, who fell to the ground with a shrill scream.

  Amy clapped a hand over her mouth as she turned and hurried to the room's door. In the hallway, Sophia had just emerged from her own room, screaming.

  "What is it?" she shrieked, grabbing Amy's arm. "What is it–what are they–"

  "I don't know, I don't know," Amy babbled, in an attempt to soothe. Behind her came the voice of Mr. Fairfax, his person positioned halfway up the staircase.

  "I'm terribly sorry," he said. "It appears we had a little scheduling conflict this week..." He spread his hands apologetically as Amy turned towards him.

  "Well, we were planning on shooting photographs of the grounds and house today, but that's all off," grumbled Ms. Murray. "Elise has already postponed it and sent Renee off to cover the local pie championship for next month's recipe section."

  She stood at the top of the stairs, surveying the scene in the lobby below–which had been converted into a hospital for the reenactment, it seemed. Wounded soldiers were sprawled across the antique sofas and chairs, groaning in various stages of fake-blood wounds. A sea of head bandages, compresses over smoke-stained limbs, and rifles propped in every available corner.

  Amy descended, casting a sympathetic glance at the nearest wounded soldier half-asleep in a chair. Veering towards the door, she narrowly missed stumbling over a pair of boots on a kneeling soldier, who was bandaging a Union soldier despite his own grey jacket. Something about the back of his head was familiar to Amy–something she realized a second
later with a sense of horror.

  "Pardon me," she said, as he glanced over his shoulder at her. Now she had a face to match the muscular figure from the landscaping crew.

  "Don't you ... work here?" she ventured, with a swallow. Her gaze shifted to the room of amateur actors around them.

  "Sometimes I do," he answered, with a faint grin. He tipped his cap, endeavoring to hide his bemused expression as he turned back to the body pretend-sprawled across the sofa. Amy crept away through the door to the veranda outside. Which was also occupied by the mock-dying, apparently.

  "I can't believe I'm missing this." Greg sounded disappointed on the phone.

  "It was a little loud at six in the morning," Amy answered. She sank lower beneath the suds of the bathtub. "I don't think you would have been so thrilled with it then."

  "Try me. I can't believe they didn't tell you. You could've watched from the windows–"

  "It was supposed to be two weeks away," she answered. "The magazine thought they had this place booked for themselves, remember? The editor wasn't exactly thrilled about having to delay their feature about the house because it was crawling in fake war wounded. Not that this place is generally crawling with anything," she admitted. The perplexities of Mr. Fairfax and the layers of dust in corners had given birth to the slow realization that this definitely wasn't one of the hottest tourist destinations in the South.

  "The hotel hasn't been open in years, you know," said Greg. "Apparently, the whole place is scheduled for renovation before it reopens to the public. The owner just granted this as a favor to your editor when she couldn't find anyplace local. I guess they granted the same privilege to the local reenactment chapter awhile back, too."

  She heard the sound of a beep in the background, a text received. Surprisingly enough, he didn't seem to answer it.

  "So, is this place run-down?" he asked. "I've heard it's not exactly Tara..."

  "Why does everyone keep saying that?" she interrupted. "It's a little dusty, it's got bad air conditioning, but other than that it's fine." She didn't mean to sound defensive, but she was beginning to fear all those remarks about the mansion would somehow come true. As if words would eat away at its perfection, revealing termites and leaky pipes, cheap wallpaper and moldy carpets.

  "Just asking," he answered, in a voice which suggested he was backing away from her. "Anyway, I'll see it for myself tomorrow, won't I?"

  "Bright and early," she answered. There was another beep in the background.

  "Isn't that your phone?" she said.

  "It is," he answered, nonchalantly.

  "You're not answering the messages," she said, suppressing the note of interest in her voice. "I'm just surprised, that's all."

  "It's just Malcolm," he answered.

  "Malcolm?"

  "The auction house employee. He sends me the latest word on who's moving in for the sword, who's dropped out. Keeping me informed."

  "Oh," she answered. So that was the reason he ignored it. It surprised her that her first reaction hadn't been fear of a rival love interest–only a sense of awe that he would ignore one of his colleagues or Civil War contacts for her.

  "Bright and early tomorrow morning, huh?" he said. "Be looking for my cab, it'll be there by dawn."

  "I will," she answered. He hung up before she could say anything further. She clipped the phone closed, emitting a startled gasp a second later in response to a splash in the bathtub. Not her phone, but a piece of plaster floating to the bottom beneath the suds. Above her, a missing piece visible from the decorative sconce surrounding the hanging chandelier.

  Okay, maybe there were a few spots in need of a little TLC. Nothing a good restoration crew couldn't fix in a day or two.

  She had spent the better part of the hot afternoon soaking in a cold bath of vanilla-flavored salts and rose petals as the reenactment down below no doubt wound up its weekend excitement. Sophia had gone shopping for shoes for the wedding and a series of romantic comedies for nighttime viewing, given the lack of televisions in the rooms.

  The water had grown warm in the afternoon sun, the moisture shriveling the tips of Amy's fingers in a sign she should climb out. She tossed her cell phone onto the chair and struggled into her bathrobe, pulling the plug to the deep tub.

  The first thing she saw on entering the bedroom was a man hunched in the corner, something heavy in his hand. With a scream, she darted behind the door, pulling her robe closed tightly around her.

  "What are you doing here!" Even as this garbled shriek emerged, she recognized the landscaper, whose face was averted from her general direction with an instinctive reaction to their situation.

  "Your air conditioner," he said. The wall unit was partly disassembled, a series of tools scattered around it.

  "I'm taking a bath–" she said, frantically.

  "–they told me you were out," he said, at almost the same time. "They thought you were in town so I–I came in here after I finished looking at the one next door."

  The hasty politeness of his speech proved he was as uncomfortable as herself–that, and the way he held his hands spread as if she had a pistol trained on him instead of an offended glare. She softened slightly in response.

  "I'm sorry," she said, her voice muffled slightly as she ducked further behind the door. "I was just surprised."

  "Do you want me to go?" he asked. Sneaking a glance in her direction as he reached for his tools.

  "No, no," she said. "I mean, I would really love some cold air in this place again." She pulled the robe more firmly into place before ducking out of hiding. His gaze flickered in her direction briefly, then away again.

  "I'm decent," she said, slipping across the room to the dresser and pulling open a drawer, rifling for her sundress. He had turned his attention to the open unit again.

  "These things are pretty old," he said, peering around the cooling system with a flashlight. "Looks like the pipes are a little rough."

  "I'm sort of surprised the owner hasn't replaced all this stuff, since the place is supposed to be under renovation," said Amy, who ducked into the next room to dress.

  "These things take time," answered the repairman, who was whistling under his breath as he banged around inside the unit.

  She peered around the doorway. "This morning's activity was sort of ... surprising," she said. "Are you a regular member of that reenactment group?" This was a personal question, with no good reason to ask it except out of curiosity.

  "I am," he answered. "Captain James Jackson, as they call me in the Civil War Preservation Society.” Her heart skipped a beat at these words–no, it was simply a coincidence.

  "Did your family fight in the war, I take it?" She had emerged from behind the door, conscious of how her yellow sundress fit, her eye catching a glimpse of her somewhat rumpled curls made flat from the water's steam. Inwardly, she winced at the sight.

  "They did," he answered. "My great-great-great grandfather fought for the Union." There was a clank as he dropped a wrench into the pile of tools. He glanced back at her briefly, a hazel eye flickering over her for a moment before he returned to his work.

  "The Union?" she asked.

  He laughed. "I had relatives fighting on both sides, don't worry." He offered her a little wink with this statement, which caused a blush to suffuse her cheeks momentarily.

  Her hands were folded on her lap, although there was no reason for her to linger here and watch him work. And yet, somehow, she didn’t feel a need to leave.

  "I see you're a writer of some kind," he ventured, as he snapped the front onto her unit again. "At least, Mr. Fairfax said that's why the magazine wanted to camp here for awhile. And I'm guessing it must be you from that stack of papers by the typewriter there."

  "I'm a novelist," she answered. "Amy Pontelle. I wrote The Antebellum Heart. Not that you've read it."

  He wiped his hands on a rag from his pocket. "I might have," he answered, slowly. "I have a lot of books. Haven't read all of them I want to–a lot of
'em piled up and waiting at home for me to get time."

  "And what do you spend your time doing?" The perky voice which asked this question did not seem like her own, she realized, as if another person had taken over her personality temporarily.

  He smiled. "I plant things," he answered. "That's what I'm doing here these days. Spend all my time in the dirt and greenhouses. Got a place to go home to and catch up on a little reading before bed. All I do these days since I gave up traveling for a bit." Bending down, he gathered his tools.

  "So you traveled before now?" she ventured. "Where?"

  "Everywhere," he answered.

  "Lucky," she answered. "I've practically never left Atlanta before this week."

  He surveyed her with an expression of interest. "You wish you had, I'm guessing."

  She shrugged. "I guess we all want something else sometimes." Recalling herself, she stood up and made a pretense of putting things away in her drawers.

  "Your unit's still not working," he said, after a moment. "I'm gonna check the others, then see if I can't find a clog in one of the lines somewhere that might be holding things up..."

  "That's all right," she answered, although it was far from all right in terms of her personal comfort. Something in his expression made him seem genuinely sorry that he couldn't fix her problem, a look of disappointment deep in those hazel eyes, perhaps.

  "Sorry about barging in on you," he said, pausing in the doorway. "Next time, I'll shout out before I start working." The friendliness in his voice, a kind of casual warmth in those Southern tones, had the capacity to melt her indignation entirely.

  "It was just an honest mistake," she answered, attempting not to blush for the second time in so many minutes. "Could have happened to anyone." She lingered on the other side of the door as he disappeared down the hallway to another open door–where, no doubt, the air conditioner was also a thing of the past.