“It is strikingly different from most of what I see around here,” Emily said.
“Perhaps. But I doubt myself. My disguise is simply more subtle. Slavery is slavery, and my pitiful attempt to free these people has come to a shabby end.”
“You were prevented by the law, Papa.” She brushed again at her skirt.
“I was a coward, Emily. I hadn’t the power—no, that isn’t true. Maybe not legally, but somewhere I had the power. And perhaps I had some courage, but not enough to use it against the tide of greed and fear.” He ground his foot on the hearth. “Even that’s not true. I made a choice. I thought I could do good. I thought there was time. And I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what, Papa? Of war?”
“Not so much of what, as for whom. I am still afraid—for you, for me, for all of us.”
“So am I, Papa,” Emily said. “I am very afraid.” Agitated, she rose from her chair, her hands spread wide.
“None of us knows how this conflict will go, Emily. No more than we know our true nature. Not one of us knows who we really are. There is too much overlaid.” He pulled his white hair back away from his forehead. “This Confederacy is like an ornate plantation house with all its framing and brick and millwork and finery—that could go up in flames. All built on a foundation dug from the earth like a grave.”
“Papa, your hope seems to have evaporated. What dire talk. You leave me—” She dropped into her chair, staring at him.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what has made me say these things. Will’s death. This bloody war I thought could not sustain itself goes on and on. So much more ghastly than anyone foresaw. Our boys coming home, if they come at all, without legs or arms, with half their faces gone. For what? To defend this other horror here at home?” Judge Matthews lifted his head to face her, as if only then aware of his daughter’s presence. “Forgive me, Emily. I’ve only added to your fears. I’m sorry. I want you happy. I have tried to protect you from life, ever since your mother died. I know now that was both impossible and foolish. It may have been a grave mistake.” He looked her in the eye. “I thought it was love.”
The judge laid his dead pipe on the mantel. At the edge of her chair, Emily struggled with the impulse to go to him, to hold him. She knew it would silence him, and whatever else he had to say would go back into hiding, like a salamander slipping beneath a rotten log. Her father was attempting to rearrange his mind, she knew. But the foundation would not change. His face was hidden, the fire illuminating the bush of his brow and the length of his beard as if from within.
“I blame myself, you know, for your mother’s death,” he said at last. “Sometimes I believe that I killed her. No, more than sometimes. It lies beneath me like her grave.”
Emily started from her chair, the book dropping to the floor, but his outstretched hand stayed her.
“I need to say this, Emily. And I believe you have the courage to hear me through. You are very like her, you know?” He turned his head toward Emily. She could not read his face in the backlit dark.
“It is worse for Jeremiah. Both of us carry the guilt of her death, and I cannot take his away with mine. Perhaps, we compete for our guilt. He believes he should not be alive. He believes I didn’t want him because I wanted her.” He hesitated, turning his face back to the fire. “He was right, Emily. I didn’t. I am deeply shamed by that. It has always lain between us. You see the results, Emily: his inability or unwillingness—I never know which—to see anything through; his obsession with land; the violence of his temper; and nothing ever enough to fill his emptiness.”
“Papa—” Emily leaned toward him, but he continued to hold up his hand.
“No, Emily. I bear the blame. I am not good, you see. And I have forfeited the love of my son. I forfeited Will. I should have taken control that day. And I am afraid that I have forfeited you.”
“Forfeited me, Papa?” she said.
He rubbed his eyes. “Emily, are you happy? Or should I say, at least content?”
She hesitated. “I am afraid,” she said.
“There is a great deal to fear.” He turned. “Emily, does Charles treat you well?”
“He—I suppose he does. I have no comparison. He is hardly ever at home and we disagree on certain basic things. Important things.”
“Things like slavery?”
“Yes, and the Union.”
“I believe Will had the same difficulties, plus Belinda’s wild moods. Such differing views on major issues make marriage difficult, in spite of love. I should have been more vocal to you both. I should have warned you what I thought—no, what I knew to be true.”
“I don’t want you to worry for me, Papa.”
“Well, I do worry for you. I always have.” He rubbed his eyes again, faced away from her. “You know that our family has been somewhat shunned because of my attempt to free my slaves and for my stance on slavery. Perhaps, you are not as keenly aware of that as I am. I think Will was. Perhaps, I have managed to protect you there, if nowhere else.” The judge locked his gaze on her. She could feel it, though she could not see it for the backlit fire. “You hadn’t any suitors, Emily. Oh, a few who soon disappeared. I held myself to blame for that. Certainly not you, so beautiful and kind. So intelligent and sweet.” A log fell in the dwindling flames. Her father shifted his weight and pushed it back with the toe of his boot. “So like your mother, really.”
The judge reached into the woodbox and dropped another piece of wood onto the fire. He stoked the embers. “When Charles came courting and you brightened and seemed to bloom, I went against my judgment and gave my blessing. I felt myself to be a primary obstacle to your happiness. You and Will both. I wonder that I was not more careful with your life. I am afraid I failed you, Emily. I ignored my reservations. I thought because of me there might be no one else. If I had been stronger for you both, perhaps he’d be alive.”
He saw her quiet crying and paused. Then he said, “Now that I’ve commenced this rambling, saying things better left unsaid, I can’t seem to stop without saying it all.”
Emily wiped away her tears.
“Maybe that is all.” He took her hands. “Well, such rambling,” he said. “I’m very tired. Belinda’s endless haggling over the land exhausts me.” He cleared his throat. “That was unkind. Everything I have said tonight is unkind. You see what I mean about who I have become.”
Emily put her arms around him, feeling the residual heat of the fire on his back.
“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I made my own choice. I had a chance at a family of my own. My own children to adore. You are not at fault. You have been my mother’s gift to me.”
His body sagged.
“Let’s go to bed now, Papa. Maybe tomorrow you will feel less burdened. Maybe I will, too.” She kissed his forehead, reached for his hand, and pressed it between hers. “I’ll bank the fire. Rest well.”
At the door, he looked back. Emily had not moved. He nodded and disappeared into the dark hall.
* * *
In the weeks following her stay with her father, Emily struggled with his confession to her; she could think of it as nothing else. She felt undone that he had approved Charles as a suitor without approving of him. His fear that there would be no one else because of his stance on slavery was a shock to her. That he felt he had sold her out triggered every insecurity she had lived with nearly all her life. Or at least since her mother’s death: her lack of real friendships, her hesitance at knowing the right fork to use on rare social outings, the feeling of something wrong in the way townsfolk looked at her, the distance some kept or the cold formality with which they spoke to her. She had been an outsider and would always be, she thought. She would not have burdened her father more by confessing the strain in her marriage since the Fourth of July. She was even more wary of her husband now, less at ease in the house that no longer felt like home, the house in which she was pervasively aware either of his presence or his absence. Sad as she had often been in her
father’s house, she had felt at ease, accepted, safe—except for Jeremiah’s heedless taunts—and at rest without even realizing. Now she perpetually reminded herself to stop moving, to stop tapping, to stop drumming her fingers, to stop ruminating. Falling asleep had become an effort, and often she woke in the morning drained and fatigued.
With resolve to divert herself and focus on the cause against slavery, Emily picked up the book she had brought from her father’s, intent on reading, only to lay it down again. The book fell from its careless placement at the edge of the table and Emily stooped to retrieve it. She roamed from room to room, rearranging bric-a-brac one-handed, the book clutched to her breast with the other.
In the parlor Emily happened upon Ginny. On impulse Emily asked for help in improving her stitches. “Well,” said Ginny, “I reckon you gone have to put that book down somewhere.” Emily handed it over and Ginny laid it on the side table by the window. Even with her fresh intention, Emily’s work on new dresses for Rosa Claire and the baby was as uneven as ever, perhaps more so.
Charles came and went, sometimes without speaking, often in the night.
Emily did not sleep well and her fatigue showed in unusual crossness with Rosa Claire and sometimes with the slaves. It occurred to her that she had absorbed her father’s guilt and his lack of faith in her.
CHAPTER 18
Summer settled over the land like the lid on a pot of boiling greens. In the fog of her pregnancy, Emily took to napping with her daughter in the heat of the day. One afternoon, she awoke to hoofbeats, as Charles’s voice penetrated her exhaustion. She rose, leaving the little girl asleep.
From the muffled voices through the window, she realized that Charles had gone into the cutting garden with Benjamin. By the time Emily reached the back door, he was walking toward her with a bouquet of foxglove in his hand.
“Look what’s blooming,” Charles said, holding the flowers out to her.
Almost by reflex, Emily received them, along with a kiss on her cheek. Digitalis. After Will’s death and the conflict in the family. Her stomach knotted. How could he walk in like this and expect her to receive them?
“They will go to seed right quick now, so don’t let them spread near the henhouse. Remember?” he said.
Emily nodded, arranging and rearranging the tall, unwieldy stems in a blue vase Charles had ordered for her the Christmas before, an ineffectual attempt at replacing her mother’s broken one. She tried to shake off her reaction. It was only a bouquet. She would not die from touching them.
“I remember,” she said. “I will collect them and save them for the fall. No foul gloves for evil fairies around our fowl!”
Charles laughed, put his arms around her waist. Emily was so rarely lighthearted these days.
“Perfect!” Charles said, fingering the hanging blooms. “We need those chickens fried up for Sunday dinner! Let’s not have any slaughter here that isn’t our own. And our glorious and victorious slaughter of the Union forces at Manassas. Scattered those cowardly bastards off in a goddamned bloody panic. The ones we didn’t bury.”
Emily pushed away. “Men are dying, Charles. And you rejoice? You make me shudder.”
“It’s life, Emily. And it’s war. We are in the business of slaughter. Or haven’t you noticed how we are slaughtering the damned Union? Like we slaughter those Sunday chickens.” Each insistent reiteration of the word slaughter fell on her like a blow. “Or haven’t you paid attention? So protected by your dear papa that you don’t see the niggers slaughtering your chickens for Sunday dinner? Or care to know the slaughter it takes for them to take care of your messy business?”
She turned away. “You promised not to use that word, Charles.”
“Nigger? Or slaughter? The chicken slaughter? Sunday dinner slaughter? Open your eyes, Emily. Haven’t you seen the Sunday slaughter?”
“I’ve seen a little—by accident. It makes me sick. I just haven’t ever . . .”
“Well, it doesn’t seem to make you sick to eat chicken. To repeat myself, Emily, this is life. This is survival. We kill the chickens. And we will sure as hell kill the goddamned invading Yankees. We are at war. To preserve the life you live thanks to your niggers, madam. The ones who kill your chickens for you. The chickens you love to feed and gather their nice, warm eggs. Love holding those little soft biddies, don’t you? But you also love fried chicken come Sunday. And that means slaughter, Mrs. Slate. So better us than the foxes, eh?”
Emily walked into the house kitchen. Charles followed her and pulled her to him. She resisted and pushed away, picking up a dirty bowl. The bowl clanged against the bottom of the chipped enamel dishpan. Emily plunged her hands into the cloudy water. Her fingers circled ’round and ’round the smooth edge of china as though it would never come clean. She felt Charles watching, but she could not stop herself.
“Thank you for the flowers, Charles,” Emily said over her shoulder, her voice barely audible.
The sound of Charles’s boots as he walked away hammered into Emily’s head. The bowl sank in the murky water as she wiped her hands on a clean linen towel. She followed him to the door, the towel hanging like a dead thing in her hand.
Halfway across the yard Charles turned his head and spotted her staring after him. She felt unable to do otherwise. Several chickens pecked around his feet. Charles kicked at them, sending them scattering. He whipped around, closing the space between them. Emily backed away, but Charles was at the top of the steps, his fingers curled around her wrist, shaking the towel loose from her fingers. His laugh at her shock was harsh and empty.
“You think I’m cruel? To speak the truth? About you and me?” he said. “Let me show you who we are, my dear.”
Charles yanked her stumbling down the steps. His intensity terrified her. Emily pulled against him, struggling, but her wrist might as well have been cuffed.
“Grab that rooster,” Charles commanded Jessie, who was sweeping by the shed.
When he let go of Emily’s wrist, she lost her balance and almost fell. He strode across the yard while Jessie chased the squawking bird, pitched after it, caught its tail, and tucked it under her arm, holding its neck in her hand.
“Put that thing on the stump and bring me an ax.” His voice softened. In a gesture resembling tenderness, Charles took Emily’s hand. “Here, now, come stroke the feathers. Beautiful, aren’t they? Not quite the fashion for high-minded ladies, but a few might look right fine on your Sunday bonnet. Here, these long ones from the tail.” He jerked several out. The bird shrieked. Charles dragged the luminous feathers across her cheek. “Ah, they frame your face so fine. Perhaps a bit bawdy for you, though? Give me that, Jessie.” Charles grabbed the ax from her.
“Now, Emily, you just hold this bird down. Like this.” He forced her hands around the struggling body. The bird’s wild heartbeat hammered at her hands like the throbbing in her own chest. She could not tell the difference. “Don’t move,” he said. Charles raised the ax over his head. “Open your eyes, Emily.”
The glittering blade came down. The bird’s round eye stared at her, unblinking. The beak gaped open, the tongue sharp and grotesque between the hard parallel curves. Blood spurted from the severed neck.
Emily screamed and jerked like the slain bird. The headless cock leaped from the stump, its wings battering the blood-spumed air. Red spatters stained Emily’s hands as she covered her eyes. The bird’s frantic body flopped against her skirt. Vomit spewed from Emily’s mouth and nose. She fled toward the outhouse. Terrified, Jessie flew after her. Emily’s boot tangled in her crinoline and she plunged face-first onto the hard-packed earth.
Charles pushed Jessie aside. “See to that rooster,” he said, low and impassive.
Vomit clung to Emily’s lashes and her hair, the smell and sight of it gagging him, despite his exposure to illness and wounds and death. An oozing abrasion followed the curve of her cheek. Her right eye was beginning to swell. A fine spray of blood from the rooster darkened her forehead. By the time Cha
rles reached the porch, Emily stirred in his arms, moaning. He pulled at the door with his little finger, forced his boot into the opening, and shouldered his way through, twisting to protect her head. In the parlor, Charles lay Emily on the divan, cradling her head with his hastily folded jacket. Its bloodstained sleeve lay limp on the floor.
Ginny stood in the door, her face dark and flat as well water for which there is no bucket. Charles turned sideways to shoulder past her. She blocked his way.
“I seen what you done,” she said.
“I—” He stopped. “I didn’t mean her harm.”
Her eyes were on Emily and he looked down, seeing her now as Ginny was seeing.
“Help me, Ginny,” he said.
“Help you?” Ginny turned her back. “Yes, sir, I’m gone help.”
Ginny set his medical bag beside him, a wet towel and calendula oil in hand. He swabbed the clotting blood and applied a sparing portion of the oil to Emily’s bruising cheek. Emily opened her eyes and Charles saw her effort to focus.
“You are in the living room,” he said, quiet and professional. “You fell. I am putting calendula oil on your cheek. Ginny is here.”
Emily’s unfocused eyes wandered from his face to Ginny’s. She raised her hand and Ginny took it.
“You gone be all right, honey child.”
Ginny set aside her scuffed boots, as Charles checked Emily’s ankles and wrists.
“I don’t find any other injury,” Charles said, placing Emily’s hand across her ribs. “I want you to lie still for a spell. I am going to talk to Ginny and bring you a cup of tea. No sitting up now. Don’t even try. Just be still.”
Emily’s eyes followed his face, rolling upward, going out of focus as he kissed her forehead and lifted his hand from hers. She watched him walk away. On the ceiling, her eyes traced a web of cracks that split the plastered ceiling.
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