The Rebel Wife Read online

  I wanted Albion to be amazed. Awed. Their tongues should be stilled in their mouths throughout that endless afternoon. They came in a flood of black silk and broadcloth to pay their respects, to collect tokens, and to stare wide-eyed with their mouths pinched at the extravagance of it. I had informed Mr. Weems that there was no limit to the expense, that I wanted the room overwhelmed with flowers. He expressed lilies and white roses on the train from Nashville. Their exquisite scent bled out through the windows onto the porch, suffocating the senses with a putrefying sweetness. The Chinese railings across the front and back porch were dressed in shiny black bunting. The doors and windows were swagged in the same material and thrown open to the autumn air. No detail was too small. Nothing was overlooked.

  The mourners thronged the lawns and parlors and the long central hall. They milled around the rooms, looking somber and resigned. Young colored girls circulated among them, dressed entirely in black down to their pantalets, carrying trays of onyx rings and bracelets, satin armbands, and handkerchiefs trimmed in black lace and embroidered with Mama’s initials. Mr. Weems had provided cards printed with a lone woman by an urn shaded by a willow tree. On the reverse was a poem by Henry Timrod.

  Art thou not glad to close

  Thy wearied eyes, O saddest child of Time,

  Eyes which have looked on every mortal crime,

  And swept the piteous round of mortal woes?

  Mrs. Branson, they called me, though I had gone to school with them, played in their parlors and gardens, and cried over the dead with them. That had been before—before I became Mrs. Branson. They treated me with civility. I shrink from calling it coldness, but it was chilling. They nodded to Eli, thin-lipped, extending limp hands and murmuring, “My condolences.” Their faces streamed past, puckered, an agony of pantomime that I had not expected. I had thought I would shame them with the house and gardens, the tokens and extravagance. It was as if they didn’t see it. As if they could barely see me. It became their funeral for Mama and I was the intruder. The Yankee officers, those who were left, came, too, and brought their wives, who were unwilling to miss an opportunity to mingle with the old aristocrats. The Yankee women were conspicuous for their stiff and shiny new taffetas and fashionable bonnets trimmed in crape, while the old families wore mended dresses and faded shawls. Those Yankee women took my hands in both of theirs, warm, gushing with sympathy and offering any assistance, begging an opportunity to call on me. Their dress embarrassed me with its newness and quality that was too like my own.

  Buck did not come. Judge’s son did not even bother to come to my mother’s funeral. Judge offered up some excuse, that he was ill or indisposed, but I knew it was a lie. People raised their heads when Judge came in. He came directly to me, without looking at any of them. They moved aside for him. That was respect, what he did for me. By his respect for me, those others, the old families, had to show their respect, too.

  Eli did not twitch at Buck’s name. He kept his eyes on a small painting of a thoroughbred horse Pa had owned years and years before. And then Mike came up, unsteady on his feet already, his words slurred, and he looked at Eli, so calm and inscrutable, and said, “Sir.” It seemed like he raised his voice. “We may tolerate your presence here, but you will never be one of us.” What an ass my brother is.

  Eli had given Mama an income after we married. He was generous with Mama and with Mike. She was very comfortable. Eli scrubbed the damage of the war years from the house, and it took on the aspect it had when Pa was alive. Eli would send Simon over to the house to report on what needed fixing or painting. The next day Simon would have a crew of men hammering and sawing at the cornices and soffits where rot had invaded, and putting up fresh paint—real paint, not whitewash. I don’t think Eli knew I observed these things, but I did. And Mama could not stop carrying on about it. She was shocked to find a gang of Negro men working in her garden or clambering up ladders and peeping through the windows as if she hadn’t lived surrounded by them before the war.

  The house gleamed, was maintained like a monument—a memorial. As if it were Pa’s mausoleum and Mama the last vestal. Or maybe I was the vestal, tending the flame from afar. It was a temple to the past, but without a soul. It was not apparent to a passerby or even to Mama, who lived in the midst of it, scolding her maids about the dusty stairs or how they didn’t put enough blue in the wash. But I could feel it with a sadness I carried in my bones like some crippling disease. I honored the house as my obligation, as I honored my mother on the day of her burial. There was no one else to observe the proper rites. It was my duty.

  Emma helped me dress the morning of Mama’s funeral, and she said that she had had her differences with Mama. Unusual of her to speak so frankly. I barely responded. She knew Mama longer than I did. She grew up with Mama. Would she have spoken like that if she were still a slave? Mama was a strong-willed person. Someone who emphatically knew right from wrong. The mildest scullery maid had her differences with Mama. I did, too, I guess. But her absence left something missing from me. I kept thinking, Who will I read to now? Mama used to sit with me in the evenings, and I would read aloud whatever novels I had while she did her handwork. But now I will read alone, I thought. In fact, I’ve stopped reading altogether. What a silly question for me to think, but I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  Three

  HENRY CLIMBS ON HIS narrow bed beside me. His solitary games always stop when I appear. He wraps his arms around me and lays his head on my lap. His hair is like corn silks under my fingers. I am petting him. My pet. He breathes out of his nose in short, discontented bursts. He is confused by all this commotion.

  The ring of the bell is faint through the open nursery windows. Little John is making his progress through the neighborhood. Soon they will all know Eli is dead. They will see Little John and know he is from my house. The whole town must already know Eli has been ill.

  John is a good playmate for Henry. They are so close in age. John was born just six months after Henry and is already the bigger boy. In that way, Rachel has been a help in the house. There are so few boys in the neighborhood for Henry to play with, not for any lack of children. John is a good companion. Rachel brings him with her and Big John when they come in the morning. Just as easy for her or Emma to watch two boys as one. And it eases Henry’s loneliness. What must be his loneliness. He is such a quiet child, as content to play alone as he is to play with others. He lives so deep inside himself that he observes more than he partakes. But there is a keenness of mind there. He will grow up to be smart as a whip. He may favor Eli Branson on the outside, but inside he is a Sedlaw. I know it as surely as I know my own name.

  “It’s too much for you to understand, I know,” I whisper. Maybe for myself. “But why don’t we go on a trip? Wouldn’t you like to go on a trip for a while? Would you like that?”

  He rubs his head against me, shy of answering. He is thinking.

  “We’ll get to ride on the railroad. And on steamboats on a river. We’ll go see mountains and the ocean, too. Wouldn’t you like to see the ocean?”

  Henry nods and says, “Mmm.” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye but looks away as soon as I catch him with my glance.

  I brush his hair with my fingers. “It’s going to be fine, Henry. Don’t worry. We’re all going to be fine.” He sighs softly and closes his eyes.

  “Miss Gus,” Rachel shouts from my bedroom in the most exasperating way. “Miss Gus, the undertaker’s here.” She comes to the nursery door and leans her head in. “And Mr. Judge Heppert is here to see you, too. I put Mr. Heppert in the front parlor and the boneman in the music room.”

  Rachel has finally used her head. She knows well enough to keep Judge and Mr. Weems apart. I suppose I must take that as a sign of progress, although she would know as well as anyone what happened during the war.

  I’ll bring Weems upstairs quickly. Then I can see Judge. He must have heard Little John’s bell. Hopefully, he will not stay long.

  Not
that Judge and Weems were ever at each other’s throats. Everyone behaves so cordially now. You might never know by looking, but those old hatreds are there. I could see them with every one of Judge’s frowns or Eli’s silences. With so much that we all lost, how could there not be anger?

  All of that is past, anyway. Dead and buried with it. I don’t have to think about it anymore. It is their burden, not mine.

  My hands are so wet from sweating. This relentless heat. The parlor door is closed. Mr. Weems is standing nervously in the music room, rolling his hat over his fingers. He is painfully thin and wears gold-rimmed spectacles perched at the tip of his nose. He looks like a blue heron in a black suit.

  “Thank you for coming, Mr. Weems,” I say. “Mr. Branson is upstairs.”

  “Mrs. Branson,” he begins. “I want to extend my most sincere condolences.” He follows me to the stairs. If only we could get out of the hall. The door to the front parlor is shut tight. My hand is on the banister. Weems looks at me, expectant. He was a friend of Eli’s, after all.

  “Yes, Mr. Weems.” I cast my eyes down. “It is a terrible loss for us all. Let me take you upstairs.”

  Weems follows me up the stairs to Eli’s bedroom door.

  “If I may ask, Mrs. Branson,” he says. I nod to him and turn the handle, slowly swinging the door wide. “How did Mr. Branson meet his end?” The bed is freshly dressed with white linen. Eli lies on the cooling board in his shirtsleeves and pants. His eyes are closed. A coat and other clothes lie folded neatly on the edge of the bed. His face has lost its ruddiness. It is the wan color of dried putty.

  I answer slowly. “Dr. Greer said that it was a sanguinary disorder brought on by the heat. A summer complaint.”

  “A summer complaint?” He remains at the threshold. The cooling board is laid across two chairs. Simon must have brought up ice to put in the long box under the board. A fine mist rises from its edges.

  “Well, that is how Dr. Greer described it,” I say, perfectly innocent. It sounds like an excuse.

  “Yes, I spoke with the doctor. He seemed, well, baffled, Mrs. Branson.” He cranes his head on his long neck, peering into the room. He surveys Eli’s body from head to toe.

  “I can assure you, Mr. Weems, there is no sickness in the house.”

  He steps into the room cautiously. “Of course, Mrs. Branson. Of course not. I understood there was a great deal of fluid lost.” Eli is almost too large for the board. His feet hang over the edge and rest against the back of one chair.

  “Yes, he did lose a great deal of—he perspired a great deal.” Eli’s face is gray and the skin seems to slide against the bone in sharp edges. His cheeks and eyesockets are hollowed out. A thick knot catches in my throat. He is dead and wasted.

  “That will help, then,” Mr. Weems says. “There will be less fluid. I have a boy bringing the materials over in a cart. We will begin as soon as he gets here. Do you have a key to the door? We prefer to keep the door locked when we are working, if that’s possible.”

  “Yes.” My throat closes. My hand gropes in the pocket of my dress for my handkerchief. The floor seems to move under my feet. “I will give you the key.”

  “You will see after our work is done. It will be like we have brought him back to life. Just like your mother.”

  Judge is waiting patiently in the front parlor. He kisses me on the top of my head. His right hand exerts a gentle pressure through the thick, twining braids that Rachel dressed. He should be pleased that I am in heavy mourning, dressed in black from cuffs to hem.

  “Poor child, you’ve been through so much,” he murmurs and sits next to me. Judge is always dressed impeccably, almost formally, in dark suits and shoes with a high shine. His hair has turned so white since the war. His beard is neatly trimmed. His pale blue eyes are piercingly clear. Mama always said girls threw their heads at him when he was young. Like Buck, I guess. Like father, like son. Mama almost tittered herself to fits about it. She regretted their close kinship, or she would have married him herself.

  “Thank you, Judge,” I murmur. “It’s kind of you to come so quickly.” He pats my hand and sits across from me. “We have seen little of you of late.”

  “Yes. And I am sorry for that.” He nods and exhales, looking at the patterns on the rug, garlands of pink roses and ivy. “My business has preoccupied me. And the party. Politics, you know. I regret it now for your sake, Augusta.”

  I smile at him, a prudent smile, not too strong, modest and deferential. “I understand, Judge. You shouldn’t apologize. You’ve always been such a support for me. And for Mama.” Mama relied on Judge for everything after Pa died. She couldn’t make a decision without asking him what to do.

  A small smile blooms on his lips, and he reaches for my hand, covering it and giving it a squeeze. “I’ve tried to do my best by you. I honestly have.”

  Rachel enters with tall glasses of iced tea. She moves silently and places the tray on the small table in front of me. She nods to me and cuts her eyes at Judge. She turns away abruptly. He barely notices.

  The glasses are covered in sweat from the humidity, and the moisture runs down the sides and pools on the black lacquer tray. The tray was a gift to Eli from a Mobile merchant who imported it from China. The tea looks so cold. I am tempted to take my glass in spite of Judge, but I must wait for him. He looks at the drink but doesn’t move. His head is cocked, listening to Rachel’s soft footfalls as they move down the hall.

  “The funeral arrangements,” he says. “Can I offer you assistance with them?”

  “No, thank you. Mr. Weems is upstairs now.” I look at the ceiling as if I can see through it to Eli’s room. I cannot look at Judge for fear. “I am leaving all the arrangements to him. I told him I want Eli buried soon. In two days’ time.”

  Judge’s eyes follow mine to the ceiling. His face registers no feeling of any kind. “Fine. Fine. Nothing too extravagant, of course. This won’t be like Elsie’s funeral.”

  Little beads of water run down the sides of the frosted glasses. I will take some ice after Judge leaves and wrap it in a towel to rub against my temples. That will help.

  “Weems,” he repeats. “I thought there was some problem between Weems and Eli. That’s what you reap when you try to force nigger voting down men’s throats. Weems might have voted Republican once, but he has sense enough to know what an abomination it is to give the darkies the vote. I told Eli he wouldn’t be able to keep his party together. We scattered them like buckshot in the last election.”

  The sunlight is so bright outside, it makes the parlor seem dark. The Corbins’ dog trots by, a large piebald hound with his tongue hanging out almost to the ground, panting.

  “I wasn’t aware of any dispute. Mr. Weems didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, I suppose it will be fine now. Eli is no more. Weems didn’t bridle at...”

  “No, sir. Not at all. He seemed pleased that I wrote to him.”

  “A dirty scalawag practicing a dirty trade. At least we’ve taken the state back from them. A disgusting practice. I wasn’t happy that you did that to your mother, but I like the old ways anyway. If you choose to do that to Eli, well, I won’t interfere.”

  We sit together quietly. Judge’s eyes move back to the ceiling. He looks at me quickly and then at the floor, his hands on his knees. “Augusta, I want you to understand that you will never be in need. I will see to that.” He drums his fingers against his knee and then coughs into his hand. He looks at me and raises an eyebrow. “Were you very familiar with Eli’s business interests?”

  “No,” I answer. “But I am very interested to learn.” There is a creeping coldness coming over my shoulders. What could he be getting at?

  “I have talked with Jim Stephens at the Planters and Merchants Bank, and I will meet with him again soon. He is doing an accounting in detail, an inventory of Eli’s assets at the bank as well as his outstanding debts. When I heard how serious Eli’s illness was, I went to him immediately.”

  “
His debts?”

  “It seems that Eli has been entangled with the bank for some time, and as more than just a holder of capital stock. He took out mortgages on a variety of his properties and against his stock in the bank.”

  “What does that mean?” I lean forward.

  “It means that the economic convulsions of the last few years left no one untouched. Perhaps you were unaware. Your mother was in her last illness. But the panic impacted everyone’s interests, Eli included, for all his seeming invulnerability. Eli had interests in railroads and mines, many of which are now worthless. There seems to be more than just losses on investments. He was playing a few rounds of monte with the bank, and it’s unclear at this point who the winner will be, if anyone. I am sorry to have to tell you.”

  “How can that be?” The words stumble out of my mouth. It isn’t possible. How could he come here and tell me these things with Eli barely cold?

  “Eli and I did not see eye to eye on many things, but we agreed on our concern for you and your interests. It was one of the things we could talk about.” He exhales heavily, almost heaving through his nostrils. I nod, too weak even to smile. Judge inhales to begin again.

  “We were not allies otherwise. That’s true. After the war, I could see the way the wind was blowing. It was no use to fight against it, although I’m proud to say I never took the oath.” He pauses and looks at the rug, tracing the curl of the ivy with his eyes. “The wind has changed again, Augusta. I think Eli realized that, too. Maybe he realized it too late. I don’t know. But the Republicans were not going to stay in control of the state. They were not going to ram Negro rule down our throats. The people of Alabama—the people of the South—would not let that happen. I could get beyond that for your sake. I know there was a lot of fear in Albion back when you were married, and perhaps your mother, God rest her soul, did what she thought was best. I know you did, too. And I have stood beside you for all that. I stand beside you now. I know that things are not perhaps as you had hoped, but the days we have lived have been full of unexpected—unanticipated—shocks. You will survive this one as you have survived the others.”