The Rebel Wife Read online

  Shocks? Negro rule? What does any of this have to do with Eli’s money? Everyone talked as if the man owned everything in town. And now Judge is telling me there’s nothing left? It’s all worthless? Because of Negro rule and the Republicans?

  “I will come back to you as I know more. I wanted to acquaint you with what I knew at this point.”

  “Thank you, Judge. I’m sorry, I just can’t believe this. I don’t know what it all means.” He watches me with discomfort. He was never one for sympathy. I tug my handkerchief from my sleeve and grip it.

  “It will all work out. I am investigating everything, and I will unravel Eli’s affairs. If there is need, I’m sure the bank can extend you something.”

  “How long will it be, Judge? How long, do you think, before you will know?”

  He pauses and scratches his beard. “Give me a week, Augusta. Maybe two. Don’t you worry. I am here to protect you. That’s why Eli made me trustee of his estate. He wanted me to protect you.”

  My hand pauses, holding the bright white handkerchief before my eyes. “Is that what he said?” Judge moves his hand over to my knee and squeezes. I put that sadness in my eyes like the woman on Mama’s memorial cards.

  “Yes,” Judge says, very earnest. “Those were his exact words. It’s been several years ago now, but I remember it as if it were this week. He said if anything should ever happen to him, he wanted me to protect you.”

  “Eli was so thoughtful. I’m surprised he never said it to me.” My left hand is clenched on my handkerchief, and I will it to soften.

  “He cared for you very much. You must have known that.”

  “I guess I did.”

  “He was not one of us, but he could show himself to be a man of honor on occasion. I hope you were able to find some happiness in your marriage.”

  I cannot meet Judge’s eyes. They are on me, probing. Small streams of water pour down the glass. The chips of ice have melted away so quickly, there is only a thin layer left. The chips are glassy, almost invisible except for the way they catch the half-light of the room.

  “Yes, I did. Of course I did. And I have Henry.”

  He nods. “Yes, and there’s Henry to think of. You focus your efforts on Henry. He may be Eli’s son, but there’s Blackwood blood in his veins. And I will see to everything else.”

  He sighs a satisfied sigh. I reach for my glass, wrapping my handkerchief around it, swabbing the moisture from the base so it does not drop on my dress. I take a long, slow drink. The tea is cool and sweet in my mouth and slides down my throat. I raise the damp handkerchief to my forehead.

  “What will you do—exactly—as trustee, Judge?” I ask.

  “Nothing for you to worry yourself about. Eli’s will is pretty straightforward.”

  “You have his will?”

  “Yes, of course. As soon as I heard he was ill, I pulled it out and reread it. Everything is in order.”

  “What does it say?” I should keep my voice softer. I look at him and smile.

  “Eli has left everything to Henry. You get the income from his investments. And I will oversee the whole. I can bring it to you if you like.” His voice is steely, and his mouth curls down.

  “No, thank you, Judge. That’s very kind.” I want to see it.

  “It was done with your best interests in mind. And Henry’s. Like I said, we have no idea who might come looking for a piece of Eli’s estate or where things stand. It protects you from—from all sorts of things.”

  “Yes, I can see that. It seems very proper.”

  “I can guarantee you that it is.”

  “And are there other trustees?”

  “Me alone. Are you worried I’m not enough?” Judge relaxes into the divan.

  My mouth feels stiff as I smile. He is more than enough. “No, that’s perfect. I was worried there would be other people.”

  Judge rises from his seat, and I rise with him. His mouth is still hard. He does not appreciate me intruding, no matter how gently.

  “We will have plenty of time to discuss it, Augusta. Trust me. I will manage it all.”

  “Thank you, Judge. Thank you so much.” The handkerchief in my hand is twisted into knots.

  We walk to the door. Judge turns to me. “One more thing. Buck wanted me to send word to you—his condolences. He asks permission to call on you.” Judge squints at me. The handkerchief is taut between my hands.

  “Oh—so soon, Judge. I don’t know.”

  “He wanted me to ask—not to upset you, of course, but as a good friend. He said, a good friend who has missed you.”

  I struggle with the handkerchief. “I don’t think so, Judge. It’s too soon. I cannot. I can’t think of it.”

  Judge frowns and puts his hat on. “I will let him know that you are thinking about it. Take your time. But think about it. It would mean very much to him.”

  He leaves, walking down the path to the sidewalk, a black cane in his hand that he taps against the bricks.

  “Miss Gus, Mr. Weems is asking after you.” Emma stands in the door of the bedroom, eyeing me up and down. Her eyes move away when I look at her.

  “Is he with Eli?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll go to him.” Emma leaves the door open and goes downstairs. She must think I’m losing my mind, pacing back and forth in my room.

  I tap softly at Eli’s door, and Weems opens it immediately.

  “Mrs. Branson, please come in.” He smiles with his lips pressed tightly together and pushes his spectacles up his nose.

  Eli is still on the cooling board, but his edges are softened. His cheeks are no longer sunken, but puffed and marked with patches of pale pink. His hair is combed and slick across the top of his head. His hands are folded across his swollen belly. How can he have done this to me?

  The rear wall is lined with canisters that have coiled tubes coming out of them, some of them streaked the color of rust inside the translucent yellow rubber. One canister has a tall pump attached to the top with a black rubber ball dangling from it. A hand pump. How much did Weems take out? And how much did he put in? The air is acrid with the bitter almond scent of arsenic.

  “My boy will remove these shortly,” he says, nodding at his equipment. “Mr. Branson looks as if he could be sleeping, doesn’t he? Dr. Holmes could not have done any better.”

  “Yes, indeed, Mr. Weems. Thank you so much for your care.” Eli does not look at all as if he is sleeping, though he certainly does not appear dead. He seems waxen and rouged. His whiskers have been smoothed against his jaw in an improbable way.

  “Yes, ma’am. It is an art as much as it is a science. Some may sneer at the trade, but it is a valuable comfort we provide to the living. To see once again those they loved as if they still had the breath of life in them. Perhaps it is a deception, but it is a comforting one.”

  “Yes, I can see that.” A comfort for some people, I suppose. After Hill was killed at Nashville, his body never made it home. Must you see someone dead to believe he is dead? I feel my brother next to me so often, like a ghost in the house with me, and I know it is because his body never came home. “Is there anything more? I have so much to prepare.”

  “I understand.” Weems nods and crinkles his eyes behind his glasses. “Did I hear the voice of your kinsman Mr. Heppert downstairs?” Weems’s lips stretch thin across his face. “Does he have any objections? I know of his preference for the more traditional practices.”

  “Not at all, sir. On the contrary, he is very pleased.” A lie can’t hurt. What does Judge or Weems care either way?

  “That is gratifying.” Weems’s smile is sour. “Although Mr. Heppert often hides his actions behind his words.”

  “Yes, well. Is that all?”

  “We may put people in the ground, Mrs. Branson, but we cannot put the past in the ground. As long as we remember the past, it is not dead and buried. Just like Mr. Branson. I know he will live on in your heart.”

  “Yes, of course.”

/>   “Mr. Branson knew that, too. That we must not forget the past. Mr. Branson did not forget. He was a man very much aware of it, which is why he was so successful—to a point. I would not support him in some things. I do not believe the Negroes are capable or deserving of the vote. Still, I had a great deal of admiration and respect for him.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Weems. It means a great deal to me to hear that. If you’ll excuse me, I’m sure you can find your way out when you are done here.”

  “It is a pleasure, Mrs. Branson.” He nods and almost bows to me. I will not offer him my hand—not after what he’s been doing with his.

  Four

  THERE SHOULD BE HUNDREDS of acres of land. A warehouse by the depot and lots along the square. He talked about railroads. It’s so muddled, but I’m sure he did. He owned some sort of railroad. Or a part of it. There were men here who talked about pig iron. At dinner not too long ago. And a cotton mill. He would bring home the yarn for me. He would say he made it himself. He gave one of the first skeins to Mama when she was alive. There must be something left of all that.

  The ice is melting through the cloth. It almost burns, it is so cold. The water streams across my wrist, and I want to scratch at it. I can hardly think for this headache. And this heat, dear Lord, it’s hot as an oven in here.

  How can Eli have done this? It cannot be. Judge must be mistaken. He seemed to hardly know himself what Eli did and didn’t have. Eli’s debts? He never seemed to worry about money. Wasn’t that what Mama wanted from the marriage? Wasn’t that what I married him for?

  There was more reason than that. Damn Buck. He’s to blame for me marrying Eli. That’s not right, either. Mama wanted me to marry Eli. She didn’t really know about Buck. It wasn’t a baby. No, I did not let it become a baby. But for Emma, I don’t know what I would have done. I was too far along for Eli to ever think it was his. Damn Buck. And Judge, too, he wanted me to marry Eli instead of his own son. He pushed me like Mama did. We always did what Judge said—after Pa died. He decided when Hill and Mike would go to school and where. He treated Hill about like another son. Buck was like his brother. He sent them to the university in Tuscaloosa together.

  And then the war broke out.

  Weems blames Judge for the war. At least men like Judge. So many men ranted on slavery and secession for so long, there was no room for anything but war. And this is what it got us all. I’m sure Judge believes we would have won but for men like Weems. Judge was never one to compromise. Not until after the war. He went in breathing fire and brimstone, and Weems was scorched by him. Judge was such a fire-breather. He signed the Ordinance of Secession in Montgomery with all those other men. He fired his largest hunting rifle fourteen times from the front yard of his house in honor of the Confederacy. And he outfitted a full company of the 26th Alabama.

  While Judge was firing off his rifle, the Weems family was shut inside their house with the shutters closed. They refused to take down their United States flag until someone tore it down and nearly burnt their house down around them. After the secession convention, men came and dragged him and one of his brothers into the street and whipped them like slaves. Calling them yellow dogs and cowards. Eli said Weems thought Judge ordered it, or that Judge’s speeches had incited the violence. You don’t forget something like that.

  Eli wasn’t a part of all that. Not then. He was locked away in his counting room. He helped the Yankees, though. That’s what Mama said before he started asking to call on me. He was head of the local Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands by then. Hill was dead. Mike was still missing. It was Eli who came out on top. Out of nowhere he appeared, no name and no family. He had been working at Val Heyward’s store, and when Val died, Eli took it over. Eli was smart. Who could say that he was wrong? How many men back then envied him for his influence? He was a moneylender, too. Mama would whisper across the fence to her friends that he robbed graves. And he was a Republican, which was even worse. An opportunist. Among the first to be called scalawag. He led the men like Weems and all the newly freed Negro men into some sort of political party while Judge and men like him were fairly banished. That was when Eli and Weems became friends. And now Judge comes to tell me that everything Eli has is gone. I can’t believe it.

  When Eli asked me to marry him, I refused to see him and sneaked out to see Judge. There were bluecoats on the street corners. They were boys, war-hardened though, and we had heard so many stories of insults to women. Mama said that the commanding officer wanted to make a show of force in Albion to intimidate the Knights of the White Cross. There seemed too few of them to make any difference.

  The Knights had appeared over the winter. They dressed in dark red hooded cassocks emblazoned with a white cross and claimed that they were the fallen crusaders of the war come back to take their vengeance on the Yankees and the freedmen. A Negro man had been found dead, shot in the face on the road to Chattanooga with a whitewash cross on his chest. Since then rumors had spread, each day bringing more tales of Union sympathizers harassed, black families burnt alive in their homes, men hanged from trees, white and black, Republican and scalawag and freedmen, subject to some terrifying justice. They would leave notes scribbled with crossed sabers and owls and coffins, telling whole families they had a few days to leave town. Everyone said the war was over, but there was no end to the dead and wounded. They just didn’t print them up on casualty lists anymore.

  Judge’s house stood amid bare trees. Late in the war they used it to quarter Union soldiers. They took out their wrath on the house as if it had belonged to Jeff Davis. They slashed the chairs and sofas, shattered china that had been in the family for generations. They pilfered the silver and broke up the dining room chairs and tables for firewood. They slashed family portraits and tore open the sofas, looking for hidden money or silver. The kitchen became their cesspit. They scrawled profanities over the French wallpaper.

  When the war ended, Judge came back from Montgomery to all that. The soldiers vacated the house, leaving the damage for Judge and Sally. He was kept a prisoner in his house for months because he refused to take the oath.

  Sally showed me up the stairs to Judge’s study. She must have been a young girl when Judge bought her, before Mrs. Heppert died giving birth to Buck. She was a yellow mulatto and pretty—she still is. As Emma remained with me and Mama, Sally had remained at Judge’s side.

  “Augusta,” Judge said as he rose from his chair. He looked surprised to see me. It was warm in his study. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. Legal books lined the shelves and a pair of chairs sat before a fire. The logs snapped and spat sparks up the chimney. “What are you doing here?”

  “Please, Judge, I need your help.”

  “What is it?” He sat down and watched me.

  “It’s Mama, Judge. She wants me to marry Eli Branson,” I burst out.

  “Yes, I know,” he said. His voice was tender but resigned. He looked at the pages on the small table beside him. “I would find Mr. Branson objectionable, too, if I were you.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  “You must stop it, Judge! You must talk to Mama!”

  “I have spoken with Elsie. I understand what she thinks she’s getting. She says she only has your interest at heart. She believes this is best for you. For both of you.”

  “Do you think it’s best for us?” I had my hands out to him, pleading. I debased myself in front of him.

  He only shook his head and stared at his papers. “Here,” he said, picking up one of the sheets. “This is what I am being forced to do.”

  The page was covered in Judge’s clean, even hand. A letter to General Swayne and President Johnson, seeking a pardon.

  “There is no possible way they will give it to me unless some sort of miracle occurs. We gambled and lost, and this is what we are compelled to do. Beg forgiveness when we have done nothing to be forgiven. That is the cost of being vanquished.” His eyes hardened, and he shook his head again. “I understand your antipathy, Au
gusta, but I am lucky to have my own freedom. You should consider yourself lucky not to face much worse. It is a stroke of fortune that Eli Branson is courting you. What if you were a plain girl? Where would you and your mother find yourselves? Starving, most likely, like half the families we know. The earth has shifted under our feet.”

  “That can’t be, Judge,” I said, thinking of Buck and his betrayal. He had left me alone, and even when I looked for him, I could not find him. Not at his father’s house. Not anywhere. I needed desperately to speak to him. He had to know. I had to tell him. I knew if I could speak to him, I could make him marry me. “There must be another way.”

  “I’m tired, Augusta. And you are trying my patience. I have spoken reason to you, and you won’t hear me. There is no other way.” He shuffled the papers and picked up his pen, dismissing me without a glance.

  “Is—is Buck here?” I asked haltingly.

  Judge’s eyes held pity or maybe contempt. I could see it. He remained unmoved. “You must put Buck out of your head. It is an unsuitable match.”

  What an effect those words had on me. I abandoned everything I had thought to say to him. Poor broken Buck. Who knows what was in his heart? He was never the same after the war. No one was. A week later, I was married to Eli. February 10, 1866.

  And now Eli is dead. Someone must know about his money. It can’t be as simple as Judge says. Judge can’t be the only one to know.

  Simon is in the far back of the garden. I shouldn’t bother him, but I have to ask. No one else knew Eli as Simon did. Simon may not have known Eli that well after all. Who knows? I lived with him for those years, but what did I learn from him? Nothing. I didn’t want to learn from him. I assumed the things I knew made me superior to him. Maybe they were. What did that pride gain me? Were they right to make me marry Eli? I don’t know. Maybe Simon will.