Celia Garth: A Novel (30 page)

“I’m so scared I can’t hardly move but I know I got to move and I knock down another green man, maybe more than one, and I run around and around so they can’t catch me. And all of a sudden I hear Miss Audrey scream again and I look up and there she is at a window upstairs with the baby, and the whole house is burnin’ and crackin’ and she can’t get down. And then she jumps out of the window and she sort of turns over in the air and her head hits the ground and there she lies, not movin’, and the baby underneath her. And some green man runs over to her and hollers out this is a crime. But I don’t know what else he says because just then another green man he grabs me and I see he’s got a rope and I knock him over and I start to run.

“I just run. I ain’t lookin’ to see where I’m goin’. I don’t see anything, I just run. I get to the trees and I run and run and somewhere in there I run right into a tree and I fall down on my face. I hear all kinds of noise and I see smoke but I just lie on the ground because it seems like I can’t breathe no more and I can’t get up.

“I reckon I fainted or somp’n because after a while I come to. I know it’s been a long time but I don’t know how long, only now everything is quiet. The fire is burnt down but I’m still scared. I’m scared to go back and scared to stay where I am. Then I hear a dog and after a while Rosco comes sniffin’ up and he finds me. I don’t know why they ain’t killed Rosco, maybe they figure can’t nobody ride him or eat him so he ain’t no use, or maybe he run away like me. Rosco howls and hollers and grabs my clothes and tries to drag me back. At first I’m scared to go but then I figure that if there was any of them green men still here they could have found me by now with all the racket Rosco is makin’. So I let him bring me back.

“And there I see the house all smokin’ and everything is like you see it now. The green men have took all the horses except a few they didn’t want, and them they killed. They took all the meat they could carry and what they didn’t take they killed just like you see. And everything is quiet like a graveyard except Rosco whimperin’. And then I see Miss Beatrice comin’ to meet me.

“Miss Beatrice looks like crazy. Her clothes are all torn and dirty and her hair is come down and her hands are cut and bloody. But she’s glad to see me. All the other colored folks is took away and she didn’t know even one was left.

“Miss Beatrice can’t hardly talk but she wants to talk. She say the man that shot Mr. Jimmy killed him right there. And Miss Audrey and the baby died from jumpin’ out of the window. And Miss Beatrice done dragged them all three yonder to the flowerbed. She had picked up my spade and she was tryin’ all by herself to dig a grave.

“But Miss Beatrice ain’t strong enough to dig a grave and I say let me do it. She stands up there and watches me. Mr. Jimmy is lyin’ on the ground by us, and the baby and Miss Audrey. I think Miss Audrey’s neck is broke and the baby’s head got broke when he hit the ground. Miss Beatrice just stands there like a stick only she keeps talkin’. Not talkin’ like somebody that’s got somp’n to say but just talkin’. Same words over and over. This will teach Miles Rand he better fight for the king. This will teach Miles Rand he better fight for the king. Over and over like that.

“I get the grave dug and put in Miss Audrey and the baby and then I pick up Mr. Jimmy. And Miss Beatrice she falls over on the ground. I try to help her but there ain’t a thing to do. Her heart is stopped beatin’. Just like that. So I have to put her in the grave too and I cover them up and then I’m scared to stay around any more and I take Rosco and go off and hide in the trees yonder, and I keep wonderin’ if the green men will come back but they don’t. Ain’t nobody been here till you folks come today.

“And that’s what happened, Mr. Miles. And I wish somebody had to tell it to you besides me.”

Somewhere near by the other Negroes had begun a chant. It was a low musical keening, every other line a plea of “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.”

Celia heard them. She was sitting on the ground. She still sat there. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Miles stood up. He took his pistol out of the holster at his side. Madge gave a cry of alarm and Lewis sprang to his feet. Without pausing Miles strode across to Rosco and shot him in the head.

He spoke over his shoulder. “Why make him live without Jimmy?” he asked.

C
ELIA NEVER HAD A
clear recollection of her journey back to Sea Garden or of the next few days. She did not remember that she talked at all about what she had seen at Bellwood. She had never been a great talker, and now she seemed to have been stricken almost dumb. She went about quietly, ate what they set in front of her, lived somehow.

Vivian asked if she did not want a cot moved into her bedroom so she could have Marietta with her at night. Celia shook her head. She slept in snatches, and when she was tired of tossing in bed she would get up and sit by a window, where she could watch the patterns of moonlight or listen to the fall of summer rain. She did not want anybody there, urging her to sleep when she could not sleep.

But the nights were long and cruel. She would dream about the awfulness at Bellwood and wake up shaking with sobs. Or she would dream about Jimmy, and wake up to the black knowledge that Jimmy was dead. She thought what fools they had been to let that prig of a parson keep them apart. Suppose he did refuse to say the holy words till after she came of age? Why had they waited? At least she could have had something to remember.

The first thing she noticed—she did not recall how many days had passed before she noticed it—was that neither Miles nor Amos was anywhere to be seen. She could not remember anything about Miles since the moment when he had snatched out his pistol in half-blind fury and shot Rosco. She had thought he was going to shoot himself, and had wondered why Lewis had sprung forward to stop him, since after what he had heard Miles must be already dead inside.

She thought of this one morning when she came out on the piazza and saw Madge cutting a bouquet of sweet peas. Celia went out and asked her what had become of Miles.

Madge was too wise to be evasive. She said that after Miles had fired the shot he stood there staring at the smoking pistol. Then all of a sudden, like a man pursued by things nobody else could see, he turned and plunged into the woods. Just as suddenly, Amos and Big Buck went after him. Lewis told the others to let all three of them go. Among the Negroes carried off by Tarleton had been the people Amos and Big Buck loved best. They and Miles would understand one another now.

Celia pulled a handful of sweet peas from the trellis and walked away, tearing them to pieces and letting the petals scatter on the ground. She wished she could go into the woods too, and hide, like a sick animal.

That afternoon Godfrey and Ida rode in. They had not heard of the holocaust at Bellwood, but when Lewis told them about it they exchanged meaningful glances, and Godfrey commented harshly, “So, that butcher meant just what he said.”

Celia, sitting on the piazza, heard these words through a window. The others asked Godfrey what he meant, and he said, “You haven’t heard about Colonel Sumter?”

At this, Celia came in. Vivian held out her hand, and Celia sat on the floor by Vivian’s chair. Vivian did not forbid her to listen. She knew a forced sheltering was not kind. “Go on, Godfrey,” Vivian said.

Godfrey said that since the home of Ida’s family was near a main crossing of the Santee, they had frequent visitors. While there, Godfrey had heard a lot of news.

He said that after revoking the paroles Clinton had taken ship for New York, leaving Cornwallis in command of the king’s men in the south. When he had set up a supply post at Camden in the northern part of South Carolina, Cornwallis sent Tarleton out to get equipment and Tory recruits. He told him also to clear up any “nests of treason” he might find.

This Major Tarleton was twenty-six years old. He came of a well-to-do family in Liverpool, but already before the start of the American war he had run through the fortune his father had left him. When the war began he decided to enter the army, that refuge of debt-ridden aristocrats. His mother bought him a commission. Tarleton set out for New York, announcing that it was his purpose to kill more men and bed more women than any other hero of his majesty’s troops.

So far his success in both his aims had been so great that he was generally referred to as Beast, or Butcher, or Barbarian, or uglier words. His own first name was Banastre, which nobody could pronounce anyway, and Americans said the other names were more fitting.

Colonel Thomas Sumter was an officer of Continental troops. He had taken part in the battle of Fort Moultrie in 1776, but in the quiet years following that victory he had retired to his plantation. He had not aided in the defense of Charleston because he had been prostrated by tragedies of his own. Father of a large family, he had in the space of a few weeks seen an epidemic kill all his children but one small boy; and about the same time his wife was stricken with paralysis and left unable to walk. Sumter had hardly known when the British attacked Charleston, or cared. But when he learned that the city was taken he roused himself to fight again. Leaving his wife and child in care of a niece and the family servants, Sumter rode off to organize rebel troops in North Carolina.

Tarleton had hoped to catch up with him. But failing in this, he destroyed Sumter’s plantation with the same terrible thoroughness he had used a few days later at Bellwood. Sumter’s little son scrambled up a tree, where he clung out of sight and watched the havoc. But Mrs. Sumter, in her chair in a room upstairs, could not move.

Tarleton ordered the house set afire. Busy supervising the destruction outside, he paid no attention to Mrs. Sumter’s screams. But two of his men, more decent than their leader, made their way back into the burning house and carried her out before the walls fell in. They left her there among the ruins of her home, and as they rode away Tarleton spread the word that this was how he intended dealing with any other traitors who continued to fight their lawful king.

As Godfrey told his story Celia sat where she was, on the floor by Vivian’s chair. She was not crying. She felt tortured with a helpless hate.

Godfrey urged Herbert and Vivian not to stay any longer at Sea Garden. He begged them to come to Charleston with him.

But all that evening, all the next day, Herbert and Vivian said no.

Herbert said, “We have no big fields, no army of Negroes to be carried off. We’re not worth the trouble of a raid.”

Vivian said, “Our schooner is in the boathouse. If we get scared we can come to Charleston any time.”

At last, the afternoon of the second day, they said they were tired arguing and wanted to rest. Herbert went to his library, Vivian started for her bedroom. As she stood up, Godfrey made one more exasperated effort.

“Mother, I know it’s because of Luke that you want to stay here. But what
good
are you doing?”

Vivian smiled serenely. “Godfrey dear, wouldn’t you just love to know?”

Celia had kept in the background. But now she slipped out and spoke to Vivian in the hall.

“Please, may I say something? I won’t take long.”

“Come in here,” said Vivian. She opened the door of the room where she kept her household records, and sat down by the desk. Celia stood before the desk, twisting her hands. “What’s the trouble?” Vivian asked.

How calm she was, how sure of herself. How Celia envied her. Celia herself was as tense as a fiddle-string. She spoke in jerks. “Vivian—you’re going to stay here all summer?”

“Why yes,” said Vivian, like any lady asked about her summer plans. “Why?”

“Then,” Celia said—“then may I stay too?” She stopped, wet her lips, made herself go on. “You see—it wasn’t until just now—when they begged you to leave Sea Garden—that I realized—I haven’t anywhere to go.”

She thought she had never spoken words that were so hard to say. Crying for shelter like a stray cat.

Vivian smiled a little. “Why yes, Celia, you can stay here.”

“I won’t stay forever!” Celia promised hastily. “I’ll go somewhere—I’ll do something. But right now—I’m all mixed up.”

Vivian was looking straight at her. “You’ll have to make your own life, Celia,” she said. “We all do. Nobody can help us much.”

Vivian must know what she was talking about. She had lived deeply, had had experience of loss. Celia blurted,

“Vivian, you—so many—what
do
you do?”

“You live through it, Celia,” said Vivian. Her voice was firm. “You find out—and sometimes it’s very surprising—that no matter what you lose, there’s always something else. Life can still be good.”

Celia stood with her hands still clenched, angry with herself for asking. “Life can still be good.” Oh, it was easy for Vivian to say that. Her world was full of blessings—riches and high position and so many people who loved her. Vivian could not know what it meant to be alone, and desolate.

Celia brought herself back to her purpose. “Thank you for letting me stay. But I don’t want to be a burden. Haven’t you some work I can do?”

“Plenty,” Vivian answered tersely. She opened a drawer. Expecting a sewing-basket, Celia was surprised to see her take out shears and garden gloves. “The flowers need looking after,” said Vivian. “You can start in the morning.”

Later Celia thought, whatever Vivian does it’s not what you expect her to do. But somehow it’s usually right.

The Bernards and the Penfields left for Charleston. As Burton and his family had left already, there was nobody at Sea Garden now but Herbert and Vivian and Celia, and about twenty Negroes. The summer tasks went along. Marietta said it was almost like old times.

Celia’s work began as soon as she had had breakfast. Directed by Vivian, she raked and spaded, pulled up weeds and trimmed the bushes, thinned the spring bulbs and put in new ones for autumn blooming. By the time she stopped to get ready for dinner she was dirty and aching and dripping with sweat. But when she came to table she was hungry, and at night her muscles relaxed, so that she went to sleep with peace in her body even if it had not yet reached her heart.