The Rebel Wife (25 page)

“I don’t know, Mike. I just mean you don’t look well.”

“Is that your joke? Don’t you goddamn tell me what I look like.” He folds his arms tightly again and looks through the windows.

“If you have something to say, Mike, say it and go.” The handle turns, smooth and slippery under my hand. The money Judge gave me. It’s in my pocket still. Fifty dollars. Too much for Mike. What does it matter? We will find Eli’s money and this fifty dollars will be meaningless. And if it will keep Mike away from me for a little while... He needs it. He needs something. Why else would he be here, acting so crazy, so desperate? How has he been living since Eli died? “How much do you want?”

Mike looks up at me. His eyes glimmer faintly for a moment, then fade. They narrow. He is calculating. “How much can you afford?” he asks.

“I’ll give you fifty dollars, Mike. But go away. Just leave me in peace.”

He licks his lips. He can almost taste the whiskey, I am sure of it. Or whatever else he might be poisoning himself with.

“You got yourself a deal. But fifty dollars doesn’t last forever. You know that, I bet.” I reach into my pocket and feel the crumpled banknotes. They rustle as I pull them out, and my hand goes out to him, holding the edges of the bills with my fingertips. He grasps it, and his hands are trembling worse than before. But he is smiling. Relieved. Almost ecstatic. “It’s not a lot, you know, Gus, but I’ll give you a piece of information to give you an idea of who you’re dealing with.”

“No, Mike,” I say, and turn to the door, looking through the two layers of glass at the porch, warped through the uneven glazing. Do I want to know it? I know I do. “Just go. I don’t need to hear it.”

“I think you should know some things. Back after the war, it wasn’t too long after, the Knights of the White Cross started running around here. Running after Yankees and some of them smart-ass niggers. And do you know who started it all up? Do you know who it was? I’ll give you one guess.”

His eyes don’t blink. They are sunken and hungry.

“It was Judge. It all started out to get the free niggers running scared and make them Yankees mind themselves. But now it’s all over Alabama. All over everywhere. They rule the roost down here, Gus. And Judge is the Grand Cyclops. How do you like that?”

Of course. Why not? Judge’s ruthlessness. His own secret army. He always talks as if the war isn’t over.

“You know,” Mike continues.

“Please, that’s enough.”

“They say the Knights killed Eli. Poisoned him to make him die like that, all bloody. Was it all bloody like that? You saw him.”

I try to move away into the office, but Mike has me pinned against the door. His hand is on my arm. The grip is weaker. Not like before.

“No, Mike. Just go.”

“Huh. You know Judge won’t stop at anything. That’s why you need to mind yourself. That’s why you need this piece of information. Buck told me back after the war, Judge got the Knights started up by setting fire at a barn dance.”

I look at Mike. My mouth is open. The blood drains from my face.

“That’s right, sister. You don’t have to make those wide eyes at me. He paid some fellow to run up and fling a lamp in there and scream something about the crazy rebels!” Mike laughs, and it is almost a cough that shakes his shoulders. He pulls his arm in and coughs hard into his hand and laughs again, looking at me. “Then Judge went around to all the old Confederates and said, ‘Lookee here! We’s got to do somethin’ ’bout this!’”

“Who told you that?”

“Buck did. Buck was there that night. He said he was outside watching for the fellow. Dumb Buck. He’ll do whatever his daddy says.”

I cannot look at him. He moves past me to the door, and his breath is hot and briny. Poisonous. He passes outside.

“Just so you know who you’re dealing with, Gus,” he says almost in a whisper, as if he can’t bear to say it. As if he is afraid to say it aloud.

He treads across the soft grass. I can see him through the double panes, hunched over, thumbing the bills, fractured and disfigured by the glass. He is a liar. He always has been. And all that is ten years ago. Ancient history. It can’t be true. There were people from Washington down here. An investigating committee. Eli spoke to them, although I never knew what he said. Was it three years ago? They were at the courthouse, and all sorts of people went to testify, to tell them stories of the outrages committed by the Knights of the White Cross. If that were true, then surely they would have arrested Judge, done something to him. Word would have gotten out. Unless they were all lying, too.

What does it matter? All that matters is finding the money and getting out of Albion. I have the attic to search. Simon told me to search the attic. Maybe they are all liars. Buck is a liar. Just like Mike. They are all after Eli’s money. They’ll say anything to get it. But I must get away from here. I have to get away from Albion. From this madness. From all these lies.

ENTERING THE ATTIC
is like walking into a fire. Sweat trickles behind my ears onto my neck, soaking the collar of my dress. I unbutton my cuffs and roll up the sleeves. Heat comes off my wrists. I open the top buttons of my bodice and take a handkerchief from my pocket, soaking up the perspiration as it runs off of me. I can hardly believe the things Mike says. He’s so desperate, he’ll say anything. He must be lying. What does he expect from me?

The light from the doorway is diffused and dusty. There’s another thin shaft of light from a small dormer that faces the garden. The ceiling vanishes into the dark rafters over my head, and I can make out the beams where swallows have abandoned their nests. Large objects clutter the uneven floors, trunks and valises filled with I don’t know what. The detritus of my marriage. The cumulative effects of the union are strewn across the room, long forgotten. I find it hard to believe Eli would have come home ill, climbed these stairs, and hidden a fortune in this dusty cave.

But there are interruptions in the pattern of filth on the warped planks. The footprints of Big John and Simon when they came for my traveling trunks. Perhaps Eli’s as well. I follow them, mostly clustered near the door, where the trunks Eli and I used were normally left. There are faint trails of footsteps that lead into different corners of the room. They could just as well be Simon’s as Eli’s—or mine or John’s. What would prevent Simon from coming up here and searching? What am I doing here? Being kept busy so that he can search Eli’s room without my interference?

The dust runs before my feet and chokes my throat, making me cough. Like that horrible dust at the cotton mill.

My head is bent to avoid the rafters. I keep a hand on them as I move, feeling the heat off the wood beams. The cobwebs reach down and cling to me. I sweep at them with my handkerchief. My sweat mixes with them, and the muck smears itself on the back of my hands and forearms. The air tastes like hot coals.

What has been happening here for ten years? Judge setting fire to that barn. He would have to be mad to do that. But Judge said there is still a war going on. He said as much to Eli more than once. And it was a threat. It must have been. Like when they whipped Simon. If what Mike says is true, that was Judge, too. Eli must have known. The Union League hall and the terror that the Knights of the White Cross spread. All Judge. A man who will stop at nothing, Mike said. For what? To keep colored men from voting? To undo what the war did to us? There is no undoing it. We cannot go back. We cannot reverse that loss. The horrible loss. Hill’s death. If only he had not died. He was a good man—a man of honor. True honor, like Pa. But they’re all gone. If only they had not died, I would not be here.

The objects loom at me in the darkness. A large basket with a wicker top is filled with Mama’s old dresses, moth-eaten for having been stored so carelessly. All the colored dresses that she put away after Hill died. Permanent mourning. Not that they were cheerful colors, grays and browns and lavenders. Threadbare, with torn trimmings hanging loose from the fabric.

There is the trunk, the small one that holds the spools of ribbon and mementos from Mama’s funeral. The dust is marked where I knelt two weeks ago, now covered in a fine layer of new dust. Footprints lead to a larger trunk, an old-fashioned cabin trunk from thirty years ago. I lift the lid and peer into the darkness. Slowly, the objects reveal themselves to me. There are old pattern books and piles of magazines.
Godey’s
and
Peterson’s
and some old
Mrs. Stephens’ Illustrated
from before the war. I brought them with me when Eli and I were married. The piles have grown since then. Emma has conscientiously stored them here. The
Godey’s Lady’s Book
that Buck brought me is in here, too, buried somewhere.

I sift through the yellowing papers, pulling them out and piling them on the floor. There are so many. Years of them. They were something to occupy me. Tatting lace and making tobacco pouches and antimacassars and silly macramé lamp tassels. I would look back to the issue Buck brought me every now and then. To read the poems and stories and to think about that summer after the war.

There it is, edges still curled and frayed. November 1864. He said he had gotten it from a woman in Franklin sometime after he was wounded. Who was that woman? He said he carried it with him to make a present of it to me. The pages are worn. A color plate folds out like an accordion and shows a group of women dressed in the latest fashions. One woman is in lavender half mourning. The fashions of the war. I close the magazine and put it in my pocket. The trunk lid drops with a dull thud.

Buck is his father’s son, isn’t he? Following me to the mill. Trying to take charge of me. Trying to take my hand again. I won’t do it. It is convenient for him to pursue me. It is convenient for Judge. Buck is a boy who does what his father tells him. To pretend with me that he has some influence over Judge. He’s as tragic as Mike, and as ruined.

Mike’s hands. He could not keep them from shaking. He could barely hold Eli’s watch.

The corners and crevices where the floor meets the roofline are dark. Perhaps there is a concealed place in these nooks. But only cobwebs and dirt are here. The heat is almost unbearable. My dress sticks to my back as if it has melted onto my skin.

There are other trunks, smaller ones, banded with wood and leather. And a leather frame valise with buckles and a key lock under the handle. The dust on it has been disturbed. I brush away the clusters of dirt. Faded initials, gold-embossed, are above the tarnished brass lock.
H.S.
They are my father’s initials. Henry Sedlaw. Mama presented the case to him when he was running for the statehouse almost twenty years ago.

I sweep away more of the dust. The leather is worn and puckered. Pa never traveled with it, but it seems used, exposed to the weather. It never went anywhere. Pa left it in the basement of the house on Allen Street. After he died, when did I last see it? Not since then, I think. It must have been there when Mama died. Did Eli bring it over then and put it in the attic for me? One of the few items of my father’s that was left to me after Mike had sold the house, the books, everything. The novels and mineral guides and atlases. Whatever he didn’t take or destroy—only the bench in the hall and now my father’s valise. I rub the leather and grab the handle, as Pa would have done.

The trunk is heavy. The leather buckles are stiff from years of heat. They are hard to loosen, but I twist them, watching the dried tongues crack, almost splitting and crumbling in my hands. My fingers are damp with sweat. The latch has a small metal button that I press, but the lock does not respond. Maybe I need a key. The ring of household keys is in my pocket. There is a small key that is for a case in the pantry. I insert it, playing at the lock, twisting until there is a snap. The mechanism must be rusted, and I have broken the spring.

I withdraw the key and press the button again. My fingers leave wet prints on the lock. Sweat falls in thick drops from my forehead and makes dark spots on the leather. They soak into the skin of the case almost immediately.

The latch will not move. I pull on the handle, jerking at it. My arms strain. Beads of sweat fall off my nose, spraying the floor around me.

The latch gives suddenly and the case flies open. Papers flutter out and settle over the floor. I gather them up. The valise is full of them. This is no five thousand dollars. This is a fortune beyond that. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. My heart is in my throat. They are denominated in fifties, hundreds, five hundreds.

But they are worthless. Bonds pledged by the Confederate States of America. On cotton. All in Confederate dollars. They are paper covered in worthless words. Many have the coupons attached, unredeemed for interest payments, due in to the Confederate Treasury Department every six months. Two-dollar coupons. Three dollars. Some for fifteen dollars payable to the bearer. Others have coupons missing, neatly clipped with a pair of scissors and a steady hand. This is a grand joke. I gather the papers and pile them back into the case.

My name. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my name. It is written on the back of one of the bonds—my own handwriting. A scrawling fancy penmanship, printed over and over again. Augusta Belier Blackwood Sedlaw. And letters. Rows of S and T. Curves and flourishes that march down the page. On several of them. My handwriting is so even, so studied. The handwriting of a schoolgirl. These must be Mama’s bonds. Mama’s hand clipped them. Some of them, at least. And she caught me writing on their reverse. I can still feel the sharp sting of her hand across my face. She hit me hard and with anger. It was a foolish prank. Silly. Her slap wiped the smug smile off my face.

It had to be in ’65. Mike had been gone for a long time already. What a girl I was. A silly foolish girl. As resentful and rebellious as Mike. We had no writing paper, and I took the bonds, since Mama had said they were good only for letter paper. Her friends who braved the streets to visit us had said it, too. I had written on them. Mama caught me and flew into a rage. She slapped me hard so that tears came into my eyes from the pain. I stood looking at her, sullen and stunned. How dare she hit me, I thought. Pa never would have let her hit me.