The Rebel Wife (28 page)

“What’s wrong, Jennie? Come into the parlor.” She resists my hand on her arm, pulling back from me. Rivulets of sweat trickle down her temples.

“Oh, no, Gus. There isn’t time. Please tell me you’re refugeeing, too. Please tell me you’re taking me with you.”

“We’re not. Not yet.” Of course, I want to go, but the money. Simon wants one more day. My Lord, what will that day cost us?

“Haven’t you heard? The whole town has gone wild. Anyone who can is leaving. They closed the mill, and they’re talking about a quarantine because of the fever. Bama left without a word to me! And just now at church, Reverend Easton collapsed in his pulpit. In front of the whole congregation.”

“What?”

“He looked terrible, Gus. There were whispers everywhere. The church was packed to the rafters. I’ve never seen such a crush. People are terrified. They don’t know what to do. So everyone came to church, but Charlie couldn’t. He’s been called away by the railroad. He said if things go on like this, the trains won’t stop in Albion anymore.”

“They’re stopping the trains, too?”

“Yes, and then Reverend Easton got up, and he was covered in sweat, head to toe. This heat. It’s made everyone crazy. I feel so out of my senses, Gus. I don’t know what to do. It’s this heat. I’ve never felt such a heat, and it isn’t even July. My God, we have to go away, Gus.”

“Reverend Easton?”

“He stood up to the pulpit and began to preach, but I couldn’t understand a word he said, and he seemed to falter. He held himself against the pulpit and leaned on it and there was such a rush of talking and whispering and fans and then he fell right back. In a pile, moaning by the altar, his eyes wide open and covered in sweat. Women started screaming and running. Everyone did. It was a stampede.”

“Is he that sick? What did he look like?”

“I don’t know. He was just lying there. No one would go near him. Only Mrs. Easton, and she held his head and wailed, but everyone ran away. He was soaked through. My God, I feel like I’m soaked through. This heat. We all must go. My father rescued you from Huntsville, Gus. You must take me away with you.”

Her eyes seem feverish. The charm is in my pocket. I squeeze the burlap and bone in my fingers. “Oh, Jennie.” Is she sick, too? Simon wants one more day.

“Please, Gus. Don’t look at me like that. Just grab anything and have your man harness the horses, and let’s go to Bama.”

“I can’t, Jennie. I need one more day.”

“What do you mean? Have you lost your mind?”

“I know I should go. We should all go. But we are leaving tomorrow. We will go tomorrow, and you can come with us. We’ll take a carriage if the trains aren’t running. I can’t go until tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow is too late.” Jennie steps back. Her face is flushed and her eyes are hard. “My father saved you from the Yankees. You owe me.”

“Jennie, I’m sorry. I know that your father helped me. I’ve always been grateful. But tomorrow. Surely one more day can’t make a difference.”

“You’re a madwoman to stay here. At least give me a little money to get away. That’s the least you can do.” She is shivering with anger. That fifty dollars I gave to Mike. If only I had it back.

“I haven’t any money at all, Jennie. I wish I could give you something, but everything is tied up with the estate. Tomorrow. I might have something for you tomorrow.”

“Enough with tomorrow. Everyone knows that you are the richest woman in town. They were right. You’ve turned scalawag, just like your husband. He brought this on us. This is all his doing. I’ve heard the stories about him. You can’t even give your friend something to get away from here?”

“But Charlie—can’t he get you on a train?”

Jennie’s face is stained with tears and sweat. She glares at me. “You’ll have the truth, then. Charlie’s dead. He died last night, and I’ve got to get away from here.” Jennie rears her head back and spits at me. I turn away, and it spots my sleeve and shoulder. “That’s what you deserve, Gus. Dirty turncoat. You’ll get yours.”

Jennie spits again at my feet. She rushes out the door, her bonnet in her hand. Out into the intense sun. This heat. She’s gone mad, too. And sick. Maybe I’m sick and I don’t even know it. The whole town has gone mad and Simon wants one more day.

Simon closed and latched all the shutters on the front of the house and bolted the door. He feels guilty for asking for another day. He knows it is a mistake. We all know it. But the money must be found. It is too much money to run away from. It will make all the difference.

Rachel came back. She is making a bath in my room. She thinks it’s best after Jennie. I step into the tin tub. Though the water does not need to be hot, the weather is too warm, Rachel has made sure it is not cold. She enters from the back stairs, carrying a kettle of hot water, and closes the door behind her. I shield myself, hiding my nakedness from the open door. But not from Rachel. After years of her bathing me, I have lost my modesty with her. She slowly pours the water in, looking at my face without a word, wanting to know from me when the proper temperature has been reached. The stream of water flows into the tub, blending with the cooler water. The swirl of warmth caresses my calves and ankles. I wait, attuned to it. The water will warm slightly even after Rachel stops pouring, so I must stop her just before it feels comfortable. Rachel steadies the stream and slows it gradually.

“Yes, that’s fine,” I say under my breath. My hand is on Rachel’s shoulder. All my weight is on one foot, and the other moves in a small circle, rippling the surface. Rachel waits for me, watching. “Yes, Rachel, that’s fine.”

She nods, rising, and places the kettle on the empty hearth. She takes a thick-cut cake of milk soap and a cloth from the mantel and places them on the floor beside the tub. She said she made the soap herself.

“Come down, ma’am,” she says. I lower myself, almost kneeling into the tepid water. A small seat is built into an angle of the tub. Rachel takes a tin cup and pours the water over my shoulders and arms and across the back of my neck. It runs over my breasts and down my back. She gathers my hair behind me and pours the water over until it is soaked through. I close my eyes as the water runs down my face. It runs along the edge of my nostrils, and I taste it on my lips. It warms my cheek and chin. The pump water is sweet with the faint taste of the cedar logs that deliver it to the house.

“Up, ma’am,” Rachel says, and I rise out of the water, which runs off of me, from my fingertips and elbows, from my hair down my back to my buttocks. Rachel takes the cloth and soap and dips them into the bathwater, then rubs them together between her hands until the lather drips from the cloth back into the tub. She stands next to me and begins washing my neck and shoulders and my back. “Miss Gus,” she says.

“Mm-hmm.” My eyes are closed. The soap is taking the sweat and dirt away.

“I’m sorry to say, ma’am, but John and I and Little John are leaving tomorrow.”

I turn to Rachel, and she steps back, holding the sudsy cloth in her hand. The soap bubbles drip onto the straw mats. “You’re going now, too? The whole town is running away.”

“Yes, ma’am. John’s brother, Garson, got some extra money, and he wants us to go now. Things are bad. You should be going, too. Why are you still here?” She steps forward and takes my shoulder, gently turning me back around.

“Is Simon going with you?”

She lifts my right arm for me and runs the cloth along its underside from the wrist to the shoulder. She runs it along the top of my arm before letting it fall back to my side.

“No, ma’am, he’s staying. He says he’s taking you and Henry and Emma out of here, and then he’ll find us.”

I have stayed away from Simon all afternoon. I can’t look at him. Thank God he is staying.

Rachel gives me a sharp look. John must have said something to her.

“Yes, he’s very good to help us. We will leave tomorrow, too. I know he’ll catch up with you very quickly.”

She says, “Mm-hmm.” She scrubs across my shoulder blades. “You just keep that charm on you, ma’am, and don’t stop for nobody on the pike.”

“You don’t have any idea what you’ll find in Kansas, Rachel. Aren’t you worried?”

Rachel washes me down to the small of my back, then moves to the other arm. “No, ma’am. John has cousins who have gone out west already. Garson sent us a letter about it. They got a bunch of land cheap from the government, and they’re farming for themselves and doing fine. They’ve got plows and mules and everything you need. They’ll lease it to us, they say, just come. It ain’t going to be easy, but it’s honest living. I’m not afraid. It would be easier if we had that money from Mr. Eli, but we’re going anyway.”

I turn and look at her over my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Rachel. I’d give you something, but the estate... it’s—”

“I’m not asking you for anything, ma’am. I’m just telling you. You asked me and I’m telling.”

Rachel kneels down to the water again. She feels on the bottom of the tub for the cake of soap and scoops it up like a slick white fish, gathering it into the cloth and working up fresh lather.

“Why is John’s brother so eager to go?” I ask.

“We’re all eager to go. We’re all ready to be our own masters rather than slaves to someone else. This isn’t freedom here, whatever they say.”

She rubs the cloth down my leg, dipping it into the water, reaching to my ankles with her arm submerged as if she’s reaching to the bottom of the tub for something.

“Was Mr. Cobb—was he a bad master, Rachel?” I don’t look at her, but I know she has turned her face up toward me.

She pauses for a moment, then stands. “Well, ma’am, if you ask me, there weren’t any good masters under slavery. Some were better than others. So I hear. I can’t imagine any of them were good. I can’t imagine they could have been much worse than Rooster Cobb, either.”

“My father was a good master.” I steal a glance at Rachel, looking for her reaction. Her skin is like very pale molasses, a little lighter than caramel. She has freckles across her cheeks and the flat bridge of her nose. She doesn’t meet my eye, but I see her mouth curve slightly at the corners. She kneels again, and her hands look brown against my skin as she washes me. She rubs the cloth down my thigh to my knee. My skin against her hand is so white, like alabaster with a hint of pink underneath.

“He was, Rachel,” I insist. “You didn’t know him. He was one of the finest men who ever lived.”

“I’ll take your word for it, ma’am.” She gives her head a quick shake.

“He was, Rachel,” I say again, interrupting the long strokes of her hand. “Not all masters were bad. There were good masters. Men who cared about their people like their own family. Like their own children.”

Rachel leans back on her heels and looks up at me. “I reckon there were a lot of slaves who really were their master’s children, ma’am. Why do you think Mr. Cobb killed my daddy other than he was trying to make children with my mama?”

I turn away toward the wall in front of me. I will not hear it. I will not think about it. Rachel dips her hand back into the water and pulls it out. The water drips from the cloth, making a tinkling sound that is like music. She rubs my leg from the hip down to my ankle, dipping into the water and then rising again. The drips fall back into the tub with the same music.

“Miss Gus,” she begins suddenly, “I know there were white folks who tried to be good to their people under slavery, but there ain’t a way you can be good to someone when you’re taking things away from them. And that’s what slavery was, people taking things that weren’t theirs. Their work. Their bodies. Their love for themselves. And we’re free now, all of us. God has given us our freedom. But He says it’s up to us to do something with our freedom. ’Cause there are always going to be people who want to take things from you. Some of them are white folks, and some of them are colored folks, even. It’s the way God made the world. There are always going to be people trying to take your freedom away. John and me, we know that we’ve got to fight to keep free and to keep our boy free, and if we have other children, them, too, if God gives them to us.”

Rachel has paused her hand while she speaks, but now she moves it against the back of my knee.

“Or maybe none of us are free. It’s just a word they give us to keep us quiet. But I’ll find it out,” she says, then looks up at me. “Do you feel free, ma’am?”

Her hand rests on the back of my leg. I look down at her.

“I don’t know, Rachel,” I say. “Maybe I’ve never been free.”

I feel my nakedness in front of her, and I sit in the tub, pulling my arms over my breasts. “That’s all, Rachel. I can finish on my own.” I take the cloth out of her hand and lay it across my knees.

“I guess this’ll be the last time we see each other, ma’am.” She stands near the tub with her hands folded in front of her.

My arms are pulled around my chest. “Yes, I guess it is,” I answer. “I hope you find your freedom, Rachel.”

She nods and looks at the door, then back at me. “I hope you find yours, too.”

I wait for her to leave. She moves quietly and looks back at me as she closes the door to the back stairs. The two little blue bottles stand on my bedside table like a pair of eyes constantly watching me.

MY FEET ARE RESTLESS.
I walk the floor in my nightdress. The walls are warm to the touch. Even before my hand is close, I can feel the heat coming off the brick and plaster.

The laudanum whispers to me. Two small blue bottles side by side on the little table. In the dark they cast no shadow. They are twin black sentinels at my bedside. They have fooled me before. I cannot let them fool me again.

I walk room by room, feeling my way. Henry sleeps with a small snore, shifting under the thin sheet. The heat is going to kill us all. Or drive us to madness.

The narrow stairs of the back hall are bare, and the wood feels smooth and warm as it creaks under my feet. The back parlor is so dark, I can barely make out the furniture. The front parlor. The hall. The music room. The dining room. They are all shadowy, shapeless spaces that I navigate by memory, touching the objects that are familiar to me. The carved wood sofa with its heavy brocaded upholstery. A horsehair settee. Figurines in glassy porcelain of a shepherd and shepherdess. The delicate wood reeding on the mantelpiece that bumps my fingers as I run them over it. I feel my way like a blind person, touching the cool glass of the Argand lamps in the dining room and the sheer summer drapes that line the tall windows.