Bon Marche (76 page)

“I made you unhappy with my little
tête-à-tête
with Alma May?”

“No.” The reply was sullen.

“I had to talk to her about something that happened a long, long time ago, before you were born. I admit to you, Honey, that it's a secret. Everyone is due a secret or two in their lives.”

“I don't have any secrets from you, Pop-Pop.”

He smiled. “No, I don't believe you do. And I appreciate that. I appreciate, too, how you've worked with me over the years. I've tried to teach you, dear, to be self-sufficient, so that you can go on without me when I'm—”

“Stop that, Pop-Pop!”

“Oh, I'm not giving up without a fight, Honey. That's not my nature.” He struggled to prop himself up on the pillows, and Honey moved quickly to help him.

“Let me tell you something: A man is the creator of his own life. It's like clay; you mold it and shape it, trying to make it into something beautiful. And when it's finished, a man ought to fight like hell to preserve his creation.”

Honey nodded agreement.

“And I'm fighting like hell, dear. I promise you that.” He drew a deep breath. “All of this talk has left me a bit weary. I think I could sleep now.”

Honey lowered him and straightened the covers around him, holding his hand as he slept.

V

H
E
improved not at all after that. Perhaps the Indian herbs had reached the zenith of their magic. The fever returned.

Dr. Almond went to Mattie. “Mrs. Dewey, there is a new drug called quinine. It is distilled, as I understand it, from the dried bark of a Peruvian tree, the cinchona. One of the properties of quinine is that it is supposed to reduce fever. I've obtained some, and I'd like to try it, although it is frightfully expensive.”

“Money is not a problem, Doctor.”

“Nevertheless, I do consider eight dollars an ounce an exorbitant price.”

Mattie wanted to laugh. Just a few weeks earlier she had seen her husband throw away five thousand dollars on a wager he knew was only a token gesture. On a thoroughbred racehorse named Charles Dewey.

With a straight face, she said, “Please use the quinine, Doctor, if you think it might help.”

Almond dosed Dewey liberally with the new drug. The fever came down dramatically. Another large dose of quinine was administered. And the next day yet another. Charles slept a lot.

But he didn't seem to really improve.

May 1845 ended on a Saturday. That evening, Dr. Almond felt that his patient was slipping away from him. It was time, he believed, to resort again to what he had been taught in medical school. To forget about Indian herbs and new drugs. He reached into his medical bag for his lancet and the crockery bowl. Once more Honey held the bowl.

The doctor made an incision in the vein in Dewey's wrist. No blood came; or only a drop or two. But no easy flow. He frowned, knitting his brows in thought. He recalled the words of one of his professors: “recourse to the jugular.”

Almond followed that advice, making another incision. When the bowl was half full, he stemmed the flow of blood with a bandage and took the bowl from Honey.

There was a ring of satisfaction in his voice. “We certainly have drawn off the bad blood this time, young lady.”

The doctor left the comatose Dewey in the care of Mattie and Honey, and for the first time, Mattie allowed the girl to stay in the room overnight. There seemed good reason to do so.

They took turns sitting awake by the side of his bed, listening to the labored breathing, watching for any telltale flutter of the eyelids that would let them know he was awakening.

At dawn on Sunday—June had arrived—his eyes did open. Dimly, Charles could see two figures leaning over the bed.

“Mattie?” His voice was very weak.

“Yes, dear. Honey is here, too.”

He tried to smile, but he seemed not to have the strength to move the necessary muscles.

“I've … been thinking … a great deal … Mattie.” He was laboring with the words.

“Don't talk, Charles. Save your strength.”

“I have … nothing more to save it for. There's something I must do before … I die. I must make sure that all the slaves are freed.”

Mattie gasped.

“It's a moral … necessity, Mattie.”

“We'll talk about this when you're well, dear.”

“No, no.” He tried to rise, but couldn't summon the strength. “I have no … time anymore. I want the slaves … freed. Do you hear me, Mattie?”

“I hear you, Charles.” She bent down and kissed him on the lips.

“Thank … you.”

The eyes stared. The labored breathing stopped.

Honey screamed in her pain.

Mattie gathered the girl in her arms, and they wept together. Two women Charles Dewey had loved.

VI

S
OMEHOW
lunch was served and eaten that day.

The housemaids had cleaned up the bedroom, had washed the corpse under Mattie's direction, and had dressed Charles Dewey, as he had often requested, in his riding clothes. Laid out on his bed, he received the grief-stricken members of his large family for the last time.

Dusk came. Mattie and Honey sat alone in the drawing room as the widow made the inevitable entry into the massive family Bible.

“When are you going to free the slaves?” Honey wanted to know.

“What?” The question shocked Mattie.

“The slaves? When are you going to free them? During the funeral ceremonies would be a good time to do it.”

“Oh, my darling, Mattie said sadly. “I
can't
free them.”

“But Pop-Pop wanted that!”

“I know. But, Honey … well, it's so very complicated. You'll learn as you grow up that wanting something and having it for certain are often two different things.”

Honey was on her feet, shouting at her great-grandmother. “With his dying breath he asked you to promise that the slaves would be freed. With his
dying
breath! And you promised!”

“No, dear, I didn't.”

“You did! You did! I heard you!”

Mattie came toward her, holding out her arms to the distraught girl. “Honey, you must understand that Pop-Pop wasn't … well, wasn't in command of all his senses at the end—”

“You lie!”

“—and he might not have known what he was asking me to do.”

“He knew!” Honey screamed. “He told me so many times that the day would come when the slaves would have to be freed.”

“I know. But he didn't mean now—this way.”

“He did! He said so with his dying breath!”

Mattie moved to her again, beseeching her. “Please, Honey, let's sit down and talk about this calmly.”

“So you can lie to me?”

“Of course not.”

“We don't have to talk about it.” The girl was backing toward the door. “I know what I heard. He asked you to free the slaves, and you
promised!
”

“No, Honey, believe me—that wasn't the way it was at all.”

“You bitch! I hope you rot in hell.”

Honey rushed from the room, crying hysterically. Mattie looked after her, debating on whether to follow. Finally, she returned to the desk, sinking disconsolately into the chair in front of the Bible. Her mind made a sum of what was written there: Charles Dewey (Charles Dupree)—two wives, seven children, eleven grandchildren, twenty-three great-grandchildren. A family. She stared at the names. For how long, she didn't know.

A housemaid burst into the room. “Miss Mattie, come quick! It Miss Honey!”

Mattie raced after her, out of the house and across the twenty or so yards to the carriage barn. True and Able were already there, along with a few slaves, gathered around the still form of Honey Mussmer, a rope twisted about her neck.

“Ah tried to save her, Miss Mattie!” one of the black men wailed. “Ah cut her down jest soon as—”

True handed Mattie a crumpled piece of paper. “I found this on the floor.”

Mattie took it, reading the scrawled words: “I want to be with Pop-Pop.”

VII

H
UNDREDS
attended the funeral services for Charles Dewey, and for his great-granddaughter, two days later. They crowded the small tulip poplar grove encompassing the family cemetery. Many of them didn't know they were in Richie's Place.

There were eulogies, maybe a dozen of them from prominent citizens of the community. And the proper words were read from Scripture. Mattie heard none of them. She stood dumbly, responding only to the guiding hands of her daughter, Alma May. It was over in an hour or so, but time meant nothing to the mistress of Bon Marché. She had used up her reservoir of emotion. She was totally spent.

A week later, stonecutters erected a granite slab over the grave where Charles Dewey's body was buried. It said:

CHARLES DUPREE DE GRASSE DEWEY

1765–1845

Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera.

That was exactly the way Charles had designated it should be in his will. It may have raised some questions, but his widow was determined that the answers would stay with Dewey.

Next to his stone was a smaller one:

HONEY MUSSMER DEWEY

1829–1845

She Loved!

Pop-Pop, Mattie reasoned, would like that.

And he would have liked, too, what happened the next morning. Charles Dewey II came to see Mattie. He seemed tentative and ill at ease.

“I know that you don't approve of me, Grandmother, but I did want you to know that on the day before Grandfather's funeral, Elizabeth and I were married at the courthouse. We did that to honor his memory.”

Mattie embraced him. “If only Charles could have known.”

“He'll know, Grandmother, he'll know.”

EPILOGUE

A
LMA
May Dewey walked slowly into the Masonic Hall in Nashville to attend the annual meeting of the Davidson County Agricultural Society. In any other venue she would not have been nervous, displaying her usual self-confidence. But not tonight, not here. Tonight, four months after her father's death, she was to represent
him,
to speak
his
words.

Her nervousness was enhanced by the knowledge that she was the first woman ever to appear at a meeting of the agricultural society. Again, she was used to dealing with all-male circumstances. But not tonight, not here.

The chairman of the meeting was waiting for her. He escorted her to the front of the hall where he deposited her in a seat next to the rostrum, facing the audience. The hall was nearly full when she arrived, and she had to wait only a few minutes before the meeting began.

“We meet tonight,” the chairman said, “under sad circumstances. All too recently the Davidson County Agricultural Society lost two of its distinguished founders. On April first Squire Charles Dewey of Bon Marché was called to his God. And, ironically, just a week later this society, this city, this state, this nation, was deprived of the wisdom and the heroism of a former president of the United States, the honorable General Andrew Jackson. I ask now that all of the members stand for a moment of silent prayer in memory of those two great men.”

There was a shuffling of feet and a squeaking of chairs as the members came to their feet. Finally, though, the noise stopped and there was a silence, with heads bowed reverently.

“Thank you,” the chairman said eventually. “You may be seated again.”

He coughed nervously as he began his introduction of Alma May. “It has been the custom of this organization that its president shall address the body at the beginning of the annual meetings. When Squire Dewey died, I contacted Bon Marché and asked whether it was known if the squire had already committed his speech to paper. Our guest tonight informed me that he had, and graciously offered to deliver it herself. Gentlemen, allow me to present a daughter of Charles Dewey, Miss Alma May Dewey.”

There was a polite, unsure applause.

The Princess trembled as she went to the rostrum, unfolded several sheets of foolscap, and placed them in front of her.

She looked up at the sober faces. “I hope that I have not mispresented the notes that I found among my father's papers as a completed speech. He had obviously started working on the speech prior to the outset of his illness, but in all honesty, it was not a speech as such. I have made those notes into a speech, arranging them in some order that I believe intelligible. What I am about to read, though, are Charles Dewey's words, not mine. They reflect his views totally.”

She dropped her eyes to the papers, and began to read:

“‘Among all the numerous varieties of domestic animals which a benevolent Providence has created for the use of man, the blood horse stands preeminent, without a compeer in the animal kingdom.'”

Alma May didn't know it, nor did anyone else in the hall, but the opening words had been spoken before, by a man named Marshall Statler to a young Frenchman newly arrived in America.

“‘In beauty he is without a rival—a coat as fine as the finest satin; his eye, in repose, as mild and gentle as a lamb; under excitement as bright as the eagle and as bold as the lion, denoting the energy of his nature; his skin as thin and elastic as the fawn; his form as perfect and well placed as beautifully defined muscles can make it.

“‘This is his exterior, or that which is visible to the human eye. But there is an interior, or invisible, structure which contributes more perhaps to his powers than even his perfect exterior formation. His large heart and capacious lungs give him the wind of a high-bred hound; his large blood vessels and soft, thin skin enable him to throw off the excess heat that must be generated by great and rapid exertion; his muscles firm and beautifully defined with bone of ivory texture—all combine to give him strength, endurance, action, and beauty far exceeding all of the equine race.'”