High Hearts (19 page)

“If you shut up and listen. No sound squeaks outta this room.” Ernie put her finger to her lips. Boyd nodded in agreement. “When Jimmy passed on, Miz Lutie jes close up like a turtle. She doan hardly eat. Me and Sin-Sin got to pry open her mouth. How we worried with that woman. Henley, he sick to death and scared she gonna follow that little boy to kingdom come. Well, she be like that for four months. Then she come out of it, but she doan talk to nobody but Sin-Sin. Why she want to talk to that ole muleface, I doan know, but Miz Lutie always been blind in that direction. What she say to Sin-Sin then Sin-Sin say to rest of us. She doan say much. We starts to hear Miz Lutie yakking her head off in the mornin’s. I think it be Henley. Sin-Sin thinking it be Geneva and Di-Peachy. Ha, I say to that muleface. When you hear Lutie say two good words strung together to Di-Peachy? Comes to think on it, when you hear Lutie say three words minus one growl to Geneva? She be hard on those girls. I be right.”

“Momma, you generally right on such matters.” Boyd buttered her up.

“So one mornin’ I goes upstairs like I hafta bring some tea. I make some raspberry cakes, puts ’em on a tray, and stands outside Miz Lutie’s bedroom. She talkin’ and talkin’. No Henley. No Geneva. No Di-Peachy. She talkin’ to someone else. I opens the door likes I hearin’ nothin’. She glares at me. Girl, I coulda burnt a hole in my stockin’! I ’pologizes and sets down de tray. That’s when I knows she talkin’ to herself but makin’ it up in her head. Sin-Sin get mad at me for bargin’ in. Say she know all along. Toad turds! She know nothin’. But then she say this talkin’ be to a familiar. That’s a person you imagine and he eases your heart.”

“Could I have one?”

“Somethin’ cruel hafta happen first. But see, she up there
now, and she liftin’ her heart. No harm in it. I thinks she talkin’ to her little dead boy. She love that little boy. Sweet chile. So much sufferin’ at the end. He hurt down in his bones, and he lay on his big, soft bed, and he bite his lips till they white. He wouldn’t cry in front of his momma. That make her wanna die, seein’ his brave face. Miz Lutie easin’ her mind. Sin-Sin go ’round me blowin’ off ’bout this familiar called Emil. I say, doan matter what his name, in his spirit he be kin to little Jimmy.”

“Momma, you think spirits come back here?”

“Course. That’s why you keep a respectful tongue in your head! They hears everything; they sees everything.” With that admonition, Ernie June lightly swatted Boyd across the back of the calves with a fly swatter. Then she started singing, and soon Boyd joined in.

Upstairs, Lutie flew about her room, babbling rapidly. Henley’s expected visit stirred her up. She’d misplaced her lessons for the day and that put her nose out of joint. By the time she found her church almanac, her inner receptivity to the Lord’s word was suspect. The readings from Joel 2 and John 17 barely scratched her consciousness. She told Emil about her dream where a bat wore ruby earrings and sang Mozart.

She allowed herself a fleeting, uncharitable thought about Jennifer Fitzgerald: she passes opinions like gas. The fact that the nursing program forced her to see Jennifer once a week tested Lutie to the core. Last Thursday, Jennifer asked if she’d gotten a letter from Sumner. Well, yes, she had. But before Lutie could quote her son’s lucid observations of camp life, Jennifer burst into a rapture about her own son Greer, the military boy wonder. It was a wonder Greer stayed sober long enough to write Jennifer a letter. It was a good thing Jennifer loved Greer because nobody else would, Lutie thought. Then again, he was easy to manage. Some shrewd harpy would marry him for the Fitzgerald fortune.

Worse, far the worse, Jennifer peppered Lutie with questions about Geneva in England. Lutie felt that Jennifer was a touch too interested in the affairs of her daughter. She feared Jennifer was implying that Geneva’s excessive grief over Nash’s enlistment revealed some instability on the girl’s part. Lutie curtly told Jennifer that Geneva took after Henley’s side of
the family, not the Chalfontes. Jennifer bluntly observed that Chatfield women were not especially good looking; Chalfonte women were gorgeous. Bitch, Lutie fumed to herself, I’ll get her yet.

“Rise and shine,” Sin-Sin called from the other side of the door.

“I’m up. Been up with the sun.”

“Master’s coming home today.” Sin-Sin opened the door.

“I know. Let me fortify myself with roped coffee.” She swept out of her bedroom like Catherine the Great preparing to see Potemkin once again. Lutie was ready.

Before coming to the big house, Henley stopped briefly at Geneva and Nash’s house. Di-Peachy, despite Lutie’s nagging, kept it open. Di-Peachy said she’d move to the big house when winter returned, but in the meantime there was no sense in Geneva’s house smelling like old horsehair.

Big Muler lived in the barn and that bothered Lutie greatly. She didn’t like any servant living where she couldn’t see him. Di-Peachy vouched for Big Muler’s character, which made Lutie certain she was sleeping with the giant. Her edginess around Big Muler seemed to confirm that point.

Henley wanted to get the facts for himself. He had other plans for Di-Peachy, and he couldn’t believe the girl would be foolish enough to carry on with a field hand. Someday he’d find a high-yellow freedman, an artisan with some business sense. That kind of man would be best for Di-Peachy.

Di-Peachy, if possible, had grown more beautiful in his absence. He delicately asked her about Big Muler; her answer satisfied him that Lutie’s imaginings were off-center.

He spent the rest of the day questioning his slaves. He talked to Boyd, Tincia, Peter, Timothy, Braxton, and Frederica, all separate from one another. Big Muler gathered up the field hands and Henley questioned them in a group. He even grilled the children. Oftimes, little ones see plenty even if they don’t know what it means. He thought if one of the children had been frightened into silence, he could tell, but they seemed fine.

Ernie June, Boyd, and Braxton stuck together like three burrs. Their mimicking one another irritated him, still he had no cause to believe they knew more than what they were telling him.

One point stood clear: Everyone but Tincia despised Alafin.

Sin-Sin, however, proved the biggest surprise. She volunteered little. Henley pressed her, and she replied that she thought it best to let sleeping dogs lie. If life returned to normal, she explained, the killer would get careless. He’d show his hand.

Henley had to agree there was merit in the woman’s logic. Sin-Sin, in her resonant voice, allowed as how Mr. Henley was off in Richmond, and Miss Lutie was running this huge estate. Everyone’s hands were full. If the master and the missus would let her have her way, she thought she’d catch him. She needed only one thing: a pass, a pass good for more than one day. Trusting Sin-Sin absolutely, he wrote out the pass, leaving the dates blank. Sin-Sin placed the valuable document in her bodice and returned to her task, which appeared to be harassing Ernie June in the kitchen.

“You gots your own kitchen!” Ernie exploded when Sin-Sin imperiously flopped a small iron pot over the large fireplace.

“Makin’ somethin’ for Mr. Henley.”

“I makes the food around here. You git your black butt outta my kitchen!”

“Master’s pulled his back again. I be mixin’ mullein flowers, poke roots, alum, and salt here in a high boil. Make the best liniment you ever heard tell of, witch.”

Ernie fulminated. “You kin mix it up in your sorry excuse for a kitchen, sloppy tits.”

Ordinarily this remark would provoke a fistfight. Today Sin-Sin paid no mind.

“Gettin’ hot and sweaty here. I better be careful.” She craftily removed the pass from her bodice and placed it on the kitchen table. Ernie couldn’t read, but she knew an official document when she saw one, and she knew Henley’s signature. Sin-Sin turned her back on the pass and stirred her brew.

“What you doin’ with somethin’ like this?” Ernie’s tone had shifted from fury to appeasement.

“None of your business, selfish witch. ’Sides which, you can’t read no more than a sheep.” Sin-Sin half closed her eyes and crumbled poke root in her large hands.

“I knows the master’s hand. You uppin’ to no good, Sin-Sin. You stealin’ somethin’ here?”

“I doan steal, Ernie June. I doan take neither, if you catch my meaning.”

Ernie snarled, “I ketch it, slut face.”

Sin-Sin sniffed the dried mullein flowers and said nothing.

Sensing the paper was more important than her feud, Ernie turned sweet. “Well, if you workin’ so hard for Mr. Henley, least I kin do is give you a hot cinnamon muffin and my best coffee.”

“Believe I will.” Much as Sin-Sin deplored Ernie, she was not immune to her cooking. Sin-Sin munched in silence for a while. “Ernie, sugar, you is the best cook. I believe if you needs it, master will give you a pass, too. Jes for the day, of course.”

“ ’Zat what this is? I seen passes before, Sin-Sin, but this has red on it. Doan ’member no red.”

“This be a special pass.”

“What for?”

“For days and weeks at a time. Mr. Henley and Miz Lutie already burdened double with this war.”

“And not a shot fired.” Ernie smirked.

“It will be, Ernie June. The Lord workin’ his wrath on mankind.”

“Uh huh.” Ernie fed her another cinnamon roll.

“So, Mr. Henley give me this pass allowing me my comin’s and goin’s into the town, into Richmond iffin he needs me. Gotta lot of extra duties now.” Sin-Sin affected newly earned weariness.

Ernie’s eyes bugged out of her head. A pass like that, free passage! Ernie had no eyes for striking north, but she surely had eyes for free passage to other big houses, other kitchens, even Richmond! She felt faint. Damn that Sin-Sin! “I kin help you when it get too much. We could go to Richmond together.” Ernie smiled broadly.

“Uh huh,” Sin-Sin said, as though she agreed. “Ernie, I tells you this ’cause even though we get on like a cat and a dog, we the head folks on this place. We kin be fightin’ ’bout the little things but not the big ones. We got to be quiet ’bout this pass. Create green jealousy in the others. You know what I mean.”

Ernie nodded vigorously. “Uh huh.”

When Sin-Sin took her liniment to Henley, Ernie June nearly broke her ankle bolting out of the kitchen door. She
found Boyd and Braxton in the smokehouse making scrapple. She whispered the forbidden news to her children and implied that at some future date she would accompany Sin-Sin on a trip, quite possibly even to Richmond, as Sin-Sin’s duties were too much even for Sin-Sin.

Braxton was impressed. Boyd scowled that she wouldn’t go to the outhouse with Sin-Sin. Ernie shushed her and swore them both to secrecy. The secrecy lasted until someone appeared whom each wished to impress. Boyd told Tincia. Even though she didn’t like Tincia, the news made Boyd important. Tincia told Frederica, and Frederica was a walking gazette. When word of this extraordinary extended pass reached Di-Peachy, she raced to find Sin-Sin. Sin-Sin laughed until she cried, but she did manage to tell Di-Peachy that yes, the gossip was true.

The trap was set.

Lutie laid rags soaked with liniment on Henley’s broad back. The sun set two hours ago, and he was tired and sore. He’d have to get up early tomorrow and take the train back to Richmond.

“Thank you, dear. Your advice and praise soothes me as much as this liniment.” He sighed. “I was wondering, my darling …”

Lutie waited. “My darling” was reserved for special occasions.

“Before travel becomes too impossible, I was wondering if I might bring down the Windsors and also their dear friend Kate, Mrs. Mars Vickers, for a few days? I think a respite from war fever would do everyone good.”

“Yes, of course.” Lutie rubbed his back. “Did I tell you Sumner is with the engineers? He’s already a lieutenant. He thinks his unit will be assigned permanently to Colonel Jackson’s regiment. I also heard from Poofy.”

Henley sat up, winced, and then plopped down again. “What’s she say?”

“She’s fine. Bedford’s gripped with war fever. Daniel is in Washington. Lincoln wants him in the capital but Daniel beseeches him to stay in the field. After all, he raised and equipped an entire regiment. Poofy thinks Lincoln will give in, so she’s worried sick. Says it’s a perfect spring up there.
You know, it doesn’t seem like we are at war, does it? This whole thing is a dream.”

“It wouldn’t be so dreamlike if you were in Richmond.” He paused. “But until we engage, time is oddly suspended, a kind of hibernation.”

The liniment improved Henley’s spirits, and he indicated to his wife that physical enjoyment would be welcome to him if it would be welcome to her.

Afterwards, they drank some homemade wine, a tangy white, and nibbled on some of Ernie June’s sweetcakes.

Lutie looked ten years younger after making love. Henley admired his wife. He liked her plumpness, for it befitted her age and station. He liked her sense of responsibility and her wit. He had made a good match; no one could deny that. But what he had learned through the years was that living with a woman wasn’t the same as being in love with a woman. He had felt only one great passion in his life, and it wasn’t Lutie. He had paid dearly for that. Now seventeen years later, he again felt that strange, terrifying rumble deep inside, but not for his wife. Yet he loved Lutie. He was sorry he’d hurt her once. He was sorry he might hurt her again. He and Lutie Chalfonte were a team, but love wore thin under daily scrutiny, at least for Henley.

“Is she as beautiful as everyone says?” Lutie asked.

“Who?”

“Kate Vickers.”

Henley fumbled. “I—yes, she is rather handsome, although I can’t say that I’ve noticed her all that much. You’ll see for yourself, dear.”

Liar, Lutie thought. She was quite eager to see for herself.

Geneva and Nash, finished with drill for the day, snuck off to a meadow about four miles from the camp. The late afternoon sun scorched overhead. They tied their horses, then tore off each other’s clothes. They were two people physically attuned to one another. Whether they were attuned in other, deeper realms only time would reveal.

Whenever Nash ejaculated, Geneva was amazed at how quickly his penis shrank and slid out of her. It made her sad. He lay beside her, sweating and happy.