The Bride of Texas (33 page)

“Looks to me like old Slocum liberated the local madmen instead of the local slaves,” said Shake.

One bummer, covered from head to toe in flour, rolled up a big barrel of molasses. Right behind him was another with a vinegar barrel. The street ran downhill to the south. Soon a strange mixture was flowing downhill in a trough, and the bummers were floating hardtack biscuits down the stream like toy sailboats.

The organ was still playing. They arrived at the corner just as flames burst through the church roof. Three men came rushing around the corner carrying turpentine torches, and a chorus of military voices sang in unison with the organ:

They finally saw the organ around the corner. It was out in the street, a short distance from the church, and on either side of it were carefully stacked pyramids of smoked hams doused in turpentine. A bummer put his torch to the one on the left and it burst into flames; then he ran over to the other side and set fire to the second pyramid. A small bummer sat at the organ with his back to them, playing. The chorus of soldiers, who looked like weather-beaten devils, sang facing the organ, the two in the middle supporting something that looked like a coffin standing on end. When they came closer, they found it was indeed a coffin, still damp from the graveyard behind the
church. The bummers had dug it up and pried open the lid and had found a fresh corpse dressed in the brand-new uniform he’d been buried in. It was a Rebel captain, his face twisted in a grimace of death, his teeth bared at the sizzling hams. One eye had been incompletely closed and he looked as if he were winking mischievously. The smell of roasting ham filled the air, along with the roar of the fire inside the church. The organist kept hitting wrong notes, and the pedals creaked behind the diabolical chorus.

“Local madmen,” said Shake. “Dangerous lunatics, I’d say.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Zinkule chimed in. “He’s sold his soul to the Devil!”

This time Houska didn’t object. He was staring, flabbergasted, at the grimacing captain in the coffin. He rubbed his eyes with his fists.

“A smoked Apocalypse,” Shake remarked.

“I told you so,” said Zinkule darkly.

Yet the Devil is a mere servant of God, thought the sergeant. A helping hand when there’s dirty work to be done.

“Stop!” he yelled, but the crazy singers went on singing, in soldiers’ discordant harmony:

“Stop it!” the sergeant yelled again. That brought Sergeant Metcalfe to his senses. He barked an order, the men shouldered arms. With a final wheeze the organ fell silent.

“What’s the matter?” asked the organist.

“Break it up!” ordered Metcalfe.

Half an hour later, the main street was cleared of bummers. By then, of course, it was too late. As Zinkule and Paidr lowered the coffin back into its grave — after tying the lid back on with a piece of rope — the smell of burnt ham hung over the cemetery. Zinkule made the sign of the cross over the coffin and shovelled the dirt back over it with a village drudger’s steadfastness. Though it was a long way down the road, the sergeant, when he looked back over his shoulder, could see the fires of Winnsboro dying down. He felt no regrets. Everything was possible in this war. Everything was at stake.

“Just like Auntie Bramwell’s ungrateful children,” Dinah said, as they walked out of the barn into the moonlight
.

“But what did they do that was so awful?”

“They did the awfullest thing in the world. They didn’t set her free.”

“And they could have?”

“That’s just it,” said Dinah. “See, they used to hire Auntie out to do sewing for young plantation ladies even back when Miz Bramwell was still alive. And more after she died. Old Massa Bramwell let Auntie keep half of what she earned, sometimes even more when she asked real nice. So she saved her money. First she bought her oldest son, Bob, and freed him. He was a carpenter, and he took off north right away.” Suddenly Dinah jumped behind a bush and gestured for him to join her
.

The man with the wooden leg was limping out of the white manor-house. Cyril’s sister was holding his arm. They strolled to the carriage shed. A groom stood waiting with a horse and buggy, which shone in the moonlight
.

“See? What did I tell you? Old Massa Ribordeaux is in Austin today,” whispered Dinah. “While I was cheating on the young massa with you, white boy, he was busy with your Linda.”

Cyril was confused but he was beginning to understand, and it terrified him. His sister jumped up into the buggy and held out her arms to the man with the wooden leg, and helped him onto the seat beside her
.

“I don’t want you to call me white boy,” whispered Cyril
.

“Why not? You are my white boy.”

“What if I started calling you black girl?”

“You couldn’t. I’m pale yellow.”

“I’m not white either. I’m darker than you are, after all this time in the Texas sun.” It was all Dinah could do not to burst out laughing
.

“So Auntie Bramwell saved up to buy all of them their freedom?”

“Sure she did,” said Dinah. “After Bob took off, Tom followed him north, then Beulah, who knew how to embroider like Auntie did, then Clothie — she sang real pretty — and finally Jim. He didn’t do nothing. But he was only fifteen. In fact,” she said, “he wasn’t the least bit to blame. As soon as he got up north, they locked him up for getting into the chicken coop at the Methodist manse. They say he got ten years. So it wasn’t his fault.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t his fault? He was a thief.”

“No, he wasn’t,” Dinah shook her head. “He took from white folks, and that ain’t stealing.”

The buggy started down the road, the man with the wooden leg at the reins. Lida’s lovely head glimmered like silver. She had made up her mind about something, but what was it? Was it this? It couldn’t be love. After all, love had stayed behind in Moravia. Suddenly everything fell into place
.

“But the rest of them — they could have done something,” Dinah continued. “Tom and Bob, they started up a carpentry shop in Boston. Beulah got work with a fancy dressmaker in Philadelphia and Clothie married a minister in Buffalo. They say he sang better than he preached. They even say he used to get hired along
with some other freed slaves to sing at white folks’ weddings. What I mean is,” sighed Dinah, “they done fine. And they forgot all about Auntie.” The tiny moons in her eyes narrowed to silver slits. “Think of that, white boy!”

“Don’t call me white boy!”

“Okay, brown boy. They started out saying they’d save up and buy her out together. But Bob and Tom, just as soon as they got a whiff of freedom, they went crazy over women — slave women, of course, two fancy little maids back in Massa Carruthers’ house in Louisiana. Carruthers set their prices real high, so Auntie had to wait while the boys saved up for Phillippa and Brigitte. Next they had to save up for a nice house for Bob, and another one for Tom. Clothie started having babies and Beulah had left two back on Massa Bramwell’s plantation, so they had to save up for them, too. Meantime things were going bad on the plantation because old Massa Bramwell didn’t care about nothing but Miz Bourbon any more, and she didn’t give two hoots for the property. The niggers in the cotton-fields lollygagged around, watching the clouds roll by, because when the meanest overseer, Mr. McDrummond, saw how everything was falling apart, he quit. The other two overseers was old and married like Massa Bramwell, and they started loafing around with the niggers. The crop was ruined, Massa Bramwell got deep in debt and come to his senses, left Miz Bourbon in the parlour and went out in the cotton-field where the overseers were down playing poker with the niggers.”

A whip snapped in the moonlight; the carriage, a gold and silver blossom in the night, vanished around a bend in the road and rattled off towards where the Toupeliks’ farmhouse stood, five miles away
.

This tea-rose, thought Cyril, would be too refined a creature for his father, and his mother would probably call her “Miss” because Dinah looked like the countess from the château at Lhota, only prettier
.

“What are you thinking about, white boy? You’re not listening to me.”

“I’m thinking about how we’ll go north,” he said. “I probably couldn’t marry you here.”

“Sure, go north,” sighed Dinah. “Question is, can I believe you, or will you turn out like Auntie Bramwell’s rotten children?” She scowled. “Except for Jim. He was behind bars, so he couldn’t save up for nothing.”

“May God strike me down if I’m like Auntie Bramwell’s rotten children!”

“He will, too! Like He did to Bob and Tom — sneaky, ungrateful niggers.”

“Did they lose their carpentry business?”

“They lost Phillippa and Brigitte. Soon as Bob and Tom bought them their freedom, the two girls ran off to Chicago. I hear they got work in some fancy house there, as whores or nannies, I ain’t sure which.”

“You’re making this up, I bet,” he said. “What happened to Beulah and Clothie?”

“Nothing, of course. In the South, the Good Lord is a gentleman. But Jim got his reward.”

“Jim the thief?”

“I told you Jim never in his life stole nothing!” This time she seemed genuinely annoyed. “But he got his freedom too, like Phillippa and Brigitte. The jailer’s ugly daughter fell in love with him and unlocked his cell door one night.”

“Where do you get these stories?”

“I read the books that Missy de Ribordeaux left here when she married and left for Louisiana,” said Dinah. “But Jim got away and ran all the way to Canada. He went way up north, where I hear there’s niggers who milk whales. So he got work as a whale-herder.”

“Now, I’m positive you got that from a book!”

“No, it just came into my head.”

“Where did you learn to read?”

“When Missy de Ribordeaux was little, she didn’t want to play with nobody but me. And she had a tutor, Mam’selle Seulac. Missy was a mite slow, so you had to repeat everything ten times over. All I had to do was listen.”

“But this mam’selle must have been French, with a name like that?”

“Sure. The novels are in French too. I don’t read English so well. Everything is spelled funny in English.”

Cyril couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Let me touch you,” he said
.

“Why?”

He reached out and touched her. She was real — he hadn’t dreamed her up. But nobody else knew about her. Just him
.

“That’s Brutus,” said the old black man in livery. “When they put that sign around his neck, he kick young Massa Burdick, and the young massa haul out his sword and slice off his leg.” He pointed a black finger at the stump, which was still dripping pink drops, like a water-clock measuring time on the cross. “Then they hang him.”

“Was it all his own idea?” asked Lieutenant Williams.

“He always a bad nigger,” said the old man. “He got this trick, colonel.” The lieutenant did not correct him. “He throw his arm out of joint and put it in a sling and get off work. Bad nigger. He talk about Nat Turner sometime, too.”

“What happened to your master? And his family?” asked Lieutenant Williams.

“Nothing, colonel. Brutus don’t want to kill ’em. He say he don’t need to, now that Massa Lincum give us freedom. He just
tell the white massas the plantation belong to us now, and he drive ’em off it.”

Lieutenant Williams glanced at Sherman. The general frowned and said nothing.

“I tell him it ain’t ours,” said the old man. “The only thing we is, is free, because Massa Lincum’s soldiers come in and do the job. That’s what they tell us, Gen’ral Kilpatrick’s cavalry. Trouble is, they ride right off again. Cato join Brutus.” He pointed to the corpse hanging next to the man with one leg, and then recited all the names like a litany: Caligula, Marcus, Aurelius, Cicero, Catiline, and the last one, with ebony skin and a horrifying post-mortem erection, Hannibal. Their master had had a classical education.

“I do what I can,” said the old man. “We only got freedom, and freedom ain’t property. But Brutus, he don’t want to hear this. We work till we bleed, he say. That’s true — some do. But not him. He got this trick, and other tricks too. Never go to the fields much. He sweep and pick up, fix the gins, help out in the kitchen —”

A wave of hot wind blew in from the burning forests. The corpses began to turn slowly.