Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig

Author:Donald McCaig [McCaig, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780312945787
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2008-08-26T07:00:00+00:00

Tara had been Gerald O’Hara’s dream.

Tara’s whitewashed brick walls and broad roof would shelter the children, kinfolks, and guests enjoying Gerald’s hospitality. “No foofaraw,” Gerald had told his wife, Ellen. “Just a big comfortable farmhouse. I cannot abide drawing rooms and withdrawing rooms and private family rooms—for what is my house if not for my family?” When Ellen wanted a ballroom, Gerald snorted. “Won’t we be dancing in our parlor, Mrs. O’Hara, anytime we have a mind to?”

Tara had no basement, because if Gerald O’Hara feared anything, it was snakes, and Gerald was certain basements harbored snakes.

Gerald wanted porches front and back—“where we can sit of a summer evening.” Off the front bedroom would be Gerald’s balcony, where Tara’s proprietor could stand in the morning brightness, overlooking a lane bordered by chestnut saplings and red clay fields verdant with flowering cotton.

The leaded lights and semicircular fanlight framing the front door were Gerald’s concession to his wife’s notions.

If Gerald’s house had been battered by the War, his plantation had been destroyed. “Our pecan trees bore the fattest nuts in Clayton County. The children’s swing was here. The Yankees burned the pecans. They burned the swing, too,” Scarlett said.

“This is where the cotton press stood. My father always bought the most up-to-date machinery. ‘Why should men do work dumb machines can do?’—that’s what my father said.

“This was our dairy. See! That’s the spring box beside that collapsed wall.

“As you see, they didn’t burn the negro cabins.”

The Colonel kicked a charred board. “You’ll need them when the niggers come to their senses. Thousands and thousands are sleeping in the streets of Atlanta. If the Yanks didn’t feed them, they’d starve.”

What did Scarlett care about negro refugees? “With a thousand dollars, Tara could get back on its feet. Just a thousand. There’s nothing wrong with the land; they can burn our buildings and kill our livestock, but, by God, they can’t kill our land!”

“Aren’t you the pretty Amazon.” When Andrew Ravanel took Scarlett’s hand, his convict’s hand felt unpleasantly soft. “I dislike traveling alone,” he said. “Can I convince you to accompany me to Charleston?”

Though Scarlett had expected an invitation, she’d not expected such a bold one. “An unmarried man and woman traveling together? Sir, what will people think?”

Ravanel’s contemptuous laughter shocked her. “My dear Scarlett, they’re dead. Everyone whose opinion mattered is dead. Only cowards, traitors, and… convicts survived the war. Jeb Stuart—the lilies of the field bowed in homage when General Stuart rode by. Pious General Polk has taken his sermons to heaven, where he and Stonewall Jackson can preach to each other. Cleburne, Turner Ashby, brave little Pegram—my friend Henry Kershaw—that brave, dumb bastard—even Rhett Butler is dead.”

Scarlett felt as if she’d been shot through the heart. She whispered, “Who?”

Colonel Ravanel picked up a crockery shard and flipped it into the ruined springhouse. “Rhett was in Fort Fisher when the Federals assaulted. It was a butcher’s shambles.” His voice lost its bitter edge. “Rhett and I were friends once. He was the best friend I ever had.

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