She saw Robert's face before
her, the shine like polished mahogany in the thickness of his hair, his
eyes that were the bluest and most beautiful she had ever seen in a
man. She saw him on a meandering, pebble-bottomed creek, surrounded by
green hills, saw him rise from behind earthworks and walk with an
extended sword toward a line of dark-clad soldiers, perhaps boys from
Massachusetts, who in unison fired their muskets in a roar of dirty
black smoke and covered Robert's face
and
chest
and
legs with
wounds
that looked like the red lesions of the pox.
What about her participation
in the Underground Railroad? she asked herself. She had told slaves of
the land across the Ohio, filling them with hope, in some cases only to
see them delivered into the hands of bounty hunters. Worse, she had
personally put Flower's aunt on a boat that overturned and drowned her.
She wanted to cut the word
"traitor" into her breast.
She fell asleep in her
clothes, the late afternoon heat glowing through the curtains in her
bedroom. She became wrapped in the sheet, her body bathed in sweat, and
she dreamed she was inside a tunnel, deep underground, the wet clay
pressing against her chest, pinning her arms at her sides, her cries
lost inside the heated blackness.
She awoke in a stupor, unsure
of where she was, and for just a moment she thought she heard Robert's
voice in the room. She pulled her dress over her head and flung it on
the floor and, dressed only in her underthings, went into the backyard
and opened the valve on the elevated cistern that fed trapped rainwater
into the bathhouse.
She closed the bathhouse door
behind her, stripped off her undergarments, and sat in the tub while
the wood sluice that protruded through the wall poured water over her
head and shoulders and breasts. It was late afternoon now, almost
evening, and the light breaking through the trees was green and gold
and spinning with motes of dust. Somewhere a bird was singing.
,
You don't know that he's dead,
she told herself.
'
But when she closed her eyes
she saw shells bursting in a field, geysering dirt into the air, while
men crouched in the bottom of a trench and prayed and begged and
pressed their palms against their ears.
Poseur, she thought.
Self-anointed
bride of Christ, walking among the afflicted. Hypocrite. Angel of Death.
She put her head down and wept.
LATER, she opened all the
windows of her house to let in the evening's coolness and tried to sort
out her thoughts but could not. Her skin felt dead to the touch, her
heart sick, as though it had been invaded by invisible worms. She
thought she understood why primitive people during,
mourning rituals, tore their hair and gouged their
bodies with
stone
knives. She lit an oil lamp on her living room table and
began a letter to a Quaker church in Bradford,
Massachusetts, resigning her title of deacon.
Then she saw a man walk into
her yard, wearing a gray officer's uniform and a soft white hat. He
removed his hat when he stepped onto the gallery, and knocked on her
door.
"Mr. Jamison?" she said.
"Yes. I was visiting in town
and heard of your distress. Your neighbors and friends were concerned
but didn't want to show a disrespect for your privacy. So I thought I
should call upon you," he said.
"Please come in," she said.
He stood in the middle of the
living room, his face rosy in the light from the oil lamp, his thick
hair touching his collar.
"I understand you've been
longtime friends with Robert Perry," he said.
"Yes, that's correct," she
replied.
"Are you and Lieutenant Perry
engaged, Miss Abigail?"
"No, we're not," she said,
clearing her throat. "Could I offer you some tea?"
"No, thank you." He smiled
self-effacingly. "I arrived at your door in a peculiar fashion. By
steamboat. Would you take a ride with me?"
She turned and saw out the
back window the lighted compartments and decks of a huge boat, with
paddle wheels on both its starboard and port sides; a roped gangway
extended from the deck to the bank.
"The cook has prepared some
dinner for us. It's a beautiful evening. As I told you, I'm a widower.
It took me some time to learn it's not good to lock ourselves up with
our losses," he said.
The dining room on the
steamboat was aft, and through the back windows, in the failing summer
light, she could see the boat's wake swelling through the cypress trees
and live oaks and elephant ears along the bayou's banks. Ira Jamison
poured a glass of burgundy for her.
"I wasn't aware you were in
the army," she said.
"I've taken a commission in
the Orleans Guards. Actually I attended the United States Military
Academy with the intention of
becoming an engineer but after my
mother's death I had to take over the family's
business affairs," he replied
.
"Is it true you're instituting
some reforms on your plantations?" she said.
"It hurts nothing to make life
a little better for others when you have means and opportunity. I wish
I'd done so earlier. No one has to convince me slavery is evil, Miss
Abigail. But I don't have an easy solution for it, either," he said.
When he turned toward the
galley, looking for the waiter, she studied his profile, the lack of
any guile in his eyes, the smooth texture of his complexion, which did
not seem consistent with his age.
He looked back at her, his
eyes curious, resting momentarily on her mouth.
"You don't like the wine?" he
asked.
"No, it's fine. I don't drink
often. I'm afraid I have no appetite, either," she replied.
He moved her glass aside and
folded his hands on top of the tablecloth. They were slender,
unfreckled by the sun, each nail pink and trimmed and rounded and
scraped clean of any dirt. For a moment she thought he was going to
place one hand over hers, which would have both embarrassed and
disappointed her, but he did not.
"Perhaps Lieutenant Perry is a
prisoner or simply separated from his regiment. I haven't been to war,
but I understand it happens often," he said.
She rose from her chair and
walked to the open French doors gave onto the fantail of the boat.
"Did I upset you?" he asked
behind her.
"No, no, not at all, sir.
You've been very kind. Thank you also for ensuring that your employee
did not harm Flower again," she said.
There was a brief silence. For
a moment she thought he had not heard her above the throb of the boat's
engines.
"Oh yes, certainly. Well,
let's get our pilot to turn around and we'll dine another evening. It's
been a trying day for you," he said.
She felt his hand touch her
lightly between the shoulder blades.
THE next morning she went to
the small brick building on Main that served as stage station and
telegraph and post office. Mr. LeBlanc sat behind the counter, his
eyeshade fastened on his forehead, garters on
his white
sleeves, sorting
newspapers from Baton Rouge, New Orleans, and
Atlanta that he
would later place in the pigeonholes for the addressees.
He had married a much younger
woman and their son had been born when Mr. LeBlanc was fifty-two. He
was a religious man and had opposed Secession and had dearly loved his
son. Abigail imagined that his struggle with bitterness and anger must
have been almost intolerable. But he held himself erect and his clothes
were freshly pressed, his steel-gray hair combed, his grief buried like
a dead coal in his face.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Mr.
LeBlanc," Abigail said.
"Thank you. May I get your
mail for you?" he said, rising from his chair without waiting for an
answer.
"Have you heard anything else
about casualties among the 8th Louisiana Volunteers?" she said.
"There's been no other news.
The Yankees were chased into Washington. That brings joy to some." Then
he seemed to lose his train of thought. "Are you a subscriber to one of
the papers? I can't remember."
He hunted through the pile of
newspapers on his desk, his concentration gone.
"It's all right, Mr. LeBlanc.
I'll come back later. Sir? Please, it's all right," she said.
She went back outside and
walked up the street toward her house, staying in the shade under the
colonnade. Men tipped their hats to her and women stepped aside to let
her pass, more deferentially and graciously than ordinary courtesy
would have required of them. Her face burned and sweat rolled down her
sides. Again she felt a sense of odium and duplicity about herself she
had never experienced before and heard the word
traitor
inside
her head, just as if someone had whispered the word close to her ear.
That evening Ira Jamison was
at her door again, this time with a carriage parked in front. He was
out of uniform, dressed in white pants and black boots and a green coat.
"I thought you might like to
take a ride into the country," he said.
"Not this evening," she replied.
"I
see."
He looked
wistfully down the street, his face melancholy in the twilight. A
mule-drawn wagon, mounted with a perforated water tank, was sprinkling
the dust in the street. "I worry about you, Miss Abigail. I've read a
bit about what some physicians are now terming 'depression.' It's a bad
business."
He looked at her in a
concerned way.
"Come in, Mr. Jamison," she
said.
After he was inside, she did
not notice the glance he gave to his driver, who snapped the reins on
the backs of his team and turned the carriage in the street and drove
it back toward the business district.
He sat by her on the couch.
The wind rustled the oak trees outside and blew the curtains on the
windows. She saw heat lightning flicker in the yard, then heard
raindrops begin ticking in the leaves and on the roof.
"I'll do whatever I can to
help find the whereabouts of Robert Perry," he said.
"I'd appreciate it very much,
Mr. Jamison."
"This may be an inappropriate
time to say this, but I think you're a lady of virtue and principle,
and also one who's incredibly beautiful. Whatever resources I have,
they'll be made immediately available to you whenever you're in need,
for whatever reason, regardless of the situation."
She was sitting on the edge of
the couch, her shoulders slightly bent, her hands in her lap. She could
feel the emotional fatigue of the last two days wash through her,
almost like a drug. Her eyes started to film.
"It's all right," he said, his
arm slipping around her.
He leaned across her and
pulled her against him and spread his fingers on her back, pressing his
cheek slightly to hers. Then she felt his lips touch her hair and his
hand stroking her back, and she placed her hands on the firmness of his
arms and let her forehead rest on his chest.
He tilted her face up and
kissed her lightly on the mouth, then on the eyes and cheeks and the
mouth again, and she put her arms around his neck and held him tighter
than she should, letting go, surrendering to it, the heat and wetness
in her own body now a balm to her soul rather than a threat, the wind
blowing the curtains and filling the room with the smell of rain and
flowers.
He extinguished the oil lamp and laid her back on the couch. He bent
down over her and
she felt his tongue enter her mouth, his hand
cup one breast, then the other, and
slide down her stomach toward her thighs. His breath was hoarse in his
throat. He pressed her leg against the swelling hardness in his pants.
She twisted her face away from
him and sat up, her hands clenched in her lap.
"Please go, Mr. Jamison," she
said.
"I'm sorry if I've done
something wrong, Miss Abigail."
"The fault isn't yours," she
replied.
He hesitated a moment, then
stood up and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
"If I can make this up" he
began.
"You need to fetch your
driver, sir. Thank you for your kind offer of assistance," she said.
For the first time she
realized one of his eyes was smaller than the other. She did not know
why that detail stuck in her mind.
That night she woke feverish
and sweaty and tangled in her sheets, her head filled with images from
a dream about a sow eating her farrow. She did not fall asleep again
until dawn.
TWO days later she was walking
home from the grocery, stepping around mud puddles in the street, an
overly loaded wicker basket in each of her hands. Rufus Atkins stopped
his buggy and got down and tried to take one of the baskets from her.
"Don't do that," she said.
"Marse Jamison says to look
after you," Atkins said.