CHAPTER 24
As the days dragged past, Emily and Adeline had little to say to one another, each in her own isolation, with nothing to speak of beyond the artificial. One evening, Emily noticed a hole in Rosa Claire’s sock. Her darning stitches had not improved. She jabbed at the needle until at last she wadded the sock and threw it into the fire. The time had come to leave.
Their parting was strained: Emily and Adeline left unspoken the web of causes and blame. Emily loaded her children and traveled home to the vacancy of her life.
As the weeks passed and winter surrendered its cold, she caught her reflection one afternoon in the window. She took a deep breath. The habit of life. She sat down by the window, fingering the drape and blinking at the light. The world was there. It would continue to be there, with or without her. If she were to live, it must be beyond the habitual.
Half an hour passed before she went to find Ginny in the library.
“I am going to town,” she said. “Tell Lucian to hitch the buggy.”
Ginny busied herself with the feather duster as if she had not heard.
“Did you hear me?” Emily said.
“You ain’t got no business out there by yourself,” Ginny said at last. “There’s a war on, even if it ain’t hereabouts. They’s gangs roaming the country, hunting runaways and such. It ain’t like it used to be, case you ain’t noticed. And I guess you ain’t had call to notice.”
“Ginny, you talk to me as if I were your child,” Emily said.
“Just about, Miss Emily. Especially if you take leave of your senses.”
“I am going, Ginny. We are fortunate enough to have a warm spell and I cannot remain closed in this house the rest of my life. You are the very one who told me I must choose to live. The longer I put it off, the more difficult it becomes.”
Tapping the feather duster against her apron, Ginny studied her mistress.
“You sure about this? You ain’t got to do it this way.” Ginny took a book from the table and slipped it into the shelves.
“I’m sure, Ginny,” Emily said. She took the duster from Ginny and laid it on the table where the book had been. “Now give me a list: thread, black silk yardage, if it’s to be had, what else? And how much silk? Oh, and buttons, or were you able to find some in the trunk among Mama’s things?”
“I found them. All you need is yardage and thread. And some muslin for lining. For sure, you do need a spare black dress. I can make another set of cuffs and a collar for that one you wearing. Spruce it up. But that ain’t lasting a year.” Ginny untied her apron. “I’m going with you. Don’t be looking like that. You can drive if you want.”
The creak of the buggy and the jangling traces soothed Emily’s anxiety as they rode, the familiar sounds lulling her into the ride itself and away from its destination. Beside her, Ginny hummed. Overhead, pale-leafed trees interlaced along the drive. Near the edge of the farm, several fence posts tilted, tugging each other toward the ground. One brings down the other, Emily thought. Repairs to make note of. Cows grazed in the pasture, its green dotted with yellow dandelion, the bucolic scene as indifferent to the war as to her pain.
Along the way, men and women bent over their work in the fields, their color blending into the new, plowed earth. A blush of early leaves—green, pale yellow, and melon—softened the treetops along the boundary lines. Houses appeared, set close, like friends stopped on an outing to gossip. On the wide porch of a faded white house, a woman knitted from a ball of purple yarn, a small dog at her feet. As the buggy neared, the dog commenced yapping. The woman looked up, gathered her work, and disappeared into the house, calling the dog. Farther along, a thin black woman in yellow calico tidied a front walk. She leaned on her broom and peered over the gate. A male slave left off trimming a hedge and lounged beside her, staring. From porches and gardens, as the buggy passed, a rolling hush accentuated the rasp of the wheels and trailed the two women into the town and along the boardwalks, where townspeople stopped to stare or darted into storefronts.
Though her hands trembled, Emily nodded at the spectators. She stopped the buggy in front of Chaney’s Mercantile and stepped down. Ginny followed.
In the dim interior of the store, a handful of women, two of whom Emily recognized from church, broke off their transactions and disappeared. A young woman dropped a handful of Confederate dollars on the counter and left without her change. The blacksmith’s wife whispered hasty instructions for her purchase to be charged and was gone. Within minutes, Emily found herself the sole customer. Mrs. Chaney vanished behind the brown plaid curtain at the rear of the store, while Chaney himself cut nine yards of black silk serge and four of cotton bodice lining. Ginny reminded Emily of a packet of needles and three spools of thread, cotton in the absence of silk. Chaney took the fifty-dollar Confederate bill from Emily, returning her four. When she thanked him by name, he raised his eyes and nodded.
“I’m real sorry, Mrs. Slate,” he said. She returned the nod.
All three turned as the bell on the door tinkled and a man’s footsteps echoed across the wooden floor.
“Nice day,” Lambert said. “We can use an early spring.” He removed his hat and nodded to Emily. “Mrs. Slate. Ginny.”
“How you do, Mr. Lambert,” Ginny said, a gentle smile playing across her narrow face.
“I’m well, thank you, especially this nice day.” He turned to Chaney. “Needing some shirt buttons, please, sir. Howdy, Mrs. Chaney.” He nodded toward a crack in the plaid curtain, which promptly fell closed. “Asa is a hard man on buttons. If they were seeds, we’d have us an orchard of button trees by now.” He laid some coins on the counter and Chaney produced a card of buttons. “You ladies leaving? I’ll walk you out, if you don’t mind the company.”
Emily’s uncertainty was apparent, but she felt immense gratitude as Lambert took her arm and escorted her toward the door. He assisted her into the buggy and handed up the reins. As Emily pulled away, Ginny was aware of him standing alone in the empty street.
“Funny thing to think of two old bachelors sewing lost buttons back on their shirts,” Emily said as they turned the corner. “I never thought about such a thing.”
“Reckon somebody got to do it.” Ginny had seen Mr. Lambert about to mount his horse as they entered the town. She knew he had seen the townspeople scatter. She had watched him hesitate and loop the horse’s reins at the post again. “Reckon a man who sews on his brother’s buttons might be a handy kind of man to have around.”
As she turned off the main street, Emily regarded the empty boardwalks. She had not considered how any one of these townsmen might have been in the mob that night. And if not, they would know who had been. An unknown number of these men had seen Hammond shot and her husband hanged. They knew the name of the man who had put the noose around Charles’s neck: a name she was more and more sure was Jeremiah.
* * *
“Mama?”
Adeline heard the door and sighed. Why, she thought. Why? She lifted her soapy hands from the dishpan and dried them on her apron. Adeline was keenly aware of the click of Belinda’s boots in the hall. She was lugging a picnic basket covered with a hemstitched linen napkin. Adeline shook her head, the motion almost imperceptible. She picked up a frayed tablecloth and followed her daughter outside, spread the cloth on the ground under the arching branches of a nearby pecan. Belinda’s attempts to help simply got in the way.
“I’ll do it, Belinda.”
Above them pale wisps of cloud shredded the sky.
The two ate little, spoke of the weather and planting time, touched with restraint on the difficulties of Belinda managing her farm on her own. They fell silent and stared away from one another.
Finally, Adeline uttered the unspoken question that hung in the air between them. “Where were you, Belinda?”
“Where was I?” Belinda’s voice was almost a shriek. “What do you mean, where was I? I was there. How dare you ask that?”
Adeline steadied herself. “You were there, Belinda?”
“Of course, I was there. You know I saw it. All of it. Blood everywhere. You had to know, Mama. Benjamin had to tell you so.” Belinda put her hand over her mouth and caught her breath. She looked at her mother as if afraid. “Charles had to tell you.”
Now Adeline’s breath caught in her throat. Time stopped. Charles? Charles had been in his coffin. “I was asking why you weren’t at the cemetery, Belinda,” she said at last.
“Oh—oh, the cemetery. Oh, yes, of course. The cemetery.” Belinda sat back, her voice steadying. Belinda did not answer. She twisted the corner of the napkin.
“I was there,” Belinda said at last. “In the woods. By the cemetery. Watching. I couldn’t bear to see it and hear it after what I—” Belinda pulled at the grass. “I couldn’t. So, I just walked off in the woods.”
Adeline kept still.
“I walked around and around. Just walked. I couldn’t get it all out of my head and I didn’t know what to do. I kicked things—twigs and acorns and pinecones.”
Adeline waited. She had seen Belinda kick things. Sometimes they were alive.
“I kicked a tree. I kicked a lot of things.” Her voice was rising. “I bruised my foot and ruined my boot. I got myself lost and somewhere out there I wrapped my arms around a tree and the bark was all rough and it scratched my cheek. It hurt, but I didn’t care. It was too much, too much. The judge and then my brothers. God. I had to hold on to something, do you see?”
Adeline nodded. But it was not you who lost all you had, she thought.
“I must have cried. Well, yes, of course, I cried. How could I not have cried? I cried for a long time. It seemed like my fault. And then I went home.” Belinda plucked a clover blossom and began to pick at the petals, dropping them one by one into her lap.
Adeline studied the horizon. “Was it, Belinda? Your fault?”
Belinda ignored the question. “Later, sometime, I don’t know—just later—I went out to the graves. I stood there forever. It was so horrible. That dirt all raw and red like a bloody wound and mounded up, except for Will’s.”
“Stop it, Belinda.” There were tears on Adeline’s cheek. Her voice cracked. “Just stop.”
“Oh, Mama, I don’t know what I’m doing here.” Belinda began snatching at the picnic things. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know why I did. I needed to know if you would still see me. I just needed after—”
“Belinda, I can’t hear these things.”
“But I need you to hear me.” Belinda’s voice took on an air of desperation. She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I stayed there a good long time. Not too long, though. And not good, either. Then, I came to see you, Mama. You were sitting in your rocker. You looked up at me when I came in, but you did not open your mouth. You did not get up and hold me. I stood so long in front of the fire, and after you never said a word to me, I left.” She waited. “And now I have come back.”
Belinda covered her face and sobbed. Adeline let her.