A freakish thunderstorm with a mixture of snow and rain struck the coast. The snow melted as it fell. Plato Hix trudged through the foul weather wearing his kepi and a secondhand poncho, vulcanized rubber on muslin. Some unknown reb had painted a checkerboard on it. Even protected this way Plato was soaked when he reached Prosperity Hall.
Gibbes Bell and a woman he introduced as his sister received him in the parlor. “Yes, ma’am, we met that time fire broke out on Legare Street.” The woman stared at him, silent and hostile. Plato’s poncho dripped on the fine Turkish carpet. The woman huffed and left the room, her spectacles riding low on her nose.
“Please excuse my sister, she’s not herself,” Gibbes said. “I remember you very well. Hix, wasn’t it?”
“’S right, sir. Plato Hix. I looked for you at Malvern, then came here.”
“We’re visiting my sister for a day or two. My wife went on to Savannah to shop.” Gibbes invited Hix to sit. He didn’t like this man, or the surprise visit.
“I surely hate to disturb you, sir. I just got no choice. I have two head of children to look after and I can’t hardly do it. Times are hard.”
“If this involves money, I don’t make loans. My friend Mr. Folsey Lark might accommodate you.”
Lightning painted the room white; thunder hit close by. Several heavy limbs crashed on the brown lawn. Little flames danced on the trunk of a live oak split in half.
“Please hear me out, sir. I was on the Peninsula in eighteen and sixty-two. Wade Hampton’s Legion. I fought at Seven Pines, sir, like you did. Like Major Wheat, who died there.”
Tiny jewels of sweat gleamed on Hix’s forehead. Gibbes’s heart pounded. He ran his hand down his thigh, clamping hard on the cup of his artificial leg.
“A lot of men died at Seven Pines, Mr. Hix. I don’t take your meaning. You’ll have to state it more clearly.”
“I saw Major Wheat die, sir. I figure that’s got to be worth something. I’m sorry to come to you like this, but I can’t let my wife and youngsters starve.”
A long moment passed, the only sound the rush of rain off the eaves. Gibbes wanted to attack the man, knock him down, batter him senseless. He smiled and stood.
“I understand what you’re saying. I’m sure we can settle this to our mutual satisfaction. Take off that slicker. Be comfortable. Would you care for a hot drink?”
“Why, sir, that would be welcome. I came through a mighty lot of cold rain to get here.”
“Sit back and I’ll ask my sister to brew us a pot of her special herb tea.”
He left. Plato wanted to clap his hands and whoop.
Two hours later Gibbes dragged Plato Hix out of the house by his collar. The tea had done its work; Hix was unconscious. He’d be dead within a few hours, depending on the strength of his constitution. Ouida hadn’t hesitated to fix the tea once Gibbes explained that the man was a dangerous intruder demanding money and threatening violence if he didn’t get it.
Hix’s boot heels dug ruts in the muddy ground. His head lolled. Heavy son of a bitch, Gibbes thought. When night fell, he’d bury Hix way out in the brush at the edge of the property. No one ventured there.
Cold and drenched, he pulled Hix into the stable. The dying man moaned. Gibbes’s fine bay, Trajan, neighed and kicked his stall. Gibbes stroked and soothed the animal, but Trajan kept tossing his head. He nipped at Gibbes’s hand. Gibbes leapt away, almost losing his balance because of his stiff wooden leg.
Rain pelted the roof shakes, leaking through in several places. Gibbes propped Hix against a post. He found rope and wrapped it around Hix and knotted it. He had little fear that Hix would have the strength to attempt an escape, or even waken, but he took no chances. Certain events on the Peninsula on the last day of May 1862 could never be revealed to the world.
He stepped back, wet gray hair straggling over his forehead. His coat was ruined, his trousers muddy, his boots soiled by stepping in horse pies. Hix breathed so lightly, it was barely audible. Gibbes heard a horse, ran to the stable door.
“Oh, sweet God.” Up the lane from the river road galloped a bareheaded and bedraggled Cal Hayward.
Cal ducked his head as he rode into the stable. Even with the odors of wet hay and manure and horseflesh swirling, Gibbes smelled the whiskey.
Cal threw his leg over the saddle and dropped to the ground. He staggered, a silly smile on his face. “Whoops.” He belched. He saw Hix. “Who’n hell’s that?”
“Some tramp. I went off to the crossroads store for an hour and when I came back, I found him in the house, in this condition. Where’ve you been?”
“Charleston. What’s wrong with him?”
“He’s poisoned. He’ll die soon.”
“Poisoned?”
Gibbes hissed and gestured for quiet. Cal ignored him. “Who poisoned him?”
“I’m sorry to say it was your mother, with some of her oleander tea. She admitted it to me. She had some notion he was a Yankee.”
A remarkable transformation occurred then. Cal’s eyes cleared. He stood without weaving or wobbling. “Why would she do something terrible like that?”
“You know how she hates Yankees. She tried using the poison once before, with a Union officer who stopped by. I prevented her from serving him the tea. Today I was too late.”
Cal lost control, screaming, “What are you telling me? What are you telling me?”
“That we have to bury him as soon as he dies, and never tell a soul. I don’t think you should blame your poor mother too much. She’s not right in the head and we both know it.”
“That sure-God doesn’t excuse murder.”
Gibbes didn’t answer. The rain abruptly slowed, dripping through the shakes, forming puddles. Thunder rolled distantly as the storm moved out to sea. Plato Hix’s head sagged lower on his chest. He moaned again. Trajan kicked the stall, a sound loud as gunshots.
73
Ouida’s Fall
Gibbes and Cal buried the dead man. They spoke only when necessary. A sharp northwest wind was blowing as they finished. They trudged back to the great house under thousands of remote and icy stars. Ouida met them with a lamp. “Be careful of that,” Gibbes said. She wasn’t wearing her glasses.
“Where have you been? Where did you come from, Cal?” Neither answered her. Gibbes brushed by and headed for the liquor decanters in the sitting room. Cal started upstairs after an intense look at his mother, whether of anguish or censure, Gibbes couldn’t tell.
The house oppressed him with memories of Hix. He slept fitfully, disturbed by Cal ranting and throwing things about in the next room. Once he heard Ouida tapping at Cal’s door, speaking in a faint, imploring voice. Cal yelled something. She went away.
Gibbes rose before dawn, woke his sister, and told her that he felt a need to join Snoo in Savannah. He saddled Trajan and took the road to the Ashley ferry. The bridge at Charleston, destroyed when the Confederates left, was not yet repaired.
Midmorning found him near Jacksonboro. He rode Trajan hard, as if fleeing pursuit. This will pass, he assured himself. No one will find Hix and he’ll be forgotten, he was a nobody. Cal won’t incriminate his mother. The past will stay buried along with Hix and Owen Wheat.
The following night Ouida sat in the sewing room with a flag draping her shoulders like a shawl. It was the glorious Confederate battle flag, designed by dear General Beauregard—thirteen white stars in a cross of St. Andrew on a red field. Formerly the flag had waved over the door of Ouida’s Legare Street town house, an emblem of her pride and patriotism. It was made of cheap material, thin and brittle, but she loved it and wanted it close to her.
Reflections of the lamp wick shimmered in her spectacles as she tried to sew a new hem on a threadbare petticoat. Age had weakened her eyes; she stabbed her middle finger with the needle. Tears flowed. “I don’t know how to do this, I’m not meant for this, it’s servant’s work.” She flung the bloodstained petticoat into the shadows, threw the needle and thimble after it.
She heard Cal’s heavy tread and confronted him at the foot of the stairs. He wore a straw planter’s hat, a bedraggled gray cape, and reeked of rum. Like a prosecutor she pointed at his leather satchel.
“What’s that? Where are you going?”
“Back to the city.”
“Who are you visiting?”
“I’m moving out, Mama.”
She reacted as though he’d smashed her face with his fist. “What? Am I hearing this? What do you mean, moving out?”
“Just that. I wanted to leave without disturbing you.”
“So I’d be frantic when I woke up and found you were gone?”
“I left a note upstairs.”
“Oh, very considerate, Calhoun Hayward, very considerate of your poor impoverished mother. How do you propose to take care of yourself in Charleston? And don’t give me sass about cards and dice.”
“I’ll work. You must have heard of work, Mama. Most of the world does it.”
“Don’t sneer, I hate that. Tell me why you’re doing this.” He stared dumbly, his face a study of pain. She shrieked at him. “Answer me, damn you.”
Her cursing made him blush. He could admit only half the truth: “There’s a woman I’m seeing, but I can’t see her if I’m moldering away in the country.” How could he look his mother in the eye and call her a murderess?
Ouida clutched the flag to her breast. “Who is she? I demand that you tell me.”
“Her name’s Adah. With an h.”
“Adah with an h, an h.” Ouida paced on the heart-pine floor. “I don’t recognize the name. She can’t be from one of the old Charleston families or I’d know her. She must be a newcomer.” She pressed her palms to her white-powdered cheeks. “Dear Lord. She isn’t the daughter of some swinish carpetbagger, is she?”
Cal seemed to gather himself. “She’s colored. A beautiful, intelligent—”
“Colored? You’re infatuated with a nigger? My God, what did the war do to your mind?” She paced again, wildly excited. “It’s the liquor, all the liquor you pour into yourself. Only a drunken sot would take up with—”
“Mama, this is ugly. Please don’t say any more. I’m going. I’m sorry for you, sorry you’re poor, sorry you’re alone, but I won’t stay here and rot away imagining things that might have been. We were deluded, Mama. Deluded and arrogant. We had no chance to win the fucking war.”
“Oh, you vile, filthy creature.” She threw her spectacles. They hit the leg of a table, cracking one lens into a star pattern. “You can’t do this. You’re betraying me. You’re betraying our family, all we ever stood for.”
“That’s gone. That was yesterday. I’ll write you soon. Good-bye.”
He lifted his bag and strode past her, trailing fumes of rum. The door closed. Ouida covered her eyes. “Oh, God, why me? Why me?”
She stepped toward the table to find her glasses. She couldn’t see where they’d fallen. Her left shoe crushed both lenses.
Sobbing, she knelt and groped. She found the frames, felt the lenses crumbling in little pieces. She twisted the frames, hurled them away, cursing again. She lurched up and ran to the sewing room with the flag clutched against herself.
The lamp was a dancing blur. She navigated toward it but misjudged the distance. Her knee bumped the three-legged taboret, overturning it. She reached to catch the lamp, too late. The lamp struck the hardwood floor. The chimney and the oil reservoir broke. The oil soaked the carpet fringe and ignited.
Ouida tried to beat out the flames with the flag. The brittle cloth caught fire. She cried out, stumbled backward, and lost her balance. She fell against a window, shattering it. She lay on her back, a huge nail of pain in her spine. She’d impaled herself on broken glass.
She clutched one of the draperies. Rings snapped; the smoldering curtain came down, smothering her. She flung it off. The more she writhed, the worse the pain was. Flames quickly consumed the flag, the drapery, spread across the valance to the other side of the window.
“Calhoun. Calhoun, son, where are you? Help me.”
Frightened as a child, she lay still, watching the light grow brighter, panting in the intense heat. The fire ate the dingy wallpaper, the faded carpet, the unpolished furniture, engulfed the discarded petticoat. She whimpered, “Calhoun.”
Her hair began to burn, a bright helmet of flame.
Cal took the Cooper River Road. A half mile beyond Mont Royal, the plantation belonging to the widow Madeline Main and her late husband, a faint rosy glow appeared behind him. Because of the serpentine curves in the road, and his swift gallop toward the city, he never saw the light of the fire that destroyed Prosperity Hall and his mother with it.
74
The Letter
Newspapers reported the destruction at Prosperity Hall. Instead of a great estate, Gibbes now owned burnt timbers, rubble, and outbuildings. Alex took no satisfaction from it.
Ouida’s accidental death stunned Alex and generated pity and sympathy not felt for years. Ouida had to be considered family in spite of her aberrant behavior. Ham called her entire life “unfortunate.”
Gibbes arranged for Ouida’s funeral to be held at St. Philip’s, perhaps to distance himself from his relatives. Richard offered to accompany Alex. She kissed him, thanked him, and said it wasn’t necessary. Ham would be with her.
Few attended the service. Over the years Ouida’s extremes of temper and opinion had driven off her friends. Gibbes and Snoo sat in a front pew, Folsey Lark across the aisle. Cal wasn’t with the family.
A half-dozen elderly black people were scattered in the gallery. Maudie was among them, with Little Bob at her side. He wore his Christmas shirt and a cravat Maudie had sewn. Negroes were seen less and less in Charleston’s white churches. Ham said they no longer wanted to worship where they had during slave days. They were breaking away in large numbers to found their own congregations.
The whole affair depressed Alex. Because of the weather the nave of St. Philip’s was gloomy. The organist’s renditions of “Abide With Me” and Bach’s “Come, Sweet Death” seemed to deepen the mood of melancholy. It was evident the rector hardly knew Ouida; his remarks included few personal details, and many bland generalities about cleansing sin and putting off sorrows of the flesh. She was thankful when “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” rang out and the mourners rose to leave.
Stepping into the aisle ahead of Ham, she spied Cal in a rear pew with a handsome woman, a light-skinned Negro. Alex saw Gibbes stare stonily at his nephew. There was little doubt as to why.
The mourners gathered under a canopy in the churchyard as rain fell. After the coffin went into the ground, Alex approached her cousin and clasped his gloved hand.
“A terrible thing to happen to anyone, Gibbes. It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“We assume so. A peddler passing by the morning after the fire found her, without her glasses.”
“You know you have my sympathy.”
“Thank you, I’m sure of that.” Stiffly polite, he might have been talking to someone he barely knew.
How terrible he looked. Thin, and sallow, almost jaundiced. He struck her as a man distracted, as though by a wasting disease. She felt sorry for him until he raked her with a look reminiscent of his old, lustful self. She took her brother’s arm and left.
On Church Street she saw Cal under a big black umbrella, hurrying away with his companion. “Who is the woman, I wonder?”
Ham said, “I surely can’t tell you. From the way she’s clutching on, I assume their relationship is more than casual. Folsey must be acquainted with her. He gave her murderous looks in the churchyard. Thank heaven Ouida isn’t here or we’d have had a riot on our hands.”
At the end of ten days, which was three days longer than his agreement with Plato Hix called for, Ham withdrew Hix’s letter from the office safe. He went to the headquarters of the Charleston police and spoke with one of the detectives recently hired. The detective said he knew of no reports of an accident or foul pl
ay involving someone named Hix. Ham braced himself for a visit to Prioleau Street.
He loathed the mixed neighborhood where poor law-abiding blacks were forced to live amid the city’s worst riffraff. Half-naked children, white, blue-black, brown, and yellow, played around the stoop of Hix’s tenement. Ham stepped over the reeking street drain, ignored the grimy children with their hands out, and went up the dingy stair, his leather document case clamped under his arm.
The staircase swayed alarmingly; the risers felt soft as cheese. A grimy windowpane leaked light from above. And the smell! Ham pressed a clean handkerchief to his nose and mouth. Why did a white man choose such a dismal address when, for the same money, he could rent in a less odious neighborhood? The moment Mrs. Hix answered his knock, he understood. Plato Hix had married a woman of mixed blood. Attractive once, perhaps, she was round-shouldered, haggard. Her expression said Ham’s arrival boded no good.
He tipped his tall hat as a rat scurried by his toes. “Mrs. Hix? Hampton Bell. I’m an attorney.”
“Yes?”
“I have a letter your husband deposited with me. He asked me to keep it secure while he attended to some personal business. He said he would reclaim the letter within a week but he’s failed to appear, so I thought it my duty to call. Is Mr. Hix at home perchance?”
“Ha’n’t seen him for days.”
“Will you allow me to come in?” She stood back, though reluctant.
The apartment consisted of two rooms. Amid an assortment of battered furniture a boy of five or six sat on a scrap of carpet, turning the pages of a cloth picture book. The rear room served as a combination sleeping area and kitchen; a girl, younger, slowly stirred a spoon in what appeared to be a bowl of corn meal mush. One small window admitted the flat’s wan light.
Mary Hix pushed the boy. “Shoo, Benny, go sit with your sister.” She lifted a damp lock of hair off her forehead. “I’m real sorry for the way the place looks. Plato don’t make a lot of money blacking boots. You can sit there.” She indicated an old sofa with a block of wood propping up one leg.