Donald McCaig - Rhett Butler’s People

One hour before sunrise, twelve years before the war, a closed carriage hurried through the Carolina Low Country. The Ashley River road was pitch-black except for the coach's sidelights, and fog swirled through the open windows, moistening the passengers' cheeks and the backs of their hands.

"Rhett Butler, damn your cross-grained soul." John Haynes sagged in his seat.

"As you like, John." Butler popped the overhead hatch to ask, "Are we near? I wouldn't wish to keep the gentlemen waiting.”

"We comin' down the main trunk now, Master Rhett." Although Hercules was Rhett's father's racehorse trainer and Broughton's highest-ranking servant, he'd insisted on driving the young men.

Rhett had warned, "When he learns you've helped, Langston will be angry.”

Hercules had stiffened. "Master Rhett, I knowed you when you was just a child. Was me, Hercules, put you up on your first horse. You and Mr. Haynes tie your horses behind. I'll be drivin' the rig tonight.”

John Haynes's plump cheeks belied his uncommonly determined chin.

His mouth was set in an unhappy line.

Rhett said, "I love these marshes. Hell, I never wanted to be a rice planter. Langston would go on about rice varieties or negro management and I'd not hear a word for dreaming about the river." Eyes sparkling, he leaned toward his friend, "I'd drift through the fog, steering with an oar.

One morning, I surprised a loggerhead sliding down an otter slide — sliding for the pure joy of it. John, have you ever seen a loggerhead turtle smile? "I don't know how many times I tried to slip past a sleeping anhinga without waking her. But that snaky head would pop from beneath her wing, sharp-eyed, not groggy in the least, and quick as that" — Rhett snapped his fingers — "she'd dive. Marsh hens weren't near as wary. Many's a time I'd drift 'round a bend and hundreds of 'em would explode into flight. Can you imagine flying through fog like this?”

"You have too much imagination," Rhett's friend said.

"And I've often wondered, John, why you are so cautious. For what great purpose are you reserving yourself?”

When John Haynes rubbed his spectacles with a damp handkerchief, he smeared them. "On some other day, I'd be flattered by your concern.”

"Oh hell, John, I'm sorry. Fast nerves. Is our powder dry?”

Haynes touched the glossy mahogany box cradled in his lap. "I stoppered it myself.”

"Hear the whippoorwill?”

The rapid pounding of the horse's hooves, the squeak of harness leather, Hercules crying, "Pick 'em up, you rascals, pick 'em up," the threenote song of the whippoorwill. Whippoorwill — hadn't John heard something about Shad Watling and a whippoorwill? "I've had a good life," Rhett Butler said.

Since John Haynes believed his friend's life had been a desperate shambles, he bit his tongue.

"Some good times, some good friends, my beloved little sister, Rosemary ...”

"What of Rosemary, Rhett? Without you, what will become of her?”

"You must not ask me that!" Rhett turned to the blank black window.

"For God's sake. If you were in my place, what would you do?”

The words in sturdy John Haynes's mind were, I would not be in your place, but he couldn't utter them, although they were as true as words have ever been.

Rhett's thick black hair was swept back off his forehead; his frock coat was lined with red silk jacquard, and the hat on the seat beside him was beaver fur. John's friend was as vital as any man John had ever known, as alive as wild creatures can be. Shot dead, Rhett Butler would be as emptied out as a swamp-lion pelt hung up on the fence of the Charleston market.

Rhett said, "I am disgraced already. Whatever happens, I can't be worse disgraced." His sudden grin flashed. "Won't this give the biddies something to gossip about?”

"You've managed that a time or two.”

"I have. By God, I've given respectable folk a satisfying tut-tut. Who has served Charleston's finger pointers better than I? Why, John, I have become the Bogeyman." He intoned solemnly, " 'Child, if you persist in your wicked ways, you'll end up just like Rhett Butler!' “

"I wish you'd stop joking," John said quietly.

"John, John, John ...”

"May I speak candidly?”

Rhett raised a dark eyebrow. "I can't prevent you.”

"You needn't go through with this. Have Hercules turn 'round — we'll enjoy a morning ride into town and a good breakfast. Shad Watling is no gentleman and you needn't fight him. Watling couldn't find one Charleston gentleman to second him. He pressed some hapless Yankee tourist into service.

"Belle Watling's brother has a right to satisfaction.”

"Rhett, for God's sake, Shad's your father's overseer's son. His employee!”

John Haynes waved dismissively. "Offer some monetary compensation...”

He paused, dismayed. "Surely you're not doing this ... this thing... for the girl?”

"Belle Watling is a better woman than many who condemn her. Forgive me, John, but you mustn't impugn my motives. Honor must be satisfied: Shad Watling told lies about me and I have called him out.”

John had so much to say, he could hardly talk. "Rhett, if it hadn't been for West Point...”

"My expulsion, you mean? That's merely my latest, most flamboyant S disgrace." Rhett clamped his friend's arm. "Must I enumerate my disgraces? More disgraces and failures than ..." He shook his head wearily. "I am sick of disgraces. John, should I have asked another to second me?”

"Damn it!" John Haynes cried. "Damn it to hell!”

John Haynes and Rhett Butler had become acquainted at Cathecarte Puryear's Charleston school. By the time Rhett left for West Point, John Haynes was established in his father's shipping business. After Rhett's expulsion and return, Haynes saw his old friend occasionally on the streets of town. Sometimes Rhett was sober, more often not. It troubled John to see a man with Rhett's natural grace reeking and slovenly.

John Haynes was one of those young Southerners from good families who take up the traces of civic virtue as if born to them. John was a St.

Michaels vestryman and the St. Cecilia Society's youngest ball manager.

Though John envied Rhett's spirit, he never accompanied Rhett and his friends — "Colonel Ravanel's Sports" — on their nightly routs through Charleston's brothels, gambling hells, and saloons.

Consequently, John had been astonished when Butler came to the wharfside offices of Haynes & Son seeking John's assistance in an affair of honor.

"But Rhett, your friends? Andrew Ravanel? Henry Kershaw? Edgar Puryear?”

"Ah, but John, you'll be sober.”

Few men or women could resist Rhett Butler's what-the-hell grin, and John Haynes didn't.

Perhaps John was dull. He never heard about amusing scandals until Charleston society was tiring of them. When John repeated a clever man's witticism, he invariably misspoke. If Charleston's mothers thought John Haynes a "good catch," maidens giggled about him behind their fans. But John Haynes had twice seconded affairs of honor. When duty came knocking, it found John Haynes at home.

Broughton Plantation's main trunk was a broad earthen dike separating its rice fields from the Ashley River. The carriage lurched when it quit the trunk to turn inland.

John Haynes had never felt so helpless. This thing — this ugly, deadly thing — would go forward whatever he might do. Honor must be satisfied.

It wasn't Hercules driving the team; it was Honor's bony hands on the lines. It wasn't .40-caliber Happoldt pistols in the mahogany box; it was Honor — ready to spit reproaches. A tune sang in John's head: "I could not love thee Cecilia, loved I not honor more" — what a stupid, stupid song!

Shad Watling was the best shot in the Low Country.

They turned into a brushy lane so infrequently traveled that Spanish moss whisked the carriage roof. Sometimes, Hercules lifted low-hanging branches so the rig could pass beneath.

With a start, John Haynes recalled the story of Shad Watling and a whippoorwill.

"Ah," Rhett mused. "Can you smell it? Marsh perfume: cattails, myrtle, sea aster, marsh gas, mud. When I was a boy, I'd get in my skiff and disappear for days, living like a red indian." Rhett's smile faded with his reverie.

"Let me beg one last favor. You know Tunis Bonneau?”

"The free colored seaman?”

"If you see him, ask him if he remembers the day we sailed to Beaufort.

Ask him to pray for my soul.”

"A free colored?”

"We were boys on the river together.”

Indeterminate gray light was filtering into the carriage. Rhett looked out. "Ah, we have arrived.”

John consulted his pocket hunter. "Sunrise in twenty minutes.”

The field of honor was a three-acre pasture edged with gloomy cypresses and moss-bedecked live oaks. The pasture vanished in the fog, inside which a voice was crying hoarsely, "Sooey! Soo cow! Soo cow!”

Rhett stepped down from the carriage, chafing his hands. "So. This is my destination. When I was a boy dreaming of glories awaiting me, I never dreamed of this.”