Donald McCaig - Rhett Butler's People

Thomas Bonneau laid down the net he'd been mending. "What you doin' here, young man?”

Rhett's smile was tentative. "I had hoped I might be welcome.”

"Well, you ain't. You's trouble.”

Glasses dangling from one hand, Tunis came outdoors. He held The Seaman's Friend m the other.

Desperately, Rhett pronounced, "That book has ketch rigging wrong.”

Tunis rolled his eyes. "Daddy, I b'lieve young Master Butler sayin' he a sailor. You reckon?”

Rhett wore a short blue jacket over a broadcloth shirt. His trousers were so tight, he dared not touch his toes.

The Bonneaus were barefoot and Tunis's dirty canvas trousers were belted with a rope.

Quietly, Rhett said, "I've nowhere else to go.”

Tunis examined Rhett for a long time before he laughed, "Eight bushel of oysters that book cost me and Young Master here says it's mistook.”

Thomas Bonneau's cheeks filled and expelled a puff of air. "I expect I gonna regret this. Sit yourself down and I'll show you how to mend a net.”

The Bonneaus raked oyster banks below Morris Island and fished off Sullivan's Island. Rhett rose with them hours before dawn, worked with them, laughed with them, and one memorable Sunday when Thomas, his wife, and the younger children were at church, Rhett and Tunis sailed Thomas Bonneau's skiff down the coast all the way to Beaufort.

Young Rhett Butler had never imagined he could be so happy.

Every negro on the Ashley River knew about Thomas Bonneau's white "son," but it was thirteen weeks before Langston Butler discovered Rhett's whereabouts and Broughton's launch tied up at the Bonneaus' rickety dock.

Langston Butler towered over Thomas Bonneau, "Many legislators wish to exile Carolina's free coloreds or return them to slavery. That is my view, as well. Should you interfere with my family again, I vow that you, your wife, and your children will toil under Mr. Watling's lash.”

On the long pull upstream to Broughton, Langston Butler didn't speak to his son, and when they landed, he turned Rhett over to Isaiah Watling.

"He's a rice hand like any other. If he runs or disobeys, introduce him to the bullwhip.”

Watling assigned Rhett a cabin in the negro quarters. Its straw pallet danced with fleas.

The stretch flow had been drained two weeks previously and the rice was thriving. His first morning in the fields, the mosquitoes and gnats were so thick, Rhett swallowed mouthfuls. Twenty minutes after sunrise, the overheated air sucked his breath away.

Thigh-deep in mud, he hoed as far as his arms could reach before, extracting one leg at a time, he shifted to a new stance.

A big man on a big horse, Shadrach Watling watched from the levee.

At noon, the work gang paused for beans and cornmeal ladled from a common pot. Since Rhett didn't have a bowl or spoon, he waited until another man finished to borrow his.

It was ninety-five degrees that first afternoon and red and purple flashes played across Rhett's eyes.

By custom, after a worker finished his allotted task, his time was his own. By three o'clock some of the stronger men left the field and by five o'clock only two middle-aged women and Rhett were still working. At 8:30, when Rhett was done, he and Shad Watling remained.

"Best watch for snakes." Shad grinned. "We lost a nigger in this patch last week.”

Rhett's delirium of working, eating, and working again was relieved by fitful snatches of sleep. When Rhett did meet a water moccasin, he watched indifferently as the snake slithered past his bare legs.

On his tall, bony mule, Overseer Watling visited each of his gangs. The handle of the bullwhip hanging from his saddle bow was bleached from the sweat of his hand.

Despite the heat, the overseer wore a black frock coat and his shirt was buttoned to his chin. His wide-brimmed straw hat clasped his close-cropped skull.

At dinnertime on Saturday, he beckoned to Rhett.

Watling had big ears, a big nose, long arms, big hands; his face was lined with hard work and bitterness.

Watling laid his pale, empty gaze on Rhett. "When I was bankrupted and come to Broughton, many stretch flows past, you was an ornery child, but I believed there was hope for you. It is writ that by tribulations we shall one day rise. Young Butler" — the overseer started his mule — "our day will come.”

By the second week, Rhett worked as well as an old woman, and by the end of the third he could keep up with a negro boy of ten.

In the evenings, Rhett slumped on a chopping block in the dooryard.

Although Broughton's negroes had been told to shun him, they slipped him food from their own meager stores.

By September, young Rhett Butler was a full-task rice hand on Broughton Plantation.

As Carolina's delegates were boarding the schooner for Baltimore and the Democratic party's convention, Senator Wade Hampton took Langston Butler aside to ask about a rumor that Langston's son was working beside negroes in the rice fields.

"My son wants discipline.”

Wade Hampton was a physical giant who owned 3,500 slaves. Now, he frowned.

Hampton explained the Democratic party could not afford a scandal.

"Sir, my son must have discipline.”

So Senator Wade Hampton arranged Rhett Butler's appointment to West Point.

When Isaiah Watling rode into the quarters that evening, Rhett Butler was sitting cross-legged in the doorway of his cabin, watching rice birds wheel over the river.

Isaiah Watling dismounted. "Master Butler wants you in town," he said. "Boat's waitin' at the landing." After a pause, Watling added, "For a white boy, you was a pretty fair nigger.”

In Charleston, Rhett was bathed and barbered. His clothing was altered for his new musculature. Before all his insect bites had healed, Rhett boarded a northbound schooner.

Young Rhett Butler stood at the rail as the schooner cleared Charleston harbor. He should have been excited about his prospects, but he wasn't. His body didn't feel right in gentleman's clothing. Fort Sumter grew smaller and smaller, until it was a dot on the gray ocean.

Rhett's sister, Rosemary, was four years old when Rhett left the Low Country, and afterward, when the child tried to remember her brother, no matter where she tried to force her thoughts, an image crept into her mind: the wolf on the front of her fairy-tale book. The wolf was long-snouted and scraggly, but how sly and what big teeth!

Those weeks Rhett was hidden by the Bonneaus, Langston Butler's anger filled every nook and cranny of the Charleston town house. Servants tiptoed, little Rosemary hid in the nursery, and Elizabeth Butler retired to her bedroom with a sick headache. Rosemary thought Rhett must be powerful and very wicked, since her father hated him so.

Rashes erupted on Rosemary's arms and legs. She woke at the least sound and couldn't get back to sleep. If she just didn't think about that scraggly wolf, if she could picture dolls or dancers or pretty dresses, that wolf wasn't lurking in the dark shadows beneath her bedroom window and couldn't be hiding under her bed.

Rosemary's mother, Elizabeth, had been the beloved only daughter of the very wealthy Ezra Ball Kershaw. A dutiful, pious wife, Elizabeth trusted the Bible to answer her questions and provide eventual justice. She prayed for her children and, without mentioning it to him, she prayed for her husband. Now, Elizabeth Butler took uncharacteristically bold action and asked her friend Constance Fisher — nobody in Charleston was more RIII-TT BUTLER'S PEOPLE respectable, or richer, than Grandmother Fisher — if Rosemary might visit the Fishers for a time.

Grandmother promptly agreed. "Rosemary and my granddaughter Charlotte will keep each other occupied.”