At Leavenworth, a contract surgeon tried to find the bullet. He failed. Day before yesterday, hoping to alleviate Charles's pain, a lanky freedman named Leander had made the third attempt. Leander said he'd been doctoring most of his adult life; he'd been the only source of medical help for fellow slaves on a Savannah River cotton plantation. Charles told him to go ahead, even though he knew the procedure could end in death.
Leander gave Charles a stick wrapped with a whiskey-soaked rag. While Charles bit down, crazy with pain, Leander cut into the wound using a flame-purified knife. Evidently Scar's lump of lead had shifted recently. Leander found it quickly and removed it with a loop of baling wire.
Beyond the half-closed door, a third voice, smaller, thinner, interposed between those of the women. Charles inhaled the musky damp of the marshlands, felt the faint tickle of pine pollen at the back of his throat. Every year, regular as God's wrath, it dusted every surface yellow-green. He was home.
It wasn't the completely happy experience he'd anticipated when he persuaded Willa to accompany him to Mont Royal for the lengthy recuperation. Madeline was rebuilding the great house in Orry's memory, but the plantation had undergone many changes that struck him as foreign and crass. Nothing was gracious any more. It was all steam engines and dug-up rice fields.
Madeline was estranged from Cooper and ostracized by the white families of the district. An organization he knew little about, the Kuklux, had terrorized the district for a while. Klansmen had murdered Andy Sherman, whom he remembered as a slave without a last name. They'd killed a white schoolteacher, too. The sweet lonely melody of home that he had whistled for years was somehow off-key, inappropriate.
And then there was the problem of the boy who no longer knew how to smile.
Gus remained a polite child. Carrying a little round hat with a floppy brim that Willa had bought, for him in Leavenworth, he came into the bedroom quietly. His feet, in rope-and-leather sandals, left a trail of water spots. Willa must have insisted that he wash after he came in from playing. But he still had mud between his toes.
Gus stood by his father's bed. "Are you feeling all right, Pa?"
"Much better today. Would you pour me a drink of water?"
The little boy put his hat on the bed and juggled the cup and large china pitcher. The water gurgled into the cup. Gus watched the stream carefully. On the boy's right cheek, Bent's cut was hardening into scar tissue; a dark ridge in a sun-washed landscape.
Gus touched the scar often but never mentioned it, or the whole dark period of the whiskey ranch. Willa, who granted that she was no expert on mental problems, nevertheless thought common sense dictated silence on the matter for a while yet.
Gus handed the cup to his father. The water was tepid. "Guess what I saw down by the sawmill, Pa."
"What?" Charles said.
"A big white bird with legs like sticks. This long. He was standing in the water but he flew away."
"Egret," Charles said.
"Guess what else I saw. I saw some other birds flying in a line. I counted five. The first one would do this" — he waved his arms up and down — "and the others did it, too. When the first one stopped, they stopped. They had funny mouths, big mouths." He stuck out his lips. "They flew that way." He pointed seaward.
"Brown pelicans, maybe. Pretty far upriver. Did you like seeing them?"
"Yes, I liked it." There wasn't a jot of pleasure in the reply, or even the slightest smile on the small, well-formed mouth, which always reminded Charles of Augusta Barclay's. How long would it be until the boy didn't hurt any more? Forever?
"I'm hungry now," Gus said, and left.
Charles turned his head away from the door. Familiar guilt lapped at him, a kind of stomach-sickness. He pictured the scar. I let it happen.
He had a lot to do to make up for it. I have to leave him something better than scars when he grows up. He knew of nothing so valuable as money. The simple repayments of fatherly affection and attention — of course he'd make those. They were not enough, though. Not nearly enough. Because of the scare — the visible one and the ones hidden within.
After dark, when the pond frogs and chuck-will's-widows tuned up for their nightly concert, Willa came in and sat with him. Charles set the lamp wick higher, to see her better. Her hair shone like white gold.
"I'm still searching for that place for us," she said. "I don't care where it is; I'll go anywhere with you."
"What about being an actress? You don't want to give that up, do you?"
She wiped a smudge of flour from her thumb. "No, but I will." She studied him. "Wait. You're thinking of something —"
He pushed himself back, straightening, shifting the pillow behind his shoulders. His hair showed a lot of gray now. He'd shaved his mustache and beard, and Madeline and Willa both said he looked ten years younger. "I thought of it day before yesterday, just before Leander cut me and I fainted. Texas. I loved Texas. I learned soldiering, so I don't see why I couldn't learn ranching."
"You mean raise cattle?"
"That's right. I could build a house for us, and put together a herd. The beef market's good. More and more cattle are shipped east all the time."
"I've never seen Texas," she said.
"Pretty godforsaken in some parts. But others are beautiful."
"What would we do for money? I haven't saved much."
"I could go to work for someone else till I learn the business and put a hunk aside."
She brought her warm mouth against his and kissed him lightly but firmly. "You'll have to save a lot. I want a huge old house. I want to raise Gus with brothers and sisters."
"I'll do it, Willa." Some liveliness animated his voice at last. "The truth is, I want to be rich." To pay for the scars. "We could settle near some town of decent size, so that, when the money comes in, I can build you a theater. An opera house of your very own."
She hugged him. "Charles, that's a lovely dream. I think you'll do it, too."
He watched the shadows of a woman and a boy outside the partly closed door. He heard Gus ask Madeline a question.
"I promise I will," he said.
Early June in the Low Country. Even sweeter and brighter than Ashton remembered. Warm air not yet tainted by the sickening humidity of full summer. A pure blue sky conveying a sense of repose, even languor.
The matched team was the color of milk. Each horse sported a white pompon fitted to the headstall. The carriage was a barouche with gleaming lacquered side panels. Before leaving Charleston, Ashton had insisted that the two black men in threadbare livery fold the top down.
She sat facing forward in the hired rig. Patterns of sun and shadow from the trees passed rhythmically over her face. Her dark eyes had a liquid look. Surrounded by the sights and scents of her childhood, she found herself struggling against a messy sentimentality.
Opposite her, oblivious to the charms of the scene, sat Favor Herrington, Esquire, a Charleston lawyer recommended to her when she said she wanted someone who put success ahead of professional ethics.
Mr. Herrington's appearance and demeanor were unimpressive. A pale, slight man of thirty-five or so, he had a mustache so small and fine, it resembled an accidental pen stroke. Below his lower lip, which receded, something resembling a lump of dough substituted for a chin. Herrington's thick 'Geechee accent was, in Ashton's opinion, decidedly inferior to her own cultivated Charleston speech. Nevertheless, at their first meeting, the lawyer had fawned and "Yes, ma'amed" her with such juicy extravagance that she immediately recognized one of her own kind. Underneath his airs, he was unscrupulous.