“Miz Greenwald, ma’am, you want me to fetch Mr. Jeffcoat?” Duncan asked, less shaken—or pretending to be.
“At once. Tell him to come quickly. I don’t want this vermin in my house a moment longer than necessary.”
Sarah stood over the shrouded body of the man who had been her husband. “How could I have ever felt anything positive for him?”
“He fooled us all.” Ruth murmured, wrapping her daughter in her arms once more.
#
Later that night, as Buck lay alone in his bed in the John C. Calhoun suite of the Sand Hills Hotel in Columbia, South Caroline, he reviewed the events of the day. He’d made a vow not to perform any more amputations and not to use his marksmanship abilities to kill another man, yet within the past twenty-four hours he’d done both. Still he was unable to see how he could have avoided either. One man’s well-being depended on his surgical skills. The other had threatened the very survival of those he loved. He’d handled the two missions with cold precision, but it would be wrong to think he hadn’t felt anything. He was grateful for both skills, as a physician and as a marksman.
He couldn’t predict what the future held. He earnestly hoped his days of surgery were over, that he could spend the rest of his life helping men live honest, honorable and well-balanced lives. He also knew, however, he would do anything and everything fate demanded to protect those he loved. He remembered something the rabbi had told him, wisdom he was only now beginning to fully comprehend: life doesn’t honor a man; a man gains honor by how he lives.
His mind no longer troubled, he slept.
Tomorrow a new life would begin.
EPILOGUE
One Year Later:
Buck sat on the box of his new phaeton, the reins in his hands, Job beside him. A maroon phaeton. Sarah had been emphatic that it be maroon.
“The color suits you,” she said.
He didn’t understand why. As far as he was concerned, one color was as good as another, though he would have baulked if she’d campaigned for the canary-yellow. Nevertheless he had to admit maroon was attractive. Not as formal as the shiny black he’d automatically gravitated toward, but still not frivolous.
“Stately,” she’d called it.
He wasn’t sure what that meant either, but it sounded nice. More important, it pleased her, and he’d do anything in the world to please his wife—he smiled to himself—except buy a yellow carriage.
She and Janey were seated behind him, facing each other. They’d talked incessantly for the first hour of this trip to Jasmine, grown silent the second.
Buck’s practice with Dr. Meyer in Columbia was thriving. Over the last several months he’d been treating men home from the war who were suffering from what some called nostalgia or melancholy, and others referred to as Soldier’s Heart, a vague indefinable lethargy, and he’d begun to make real progress with them by listening and by learning to better guide their narratives. So far his only surgery had been lancing a small boil. Professionally his ambitions were being realized.
His personal world had settled down and expanded as well. He’d resumed shooting, his targets were again only paper and pine cones. In another year or two he’d begin teaching Job to shoot. He looked forward to the paternal role. Buck had never expected to use the word happy, but it was the only one that came close to the emotion that filled his heart every day.
Six months ago he and Sarah had been married in a private ceremony, attended by the Graysons and a few other close friends. They’d honeymooned in Charleston where Sarah and he had rediscovered the pleasure and tranquility of sailing.
“You’re almost as good as Aaron,” she’d claimed.
He’d appreciated the compliment but hesitated to pursue it. Sarah had apparently accepted the fact that her blockade-running brother had been lost at sea during the war, but her mother still clung to the hope that one day he’d return.
Now they were all on their way to Jasmine.
“Our first barbecue,” Sarah remarked. “And probably the first one at Jasmine without pork.”
Buck laughed, confident a pig would be roasting somewhere on the grounds, but she didn’t have to know that. “Let them eat chicken.”
“Or beef,” she added with a sly grin. He’d have to be crazy to think he could hide anything from her. She was after all her mother’s daughter. Was it another Jewish aphorism that said if a man wanted to know what kind of wife a woman would make, he had only to look at her mother?
“Or deer meat,” Job chimed in.
“Or quail,” Janey added.
“Or catfish,” the boy sang out.
Buck laughed. “I don’t think anyone’ll go hungry. If they do, it’s their own darn fault. I’m not sure kugel will ever replace tapioca or rice pudding, though.”
“Apple kugel’s the best,” Job announced.
Sarah smiled at the five year-old. “It’s my favorite too. I bet Grandma also brings Blintzes.”
“Yum.” He patted his belly. “Is Liza going to be there?”
Buck smiled. The boy had become very fond of Asa’s stepdaughter who was going on four. Job clearly enjoyed playing big brother.
“You bet.”
“And Ophelia?” Janey asked. Ophelia was Benson’s daughter and about the same age as Janey.
“Ophelia too.”
A few minutes later they arrived at the twin pillars guarding the entrance to the Thomson plantation. The high, wrought-iron gates were open wide. Buck pulled the horses to a halt. The four passengers took in the scene before them. The grounds, ragged and unkempt a year ago, were pristine now. The hundred-year-old oaks had been neatly pruned of four years of neglect. The sun sparkled through their thick foliage.
“Oh my!” Sarah pointed to the as-yet-unfinished two-story house at the end of the drive.
The multi-gabled roof of cypress shingles was still light brown. As it aged it would weather and darken. The walls were complete, most of the windows installed. The old mansion had had six Corinthian columns in front. This one had six as well, but these were simpler Doric pillars. Nor was this residence as big as its predecessor, four bedrooms instead of eight, the piazzas smaller, the chimneys more modest. It would still have a separate library and large dining room. The detached kitchen in back, which was being built with brick from the old foundation and chimneys, was also smaller than its forerunner but more efficiently designed. Buck couldn’t help but wonder what Emma would have thought of it all. He hoped she’d approve.
“It’s beautiful, Buck.” This was the first time Sarah had been here since construction began several months earlier.
“Or will be,” he said. “It won’t be as grand as the old house, but it’ll be all ours. We’ll fill it with our own memories. No one else’s.”
Buck drove around the building site to what had been the courtyard behind it. The slave quarters had all been torn down, including Emma’s, but the chinaberry tree was still there. Buck had insisted when he’d turned responsibility for the plantation over to Asa that the chinaberry would not be cut down. A black wrought-iron fence with a small gate now surrounded Emma’s gravesite. Buck had ordered a tombstone as well, but it had not yet arrived.
Beyond the tree, he could see the overseer’s new house. It was modest, but it radiated a contentment that Buck found appealing.