Will Benteen visited every farmhouse and poor-white shanty for twenty miles around. Who had a grievance against Tara? Had anybody boasted about vandalizing a meat house? Somebody at the Jonesboro market told Tony Fontaine the Klan was involved, but Will thought that unlikely. "The Klan's finished, Tony. Anyways, the KKK never pestered Democrats.”
The hayloft of the horse barn was the highest vantage point in the steading, and when the ice melted and riders were traveling the road again, Will toted quilts and an old straw tick up the ladder to the loft.
Suellen told Will he was wasting his time, that whoever had wrecked their meat house had "had their fun.”
"Honeypie," Will said, "when Boo barks at night, I plumb hate to keep wakin' you.”
Suellen said if anything happened to Will, she'd never forgive him.
That evening, Big Sam stared up at the loft door and called, "I'm sorrowed 'bout this, Mr. Will. But this ain't no business for colored folks.”
"See you in the mornin', Sam.”
Uncertain about the change in routine, Boo lay in front of the horse barn for an hour before he got to his feet, stretched, and resumed his nocturnal patrol.
The moon illumined frozen earth. It was a windless night. Wrapped in quilts, Will slept deeply all night long.
The next night was as uneventful as the first.
His third night in the loft, Will starded awake to scuffling sounds.
Somebody was climbing the ladder. Will's hand crept from the warm quilts to his shotgun's icy steel barrels. His finger found the triggers.
When Will felt a tremor in the loft floor, he cocked the hammers: clack, clack.
"It's me, Will," Wade Hamilton whispered.
Will let the hammers down. "Son," he said as the boy's head cleared the hatch, "you skeered the bejesus out of me.”
"I came to help." Wade slid his new rifle into the loft. "It isn't right, you bein' out here by yourself.”
A grin crossed Will's big face. "Is that gun loaded?”
"No, sir. I thought maybe you could show me.”
"In the morning, Wade. I thank you for comin', but I reckon I'll handle this business my own self.”
Will was still grinning when he dropped off to sleep.
In the morning, when Will came into the house for breakfast, Suellen pouted. "Oh, here's my husband now. I was wondering if I still had one.”
Though she tried to pull away, Will kissed her. "Mornin', Sweet Pea. I got to tell you that sleepin' with a shotgun is a darn sight colder than sleepin' with you." He swatted her behind.
"Please, leave off, Will. The children ...”
Yes m.
Will and Big Sam got ready for planting. They checked and trimmed the workhorses' hooves, polished and oiled the plow soles, and inventoried hames and work harnesses.
"Mr. Will," Big Sam complained. "We got to buy some new harness.
These lines dried out and cracked.”
"Put together harness from what's sound.”
Big Sam cocked his head, "Mr. Will, is Tara broke?”
Will didn't answer.
On the second of February, a full moon sailed across a cloudless sky and Will slept restlessly in the too-bright night. He woke to Boo's furious barking, followed by shots that came so fast, Will didn't know how many had been fired. He backed so quickly down the ladder, he missed a rung and almost fell. In stocking feet, he jogged toward the barking.
That low dark shape speeding toward him was Boo. The dog's ears were flattened against his head.
"S'all right, Boo," Will said thickly.
At the paddock gate in the bright moonlight, Will saw it all. "Christ Jesus,”
he said. "Christ Jesus.”
One foal was blindly racing the fence in a panic. The other stood trembling over her dead dam. The two mares seemed smaller than they'd been when they were alive. The second foal lowered her long neck to bump at her dead mother's flanks. Like all frightened babies, she wanted to nurse.
Tara's neighbors came. Men stood in groups in the paddock, speaking in low tones. The women stayed in the kitchen and said how frightened they were. They asked who would do such a wicked thing. Mammy insisted, "This ain't colored folks' work." Tony Fontaine hunted for tracks, but the ground was too hard.
Mrs. Tarleton took the foals to rear on goat's milk. She said there was a special place in hell for anybody who'd shoot a horse.
When they could stomach it, Sam and Will wrapped chains around the mares' hind legs and dragged them to the boneyard.
The weather warmed, the ground thawed, and though Will still slept in the hayloft, like other Clayton County planters he spent his days plowing and ridging the cotton fields.
Before daylight, Big Sam put hames and harnesses on the big, stolid workhorses. Sam might say, "Right nippy this mornin'," or "Look here, Dolly's got a gall.”
Will might say, "Feels like weather coming in.”
The two men rarely said much more. Big Sam always fitted the hames.
Will always lit the tack room lantern and snuffed it when they went out.
As soon as it was light enough to keep to their furrows, they lowered their plowshares and plowed until noon, when they rested the horses and ate the dinner Suellen brought them. Will never tired of hearing about Tara before the War, and Sam obliged by describing Tara's barbecues and the time Gerald O'Hara organized a horse race down the Jonesboro road. "All the young bloods was bettin' and drinkin' and it's a wonder none of 'em fell off and got kilt.
"Miss Ellen, she was a good Christian woman. 'Deed she was. But sometimes her bein' so good made everybody else feel bad. Master Gerald, oh he had a temper." Sam shook his head. "Master Gerald jest like a summer rain — get you wet 'n' gone. Wet 'n' gone.”
While Will smoked his pipe, Sam'd talked about Darktown doings. Sam didn't approve of Reverend Maxwell, the First African Baptist's new young preacher. "That boy don't know his place," Sam said. "He born up north.
He never been bought nor sold.”
After dinner, they'd hitch up and plow until dusk, when they returned to the barn, rubbed down and fed their horses. Will never went into the paddock where his mares had been killed.
One Sunday after church, Rosemary and Beau Wilkes rode to Twelve Oaks. It was a crisp February day and every branch tip glowed pink with new life.
Ashley's grandfather, Virginian Robert Wilkes, had built his plantation in a wilderness. His negroes felled the timber and burned or uprooted stubborn stumps from what became Twelve Oaks' cotton fields. As his plantation prospered, Robert Wilkes added outbuildings, servants' quarters, and, ultimately, his Georgian manor house. The gardens at Twelve Oaks were a project of Robert's old age and his lifelong urge to civilize wilderness.
Huge magnolias had marked the garden corners. Dogwood, redbud, sparkleberry, and crab apple were the backdrop for flowering perennials.
Spirea bushes shaded garden paths and the formal rose garden — fragrant with Bourbon roses — had been framed with boxwood. An arched Chinese footbridge had crossed a tiny stream banked with camellias, and an iron trellis, covered with abelia, opened on a tiny park where a fountain splashed.
That was before Sherman came.
The carriage turnaround was black where Ashley had burned brush.
More brush, piled higher than Rosemary's horse, awaited the match. She and Beau dismounted and Beau ran down a stubbly path toward the sound of singing.
They emerged into a clearing where a dry fountain was overseen by a rearing, life-size bronze horse. Ashley was stabbing a sword into the earth beside the fountain. Unaware of his audience, he sang, "De Master run, ha, ha." Ashley stabbed a new spot. "And de darkies stay, ho, ho." Ashley dropped to hands and knees and wiggled the sword. "Must be the Kingdom comin' and de day of Jubilo!”