Carolina Gold

by Dorothy Love

“My word. Trim?”

  “Yes’m. It’s me all right. I’m still on this side o’ the dirt.”

  “I never expected to see you again. Peter and Quash sent word to Papa that everyone had gone.”

  “Yes’m, that’s about right.”

  “How are you, Trim? How are you getting on?”

  “Well, I got me a wife now. Name’s Florinda. Got a job in town. And I preach at the Negro church of a Sunday. Me and Florinda got ourselves a house and a team of oxen. But I hires out to Mrs. Hadley now and then, when Mr. Hadley is feeling poorly.” He looked past her shoulder. “Them your things there on the dock?”

  “Yes. The two trunks and those boxes of linens and kitchen supplies. And Mother’s writing desk.”

  “I ’member that desk—set by the window that looked out on Miss Susan’s garden. Used to see her there writing in her household books, back in them days.”

  “That’s right. It’s practically the only thing I have left of hers. Quash told Papa the Yankees destroyed her portrait.” Her stomach clenched at the memory. “Pure meanness, if you ask me.”

  “Yes’m, that’s the truth. But it don’t do no good studyin’ over what’s gone. We got to carry on till the good Lawd come to fetch us home.”

  Three loud blasts from the ship’s whistle signaled its departure. The Resolute belched a cloud of steam and smoke and inched away from the landing. Charlotte thought of the plantations farther upriver—Springfield, Laurel Hill, Wachesaw. Were any of them left standing? Would the heir of Willowood—whoever he was—find that he too was master of a ruin? Charlotte swayed, suddenly dizzy from hunger, worry, and fatigue from her twelve-hour journey.

  “Miss Cha’lotte?” Trim motioned to her. “Come on. Let me help you up on the wagon. You just sit and rest a spell while I look after your things.”

  He boosted her onto the rickety wagon seat and into Lettice’s motherly, powder-scented embrace. “Oh, Charlotte. Dear girl, I am so happy you are back.”

  Mrs. Hadley held Charlotte at arm’s length, and Charlotte saw the hollows beneath the woman’s pale gray eyes, the wrinkles that had deepened around her generous mouth.

  “You have no idea how lonely it has been here,” Mrs. Hadley said. “We ourselves returned only a few months ago, and it feels like years. But Mr. Hadley won’t hear of moving into Charleston or even Georgetown. Though heaven knows that poor town has little to recommend it these days.”

  “I’m happy to see you too.” Charlotte’s empty stomach groaned, but she was thinking of something else entirely. “I can’t wait to go riding. I’ve missed it so.”

  Mrs. Hadley’s lips tightened. “Unfortunately we had to sell the blooded horses. All I’m left with is this old nag. He isn’t much to look at, but he’s indispensable these days.”

  “Oh, I am sorry. I know how you loved your horses.”

  Lettice stared out at the river. “The taxes came due in November, and they were much more than we thought. And the house is falling down and needs repairs. Stables too, so I suppose it’s for the best. Charles wasn’t able to look after the horses properly anyway, and most of the servants we counted upon have become completely unreliable, even when good money is offered. I do miss my little bay mare all the same. And I’m sorry to have promised you an outing. I should have told you about the horses before now. I know you were looking forward to a good long ride.”

  “I was. But it doesn’t matter. I’m sure I’ll be busy anyway until I get my house repaired and my rice planted.”

  Lettice fixed her with a firm gaze. “I’m all for restoring whatever you can, but you mustn’t be too disappointed if things don’t work out the way you hope.”

  “Things must work out. There is no other option.” Charlotte patted the older woman’s hand. “Thank you for going to the trouble of meeting me. Even the shortest trip these days seems a trial. And I am so happy to see you. Trim too. He was one of Papa’s favorites.”

  “No trouble at all, my dear.” Lettice sighed and watched Trim struggling to balance Charlotte’s large trunk on his shoulders. “Now that the Negroes are free, I suppose we must do our part to see that they succeed. Trim at least is fairly dependable. I hire him whenever I can, and of course he is glad of the money.”

  Trim shoved the trunk and the desk onto the wagon next to the boxes. He climbed up and rattled the reins. They headed west down the dirt road.

  “Now, I know you’re anxious to get to Fairhaven,” Lettice said, “but I knew you’d be famished, so I’m taking you to Alder Hill first. Florinda came this morning to prepare a light supper for us.”

  “Thank you. I am hungry.”

  “As soon as we heard you were coming back, Mr. Hadley sent March and Percy up to Fairhaven. They boarded up the broken windows and replaced the front door and cut down the weeds, but there wasn’t time to do much else.”

  “Or money either, I expect. Thank you, Lettice. I will repay you as soon as I can.”

  “No hurry. We’re doing all right.”

  Charlotte glanced at her mother’s friend. Mrs. Hadley’s threadbare shirtwaist and scuffed shoes told a different story. But perhaps pretending that nothing had changed was Lettice’s way of coping with unimaginable loss.

  “Percy says your kitchen is fairly intact, but the rest of the house . . .” Lettice’s voice trailed away. “You mustn’t be too upset when you see the state it’s in.”

  “It’s bad, then.”

  “Apparently. He reports the house is nearly bare of furnishings. I sent over a bed and a mattress for you and a set of linens. They’re threadbare but clean. Oh, and a table and some chairs—odds and ends, I’m afraid, but serviceable enough.”

  “Thank you. I brought a few things with me, but I hadn’t even thought about where to sit or sleep.”

  “You’ve had much too much on your mind of late.”

  “Yes.”

  “We were sorry to miss your dear father’s funeral. Augusta Milton says it was well attended.”

  “It was. And Augusta was a great comfort to me. At least I’ll have her for company on the beach this summer.”

  “I’m glad of that. She said his last days were peaceful.”

  “For the most part. Near the end he became confused, talking out of his head about secrets.”

  “No doubt the effects of the medicines.”

  “I suppose.” Charlotte paused. “The evening he breathed his last, he seemed to gather strength.”

  “I’ve heard that’s often the case.”

  “He suddenly raised himself in the bed and grasped my arm with more strength than I supposed he had. He spoke my name, clear as day, and then he said, ‘The fire . . . the fire.’”

  “Poor Francis. No doubt he was remembering the destruction in Charleston, back in sixty-one.”

  “I suppose.” Charlotte chewed on her bottom lip. “But at the time I had the eerie feeling that it was more than just a deathbed memory. I felt he was trying to tell me something important.” She shifted on the seat. “Lettice, did he ever mention anything about having papers associated with our land? Any official documents, anything like that?”

  Lettice frowned. “Not that I recall. Why? Is something amiss?”

  “The lawyer can’t find proof that Papa ever filed for ownership of our barony.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he did, Charlotte. If he hadn’t, surely the situation would have come to light before now. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  As they approached the ferry that would take them to Alder Hill, Trim slowed the wagon and guided it onto the flat, wide boat that once had carried tons of Carolina Gold rice down river. The boat settled on the water. Charlotte’s breath caught as peace washed over her. This was the world she had shared with Papa, who often declared that an attachment to the Lowcountry was a bit like being in love. During her long absence, first at her Aunt Livinia’s during the war and later in the house in Charleston that Papa had been forced to sell, she had suppressed her longing for the marshes and tidal creeks, the salt-
scented air, but now she remembered exactly what he meant.

  Now that she was almost home, she could hardly wait to get started. She began a mental inventory of Fairhaven as she had last seen it: twelve rice boats, a steam-powered threshing machine, two barns for oxen and horses. The cabins in the slave street, no longer necessary. How much, if anything, remained? If the cabins had been spared, perhaps she could salvage materials from them to repair the house. More than likely the pasture fences were down, the smokehouse too. And what of the rice-field trunks, the wooden gates that allowed the workers to flood the fields? After so long, they were bound to be in disrepair. All of it would have to be replaced at great cost.

  The peace she’d felt just moments before turned to anger that roiled her stomach. From childhood she’d been taught that it was wrong to hate anyone, even an enemy. But how could any Southerner not hate the Northerners who had decimated every home and field in an effort to wipe the Confederacy off the face of the earth?

  The two ferrymen guided the vessel to the dock and held it fast while Trim drove the wagon onto the lane and over a rickety wooden bridge that spanned a deep tidal creek. In another five minutes the smoke-blackened porch columns and boarded-up windows of Alder Hill came into view. Leaving Trim in charge of the horse and wagon, Lettice led the way up the sagging porch and into the parlor, where sunlight filtered weakly through limp linen curtains.

  “Please, my dear, sit down,” Lettice said. “I’ll see to our supper. I’m sorry about the gloom. My husband prefers darkness these days. He says the light hurts his eyes.”

  Charlotte chose a chair upholstered in blue velvet and looked around the once-familiar room. In the old days, Mama and Lettice had spent hours here bent over their needlework or reading and talking while the men were out hunting and collecting ricebirds for dinner. The birds gathered by the thousands in the rice fields, a dark cloud against the pale sky, so small that even she could eat half a dozen at one sitting.

  The wooden floor creaked as Lettice returned with a tray laden with biscuits, a plate of fried ham and potatoes, a pot of fig preserves, and a small cake dripping with caramel icing. Charlotte dug into her meal, grateful for every succulent bite. During the war when the Yankees blockaded the Southern ports and nearly starved them all to death, sugar and flour had become luxuries. At one time she had wondered whether she would ever again enjoy such simple pleasures.

  Lettice ate quickly, her eyes darting toward the darkened staircase.

  “Is Mr. Hadley at home?” Charlotte polished off the last crumbs of her cake and blotted her lips with her napkin. “Papa would have wanted me to pay my respects.”

  “Charles is sleeping.” Weariness tinged Lettice’s words. “He hasn’t felt well these past days.”

  “I’m sorry. Another time, then. Please tell him I’m grateful for his help at Fairhaven.”

  “I will.”

  Something crashed overhead, and Lettice shot to her feet, spilling her lemonade onto the bare floor. “I don’t mean to rush you, my dear, but the ferry is so unreliable these days—perhaps you should go. You don’t want to be stranded on this side of the river in the dark.”

  She hurried to the door and called for Trim. “Miss Fraser is ready to go now.”

  She kissed both Charlotte’s cheeks. “Trim will take good care of you. I must see to Charles.”

  Trim helped Charlotte onto the wagon seat. He called to the horses and they set off again. From her perch on the wagon seat, Charlotte took in the sights and smells of home. On either side of the river, serpentine creeks crisscrossed the marshes in an endless pattern of blue and gold. The air was fresh from the sea, and the riverbank was covered in new green that in a few weeks’ time would blossom with violets and blue jessamine.

  They passed a family of Negro women casting their nets for herring, their children playing in the shafts of late-afternoon sunlight falling across the shallows. One of them called to Trim and he returned her greeting, tipping his hat as they passed.

  When they reached the other side, they drove off the ferry, left the road, and turned up the long avenue of two-hundred-year-old oaks toward Fairhaven. Trim jumped down to open the gate and Charlotte’s heart sped up. Here was home at last. Though long neglected, the climbing roses had survived; here and there, new leaves had stitched through the banks of wild jessamine, forming patches of green among the brown thorns.

  They continued along the edge of the river past a narrow sand beach where she had played as a child. To the right was a sloping green lawn, now marred with burned-out patches, and the overgrown garden where neat rows of lettuce and asparagus had once thrived alongside roses and camellias. Charlotte peered through deepening shadows at the burned-out skeletons of her barns and stables, a falling-down shed missing its door. The little schoolhouse where her tutor, Miss Heyward, had taught her to read, the “chillun house” where the older slave women had tended babies, even the chicken coop had been reduced to rubble. Of course the livestock were long gone. As were Papa’s prized peacocks who had ruled the yard with their showy feather displays and haunting calls.

  Trim tethered the horses and jumped off the wagon. “You go on in, Miss Cha’lotte. I’ll bring your things.”

  The front steps had been torn away. Skirting the gaping hole, Charlotte entered through the pantry steps and walked through the empty rooms assessing the damage. Not a shutter or sash was left intact. The mahogany woodwork around the windows and doors and the magnificent staircase banister were gone. The grandfather clock that for all her life had stood on the stairway landing was gone. The zinc-lined water tank that supplied water for the bathroom, gone—along with the bathtub. In the musty parlor, dark rectangles on the faded cabbage-rose wallpaper marked the places where seascapes and family portraits had once hung.

  She continued along the gritty hallway to her father’s study, her steps echoing in the emptiness. She stepped through the wrecked doorway, overcome with memories of countless afternoons reading with Papa or sitting on his knee as he showed her how to make entries in his leather-bound account books. The delight he took in listening to her recitations. The birthday when he’d wrapped her present in a length of muslin and hidden it on a wide ledge high inside the fireplace where the chimney met the firebox. He had left clues all over the house, leading her at last to the exquisite porcelain doll she named Polly. She had slept with Polly every night until the girls at Madame Giraud’s discovered what she was doing and made fun of her.

  A fly buzzed about her head and she swatted it away as another memory surfaced. She’d been fifteen the day she returned from a visit to friends at Strawberry Hill to find Papa sitting alone in the study, the contents of his strongbox scattered across his desk. At her knock he’d scooped everything into the box and turned the brass key in the lock. He’d reassured her that nothing was wrong, but even now she remembered the look in his eyes, a look that told a different story.

  She moved toward the windows, shards of glass crunching beneath her feet as she crossed the room. She ran a finger along the windowsill. Dirt daubers had built nests in the corners, and thick cobwebs hung from a shattered chandelier. In this room, too, rugs and paintings were missing. Only the remains of a woven rush rug lay crumpled in the corner. Her father’s account books and papers, copies of his articles on rice cultivation, were torn and piled knee-deep in one corner. She picked up a couple of volumes and fanned the pages, reading random entries. It would take days to sort through it all, but the effort would be worthwhile if some proof of her ownership of the barony could be found. She tamped down a jolt of anger. What had Papa been thinking? Surely he had not intended to leave her in such a precarious position.

  She moved to the library, surprised to discover a good number of books still lying on the shelves. But the spiders and the dirt daubers had been at work here too. Sighing, she went down the hall and crossed the short covered walkway to the kitchen. Mercifully the stove was still there, and the butter churn. A cracked platter. A creamware pitcher. A fryi
ng pan. A scarred table and three battered chairs, one with a broken seat. She looked around for a teakettle and settled for a battered tin pot that had been a childhood plaything.

  Trim came in with her trunks, and she directed him to her old bedroom on the second floor. He trudged up and down the stairs, huffing and puffing beneath his burden, until everything was in place. He placed her mother’s writing desk in the library, then took out a blue bandanna and wiped his face. “Reckon tha’s ever’thing, Miss Cha’lotte.”

  “Thank you, Trim.”

  He waved one hand toward the kitchen. “I expect you’ll be needin’ stove wood and some fresh water to see you through the night.”

  “Yes, please.”

  He shifted his stance and focused on a cobweb wafting from one corner. “For such chores, I usually gets a dollar.”

  “A—”

  “I’m a free man now, entitled to charge for my work. I brung you here for Miz Hadley, but now I got to charge you for extrys.”

  She looked at him, confounded. In the old days, he would have gladly looked after her every need. But the old relationships had changed. A dollar for such minimal tasks seemed outrageous, but perhaps in this strange new world of equals it was the going rate.

  Trim stood quietly, arms at his sides, looking as uncomfortable as she felt. Perhaps this new way of doing things was not easy for him either. In any case, she was too tired for argument.

  “Fine. Please bring the wood and water. I’ll get my bag.”

  When his chores were complete, she paid him and followed him outside. “I’m planning to seed that field closest to the road, Trim. I’ll need at least a dozen men to get it planted and someone to oversee things.”

  “You way behind schedule, miss. The trunks in that field needs fixin’—they’s rotted out, mostly. And the ground oughta been plowed and broke up las’ month.”

  “I know that, but I couldn’t get here any sooner. We’ll simply have to work faster to make up for lost time. Now, can you find some men and see that my field is ready in time for planting next week or not?”