Celia Garth: A Novel

by Gwen Bristow

  “… no roosters crowed in the mornings, all eaten. People had even eaten their pet birds. On the lines we still had coffee—”

  Suddenly Miles turned his head. “What’s that smell?” he exclaimed.

  Lewis and Madge did not hear him, but Amos did. Amos raised his head and sniffed, scowled, sniffed again. “I don’t know what it is, Mr. Miles. Sure is nasty.”

  Miles dug his heels into his horse’s flanks. “Come on!” he cried. “We’re just loafing along! Celia—”

  But Celia had already caught up with him. “How much farther, Miles?” she called as they hurried their horses.

  “Nearly there!” he shouted back.

  She heard Lewis calling to them both. He caught up with them and urged them not to hurry so. The horses would stumble over one of these fallen branches, and then where would they be?

  Reluctantly admitting the sense of this advice, they slowed to a more reasonable pace. As they rode along the smell grew heavier. It filled the air with a rank staleness. Whatever the source, they were riding toward it, and they were riding toward Bellwood. Celia clamped her teeth on her lip, afraid lest sheer nervousness would make her cry out.

  The woods were less dense. The track widened. They were coming to the edge of the clearing where the fields of Bellwood lay. The smell thickened to a stench. Celia and Miles were side by side, ahead of the others. She gave him a sidelong glance. Miles’ lips were turned in toward his teeth and set in a hard thin line. Between his eyebrows were two ridges of strain. His hand holding the bridle was stiff. At Bellwood were his wife and child, his mother and brother, the household servants who like Amos had been his friends and playmates from childhood. Miles was holding himself sternly in check, but he was in torture.

  Celia felt creepy all over, as if things were crawling on her skin. The back of her neck hurt.

  Now the air was so foul as to be almost unbearable. They came out of the woods. Below them lay the fields, hundreds of acres broken here and there by orchards and vineyards; beyond, the Cooper River was like a silver ribbon in the sun; and by the river, less than a mile from the edge of the clearing, was the grove of mighty oaks left from the forest to shelter the plantation buildings.

  With a groan of horror Miles jerked back on his bridle and stopped his horse. Celia stopped too, rigid with shock.

  The others rode up. She heard them exclaiming but she did not understand the words.

  She did not need words. She was there. Before her lay Bellwood. And all over Bellwood was the sight and silence and smell of death.

  From the edge of the woods the ground sloped gently to the river-bank, so that she was looking downward over the fields. The grove was a mass of burnt tree-trunks standing like tall black sticks. Among them she saw chimneys, gaunt and dark against the bright river; piles of ashes, charred pieces of wall standing crookedly, half-burnt timbers lying as they had fallen in the fire that had burned the great house at Bellwood and the smaller buildings around it.

  Around the black ruin the fields were strewn with the dead bodies of animals. There were hundreds of them, pigs and sheep and cattle, flocks of poultry, colts and a few old horses. The bodies lay bloated and stinking in the sun. Some of the animals had been slaughtered for food, the meaty parts cut off and the rest left to rot; others had simply been killed with bullets or bayonets to complete the work of destruction. Of these last, most had swollen twice their size and rolled over on their backs. Their legs stood up stiff in the air.

  From where Celia and the rest had stopped their horses, to the trees across the river, they could not see a moving creature except the buzzards circling above the corpses. The air was putrid with the stink of rotting flesh.

  Celia did not know how long she sat there in her saddle, not moving because she was nearly stunned. She had more impressions of voices. Vaguely, as if through a twilight, she saw Marietta on her knees vomiting. She felt a movement of her horse, and saw the dark hand of Amos grasping the bridle. She realized then that her horse had sensed the horror ahead and needed a controlling hand.

  Just as she saw Madge riding closer she heard a yelp of rage at her side and pounding of hoofs. Miles, who like herself had been paralyzed with shock, had come to his senses and had started at a gallop toward what used to be his home. That roused her in earnest. Striking her horse savagely with her heel she went after him. She heard Amos cry out “Miss Celia!”—then she heard more hoofbeats behind her, but she did not look around.

  She was making a wild journey. It was a journey of filth and stench, dried blood on the ground and rotting entrails swarming with flies, carcasses scorched by scraps of fire blown from the big house. Her horse was scared and hard to manage. Celia was hardly aware of the horse. She had grown up on a plantation and was a good rider, and this was useful now; with her heel and knee and hands she gave directions without thinking of what she was doing. All she could think of was getting to the black place where the house had been and finding out what had happened, and it seemed that it was taking her hours to get there.

  Ahead of her she heard Miles shouting, and behind her Amos. Miles was calling Jimmy, Audrey, his mother. Amos called Jimmy, and people she had not heard of before, the colored folk who had grown up at Bellwood with him, his friends.

  Nobody answered. Overhead the buzzards squawked, angry to be thus annoyed at their feast.

  Now she was there. She sprang to the ground, and Amos yelled for Elby to come help him tie the horses. Celia looked at the black destruction.

  It covered even more ground than she had realized. Bellwood had been a spacious establishment. She could see the foundations of the great house, with the wide brick steps and marble carriage-block still there. Behind the house she saw the kitchen—such solid brick that it was damaged less than the rest—and beyond that, burnt remnants of storehouses, stables, servants’ quarters, and she did not know what else, reaching away till she lost sight of them among the scorched tree-trunks.

  She was standing in what had been the driveway. This had curved away between two lines of trees, and those farthest from the house were still there, lacing their branches overhead. In front of the house there had been a lawn—she could see patches of trampled grass that had escaped the burning, and charred clumps of shrubbery. Scattered about the lawn she saw pieces of silver and china, broken furniture, a crystal decanter cracked and trodden into the earth. On one side a path led through what might have been a garden, and beyond that were more trees. On the other side she saw a big oblong enclosure bordered with fancy brick coping, like a flowerbed. Inside the coping the soft garden earth had been thrown up in a pile about four feet wide and seven or eight feet long.

  Celia had stood in a dazed silence as she stared at the rest of it. But when she saw that pile of earth it seemed that every nerve in her body trembled. She put her hand over her mouth and found that her mouth was open as if to scream, but she was not screaming. Her throat was stiff, and all that came out was a little croaking noise like the sound of an animal in a faroff swamp. That mound was fresh, and it bore no marks of trampling hoofs. It was a new-made grave.

  She felt a hand gently taking hers. Madge Penfield was trying to give her support. But it meant nothing. She could not respond, she simply could not. She stood rigid as a gatepost, staring.

  She saw Miles stumbling around among the ruins like a man not quite sane. He picked up the fragments of things that had been in his home, looked at them, put them back on the ground. Lewis was with him, trying to give sympathy as Madge was trying to give it to her, and getting no more response.

  A little way off Amos stood in the shadow of a scorched tree, shaking his head as if he knew it could not possibly be true and he would wake up in a minute. Beside him Marietta stood holding his hand. Farther off, Madge’s maid was sobbing a prayer, and Elby sat on the fallen branch of a tree murmuring, “Lord help us. Lord help us.”

  Then all at once they heard something else. Celia started, and Miles stopped short, holding a silver soup-ladle th
at he had picked up from the ground. He raised his head and listened. There was no mistake. From the far end of the grove beyond the garden, where the fire had not reached, they heard a dog barking.

  It was Amos who first recognized the bark. Amos leaped, he shouted. “Praise the Lord! Mr. Miles—it’s Rosco!” Before the words were well spoken he and Miles had started on a run toward the trees.

  They had gone only a few yards when Rosco came running out of the thicket toward them, barking his welcome. They met him halfway and dropped on their knees, then as Miles hugged the dog Amos sprang up and shouted again. A big sturdy Negro man was coming out of the grove behind Rosco. Amos ran toward him.

  “Big Buck!” he cried. “Oh, Big Buck—I never was so glad to see anybody in my life—shake hands—”

  Then Amos stopped. For at the sight of him, Big Buck had sat down on the ground and started bawling like a baby.

  Followed by Rosco, Miles sprang up and crossed to where Big Buck sat sobbing. He grabbed the colored man’s shoulder and shook it, while Amos shook his other shoulder and the rest of them gathered round. Except for Celia they all knew Big Buck, and all of them together were demanding to know what had happened.

  “Where’s everybody?” Miles exclaimed, and Amos, giving Big Buck another shake, ordered him, “Talk up, you! Where’s the folks?”

  As though he had understood the question, Rosco howled.

  Lewis put a hand on the dog’s head to quiet him. Still sitting on the ground, Big Buck struggled to say what he had to say.

  “The white folks is dead.”

  Nobody said anything. They stared at him blankly, like idiots. Overhead a buzzard squawked. Big Buck spoke again.

  “The colored folks all but me is carried off.”

  Still nobody answered. It was as though every one of them had received a separate knock on the head. Big Buck added,

  “It was them green Tories and Tarleton.”

  He stopped again. He put his head down on his fist and shook with sobs.

  But at last Big Buck told his story.

  “It’s two days, maybe three days after Amos and Mr. Miles went to get Miss Celia. It’s in the morning, ten-eleven o’clock. We’re all busy because Mr. Jimmy he say, shine up everything before Miss Celia gets here. I’m spadin’ up the flowerbed over yonder and Miss Beatrice is tellin’ me to make it real pretty for Miss Celia. The baby is upstairs fast asleep and Mr. Jimmy he’s on the porch tellin’ Miss Audrey what Miss Celia looks like. He’s got his cane by him because he can’t walk by hisself. Then we see these men in green jackets come ridin’ out of the woods.

  “They just come ridin’, and when they see the house they start yellin’ and hollerin’ and shootin’ and they ride right across the fields. Miss Audrey she screams out and Mr. Jimmy he come hobblin’ down the front steps. He can’t walk fast and by the time he gets out to the front the green men are all over the place. I don’t know how many but it sure seems like a lot, and the colored folks are runnin’ up and it seems like everybody is hollerin’ all at the same time and it’s hard to know what’s goin’ on.

  “But a fellow on a horse he rides straight to Mr. Jimmy and I hear him ask if he’s the man that owns the place. Mr. Jimmy he says no, the man that owns the place is his brother and he’s not home. And the fellow on the horse and two-three others with him, they bawl out yes, that’s what they thought, Mr. Miles is gone to North Carolina to join the rebel troops like that man Sumter.

  “Mr. Jimmy say he don’t know any man name Sumter. He say anyway his brother ain’t gone to join no rebel troops, his brother give parole in Charleston. And the men on the horses they holler back and say there ain’t no more paroles. They say everybody got to join them now and they say Miles Rand is gone like Sumter. They say they’ll do to him what they did to Sumter and this will teach Miles Rand he better fight for the king.

  “And I hear Mr. Jimmy talkin’ back to them. Shoutin’ mad he is. Mr. Jimmy say not he nor his brother will ever fight for the king. And then there’s a gunshot and he falls down.

  “I try to run help Mr. Jimmy but all the folks is screamin’ and yellin’ and runnin’ around so I can’t get nowhere. The green men is ropin’ the colored folks and tyin’ them together, and one of them grabs me but I’ve got my spade and I bang him on the head. Miss Beatrice is kneelin’ on the ground by Mr. Jimmy and I hear her moanin’.

  “Then I see more green men comin’ out of the house loaded up with things, mirrors and bottles and forks and spoons and all like that. They stuff their shirts full of things and carry all they can hold besides, and a lot of them are uncorkin’ bottles and takin’ drinks. Some of ’em try to catch me again and I run around and hide in a cabin. But there’s a lot of the colored folks hidin’ in the cabins and the green men set the cabins on fire so the folks would have to run out and they could catch ’em and tie ’em up.

  “When I run out I see the stables are on fire too, and the trees and the big house. I run around to the front and there’s a green man draggin’ Miss Audrey out of the house and her screamin’ and fightin’. He hollers at her that she must not go back in because everything in there is on fire and she’ll catch fire too. But she screams back that her baby is in there and he can’t keep her out. And he can’t. All of a sudden she breaks away from the man and runs indoors and everybody is scared to go after her because now the fire is comin’ out of the windows. All around they’s shootin’ the animals and ropin’ the folks, and there’s howlin’ and screamin’ and I hear one green man say these folks will bring good prices in the West Indies and make them all rich.

  “I’m so scared I can’t hardly move but I know I got to move and I knock down another green man, maybe more than one, and I run around and around so they can’t catch me. And all of a sudden I hear Miss Audrey scream again and I look up and there she is at a window upstairs with the baby, and the whole house is burnin’ and crackin’ and she can’t get down. And then she jumps out of the window and she sort of turns over in the air and her head hits the ground and there she lies, not movin’, and the baby underneath her. And some green man runs over to her and hollers out this is a crime. But I don’t know what else he says because just then another green man he grabs me and I see he’s got a rope and I knock him over and I start to run.

  “I just run. I ain’t lookin’ to see where I’m goin’. I don’t see anything, I just run. I get to the trees and I run and run and somewhere in there I run right into a tree and I fall down on my face. I hear all kinds of noise and I see smoke but I just lie on the ground because it seems like I can’t breathe no more and I can’t get up.

  “I reckon I fainted or somp’n because after a while I come to. I know it’s been a long time but I don’t know how long, only now everything is quiet. The fire is burnt down but I’m still scared. I’m scared to go back and scared to stay where I am. Then I hear a dog and after a while Rosco comes sniffin’ up and he finds me. I don’t know why they ain’t killed Rosco, maybe they figure can’t nobody ride him or eat him so he ain’t no use, or maybe he run away like me. Rosco howls and hollers and grabs my clothes and tries to drag me back. At first I’m scared to go but then I figure that if there was any of them green men still here they could have found me by now with all the racket Rosco is makin’. So I let him bring me back.

  “And there I see the house all smokin’ and everything is like you see it now. The green men have took all the horses except a few they didn’t want, and them they killed. They took all the meat they could carry and what they didn’t take they killed just like you see. And everything is quiet like a graveyard except Rosco whimperin’. And then I see Miss Beatrice comin’ to meet me.

  “Miss Beatrice looks like crazy. Her clothes are all torn and dirty and her hair is come down and her hands are cut and bloody. But she’s glad to see me. All the other colored folks is took away and she didn’t know even one was left.

  “Miss Beatrice can’t hardly talk but she wants to talk. She say the man that shot Mr. Jimmy k
illed him right there. And Miss Audrey and the baby died from jumpin’ out of the window. And Miss Beatrice done dragged them all three yonder to the flowerbed. She had picked up my spade and she was tryin’ all by herself to dig a grave.

  “But Miss Beatrice ain’t strong enough to dig a grave and I say let me do it. She stands up there and watches me. Mr. Jimmy is lyin’ on the ground by us, and the baby and Miss Audrey. I think Miss Audrey’s neck is broke and the baby’s head got broke when he hit the ground. Miss Beatrice just stands there like a stick only she keeps talkin’. Not talkin’ like somebody that’s got somp’n to say but just talkin’. Same words over and over. This will teach Miles Rand he better fight for the king. This will teach Miles Rand he better fight for the king. Over and over like that.

  “I get the grave dug and put in Miss Audrey and the baby and then I pick up Mr. Jimmy. And Miss Beatrice she falls over on the ground. I try to help her but there ain’t a thing to do. Her heart is stopped beatin’. Just like that. So I have to put her in the grave too and I cover them up and then I’m scared to stay around any more and I take Rosco and go off and hide in the trees yonder, and I keep wonderin’ if the green men will come back but they don’t. Ain’t nobody been here till you folks come today.

  “And that’s what happened, Mr. Miles. And I wish somebody had to tell it to you besides me.”

  Somewhere near by the other Negroes had begun a chant. It was a low musical keening, every other line a plea of “Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.”

  Celia heard them. She was sitting on the ground. She still sat there. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

  Miles stood up. He took his pistol out of the holster at his side. Madge gave a cry of alarm and Lewis sprang to his feet. Without pausing Miles strode across to Rosco and shot him in the head.

  He spoke over his shoulder. “Why make him live without Jimmy?” he asked.

  CHAPTER 19