“Surely . . .”
“I were baby child, Missus, when Captain Fornier find me. Captain Fornier just about my firstest memory.” I is more upset than I showin’. I don’t want remember, no.
“Captain Fornier. That affair of honor . . .”
“That were just one of them stupid things white gentlemen gets up to!”
“Ruth, honor . . .”
“‘Must be satisfied.’ White folks always sayin’ that. You know whats I think? I think honor be 666, Beast of the Apocalypse, all eyes and grins and teeth!”
“A gentlemen’s honor . . .”
“How comes colored mens get along without it?”
Miss Ellen got answer on she tongue but don’t let fly. She pour her tea. Spoon clink ’gainst she blue cup. “Will Scarlett be happy, I wonder.”
I drinks my water.
“Ruth, you know my daughter best.”
“Yes’m. I knowed your mother and I knowed you and I knows Katie Scarlett, and, if Le Bon Dieu willing, I gets know Miss Scarlett’s childrens too.”
“Well?”
Mammies don’t say what they know. Mammies don’t ever say what they know. But I do. Don’t know why, but I do. “Scarlett don’t give a hang for Charles Hamilton. She marryin’ to spite Ashley Wilkes.”
I hears Miss Ellen’s cup rattlin’ ’gainst saucer. “Mammy!”
“Yes, Missus. You want I say somethin’ else, I will.”
“Have I ever sought anything but the truth?”
I takes that in. I takes my sweet time takin’ it in. I takin’ so long, Miss Ellen impatient. “Ruth . . .”
“Reckon you same like most Mistress. You knows what you wants know and lets everything else go by.”
“Will my daughter be happy?”
“Charles Hamilton got deportment and plenty money, but he ain’t no match for Miss Scarlett. That Beelzebub would have killed Charles quick as a wink. Charles ain’t long for this world aryway.”
Like I done said, Ellen knows what she want know and lets the rest go by, and what I’m sayin’ ain’t to her likin’. “Ah, so you know this.”
Contrariness rise up strong and hot, and I says, “I sees things, Miss Ellen. I don’t wants see, but I does.”
“Ah,” she say. She say, “It is a beautiful spring, isn’t it, Mammy. I can’t remember a finer.”
I plain can’t turn loose of it. “Scarlett and Rhett Butler get together one day,” I say. “Them one of a kind. Maybe they buck and jibe and fight the bit, but they two am halves a broke plate. Only be whole when you glues ’em together.”
She smile like somethin’ addle my wits. “Mr. Butler is a scoundrel, Mammy.”
I looks her right in the eye. “Master Butler same like Master Philippe. No God Damn different.”
Smile drop off Ellen face, and she hits back, “Philippe died in an affair of honor. At least he wasn’t hanged.”
Which leave me gaspin’. Morning swim round me: blue skies, green earth, porch flooring painted gray. “How you know . . . How you know ’bout . . .”
“Philippe and Jack Ravanel were friends, Ruth. Good friends. You wouldn’t want to know that, I suppose. You wouldn’t want to know Philippe admired your husband.”
I gape like fish out of water.
“Philippe said had their positions been reversed, he’d have been a rebel like Jehu Glen. ‘Give me liberty . . .’”
“‘Or give me death.’ Most times death.” I so distress I speak without hardly knowin’ what I say.
Ellen distress too and take her sweet time sayin, “Yes.” Her hand shakin’, and she set cup down careful. “Philippe was half Muscogee. In his grandfather’s time, he’d have fought us at Horseshoe Bend.”
I nods.
“Before he was ready, no more than a boy, his father died and Philippe was the man in his family.” Ellen look off where I weren’t. “I am sometimes reminded of him; a shadow’s odd shape, a warm spring rain, an unexpected burst of children’s laughter. I am invariably surprised and . . . stung when I remember my Philippe.”
“Spirits stay near them they loves. They impatient we join ’em.”
“Only ever loved one man. Jehu, he . . . he had the beautifulest hands.”
“Philippe would sing sometimes. Silly rhymes. ‘Here’s my Ellen. Not much for hellin’ . . . ’”
“Philippe might have growed up be different. Philippe die afore he was who he am.”
“Can we hope for what can’t be undone?”
“Some men particular difficult. Yet we loves ’em. Them men don’t leave much room for woman to be.” It were my turn to pause. “Philippe and Rhett Butler don’t got deportment.”
She smiles. “Philippe? Deportment? No. But Ruth, truly graceful folks don’t need that. Grace is how they move, and, God knows, Philippe was graceful.”
“You got money enough and power enough and you white, maybe you don’t need deportment. Other folks—it all they got.”
Ellen get up then and step off the porch to pull a weed in the flower patch. She shake dirt off it root. She wipe she hands with a handkerchief. “Scarlett . . .”
Oh, I burstin’ today. Old nigger woman, can’t write she own name! Just burstin’! “Scarlett rise above. Ain’t nothin’ put her down. I don’t want be the fool stand in her way.”
Ellen lookin’ past Tara lawn down to the Flint River, which am high and brown ’count it springtime.
After her poor Momma pass, I holds Baby Ellen. Maybe she rememberin’ that. I don’t expect she wants to. Rememberin’ ain’t what you wants to do much of. Rememberin’ stab you heart.
I say, “I sees things.”
She looks at me like we not Mistress and Mammy, we two womens makin’ our way in the world. “I know,” Ellen say. “I’ve always known.”
I say, “I lost ’em all.”
Kindly she say, “Them?”
I say “Ki kote pitit-la?” not knowin’ why I’m sayin’ that. In this moment Ellen let me say arything I wants.
I say, “Jehu Glen, my Martine . . .”
“Yes.”
“Captain Augustin, Missus Frances and Penny and Miss Solange and Master Pierre and Nehemiah. And . . . each of them Baby Geralds.”
“Yes,” Ellen say. “Yes. Each precious one of them.”
Almost we falls into each other arms, but that can’t ever be took back, so we doesn’t.
I say, “War comin’ worse than what Babylon done to Jerusalem. I sees fire and blood. War, fire, and blood.”
She say, “We’ve only prayer. Sometimes I believe that’s all . . .” She touch me then, gentle as a sparrow lightin’. “I did love Philippe. I do. Do you think that’s wrong? We love always with a divided heart. I can’t ‘see.’ I’m grateful for that. I can only heal those wounds under my hands. We can’t protect them, Mammy. We must try, but they do as they will. However we try, however we pray, they will do as they will.”
Her hand tremble when she touch rim of teacup. No stronger’n eggshell and come all the way from France, then Saint-Domingue, then Savannah, then Tara.
We has said too much already. No more can be said without we go where we can’t never come back.
Miss Ellen say, “Mr. Wilkerson’s accounts are a shambles.”
I gets up. “I be seein’ to Teena’s newborn.”
We never lost no newborn at Tara. None but Miss Ellen’s.
Ki kote pitit-la? . . . Oh, where is that child?
Well, Momma, here I am. Here am where I gots to.
Acknowledgments
My grateful thanks to those whose knowledge, kindness, faith, and forbearance helped Mammy come alive:
Mr. Paul Anderson Sr.
Mr. Paul Anderson Jr.
Mr. Peter Borland
Ms. Gillian Brown
Ms. Susan Brown
Ms. Mia Crowley
Ms. Kris Dahl
Dr. Laurent Dubois
Dr. Douglas Egerton
Ms. Julia Gaffield
Dr. Philippe Girard
Dr. Joan Hall
Ms. Anne McCaig
Dr. Jeremy Popkin
Dr. J. Tracy Power
Ms. Laura Starratt
Mr. Kerly Vincent
Mr. John Wiley, Jr.
The Atlanta History Center
Cathedral of St. John the Baptist
The Davenport House
The Georgia Historical Society
The Hermitage
The Owens-Thomas House
And, in special,
Ms. Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell
ALSO BY DONALD McCAIG
Mr. & Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies
Rhett Butler’s People
Canaan
Jacob’s Ladder: A Story of Virginia During the War
An American Homeplace
Nop’s Trials
Nop’s Hope
Eminent Dogs, Dangerous Men
The Butte Polka
About the Author
Donald McCaig is the award-winning author of Canaan as well as Jacob’s Ladder, designated “the best Civil War novel ever written” by the Virginia Quarterly. It won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. He was chosen by the Margaret Mitchell estate to write Rhett Butler’s People, an authorized sequel to Gone with the Wind. He lives on a sheep farm in the mountains near Williamsville, Virginia, where he writes fiction, essays, and poetry, and trains and trials sheep dogs.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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authors.simonandschuster.com/Donald-McCaig
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Interior design by Kyoko Watanabe
Map copyright © 2014 by David Cain
Jacket art and design by Alan Dingman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McCaig, Donald.
Ruth’s journey : the authorized novel of Mammy from Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the wind / Donald McCaig. — First Atria Books hardcover edition.
pages cm
1. Women slaves—Fiction. 2. Southern States—History—1775–1865—Fiction. 3. Historical fiction. I. Mitchell, Margaret, 1900–1949. Gone with the wind. II. Title.
PS3563.A2555R88 2014
813'.54—dc23
2014027583
ISBN 978-1-4516-4353-4
ISBN 978-1-4516-4355-8 (ebook)