Varina(24)

Florida had been V’s refuge from the challenges of conversing with equally dour Old Joseph and young Eliza. Sometimes, rarely, when an old man—gray and bald and paunchy and blotchy—marries a much younger woman, he becomes younger too, like having her at his side equals a draft of black Gypsy potion or crystal water from Ponce de León’s magic fountain. That’s what old men want desperately to believe. With Joseph and Eliza, it went the opposite way, as it generally does—Joseph kept being old and Eliza became old. Though she was barely V’s elder—and thus her age still ended in teen for the next couple of months—Eliza acted like an awful granny who had turned grim rather than feisty with age. V’s opinion was, give me an old wrinkled woman with a blistering tongue any day to a young beaten dog hump-shouldered by the fireside hoping for death to grant release. To Eliza’s credit, though, she could still rally to give V the bright, jealous side-eye when she looked particularly pretty at the dinner table.

So V said to Florida, Why would a girl Eliza’s age marry her grandfather?

Florida laughed and said, To be fair, we don’t know for certain that Old Joe’s her grandfather.

V blushed, but one of the benefits of being brownish is that often nobody notices.

V said, I apologize. That’s not what I meant. It was an expression. You hear all kinds of rumors around Natchez, some of them about my own family. Hardly any with a particle of truth.

Florida patted her arm and said, Easy down, girl. We’re past that now. I don’t know about you, but there’s probably plenty of truth in what they say about us.

V said, One way or the other, I guess we’re both outlaws. Fled to the wilderness, or driven to it.

Florida said, Let’s kiss on that, like blood brothers.

Florida leaned and pecked V on the cheek. And then when V leaned to peck her back, Florida turned her face and kissed V on the mouth.

And then V was certain Florida saw the blush.

Florida laughed and said, Oh, you’re gonna take a lot of breaking in. But while you cool off, I’ll go back to your question about Eliza and Joe. The answer’s easy. Some women feel like, if they’ve got to marry they want to marry the biggest, strongest, richest bear in the woods. Even if that bear’s old and grumpy and shaggy and stinks, he’s your big bear. He’s won a lot of battles to be where he is, and he’s not going down easy. Eliza’s that kind of woman. And I’m not criticizing. I haven’t figured out which kind of woman I am. Maybe that kind.

V sat quiet within her seventeen-year-old self, thinking about the handsome woodcutter.


—THE MAN WHO DROVE ME from the river, Benjamin Montgomery. I see him all over the place. One minute he’s here in the house coming in and out of the library and the office, then he’s on horseback studying the fields, then around the barns checking inventory of hay and feed. Always busy, always writing notes in a little book.

—Yes?

—Well, what is his job?

—A little bit of everything. Mostly, Ben stays busy making himself indispensable.

Florida explained how some while back, Joseph bought Ben out of Virginia, just across the Potomac from Washington. He arrived in Mississippi knowing how to read and write, and he was especially good with numbers. Then before long Ben began drawing architectural plans for outbuildings with compasses and rulers and squares. He learned how to survey land in no time—all that complicated business of rods and chains and that strange device on its tripod. But before all that, Ben hadn’t been at the Bend much over a month when he ran. He was caught in Vicksburg trying to pass as free, looking for a job on a northbound riverboat. When he got hauled back to Davis Bend, Joseph didn’t whip him. They had a meeting in the office, just the two of them, and the way they both tell it, Joseph asked Ben to name the source of his displeasure. Ben said he preferred the city life.

—Oh, please, V said. My experience may be limited, but I won’t believe just anything. That is not the way it goes.

—I’m not making this up. They worked out some compromise between them. Soon Benjamin was married to a pretty girl named Edella and was keeping the books for all Joseph’s holdings and running the plantation store—eventually with a cut of the profits. He has free run of Joseph’s library and collects books of his own. Gets paid cash for some of his work, and uses some of his money to buy Edella’s time back from Joseph—so she can stay home and care for their new baby. He’s made himself so necessary to the running of The Hurricane that Joseph’s recently taken out a fat insurance policy on his life. Joseph can leave for any stretch of time and Ben runs the whole place, and writes reports and asks permission for big expenditures but decides the smaller ones himself.

—You’re making all this up.

—Am not. This place is strange aplenty.


V FIRST SAW UNCLE JEFF riding through the front gates of The Hurricane on a thoroughbred, a chestnut mare, her coat gleaming when the sun hit. He was a fine horseman—perfect equitation, straight relaxed posture in the saddle—though she saw he was showing off, using a lot of leg urging the mare forward and at the same time using the reins to hold her back, collecting her energy and releasing it, trying to make her look harder to ride than she was. But still, he looked beautiful on a horse. Even during the war when he was tired and sick and half blind, he rode for hours almost daily.

V guessed he was about her mother’s age—late thirties—and was surprised he could still maintain so athletic an aspect. Once he set foot on the ground, though, he lost something and became just a slim, middle-size man. She noticed right away his stacked boot heels lifting him an inch higher than reality and wondered what that might say about him, whether he was a fop or had a streak of bantam rooster in him.