LV.

Bright Marin and The Major found tables at the Nickajack Hotel where Chef Burman was serving up steer butt with steamed asparagus and roasted potatoes. It was the Magic Hour of a cool October.  The sweet smoke of a pit wafted down into the bottoms of Strangetown, which returned the exchange with the sound of guitar picking by the band called the Hine Streeters, or what was left of them anyway. They were playing a giddy-up from the gazebo overlooking the creek. The concierge had the windows opened, and the music ambled in to the leisure of the guests, many of whom were visitors passing through from the North. Many of them knew The Major, and he'd greet them with great gusto and present Bright Marin as his business partner, which in fact she was. This drew surprise which Bright reveled in. It piqued the air of the sanctum of men. She enjoyed the brusque manner and relaxed etiquette of Northerners, who all seemed so pragmatic and restless she thought.  Above all, she was positively grateful that so many of them were Republicans. Those goddam Democrats are were so demented! 

They were seated, and The Major ordered a bottle of Chablis Laroche 1859, the stock of which he procured himself for the hotel. It was poured and examined and accepted.  He glided through these rituals with such a big smile, and with physically elaborate grace. It always amused Bright more than it ever impressed her. The Major was in such in an expansive mood, she felt guilty she was about overturn it. Unsure of where to begin, she got right to the middle of it.  

I'd like to speak at the rally for Jimmy Sugar next Saturday, Bonwit.  I need you to get me in.  

The Major nearly coughed up his Chablis.  Bright recognized the slight look of palpitating that Bonwit Vrooman exhibited when confronted with crises.  His eyes grew glazed and still, and slid slowly into the dead space past your face.  His breathe grew a pace faster, but more measured.  

Bright, you can't do that.  You can't even vote.  What will the coloreds think of a rich white woman coming to speak to them about... about what?  What would you say anyway?  

You'll hear my voice when the time comes, Bonwit, she said huffily.  

That may be so, but if you want to be heard, you might as well dovetail behind Mary Fletcher Wells and the Temperance Society.  They're grabbing up quite the basket of ears among the Bible beaters.  

She snorted and drank her wine. Then she crossed her legs and kicked them impatiently.  When The Major's palpitations had passed, she leaned in.  

Bonwit, she said again, I want to speak at Jimmy Sugar's rally. You are going to let me.  

Goddamit woman, he barked with exasperation such that it drew the askance attentions of the next table. This election means everything. More importantly, it means everything to my superiors in Washington. 

Are you saying I could lose Jimmy Sugar the election by what I might have to say?  

No, but you sure as hell won't help win it.  

She was indignant.  She was hurt.  It sparked the forgiven resentments that come with a ripened love.  She felt like throwing her drink in his face. She felt like slapping him. She felt like kicking him out of his chair.  But she said again:

Bonwit. I'm going to speak at Jimmy Sugar's rally.  You're not going to stop me.  I've got Barry Hogan approval.  

The Major looked red in the face.

You went behind my back to Barry Hogan?  

Now she was angry.  Who are you to keep me from speaking to whom I please?  

Bonwit shook his head with exasperation.  He picked up his fork and pushed around a morsel of meat. He looked like he was divining an entrail.  Then he sighed.  

I didn't mean it like that, Bright.  Its just... its just politically risky.  The Democrats can hook into it and drag it through the mud.  I'd expect nothing less from Lyman Resnick and his dogs at the Limestone Democrat. But... I'd be grateful to hear what you have to say.  He said this with the exhale of resignation.

Bright Marin rubbed her mysterious amulet she always wore around her neck, which was a red and milk white agate.  Then she leaned forward across the table towards The Major and kissed him.  At every last word, he had always had her back.  

He returned to eating, more silent now seemingly lost in thought. Bright watched him.  Loved on him.  Drank him in.  She let it wash through and over her.  But it did nothing to change the sadness she suddenly felt for him.  

She would never tell him of the pregnancy she terminated. Why this thought occurred to her, she did not know.  

She had visited Maw Possum, and she was prescribed the abortifacient Black Cow.  It took three days with few complications, during which she rested at her mansion Swan Song on Beaty Street.  She pretended fever and turned Bonwit away during those troubled hours.  

She felt he never needed to know.  No good would come by it.  And though she loved Bonwit Vrooman deeply, she simply did not want his child... any child.  She watched him, and she pushed the watercress on her plate pretending to be hungry.  When her emotions seemed to rise to brim of her eyes, Bonwit sensed something was amiss.  

What's getting you so upset?  I'm acquiescing to your desire to speak at the rally.  That's about it.  It doesn't mean I can't be nervous about it.  Why the tear that I see?  

Nothing, she said, smiling and dabbing at a rivulet that ran down across her cheek.  

I was thinking about something sad from long ago, she replied, and it was mostly the truth.  

XIV

The plaintive amblings of a waltz from Strangetown drifted in through the windows where Bright Marin had opened the drapes but left drawn the sheers, which wafted in a dry breeze. It was the hottest day of June. Bonwit poured a scotch and watched her recline into the couch. She uncoiled her shawl and she touched her neck, which glistened. It had been a long night of dancing at the Loyal League fundraiser for freedmen. They were both drunk and had ridden his red landau back to the Nickajack Hotel on Clinton Street. He moved towards her and dropped into the couch beside. A marihuana cigarillo was crushed out in an ashtray on the coffee table. He turned to her and took her in with his eyes. Her hair was lush and raven. Her eyes hazel. Her skin olive.

 
He wanted her. But not like that. He plotted deeper than that. Is this pragmatism? It feels like love. Why don't we get married?

 
She burst into laughter. I'm not going to marry you!

 
Why not? He looked hurt.

 
Her smile brightened. I’m having too much fun with you! Besides, I've been married before, and withdrew her body in mock timidly.

He knew now he wanted to marry her.

Ahh yes. You know everyone thinks you poisoned him, he said without invective. She pursed her lips and shrugged.

 
There was silence. Did you love him, he asked?

 
The question took her aback for a moment but her smile grew tender. She thought carefully about it. Yes, she said. Bonwit said nothing. He knew Dr. Marin was forty years her senior.

 
How did you come to marry him, he asked intrepidly?

 
She paused, keeping her smile.

Another life was recalled from the recesses of her memory and she related it to him - of how she was a bastard of her Cherokee mother and a white merchant. Of how gold was discovered in Georgia and they were all roused from their homesteads by soldiers. They were given an hour's notice to pack their belongings for the trek to lands beyond the Father of Waters. The roads were already flooded with Cherokee moving West as though the menace of an evil consumed the lands in their wake. They journeyed through the Nickajack following the river. Food was scarce. They were bilked by white settlers and merchants at every step. When her mother perished beside the road, her stepfather abandoned her into the ward of Dr. Marin as an unwanted half breed.

 
Dr. Marin was a bachelor and a physician in Athens of significant wealth. He took her in. He educated her. He read the Bible to her. And she told how she walked into his room disrobed and made love to him when she had come of age, because she thought she loved him. And he asked her to marry him. And she did, not really with understanding. And she was loyal to his last day. And she reflected again that yes, she loved Dr. Marin.

When she had finished she saw that The Major had fallen asleep.

 
She leaned into Bonwit and ran her slender fingers through his reddish-brown hair. She watched him this time. And when she was finished, she leaned into him and kissed him wistfully. She knew now that she was going to spend the rest of her life with him.

III

Bonwit Vrooman was a Dutch New Yorker and a carpetbagger through and through. No man knew how to bilk the government better than this grinning, obnoxious, fun-loving Yankee. He had served as a federal captain of volunteers during the war where he became a virtuoso in the surreptitious art of government contracting. As a regimental quartermaster he built a tidy side income on contract kickbacks. At outrageous prices he bought boots that became un-soled on the march, and cardboard haversacks that melted in the rains. For his efficient labors they awarded him a pension after the war, and a permanent rank of major in the New York State Guard.

 
Taking his skills to further task, he outbid his competitors for a post from President Johnson to run the Freedman’s Bureau of Limestone County. He was viewed with great suspicion by the locals when he arrived by the cars from Nashville. That is until he walked out of the Western Union with his fat leather-bound checkbook. Not only did this Yankee have real money, but he knew how to get it, he knew how to squirrel it, and he knew how to spend it.

 
He settled into a mansion on Lee Street known as Grand Coeur and dressed it with fancy furniture and plush linens no one had ever seen before. Then he got to work spreading the wealth from an office he rented on Pryor Street, which became the Freedman’s Bureau headquarters. He hired a battery of scriviners to dictate grants and draft contracts from that fast-moving mouth of his. All of his old war buddies were in Washington controlling the spigots, and the dollars came flowing down an odious chain of custody straight into the Heart of Dixie.

 
Everyone was getting in on the cut, starting with Maw Possum, who pulled all the strings in the little freedman hamlets that were springing up all around the County. No one was getting paid enough to work the plantations they used to work as slaves. What gives? So, Maw Possum got contracts to build cisterns, livestock fencing and schoolhouses for all the freed negroes. Vrooman, who soon earned the nickname The Major, was pleased by the public progress and personal profits. He then worked over the Greeks on the Hill, mostly Democrats who found him abrasive and faux refined. But they gracefully tolerated the quick-tongued foreigner in their midst because he paid exorbitant prices for their wares, and they still controlled much of the local politics.

 
He rode around town in an imported Italian chaise with his mistress, the wealthy widow Bright Marin. She was a raven-haired femme fatale rumored to have poisoned her physician husband. They frequented Wang Fu’s laundry where they reclined on cotton divans, smoked opium and laughed into the night to the music that wafted across Strangetown. Bright Marin was no Greek, nor The Major a man of good Southern graces, but they were richer than just about anyone else in the County. They were resented by many on the Hill because of that wealth and because they were Republican, anathema to the old Democrat elites. These two stuck around for a time until the election of Rutherford Hayes, when the Greeks cut their devil’s deal with the Klan and Jim Crowe brought the hammer down on Strangetown. There might be more to tell about these two kids later.