Free The Rebel Wife by Taylor M. Polites Page A

Augusta alone. It’s enough that she is burying her husband today.”
    Mrs. Mastin steps from the shadows. “But what was it, Gus? Was it cholera? My daughter is ready to pack up her boys and get on the train to Chattanooga. Lord help us, it’ll be just like after the war, when smallpox and typhoid was everywhere.” She trembles as Beth comes forward.
    “Mama, please,” her daughter says. “I didn’t say that!”
    “It’s from those shanties across from the railroad,” the old woman goes on. “Those coloreds and poor whites. Remember, Bama, after the war? It was like a plague over the whole town. The niggers and the soldiers brought it with them. And things are worse than ever over there. People living in squalor. Your husband mixed with that lot—out at that mill. We’ll all be sick from it soon!”
    “It wasn’t typhoid,” I say uneasily. “It was—it was a blood disorder—the heat—it affected Mr. Branson.”
    Bama casts a hard glance at the women around us. Their fear surprises me. The things they know surprise me. Bama coughs without covering her mouth, a loud hacking sound, and then speaks. “Ladies, if it was something for us to worry about, you know old Greer would have told us. None of us would be here otherwise.”
    “Well, Dr. Greer is talking.” Sally Mabry again.
    “He is talking some nonsense that we’d all best ignore. He’s not talking about typhoid or malaria or smallpox, God forbid, and we will leave it at that. We all know how Greer is now.”
    An uneasy quiet settles over the room. Their faces are half shrouded in shadow. Who are they? These are not the women I knew during the war. They are changed women—changed faces that I cannot recognize. The hard bite of circumstance has changed us all, and they look at me, too, as a stranger.
    “It is a shame, Gus,” Bama says with a long sigh. “If Mr. Branson had died two weeks ago, you could have come down to the cemetery with us for Decoration Day.” Someone gasps while someone else titters behind her fan. “Hilliard is down there, isn’t he?”
    I have to wait a moment before I answer. “No,” I say. “No, his body was never found.”
    It is quiet again. Bama reaches out for my hand and squeezes. “Yes,” she says. “I am sorry. I am forgetful.”
    “Miss Gus,” Emma says anxiously. “You should come.” She slipped into the room as silent as a ghost. The women step back from her and turn their heads.
    She leads me into the hall. Sunlight floods in from the open front door. The brightness is painful after the shadows of the music room. There are more visitors, men and women. I don’t know half of them. There are the Yankee officers, although most of them no longer serve in the army and have put away their blue uniforms. They have businesses here, or land in the county that they call farms. The bankers and newspapermen are here with their wives. They crowd the hall with their beaver hats and fans trimmed in ivory and feathers. They jostle me and excuse themselves. But for my dress, many would not even know who I am.
    Outside, the men are still on the lawn. Eli’s coffin is visible through the open front windows, sitting in the middle of the parlor crowded with mourners. The men have stopped talking and face the street, cigars poised in their hands. Some stand on their toes. Just beyond them, Judge’s voice is booming. He is on the sidewalk, practically in the street, shouting and waving his hat at a group of Negroes from town. Some of them used to hang around the kitchen door, asking to see Eli or idling with Rachel and Emma.
    “Now, get on with you all,” he says, and he sounds angry. “Only friends and relations here. Get on with you!”
    Emma pushes forward through the last line of mourners, and one of them calls back at her, “Mind yourself, nigger.” His voice has a Northern twang. The hometown men have their eyes trained on Judge, some with hands on their hips, as if reaching for pistols. My God, bringing