Free Confederates by Thomas Keneally

girl, that impression – that she’d opened his uncle’s door in so wifely a manner – still tormented him.
    â€˜Miss,’ he said, ‘I am Patrick Bumpass’s nephew, Usaph.’
    â€˜You come right in then, Mr Usaph.’ She stepped back, hanging her head shyly as if she didn’t believe in her own beauty.
    He passed into the murky, torpid interior. The floor was of packed mud. On the undressed walls were unframed prints of Jefferson and Ole Hickory and various fire-eating Southern Democrats. It looked as if Usaph’s Uncle Patrick, having lived by the peculiar institution of slavery, was determined to die by it, with pictures of its patron saints all over his walls. The uncle lay on a bed by the one window. He’d once been a big man, and his wasted jaws jutted aggressively even now, while he was hard up for breath. He watched his nephew. On a stool by his bedside was a copy of the Charlestown Mercury and a near-empty bowl of oatmeal. Usaph knew the lovely girl had been feeding it to him.
    â€˜Sir,’ said Usaph reverently, ‘I’m your nephew, Usaph. I’m your brother Noah’s boy from Shenandoah County, Virginia.’
    The man’s breath rasped. ‘You are welcome, son,’ he said and tears came into his eyes.
    â€˜My father – Noah – is poorly. But he wanted you to have a few comforts …’
    Usaph got a bottle of brandy from the valise, and a deer-skin purse with ten dollars in it. He put the bottle and the purse on top of the Charlestown Mercury . The dark-eyed, dark-haired girl watched, and Usaph smiled at her in a tortured way. If the luxuriant, humid, magnolia-drugged lowlands ever got together to create a lush woman, this woman was close to what might result. She had already infested Usaph’s blood, she was already a lowland fever in him and he found it hard to look at her.
    â€˜I saw you once,’ said Uncle Patrick Bumpass. ‘It was at the depot at Charlottesville and I looks up and sees my brother and his bride toting a littl’un and waiting for the Staunton express. And goddam if that littl’un weren’t yourself, Usaph … Usaph it is, ain’t it?’
    â€˜Yes, Uncle Patrick. Usaph.’
    The old man began weeping. His tongue darted in and out of his mouth as if to catch tears.
    â€˜Thank my little brother,’ he said in a slow voice you could barely hear. ‘Tell him that-there’s my monument money.’ The tears increased. ‘Tell your daddy you found his brother living in a nigra’s hut. All his savings lost in a damnfool enterprise called the Combahee Drum-Fishing Company.’
    â€˜Don’t fuss yourself, Mr Bumpass,’ the girl said in a low, soothing way.
    â€˜This-here’s Ephephtha Corry, nephew,’ the old man told him. ‘Her daddy’s been my truest friend. He sends her in each day to nurse and housekeep.’
    For some reason the idea repelled Usaph. ‘Mrs Kearsage,’ he said to change the subject, ‘Mrs Kearsage said to send her wishes.’
    The old man laughed at this. ‘Mrs Kearsage. There was a time when Mrs Kearsage liked being around me more than now. But we run headfirst here into one of them ironies of the God-ordained system of slavery. An ailing overseer ain’t worth the nursing, since he has no value on the market.’ He laughed again, but it turned into a choking fit.
    â€˜If I had market value,’ he went on, still chuckling and choking, ‘the way a nigra has, I’d get nursed then by Mrs Kearsage; I’d be an investment, see, and she’d feel anxious for me. Them slaves, she wipes their fevered brow, but if it weren’t for Ephie here my goddam fevered brow could go unwiped till my poor ole brain rotted.’
    His chest heaved as he tried to get back the breath he’d expended on this speech. ‘When a man is young and lusty he don’t think on these peculiarities of