Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead. Livia J Washburn

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СКАЧАТЬ be splitting up into three separate groups,” the older man explained. “I’ll take one group around and explain the workings of the plantation, while Captain Butler will accompany another group to the stables and Scarlett will show a third group through the house. Then we’ll switch around later, so everyone will get to see everything, don’t worry about that. There’ll be a picnic lunch served at one o’clock. After that, we’ll finish the tours, and you’ll have plenty of time to wander around the plantation on your own before the ball this evening. Are there any questions?”

      Mueller looked around and said, “Yes. Where are the slaves?”

      Mr. O’Hara—that’s how I thought of him, since I didn’t know his real name—looked a little surprised and said, “We, ah, don’t have any slaves here, sir. Slavery is—”

      “Illegal, yes, yes, I know. I meant people portraying slaves. We saw the field hands, but there must be house slaves as well, ja?”

      “When you tour the house, you’ll see some servants working there,” O’Hara explained.

      “Good. A plantation should have plenty of slaves.”

      I didn’t like Mueller much to start with, and I was starting to like him less. I glanced at his wife, a tired-looking woman with red hair. She was supposed to be the Gone With the Wind fan in the family, but she didn’t look as enthusiastic about seeing all this as her husband did.

      You don’t have to like the people who sign up for your tours, though; you just have to make sure they enjoy themselves. That way, maybe they’ll come back sometime, or recommend you to their friends. I put a smile on my face and said, “Let’s get started splitting up into groups.”

      With Luke’s help, I got everybody sorted out and on their way. I would have made sure to put Mueller and Riley into different groups if I needed to, but luckily I didn’t have to do that. Mueller and his wife went into the house with Scarlett while Riley attached himself to the group following Rhett toward the stables. Augusta and Amelia went with that bunch, too.

      I stood beside the bus and said to Luke, “So far, so good.”

      “Don’t worry, Miz D. It’ll all be fine.”

      Wilson Cobb said, “It’s air-conditioned inside the house, so I’m going in there to cool off for a while before I head back to town. Going to be a scorcher today.”

      “That’s fine, Mr. Cobb,” I told him. “We won’t need you until we’re ready to start back tomorrow.”

      He walked off, moving with the caution of the elderly. He didn’t want to fall and break a hip or anything like that.

      When everyone was gone, I was left by myself standing next to the bus. I looked around at the plantation and thought about how pretty it was. With my back to the bus, I could almost believe that I had gone back in the past a hundred and fifty years or so. The house and the grounds looked a lot like they must have back in those days. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that things had been better back then for anyone, not just the slaves. The hardships of life were a lot rougher on everyone. Life was shorter, harder, and more brutal.

      But, my, the flowers were pretty, and their delicious fragrance filled the air. The sky was a beautiful blue, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The spreading trees around the house provided some welcome shade.

      It was only after a few moments of enjoying the solitude and the sense of being transported back in time that I began to notice things like the humming of the central air-conditioning system’s round condenser at the side of the house and the whisper of traffic from the nearby highway. I looked up and saw the little satellite dish attached to the fourth-floor balcony. There sure hadn’t been anything like that back in the real plantation days. Shoot, the country hadn’t even been crossed by telegraph wires back then.

      That was proof you couldn’t keep the modern world out, even when you tried.

      With a shake of my head at that thought, I went into the house to join the group being shown around by the actress playing Scarlett.

      The tour went well during the rest of the morning and the afternoon, with the three groups swapping around and, I hoped, learning a lot about life on a Southern plantation in the antebellum days. Luke and I kept ourselves available in the house all afternoon in case anyone had any questions or problems, but everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves. Even Elliott Riley gave me a smile when he ambled by during the time devoted to wandering freely around the grounds and the house.

      Dinner was served in a huge dining room lit by glittering crystal chandeliers. I knew there were electric lights concealed here and there, but they weren’t in use. The oil lamps and the hundreds of candles provided plenty of illumination. The only real concession to the modern age was the air conditioning, and nobody who was used to modern conveniences could do without that, not even for the sake of authenticity.

      Following the banquet, everybody adjourned to an even more vast ballroom with gleaming parquet floors, and walls hung with tapestries and landscape paintings. An orchestra played waltzes and other dance music of the period. The actors who worked there started the dancing, but the tourists were welcome to join in, too, and they did. I kept expecting Riley to show up and ask me for that dance he had mentioned the day before, but he didn’t. In fact, I wasn’t sure where he was.

      But he had to be around somewhere, because the bus wouldn’t be back until the next morning.

      The phony Scarlett was the belle of the ball, of course. She danced with everyone—Rhett, Ashley Wilkes, the Tarleton twins, and several of the men from the tour group. The actors playing the Tarletons, who looked like real twins, made a point of dancing with Augusta and Amelia, which made the girls smile and laugh and prompted several people to take pictures of them.

      I didn’t dance at all, although Luke asked me. I knew he didn’t really want to and was asking more out of a sense of duty than anything else, so I told him that was all right, not to worry about it.

      A little later, I was standing next to the wall, under one of the big paintings, when an unfamiliar voice said from beside me, “Enjoying yourself, Ms. Dickinson?”

      I looked over, expecting to see one of the staff from the plantation house, but instead I saw a man wearing a corduroy jacket and jeans, rather than the period costume that the people who worked here wore. He wore glasses and had thinning blond hair touched here and there with gray.

      “Have we met?” I asked him.

      “No, but I know who you are. Mr. Ralston, who owns the plantation, pointed you out to me.” He put out a hand. “I’m Will Burke. Doctor Will Burke.”

      I shook hands with him and asked, “Doctor as in physician, or professor?”

      “Professor, definitely,” he said. “My doctorate is in English, and I teach at one of the local colleges. But I do some work on the side as a consultant here on the plantation, as well as at the Center for Southern Literature.”

      “So you’re here because of the Gone With the Wind connection?”

      “That’s right. My thesis was about the interrelationship between literature and history. I’ve always been interested in the subject.”

      “Well, no offense, Professor Burke, but I’m not that academically minded.”

      He СКАЧАТЬ