Frankly My Dear, I'm Dead. Livia J Washburn
bolls. Workers hoed weeds out of the field of plants. The men wore overalls and broad-brimmed straw hats. The women were in long dresses and colorful kerchiefs. It was hard work out there in the sun, but they were being paid excellent wages. These folks were actors as much as they were field hands.
The house at the end of the driveway was magnificent, a four-story structure with massive columns supporting a covered portico where the drive curved in front of it. White-painted walls, set off by elegant wooden and wrought-iron trim, shone in the sun. More magnolias, as well as towering cottonwoods, surrounded the house. Well-tended flowerbeds gave the grounds patches of brilliant color. Roses, lilies, gladiolas, and half a dozen other varieties were bursting with blooms. Think of the most beautiful, stately plantation home you can imagine, and that gives you a pretty good idea of what this mock-Tara looked like.
Pretty girls in hoop skirts strolled the grounds, accompanied by young men in swallowtail coats, silk vests, and fancy cravats with jeweled stickpins in them. A few Confederate officers in spotless gray uniforms were mixed in for good measure. The sun shone on their brass buttons, scabbards, and insignia. The men all had muttonchop whiskers. Some had drooping mustaches and others sported Beauregard beards. The women’s hair was done in elaborate arrangements of curls, some of them adorned by flowers.
A burly, middle-aged man in a fancy suit was waiting for the bus. As it came to a stop and the tourists began to get off, this man boomed out, “Welcome to Tara, folks!” He was bigger than Thomas Mitchell but did a passable imitation of that character actor’s voice. I thought I heard a hint of a British accent under the Southern drawl that he was putting on. He held out a hand and continued, “Scarlett and I are so glad to see you.”
The woman who came forward to take his hand was beautiful, all right, no doubt about that. With her fair skin displayed to advantage in the low-cut gown she wore and ringlets of midnight-dark hair tumbling around her head and over her bare shoulders, she did Scarlett O’Hara proud. She smiled coyly and said, “Why, fiddle-dee-dee, Papa, who are all these nice folks who’ve come to see us here at Tara?”
Her accent was thick as molasses. I felt a little like groaning because her Southern belle act was so overdone, but the tourists seemed to be eating it up, especially when she turned her head and called, “Rhett, come over here and say howdy to all these nice folks who’ve come to visit us.”
The man who joined them wore a white suit and a broad-brimmed planter’s hat. He had an unlit cigar in his mouth. The strong chin, the narrow mustache, the cocky grin, and the twinkle in his eyes were all just about perfect. He took off his hat, revealing thick black hair, and gave a little bow to the group. Then he put the hat back on, took the cigar out of his mouth, and said, “Hello, everyone. I’m glad you ran the blockade to come see us today.”
“We’ll 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