False Southern Gentility

For the first time in three weeks, after the rain seemed to never stop, it did, finally stop. Streams of sun shone through Christine's windows, the windows that had started this nightmare for her.

Christine sat up, alert and sore from her arms and body's seemingly useless feeling. "So she awakens." a voice said from the shadows of a chair across the room. "You have slept long, and the sleep of grace has done your looks very well, if I might add." the voice said with a laugh.

Christine swallowed, and spoke. "Yo..." she stopped, her voice breaking from the deprivation of water. She swallowed, her mouth full of cotton. "You are?" she asked quietly as she laid back.

The voice stood and walked to the edge of the shadows, his tops of his black patten-leather shoes, shimmering before he dared take another step into the light, "You don't recognize me then? What a shame, Marcus remembered me, then again, I would think it hard to forget me, after our first meeting that is." the voice said with another deep laugh.

"You know the name of my slave then?" Christine asked as she ran her hand over the lace pillowcase. "I do wonder...sir...would you hand me a glass of water, and kindly tell me where my Aunt is?" Christine asked as she swallowed again, the cotton sliding down, it's spurs digging into the flesh.

The shadow nodded and looked over at the window. The shadow took a step into the light, his face was not terribly dark. But it couldn't be from a...normal man. His hair had been combed back neatly, the dark brown color darkened by the water or oil that he had used that morning.

Christine shook her head. "Damn," she whispered to herself, "not even a bell wrung." she added quietly. The face of the man laughed, his strangely white teeth, shimmering brightly against his skin.

"The language of a true lady." the man laughed hard this time, his hand coming up to his face, his fingers feeling along his jaw line. "Oh don't act ashamed. Tell me, Threldkeld. What is your first name? Or, do you remember that you had told me once before?" he asked as he lifted a small glass and poured the cleaning clear liquid within it. Chuckling at his strange questions.

Christine swallowed; licking her cracked lips at the sight of the water. "Christine, but I would think my Aunt had told you by now? Then again, Auntie Meredith can be a skidish and a customarily annoying little thing." she said as she reached forward, grabbing greedily at the water, the man waved her hands away and leaned the cup towards her.

The man laughed as Christine turned her head and put her hands out again. Once again he swatted them away, after about six or seven times of this game, she gave up and let him put the cup to her lips.

Christine swallowed hard, the small amounts of liquid never seeming to be enough to her. "Tell me sir, you now know my name, but I don't know yours. If you'd be so ablidged." she said as her eyes became heavy. The feeling of not having slept in weeks, but simply staring into the darkness, became very clear to her.

The man nodded as he lifted the blankets back over her legs and sat the cup down next to the bed. "Christopher, Christopher Rudd." he said with a laugh as Christine let her eyes close.

So that was his name, she thought in her dreams, the name flouting around her dreams in different writings, some accompanied by Misters and some accompanied by Sir's. Christopher Rudd, he seemed to be a blasted arrogant fool, there was no doubt about that, and he seemed to just love having things his way.

"We we're worried about that Negro of yours running off. You really can't tell these days." the same deep voice said with a laugh.

"Christopher Rudd." the voice said quietly. It was a different time, and she couldn't place it. But she remembered it with a reddening passion.

That! Christine screamed in her dream. He was the silhouette, the man out the door of the carriage, the hand. Oh dear God, that's what he meant. 'The first time we met', and of course, the 'Or don't you remember that you told me once before?'. Good Lord above, it makes so much sense now!

Suddenly her dreams crumbled into the light of reality. The world beckoning out at her again. Christine laid back, allowing her dream within it's self, to wake her again.

"Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me, Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee; Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day, Lull'd by the moonlight have all passed away!" a deep voice called to her.

"Christopher." she said with a smile as she touched the side of her face; she turned her head away. "Must you always be here? Doesn't your wife worry about your presence being few?" she asked with a muted smile.

Christopher shook his head, "I haven't a wife to have to worry about. They always seemed like such a hassle to me, always throwing tantrums, always throwing out a child every year. No," he said as he waved his hand, as if waving off the idea to the gutter, "I haven't a wife to burden myself with."

Christine nodded and looked at the window, "What were you singing?" she asked as she pulled her hair back onto the nape of her neck, her head laying lazily on it.

Christopher shook his head, "I don't sing, my dear. I simply hum a few things that I pick up here and there. This is about three years old, I'd think that you would know about it? But never the less, it was Beautiful Dreamer, strange enough, I believe it to be written by a Yank." he said with a laugh.

Christine turned her nose up in disgust, "Then I will learn to despise it. I will never take one thing from them, not if they brought back my mother's silver and every slave that we ever lost to this da--" she stopped short, realizing her language, "this monstrosity that they called a war." she said as she bit into her lip.

Christopher laughed, "Ha, you really do despise the Yankees, don't you?" he asked with a half crooked smile. Christine flared her nostrils in spite, "Oh don't fret, pet. I am not laughing at you, I am merely laughing at the state of you." he said with a deep laugh that echoed through the room.

Christine turned her head away, "Why are you here?" she asked as her mind flew from one memory to the next. That seemed to be all that she could remember anymore, smoke and Yankees. Pain and Yankees. Hunger and Yankees. Desecration and Yankees. Everything in her mind seemed to be linked to Yankees in one way or another, even her mother was now forever linked with the accursed word Yankee.

Christopher shook his head, "You are displeased with my presence? I will go if it upsets you?" he asked with a smile. He didn't mean it, Christine knew that, there didn't seem to be anything she could do to make him leave, and it drove her crazy.

"I want you to leave then. I don't want your presence here anymore than I want a bee sting or a broken bone!" she exclaimed as she turned over on her side, acting, in very much the same manner of the wounded wife or perhaps even the scolded child.

Christopher laughed and leaned back further into his chair, "You and I both know that I'm not leaving, and if I was to leave, for even a few minutes, you would only worry about where I was, and I would only be irritated by the feeling that I had let you control me." he said as he leaned his elbow onto the arm of the chair and propped his chin on it.

Christine rolled over and looked at him, "I am beginning to think that merely being annoyed by your presence isn't enough, that perhaps you wish for me to despise you. Well, I want to warn you, Mr. Rudd. I am not one to be easily beaten or easily won. You can count on that." she said as her hard stare rolled gradually into a cold glare.

Christopher shook his head and stood, "Ah, but that only makes the game more interesting, Christine. The fact that you are neither easily beaten nor won makes this all the more entertaining." he said as he lifted his hat and stepped towards the door.

Christine sat alert, her eyes full of thoughts, "Where are you going? I thought you said that you weren't going to leave??" she asked, her voice breaking with eagerness and concern. Why was he leaving, had he not just said that he was not leaving, that he would be to irritated by the very idea of leaving....not in so many words, but something like that. She was sure of it.

Christopher shook his head, "I thought that my presence irritated the beautiful dreamer? I thought that I had been commanded by queen of my song!" he said as he raised his fist high in the air in mock defiance.

Christine rolled her eyes, "Go then, I don't want you here." she said as she turned away again.

For some reason she expected to hear the chair creak as he sat back down, for some reason she expected to hear the floor boards bend as they gave way beneath his weight, but neither of the two came, only the sound of the door opening.

"Charming." he said as he took hold of the brass door knob and closed it behind him.

Christine sat there, grinding her teeth, irritation seeming to coarse through her veins. "The nerve." she said as she slammed her fist into comforter, sending tremors through the bed. "Coming into my room, standing here, sitting there, singing this Yankees song and that Yankee song. The nerve!" she repeated again, trying to hold onto the irritation.

Why had she always done that? Even as a little girl, when she and her sister had argued, she had always been the last of the two that held onto the doll, or the last of them to laugh at the other, but never the first to cry. She had never been able to be the first to cry, that just seemed like a part of her, she was always strong, always more grounded than the others. In short, she had been the son that her father had lost. Her mother had borne three sons and three daughters, but the three sons never seemed to survive more than a month or two.

By the third son, if the doctor had told her what the sex of the child had been, she would refuse to see it. If it had been a male, a strong, healthy boy, she wouldn't lay eyes on it. For some reason she believed that she was a curse to her children, and that for some reason, that reason far beyond her knowledge, Mary had given her a higher penance than others.

When the third came, he had no name, he was duded "Three" by her father, her father had only touched the child once, before he died. He had lived to the age of nine months. No one would look at him besides Christine and her sisters. No one would dare touch him, for fear that the only man-child would be destroyed by the general human essence.

When the baby had died, not a tear was shed. Three was short-lived, as were the other two, after that, father only gave her mother decency as any emotion, and things to cover his lack of affection for her.

Yes, of course he had loved her, she had given birth to six children. She had sacrificed everything that she had for him. Her health, her age, her vitality, everything, but he could not bear to want her, to feel anything for her in the least.

Yes, that had been where Christine had gotten her hardness from, she had learned it. She had grown-up around cold. As she grew older, and learned of the small tidbits that she heard so many referred to as love, she had learned the art of being cold very well.

Her mother hadn't been attached, nor had her father. But this Christopher man, he brought something from within her that...almost scared her, to the point of not being cold, to the point being hot with anger.

That strangely familiar voice...that strange stranger that had stopped Marcus and she on the way to Atlanta...that stranger was...in a way...her own vitality...her never gained never lost vitality for life.