Chapter Twenty-Six

Scarlett leaned against the porch railing, staring out over the broad acres of Tara. Rhett was right about the land, of course. She didn't like to admit it, but it was divided into small family farms now, not big plantations, and there were many, many fields that she remembered being planted with cotton that now boasted only weeds and scrub pine. Given another ten years, the land would be gone back to forest, and Scarlett was determined not to let that happen. Not if it were in her power to prevent it.

She wasn't sure that it was. For all she had boasted to Rhett that she was the largest landowner in Clayton County, it wasn't really true. Two of her properties were shared with others, men, who thought they knew at least as much and probably more than she did, and didn't hesitate to say so. She could control Tara, but she knew that if she tried to do it against Will, he would take Suellen and her children and leave Tara forever. That would be a great loss, not only because he was married to her sister and she had grown fond of him, but a loss for Tara. Where could she possibly get another overseer for Tara that would do as well by the land? Another overseer who would love it, as she and Will did?

"Now, I think this must be a first," a teasing voice said from beside her. "Scarlett O'Hara too lost in thought to notice the approach of a beau."

"I think that would have to be 'former beau,' Alex," she said, a smile curving her lips as she turned to look at him. "Sally would certainly have something to say about you hanging around me the way you used to, before the war."

"'Before the war.' Now, there's a phrase that divides my life into two halves, one that held beauty and gentleness and grace, and the other, hardship and hunger and work..." He came and sat on the porch steps beside her, and if one ignored his frayed collar and the neat patches on his britches, he looked almost like the Alex of her youth, with his ironic smile and quick temper.

"Now you sound like Ashley," she commented wryly.

Alex winced, throwing up his hands in mock pain. "Oh, not that! The horror!" After a moment's pause, he said, "You know, Tony never liked him very well. And I always accepted that, 'cause Tony knew people as well as any man I've ever met. But if he was wrong, if Ashley really was worthy, then you have my condolences on his death, Scarlett. I know you were friends for a long time."

Scarlett hesitated, then said flatly, "Condolences should go to Beau. After all, he's the one who lost his father."

"Ah." Alex nodded, as if what she had said was a good deal more complicated than correcting him on a minor point of etiquette. "I'll do that while I'm here, then. Are he and Will inside?"

"Yes, along with India and Rhett and the girls. I came out here to get a breath of fresh air – not that there's a breeze stirring."

"And what deep thoughts were occupying your mind while you were searching for the elusive breeze?" he asked lightly.

"I was thinking about farming," she said frankly. He roared with laughter, completely amused, but she had no idea what was so funny. She always hated that.

"Oh, Scarlett," he said at last, wiping his eyes. "I have to tell you, you are the most refreshingly practical woman I know."

"And what's wrong with that, I'd like to know?" she asked, not sure if she should be insulted or not.

"Absolutely nothing," he said. "So... what particular aspect of farming were you thinking about?"

"When we were on our way here, Rhett commented about how it's all small farms now, not plantations," she said. "And he has the irritating habit of being right, most of the time. Even the places that are doing well, like Mimosa, and Tara, aren't a tenth of what they once were. And some of the others are... when I was here for the wedding, I went for a ride down by the river, where Pine Bloom used to be. You remember how lovely it always was, Alex, with the tall oak trees lining the road to the house, that lovely house by the river, with the huge porches... and now, the porches are sagging, and the road's overgrown, and in another ten years, you won't be able to tell there ever were any fields. It will all be gone back to forest."

"Yes," he agreed. "But Scarlett, while I am sentimentalist enough to agree with you that it's a shame, I'm not genius enough to see a solution. I have all I can do to take care of my place, and even there, I've had to sacrifice beauty for utility in a lot of places. You of all people should understand that."

"I do," she assured him. "I understand that there's nothing you wouldn't give up, to make sure the ones you love have food and clothing, Alex. How do you think I wound up married to Frank? Do you think that was a love match?"

He smiled, the cocky, arrogant smirk that she remembered from before the war. "No. There are some fairy tales I've been gullible enough to swallow, but the idea that you cared tuppence for ole Frank was never one of them. I knew about the extra taxes they levied on Tara, so I assume that Frank had enough money to pay for them. I'm not sure whether I felt sorrier for him, or you. Either way you look at it, it wasn't exactly a match made in heaven." He hesitated, then said quietly, "I always hoped that you did better with Tony."

She looked up at him quickly. "Oh, much better," she assured him, with a smile. "Tony was everything that Frank wasn't – handsome, and brave and quick-witted. That's what I liked best about him, you know, the fact that he could out-think me sometimes. I didn't always have to wait for him to catch up, or explain things in words of one syllable, only to have him ask me what people would think, like Frank did. Who cares what people think, when the choice is to go against the rules or have your folks go hungry? Tony understood that."

"I imagine he did," Alex said, looking down at her lively, expressive face, and feeling suddenly glad that the woman he had at home was of a calmer nature, even if she was plainer of face. With a girl like Sally, a man knew where he was. Being married to Scarlett would be like hitching your wagon to a hurricane. You'd go far, and in a mighty big hurry, but only the luckiest would arrive safely.

"You said you wanted to talk to me and Will together," he said, changing the subject as he stood up and dusted off his hat. "Shall we go in and do that?"

They sat around the dining room table. The days when there had been an 'office,' where Ellen tended to the business of the estate were long gone. Sue used that room as a playroom for the children now, since it was convenient to the kitchen where she spent so much of her time.

"Beau, are you feeling up to this?" Scarlett asked him, her voice gentle. He looked so much like his mother, and she found that she had become adept at ignoring the ways that he also looked like his father.

"I'm fine, Aunt Scarlett," he said, fingering the bandage on the side of his face. Dr Meade had given him strict instructions to keep it covered for another week, lest infection set in.

"All right. What I want to talk about is goals we have in common for our land, and some things I hope will make it easier for us to meet them."

"Before we start, may I ask why Beau and India are here? They don't own any land here," Alex said bluntly.

"They're going to own Twelve Oaks. I bought it, when it came up for sale just after Melly died. My thought then was to give it back to Beau as a graduation present when he finishes college. India has -" she glanced at the thin spinster, a slight smile curving her lips, "- expressed an interest in having some of the land, however, so I've agreed to stake her to supplies and let her farm for five years. If she can make a go of it after five years, half the land will be hers."

Alex looked surprised; the enmity between the two women was well-known. Will nodded thoughtfully. "It c'n be done," he said in his calm, thoughtful way. "It's no cinch, 'cause lots c'n go wrong, but with a bit o' luck, I reckon you'd make out all right."

"I'm glad you feel that way, because I'd like you and Alex to keep a strong eye on how things are going," Scarlett said. She was aware of Rhett watching silently in the background, and she wondered if he had ever been around when she did business before. Odd, that in all the years they were married, she could never remember him taking any interest at all in her work.

"India has some experience with farming," Scarlett said. "Most of that, however, was helping her father to run the plantation. She'll need a large amount of guidance to get started in a scaled down way. Will, I'd like you to oversee the building and the supplies for that. She'll need a house and a barn. Alex, I'd like you to oversee buying seed, hiring workers, and the planting. It's too late for planting, now, although if the weather holds and you hurry, you might be able to get a hay barn built and some hay put away for winter. That's one thing you wouldn't have to spend money on"

"Would it be better to wait until spring to buy the mules?" India asked. "Since all they'd be doing in the winter is eating, and taking up room in the barn we don't have yet."

"You c'n try to get the barn built 'fore the weather turns wet," Will said. "House, too; once harvest is over, there should be plenty of good workers. Having both of them done by spring would give you 'n edge, 'n' you'll probably need it. My 'dvice would be to buy 't least one team o' mules now; stable 'em at Tara till you get your buildings up."

India nodded. "I suppose that makes sense," she said calmly.

"We'll worry about seed when we've had a look at the land," Alex said, making his contribution. "And Sally and Suellen can probably be more help to you than I can as far as hiring a cook and a maid. For outside help, 'I'll want to ask around, see who's available, and reliable."

India nodded. "I won't be needing house help until – well, until we get the house built, as obvious as that sounds." She smiled self-consciously. "But the outside help can start as soon as the harvest is over, when hopefully we'll be able to start on the house and barn."

"All right. That takes care of the first thing I wanted to talk to you about," she said. "The details of what you intend to do at Twelve Oaks can wait a bit. What I want to talk to you about is Watt Myers."

Alex rolled his eyes, and even Will muttered something under his breath.

"I see that there's no need to explain what I'm talking about to you," Scarlett said to them.

"No, Scarlett, I know exactly what you're talking about. The man is a menace. Not only does he cheat us, but to our face, he talks as though he's doing us a favor, and then he laughs about it behind our backs."

"So the obvious solution is to stop doing business with him," Scarlett said quietly. "Because I agree that he's cheating you. I got the price on fifty pounds of cotton seed while I was in Atlanta, and compared it to what he sold it to you for, and he's getting more than two-hundred percent mark-up. That's outrageous."

"Scarlett, I agree with you completely. But what can we do? Will and I aren't running Mimosa and Tara back before the war, when we had money to burn and bought freight-cars full of seed every year. We're shirt-tail farmers who buy five thousand pounds of cotton seed a year, less than that of corn and rice. None of the big warehouses in Atlanta will ship such small amounts direct to the farmer – it isn't cost-efficient to them. So we're caught, left to buy our seed from a man who cheats us."

"Not," Scarlett said deliberately, "if we band together."

"What do you mean, band together?" Will asked.

"I mean we should join together, go to the wholesalers in Atlanta and buy the least amounts of seed he'll sell us. I know it's more seed than we need for a year, probably more than we need for two years, even adding Twelve Oaks in, but if we can buy enough seed to keep from having to do business with Myers for a couple of years, we can drive him out of business, or at least force him to treat us fairly."

Alex shook his head. "It won't work, Scarlett. To keep seed for that long, you've got to have good warehousing. Someplace dry, with a concrete floor that's in good shape so the damp can't get in. Over the past few years, I've probably been in every building on Tara that's big enough, and none of them are in anything like the shape they'd have to be in for this. Will, can you think of anything?"

Silently, Will shook his head.

"And that's not even to mention the varmints you'd have. You'd end up providing a meal for the rats and mice and coons – and for the foxes and snakes that would come after the other critters. And after all that, you'd have seed that was ruined by the damp. It can't be done, Scarlett. Don't you think we've thought of all the alternatives? We wouldn't put up with being cheated if we could think of any other way."

"May I ask a question?"

Rhett's voice was unexpected; Scarlett had almost forgotten that he was in the room.

Alex hesitated for just a moment. "Go ahead. Maybe you've thought of something we've overlooked."

"No, I actually think you've covered everything. I just want to make sure I understand – the main objection to Scarlett's plan is that the seed would have to sit for months or years? If there was a way it could be used in a single year, the idea of banding together to buy the seed is sound?"

"Well, yes, but the point is, we can't use that much seed," Alex said slowly, as if talking to a child. "We just don't have that much land in cultivation."

"Maybe this will help, then."

From the inside pocket of his jacket, he withdrew a thin leather document wallet, and tossed it on the table. After a moment, Alex picked it up as gingerly as if he expected it to explode in his hands and looked at the papers inside. His eyes widened, and he rifled through them quickly.

"What is it?" Scarlett asked curiously. India and Will looked interested, and even Wade and Beau watched Alex.

He looked up at Scarlett and grinned. "Land deeds," he said. "Scarlett, I'm afraid you'll have to give up your claim to be the biggest land owner in Clayton County."

"What?" Scarlett took the case from him and looked through the land deeds. Rhett had bought up every piece of land that had come up for sale in the county for the last eight years. He owned Pine Bloom, which used to belong to the Calvert's, the old Macintosh place, half of the McRae plantation, even the swampy forty acres that had once been the Slattery's farmstead.

She looked up at Rhett, bewildered. "But I don't understand," she said. "Why would you go to the trouble of buying all this? As far as I know, you never even came to Tara until last week. Why would you want all this land here?"

"Oh, I don't," he said calmly. "I bought it for you, because I thought you might like to live here, someday. If you hadn't already agreed to marry me again, some people might say I was trying to bribe you."

Scarlett saw Wade and Beau trying to hide smiles; Alex and Will looked a little embarrassed, and India merely tightened her lips in disgust. But she wouldn't let them stop her from giving as natural a reaction as she could.

Looking at Rhett, she smiled. "Why Rhett Butler! You're just as much of a varmint as ever!"

Well, this is the end. When I post this chapter, I will change the status to complete. However, there are a few events that occur after this that I would like to write about, so I have decided to do a series of short chapters, each a complete story, dealing with moments when Wade rejoined the lives of his mother and sisters. Some possible occasions: Scarlett's wedding, the birth of any future children for her and Rhett, and perhaps the birth and/or christening of Ella's first child. These would be posted together under the title 'Moments with Wade,' which would make it easier to follow and get updates about. The first of these will be posted at the same time as this chapter, and deals with the twins reaction to the news that their mother is getting married again. Comments and suggestions are welcome as always.

I also would love to get reviews dealing with this story as a whole. Let me know what you thought of the way it did or did not work, so I can do better next time. I appreciate every reader, and I read every review!