Varina

by Charles Frazier

I’m long since exhausted with that insane war and don’t need to re-dream a nightmare.

An eternity in itself. A perfect instant if you erased guilt of the past and dread of the future.

So even very young she saw slavery as an ancient practice arising because rich people would rather not do hard work, and also from the tendency of people to clench hard to advantageous passages in the Bible and dismiss the

rest.

Back then, a good marriage didn’t require love. A good marriage meant security—money and position and a man who didn’t knock you around.

All those years, I can’t remember one girl from a good family who settled for only love.

The slowest man sets the pace because we’re not the kind of people to leave anybody behind.

So, assume the usual plot elements—attractiveness, proximity, opportunity.

He did as most politicians do—except more so—corrupt our language and symbols of freedom, pervert our heroes. Because, like so many of them, he held no beloved idea or philosophy as tightly as his money purse. Take a king or a president or anybody. Put a heavy sack of gold in one hand and a feather-light declaration about freedom in the other. And then an outlaw sticks a pistol in his face and says give me one or the other. Every time—ten out of ten—he’ll hug the sack and throw away the ideals. Because the sack’s what’s behind the ideals, like the foundation under a building. And that’s how freedom and chains and a whipping post can live alongside each other comfortably.