Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  You shut both eyes after using them to the very best of your ability, to aim, I mean. It’s really just one closing of one forefinger. Don’t jerk, mustn’t jerk. Squeeze. How smartly guns are made—so little does so much. Off it bucks against you. Musket’s kick forever makes you, the shooter, feel, for one bruised second, shot.

  Peeking, you feel surprised then proud, then scared, and finally shamed to see your chosen boy heave sharply left and sharp backwards. His small cap and long musket go in opposite directions, landing among clumps of black-eyed Susans.

  One blue uniform now rests face-up, heaving, blinking in a meadow that’s all blooming yellow-gold and green. Around him, others run, aim, scream, grab themselves, rush off. The farm hound trots over, sniffs the fallen boy and—tail wagging—lumbers away, paws huge, tongue out, happy. Your hurt soldier’s face looks fine, his chest not. Face dry, chest wetly opened in its upper right. You see this as he tries to prop himself on either elbow, and looks down at his chest as if staring a great distance. Then he gets interested, squinting toward this ditch of yours, a location where a crucial shot has flown from. Uh-oh. With his hat lost, blond hair standing in a funny crest, he tries standing, finds that too hard then starts to crawl this way. Really uh-oh. Bad tactics. He appears rational but puzzled by the logic of events that dropped him on his back and opened his young chest. Now, to yourself, safe behind your fringe of ditch-bank weeds and Johnny-jump-ups, you say simply, “Don’t.” You see he’s not yet felt the full pain of being hit. He will, you know. You know this without pleasure, full of bitterness for him, though you yourself just shot him. Lucille? you figure all this out. I will simply tell it plainly and fast.

  Earlier, while walking, a target, his face looked very vacant. Downed, it is all lit up with this strange intelligence, a care. Features are smarting but the pain seems almost some social embarrassment. Officers surely taught him never to move upright during firing, always dodge while advancing, do obliques, think obliques. Now he’s shaking his head sideways, perhaps remembering the rules as he drags over here. Either elbow pulls the upper body. He’s talking to himself and there’s an expression like a smile, but not a smile. You hoot instructions, try and guide him back toward his own lines. Under his pulled weight, a trail of wildflowers flatten. It’s terrible to see his pale grin as he gets nearer—like he’s recognized you. You picture yourself out there. Just now, a running Yankee tramples one whole leg of him. Volleys keep detonating left and right. He’s about to crawl directly into cross fire, he’s about to get his goddam head blown off. Excuse me.

  And here we go, Lucille, here’s part I never manage to understand. It’s from your being thirteen perhaps. It’s pure insanity as you find somebody like yourself—but far, far stupider—leaping from your ditch’s safety, running through the noisy open, hollering at this boy (far bigger up close), “Here, let me.” He sees gray above him, scrambles backward, squeals, pats all around him, finds his musket’s too far off, grabs a rock instead, holds this up—his eyes too huge to bear—tries tossing it. The thing falls inches short, of course. He keeps crying up at you, “No more. No more now, sir.”

  “Let me. Really. Here,” which means setting down your musket as you get a grip, as, without permission, you pull this boy to safety. Seeing how his chest is opened, you have grabbed him boot-first. You pull him face-up by either long leg—he is bouncing, groaning from the pain of being dragged. Till the both of you fall backwards, you in first, gasping, grateful, it’s your ditch again. Just then cannons really start and a great din of battle roars over where he was. And you look out to where your musket is. Oh dear.

  What the fuck have you done? Pardon me, miss. Separated from your rifle, you’ve just pulled a Yankee stranger in this hole with you, is what. A mouse drags a cat through the small slit into its very home and has to know then it is certainly a stupid mouse and probably quite soon a dead one too!

  You both hear you’re both panting. Even above the pumping of lead over the ditch you occupy—the sound of troubled breath, your own, means most. You are very scared to look directly at each other. Terrified, no doubt, for different sets of reasons but both sets quite likely very good. It hurts to turn your neck but finally you do, so slow in hopes that—hand to hand—he won’t now try to kill you back. Disarmed, in a hole, two boys, one hurt, one less so, stare at each other. Your mouths are both open like screaming, but they’re embarrassed to make sounds while doing so. You see how, up close, the other kid has blond-silver hair, thick dark eyebrows, spiky lashes. This is plain since these eyes are definitely on you. His damaged right arm and shoulder shake, St. Vitus, uncontrolled. You recognize your own nighttime teeth chomping.

  Then you do something pitiful. You smile at him. It is a disgusting display but all you can think of. He says, “Some mess, hunh?”

  He chances grinning in hopes you won’t do him worse harm. The Yankee’s sweating a lot, clear drops are set side to side across his forehead. He seems to know where he is and how he erred by becoming so willing a target. He seems to feel that he will now—for his mistakes—be killed. Soon. Maybe bayoneted. With one red palm, he covers his weird smile. But he doesn’t apologize or plead. He hasn’t yet noticed how, in saving him (from your own shooting him), you dropped your musket way, way out there in the harmful open.

  As a sign, you hold up both your hands toward him—palms foremost, wrists exposed to prove you mean no harm, not now. Not now you’ve probably killed him once. Enough. Some mess all right. Does he even know that it was you who plugged him? You hope he’ll blame most anybody else.

  Missing your cartridge belt, powder, rifle, you turn and see those out there sunning among daisies, you just say, “Boy.”

  Then he notices that you’re disarmed as he is. You want to ask advice. “Would it be all that dumb to dive back out in open fire and try for it?” Space above this ditch now coughs and whistles, it’s fairly stuttering with flying damage far too quick to see but oh you hear it. Smoke leaves traces till it’s like looking up out of a basket made of smoke. Some mess you’re in.

  Jangled, and despite yourself, you feel a need to explain or ask. You tell your predicament to somebody you just blasted into a state a good deal worse than yours. He tells you it’d be risky to go back for the gun but adds as how, considering, he would say that, and grins a form of laugh.

  You look at him and snort appreciation for a little wit out here in this shithole situation. Excuse me. Some shithole. “Yeah, you would tell me not to.” And you feel freer to confess what an idiot you’ve been. “Why’d I do that? Hester told us.” And your guest nods, eyes half shut, “Me too. Till five minutes back, I thought I was fairly smart. Thing is, you freeze, you know?”

  In order to hear him better, you’d best slide inches nearer but, check first, is there a knife on him? The kid keeps clawing at his tunic’s dampening front, maybe trying to stanch the wound. You say, “Look, uh, you won’t hurt me if I help you out here, right?”

  “No,” he, fifteen or so, says back. “Can’t now …” So you bend across, undo his each brass button, holding your own breath all during, closing your eyes, like the hole you opened in his chest might send out one gruesome smell.

  He fumbles for some item in his uniform’s sogged right and then out into summer daylight pulls a very large gold pocket watch. The chain follows, crackling beady sounds. How it shines in the sunshine in this muddy hole. Just from how he holds it you can see it really is a good one. First he wipes a bit of his own grape-tinted gore off its yellow casing and onto his driest sleeve. Then, greedy, the kid presses a timepiece against one whole ear. Finally he nods, eyes closing from pleasure. “Johnny Reb didn’t even scratch it,” he says, hurting your feelings some. He tells you how his father left it to him. His voice is just becoming manly, starting to break and deepen.

  Six great explosions rock your hiding place. The boy barely notices.

  “Look.” Instead he presses some latch and the watch’s gold lid springs open—yellow light, a coin’
s worth, swings across his face. Chimes play three bars of a hymn. Harmony and all. The owner smiles. Above cannons’ rumbling and the shouts of others, over that farm dog’s barking, you get this sweet tense little chiming. It makes you flinch. Pleasure seems completely out of place. You feel your own face strain and break, unused to really smiling. You’ve all but forgotten melody since your friend got killed.

  “Plus, look.” He wants to show you something. Just then a cannonade, the worst yet, pelts everything nearby and overturns a length of fencing. Dirt clods pepper you. When smoke clears, the Yankee (you’re starting to think of him as your Yankee) is still staring at the watch. You see how his eyes wear tossed grit, it’s all across their fronts. He looks from you to the watch, unaware of dirt in eyes. Tell him to blink. Ask his name. “Simon,” he says and does blink, good-natured. “Nice picture on the lid.” He shows you a hunting scene, enameled (one stag chased by six eager hounds). Above the swerving second hand, a small compass proves due north—a Yankee watch okay. And under that the phases of the moon are gauged in a slot. Spiky letters say the thing was made in Germany. It looks it.

  He thanks you for pulling it and him to safety and you don’t correct him. He holds the watch against his ear and nods, pleased with its ticking, as if eavesdropping on his own continuing heart. He talks some and you see that his spittle has blood in it. You are close enough to offer your canteen. This means pouring water into his cracked mouth. Afterwards, not recalling how you managed (apart from rank adrenaline), you two kids just talk. Seems natural. He mentions sledding, how he loves it and is considered pretty good at home. You try a joke on him.

  Q: Why does the ocean stay real mad?

  A: Because it has been crossed so many times.

  Simon starts to laugh (he’s Private Simon Utt from Maiden, Massachusetts), but then the laugh falls back in on itself, it hurts him to, so he nods. You wonder how it happened: You two’s winding up in this same rut in Virginia. You all should be in school, not here, and he agrees. Your complaints are similar: rotten recent food, one earlier flesh wound quickly healed (you mention your leg because it’ll maybe make Simon feel better about his now being hurt). He speaks of a mother and three sisters. Then he seems to sleep but wakes describing the house, the sisters’ bell-ringing choir. His late poppa was a preacher, bought the watch in Germany, went to seminary there. Simon praises one big icy slope near his home. Winters, a boy can sled down it and be carried—lickedy-split—half a mile, easy.

  This ditch was your home six hours before you dragged him into it. Strange, but it feels such a relief to talk, even to this unexpected type of company. Odd, your hole (nobody would understand it) almost seems safer now for Simon’s being in it. One boy from each side. Maybe he’s talking too much, using up his life to speak of fishing through holes cut in the ice of winter ponds. Surely is hot out here. Then, after seeming to sleep, Simon asks if he might ask you one big favor, huh? Will you make sure—if anything should happen to him, not that it will—promise to get his timepiece here sent home safe? Simon says his best friends would do this but some got transferred, hurt or worse. Anyway, he might not be found here in a Southern ditch and all. So would you, huh? And he tells you which trouser pocket holds a home address. He admits—head trying not to quake so much—he’s getting real scared now.

  You agree to mail the watch but say he’ll come out of this just fine. You add you’re never wrong about these things. “Say you will?” he begs.

  “I will. Honest.”

  “Say that you’ll get out their address and see it’s buttoned in your pocket? Buttoned.”

  “Sure. You bet, Simon. Word on it.”

  “Uh-oh, hold my hand, please,” and you do. By now you’re so much for Simon, you know? “Hold it, please. Play like we’re at home. Say you’ll get it there. Having it will help them. Having something. Say we’re home, Will.”

  “You’re safe at home. You’ve got somebody here. I’ll guard this damn watch with my life, Simon. You see if I don’t. You sure found the right person.”

  Simon nods then and his spine arches till it’s straight. He rears up into sun. He mumbles about sleds, a hill, is it hot out here or is it just him? “Here we go,” he says, then his nose is pink and it’s a terrible nosebleed.

  Worse than that.

  To see us from above the ditch, Lucy, it’d look like two wrestling—a Reb and a Yank, young, thrashing one another good. But it’s just me holding him for dear life. Putting hands where he’s least hurt and hugging there. You hear it run out, like a fuel going. Then you can release him. You can admire the thick dark lashes and the brows and keep the flies off for a while and see the fronts of eyes where life shows wittiest, the fronts that soon cloud over to be just surfaces, like the ground nearby, the roots of weeds along the ditch. No better, no worse.

  The dog bounds past and then runs off, its tie rope sogged in gore the rope’s dragged through. A voice nearby says, “Sara? This is it, Sara. Sara?” And then there is a great yelling and it is too loud and unembarrassed for a man’s and you guess as how the farm dog has got his. Shells toss great buckling geysers of black earth. In the silence after, in the char of cannon stink, you smell a clover sweetness, you hear bee wings going in the ditch-bank flowers, bees still out here, workaday busy instead of staying in their hives during this field’s one day of war. There’s a Dunkers’ church set down there on the creek at meadow’s bottom and a marksman chooses to fire at its bell. Then others do until you’re hearing Hester holler at your pals, fools, don’t waste rounds on bronze, for God’s sake. He says get ready to advance. Soon you are going to have to leave this ditch and Simon.

  You can now have this beautiful watch and you feel guilty for it but glad. The address is still there in his pocket. Simon’s mouth hangs open. His right cheek rests flush to brown ditch bank and is muddied. The pink face has lost no rosiness, not yet. Near his left hand, high up by the collar you unbuttoned, he still grips his preacher father’s timepiece. He’s kept it clear of his own darkening lower clothes. You unsnag the long gold chain from around pale fingers already locking. For the address, you must reach directly into poor Simon’s britches. He has fouled himself. It is embarrassing and exceedingly unpleasant to reach into the pocket of another boy. Especially another one who’s dead and you helped kill. No, not “helped”—“killed” outright. Remember that. A woman’s name and street facts are written on a scrap of blue envelope, simple block letters, his—preparing for emergency. Into your breast pocket you commend this scrap, buttoning as he said do. For good measure—best to tip over, listen closer for his heart. A person never knows. This is what the doctors do in books. Then, yes, your eyes closed to concentrate, you do hear the faintest almost singing knock. He’s back! Company. Until you understand, no, it’s the lovely heavy German watch you’re clutching in one hand, that sweats. Pocket the timepiece. Its weight is that of two good-sized hen’s eggs, it has that same sturdy-fragile cool feel.

  Voices you know now discuss moving. From one ditch quite nearby, it’s good old Sal Smith hollering your name. Fun to call, “Alive, Sal! Here!”

  “Well, knock me over with a feather,” Sal barks back. “You got through it!”

  “Yeah. Through it,” you cry back. “Some mess, huh?”

  “Say that again.”

  “Some mess.”

  “Card!”

  NOT KNOWING what else to do, you prop Simon Utt (nobody you know knows him at all or understands what-all has happened here, and that is fine, that will help save your soldier’s reputation, consorting with the enemy and all), get him vertical against the ditch’s edge. That way he’ll look natural and dignified while waiting for Northern gatherers to find him. Cross his arms over the chest (because adults do that with bodies, though you’re not sure why, but you do it anyway). Make sure the boy’s head shows up above this hollow’s flowered lip. He’s got to be discovered if he’s to get Christian burial. Something should be said now but it’s hard recalling even one stray tag of lit
urgy.

  Others bellow for you. “Moving out,” they call. Lieutenant Hester, usually so calm, sounds hoarse from yelling.

  First, though you’re no Catholic, make the sign of the cross—over your own front and then his. Touch Simon’s forehead, his regulation belt buckle, then press opposite shoulders, including his wettest one. Close his mouth. Ease his head back against flowers that flatten from this much dead weight. Using your right thumb, press down each eyelid. Since there is a batter of dirt mixed across the white and blue of either eye, first use one of your sleeves to wipe grit out. “There.”

  At home before the war, you buried dead pets in Poppa’s cigar boxes under Mother’s lilacs, each creature important beneath its two crossed sticks. You have no other burying experience. Your division is leaving you, there’s a roll call hole to hole. You killed this boy. Why lie? And there’s a human need to speak something out loud. And, though alone now, you feel stage fright as if listened to by him and his whole family. You try, “Private Simon P. Utt. It could’ve been me. We didn’t either of us mean it, did we? They just put us out here, so we did. I will get your watch home. Cross my heart and … cross my heart. I’m sorry now for what I did here. Boy, I never should’ve joined up. This happens. Now I see clearer, but I’ll do right by you, Simon. Bye and … amen? Sure, amen.”

  Are the watch and address fastened in your breast pocket? With one hand cupped over those for good measure, scramble up across your ditch’s edge and out into lethal air. You hustle, doubled small, then opening with rangy speed into this space. It seems like you were born and have always lived till now inside that flower-bordered hole. Running, you’re feeling like some released animal, almost a dancer and perfect. Rush toward the musket and the belt you grab while running. Moving well you are, these things are warmed from sunlight. Startling to find them hot as a person is alive. Due east, a woods is burning black and gold. You stumble into a clearing behind other men who, looking over shoulders, half smile, cough your name as welcome. They know you! It’s still you, to look at anyway.