Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  What you’ve done to him, it doesn’t show yet.

  FROM your new hollow ninety feet nearer a smoking woods, you can easily look back across the meadow. You can easily see just where you were with him and where he—facing straight toward you—still sits.

  You avoid noticing a poor yellow dog’s legs-up remains.

  Instead concentrate on the old hole. It calms you to stare—above the fringe of golden grasses, flowers, and butterflies—monarchs and cabbage ones—to see Simon’s bright hair, his funny crest moved by breeze so it seems almost alive, and, hey, it could be, couldn’t it?

  Take out his watch, your watch, a luxury in hand. You wait for orders. How smooth this metal feels. You can see how the soft gold has been nicked by years of use. Open it to hear the chimes, a pretty human sound like some toy shop has just opened on a battlefield.

  Your new hole rests four hundred miles due northeast of your folks’ farm. You are still thirteen, you take a risk, you hold the watch up so Simon’ll see that it’s still fine. Working. Miniés are yet firing here and there. A coarse “whoosh” you’ve almost learned to love since Sal said: Every one you hear: it hasn’t killed you! (though you do recall the sound of that one going in your leg).

  Now you risk your arm to prove to him his watch is safe. You hold it into air that’s worrisome and cross. Chain dangling, you squeeze the watch like it’s most everything you love. “See?” you call. No answer. Then you do something you know is pretty dumb. You yourself stand up. Whole. You pop up vertical long enough to get hit if you’re going to. And just so you can wave towards him better, show his watch to him, your watch. His hair’s so real-looking. It is real, stupid, human hair, just not alive. You get the shakes then. You want to tell somebody about what happened, it’s nobody’s fault. Sit down. You’ve done your duty. The watch is a good watch and it lives with you now.

  “I will be worthy of Simon’s watch, Simon.” In the middle of Antietam you speak this to the watch. And toward the corpse you made a corpse, you wave, you holler, “Over here, Simon. Look. It’s me. It’s me.”

  2

  NOW, my dimplenook, daffodil, and listener, to tell the rest myself. Slipping into something more comfortable. Doing his wears me down. The responsibility! Soon as I say a line that has the old man’s exact and factual ring, soon as I do one sentence with his own low-gravity weights and balances, I decide, “Well, at least that’s just like him.” Then the next three get thrown all off. Ask me to imitate most any soul on earth but his and him. Our kids used to try and bribe me to do Jolson, going down on one knee—a mammy praising Mammy. I’m a sight better at the voice of FDR—complete with blue wireless’s static and that warm brown bourbon/maple running safe underneath, “My fellow Americans …” Better at Mr. Roosevelt than at doing my own man I lived and battled with so long. Still, truth is, I’m closer to sounding like Captain Marsden than anybody else is—not that there’s a heap of competition.

  Same evening of the afternoon when Will exposed hisself to major minies to prove to Simon that the mainspring had stayed sprung, he settled near his company’s bonfire. It’d got built one mile from the meadow where the young body was yet stiffening in one hole of it. Will commenced writing a long letter to a Mrs. Utt. Will redone the thing fully four times till it come near to sounding right concerned and a bit official.

  Dear Mrs. Utt,

  Something bad happened on the afternoon of September Seventeenth, 18 and 62. It was in a field close by near here. He was square in the line of duty when your son Simon (Utt) lost his brave young life. He sure was defending his own country when that happened and I am going to try and tell you more how it came to pass, see …

  Didn’t it seem strange to Will—taking so Federal a tone with this far-off widow? During the whole war, Marsden had only wrote his own momma around ten times and each try took him many days. But this felt weirdly natural, spending so much time over one piece of mail. Seemed a fellow’s duty to, even if these particular grieving strangers happened to be the worst kind, Yankee ones.

  Will hunkered nearer his fireside friends. To them, he read the thing aloud. He skipped the victim’s name. He asked did the letter sound like somebody older than thirteen had wrote it? Sure, they said.

  Young Marsden, concentrating, tongue pressed between beaver teeth, used a borrowed pen and ink bottle, he’d tried describing young Simon’s last earthly moments. Will told Mrs. Utt how her boy’s final thoughts had been of his family, which was true enough. The note never did get around to mentioning who’d shot young Simon. How could a single letter tell: how a good Yank and one okay Reb wound up in the selfsame ditch, see? and how they never really tried no strangling of each other but instead had a good long talk? Will hisself hardly understood this, so he surely couldn’t try and spell it out for some grown lady he’d never met.

  Staring into flames, Will wondered what he’d answer if some court-martial pressed him: “Why didn’t I try and keep hurting him?” Private Marsden explained it this way in his head: The shooting happened before them two spirited youngsters got introduced and all, see? Before they knew each other and joked around, talked stuff over. Otherwise it wouldn’t have.

  So, true, Marsden did announce the death but failed to mention the killer’s exact name. It was wartime. Nobody expected to know just who shot who. Someday he would have to fess up to this act maybe. But, Will told hisself, the whole story could only be spoke aloud to the Rev. Utt’s widow and daughters face to face. The brunt of total news seemed too much for one lightweight page to bear up North now.

  I picture my Willie, hunched over a writing board at the fire’s far edge. Paper was in short supply and so (true to the custom of the time) he cross-wrote the letter, lines working like a plaid of woven words. The lost picture of him from then showed a kid looking plenty unloved. Thirteen, he appeared younger, boy was freckles’ very convention center.

  Seeming made mostly of cartilage, he was one of them boys with sleep crusted in the corners of their eyes and it stayed there till some adult said wipe it. Few fellow soldiers cared enough to notice. None past Sal, and sometimes dashing Hester. Mirrors scare boys this age. With good reason. Many things scare them. War and puberty befell poor Willie almost at once. Put it this way: You have seen my husband. Around every swimming pool or pond in present-day America, just at five o’clock closing time, down near water’s edge, you’ve spied a kid skin and bones, eleven years old (actually a young thirteen). His arms are coiled around his chest, his teeth just knocking in his head, them lips are hinting toward the bluish, his dough-white skin’s drawn up knotty as a plucked duck’s skin after a day of Frigidaire. Child’s been in water since opening time this a.m. and now—freezing most to death—fleshless, knowing he should go dry off and head home—he still so hates to leave. He stands, pitiful without knowing it, at the edge of others’ splashing. Here’s a boy hating to miss even a minute of strangers’ grab-ass fun. Boy seems to know everybody present, though nobody present quite knows or notices him. You wonder—just by looking at his overmany ribs, by seeing how unsupervised he looks—“Where’s this child’s mother?” So you—adult—slip up to him and bend alongside, say, voice kindly, what them lifeguards should’ve spoken hours back, “Don’t you think it’s time you dried off, son? Probably cold, right?” He jumps like fearing nasty strangers that his dirty-minded folks have warned him of. And then, finally hearing you, he nods, shows that, yeah, he should go in, he knows he’s hurting. But when you turn and resettle on your chaise, he’s still right down there by the water, stick arms crossed, dancing from foot to foot, back clinching from the chills—and smiling out at all them other fun lovers. And not one of them is missing him. If a single swimmer called, “Hey, pal, over here! Come back in!” he’d hurl hisself and, with six more minutes’ exposure, would get fished out by the lifeguards, stiffened, his nipples and nails the gray-blue of used carbon paper and him smiling, embarrassed at beginning here, in public, to be dead.—That boy.

  SO, anyhoo: Let
ter done, Willie made the envelope hisself. Child used brown wrapping stock borrowed from the company’s jolly cook, a man not long for this world. Will mixed glue from snitched flour and free ditch water. Will found some nice heartwood planks. Found them in a barn where he got caught in cross fire, spent two thirsty nights. On the floor, out of Yank sight lines, he used pegs and brads from a barn workbench. Will fashioned a solid little pine box, one just the right size to mail home a heavy watch. He’d never had much training at The Lilacs, where a boy complained that slaves got to shoe the horses and do all the fun stuff. Will used his rifle’s butt to be a hammer. (He’d run out of ammo anyways.)

  Later, during idle minutes around camp, he would poke the tips of tenpenny nails into a handy fire. He’d get them red-hot and—holding these with wooden tongs he made—Will commenced burning little pictures all over the outside of Simon’s official ship-his-watch-home crate.

  This container was six inches by four deep. Every inch, slow, got covered with pictures that—to others’ eyes—looked blurred as any old-timer’s tattoo smudged by decades of outrushing body heat. To Will, of course, these seemed little master drawings. Into soft pine he scored cabins, barns, animals both wild and tame, a large home ridged with columns, blooming bushes, sunflowers that shot high as houses. No people were shown. Will told hisself he couldn’t draw a person good enough, not yet. That’d be the test of entering the big league, artist-wise, to risk committing somebody. The child felt handicapped: his one art supply was—Sherman’s own—plain fire.

  Before our private wrapped this careful box in oiled paper using double-knotted twine and wiring, he decided Simon’s watch should be well wound first. Thing had a eight-day movement. If the postman hurried, this timepiece might fall into Utt family hands whilst yet ticking.

  The Friday after the Wednesday shooting, Will noticed that the masterpiece was losing time. This spooked him. If it wound clear down, that maybe meant some second death—his own. Seemed a relay. He had to get the watch home right.

  He found the key hooked to its fat-linked gold chain. (A iron key that looked cheap and ugly, worker bee, compared to all that gold. But what good was gold without its good iron help?) Will worried he might break the trusted item by overwinding. So he prowled, checking for soldiers’ watch fobs. Simon’s watch had changed how Will saw others. While asking several gents the time, Will checked the quality of their timepieces. Most disappointed and he refused to accept their advice about the hour. He quizzed one grizzled vet for the o’clock. This fellow turned, leering, “Why? You in a rush for another set-to? Want to do in another little Yank like that last you bagged then pulled into your hole to finish off. Oh, we saw, Attila Junior. I like that, he’s bloodthirsty ripe for another run at Yanks. We got a fierce ’un here, boys.”

  Men laughed half-nasty laughs. Made hand-to-hand sound smutty. Marsden hurried off, all he could do was his usual: pretending not to hear.

  Officers had set up a table in a root cellar’s far corner. (They always seemed to need a table to hold official papers or they couldn’t think clear.) Will usually stayed away from higher-ups. Oh sure, he listened when they told him to line up, the boy did whatever dangerous they said do. But spying a fine platinum chain leading to the vest pocket of First Lieutenant Hester, Will slinked over whippet-shy and asked.

  “Time? Surely, son.” Hester’s eyes were kind as he pulled forth this beautiful saucer-sized timepiece—but thin as a mint, it was. Willie yanked forth Simon’s watch, he used the stem, he set its hand then let hisself be observed to fiddle with its key. “You’ve forgotten how, Willie, between windings? Here.” Hester took Will’s watch, set the key into its opened crystal’s face. Hester twisted Simon’s timepiece counterclockwise with a ratcheting that sounded like many toe bones popping. Will tried not wincing, he had to trust the First Lieutenant. Handing back the treasure, Hester said, “Fine instrument, Marsden.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It was his father’s, sir.”

  “Oh, family thing, is it? Your granddad’s. Yes, it looks to be. A hunting family. Keeps good time, does it? Imported, I see.”

  “Yes, sir. It’s German and was made in Germany. And I’m trying and take care of it right.”

  “You do just that, Private. A superb watch is a comfort during times as bad as ours.”

  “Yes sir, sir.”

  WILL waited in line to mail it. He knew the Utt survivors would sure relish this keepsake. But, oh, but he hated giving it up. It did seem like some family thing, passed on. His own. He’d got into a habit: Whilst pinned behind woodpiles or in other gullies, Will would take the thing out, he’d mash its fine ringing clicks against one ear. Will would sometimes set to oiling its nice crate, admiring his own burned scenes around the edges. He made the watch his homework. Why did it soothe him so? It should make him feel bad but didn’t, lonely like he was. It meted out the moon’s phases, it showed a moon man’s face grinning. He liked its hymn, “Work For the Night Is Coming.” Good advice. German chimes sent out fanning gauzy rings, bongzz, bongzz. Such sounds made the watch seem larger than its own good given size. How fertile and continuingly egglike its nice weight felt in a person’s hand or pocket.

  Now, patient, Will stood moping in the long line for mailing stuff. He held his bundle chest-high in a treasuring Wise Man pose. He’d copied out the exact address from Simon’s blue slip. Will had used his own best Lower Normal script. He laid his folded explaining letter up top so Simon’s family would find that, even prior to touching coiled chain and a watch, still ticking, he hoped, ticking clear to Maiden. Will had sealed his box’s paper wrapping, caulking it in candle wax. Now, in December, men’s breath made gray clouds, scalloped. Did Northern fellows out in this same weather see their own breaths as official blue?

  Odd, it was only whilst approaching the postal tent, only when he stood feeling proud in this line one-eighth of a mile long, only then did Willie—slow—begin to understand a few right crucial facts. These come to him in small tick-tock degrees, then gonged. To his parcel, lifted near a private’s freckled face, one mouth announced, “Uh-oh. More mess.”

  See, he’d just figured out—a Southern soldier couldn’t post no package to no town in no Massachusetts, fool! Not even a small nice-looking box like this would inspire Yank mailmen to cooperate with Reb ones. Rebs would call the Southerner sending it North a Yank spy, maybe. Only when Marsden tallied how many days and months it’d taken him to catch on to this (September 17 to December 20, ’62), only then did Wee Willie Marsden, Private, CSA, feel his first caving-in and weak-kneed shame. Regret, postponed, caught him across the back of his head. Who killed one Private Simon Utt?

  Not I, said Cock Robin. Cross my heart and hope … cross my heart, not I.

  All around Will, other fellows talked of far-off wives, of love-letter sweethearts (first cousins, but who cared!), of their old pappies left in charge of stores and probably losing everybody’s shirt. Holding their own homebound letters, how stirred and loud and full of fire men acted! One boy had drawn some Christmas holly on his envelope and this got passed along. “That’s good. Looks like it’d prick you almost.” Soldiers behaved like this was some lottery queue. They each expected to win big. After all, one letter sent home from the front usually got you three civvie notes in return—from others’ itchy wives, from the town mayor, good odds for a gambling man: three to one. Nobody noticed the new stillness of a kid with cowlicks, holding a bundle like he had his entire family in there, shrunk, politely eating supper, maybe even soup. Will’s busyness in getting this item wrapped for Simon’s kin, it’d tricked Will good. Softened the rude fact of what he’d done. The single good deed of a watch’s return had started seeming to nearbout balance out the crime, cancel it. The shooting had been, of course, a legal crime—committed during a declared war, but even so … Will left line. He felt uneasy on his legs. He moved off and sat, back mashed against a wagon wheel’s spokes, Will sat staring ahead whilst squeezing this nice homemade crate against his front. Wadd
ed in one hand, Confederate money he’d planned to use for postage, a bill now damp. Other soldiers shuffled forward joshing, shoving one another, each holding something meant for others.

  Imagine, Marsden told me years later, imagine thinking that you’ve justified shooting a live person by working hard to be your victim’s belated shipping clerk! But that’s just how far off course a decent fellow’s decency can drift during indecent times.

  (And, child, I figure: If that applied in 18 and 62, if fellow feeling had slipped that far back, then what-all must we worry over today? How far off the compass’s pure course has recent Kindness drifted?)

  3

  WILL lived out the war, he wanted to and did. He had one extra reason to try hanging on. He must last till North-South mail routes healed. Appomattox would mean: One stamp fits all. For the rest of the war, he shot not nobody else. Boy vowed: If it came down to them or him onct more, then this go-round they were in luck. Instead, he mostly hid in holes—not bothering to fire back except when his officers stood close. Then he shot into the air and over all heads blond and otherwise. Usually he curled deep into ruts and—unobserved—just waited till smoke cleared. Hid, he polished the watch and listened to it like for company and wisdom. He sternly compared the real moon to the watch’s painted moon and marveled that a old-time German should know about these recent modern months.

  War ended and stillness suddenly got scarier than noise. It made the watch mean even more when you understood how hard it’d been to hear this thing during shelling and how valiant it’d been over all that mess. You felt the silence couldn’t last. Will, as you well know, walked home from Virginia proper, walked clear to Falls, and in something under seven weeks, given all the wrong turns he made. He stood, hungry, in Nutbush, Virginia, on a sidewalk between a bakeshop and a pawnbroker. Will was holding his wood burner’s case and its eighteen-carat prize nestled clicksome among straw inside. Will stared from racks of other people’s gems and timepieces displayed in one window to three dozen hot caramel rolls steaming next door. (He could get all those for this one watch, he bet. A Yankee’s watch, true, but who’d know?) Will scanned window to window till he felt dizzy, then got hiccups, which made him laugh and let him concentrate on hiccups and not cashing in young Master Utt’s one heirloom message to his waiting folks. “Honest,” Will had promised Simon, and meant it.