Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  I sat here marveling at the headlock History still had on my man. I wondered, chilled out here, what tales I had to match his own. Sometimes I worried I was jealous of his charm around our watchful children. Above me, in the car, Captain now muttered—something about the three missing tent staubs, where were they? “Not again,” sighed I. Marshland behind the cabins sent a knee-high mist our way. Above walnut trees—black and lacy-looking—a yellow moon burned off to one side, cocked like a Saturday hat. Clouds kept interfering with moonlight so the brightness looked anemic, cramping, gaining confidence then losing face.

  He claimed aloud he had to know who’d took that tent gear, and why. Child, I felt so bored of acting nice, of being Mrs. Nurse to every soul but me. Listening, I longed to give some marching orders. Then, not even expecting to, I yelled at Captain. Just said in a voice as strong and hard as your most superior superior officer’s, “Marsden, listen up.” Then I heard my husband—fast asleep—stiffen, his wide breath faltering, gone quiet as some bullied kid.

  “Do this, Marsden. You run and get that Ned of yours, hear me? Go fetch your young friend right back to this spot. That there’s a direct order, soldier. Got me?”

  I waited.

  Two touring cars rattled past, headlamps on. A mule-drawn hayrick creaked by, slow, black children headed out to harvest something for somebody, nestled half asleep amongst the straw.—I’d been in on the ground floor of my husband’s nightmares all these years. Before, I had only told him to roll over, quit jabbering, calm down. Ofttimes that worked. But till this minute, I’d never thought to holler, try and bluff my way into a sleeping head, to go—a double agent, so to speak—down into that bitter dreamed old war of his.

  And what if it worked? What if I really finally managed to set up a person-to-person talk with this famous Ned I’d never heard the voice of? What should I say? I figured, Lucy darling, you’ll probably think of something. You usually do.

  Biding my time till it seemed one boy might go bring another obedient boy, I waited. Cap kept rigid up front, I could practically hear his posture. I cleared my throat, swallowed. “Private Ned? I sent for you. You getting this? You present and accounted for?” I leaned shoulders back against the car doors, requiring support. I touched my throat, for company.

  “Ned, son,” I made my voice dip froggy/manly as I could, “you sure have been a big help to us, boy. I mean, you’ve stuck right with us all this time. No shaking you, ever. Job well done. But, look, you’ve stayed on long enough, hear? You just got permission, from the higher-ups, the top in fact, to clear out. Congratulations, son. You got the orders every warrior wants. It’s over. Go pack. Singing voices count. Head home to your poor momma yet waiting with her birds. Go be civilian as possible, lad. Your days of service they just ended, honorable, too. So, bye-bye. You can leave us be now. Oh, and, son? That’s a direct order, son.”

  I waited, braced for back talk, maybe a little whining. Oh but I longed to hear his voice squeak through that grownup snoozing at the wheel. Ned’s voice that would never ever stop being thirteen. But no sound came. Finally I hollered Private Marsden’s name. I had to know if his excellent dead friend was following commands. (Prayer: Dear Lord, in who I doubt, do let these discharge papers go through for my sake. Amen.)

  “Is your buddy packed yet, Private Marsden? He fixing to clear out?”

  A boy voice finally spoke. “Sir? in the woods yonder.”

  I asked—hard: And what was he doing over there, following orders?

  “Sir?” my husband told me, “he’s just crying and crying. And, sir? Sir?”

  I give a snort. I sounded mean as a mean man can—which is mean.

  “Sir?” The tone came out all pinched and reedy. “Sir? please don’t make him. If he goes, I’ll be in it all alone then, sir. Sir?”

  A shout. I felt the chassis hop inches, Captain’s great weight jerking to. His own holler woke him back into a peacetime adult. “Wha …?”

  “It’s okay, honey. I’m here,” speaks I. “The tourist camp, remember? Your babies are asleep. You were talking out loud again is all.”

  “Had this dream. Had another one, Lucy.”

  “What about?”

  “It was then—only, I’d been … betrayed.”

  I sat looking out at the road. Moon made all Virginia look gunmetal gray. Deeper in the walnut grove, falling nuts gave sharp stupid thuds, both grim and funny.

  I thought, If I ever smoked cigarettes, I’d surely stoke one up right now. At last he crawled out, he bent over me, said, “Night, buttermilk,” kissed my dry scalp, and then—rubbing his either eye—Cap dragged back towards our cabin. His bulwark back seemed wider than our rented hut. Either very early or very late in the day, Cap could act sweet as your secretly favorite child.

  NOW, alone, I pulled either foot up onto running board, tugged skirt down over knees. I clasped myself around the ankles. If it won’t for my age and experience, I could of been a girl. But I won’t one. Never would be again. Maybe one reason my old man looked so young so long, he’d never quit being basically a boy. I didn’t know if I’d been old since birth or if this present tiredness would finally roll back and leave me feeling a kid again.

  Dawn was just trying to start, and I wondered what I’d of done if Ned hisself had answered up. I imagined the kid soldier, still off somewheres in the woods, leaning against a young tree, sobbing and sobbing. Poor thing. It won’t enough that he’d been dead for a half a century, I had to come along and ride that child still more. I didn’t hate him. He was—after all—like one of mine. Lost prior to my own turning up on earth, someway, he felt like my firstborn. But, oh, I wanted him planted finally, and stilled. Won’t nothing personal in that. Was for me and him. Oh, for a stake through his heart to let him sleep.

  I pictured my own kitchen, my house standing alone without me—clicking like a empty residence does thinkingly click. And, you know, I wished that I was missing somebody. I wanted somebody back there in Falls to be missing me in a active way this very second. A person would wake with this same dawn, to mumble, “Wonder where my Lucy is now?” and then they’d slide back to sleep imagining me. I wanted my absence noticed, just half strong as Captain missed his Ned. I wanted it so bad. Who—in all of Falls—did I long for even partway as much? And who … who liked me back?

  I ruled out all the ladies at church. I passed over my own fussy mother, who didn’t want to know the truth, which she called Morbid. And Poppa—who loved me because, half lazy, he almost had to. The older I got, the weaker he seemed—the sweeter, too, but helpless someway that made even three hours on the porch with him a torture. Almost by forfeit—I recalled Castalia. Cool, on fire, my first true enemy, a victim, another soul whose proportions seemed somewhat on the secret cathedral scale of mine. I pictured her in her orderly ruin of a house held up mostly by the mink cages around it. I remembered her pressing cold washrags to my forehead and how she always knew just when a scented compress had faded to plain room temperature. Her touch could feel almost rough but quit just at the edge of being careless. It felt all the truer for that. She had lately told me a few more stories about slave days—sometimes even funny tales from then. She talked about her plans for one huge mink farm—it always made me picture lettuces of minkskin, growing in a thousand plugs, rich brown and round as her. She described the coat that she was growing for circling her own great girth, cultivating it animal by animal. I heard her voice, ripe-sounding, rolling from her bolster couches of breasts. I recalled her barking orders at my older children while I heaved to bring forth the next little rude one. I’d be stooped over a basin, thinking this should get easier with practice though it won’t. I pictured her hands—so gray-brown on their backsides—ivory in the underpalms. Work had burned palms with deep coppery pleats. Cassie looked out for her own six children, but had never bothered marrying any of their separate fathers. Seemed to me she’d squeezed the very best out of her men—good times, fine memories, their seducer’s charm, distilling from each: a
single snifterful of crucial seed—one souvenir child apiece. Her men had sense enough to clear out, sometimes even before true happiness stopped.

  I sat here in Virginia’s first light. I listened for my kids—none stirred yet. Castalia spoke of her former boyfriends so fond-like, if full of comic pity. Castalia could honestly praise each one’s tricks, talents, looks, styles of lovey-doveyness. Plus, she got to keep the kids without having all them extra bosses right there on her case full-time. Once at our house, Cap caught me talking to her over coffee (Cassie and me were hooked on the stuff, could put away ten cups a day—needed it, two cups per child, minimum, our day’s dark jazzy fuel). Maybe feeling jealous, Cap tried and make Castalia look bad in front of me. Undignified.

  Our long cozy talks worried him. He didn’t much like how our children played mingled all day long in the white neighborhood. Even after his own long complicated history with Castalia, Cap still kept a eye out for her shape, her skin like smoked round glass. “How come you never married any of them, Cassie? Six children and not one spouse in sight. A God-believing woman like you, it seems you’d feel ashamed.”

  She just laughed, a gilled edge ridged under each chuckle. “Ooh, I tell you—I done lived with all six of them men. All fine-looking, good with they hands, better steady company than you usually makes, sir. I tested them in this, checked them out at that, I give each one them pretty clowns a good fair tryout. But you know what, mister? Won’t even one of them my type.”

  He laughed at this. Had to. He recognized some truth in what she’d said, he knew her answer was fairer than his hard question deserved. I remember we all sat in the kitchen, holding identical white coffee mugs. Each of us looked each other over (appraising, tender, realistic, sobered). We sat here laughing like the equals that we were. Some of our children trailed in to ask something and stood in the doorway, not daring interrupt for once—jealous of our union, stepping from one of us to the other, asking, “What? What?” Kids felt cut out of it and they were right. We didn’t want no children in the room just then. They spoiled things. We were grown!

  —I stood now, rubbed my lower back. Yeah, I’d feel the happiest to see Castalia. Did she half miss me? Was it her I loved? Was Captain just another of my children and Cassie some truer mother bulk, more my own and only equal? Was this a stupid crush like my children sometimes got on teachers and friends’ older brothers? “Self-pity and jealousy,” I warned myself—the family curse. Sunlight broke through pinewoods across a field—the center of it red as your own eyelid closed against noon. Light let me read a sign, “Heart O’ Dixie Tourist Cabins.” It’d been hid in the dark all night, not nine feet from our black Ford. (Child, the word “motel” had not even been invented yet—all of this went on that long ago.)

  3

  AND IT WAS this very morning, not three hours later—us underway again and me nodding off, he stopped the car. I woke fast, so did the one baby in my lap. I looked over. There Cap sat, swallowing hard. Grinning like some bridegroom trying to hide his nerves and second thoughts. The few children awake in back had been playing their first games of Mules and Graveyards, counting, sounding sleepy but half interested. No farm in sight, no lake visible, just weeds and way up ahead a rusted mailbox, like a case of lockjaw on a stick.

  Now all our young ones piled out. To them it was just another stop. Older ones led the babies into tall weeds to do their duty. Lou and Ned took charge, giving me a break. Captain still sat at the wheel. It was a misty early morning but he was perspiring pretty bad. “So,” he said, looking around. In the bushes, one of our twins still argued game rules, whether cemeteries canceled solid-white mules. True, I was yet holding the baby but I got out, I come around to Captain’s side, opened the door for him like he was the wife. The big fellow thanked me, unfolded hisself, patted down his graying brown hair, a single stubborn cowlick left, he buffed shoe tops on the backs of trouser legs, shining shoes. Like keeping a appointment. Somehow pitiful to witness. We all followed him. We had to.

  I was getting aware of breathing—mine and the baby’s I held—my heart grew busy, expecting what? I glanced around, prepared for smoke, for rifle fire, a long scream, anything. I didn’t see no water yet. I just wished I looked better. We heard late summer bug sounds, a tractor working uphill maybe two miles off—it was that still out there. Captain hopped a ditch, us trailing after. My children had hushed. Even groggy, they sensed some change. Cap had cleared a little rising when he spied a low woods up ahead. Soon as he smelled the water beyond it, I saw his whole chest swing aside, front muscles locking like a horse’s shying from a high jump or from open flames.

  “What?” I asked him, trying to be helpful, wondering if I could. I half heard the man. He kept whispering one foreign-sounding word, like trying to steel hisself and using it as a charm. “What?” I asked, feeling I had a right to know. Only weeks later would I figure what he’d sputtered again and again. “Gethsemane,” he said.

  Needing no guidebook now, he was like sleepwalking, arms lifting partway before him, half tripping over sticks and roots. Hurrying so. I lugged one baby on my hip, our youngest napped snug in the picnic hamper I toted. All our little ones pulled along after, ragtag, not wanting to get left. Soon as he saw water, Captain, stiff-backed, commenced to checking his Swiss pocket watch, like it might tell him how many holdout Yankee marksmen still hid waiting up them trees before us.

  “Everything’s taller,” he said. Something in his voice caught my heart then, nearbout sideswiped it. I’d never heard him sound so plain unguarded. It reminded me again: he was a victim just like the rest of us. Different things get everybody: For him, war. For me, the setup, or what war’d done to him maybe. For my babies, what this mix—his battle past, and my stab at side-street peace—set off. Who knows? We all keep trying, darling.

  I followed. You do that if you love somebody. Otherwise you leave.

  My children huddled closer. Our group waded through a field of tall sedge. The back of the Captain’s black suit was flecked with green triangle sticky seeds. They’re called beggar’s purses, a good name since they’re worthless but’ll grab whatever’s unlucky enough to move past. My children’s hair was already spotty with these. I figured it’d give kids busywork once we got back to the Ford (we will, we will get back, I promised my own self). It soothed me for a second, picturing small hands going over one another like young grooming monkeys do.

  I’d made the Captain wear his civvies on this trip. Said I wouldn’t be seen with no man sporting a feather in his uniform hat—especially when I didn’t even own one hat with a sprig of plume to its name. Too, I hated how that sword was always knocking against our Ford’s gearshift. One hint at how off-center war is: the awkwardness of living life with that size a weapon tripping you up. Whenever I called the Captain’s uniform vain and dandyish, he cited peacocks: how the man ones have more colors than a Rit Dye sample board at Woolworth’s, while the lady birds get born washed out, khaki being about their finest effort tint-wise. I’d scold him, “Don’t talk peahens to me, mister. I’m white as you, and not no hen. Besides—what’s the use of quoting Nature at a person if it only makes her feel worse. That’s not what Nature’s for!”

  NOT a marker, not one path. The gristmill standing on the far east shore was in ruins now. Vines had made a trellis of its waterwheel. Not one other sightseer. No battle had happened here. Just one boy got killed and only Captain Marsden remembered who.

  A big blue heron at the lake’s far end flew off like a judgment on our nosiness, our family’s size. Everything got way quieter. Us, too. Bug noises—interested in us—tamped back a notch.

  The shore narrowed more. Trees on our right, stagnant water to the left. I shoved children all before me, hoping none would slip and fall into that filmy mess. I remember thinking, What are we looking for? What are we doing here? He needed witnesses, I guess. You marry, it means you’ve signed on as a witness to that person’s pain—meaning their history, entire. We trailed him—so he’d have somebody with
him. Could’ve been anybody. But it was us. Required to, we all tripped along, fighting to keep up.

  He stared to his right then. Saw one tree wedged among the many. They all appeared alike to me. Must of been the one. Because: Captain stepped left, Captain fell three and a half feet downhill, Captain sloshed away from us, Captain backed into the lake. He was getting the full view of it, looking up. He bogged knee-deep in bilgy mud among floating water hyacinths. He’d sunk to his thighs.

  The pocket watch popped free of his vest pocket and—on its chain—swung back and forth above the shallows. Minnows, drawn to platinum, bunched there churning before him. Some fish broke water, leaping for the watch like they figured Time was edible, the fools. Cap’s vest and lapels were speckled like a telegram with green seeds set in rows. He mashed one hand around his throat, up underneath his brown beard. For every breath, his voice gave one moan. Fish kept stitching water all in front of him. He pointed up at that tree yonder.

  Our children held tight on to one another’s sleeves and shoulders, they grabbed my skirt’s whole hem. On all sides I was soon sectioned like a pie, my honor guard. Captain finally saw us, gaping from uphill—our faces so worried about his toppling right into water. Proud as ever, he must’ve hated what pity showed in our wide eyes and open mouths. Lake weeds clinging to black britches, dripping, he now climbed, hands and knees at first, onto our mossy bank. He moved through our group—which split—on towards the tree. It was a big old sycamore. It’d grown a lot since that August day in ’62. But then, too, so had Captain.

  Strange, this breeze came up, wide sycamore leaves turned to show their whitish backsides. I felt for a minute, against all my common sense, that the tree had someway recognized him. Then Cap, he shinnied right up into it. Muddy legs and shoes went last into the rustling green. He was now hid total from our view. This was early September. All at once, I felt the heat.