Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  Pop’s people lived in a cabin made of real but flaking logs. Three pigs roamed free and looked too thin to ever butcher. Poppa had explained: Smart hogs out this way under-ate as self-defense. From the door, two old people came forward, walking just alike, side by side. They looked varnished brown. They appeared roasted, like they were past ever dying—like everything moist in them had been baked, like what stayed on would last. Their faces: little fist-sized hams. What English they spoke took getting used to. They left off any word they could.

  On tiptoe near our buggy, they kissed me and asked, “Hong?” Right in front of them, Pop said, “Sugar, they mean, ‘Are you hungry?’”

  “Tell them No,” I whispered, then—troubled—turning to my own grandfolks, I shook my head sideways hard, said, loud, “NO!” Momma huffed, “Honestly.” The old ones laughed.

  “Doll mesh,” the yam-colored woman said. She looked like the old man (only with some extra hair, her pant legs joined to be a skirt). “She said, ‘Darling mess,’” Poppa sounded tired already. “That’s considered nice,” he explained. “Say ‘Thank you.’” I thanked him but he then pointed off the wagon at two tiny farmers. “Oh, thank you,” I said. They wheezed. It was their way of laughing.

  POPPA had written ahead that we were coming. They couldn’t read. We always came ahead anyway. They would definitely be home. Momma refused to sleep in the cabin. She claimed to be allergic to insects and straw but everybody knew what she really meant. Poppa drove her to the county’s only boardinghouse six miles away. My folks always stopped near a railroad crossing not far off—the spot where a lady, thrown twenty-odd feet by a locomotive’s striking a wagon, dropped directly in his path. I was left alone with the little varnish people, brown as beetles. My poppa seemed to be taking hours getting back. I grinned harder at the country folks. The inside of their cabin was just backs of the logs on front, wood cured with years of greasy cook smoke. Holes had been plugged by some of the hundreds of Poppa’s unopened envelopes pinned up on most inside walls, brown now, too. I smiled more. They sat in chairs facing mine, they stared. They could. It was their house. I was new here. Once the old woman hobbled over and felt of my braid, nodded, said, “Liquor popper,” sat again.

  A half hour later, “Like her poppa’s” done occurred to me.

  When my loved one finally got back, oh I hugged him so. Night really settled. Such night, too, a pitchy dark that our bright glittery downtown Falls kept at bay. Dogs could be heard howling in a ditch nearby. Bug noises sounded like a coded insect plan to take over the world. Let them, I thought. Our only light came from a lantern burning oil as brown as the old people. Ridge-backed bugs chimed its smudgy flue. For twenty minutes, more, not one soul said a thing. I gulped a lot. “Sure is quiet,” I offered. They all looked at me—nobody’d noticed.

  “Lucy here can read.” Poppa sounded both proud and mad.

  “Naw,” both old ones said. I looked young for my age. Poppa promised I actually could, whole rows of words, pages even. The old woman scurried to her cabinet, brought me a Bible fat as a couch cushion. On my lap, she opened it, pointed to one verse. (Since I knew that neither of these folks could read and that they’d punished Pop for doing it in the house—I felt ashamed and irritated, weak now.) Their open Bible smelled like a open grave.

  Poppa stood behind me, jittery. He slid the lantern nearer my side of the table. One bug hit my neck. It felt so big. Dogs kept barking. I looked down into the Bible. I feared that the brown people would punish me. I pictured Momma alone in a room, explaining to boardinghouse wallpaper how honestly hideous that very paper was. (Poppa had onct burned a whole woods to cinders just to try seeing the black and white of a cowpoke Western story he needed to finish.)

  I looked up at him.

  “Do,” he said, sharpish and vain-sounding as Momma at her worst. He touched my shoulder. “Show them,” he said. “This here’s important to me. I’m with you. Now.” His worn hand weighed on me, a comfort.

  Gulping, I went slow, not wanting to seem bratty or too good.

  “Chap-ter Thirty-two. Give ear ye heav-ens, and I will speak, and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth. Verse Two. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herbs, and as the showers upon the grass. Verse Three …”

  I peeked up. Water lit the dried face crinkles of the old ones watching me. The little man one jumped up and ran to a cupboard, seeking some prize to offer. Every shelf slowed him, he found less and less. Finally he brought me a sugar bowl, one rusty spoon stuck in it. “Eat some,” Poppa spoke, hoarse behind me. I looked up. Pop’s face was fisted. “I’m so proud of you,” he stroked one pigtail, then turned toward the log wall spotted with his life of letters. He said to that wall, “Eat some sugar, sugar. They believe it’s a treat.” So I took me a spoonful. I felt it melting at the edges. My mouth full, I tried grinning. Their Bible, heavy in my lap, put either leg to sleep. The book smelled black. It stunk of olden times, bitter as tar. In the Bible, the earth opened and swallowed children for bad things their folks’d done. I could smell that. Mouth full of sugar grit, I smiled. Howling dogs got closer. They sounded not so mean, just hungry. My tongue burned with sugar. I couldn’t hardly swallow. Three country people now chuckled, shook their heads amazed at me, they sniffled some. My momma was allergic to all bugs and straw. Sitting here, the days of buggy riding caught up with me, plus the hardship of sitting here on my own with the old ones. I thought of Shirl, home alone and missing me. I nodded off.

  I soon felt Poppa lift me, tote me to the attic loft. A mattress, stuffed with corn husks, whispered, guessing my weight. I felt three hicks undressing me. I heard three rubes talking that strange unborn English. Now he talked like them. With me too tired to help and guard him, the poor man had lost hisself it seemed. He had become them now he thought I slept. The old woman placed her lamp near my feet. I could feel all three of them studying my pale city limbs. They jawed and grunted in their strange farm language. They studied every part of me. They turned me over. They looked between my legs. I laid there. I let them. I had to.

  Years after, whenever I heard somebody say, “She speaks a foreign language,” I heard “farm.” A farm language.

  HOME, this invitation waited, my full name in roly-poly cursive. Our mayor would throw the year’s most important party for Summit girls. Being poor, being connected to a stable, having hayseed genes, Shirl won’t invited.

  Before the shindig, in our tree house, she cried a little, begged me to remember everything and tell her it afterwards. I said Okay, I said we should now practice our first aid. A class at church concentrated on helping fainters. Those years, many more women fainted—they did so thanks to corsets, too tight shoes, and, yeah, the fad for fainting. Honey, never underrate the power of fashion. Step One: Loosen all constricting clothing. Shirl always played the swoon victim. Her pink cheeks still shined from crying. I set to work unfastening twenty-some buttons hiding white collarbones from air. I’d got good at this. Her clothes had more buttons than a concertina’s tail end. When I’d unlatched a fair number, I chanted down into her open dress our favorite ditty. Ended: “Cocked his shiny eye and said, ‘Ain’t you ’shamed, you sleepyhead?’” On “’shamed,” she showed signs of becoming un-faint. I pressed one ear to her chest. Since the country visit, she looked more soft and fair and perfect. I listened to the humid center of her, a middle spot where old Eve got built around Adam’s spare funny bone—a knot of garden yet in there. Oh, to get at it. Squatting on our platform in the privacy of leaves, I watched my Shirley giggle alive. Laughing, I stared along the whole girl—prettier, longer, simpler, lots more kind than me. I could not believe the Mayor’d forgot to ask my Shirl—and here I had grandfolks that looked like salt and pepper shakers made of tanned raccoon hide. No fair. Something had to happen. I longed to do something for her.

  I GOT let indoors with Momma, me decked out in a itchy crinoline—it felt like wearing a place mat. Momma’d paid a cl
ever black lady to sew this outfit, special. (The seamstress was in such demand, Momma’d already made a down payment on my debutante’s gown, some years in advance. When I poohpoohed this, Momma said, “We have simply avoided the rush. You’ll thank me later.”) Our country trip had soured me on all this fancy society junk. It’d further glazed my poor mother’s eyes with party ambition for me. From visit to Bear Grass visit, she forgot how bad Poppa’s people really looked. She had turned them into hearty hunting country-squire types. But then there they stood and she bitterly knew. She feared for me, my future—even for such genes that were presently aloose in my own wiry unfine body. Oh, but Momma hoped I would prove she’d not made a terrible mistake by marrying the one she did. I see that now.

  At the time I sat around the party, got dozy, and then, half thinking about Shirley, half remembering rough country manners, did something. Idle, but meaning it, I reached up under my dress and scratched a certain something, yanking at panties. Mothers around the grand room (my own included) experienced facial paralysis—their shoulders fell, then all their backs locked. Such dredging—far from ladylike—had got me a certain amount of attention. I did feel a little bad when the Mayor’s wife looked from me to my dignified mother, then turned aside. A bit later, when other frilly little things lined up to pin the donkey tail, all obeying orders (just three feet tall but acting high and mighty as their mommas), Mrs. Saiterwaite tried pinching me into place. What got into me? What made me bellow at the center pole of Summit society, “Keep your claws to yourself, nightmare face. I ain’t yours.”

  That pretty much did it.

  I found poor Momma on the front porch, her cheeks so full of color, she looked half changed. She sat fanning her forehead and neck, hissing, “The shame, Lucille. The shame.” I told her: I didn’t know just what made me do it. Underneath I was basically nice, but felt like we were wrong to try and lord it over everybody not invited. I’d looked around the huge room and all I seen was: who won’t here.

  Like Daddy, maybe I was too much of a democrat—not even Republican enough to save myself.

  I patted Momma’s linen skirt, counted her long fingers, played like I was the nicer sister of that wicked snit that’d talked so countrified and loud in there, that’d sounded like a reform-school boy paroled into a lettuce of a dress, that’d then excavated in the pantaloon territory.

  “Socially,” she spoke like in a trance—not even mad no more—which upset me. “What you did just now in there was suicide, Lucille. You know the term ‘suicide’?”

  “Like …?” and I dragged one fingertip across my throat, made a raspy sound.

  She nodded. “That,” she said, and held my hand—tender, almost relaxed-acting—all the way home. “Change your clothes,” she said at our front door. “May as well make yourself comfortable. I know you might not recall this moment when you’re grown. But you should understand what you’ve done, my poor baby. It’s over. All my plans and hopes are ended here. This means that our family will never regain the place we lost when I married my darling Samuel. We had a chance. You could not or would not help me in the only thing I’ve ever wanted. Go on, change. Put on rags. From now on, nobody will care.”

  IN STREET clothes, carrying a book and a butcher knife in a sack, I shinnied down one drainpipe.

  Up our tree, Shirl sat waiting, long-suffering and calm as any spouse. Eager to hear about my social triumph, she hollered hostess questions down through elm leaves. I climbed towards a sweet voice pleading: Had they served mints both pink and green? Types of floral centerpieces, please? I moaned. Around her, a full skirt was spread. She’d worn, for me, what she would of worn to the party if they’d asked her. Perfect, she’d tied bows of crepe paper to our household twigs. It broke my heart.

  In one of Poppa’s Fenimore Coopers, I’d read where this friendly Indian and white man cut open their veins to become blood brothers forever. I wanted my heart now circulating some droplet souvenir of Shirl for good. I understood—after digging at my privates publicly, after snarling at a holy Saiterwaite—high society was now but a thing of the past. I was ready for the next part: Shirley. For her, I’d given all of it up, I’d half killed poor Momma. Odd—I only believed in Momma’s pain onct it’d finally happened. Her strange calm had made me think of her when young, when hurt so.

  But poor Shirl sat pumping for the Mayor’s punch recipe. I was not often stingy with details (as you yourself should know by now!), but I just shrugged off Shirl’s every question. Seeing I was in a darker mood, Shirl said she’d settle for a last teensy fact: How did the inside of our mayor’s finest mansion parlor really look?

  My answer: “Big.”

  Shirl smoothed her skirt (a painful green) over knees, she made her either dimple show, she tossed the curls and spoke to our tin tea set arranged just so before her. “But how big, Luce?”

  Behind me, I undid the sack, pulled out the book, leaving the knife for later. I read the Mohican rite where your blending of veins happens. “Sounds mighty good, don’t it?” She half nodded, still eager for news of a party I only wanted to forever forget. “Sounds mighty good, okay,” I answered my own self. “Let’s us do it. Only, we’ll be blood sisters.”

  “But how?” When I whipped out Momma’s best butcher knife, Shirley slapped a palm to either cheek, gave this squeal I thought was absolutely precious. My hip bones went pure sponge. Below our elm, on sidewalk, the postman spun in circles, looking for a crime. Then I did one hour of fast-talk convincing, told Shirl how this swap would make us stronger, we’d each catch half as many colds.

  Finally I offered to go first—just a light scratch, see? You could only feel amazed at all the color waiting inside a skinny white girl. It filled my hand, red coated each finger in its bright new separate glove. Then I cut Shirl as—eyes closed, frowning—her free hand pinched her nose. We made the magical mingling (I’d agreed to be the Indian, leaving her the choicer white role). Our wrists nuzzled wetness to mother wetness. We invented vows, shivered, spoke Red Indian place names aloud.

  “There,” I said when all felt done. Shirl even kissed a red pinkie fingertip, pressed it to my forehead, left pink streaked there. But onct our blood was swapped sufficient, drainage didn’t quit. It longed to be transfusion. We used old curtains as bandages, we ripped down crepe paper but party favors proved flimsy tourniquets. First we snickered, seeing our losses flung on leaves, boards. Then we went, “Uh-oh.” What had started as a poem was ending as emergency. (Like life, child!)

  One-armed, we gimped down, and—even with her leaking pints and ruining good clothes—Shirl called back, “Crust on the finger sandwiches? Cut to triangles? Watercress and what?”

  We later found that each of us, when mothers asked how it’d happened, said, “From picking blackberries. A thorn.”

  NOBODY spoke to me after the party where I dug into, up, and beneath my underpants. Girls that’d been present turned away. Girls that wished they’d been there really gave me the works, peeved that homely me had been so careless with my good luck. Come school on Monday, I was shamed like some brat who—in a land of famine—throws away a banquet of leftovers and has not shared. On my way home from class, some unseen person chugged a heavy green walnut at me, over a fence. Luckily, I ducked. I couldn’t exactly complain to Momma, could I? All invitations quit. That, she noticed. Three meals a day, she kept her diluted half-cheerful air and sometimes smiled my way. She said, “Hello, suicide.” Poppa asked her to please ease up. “Samuel, have you written your sophisticated parents a thank-you note? No? Why, they’ll be mortified,” she then apologized to him, scared of herself.

  If I told some colorful story at table, she’d rush me for the letter of the law, “How big a pumpkin?” Pop said it just showed I was having my way with the world, peeling a bit off, adding a inch on. “An inch? Hold up your hands, young lady, show how large. I’ll go get my tape measure and tomorrow we’ll just march downtown and we will simply check. I cannot abide liars.”

  She swept off to
her needlework room. I sat picking at my bandaged wrist. Pop gave me his crooked grin. “My wife,” he shrugged, nodding her way.

  “Our wife,” I said without thinking. He laughed agreement.

  I THEN decided what I’d known: Coming out would always be beyond me. After my party setback, after being fortified by my chosen sister’s blood, I could now act more myself. Momma would never shoehorn me into no ball gown at seventeen. I’d give it to the poor or shred it into silky kite tails.

  I had always tended more towards Poppa. Now I got up from my place at table and I announced, “I’m climbing into your lap.” He pushed back his chair, made room for me, I held on to him like a monkey. “You’ll see,” he said, like trying and soothe me with a promise, but he never said what I’d see.

  Soon I plainly copied his bowlegged walk—Momma feared I’d caught the rickets. I chewed on grass’s white stem ends, read dime-novel Westerns, made water willy-nilly under shrubs. I memorized Pop’s funnier lines and sprung them on poor Shirl. Something got lost when I scratched my head and used his shambling swamp-boy manner.—Momma meantime played piano, paced, sulked, dragged me to church more. She made me give her a penny every time I imitated somebody or stretched the truth or said old Ain’t.