Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  Down the pike, David—as history tells us—gave up his kingdom for the woman he loved, though God knows why he picked that one. I believe: she made him. Lolly somewhat resembled Mrs. Simpson—knobby, long-nosed, doubly-divorced-looking. Loll was not to be consoled over David’s poor choice. On the couple’s wedding date, Loll took down every picture of either Prince of Wales, carried them to the courtyard behind her Palais. Squirting them with some lethal hair product, Loll threw a match, watched glass pop, watched David’s greyhound beauty curl and brown.

  “A entire country’s Inner Glow is … doused, and for what? some tramp golddigger with a butt like a boy’s,” said Lolly. We’d never connected the name Palais with Loll’s interest in her Crown Prince. But not a week later she had the sign changed. Reduced to just “Falls’ Beauty and Inner Glow Headquarters.” You could tell some dream had died.

  So on my visit that day, before England changed hands, when Le Palais still had its name, Loll was humming the Princely song, squinting in her Lucky’s back-smoke, and passing along less international trashy news. Was then that strong fingers touched my scalp’s worst knot and I, though I’d vowed not to, flinched. Couldn’t help it. This came during the brief brief period when Cap was playing out his Hit Parade of Battles on my youngish noggin. Loll’s smart fingers with their red talons right off found the biggest bump. Fingers skirted it like magic, not missing a beat in her tale of misplaced North Carolina highway funds and a certain lieutenant governor’s love-nest casino in the nearby countryside.

  There might have been ten other women in the sixteen square feet of the Palais, tucked under industrial-size blowers and soaking in some necessary cream or shellac dedicated to the torturing to the surface of Inner Glow. Some such glow rested stubbornly farther in than others, and I placed mine among the deep-seated problem glows. But even with this high-octane gossip, and even considering close quarters, not one soul ever knew that Loll was working around a Asia Minor relief map conked on my head. Fingertips treated my each welt like secret royalty.

  Chattering, she quick gets me in pin curls to hide the goose eggs. Before she whips my bib off I feel Loll do some serious backcombing of my thinning hair. And all the while, she’s scurrying from other head to other head. Wouldn’t hire no assistant. One queen per Palais, but a cross one: “Estelle, I swear to God, look at you. Your moisturizer has clogged, now didn’t I tell you to call me when it clabbered up on you, honey? Well, does that look clogged or clogged? Now wake up and put down that back issue of Liberty. Your glow’ll just stay inner without some cooperation here. I want you attractive at the Daughters of the Confederacy Antebellum Belle Bash, but do you, Estelle? All right then!”

  And those many years, Lolly told nobody. She never blamed me for the welts and bruises. (Blamed him, I mean, blamed him.)

  3

  TIMES, while ironing, I’d find myself haunted. The people I stood recalling weren’t any souls I’d ever seen alive. I only knew them through a grown civic leader who’d been a soldier, aged thirteen, and he only knew these three from having killed them.

  I stood dousing a terry-cloth middy belonging to Louisa and I was picturing a man shot while smoking a pipe. (I had no other info on him!) Trying to imagine his features, I’d be hoping to apologize. Sometimes my husband’s curtness hurt locals’ feelings, and I would then go over at a gathering and pay folks a little extra attention. I would be making up for what he’d done, a little social slight he had but half intended, child. And, like that, while ironing or shopping—these three victims would sweep into my head, good shirts hanging drying on one line. I soon wondered who they were to me, and how sick I was to feel accountable, say, to the Yankee boy who trusted a Reb with his heirloom watch? I told myself that if I ever had to kill somebody, well, I wouldn’t, couldn’t. I’d die first. And even if I did—how would I then walk around eating snacks and taking catnaps? Life would not allow a moral murderer her everyday joys and pleasures. The ghost of who you plugged would be there like state and federal sales tax on niceties great and minor. And so I paid secret tariffs—forty-odd years’ worth—to the puzzled spirits of three strangers my boy-hubby’d slaughtered. It seemed a duty—as I ironed—but, too, I got half used to their being there, like the sound of water boiling just across my kitchen. I became their protector, their volunteer Madonna on a real real smalltime level. This might sound odd, child, but, over the years, so upset was I by the idea of murder, of his doing them in (even if he had to), I signed on as their loyal representative. They swarmed in—faint as steam but at least that real. They each became my silent partner, okay company.

  I slowly knew: I had willingly become the mother of the men my husband killed.

  4

  WELL, at Raleigh, Cap found he could now act ceremonial and bossy as possible, he would finally get away with it forever. See, by this time, many soldiers who’d once doubted his war record, they had aged past life’s more lucid parts. Half had one mental foot already in the vegetable patch. Their tempers improved.

  They’d been full grown during our terrible Rebellion. Him? he was just a shaky sliver of a child. But none of them elders now recalled Cap’s tender age back then. At the last reunion six years back, doubters had made comments. Now men believed Cap looked so strong because of what a rough, exceptional soldier he’d once made. Older fellows still recalled the Marsden family name, still considered Captain’s mother the Tidewater’s ongoing finest-looking woman. They forgot how she’d got burned, and how—after years of living under veils and clutching teacups through flamish nightmares, after living back of drapes to hide scars—the poor thing died, Spode in hand, her last words, whispered toward what she imagined were still more gentlemen callers, “Tell … them … I’m … out.”

  But there in Raleigh, milling around, waiting for Fort Bragg’s spiffy marching band to arrive by bus, Cap got grilled by his momma’s last living senile admirers. “She’s doing exceptionally well, considering,” Marsden valiantly lied to the valiant boys in moth-eaten gray. Cap didn’t want to spoil their final parade.

  “High-flung as ever, I guess? A handful, our Lady is, but Lord such skin.”

  “I’m sure, if she were present, my mother’d ask to be remembered to you.”

  “Well, well. Same back. Recalls me, does she? Oh, I’m no fool, I know I was but one of many. Not like our ‘Lady’ is … one of a kind. Now she can flat-out flirt.” They sighed in their wheelchairs. Behind them, talking at each other about more recent topics, were young black men hired to push these geezers along festooned Hillsborough Street (the black helpers discussed not no mealy has-been war, but Last Night).

  The veterans wheeled with Confed flags as lap robes, they had perfect memories for every little thing but what’d happened these last fifty crowding years.

  (Dear God, never let me lose my marbles—all I’ve got—but I ain’t complaining.)

  Captain Wm. More Marsden let hisself be liberally photographed and admired before the parade moved. His crew of D o Cs still worked on him like he was a whole Rose Bowl float, them his keyed-up florists. I understand some eyeliner was used, but I didn’t like to say nothing too critical at the time.—A photographer from Liberty come up and snapped him. There he stood, one fist delved into the tunic of a uniform that had about as much to do with his skinny wartime self as Hollywood California did The Holy Lands. My man posed, with wheelchairs being background to prove he won’t yet in one.

  Pearl-gray outfit, feathered hat, white gloves I’d scrubbed myself by wearing each one while I bleached and scoured the thing on my own burned hand, cock-spur cut still stingsome. The man answered only direct questions Liberty asked but otherwise never opened his mouth. Soon, everybody present accepted as how Marsden had once god-Blessed the great Lee’s every sneeze.

  Our dashing lieutenant governor was photographed smiling, slapping Captain on the back, inviting him to a floating poker game, after. Our Herald Traveler did a full page of Parade Pix. The local chapter of D of Cs made sure. I studied the
fleet of wicker wheelchairs, old-timers waving out at the crowd, what vets still had use of their arms. Time had paralyzed several, and yet their eyes still could chop side to side, self-styled 20/20 salutes, poor things. But my man was the only one that later got showed in Liberty, worldwide.

  REMEMBER “Red,” our Tailor of Genius? He was fifty-some when, around this time, Wong Chow died downtown at his solitary Singer. Must’ve happened sudden, he stitched a seam across two fingers, joining them to the oldest Lucas girl’s white satin wedding dress. Huge funeral “Riceyman” had. Preacher praised him, “Knew what a day’s work meant.” Under the shop’s floorboard, eight thousand hard-earned dollars was found squirreled. Ignoring foreign addresses among his things, our Town Council voted: the money should go to keep our public library open longer hours on the weekends forever.

  MYSELF, I was home in Falls with the kids, four head colds and the twins had fallen from the side-yard swing trying to get a neighbor’s collie up onto it. I told them not to. Then our first household case of measles. Me up and down them stairs—not yet old but feeling I deserved a flag and lap robe myself, and a wheelchair (which I now rate, you notice). A two-story house with that many children, I deserved a elevator chair on wheels with wings. But also, after the Raleigh vets’ march, I felt proud of him, and that’s a fact. In downtown stores, people kept coming up to me.

  One month after the parade, there he was in Liberty, on newsstands worldwide, plus the one at Lucas’ Ail-Round—Captain hogging a whole page and looking fierce and fatal and content as God hisself on wartime R and R.

  When that issue come out, our house was all loud joy. We received two casseroles, and without even a death or injury to any of us personally! Baby, who proved nimble early with our mother tongue, noticed the occasions when such dishes usually turned up. She dubbed such donated casseroles “Disasteroles.” We all sat stunned at supper, Cap too, amazed how apt it was—how bright she’d have to keep on being all her life to stay abreast of her own starter wit! She pretty much did, too.

  The magazine got so many letters, they wrote us saying it’d be nice to do a feature article “on what we hear is your surprisingly large and surprisingly youthful family, sir.”

  Cap set a date and, two weeks later, two days before Liberty’s cameras arrived to check up on my housekeeping for all of planet Earth to see, my hubby thought to tell me. Can you imagine? Is that even fair?

  Food and Rifles

  When goods increase, they are increased that eat them …

  —ECCLESIASTES 5:11

  BOYS LOVE GUNS. Dads, being both ex-boys and members of the NRA, encourage this. Me, I watch from outside and wring my hands and hope it’s all a phase every man on earth’ll outgrow in time to save theirselves and us. I mean the rest of us at our sinks and calendars and chores—us, trying not to listen for the crack of weapons from nearby woods, trying not to expect open season and the sky on fire.

  Meaning: Back then, my oldest son, Ned, was about to turn twelve. This meant his poppa planned to take him hunting soon. A rite—blood rite. Ned’s older sister I cornered for a warning talk concerning womanhood, her own. I wouldn’t be a coward like my mother had. At table alone with me, Lou idly touched veins on the back of my hand, Lou whispered, “But, Momma? how will I know when it happens, the woman … hood?”

  “Blood … will … tell … us … that. Nature marks the occasion, see? Ain’t that something? They think of everything.” I felt sick, like I’d foisted the whole darn setup on her.

  I thought how my hubby would someday have the fun of taking Ned down to Duck, North Carolina, to shoot mallard blood from out of a whole migrating skyful. Heaps more glamorous than living like Louisa, scanning the comings and goings of her own plump stay-at-home body. But then, darling, like I said: the mystery with us and fairness stays: how we ever came to so steadily expect it. Maybe we’re all banished, at birth, from some dim land of perfect decency, maybe our hopes for it are just homesickness for that first remembered justice?

  “I will not permit your taking our Ned to no Outer Banks in the company of professional bourbon drinkers whose main joy is not shaving for three days straight. Most come home looking worse than what they bagged. Ned’s a bit nervous, and the sounds of guns won’t help. You want meat? I’ll go buy some from Luke Lucas’. These ducks you bring back have so much shot in them, it’s like eating fricasseed tooth fillings. Leave Ned be, Cap. Leave me one. You get your way so often, sir. Do me this one favor, please.”

  Ned hated hearing me call him “nervous,” a mistake. This was during another lovely evening meal—peace, communion, and good digestion. Ned claimed he got to choose what he liked doing: he’d soon go twelve. Captain said our lieutenant governor would be among the hunters. “Imagine a lad firing his first shot in the presence of the North State’s second-in-command. Might almost constitute a civics lesson.”

  “Don’t push this,” I said, just as the twins raised their hands to contribute. I welcomed a change. “Yes, petnesses, what’s on your mind?”

  “Baby just called us a wiener-head.”

  “I did not, called you ‘Hot-Dog Breath’ but not ‘Wiener-Head,’ because that’d be … crude.”

  “When can I, Poppa, ‘fire my first shot,’ hunh?”

  “In time,” Cap answered, eyeing me. “More corn, Lucille? Ned, we will bring her around. I plan to personally prove what an education this outing’s going to be. Ducks, natural history, elected official, a motorcade with State Police to lead it.”

  Says I, “Waste of taxpayers’ money, ask me. Anyhow, it’s final. He goes over my dead body.”

  “So, is that the way you want it?—Just joking. You can joke constantly, can’t I? Relax, voice of doom. Further corn anybody? Your mother’s done a fine job here on this corn.”

  “Please pass the Wiener-Heads.”

  “Enough,” my fingers snap. “Besides, he’s young for his age.”

  Ned threw the saltcellar my way. I couldn’t blame him basically. Nobody likes being discussed like they’re missing.

  “Twelve’s not young,” my husband said. “You know where I was at twelve?”

  “No, remind me.” I stooped to irony.

  “It’s high time Ned learned a few things. Time the lad got …”

  “‘Broke in’? Kind of ‘broke in’? Where have I heard that before?”

  Captain excused hisself to go back downtown to work at 6 p.m.

  “You hate fun,” Ned sputtered at me. “You want to keep me safe in some house all day with girls.”

  Louisa lowered her eyes and Ned told her he was sorry but she knew what he meant. “Men have the fun. I can’t be safe forever, Momma. I’m twelllve.”

  I looked at him—how reasonable and sharp he sounded. How clear and fair a face. What a shrew I was, driving my old man from this house at night.

  “I’m trying to save you, son. Don’t hate me for that, please.”

  Ned sat there behind those long lashes that looked stowed nightly in tailor-built humidors. For Ned, eyes won’t just something to look out of—they made surfaces to rest behind. We stared at each other and he said, “Be excused?” rising, tossing down his napkin. “Wiener breath,” one twin remarked. “Breath wiener,” come the other’s reply. Nobody laughed.

  “CASTALIA time!” I hollered minutes later for a change of pace. Some kids cheered. We would head downhill to re-view Cassie’s mink ranch and neighborhood rec center. Ned said he’d stay home with Water Fowl of Our North America. Said they showed you birds flying in black outline so you’d know which to aim for.

  I started to joke aloud: Maybe baby ducks had library albums showing boys like him, only pictured from on high—so ducks’d know to flap away quick? But I let it rest. My will to have the sharp last word—my desire to ofttimes be proved right—it made me harder to be near, both as mother and wife. Everything that now makes me a sometimes-okay talker with strangers, that could turn me to ground glass around the house. And, look here, it’s a weakness I’ve admi
tted, right? Okay, then.

  Though the temperature stayed near seventy, Cassie barrels out to greet us ridged inside her ripe brown mink. The coat now struck Castalia mid-thigh, new pelts added along the bottom one at a time, like some Sunday-school perfect-attendance pin accumulating your prestige and longevity at once. The collar arched high as Elizabeth I’s, framing Cassie’s noble neck, backing her up.

  Her hair tonight was all braided corn rows—glistening with pricey pomade. Like us, she had no phone—so all my visits (trailing my kids and their stray pals) were unannounced and more a pleasure for that. Castalia was, like me, a stay-at-home. Our usual problem was the swallowing of pride it took to walk ten long blocks to one another’s house.

  She showed us how pit bulls had been disrupting her minks’ needed beauty sleep. She pointed near front porch steps where she kept her sledgehammers. Cas explained how satisfying it’d felt last night when this particular hammerhead met bulldog teeth trying and pry through the mesh of her chicken wire. Minks, saved, hissed in cedar breeding boxes. The bulldog had staggered home, head dented but barely fazed. “You gots to hand it to them,” Cas respected any enemy’s true merit—even when a sledgehammer was needed to fully investigate it.

  Black friends visiting her, they shyly took off at the sight of white us, me of course protesting. Cassie poured iced tea, using mason jars for glasses. My kids had tried this at home but uphill it looked silly, here it seemed a fine idea. Once we settled in a bright red kitchen that made up most of Cassie’s home, Baby stepped toward the great fur wrap our hostess wore. “Can I, Cas?” Baby would then point to a pelt. Castalia, seated, eyes closed—feeling Baby’s finger prod—announced the name of each pelt’s contributor. “Dixie. Dixie Too, that’s Dixie daughter. Chenille. Flyboy. Compote. Max. Foxy. Tater. Toothy. Back to Chenille again—you a sly one, ain’t you, Baby?”