Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  “Someday, my snakebit left palm say by tingling like some third eye trying and rise up like a boil and look right out my bony wrist, this boat going to cease it wicked rocking. True. We gone quit smelling how they onetime hauled fish down in here. Finally our noses’ll tell us Land Again! Bleaches will toss open both them wide doors, gone sclump down, all sorry-acting. Yeah. I figures that, waiting on us up there—our honor guard and help—we gone find the selfsame holy sun. We the only ones knows how to use the sun proper. These un-colors, why them it mostly hurts. They dead to know why our women be so beautiful, our men so strong, how come our children act so smart and bold? They flat palpitating to understand. Poor things, gone needs a pile of help. I don’t likes to say they slow but I reckon that poor monkey up yonder would be better at sailing this thing. Sad part, how hard they try and look in charge. You notice? that’s what they seems to care about the most! Poor creatures so confused. That where us comes in. We gots to let them finally see the folly of this owning/grabbing mess. They figures that anything or anybody they likes (and has a boat big enough to tote away) be theirs.”

  We all set here listening, Lady. We hear Miss Aunt’s chains clinking, ironbound hands prodding some ouch plowed deep into her left side: “My scar, bunchy far in, twining with a nerve wit all it own, say: Once us on they shores, we gone see other whitenesses bow down and smile. This proves they know what-all luck they had in finding us wizard ones come clear cross Tears to teach them right. Bleachnesses is bringing us to finish off they own missing gredients. They got a big tribe—be like a pot full of village food—I talking: mealy, pinky, blank. They knows it ain’t too tasty. They done zigzagged everywhere seeking spices/flavoring/hot stuff what’ll put some lively bite into they paste. We the dark and quickening herbals they sought.—Right now, blood kin, these chains do hurt, unh-uhnh, they smarts for old me, too, but the ones sailing up in daylight, they keeps dancing and singing cause they know how good they done by finding us. Oh, yes, they gone be rewarded mighty rich for turning us ones up. I mean, don’t we be famous? After all, childrens mine, ain’t we ‘The Tribe That Answers’?”

  Everybody got pent all up so still. One person commenced crying in a ordered kind of gulp. Somebody that glad to finally know the reason for this pain we going through. A few bold aunts start axting Reba more, to clear things up. But right off we mostly blieved what Aunt just say. It help us to. Blieve.

  Patient as anything, old Reba croak-spill answers. She never have acted more willing to prove she our blood own. Reba touch another tender underrib spot, “Say here, one reason them bird-beaks behave so lazy bout hurting us: so much hurts them. They figures the world’s gots to feel that bad. Won’t trust what fails to pain/bind/cut them some. Maybe they ashamed all the time, be why they hide theyselves in leg and arm hammocks? Might be part of they religion, staying dammed all up with fears. Us got our healthy river gods, bird and fish and mud gods. (Like your King say, they probably just has sky ones.) They very eyes show it. Sky gods? Can’t nobody fly up to no sky. Be nothing to touch. No wonder they looks so miserable! Still, that why they sought us Answerers out, to show them how. They after some holy help.”

  Somebody axted bout the food part. If us was such a find, why don’t they feed us proper? She say, “Bleaches soon gone prepare a long feast. They bout to let us up into the sun, they gone give us more real eatings than our whole hungry home tribe could down. I see this picture, starting like a spiderweb pult out my thumb joint and leading to the base part of my skull. We soon be sitting on thrones in a huge room. We all feel proudened on a high stage. I sees many Blanks come to study what it mean to be a person that ain’t ashame of knowing all bout color and the sun, facts of they own body. Spirit don’t dwell up in no cold sky but right much nearer, it right here bodily beating plain as the million drums them poor Blanks ain’t yet discovered.—We going to answer mist men with all us knows that’s solid, color. Just be our leading family duty to. They the un-world, the not-yets, pitiful spongy like shelled pink crayfish. Our best luck gone come this way: teaching through example. Secret is—they needs us and they leastways smart enough to know it.”

  Then Reba rock rearwards among chains, feebled by the long tell, her voice, dry as years, ashed back to a old woman’s. “You been listening?”

  Us answer in no words, just low, meant sounds.

  “You blieve Reba’s hurts been spout/fountaining what’s least partway true?”

  Again our answering grunts make a group Yessing.

  Were then, from her quiet place, Reba give low “huck, huckle” sounds. First us think she got some food caught in she throat—but ain’t no food down here. Then we know, pleased, she’d started laughing. Reba just laugh and ackle. Seem like she got tickled, couldn’t hold nothing back. Health and un-health rubbed and kindled in her, side by side, on right good rattling terms.

  “Ain’t it something?” she axted, not axting. “Ain’t that great white shoreline going to be a sight? No wonder our river enemies weept and carried on so bad. They wisht it was them. We been let to come here apurpose. And ain’t we going to do the un-ones up top a world of good? Putting tints onto great waiting blanknesses. You each go in on you best self, you choose one color and one law to tell out first. Get both ready. And, listen, you’d best to keep it simple.—Prepare you answers, Answerers.”

  (If we hailed from a land where one leaf could grow wide as your front double doors, just think how huge/to/beautiful our transplant answers might could bloom!)

  And so, yet in the limits of chains, we pick which color—of all the pretty tones on earth (beautiful and homey)—we plans and slap up earliest. What in our way of looking at the earth, should each/us speak the first? Some folks nested here in links wonder if—once we does teach blanknesses, once them starts to knowing rules, once us makes them become more human and upright animals—then can us head back where we come from? Reba say out, “No. That part over, friends. We this now.”

  “Oh,” the sassy princess answer for all.

  My kinfolks stays locked down here in dark, and yet we each sat deciding how to rule the very rightest. What would you first tell?

  Though many arms sure smart and though our legs is cut right deep and though we a-laying in floating personal messes—all my kin yet starts picking what deeds want speaking first, then second (second’s right important, too). How do you coach chain lovers in proper ways to rule, to carve they art and live a life where shame and sin and joyless work ain’t yet got barb hooks into every single soul?

  You could hear folks’ chains being somewhat neatened now. Like for inspection. Like we soon gone be led up onto deck to view the anything-possible white village Reba promised. We best start practicing for how to act. Down here, we got to show no pain, we best give lessons to the very dark, these chains, and each other. Mostly each other. For this great task, we gone need our all-tribe strength.

  Reba’d helped us understand how water-faces be so ignorant. And we commencing to change our feelings towards them. Not to loving them, no, but at least offering the pity you shows animals, even animals what’ll turn on you, ma’am, the flesh-eating kind. We is the King’s family, after all. Patience with risky fools stays part of being at the center of a setup. “We will do right.” In the dark, our heads rise, like Reba say. In the dim gut of a boat, we knows that—though rude whitenesses got it all wrong—this trip is yet a clumsy try at invitation. So, now us royals has got a new un-leisure job. May be our hardest yet. But, yeah, we will teach. We gone try and start a colony of courtesy, of answering river calm.

  Were weeks of days then a new half-week gone (try like you will, you flat lose count). Us yet waits, hoping only to live long enough to go on expecting deliverance. Folks wants a chance to say first speeches in the big promised tooth-white court. Eight my kinfolks died. Of fear, hunger, from age, of this water prison’s excess strangeness. Fifty-one had started. Take away the one uncle louded to death within sight of home, plus two cousins what perished from first scare of mo
nster seeing. We down to forty-eight and now subtrack these other eight new dead, make forty. Should we count the three maids took up on deck for purposes of purposes—girls not heard scampering for days? Three more equals thirty-seven but, no, let’s say the three maids yet lives. So we just down to forty. Eight bodies got toted out, us yelling they names, announcing who they be to The Country Made of the Tears of Something Even Bigger. Us hears kin splash.

  The Tears be where all rivers go to die. And maybe all us, too. Rivers headed to form this, just like we is washing to our next level and test—this training-up-right of a animal race toward kinder natural thinking.

  “But,” the sassy princess call, not honoring Auntie’s tiredness for a single second’s pausement, “how come one river’s sweet water, when it meet another’s bound-to-heaven drinking water, go so salt, turn straight to tears? Why, hunh? Guesswork long been my secret hobby.—So how come, Auntie?”

  “That part,” Reba go, laughing till a slow geyser of cough done hook-leap all up out she, scarring air. “That part,” Reba scrap for breath (chains clashing while she feel her boils, cuts, bunions), “I ain’t been lucky enough to’ve got hurt in the right place so’s I’d know. Yet. But, sassy, I checking. I can’t keeps my hands off me.”

  Folks chuckle at a newfound modesty what’d overtook our old-time crab woman. Odd, sometimes seem like all Reba’s skills if ladled into a married-man warrior would’ve made him King of Kings for sure, and since the age of twelve. But them same gifts, sewed up in a wither-spinster and un-wife, mean she been, for life, called Witch.

  Later, when more strength seep back, folks put harder questions to the sadder parts of Aunt’s nicked body. We hear irons’ slow shift. For us, Reba woman stir up all them embers hid under her ashy scars. You wakes a pain to axt a one-word question, you can’t just hammock-rock it back to sleep for another twelve years’ snooze. Fearless for us, Reba. Auntie now admit she ain’t ever had a better bunch of painting-pains to read, never. Finally out his corner, the King speaks one home word to put her back in place … our word for “Too Much of a Good Thing.”

  A man, he feeling scared of all the tribe notice freed toward Reba, scared she’d took over most complete. King go, “Seem like the best sign would be: You didn’t have not one single ache to read, Respected Aunt.”

  Reba never even bother answering. Our tribe elders, in chains, done noticed the King’s selfish tone. They heared him trying and keep Reba’s full truth from us, and only out of personal vanity. Then Daddy King heself, ashamed, listening at how he sound, knowing he bout to be scolded by the council/elders—say, “I sorry.” Be the first time we done ever heared He Majesty admit that. And—to give you some idea how Reba’d took over: Didn’t nobody marvel for more than a second on hearing He High-Up pologize like any hangdog mortal. Her spell were already that fixed upon us, Mistress mine. All evening, she stay hush till her giggle led down to the up-pull of one deep cough. In the slow-coming stillness afterwards, Reba found enough oddment air to sigh over at us: “Oh, soon, soon.”

  MOST others they now trying and sleep. Wee bit later, sassy princess call, shy then not so shy, “Uh-oh, I just heared what I thought was gone for good. Know how we been blieving that The Noise You Couldn’t Name come out the center of our jungle? riding from some hollow tree or whistling cave what led down to the Nother World? Well, now, I figure, couldn’t be, cause … uh-oh, right here, me, I just heared it.” She grown uneasy, acting not much like her sassy self.

  Reba, bent into a black crescent resting on one side, Reba go, “Tell.”

  “When we been scared,” the girl admit, “it grown real still, the sound. It gone and hid. Now us is calmer cause of Auntie and … listen. Friends. It back. Eavesdrop on youselves. Each one what’s still awake, you try. Might could be, I out my mind.—You tell me. I gone believe you.”

  A smoothening happen, listeners concentrating so.

  “Well? Does you? Hear?”

  The Sound Us Couldn’t Name. Now we down here in dark—unorchided, unsunned—folks found, plain, that all along it ain’t been coming from the jungle, it mostly been us breathing. It the ear blood living in you hearing, and when no listening work be required, just playing house, and having servant fun and trying not to break nothing.

  We once figured such sound rolled to us from miles out of our land. But all the while it just been sawing/hushed inside our throats, our lungs, and home-owned mouths. It our own bodies’ river-drums answering others’, staying brave.

  Down here, you felt now others listening so hard. That added another purring noisement.

  “All I hears,” goes one cousin, “be Uncle Thus-and-So’s hoggish snoring!”

  But slow, come nodding, general muttering. “The Sound You Couldn’t Name?” princess axted. “Well, look, I can. Name. It just us. We ain’t so lost as us done felt. We brung it. They’s more us here than we done guessed or knowed. We now our own main home. Us, bodily.”

  LADY, might I bust in here and speak right frank? You better nod Yes.

  All these years you figured you the lucky one. But, Mrs. L. E. Marsden, Jr., but that ain’t the full way true. You hear those scraping sounds cross you marble foyer downstairs? Them’s the left-here slaves saving all you fine picture portraits and settees from out the seven parlors. Well, don’t get too misty-eyed bout it, Lady Ladyfinger. Slaves ain’t saving them for you.

  You know something? After all us clears out (us what didn’t have no choice but to act loyal these long years), when us stops cooking, and sets down the long mending, quits that hardest chore—listening at you chatter-birding all day (the Sound Couldn’t Nobody Miss)—why then, Lady mine, you gone crave us lots more than we does you. They’s some sweet revenge in knowing that. Don’t set there shaking you semi-pretty head No. It flat True.

  All these years, once the long day finally over, we could all go stretch out in the crowded quarter. We done had each other for complaining to. But you? You couldn’t complain bout slaves except to slaves. You poor pale thing weighing not much more than a skinned rabbit, you been left upstairs, blinking in the dark of three floors pretty as a funeral home. You been the only live thing left here nights. Hiding in yonder ivory four-poster tall as a ship what needs a gangplank to help you crawl to sleep. You done dwelt alone since you got widowed, then young Master Willie left you here by heading off to war. He march north to keep me down here at The Lilacs doing windows. They a hundred and seventeen windows in this barn and, by now, Castalia, she know every one by heart.

  Facts be coming down on your fair head, don’t they, Beauty Nap? Is too. You got ten, eleven minutes, most. Castalia would feel sorry for you if Castalia could. Castalia might be sadder now if you’d let her feel a wee bit sadder for you—day by day—all along. Secret is, You only had to axted! I were right here, won’t I?

  Oh, I plans to go on storying while hand-and-knees polishing the rest this bedroom’s flooring. And you, stay cross-wristing it up and down you white piano there. (I never did understand why come you painted that fine ebony thing flat white to match this bedroom’s color. White ain’t even a color, Mrs. Decorator, or ain’t you heard? Black be the gathering of all tribes of every color in the world. White the lack of even one! Black be total Tribal. White: alone off by itself. So when Castalia say she’s colored, she means all-colored with every color, all!) Play on. Keep them boneless-looking fingers working good. You soon gone need them for something other than ebony/ivory stole out of Africa. Like what? Like for maybe hoeing round you own okra and field peas. In minutes flat, you gone look up, you gone really finally need Castalia. She be gone.

  ABOVE

  BUT, till then. That same night us heared shouts, another boat seem to draw alongside. First we figured it was the pirate Bleaches that’d learnt bout us—valuable cargo—come for to kidnap us off kidnappers.

  Next morning, hatches done flop open nearbout blinding us with a full dose of regular day. That’s what punishment can do—turn what you wants most into something that’ll
hurt you when first you gets it. Then your jailer can say, “See, you didn’t really want that. Look at you, all fally down. I knows best.” Darkness, chains, un-food, un-drink, un-dignity of bobbling in you bits and juices, it had turnt us weak and sun-spooked as them pale things what done did it. We finally sees, through shielding fingers, plain up in air (the sky!), sees framed by ship’s salt timbers white birds, too bright to watch for long. Picture them. They keeps circling high up yonder, letting out twisty cries like the souls of lost children. They sobbing, “Go back. Not now. Head off. Hey off, hey off.” Birds keep swinging over, trying to peek down in on us—the dark guests needed by a spirit-starved land.

  Sailors pulled us up, our legs too out/practice for working good. It hurt you feelings, being so floppy and for all to see. Still, remembering Reba’s words, our necks done managed to pitch upright. Maybe our knees won’t ready to lock in place, but jaws lifted, tribe eyes did fight to stay proud-open.

  Reba got lugged up last, too worn down for taking a single step, maybe too pleased. They left her famous walking stick below, the exclamation gone and just one old rubber question mark now glomped on deck. Crouping, Aunt keep checking all round, eyes full of water from hacking so. But even while coughing, Reba signs towards salt water. And what do us see down there? Riding them Tears, green leaves bobbing big as life, chips of barky tree limbs go drifty past. Then her find sufficient air to boss us, “Somebody young, look to all sides, does you spot it? Anybody spy a white village? Is they land?” Our second-from-youngest semi-prince soon jump up and down, he pointing, “There, what Auntie say, it lined up over there.” Reba, level with the deck, only nods the once, grinning her crixcrossed squint, “Which way?” Her eyesight been so good till now. Sad to know it leaving her, us look at each other. Then we just aim her shrunk body in the right direction for enjoying the clay-and-greenery smell at least.