“Not really,” says she. “Thank you.”
“What?” Baby slaps tabletop. “You all talk about Baby and talk about Baby. Tell.”
I can only offer her my elbow to hold—I’ve got to keep this ring hand in the middle. I aim my light just so and our dining room is a stained-glass window, chicken-poxed with happy tints. Such a noisy excellent madhouse we’ve got going here.
That yellow near one wall sconce, it’s the exact farewell yellow of a healing bruise. And on the tinfoil of a place-card gem, coppery light flips itself to crib-quilt pink then turncoats to the greenery of seaweed, gills. Oh, sixty shades of blue. And, as I watch, my children—skipping through these broken plates of churchy light—change, bit by inch, into the silly saints. One diamond lays a million checkmarks on us all.
NOW THAT’S over except the recollecting. Time has come and turned me this hickory-nut brown. Not that I was ever no front-page beauty—my face was Section C at best. Time’s made a oversight in leaving me propped up here but, oh, it’ll be back. Maybe a person is “best if used before …” but I’m still enjoying full sunlight and your softer foods.
Even so, some nights in this place, sleep gets real hard. The world’s grown noisier—these roars and booms and sirens you can’t trace or figure. (Not like Falls then, when every slammed door was on a first-name basis with you.) Nowadays you hear our new aeroport, and you were never ever on a plane. You lay in a bed that, within two days of your dying, will be another person’s bed. You hear the world’s static a-hissing and spitting right outside your window. You don’t even need a wireless set to pick it up. Wired, you are one!—A person rests less and less at my age. It’s one gentle way they get you ready. Finally you’ve grown so homesick for quiet and a good night’s sleep—you’ll throw yourself at Eternity just to enjoy them first eight restful hours of it.
Sometimes, trying to doze, that ring story will come back on me, like a rich food. Some nights, half asleep, I feel I’ve done become the thing. I tell myself: It’s always been like that for me, lost and found. “We’ll see.” Maybe I’m a permanent stone washing through some darkness? But, to me, the blackness itself seems familiar, kind of personal—like it’s the shadow zipped inside one of my babies. Seems like I helped to start the darkness where I’ll end. I’m one of its mothers, anyhow.—Other nights, I get to be a baby. But some item that’s supposed to be real valuable (the world) has turned into a fishhook, has snagged—caught and killing—somewhere deep in me.
Now I have time for thinking up such silliness. Which is good.
NOT TWO days ago, I was laying here at 10 a.m. full of French toast, recalling what the World Book said way back when: about the diamond-cutting district in Amsterdam, which is Holland. Come shop’s closing time, the boss is naturally scared he’ll throw out some lost chip of preciousness. So he makes the evening cleaning ladies do this: They dump all their sweepings into a open metal pot. They set such gunk afire. Flames take care of paper scraps, burn the usual lint, scorch what threads and nameless crud will sift into corners of any busy place by workday’s end. Then, all the cleaning lady does, see, she pokes through them ashes. And sometimes—sure enough—there, still safe among black crackling soot, she’ll find a few beautiful lost stones—blue-white brilliants—too pure to let fire bother them, gems stronger than the earth’s best damage.
Honey, I think: My life has been like this—the frying off of extras. And whatever is left, whatever still shines in the hand—why, that’s what I call Mine, darling. Them’s the keepers.
I LOVED my children. My children are all gone.
I loved my ring. Here … look … I still have it.
Music Changes During War
Sing unto him a new song. Play skilfully with a loud noise.
—PSALM 33:3
HERE’S THE LAST of his better tales:
Once, in a time of smoky war on a cliff with the clearest of Virginia river views, there lived a peaceable young rich girl—musical and plain.
Virgin-ia. The commonwealth was named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
Given the personal talent and hygiene of our last tale’s heroine—young Miss Randolph sure deserved to be her poppa’s dream of a youngest child. Three roustabout blond older brothers gently teased baby sis, their worthy favorite. Unison Randolph turned fifteen the day her father and brothers rode from the plantation house to war. Unison and her mother stood on the portico waving lace as big as flags.
In Virginia at this time, child, lace sort of was … a flag, to save.
Men left girl and mother to tend the place and mind the family name. Off gents trotted toward General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Unison was not fifteen long when word arrived: She now had but one relative left living, Momma. These things happened—especially in Virginia ’61–’65. Unison’s poppa had been killed outright by a cannon volley that’d also claimed his beloved Arabian horse. Her eldest brother, a strong swimmer, drowned under strange conditions during a river crossing. The other two were shot within three days of each other while foraging in different parts of North Carolina’s Piedmont.
Six months later, a division of Southerners chose to encamp around her big house and across family acreage. Till now, the ladies Randolph had turned their grief toward good works amongst local sharecroppers and the few blacks who’d not run off. Unison endured on the comforts of her expert keyboard playing, she lived with her mother’s quiet patriotic woes. Most every night, skinny Unison took to her huge four-poster, where—under quilts, so as not to bother Momma—the child cried, saying names of her three older brothers over and over again, “Edmund, Billy, Keane, Edmund, Billy, Keane.” Maybe this might keep her favorite boys real? Maybe this would restore them, blond and fresh-mouthed, to the world? Brothers had all been flirts and hell-raisers, brilliant horsemen and big spenders. How she missed their constant pointless noise.
With a division of fellow Rebs bivouacked near the mansion, two grieving ladies had sudden company, assured work. Oh, to be needed again. The yard and acreage sounded and smelled once more of men. Young Unison could stand on the veranda and stare at a zone dusty from ridden beasts, prickly with tent tops. She could hear a gritty raucous clanking she connected with hardware and with the weapon-prone male of the species. A graceless sound, brutal, smacking more of physics, less of niceties—but even to Unison’s trained musician’s ear, it had a order, child. She noted each passing gray uniform’s rips and missing brass buttons. Unison so longed to act kindly towards every Rebel present, even the enlisted ones. She succeeded—faithful listener, as we soon will see—little Unison Randolph oh she succeeded all too well.
My husband was a groom then. Thirteen years of age, he’d been demoted from bugle boy. Being seriously tone-deaf proved something of a drawback. Your waking at five-thirty under a dew-sogged tarp is never easy … but when what’s waked you is flat then sharp every morning—it’ll wear on you, child.
But, by now, you, a veteran of the veteran’s veteran, know all this.
So … another billet was offered young Marsden. He got sent to help tend horses. What harm could he do there?
Will now lived stuck off with beasts at woods’ edge. Birds gathered to be near the oats. Willie liked that part. He liked birds. He was good at keeping horses well watered and nicely groomed, not that anybody noticed. Nights, he got to talking to his charges—he explained how his own people’s home stood near a river much like the Randolphs’ grand pile yonder. He described his favorite home spots for finding muskrats’ burrows. Will told horses about a nifty little home-woods cave that dripped steady as a mansion’s clocks’ll click. Horses absorbed his voice’s sound waves natural as couches will indoors—but remembered little, understanding little, being horses.
Will and others admired Unison Randolph, her kindnesses around camp. Sometimes she made cookies and distributed them by hand till she ran out. Some fellows saved the cookies, good luck, in their pockets.
A new lieutenant arrived in camp, his magnificent
bay wobbled under gear enough to equip a minor traveling circus. Lieutenant Prothero owned a three-paneled mirror—how it glinted during his gallant approach! It almost seemed that mirror was a kind of cannon: sunlight dragged to earth for purposes of warfare.
Lieutenant Prothero was handsome in a plump obvious way. You almost resented noticing that so fast, and of course, the splendid whiskers. He brought folding camp furniture made of ebony and sterling. Plus he traveled with his own portable potty seat to spare his visiting the common latrines. All these extras had arrived strapped onto the Lieutenant’s thoroughbred. The Morgan walker seemed to hate that. Who wouldn’t? The beast snorted as asthma sufferers’ll snort. This gelding boasted its own after-hours outfit—a tailor-made blanket stitched from the Fraser clan’s hunting plaid.
Prothero’s first night, he set up his looking glass. He got out two monogrammed solid-silver hairbrushes. The young Lieutenant kept four kinds of French perfume in squirt bottles for spraying during tense times onto warrior pressure points. Not even Miss Unison Randolph owned so many Europe scents.
Boy he rigged his three-part mirror with candles. This got others’ attention. His mirror, like music stands of the day, featured slots for tapers around its frame. Evening fell. The Lieutenant arranged his ebony camp chair, clamped on his pince-nez, set to combing his silver-blond whiskers, trimming sideburns. He did this in plain view of everybody. From a distant veranda, Unison Randolph and her sickly mother sat in rockers behind hand fans that fluttered just beneath uplifted chins. The fans slowed, ladies watched a man groom the way some touring actor in a sideshow might. What did it mean really?
A poker game in progress, other men gathered just opposite, near the campfire. They turned to study young Prothero, new here, exceedingly new here. He lounged at his makeshift table (the mounted platform of a rolling cannon). He was staring into hinged silver. Many times apiece, he combed his either platinum eyebrow.
It hurt your feelings, watching. You felt like an intruder, but shouldn’t he feel odd? When rowdy enlistees hollered certain wisecracks, the young officer absentmindedly waved them off. Salvador Magellan Smith, homely as ever, finally hollered, “See something you like, sir?”
Prothero called back, “I see three times more of it than anybody in this wilderland has any right to, thank you, soldier.” Then he made a show of jutting out his excellent profile and he groaned with seeming pleasure.
Well, men laughed. They more or less had to. When people joke about their little failings, they dare you to dislike these. Sal shook his homely head. “Boy’s handsome. But ain’t nobody that handsome.”
Who would complain about mirror gazing by a young man so seemingly lonely at the front? Who, except other lonely men here? Who but the surviving mother and sister of three boys and one older man, gents once maybe even better-looking than this dandy?
Prothero’s careful treatment of hisself seemed less sissified way out here. The care was so direct and simple. His perfumes, more a superstition than a comfort. Grooming came to seem a joyless maintenance on some large investment.
Passing Prothero’s mirrors, other fellows avoided viewing theirselves. If you’ve been living in open fields for two years straight—it’s better not to see the damage up close, all at once, and from three cruel sides, magnified.
THE YOUNG Charlestonian introduced hisself to everybody, twice. He asked for names and hometowns and you saw him memorizing these. Even Willie Marsden, Prothero’s assigned groom, seemed worth the Lieutenant’s notice. Prothero’s voice was smokesome, rich—sleek black like caviar. The new man walked in a rolling particular stride. He used a pince-nez fastened to his vest’s lowest button, held by a two-foot-long grosgrain cord. Prothero circulated behind solid handshakes, acting like some candidate overripe for office. He took time to ask his thin groom about the boy’s hometown and folks. When the Lieutenant found he knew a Charleston cousin of young Private Marsden, he showed the pip a new respect. Prothero remembered all that Willie told him. The Lieutenant loved hearing about Will’s tantrum-prone talcum-white mother. Prothero would wander from his mirrors out where horses were tied. While Willie curried the officer’s Morgan named Target, the Charlestonian asked to hear a certain tale again, again.
Young Willie enjoyed grooming Target—a creature russet, high-strung, and overpretty as Prothero hisself.
Unlike Yankees, who were issued their mounts, Confederate soldiers brought their own animals to war. Plugs, Arabians, swaybacks, mules—you can imagine: any Animal Army gets all kinds, too. I maybe said that.
My late husband considered Prothero’s steed to be the Thomas Jefferson of quadrupeds. Other beasts looked at Target as if into some candlelit mirror that showed them their own raw spots, swaybacks, flyspecks. They bit Target. The officer’s blooded Morgan was out of Upperville’s top-drawer studbook. Target had been overbred for peacetime. During war, what with so much noise and shouting and all, Willie claimed the creature seemed a pinched nerve, five-gaited. Sounds of shelling so scared the beast, it often shook. Instead of whinnying, Will heard the poor thing give off a kind of low humanish cough, “Ah-her, Ah-her.” Tied amongst grouchy quarter horses and stinky pack mules, Target seemed some visiting celebrity in its satin-lined plaid. Only when young Will commenced to brush and talk to the poor beast did its trembling ease some. For a few minutes at a stretch, it half forgot the war. But—like with soldiers—never for long, child.
Prothero had inherited a silver sword from his great-granddad. It’d been awarded for bravery by the great Washington hisself. It said so right on its scabbarb and Lieutenant Prothero, if asked, would show you. Others said that, out here, the Society boy’s oily cordial habits sure seemed wasted, kind of sad. “Way I figure,” one private remarked. “He can’t help it.”
Nobody liked him.
• • •
EVEN so, the Chaplain felt sure Prothero would become a favorite of the division’s present hostesses. Reverend set about arranging a fittingly formal first meeting with the Widow Randolph and her refined daughter. The Chaplain had retired from teaching classics at Chapel Hill. He was a walking bloodline studbook for the entire South—he had personally met the Lieutenant’s father when Prothero, Sr., was governor of South Carolina.
Unison Randolph and her mother issued officers a invitation to tea on Thursday. Told of this, Prothero smiled and spent extra time at his mirrors. For all his courtesy, something felt unfastened and wide open just under his grins and compliments and bows. Something comical in his confidence charmed you. To muddy soldiers, he identified nearby trees by their full Latin names. When one corporal said, “So what?” the Lieutenant grinned and shrugged. Prothero’s certainty seemed to take its own silliness into consideration and to feel even better for that. His nightly vigils at the looking glass told one and all, “I know that I risk seeming ridiculous.” It someway made him less so.
Two days before tea in the ladies Randolph’s west parlor, gossip followed: The Lieutenant had deeply miffed superior officers at his last post. Rumor didn’t yet say how. “Cowardice” seemed likely.
Unison Randolph was not glimpsed the full forty-eight hours before the officers’ tea. Maybe she was being mysterious for the Lieutenant of the mirrors. Maybe she was sewing herself a new black dress. Troops missed her.
Prothero had already heard much about the young heiress. How she reminded every single soldier of some one cherished person left at home. How eager she was to make all the fellows stationed here feel natural. Unison (it was a family name) showed officers no favoritism but circulated among enlisted men, asking after their well-being, remembering the names of their children, their hometowns. She wrote letters for the illiterate (there were many) and the wounded (there were many). She had a talent for cutting silhouettes from black paper. She did “sittings” of men who waited in line for hours, who then mailed likenesses home. Outlines were merciful in how they eliminated splotches, three-day beards, and the crow’s-feet even boys developed from living out of doors for years now
. Strange to see a hardened old soldier walking around with a weightless him-shaped piece of paper curling in one hardened hand. “Look, buddies—me, only little!” What gentleness we show our own images! Unison explained to some subjects: The very word “silhouette” had a curious history. It was the name of a stingy French Minister of Finance—a man so tightfisted that newspapers of the day showed him only in black Punch-and-Judy outline. His name became the name of this itself. Monsieur Silhouette. Unison smiled, her scissors creating a nose.
“You don’t say,” soldiers said. “Live and learn,” they said.
She was not beautiful. Her face was too oval and her hair—pulled back—could make the earnest head seem almost egglike outdoors at noon. Her hands might be beautiful but she was not. Unison Peyton Randolph carried herself with a quality of patriotic mourning that men found moving and familiar. Suffering, which breaks down some people’s bearing, makes others’ even grander, prouder. This is hard to explain, but the dignity of her public-spirited pain made the division see Miss Unison as more a man—less girlish. Made her more womanly—her good sense, the readiness to help, to chance being awkward in the service of a fine idea.—She inspired many sighs.
Unison sat inside the tent containing boys most newly dead. There she sketched portraits of the corpses stretched on cots. Other men looked in. They considered that this made a beautiful and strange picture. They considered Unison one brave girl. They knew that her three older brothers and her father had been killed within one week of Manassas. Had that made a child who looked so frail grow so darn fine and stubborn?—What stirred men more than just the sight of their dead friends? Seeing dead pals solemnly sketched by “a Southern maiden of surpassing sensibility.” That’s how they talked back then, child. Unison mailed many such sad noble drawings to families of the deceased. She sent letters telling of last days, final words. And every man who camped here felt she had special feelings for him alone. When troops arrived, that had been her secret vow and plan. She had succeeded.
Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All Page 100
