Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (128 page)

“So what!” says she. “Baby didn’t know, and Baby not ashame. Look here,” she points to my fine gem, unharmed by her body’s best tries at making food of it.

To cover up my kids’ earlier picking at each other (I just hate it when they do like that), I stand to clear their plates. Ned is asking, “What’s for dessert?”

“Tonight, I’ve got you all a light dessert,” I say. I shove my expensive worldly-wise diamond down toward Kress’s candle flames. Gem light flings itself all over our dining room. My inherited ring makes coleslaw of the rainbow. I aim my stone side to side like some smart salesgirl, demonstrating. Pear shape throws mild specks, bright watercolor dots, stripes, X’s, a short-lived chandelier across walls, over my children’s living faces, onto window glass with night pressed black behind it.

Louisa, still standing, seems quieted by the show. She blinks then steps around my chair to Baby’s. She tugs off the dime-store ring, grabs her sister’s left hand, and—moving bold as a groom that means it—shoves the jewel hard onto Baby’s pudgy finger. Then Lou bends, tightening soft metal yet another notch.

“But …” Baby lifts her right shoulder, tips her right cheek to it, dimples deepening. “But … why … me, Weeza?” (Some folks’ whole life is a fishing trip for compliments.)

“Because I’m oldest is why.” Lou, square-built, truth-telling, straightens.
“‘Cause they expect me to and because you’re such a … total … baby. Because you’re our baby, Baby. You’re all our Baby.”

“Sanks,” comes the answer. Our eldest sits. I resettle myself and find Lou’s hand. I keep my ring held still on tabletop, hostess to light.

Other children have hopped up (no “May I be excused?” tonight). They run now, really chasing colors that keep beating with my pulse. Wallpaper takes on light as a project, meal, and spangle. Kids fling up their arms as eyes go animal wild. Twins jump to reach the really good spots burning above the sideboard. Ned drags over a chair so he can climb up quick and touch a circle. His head pokes into spotlight as he pretends to eat all brightness before it dies. The deeds and sufferings of light. Such noise in here. We’re all laughing some. Kids trot around and round the table. Only Louisa, Baby, and yours truly are still seated, watching. (I know: All that glitters is not gold. True, too: All that glitters is not food. But, honey, all that glitters glitters. That is fact—like your body is a fact.)

Lou’s grip tightens. My mouth swims to her nearest ear. “You been so good during this long wait, child. With Poppa gone so much lately, I depend on you. I overdo. And I know what being considered a strong person can cost a girl—you’re so fine, Louisa.”

“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.

H
ERE’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.