Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (13 page)

Blade is placed two inches above Will’s freckled knee. The Lieutenant plants his boots more solid on the ground to gain proper leverage for that first deep pull. Nurse clamps one hand on a boy’s white foot, the other steadying his upper thigh. The Lieutenant draws back for the first stroke’s squeal.

Tent bows inwardly. Tent flaps over Salvador Cortez Drake Magellan Smith. Who holds two pistols like a highwayman in a melodrama. Up alongside his either ear, barrels press beyond his face like snouts. Appreciating this spectacle, Willie, on the table—drunk, so scared—almost considers laughing once.

“Yes, Corporal?” asks the young doctor in white gloves. “Have we been apprehended by our Northern brethren? The reason I mention it, you seem to be holding two dueling pistols aimed very much my way.”

“You’ve
flat been ‘apprehended,’ sir. You’re as tired as me. It’s not you personally. It’s just I’ve lost my farm. My dapper little tailor-helper has run off with our biggest customer plus them tweeds. I’ve lost so many friends already. I got six ailing daughters—one this boy’s same age. They have nothing much past sweet potatoes to get them by. Meantime, I’m
here
and can’t seem to help a soul. I’m duty-bound to shoot the ones in blue, sir. (I’d rather not. Is that wrong?) I can’t find a single good and rightful step to take. Seems I’ve been born into the wrong time for doing any one thing decent. So this, sir, is what I plan to try. I know you’re as worn out as me—which is going some. It’s a sloppy time, sir, and we’re all taking shortcuts. But not on Willie Marsden here. No shortcuts on that leg. He says it’ll do better if you give it half a chance. He knows more than you. He’s
in
there, it’s his, sir. So, get the lead out, literal. Leave his leg be. Take as much care over this as you would during peacetime and if this was the President’s boy and your whole standing, your life depended on it—because, sir? It does.”

The Lieutenant tugged off both white gloves. In a low voice he hinted what a outrage this was. He mentioned professional dignity, codes of conduct, his father’s being a surgeon too, so forth. “Here.” He pointed toward a festering wound in lamplight, he tried passing Smith the gloves, tried handing Sal the shiny saw that had been through so much. “Be my guest.”

A boy, mouth bunched with rag, looked at each speaker in turn, head shifting, fighting to follow the game fought over him, adding nothing to save hisself. But interested.

Smith’s left-hand pistol nudged the surgeon back into place, his right pistol came to rest upon the Lieutenant’s closest temple. “Sir? You hear the one about the dentist and the woman spooked of being hurt? No? Yeah, seems there’s this dentist, see? It’s the end of a long day. In comes the woman mentioned earlier. To him, this lady’s just another mouth. He’s all but yanked her jaw out of kilter and is picking around into them molars any old way. It’s at that second he feels her pretty little hand slip into his white trousers and snag him by the goodly clump of his manly parts. He gets real careful about pulling the pick back out of her mouth so she can say, smiling, ‘Now, we’re not going to hurt each other,
are
we?’

“You do your best, sir. Just clean and dress it. You have others waiting in other tents. I hear some doctor sawing right nearby. Go whittle on anybody else tonight and till the cows come home. You got a reputation as being saw-happy, did you even know? Just spare our Willie here. We’ll give him a month to heal. Me, I’m taking full responsibility.”

“You?
You’ll
take?”

But the doctor slid his gloves back on. Muttering about courts-martial, about these farmers, ingrates, he prodded—slowed, alert. He pulled out lead and bone in pieces. The lamps hissed, moths pelted glass, moth wings tickled a drenched patient, wings left brown and gold powder on damp pale skin. The boy stiffened, grunted but never bellowed onct. Compared to the saw, all this felt so easy, child.

The pistols were lifted clear up alongside Smith’s ears, thumbs steadied barrels against each cheekbone. Sal looked ill from watching, sick from tiredness, agitated from going into and out of Yank prison camp so quick, worried over his shrunken business and swollen family—the more Will’s leg bled, the louder that raw shot sounded thwunking in a tin dish, the better but more woozy did poor Sal feel. Finally a blob of metal the size of a dollar piece clanked real hard. When the doctor’s red gloves came off at last, Smith blenched white, mildly handed pistols butt-first to the nurse, smiled, acting ashamed. Then, stretching out on the tent’s sod floor, the Corporal passed over into a kind of fit. It lasted nine long minutes. St. Vitus, all akimbo. Chewed words, molars being castanets, a drowner’s crackling. He kicked the operating table’s 2 by 4 pine legs. The nurse held Smith’s head, the young Lieutenant got hold of Smith’s tongue. From off the table’s edge—Willie stared down—soaked clear through, mouth yet jammed with whiskeyed cloth. Will was looking at his friend with such concern that, for a second, he left and almost lost his own pain. Then, of course, as happens, child, refound it.

(This near the front, such spasms as Sal’s happened nastily often. Was probably the fear—the dailiness of fearing. Made some boys get real loud. You saw others just fall over with the shakes like this. Still others couldn’t
wake without being dunked into cold water—they
wanted
to stay out, they couldn’t bear to remember all this mess waiting with first light. Everybody said that waking was the worst. Eyes opening, you thought you were back home, then you knew.)

When Smith, shy on memories of the night before, came to at 5 p.m. next day, he felt so much fresher. The Lieutenant Surgeon had not yet pressed charges. Will explained what had happened and Corporal Salvador Cortez Drake Magellan Smith went, “I did that? Must of borrowed Worley’s dueling pistols. Well, good for me. Did you hear I have twin boys? It just sunk in. There’s been so much of this
other
… imagine. Twins, little ugly redheaded mites maybe even worse-looking than me, poor things. Six girls, two boys, now that’s a family, ain’t it?” Grinning, Sal felt like something had been gained overnight—maybe his farm held on to, the Chinaman returned with new wool and a wagonful of coconuts and trained pet monkeys plus many tan-faced Florida lady customers, Vicksburg saved, something very good and mighty necessary won back. Sal’s seizure had returned him to full spirits.—The world can be a friend that’ll give you the shirt right off its back, honey, give you a arm or a leg.

Took weeks for the thing to start to sealing proper. You know how fast children heal. But even so, Willie gimped, then stepped and only finally (just in time for Antietam) tried and managed—walked on it. First destination: Salvador Smith. Who cheered.

MORAL
: In hard times, friend, keep being friends to your friends. We sure do need us now.

Y
OU STILL
like my room’s color? Larry let me pick.

Mr. Laurence “Larry” Winch was our Home director. He supervised the first fourteen years of my eating this place’s Thursday tripe and rice. I’ve had complaints this tint is notches too “raw.” Vote again. Not too yaller a yellow? Well, ain’t you kind. I like it. But considering how my eyes have toned down lately, what’s good taste for me might look heated up to hootchy-kootchy for somebody your age. Along our cinder-block hallway, Larry allowed every soul to choose. One lady went for lilac with silver trim, but did Larry even bat a eye? “Done,” says he, like some wild gentle king.

While Lar reigned, nobody exactly called Lanes’ End a daily funfest—but post-Larry we understood we’d onct had it pretty good. Except for Thursday’s tripe and Jell-O. (You know the new disease where young girls won’t eat, or else they do and upchuck right after? I never understood that disease, except Thursdays.)

Of course, Larry made bad mistakes. True, the state got after him for money matters. But, one nice thing, Larry Winch grew up local. Which helps. Lar knew the family tree of every bad old apple on this hall.

With Carolinians, child, gene-knowledge means character-knowledge means history-knowledge means destiny-knowledge. And you can quote me. (Plus, feel free to tell my mother’s toney maiden name, McCloud.)

If in 1929, say, a certain person’s grandpa constantly stole stuff out of Woolworth’s (and this in a family that just had money to burn!) and if he got caught more than onct and was ofttimes listed for it right in the local paper’s court docket, well, that certainly does not mean that all his kids and grandkids must eventually be born sticky-fingered. No, nothing’s that simple in this double-whammy world.

However
, when a local person’s recent Tupperware party turned up short by six cake stands, two colanders, and an as yet undisclosed number of twirl-wind lettuce driers, local minds naturally turned to some likely candidates. Our Sheriff Cooper—whose poppa was Sheriff Cooper first—found the total loot in the trunk of a certain Cadillac belonging to that dimestore klepto’s own great-granddaughter. No names, please. In this town, child, a
body don’t need them. Gossip comes what they now call genetically encoded. Oh, I read. I keep up.

I’D SEEN
Larry Winch’s mother blossom, a pretty nervous only child from Summit Avenue, the best end. She married early, picked a bear of a metalworker who called her “Dollie,” who soon sold most of her timber land, took to drink, and made fun of their one dimpled son in public. Mrs. Winch dressed her Laurence in velvet knickerbockers and silly tams. Folks never blamed
him
. Meantime Baby Larry doted on his wasting child of a momma. When she died young—her people
did
—Larry was onto thirty and back from college and had never really held a job. He meant to, of course. For a while, he lived off timber dividends. His mother’s doctors’ bills were harder to concentrate on paying—with the patient gone. Larry’s poppa soon run off to Florida with a secretary (from First Methodist!). They took along the final lumber cash.

So Larry found hisself in possession of that big showplace home on Summit (fuel bills alone would eat you alive), he was a aging boy too unsteady for being even a waiter, he was eating only when invited out.—Well, everybody local pulled strings to get him the job here at Lanes’ End. Falls felt that a boy who’d acted so kind to his momma deserved some kindness back. Outsiders might call this “undue local influence.” Us locals call it justice.

Larry loved us calcified natives for witnessing his mom’s fine upbringing, her quick decline. Laurence didn’t need to study no file cabinet of residents’ records. The day he walked in here, “Hi, Lar,” said we. Our ruling wit went, “Well, will you look what the cat drug in.” “Hello right back at you, folks. You all don’t appear
much
worse than you always did,” Lar winked.

If we mentioned his dead momma, Larry Winch acted proud as any boy. Afterwards, he’d beg to hear that same old tale. When young, she had enjoyed a certain fame—for hereabouts. She skipped everywhere, even into and out of church, while a tame squirrel rode her shoulder. The creature wore its own knitted cap. It loved that cap!

Listening, Larry sighed, feeling he’d been let onto a hallway lined with safe-deposit vaults, each yet holding a few stray factual jewels of her. We understood which tales Larry’d like to hear. Which—on pain of death—you’d never mention. He knew ours.

Outsiders might consider us to be too local of yokels. But knowing and being
known
(for generations’ warp and woof), that can be a bind and yet one great abiding joy, sug. What with these malls, stuffed by total strangers, it’s one joy that’s withering fast.

SO ANYHOW
, come parade time in 1899, twelve lady admirers paid a local tailor (Chinese, Falls’ version of Sal’s slippery employee) to make a uniform for Marsden. By then a prosperous Captain tipped the scales at a hundred
and eighty-some pounds, stood six foot one, and you couldn’t have fit one hairy solid leg of him into the child’s suit I’ve got squirreled under this bed somewheres. You might say the Captain’s reputation just expanded like his uniform had to. That officer’s outfit was a show in itself. Nobody missed the young Willie, a stick-figure bugle boy whose mouth was too sour-sad to ever get reveille right.

First time I seriously noticed him in daylight Cap was wearing that particular suit. It had more brass buttons than a countinghouse, enough gold braid to bric-a-brac a altar with. Had those things like eaves on the shoulders, like graduation caps but for shoulders, you know those things. He owned a hat with this curly dove-gray feather growing right in it—wore his whole sword then, had on gloves as white as any white-bread new-rich debutante’s. It was July, there was a full sun—he could hurt your eyes, the sun buttering him up so. Brown beard glossy as furniture. Boots so mirror-shiny seemed like they both had memories. All that fastened to a good-sized fleshy gent, oh, he was a one-man band for any woman’s eyesight, honey.

Them days we liked a man with a little more meat on him, honey. Not like these boys you see now on the soap shows, so skinny it looks like they’d get tired from toting around all the hair mossing their chests. Our men then weren’t just these pretty bony newts—a man then was
noticeable
.

You’d spy Cap in parades, on platforms with the Mayor, once when President McKinley came through by decorated train. And Marsden always wore Ned’s bugle on a red cord crossing one shoulder—still loyal to the point of plain unhealthiness. Cap had swelled so far past boyhood, that horn now looked too tiny, like a your top-of-the-line play one from the Kress store. By now everybody local knew the story of it. During ceremonies and ribbon cuttings, Cap never give one speech, didn’t have to, just sat. His mute looks were the whole story. He never told his now famous tales during daylight. I studied him. Dangling at his side, that bugle: Brassoed to a spectacle. Why, to me, Captain looked like a painting out of history. Retouched—like history always is.