Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (133 page)

It was then, like acting out of mercy for the Chaplain’s stilted speech and lack of love, like she now meant to offer true music and not just its shop talk, one young lady opened her black reticule. She pulled forth a small blond recorder. How simply she began the Doxology. Unison’s face looked so white in the late-day sun. Her egg-blunt features’ main beauty: their discipline.

The field was mud eighteen inches deep, seven open acres of it. The western sky was piled with battle-gray clouds. Nearby horses chewed hay, they stupidly noisily relieved themselves. One mildly said,
“Ah-her.”
On this brown bog—trees at its edges splintered by yesterday’s shelling—the pull of a girl’s piping came at you so pure. It started by sounding clean then grew, while daylight faded, patient, nearbout unearthly.

She performed two hymns. Her elbows poked way out, the upper body slid subtly side to side tipping with the melody, her eyes were lowered as notes she piped fell into the open grave. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” “Sheep May Safely Graze.” “He was Despis-ed.” Loose ends of five black armbands shifted in the breeze. Men and boys felt embarrassed, they were so stirred by these direct songs. They felt ashamed of earlier dark thoughts about this strict young virgin. She had cut their silhouettes, she had written their letters, she had sketched their fallen comrades.

Here in tents, Will and others lived glumly alongside each other—always checking fore and aft—sure only of likely damage. To each other, they acted numb if semi-courteous. But every good personal feeling seemed lost way in the past or hidden far far up ahead. Even now beyond pinewoods, heavy shelling could be heard. Then came the random tenor snap of closer musket fire. But steadily threading above all this, much nearer—her reedy tone: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Notes came out unornamented, simple as the breath they rode.

Something in her traveling this far, honoring the man who’d stolen her best music and last civilian pleasure—it upset and surprised the forty men
gathered here clutching hats in hands. She reminded the division of almost too much. Maybe they worried at how like Prothero they’d each and all become. One fellow now trudged toward the woods—one acre of mud away. He just left—something in her tune upset him. Unison Randolph had been playing six full minutes.

Chaplain now turned and watched the young lady. He listened hard, some new amazement complicating his face.

Her piping worked on all the men and boys. They soon felt moved that
any
fellow should be dead, especially a gilded boy like Prothero at twenty-two. Soldiers naturally thought of theirselves, of their own ends. But what seemed even worse than war’s claiming a person was: its making you a brute before it got to do you in. Music—starting as a simple statement of the young lady’s faith—had twisted, had become a question. The more it shaped that question, the more men shifted weight from foot to foot. Some turned partly aside from its odd growing force. A wind came out of the east. The horses, soothed before, now tossed and snorted.

When the Chaplain spoke again, his lofty unyielding tone had deepened. He now stood looking not towards sky but down at the winding shroud. How small young Prothero appeared there in his personal hole! Somehow, the pince-nez had resisted wrapping and its black ribbon looped out between two twists of cloth, lenses catching round bright bits of sky.

“Lord, we never noticed,” the Chaplain began afresh. “That he was quite mad. He was, though. ‘By degrees,’ he told us. And here I have been holding him to blame. I’ve been asking ‘Why?’ as if this boy invented our circumstances and didn’t simply fall prey to them.

“Father? such is the nature of our times. Derangement passes, Lord, for what? for valor, Lord. We profess to admire those among us who fight best and kill fastest. We condemn the rest as weak. This boy walked among us, and we recognized him not. I’d met his father, charming man. That changed nothing for me. We might have stopped our Prothero here. I don’t quite know how. In such moments as ours, Holy Father, it is not simply hard to become good, Lord. It is so hard—O Father—to
remain
good. Let those parts of us that still are, stay. ‘A dark forest’—Lord, as are Thy ways.
Keep
us suffering for our misdeeds. Let our virtues stand separate from our madness, Father. Let us know which part is which.” The Chaplain ended: “Do not necessarily give us all perfect pitch, Lord. Only give us pitch. Some. A little pitch, Lord.”

IT WAS
the funeral of a man nobody much liked. And yet some stranger passing on the road—seeing all these downcast eyes, men holding caps against their ribs, the one girl (his sweetheart?) with her instrument—might have taken this for the burial of a great favorite. It became, for many present (for Will, the groom), the single most upsetting funeral in a long war of those. Because of music? Because of a woman’s saving presence? Because
Prothero had finally grown still and let people forgive him? Nobody quite understood the power of his ending—no more than they’d figured out his bright odd swerving presence.

Then men started filling in the grave. Bending closer, you still smelled his stubborn perfume rising. Will shoveled dirt, aware of Target over there wearing a Fraser’s plaid blanket, tied among mules, eating oats, not knowing—of course—what’d happened. (Soon many others would ride Target in turn and badly till he dropped.) Six shovels were used. Everybody helped but Unison. The boy’s grave had seeped half full of boggy tea-colored water. The young lady went on playing a German instrument. You saw fingers shifting on their pear-wood stops. Her face wet, upper body moving—sinuous and natural, comfortable rocking side to side. Whatever she wept for now (her brothers and father? a lost love?), how perfectly she piped hymn after hymn. Now she did a little country dance air, whatever came to mind, continuous. Her eyes weren’t lowered now. They bore into other mourners, hard requests. She’d found a strange fearless stance—ruined boots planted farther apart. Men looked away from her. Soldiers stared at their feet.

Done, men filed away to camp. They moved in small clumps. Will and the Chaplain waited last, they left the grave together hinting how Unison Randolph should follow. But the young lady stayed out there a while—her trim silhouette made the only vertical for acres. Her back was towards them. Her purse was yet strung over one arm, she kept playing in the middle of noplace, playing to the newly heaped mud. Wind toyed with her armbands: From camp, others watched her braided bun. They listened. Had to.

If this was not true story, it might perfectly well end right here, child. There would be decisions made, sweet resolve on all sides: to act better, to really learn from this
.

But fact is, it’s a war and it’s not over and it’s always harder than you think. She’d soon kept at it for nearabout a hour. That’s a right long time as the day is ending and you want to get on with things and eat your dinner. The man who’d walked off to the woods came hiking back. But when he got some nine hundred yards from her, the others saw him pause, hear, then turn and stalk right back toward trees. Above those pines, the sun had lowered, gone a somber red.

The ranking major now left his tent, he settled in a canvas chair. He studied the young lady, listened to the start of her second straight hour’s music. Men slouched against cannon’s wheels and in wagons’ flatbeds. Men watched her. Miss Unison’s dress was black, the field brown, the late-day sky a rosy saturated gray. It made a right sad picture. Some soldiers started fidgeting, wishing she’d stop. Ten or twelve, though right eager for chow, retired to their tents. It wore on them, her style of music—the pure simple quality, tireless. Some serious brilliance ran straight through her ditties, now came hymns, now jigs. It was so
true
. Truth always leaves a pleasure asking questions.

First men told theirselves they worried for her health, her being too
long out there in a marshy field behind enemy lines. Then guys had to admit they’d had enough, thank you. Her music changed from being a pleasing statement of one girl’s homey faith, it went moving on through asking and more towards a challenge. Now its perfect lightness weighed on them. Miss Unison’s music seemed a lesson:
“Why have we lost these people? Who is making us do this?”

Finally, the Chaplain sent Will out with a cup of hot coffee. The blue willow mug sat steaming where the boy put it beside her feet. Will looked up, ventured a dim smile. Her face was swollen, wet. She saw him, nodded curt, but Miss Randolph never missed a note.

Now the sun had nearly set. She kept playing. The company doctor, known as See and Saw, went next. He stood where she could plainly view him. He bent closer, said, “It’s time. Thank you. Your own strength to think about. My advice …”

But with a shrill note she turned away from him. Seemed rude. Doc came back shaking his head, miffed, hating to look powerless before other men.

One corporal eager to
do
something, wanting to give her a sign, reached into his vest, pulled out a good-luck brass piece shaped like a horseshoe. Bashful, he straggled out, held it near her face—made the highborn lady know he gave this as a loan and not a gift and mostly as a bribe to shush her. He placed it near her small caked boots, he walked back, looking smug. But it didn’t work. Two others dragged out separately, put down a ring, a keepsake handkerchief.

They were hungry. What did this woman
want?

She never stopped. She seemed to be mourning
them
while blaming them. Her tone grew wilder if more sweet. Two full hours into it—some listeners felt accused. Felt sick. Imagine this girl’s mother pacing their veranda, worried. Under Unison’s boots, in final light, the Lieutenant’s grave rose just a little higher than its field.

How could she go on? What would stop her? If a battle came out of the trees yonder, that’d pretty much shut her up, wouldn’t it? If she got hurt, she’d need them then—that’d quiet her! Soldiers felt they couldn’t go about their business. Music had them like a trance, a taunt. She was nagging them, that was it. The cook made no move to start the fire for supper. Darkness settling. You could barely see her—and then you only heard her out there. Nothing of the war could continue with her out here right in it. She’d probably
planned
this!

When the division had been camped on Randolph property, men had found Miss Unison a touching mascot, even her sadness: a inspiration. Here, out here, no. Men wanted to get on with things. They were hungry. Night had fallen and Prothero was buried. What next? Let’s get it the hell over with.

More fellows withdrew into tents, but the canvas proved porous. Her sharp music still reached them. One boy said just, “No.” Some men started
cupping hands over their ears. She played anything that came to her. Southern fifes and bugles only dared “Yankee Doodle Dandy” during the firing-squad execution of traitors. Unison now chanced choruses of that alternated with holy “Dixie,” weird. Was like listening, privileged, to the sound of another person’s ransacking inside thoughts. Nursery jingles, little love songs, scales, anthems, everything. She seemed to play about promises. The pipe sang about something her listeners had all lost but could still perfectly remember. Her music would sometimes smear a bit, maybe from tiredness, but melody pushed on into another hour—even more urgent. It ran shriller. In the distance, munitions’ rumbling sounded worse with the sun gone.

“Unison?” The Chaplain called in his grand voice. “Thank you, Unison? You’ve done more than your part, that is enough. I ask you on behalf of your father and brothers … Unison.”

She didn’t stop. Now, only fifteen fellows waited in the open, all others were on cots in tents, staring noplace. Finally, one man (nobody but hisself later knew who) slipped around behind the others still turned towards her, seeming held here. Unnoticed in the blackness, this fellow lifted a single dirt clod. In Unison’s direction, he threw the thing. He stood near the road out by her buggy. He tossed his pellet over the heads of other infantrymen yet facing her field. The Chaplain and the Major, sitting forward, pretended not to notice. In darkness, that was easy. A second and third toss. You could hear the man give a little grunt as he hurlt one after another, using all his strength.

Nobody stopped him.

Finally, one struck her back. You heard her pipe give off a extra squeal. Though the melody ran on—determined—a second pebble hit her, harder yet. Music held its own. Someone joined the stone tosser on the road, then a third did. Soon over the piping, a snapping sound out there like some hailstorm centered on one grave. Finally, her tune did falter, stop. You heard a whimper follow her each breath. Rock throwing ceased.

All the men wandered out of their tents, so glad for silence. There was a moment when anything might’ve happened. Some stone thrower could’ve run toward her—might’ve pushed her down on the mud of Prothero’s new grave, could’ve yanked her skirts up, pressed one hand over her mouth, and done whatever. Whatever, repeatedly. Men might have found a large rock and beat her head to paste. This didn’t happen. Instead, silence seemed Unison’s new kind of accusing. Felt almost worse than music that’d bravely kept this massive stillness back.

You heard bug noises, frogs croaking. Nothing else. In camp no lantern had been lit. Only now did soldiers hear the girl’s feet squishing mud, moving in rushes and halts, as she headed fearful back this way. They heard Miss Randolph walk right through their ranks. Somebody saw her holding one side of her head. Soldiers eased aside to let her pass. Once in her buggy, she clucked, “Effie? Good Effie,” probably to the horse. Unison turned her cart around in three bad tries, then trotted off—bound back, unescorted,
those six miles to a fine riverside house that Sherman’s troops would burn in ’65.

Men stayed right where they had been. And for some minutes. They waited till something happened next. More music? enemy fire that’d give them a excuse to move? Then there came another dragging step from out there in the black black field. Two men ran for firearms. But, oh, it was just that fellow who’d trudged off to hide in the woods. Only when he returned did Cook stand, yawn loud, say, “So. We got us any willing fire builders?” He struck a match to his oil lamp. Tonight ten noisy volunteers came forward. Others stretched, feeling meaner maybe—but easier. Just them here, just men/boys/males, honor among thieves, all do-gooder outsiders gone.