Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (2 page)

In a way she was right.

THE MORE
the Captain got onto TVs, the more Mrs. Lucy here worked. Footprints all over my new beige carpet. Newsladies kept asking: What did I remember of the war, that war? I admitted as how I’d missed it by twenty-some years. I was born in 1885, and he was 1849. Well, when they heard this, they’d get kind of sour-faced and say, “oh,” like it was my failing, like I was pretty lucky to have latched on to the last vet gets to live or breathe on either side.

His final thirty years I served as tour guide, and what I gave tours of was Captain Marsden. Kept hiding the bedpan, kept carding knots out of that beard, forever wrestling him into uniform and with Cap siccing the sentinels on me yet again.

Hoarse, he’d asked reporters, “Say … what o’clock is it?” They’d check their watches. I stopped them. “He means the year, folks, what year.” “Oh,” they looked from me to him to me. They seemed embarrassed, like it
shouldn’t
be so late in the century.—Newsfolks acted like the recent lack of world progress was
their
fault. I know the feeling. Finally somebody did tell the year, and loud. Cap cupped a meaty palm behind one ear, sat straighter, “Say
what?”
When he heard it hollered again, my man heaved back into pillows and crossed his broad arms. Then Cap grinned out from under overhang eyebrows, he said, “Go on!”

I BEGGED
reporters to please not use flashbulbs on him. Bright pops put him in a artillery frame of mind, shocked him into yelling for the horse brigade. But no sooner my back was turned, I’d see white light ricochet down the hallway, I’d hear folks scatter.

Off he’d go again. Northern camera crews had flashed him back to
combat moods and then they left. I had to slip in and calm him as best I could. I sat, stroking his white hair, smoothing his white beard. I sat cooing the only word that ever helped: “Appomattox, Appomattox, Appomattox, baby.”—It’s a Indian word, you know. That’s why it’s so pretty.

NOWADAYS
there’s more commotion, folks coming to visit me. Just for me, too. Here you are with this recording machine set right on my bed. You way off on that plastic chair. Draw up nearer, sugar.—That’s better. Good face. Oh, I know how mine looks now. All bunchy. But so is what’s behind it. Don’t they say the smarter you are, the more shriveled-up-like your brain gets? Well, child, if what’s inside looks like what’s hanging here on front, I figure I’m nearbout to genius level by now.

When my vet finally died (a violent death—another story), peace was such a novelty it scared me like a war would. Didn’t know what to
do
with it. Walked around our house cleaning up after myself, but I’d always been the neat one. Every hallway knickknack looked shell-shocked with the silence weighing down our home. No mud on the beige rug now, I half missed it. Not a soul visited. Bad stroke, two broken hips—most of my friends got carried off in three bumpy months. And you know that one old lady living on alone in peace, why she ain’t news anymore. First I hated being still. Now I’m getting more accustomed. Fact is, I like it. I love it quiet.

Turns out, that’s what I was looking for all along. Funny, ain’t it? Some of the old ones in here, they talk like a quiet house on a side street is the hardest thing in the world. To me, that lived in Poppa’s home till Poppa passed me on to Cap Marsden’s (which we soon filled up with babies and their noise), why a quiet house, it grew on me. Stopped sounding like what was missing, started being what I had. Soon the long hush got feeling better than church. You didn’t even have to dress up and go out. It was all right there, all yours, sweet as a reward. Honey, I know I’m sounding like the selfish old woman I’ve become. But, believe me, it took work to get this way.

—So, you come to pump me for my news before I got too little wind to spill news with? Well, as for secrets, I admit I am rich, child. That’s all the riches I’ve got—but on that score anyways, I am Mrs. Gotrocks. Still, a body can’t give her secrets away twice, can she? They’re either secrets or somebody else’s. Others in here pride theirselves on knowing every grandchild’s birth date. Some of our men can tell you how much tax they paid every unfair April for sixty-odd years. Me, I’ve mostly got his war stories and my peace ones. They’re yet on tap. Knock wood (or in
this
room, rap yonder walnut-grained Formica).

But I can’t see the percentages in spilling this amount of beans. What if I did tell: Maybe my old man’s bad news, what war does, how it feels to
be the last of something. What would I get for it? I know that smacks of greed, but I don’t mind. I like being greedy. Turns out I was talented in that direction all along and never even knew.

See the sun in this nice room? Others want the corner rooms but I been given one. Polite young men wash my sheets twice a week, need it or no. This one, Jerome, quick, good-looking fellow the color of cinnamon toast, he comes in on Thursdays. He shows me the weekend disco routines he’s planning. They’re long! Last time, he takes off his orderly’s jacket, underneath he’s wearing a black-and-white T-shirt that spells:

I had to laugh. “Sounds like me,” says I. He’s going to get me one. Jerome hand-stitches quilts to order. Oh, he’s versatile, Jerome is. Nights, he studies acting. I know you ain’t supposed to say it but that child can flat dance. Jerome can jump from here to there just like that, like a deer, perfect. He says he feels like I’m his own grandma. Time’s turnt me nearbout brown enough to be. Look at these speckledy marble-cake hands. I could be a mixed marriage all in myself. Yes, Jerome’s a comfort. And the ladies with hairnets make my meals. Certain high school candy-stripers spill their love secrets Lucy’s way. The things I’ve heard. Plus our director, he let me choose my own paint color for this room. I’ve had hints it looks, well, cheap. Is it too bright of a yellow for you? I don’t think so either. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people.

Yeah, now all I got to do is sit here like a queen, watch young fellows dance, make statements to the Press or history majors, and eat what I didn’t cook. Oh, I’ll tell you straight, sugar, I’m getting used to it.

But, the story? It ain’t just one. It’s more to it than you think. Well, maybe a taste. Say once, as it so happens, Captain Marsden went to war with his best chum, say neither of them had even shaved yet, both so scared they walked hand in hand clear to Virginia, then Maryland. I probably told you before. They hiked into the valley of the shadow of death. Say all that, since all of it is so. Popular boys, not equally pretty nor equally rich (my homely little Marsden stood to inherit a passel of slaves and acreage, though you wouldn’t of known it to look at him). Those boys were hair-triggered as five-dollar pistols. Tots, really.

In his younger life (till age forty-five, in there) my man stayed mighty tight-lipped about his war doings. Older, he’d speak of hardly nothing else. For breakfast toast, Willie wanted his bread burned jet-dark so he could call it “hardtack.” Words like “forest” or “hood” stopped meaning anything but our Southern generals named that. By the, end, my husband had gone back to battle, child. Lived there. He finally repeated his war tales so often,
seemed like they happened to me (and to our nine civilian children), only neatened up considerable.

Just months from home kitchens, my boy was already a sharpshooter and Ned, the company mascot. These youngsters were well liked owing to nightly skits they did for others. Now, Ned had a way with a tune. Fellow soldiers loved him for being so liberal with the gift. His picture got lost when my old man’s did. Odd what you lose. Ned was ringlets from the ears up, gold, and with this grin that
was
going to win him friends fast, girls specially. In the picture, he kept one hand on his hip, bugle propped there, head tipped kind of cocky, like in love with the photographer. Ned daily bugled the division awake. Then he upped and put men back to sleep again, some baby Gabriel. He had clear eyes as I remember and, you got to admit it, don’t you, Mrs. Lucy Marsden’s memory ain’t half bad for somebody with ninety-odd years’ mileage on it.—Yeah, every war has got them faces. Grins lit up from inside. Some eyes are so blue they don’t even register on that poor-grade early film. Such stares show up nearbout clear and look slam through you. Faces oval as angels’. Too perfect to be local!

And every time you see a face like that? one that sets itself aside as overly excellent? one so full of rare high spirits? why—that’s a face that ain’t going to last. War looks over all the soldiers’ pictures in advance. It takes the very best. Oh, quite a eye for beauty it’s got. Picky picky picky.

Listen, it let
my
old man live, didn’t it?

OKAY
, look under my bed here. Get off that chair. I guess you’re spryer than me by a century or so. Go on, door’s closed, just us chickens. Yeah, now that there’s his scabbard—the thing Cap kept his sword in till we hocked the sword part back in 19 and 31, had to. Starving.

Ain’t fair that a person should live through the Civil War of one hunk of years and the Great Depression of the next batch, but Cap did. Had to. “The Great Depression.” I’d like to know what was so great about it.

We ate dandelion greens for six years. He lost his livestock yard, sold his momma’s last farm. Still I made the Captain, for that’s what I had to call him (in bed and out), made him save back this here scabbard part for later, don’t you know. He’s long planted but now you turn up, “Later” come to chat.

Time was, I owned a tintype showed him wearing this, him hooked on to it, buck-toothed, grinning like a hero in advance of ever stepping off his folks’ two thousand acres. Voice hadn’t even changed yet. Imagine, still a soprano and already a soldier. Now you know that ain’t right. Sword came clear up to his shoulder. Looked raw but mighty sweet, the cowlicks up and out like the crown on the Statue of Liberty later. What’s happened to cowlicks? You don’t see those anymore. Yes, blow-dryers, I guess. Now they’ll
blow-dry any baby’s cowlicks to death. Never stand a chance. Three things missing off of children now: cowlicks, freckles, and stuttering. Used to every third child couldn’t talk straight and was speckled as—well, as my old hand here. Now, not. Things change, weather’s not what it was. Woman down the hall blames the astronauts going to-and-from through it. Did you see that rocket blow up with the people in it? Won’t that sad? Their families were right there.

But wait, I’m wandering, the war, his war.

I MENTIONED NED
. His beauty was kind of honorary. Men liked having him in sight, seemed
he
was what they fought for. Men claimed to be doing battle for the sakes of mothers, daughters, wives. (A likely story and a old one.) Ned was the nearest pretty thing. They watched him. The child’d idle around picking wildflowers, finding baby rabbits in the weeds. Even with artillery thunder rolling, he’d traipse off gathering a hatful of farmer’s raspberries to give away later, mouth all red from sampling. Ned played the bugle perfect, his hair metal-yellow as the horn was. He did reveille not as punishment, more for the tune. Made a fellow’s wartime waking easier.

Now, not six months into their enlistment, between rounds, boys found this swimming hole near a gristmill. Ned asked the commander for one morning off so everybody could horse around and bathe, horses included. Shock of shocks, the commander said Yes. Ned was one of the people people ofttimes say Yes to. (Myself, I’ve had a lifetime of “We’ll see.”) Ned got credit for the swim. Men all waded in, so glad after these many weeks of mud. This was up near Petersburg, Virginia, that they later called “Fort Hell” because it all got fought in holes and burrows underground. “Fort Hell” because it was one.

Ned drove twenty horses in shank-deep. My husband never told me that the whole division went swimming naked but I bet they did. You think the Confederate Army issued regulation-gray bathing suits back then? No way.

My man and this Ned were whooping, splashing, carrying on. If they’d been bosom friends when they left Falls, why they were beyond blood brothers now. Slept side by side, and when cannon fire got nearer and so loud, they’d scoot over and hold on to one another, all mashed cheek to jowl like puppies in a box—missing their old momma’s teat and can’t get close enough to suit them. My man claimed he’d start the sentence, Ned’d polish it off. Got to where their dreams rhymed. Was no surprise they dreamed of one hometown, of being safe in many different parts of it. They wore the selfsame boot size (4—I told you they were babies), and if their heels got blistered, they’d swap boots, giving one batch of calluses a rest, chafing up the other for a change.

Ned owned the singing voice, my poor husband croaked with one note only. Had the bellows but no control of it. His high and low notes come out only as louds and softs, poor thing. Back home in Baptist Youth Choir, these child-soldiers had stood side by side in civilian robes patterned on
what we think the angels wear. Are angels civilian or military? Well, in
my
heaven, the robe is civvies. That much I know.

During his robe days, Ned had done most of the soprano solos. Girls grumbled but the choir leader mentioned how girls’d always be sopranos whereas Ned’s sweet upward tones just wouldn’t keep. “Gather your high notes whilst you may,” the director told Ned. This choir honcho was New York-trained, somewhat of a sissy but musical as possible. He made my husband be “a mouth singer.” Meaning my Willie could not get
near
a hymn. Will just had to stand there, cowlicks out, total quiet but with his lips moving. A lot.

Well, encamped with the division, the Falls boys worked out a routine based on all their Youth Choir practice. My husband did the gestures. Ned sang the song while standing before a open tent flap. Will would hide inside out of sight. Ned clasped hands behind his back. Marsden, after rolling up gray sleeves, would slide his bare arms under his pal’s armpits. (You getting this?) From out front, you saw Ned’s face and front, saw Willie’s freckled arms. At the first perfect note, Marsden (glad to be hid, suddenly bold for one so bashful) made a first sweeping gesture. If, say, Ned’s song run, oh maybe (I’m just making this part up) “My Heart Aches For You,” then the right hand might point to Ned’s left chest, flap there like a bird hurting, and then finally aim a “you” out at the tough-boy audience. Like that.