Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (3 page)

During civilian concerts in them days, people expected to weep. And in a city of tents, by campfire glow, on the night before a battle, to hear a boy whose voice might never get to change—well, what you asked and expected of a song went double.

DECADES
later, survivors from my husband’s division remembered Captain, not Ned, to be the singer. Our children, having heard their poppa’s beagle baying in the bathtub, looked shocked. “Do one for us,” visiting vets would beg my old man. “Sweetest Irish tenor south of Dublin. Willie’s ‘Last Rose of Summer got us through many a rough night.” Memory seems to work like that—meaning: wrong, for some of the right reasons. Of course, Captain Marsden refused to sing—but just from seeming modesty. He never corrected pals about his not being able to carry a tune in a bucket. And me, I didn’t blame him.

Pecks of decades later, Captain was one of the last forty vets left alive. In homes across our land, others surrendered the battle of breathing. Before long, thanks to my good company, to time’s wear and tear, plus his own meat-and-potato stubbornness, the list’d whittled down to ten, then six, with him still hanging on. Every day Cap scanned the Obits. Even prior to checking the Funnies and his “Andy Gump.” And you know how he was about his “Andy Gump.” Well, he was. For him, Obits soon became the Funnies, long as
he
won’t listed. Whenever Cap found another Northerner had bit the dust, why he’d just chuckle. I’d hear him in there humming “The Old Reb” or “Who’s Sorry Now?” Made his day. He’d asked me for a widgeon
of celebration whiskey. Could he play with his scabbard today, please, please? My man held the
Falls Herald Traveler
so close to his beard you heard beard crackling against newsprint. He would eyeball the poor dead Yankee’s photo. And my man’s dark and final voice would tell that picture, “Weakling.”

First my husband was the only non-vegetable Confederate left, then he was the final one alive on either side in any condition. More and more guests stopped by with ready-made questions. Around here, on the subject of the Civil War, every filling-station man’s a expert.

They quizzed Captain: could General Braxton Bragg be clumsy as history shows? was hardtack all that rough on the teeth? what year did your average Reb foot soldier
know
the gray’d done dropped the ball? But grill me? Me, they’d corner to find out how you get back to Durham on the Interstate. Where could they buy decent bar-b-que to go?

Still, turns out I am something he never was. You know what? Well, see, there’s the war and it gets holt of him, it shakes him something awful, and then he gets to grab
me
by the scruff of my neck. (He didn’t
get
to, but I noticed he sure done it often enough anyway.) So, say, he’s the last vet of that war, but me? Why, honey, I’m a veteran of the veteran.

I’m the last living veteran of the last living veteran of that war.

Probably a cheap kind of famous but, look, it’s better than nothing.

Now he’s gone. Around six o clock, at he-gets-home-for-supper time, I notice this the most. Even now, even after everything that had to happen, I halfway miss him. Don’t it make you sick? But William More Marsden could be the most charming man in the world and I don’t ever want to seem to talk just bad about him. That reflects terrible on the spouse, I think. I consider myself a loyal person. And there’s nothing Lucy here is loyaler to than the idea that she
is
… loyal. If you catch my drift.

So, yeah, “charming.” The fellow was not overpolite or knee-jerk kind, like me back then. But when he
did
do something tender, you sure noticed. It could break you sideways. Last reporters to interview Marsden told me he was the most charming
senile
man they’d ever met. In 19 and 21, I saw him drive our Model T over a rabbit and then get out and cry like a baby at what he’d done. Our children never forgot it. They stood sobbing by the roadside. Him kneeling on hot tarmac, him wearing his best summer poplin suit, and trying to breathe air into the creature (a trick learned at cockfights). Captain whispered to the victim, “I honked our horn. What were these long ears for?” Cap’s beard was sticky and beautiful with rubies of rabbit blood.

Plus, he acted so good to his momma after what Sherman went and did to her. Captain also knew his way around a story, could be one of the funniest men alive. With me, child, that’s a big part of “attractive.” Question number one: Can he make you laugh on a regular basis? In my book, money and looks come way down the list after a decent daily giggle to keep the doctor away.

Sure, he did some things he regretted later. Haven’t I and haven’t you,
child? True, murder might not top our particular list. But, taken all together, Marsden was a man. He had days and days like all of us.

Then Cap went and died. And myself? Well, less. “Close” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades—but at this branch of the State Home, half dead still means half a loaf. Maybe I do look like I’m wearing canning alum for face powder (I won’t
have
a mirror in this room). But Lucy here is still something that many folks from History would dearly love to be. I am alive, honey.

And unlike many a younger person, Mrs. Lucy knows it. Oh, child, I could blow the whistle on the world if I ever took a mind to. Forgive my speaking so strutting and bold, but remember, talk’s about the single pleasure left me. My mouth is still a cakewalk, my mouth’s both a deep gutter and a full-out waltz. And see, I liked saying even
that
.

—
EVEN
so, honey? don’t get your hopes up. Spare your batteries. You mustn’t mind my being way too frank—but you ain’t ready for this. I can nearbout look at you and tell. Open face, fresh skin, maybe the offspring of lawyers, even doctors. Such hopeful eyes—a tad tired but
more
hopeful for that. You think the world is a straight-A student. I see you’re eager to do stuff right and behave professional. You’re willing to sign a petition if you’re really mad about something. A person that notices, you’ve got a sweet tooth for local color. Chestnuts opened on a roasting fire, Jack Frost taking off your toes. (Nobody believes in the Future no more, so they come in here trying to beat the bushes for some hokum called The Past. Bunk.
That
ain’t a fair trade.)

Folks expect me to act all cute and all. Makes me sick. You don’t see no African violets in
my
room, do you? Folks want I should tell them how to churn butter, what it was to weave cloth. How I saw some Indians onct. You think I’m going to play like that Miss Priss Betsy Ross? Momma always held her up as Miss Johnny-on-the-Spot, what women can do. Some glory. She just got to sew some more. They didn’t let her featherstitch her name in that Constitution’s lower left, I notice. She just made another quilt, warm stripes, a appliqué of stars, a quilt men chose to run up their erect old flagpole and fight for. One-track minds, men’s ups and downs.

Honey, you don’t want the truth. You’re just hunting some sharp old gingham gal that’ll fit onto a Sunday Supplement Ladies’ Page. She’d tell you how to make gentle soap and slow candles. You think the past was just one long class in handicrafts? Oh, I’ve had others in here glad-handing me for household tips. Listen, as a child, I hated being near the candlemakers. Rendered fat stinks! Show me a butter churn or some margarine, I’ll grab that margarine stick any day of the week. You ain’t looking to hear my particular rough news. I ain’t a antique, was never such a fine lady. I don’t have no blue-book value whatever. All I am is stringy and cross—with a good memory for grudges. I’m no more than what you see: just old, old, old.

So, child, get this gear packed up, cut off your machine, leave. And no hard feelings. It’s just—I’m too tired to lie, too vain to need to. Staying mad—that’s a lot of what’s kept me opening these eyes. See, I’m still waiting for a small last way of getting even.

I got news, honey, the world is a C – student. Everybody
but
it deserves the A’s. So, get on out now. Bye.

NO
? Oooo, I like seeing your jaw set. Good sign. Feeling underestimated? Welcome to the club—I am a charter member. Listen, the day I went ninety and somebody first called me a nonagenarian? I thought it meant I’d run out of claiming numbers, thought I’d hit some non-age—off time’s mailing list. But
you
don’t plan to be sold short, do you? Well, good. So you hate being pushed around, even from a bed by some creaky leather hinge weighing under eighty-nine, hunh?

Well, maybe we can work something out here. For today only, understand. My secretary tells me I ain’t exactly got no national news conference scheduled between now and lunch. Look at you. Think you got some stuffing, do you? We all need to stay a little mad. Helps you know you ain’t handpicked—just lucky.

So, bracing for the whole truth and nothing but? Well, I didn’t mean to tick you off none. It’s just, you wouldn’t believe the folks rush in here with their questions answered before they even ask. I get to talking about my babies dying, they’ll shoo me over to household niceties.

LISTEN
. I been steadily waiting for a certain person to turn up, the one who’ll ask it right, who’ll just say maybe, “yes?”

I can’t be sure. But if you plan to hear a few more salty facts, Big Eyes, you’d best pull up a little closer. I ain’t going to bite. Couldn’t even gum you hard enough to make a mark. Just had to do a little test. Only got so many retellings in me. Can’t be casting my old gems in just anybody’s trough. At ninety-nine, you got to hold something back. What? I’m that old, hunh? Imagine,
me?
Well, you’re the one with the facts and equipment. You have history on your side, all I got’s my life.

Can you feature me this far up in years and still able to
notice
company? Machine’s listening, ain’t it? I can tell. Loose lips sink ships. Is this a Japanese one? I declare, nothing’s what it was.

Come maybe two, three inches closer. Fine. No nearer, please. At my age, child, the suspense is everything.

ON THAT
particular day I started, soldiers kept swimming in their millpond. A stone wheel ground corn toward being daily Confederate johnnycakes. Men stayed sloshing around the way men will when they been busy being
scared and then, of a sudden, get a good chance not to be. Fellows freed up, hollering, were ducking one another. Men!—one minute killing each other, next minute all innocence, how do you figure it?

The sentinel on duty got to feeling so silly he fired a round of shots to celebrate. Everybody laughed. Pretty Ned shucked a rein from off one wading dray horse, he tied the four-foot leather thong to a sturdy sapling down near water. Made ready to swing off of it. He wanted to “cannonball,” as my children call it. Called it.

Ned secured it good and tight, yelled that he got to dive first since swimming had been his idea. Nobody argued. Soldiers, older and younger with farmer’s tans, hair full of soapsuds, stood chest-deep, hip-deep. They turned to see how big of a splash he’d make. They grinned. Ned got a goodly hold, he looped one arm in leather, wrist to elbow. Wore his bugle on its red sling full-time so he could signal during emergencies. Brass won’t rust that much. He took a push off the mud shore. A slender naked boy, shiny-wet, hands and face catching bugle light. He heaved to get up a decent speed, ready to hurl hisself aloose for the largest plop possible.

Well, what noise others’d made, those shots fired, sounds of men acting so spunky for once, it had drawn three Yankees. They’d done set up sniper’s shop in a old willow tree on the shore opposite. Dear me yes.

Course, you know.

NED SWINGS
back a last time. For fun, the sentinel pulls off a blast straight up. Others start to whistling, slapping water, making Rebel yells. Ned, in this noise, gives a little shout that others think is for the fun of it, Ned keeps swinging, never letting loose, goes weaving way on out, then slinging in again and twisting funnier, more sideways every time. No man watching could tell Ned’s high spirits from his flinching with them bullets finding every good soft part of him. Hogtied up in air, poor child was catching everything. The sentinel stopped his celebration firing. Swimmers ceased clapping. All went still. Finally plain weight pulled Ned down. Men groaned when he fell, disappointed at so poor a dive after all the practice. Still nobody knew. Only with Ned face-first and in too long did some man’s foot nudge him, man saw stripes of dark all through the shallows, man yelled, “Child’s been hit. They’re here.”

Then everybody plunged under. All but the caisson mules and horses—too stupid to—all but my man, my boy back then. He moved to carry out his pal. He lifted Ned from lake, lugged Ned right up onto slippery moss. Ned’s bugle was draining brown water and all the color Ned had lost. The bugle belched out gore like it’d been wounded
for
Ned. The living boy didn’t worry that things were splintering and popping open all around him, target number two. Didn’t notice, bent across his friend.

The sentinel saw which tree smoke kept rolling from across the lake. He fired at drooping willow fronds till one lump of Yankee fell down splash into the water. Onshore Rebels grabbed knives from off their clothes. They
swam over fast, they cut that Yankee in his manly parts like he had raped their boy, not shot him. They already missed their Ned. Seemed like he’d been nice-looking and in good voice for them. Their first lieutenant had to pull men off that sniper, then men tried to peel my naked little husband off the dead friend he kept propping up and holding on to. Willie kept pressing wet curls back from his buddy’s forehead. Kept telling Ned which girls in Falls just couldn’t live through news of this, which choir director couldn’t. Didn’t help.

“Ain’t fair,” he called down at the perfect face, two clear open eyes. So then—though nobody’d ever known young Marsden to do so before, the child swallowed hard, whispered at the rosy ear nearest, “Hey, help me out here, bud,” bent closer, started singing, trying to. It sounded bad as expected—half-caw, much ache in it. Willie sounded plain pitiful and knew it but just hoped he might be interrupted. Didn’t happen. Nothing left the dead boy’s mouth but lake and a touch of pink, like when you brush your teeth too hard.