Read Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All Online
Authors: Allan Gurganus
Tags: #General Fiction
I laughed. The older kids frowned, the younger ones still waiting.
Sometimes Cap would hoist our two oldests—each a armful—and then turn in one place till he got so dizzy he had to tilt against the mantelpiece, laughing—taking great bites of household air. Kids wailing, “More, harder, Poppa,” the youngests begging to go next.—But this was during daylight. Later, when you get your children in bed and off to sleep, later, when the decks were cleared, child, watch out.
He might have worked long hours, maybe he rode across three filthy counties buying decent shoats, mules. But you could not tucker out that old soldier. All was never quiet on
his
western front! Well up into his fifties, a fellow still randy as three billies at rut. Some nights I’d beat retreat to my sewing room off the kitchen, my only refuge. I had the key. I’d spread a pallet on the floor. Soon, he knocked on the door. He’d ask, of his own
knocking, “Who
is
it?” A tender charming joke, he thought. The man wouldn’t stay out of there even if I locked, even if I propped a chair under the doorknob. I blocked the entry with my foot-treadle Singer. Fellow could not take a hint.
Cap had a history of battle tactics on his side, had a bull’s own strength. I was the china shop this particular bull had got used to. I thought about them signs in porcelain gift stores: “Sorry, folks, but: You break it, you bought it.” Well, he had bought it before he broke it. Bought it so he could break it in good. Captain would just jimmy up the window. “Hi,” he’d say, stepping in, standing there, grinning like I couldn’t guess what-all he planned for us, me. “Just happened to be passing by. Couldn’t help notice your light on, Missy. I’ve certainly been missing you,” grins he.
“You ain’t been missing
me,” I
says. “You might be missing something but it ain’t me. Least, ain’t
much
of me.”
“But …” He toyed with his watch chain, studied the floor, rocking his upper body to and fro like a schoolboy doing Diction. “But it’s one of my favorite parts.”
“So I noticed.”
He steps nearer, squats down by my pallet, says, hoarser, “Can’t I just
look
at it?”
What’s a woman to do? You can’t live with them. You can’t live without. But you can’t live.—To put it mildly, sugar, the honeymoon was over.
THESE DAYS
they call it lovemaking, don’t they? Used to, that meant just the kissing part, the warm-up. Titles change, styles in it shift, but that particular shenanigan has sure stayed popular right along. Well, after a while, you quit the struggling, you see it’s maybe bigger than the both of you. Even bigger than him—which is going some. For one thing, it’s free. They
really
love it in poor countries. It don’t demand no expensive regulation gear but what you got on you.—Finally a woman has to learn to just lean back into it—either that or leave home. Relaxed, it sure hurts less. And there were times, I got to admit, I found out how to catch him, how to dash on by and wait ahead, toe-tapping, miles in front and ready for my Captain to rush up red-faced, wheezing like the horse cavalry, and finish the famous race my old man did so dearly love to run. He seemed to need it—proof sure he was still alive. It was a kind of punch clock for a man of fifty-some. I was a kind of punch clock.
Honey, when he traveled on the road for three nights straight, I’d finish the dishes, get the last of our kids’ pajamaed, I’d stay longer than usual tucking them in. I would come downstairs, and every pine knot’s popping of house timbers, every dog barking a block off would be filling in this odd new time—a welcome silence but, too, strange, don’t you know? Them old songs might call it “Lack of a man.” To me it was more “Lack of somebody.” He happened to be it—that give him standing—faults and all. And when I moved from lamp to lamp, dousing household lights, the place seemed
darker than usual with just me downstairs. I didn’t miss it (didn’t exactly want him to jump out of a hall closet, grinning, “I been homesick for something, guess what?”). I just missed his extra stir and weight—call it ballast.
He knew too much about card games and horse races. One night in bed he’d told me how folks invented the saying “To get somebody’s goat.” Seems that racehorses are keyed-up, high-strung creatures—jumpy about being shipped from track to track. So trainers give the thoroughbreds their own pet—another small life to fit into their stall each night: a goat. It soothes, this mascot, comes to be familiar and a constant. Well, bad men, the night before some race, they know how they can sure upset a competition horse. They steal into the stall, they kidnap the champion’s beloved goat. The racehorse won’t catch one wink one of sleep. “To get your goat.” Nights that Captain was on the road, seemed my own was gone. The old goat. I slept shallower. Missed him and—only the slant-like, I reckon I got to miss that other part, too.
Yet, once he come home and however I cooperated, it never seemed enough. Captain believed Bed to be a type of siege. During, he’d mutter down at me, sometimes in a not-nice voice. Some evenings, he growled like I was a Yankee boy he’d trapped behind Rubble lines, a boy foe he planned to finish off from the back in a whole new way.
Later when one of our sons went out for high school football, I learned the name of a penalty: “unnecessary roughness.” On me, Cap was still making Northerners pay. I was the middleman trapped between wartime and tonight. Sometimes he’d get my wrists wrestled flat to mattress, veins up. I’d call, “Look, ease off, I promise I ain’t going anyplace, okay?”
Honey, for him it was all a flanking action.
Afterwards, Cap would roll my way, might lift one braid end from my unraveled bun, would try brushing my closed eyes with it, ask me how I was. But he didn’t really want my facts. Poor thing longed for compliments, like craving good grades from his Normal School teacher.—You know how women get blamed for being too monthly-moody, for staying too near mirrors? Look, I described the Captain’s dress uniform, didn’t I? Well, they don’t call it a
dress
uniform for nothing. Men have always held the patent for sullenness. Why, war itself is a form of pouting.
As for mirrors, men invented those. There’s that myth boy that looked into a pond’s top and fell flat in love with his reflected self. He figured the only thing on earth better than hisself was hisself twice. Thought he was so pretty he took the name of a flower. He did. In sulking and raw vanity, men could give us women lessons for life. Oh, don’t get me on the subject of it, please.
I’m sure that Captain tried. But in bed he was like a stamp collector born with mittens on. A steam locomotive trying to hop up onto your knees and pass as a lapdog. Just wouldn’t fit. Too much of everything. We never truly dovetailed at the mouths or lower. Teeth always knocking, bones in
the wrong spots. He was twice my weight, going on three times my age. I don’t want to dwell on this.
He kept a few old muskets right under our bed. Sometimes, during, I’d think of them—deadly—just inches below, antique and maybe loaded, cocked, and each one listening.
Times, in bed, my man wanted to try something “new.” Like somebody in a restaurant holding the menu, accustomed to ordering roast chicken only—now snapping at the waitress, “What’s
new
here?”
“New” meant tighter fits when use had broke in this or that.
“New” meant having your head shoved down onto such bulks as seemed a fire hydrant’s own. This too raw for you?—go read Hallmark—this is my life. “New” could—a few times at his drunkest—mean a message itch of beard cleansing me like some angel of steel wool. Now, I think back on how strict we looked by day and at church and it strikes me how basically wild we were come night. Times, it shamed me. Times, it hurt me. Times, it felt like canopy of daylight and pure oxygen overtop our carved and squeaking bedstead. What I liked best: It was just us. Nobody would need to know. It was—at its best—like some legal playpen for adults.
Of course, I was a very young girl starting out. He was busy seriously corrupting the morals of a minor. Many a night—to be honest—it was with the minor’s full consent. We had married. Richer or poorer, in sickie or in health.
Last week I looked at the Mall’s supermarket’s magazine racks: It’s just naked people squirming on everything. Folks forget to notice. It’s like them dreams where you go to church nude and nobody cares. Disappointing, really. The soap shows on the TV set, dear as I love my best one, it’s basically about their all hopping into each other’s beds. I don’t like to say it but “soap” is what they mostly need. Bedroom’s secrets are hanging out most everywhere. But, darling, to the menu question: “What’s
new
here?” My answer is: Nothing. We tried it all in 18 and 97.
When it meant more.
January sometime 63, Virginia
Dear Momma,
Christmas was the same as other days. I never knew it could be but don’t know what I expected. My socks are warm but sure very yellow and Sal and others say my legs look like a chickens. You say you want to know more than my being fine and asking How are you. Well maybe the strangest part here is games we played with Yankees. Before they moved, just a river kept their winter camp from ours. Since we had tobacco but no real coffee somebody got the idea of trading. Sal Smith my friend is good with his hands and made a little boat one foot square sealed with candle wax. He used
his last good handkerchief to be its sail set up in sticks. He was once a tailor and sewed the sails in two minutes flat and the boat floated level. He put in a sacthel sathchel sachtel sachtel sack of tobacco he could spare and wrote a note that said
Yankees I am trusting you to do right and send me this same sack but full of real coffee
.
He went down by the reads reeds and used a stick to launch it so he could not be shot so easy. Sal sent it on across. It took over thirty minutes for it to drift about sixty some feet but we waited in the bullrushes. What else did we have to do? You know it came back! With coffee too. You never tasted anything better after our stuff made from parched rye. Its being brown and in tin mugs is about the one thing that lets ours try and even pass for coffee. Well we groaned with how good real coffee is. No wonder Yanks so often win lately. You feel stronger after it. Momma breakfasts before leaving I could never even have one sip. You said Too Young. Ha ha now. Well pretty soon we had a whole nice little navy going back and forth. Swaps and no hard feelings. First the fellows on our side of the river were scared to stand in the open for fear of getting shot but then we understood that anybody silly enough to sail these things would probably not mess up a good time by blowing your blamed head off. Soon we were waving at each other and trying to holler. Men put notes in stick rafts and the commerce was brisk, as Lt. Hester puts it. He knows how to put it evertime. The Yank notes were funny at first but one of our boys from the moutains which tends to be a hard type of fellow but good fighters he got somebody to write something for him. He never went to school. The thing he sail over said
Say Yanks have you got yourselves any nigger wives yet? We think maybe they would improve the Yankee breed a bit
.
Then a message came back that said
Say Reb why don’t you people wear uniforms instead of those gray rags?
Reb answer drifted over,
Who do you think we are anyways, a set of damn fools to put on our good clothes to go out and kill damn dogs in?
Then the shooting commenced. Our fleet of pretty boats got pretty much blown out of the water. It nice while it lasted. Like their not fighting during winter it made you wonder why it couldn’t just go on like that. Well it is soon time for dirll drill which I hate but happens every Sunday like it or not. I would rather be there with you having rare roast beef and pudding and red wine from Poppa’s cellar and with the good silver and flowers in the middle of the table so high we can hardly see each other over them. Sunday afternoon and your piano playing. Even jokes you memorized from mailorder books. I think I like those jokes now. Momma I sure know why they put the sick in homesick. It is like a disease for me
sometimes around sunset especially. You keep right on being my mother don’t you? Even after all the bad things I have had to do. They told us we should for the Confederaecy. You said to do what they tell me and I have. Everything that was just regular at home seems like remembering heaven. Winters go easier on a fellow. Which is why I wanted to write before the thaw changes one thing. I bet you never believed I could do so many pages at once did you Momma? It took me days to. You can do a lot of things you never knew you could till it’s time. Yesterday I found the best rock kristl crsytl quarts I ever have. Well so long.
I wanted to send this one on off. Do not for one minute doubt that I am stay your loving son and Willie.
Seventeen years after Appomattox, my husband still meant to. Meant to go see old Sal Smith of New Bern, that leg-saving friend. But you know how it is with time and chores and excellent intentions. Those days, New Bern won’t a two-hour car ride. It hid back of virgin woods, washed-out bridges, hairpin curves threading around the property lines of the powerful. Finally Will wound up there for the usual reason: moneymaking. He’d come to peddle overpriced peafowl to the takeover-type Yanks who’d bought the few river-front plantations Sherm’s boys had spared.
Imagine it, you’re on a leg that Sal saved. You’re seventeen years and several pounds beyond the War. You turn a corner and here comes a banker-type, surrounded by yes-men holding clipboards, asking him questions. This gent wore a ground-dragging leather-looking coat. His face was framed in a starchy white collar and underwritten by a vulgar nugget stickpin. His hair looked dyed a hard brown, laid flat by grease. Fellow’s right leg was wooden, but rosewood, mind you, and polished like some revered parlor furniture. The face, hopeless, had stayed yam-raw and comedy ugly.
Marsden, unrecognizably civilian, grown awful far past his own bony boyhood shakes, rushed this citizen and, practically breathless, called, “Why
has
the ocean stayed so doggone mad?”