Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (64 page)

Hearing this, my jawbone sagged. Like Castalia, copying Zelia, warding off the world’s blows, I crossed arms over my chest. As many times as my old man’d been over all this territory in my company, alone and at banquets, through rain and dry till death do us in, imagine Captain Marsden leaving this part out. Even if he made it up, you know he might have made it up a little earlier, and for his lady-wife alone.

My mother once told me that, of all the electric feelings on life’s totem pole of bargain-basement emotions, Jealousy and Self-Pity are the tackiest. Momma always felt more at ease lecturing about emotion than showing any. Still, this didn’t make her wrong concerning personal hunches. I remember her changing subjects, claiming every local family had its own built-in gene-prone weaknesses. Ketchums stole. Cogdells stuttered. The Williamses always suffered kidney complaints and, after forty, their backs went. So I asked, “What’s
ours?”
She blinked. I pressed her, being pushy me, “What’s our own clan’s biggest sicknesses?” Momma got a strange large look on her narrow face. She felt to check if her cameo was pinned on straight. She looked dead ahead as her voice wobbled some. “Jealousy and Self-Pity,” she said.

Early on, I’d vowed to never feel any envy for the slippery child my husband missed. I told myself, “Lucy, in that direction, craziness waits.” I swore I’d blow the whistle on self-pity every time it licked its way within a foot of me. But now, hearing what the Captain had been holding out on me, it smarted afresh. Saving back his most name-brand story (Stuart
and
Lee!), well, that flat hurt my feelings. No telling what else he’d filed deep in his ponder heart, hid there, refrigerated—forever sweet while I risked spoiling out here in hot open air.

Said (over babies’ lowered voices, some still counting mules and tombstones) how one evening (Cap waited for the game to die—one backward glance from him soon killed it) the great men had been camped near his regiment, there came a lull in the fighting. Supplies were due any day. Was time for oiling your musket, time to jot brave cheerful letters home while, on another page, writing your will. The boys from Falls were just fixing to do their nightly skit. Word arrived that entertainment was being sought for the High Command. Generals need distracting, too.

Private Ned, as his division’s all-time favorite, got handpicked for the tryout. Meanwhile, the big-toothed kid who did Ned’s musical arm gestures, he won’t even asked along. Nobody half thought of Will, though he stood around, chin up, chest out—right winningly ready.—See, everybody knew: Lee might be a genius at strategy and a saint at duty. (What other general
ever
stuck his beloved youngest son in a risky artillery unit as a buck private and made sure other boys got promoted quicker? Fact.) Lee’s might be the candidate for the handsomest face in Christendom. (The argument always run: if good looks had been ammo, the South would’ve won the whole mess two weeks after Sumter.) Yeah, Lee maybe boasted the finest pedigree this side of Upperville thoroughbreds. But, child, levity was probably beyond Marse Robert. He was not what you’d call no laugh riot. Saints ain’t often all that big on comedy. One of self-sacrifice’s big loopholes, to my mind.

So for this reason, the singing team got split up. The pretty young talent part got escorted by the General’s aide-de-camp, on towards Command Headquarters. The silent partner, freckled, thinking of cute hand signals to try, he followed at a distance.

Out by the horses, out near a tent that Lee’s famous animal, Traveler, had all to hisself (huge horse for a big man—I seen him stuffed in Lexington, later of course), Fitzhugh Lee, one of Stuart’s division commanders and kin to Marse Robert, held a kind of audition. Four tenors from four other outfits did their level best, one by one. A fifth fellow offered rope tricks. Good, but he ended with a trick using a noose made with one jerk and he added some patter about Lincoln’s swinging in it. Would Lee go for
that?
No way. Then Ned sang. Everything went stiller, then still, including horses. Even night bugs took a brief intermission. Ned got picked. The others agreed. Some tenors come over to shake Ned’s hand and ask his name. The rope one pouted off into the night.

First the child was fed extra-fine rations. He got groomed a bit. From
one tiny black bottle, a drop of what smelled like expensive perfume was daubed behind Ned’s either ear and on his wrists. Later, a strategy meeting broke up, leaders exiting Lee’s tent. Imagine a little soldier’s excitement. It’d be like a Bible believer catching sight of a Prophet Convention, Moses and Abraham talking shop, prophet shop.

The map boy came out carrying tubes and rulers and calipers. He sure flung our little singer one jealous look. Then Fitzhugh Lee ushered in young Ned Smythe, introduced him. Two generals were left seated on folding camp chairs. They’d just finished their meal. History books will claim that Lee prided hisself on using the same tin plates and cups your average foot soldier ate off of. But, according to Ned according to my husband, here rested a full-sized Dresden soup tureen, fine porcelain plates out here in the viny woods. In bowls, remains of a clear French soup. By the light of one lantern, two bearded gents turned to study this silvery newt of a boy.

Stuart was a knobby dandified wag, personal congratulations in his every fidget. Lee—the white beard, gray suit, brass buttons—looked, in lamplight, metal! Ned swallowed hard. He didn’t know quite what to do with his hands now that all of him showed. He clasped these before him just like a hometown choir director once made all the solo ladies do. Ned announced he would now try “The Last Rose of Summer.” He chose to offer his best selection first. Oh, he had show-business instinct, that lad! He understood: Such faces didn’t want no tinselly minstrel jokes. (It was a bad moment for the Southern fortunes. That sure showed in the generals’ grave features. Victory at Bull Run was just a memory. What’d seemed destiny’s first win was looking more like beginner’s luck. The long unmanly wait for supplies had worn everybody out.)

Standing up—both men would’ve been over six feet tall. Even sitting, Ned saw that they were massy and real
there
. Both waited. So Ned, willing, sang it out. He faltered at first then judged that these figures expected but little from so young a recruit. Which freed Ned up considerable, relaxed him into usual sweetness. His tone lifted, pure as duty going on its rounds from verse to verse. The voice, unchanged as yet, hit even highest notes with simple and sensible spirit.

When the song was done, Stuart asked for it again, please. Then Lee, with typical kindness, wondered aloud if Ned felt strong enough. (A saint can understand most everything but ease, child.) Ned nodded he was fine. Scared as he felt, with his pressure points just pounding, the command tent now stank of the lilac-ish perfume he’d been touched with earlier. Ned rescaled that sad song’s every peak, did it even better. Still thirteen, he showed a face wide open as his open oval mouth. He looked and sounded like one thing: the winning side.

Them elder males sat soaking up his every note, basking in the scent his pulse was broadcasting. Lee—upright in his chair—looked like a chart for ideal posture. Stuart slumped more forward, studied his boots, fondly petting his beard’s one side and then the other.

When singing stopped, Stuart rose up very straight, barked, “Our cause is just.” Then he nodded respects to Ned, saluted a Lee as still and silver as any Lee on any coin might be—and, riled afresh, sporting a yellow sash around his waist, J. E. B. took his leave like some rash bighearted operetta prince. (In two years, he’d be a lot more famous but completely dead at thirty-one.)

Ned now faced the Supreme Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Moths kept pestering the lantern’s chimney. You could hear laughing from the three hundred tents downhill. Lee sat, legs crossed, looking hard at the handsome child. He spoke, “Where’s your mother, boy? Where do your people live?”

“Falls, North Carolina … sir.”

The great man asked Ned’s age. “Thirteen, sir.” At this, Lee lowered his head, pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fourteen come May, sir,” the child tried helping out. It was only August.

Next the General muttered what he was later quoted as saying elsewhere, what he finally admitted at Gettysburg when requesting a pitiful Reb company to resist impossible odds. Lee, seated in lamplight, bugs peppering the tabletop and getting in the soup, said, “Of course, it’s my fault. All of it is my fault, son.” (The man
had
read his New Testament.) Then Lee’s eyes seemed to shut, fretting. Ned, still waiting to be dismissed, considered contradicting this, about the blame and all. But, polite, a private, he decided against. Then he noticed: the Supreme Commander was napping. Ned would wait till Lee woke. Beginning to be tired, Ned shifted from foot to foot. Maybe he should clear his throat, or else just leave? What would his stern mother scold him to do next?

Then Ned told hisself: Fool, here’s your big chance to notice Marse Rob. Ned knew to study this hero that enlistees admired “with a love surpassing that of women.” Finally Lee’s sad eyes opened one at a time. He sat straight er, smiled a close responsible smile. He took something from his tunic’s inner lining and waved the singer nearer.

The old man held a picture of a child. She’d posed, a dimpled ideal person—ten or twelve—one finger pressing her right cheek. Ned, nervous, nodded to show he approved and saw how pretty a girl this was. Lee sat looking at the tintype, moved it off at arm’s length—squinted—a nearsighted man in his fifties—too vain or busy to use glasses. “My nickname for my baby girl here is ‘Precious Life.’ Is that a foolish name?”

“No, sir. Girls’ nicknames always sound like … that.”

“Like what, son?”

“You know … Puddin’ or Kitten. Mushy such as that. Nice but mushy.”

Lee actually laughed. It appeared to cost him a good deal but it was a sacrifice made nobly. Then he thanked the boy for singing.—Smiling, Lee reached up, almost touched the front of Ned’s neck. (Lee would not have done so without express permission from this bugle boy private.) “You have a gift here. Guard it.” The General looked back at his unlatched picture.
“My daughter here sings. Some evenings on special occasions, her nurse will let her wear a bit of cologne. Nobody would believe it but, times, young boys your age come in at night to sing for me—and I feel—I can smell it.”

Lee directed Ned to step a bit closer. Ned did so—uneasy, his eyes watering, feeling guilty—he had
tricked
Lee, the single greatest American strategist. Ned saluted, needing something to do. The old man seemed to be dozing in his daughter’s scent. His beard now rested on his chest. The General still clasped the portrait in one palm. Ned—for good measure—hummed final bars of “The Last Rose” again. “Sir?” He finally backed away. “Dismissed?” he whispered just in case. Then he saluted the sleeper once more. He said, “Sir. Sir? … We
like
you.”

Ned slipped out.

He was sweating, fearful he’d made a mistake that might disgrace all Carolina regulars. Had he done enough for the great Lee, or maybe too much? The smell of girl still hung around Ned Smythe but by now it was mostly his own smell too. Confused, he found his buddy waiting by the horses. He told skinny Marsden everything, and fast. The perfume, the song twice, the old man’s great silver weariness. Shy, Ned even offered his own pale neck for the other to sniff—even jerked his collar open. Even so near horses, Marsden went, “P.U.—nice. Precious Life!” and Will made comedy kissing sounds. Arm in arm, shoving each other, getting one then the other into headlocks for no good reason, boys walked to their part of camp.

All the fellows had waited up to hear. Salvador Smith, the sentimental corporal, was circulating pictures
of his
girls, he forced Ned to sing it three times through, just like for the big brass. “Boy,” Sal asked, “what’d Lee say to
that
note? Just look what that did to me,” and rolled back a gray sleeve to show goose bumps. Others did the same, it was a beautiful form of bragging. And Ned was about to tell his chums the rest—the aide’s strange trick of dousing Lee’s nightly visitors with a familiar scent, the old man’s battle-weary catnaps. But Willie flashed him just the ghost of a frown (they knew each other like Siamese twins sharing one snack’s candelabrum indigestion). Ned thought better of it, hushed. Nice to spare the Supreme Commander a little pain. Instead, Private Ned Smythe hummed one final “Last Rose” refrain. A man studying his own goose bumps called, “Amen,” and added in his own dusky voice, “Boy, when this is over … one spring, when this is over …”

Five days later, the inspirational boy soprano was floating dead in the water.

MORE DIRT
roads, more dead ends. One farmwife rushed onto her porch lugging a shotgun as Cap did a real gingerly U-turn in her yard. Two more days we rambled, looking. Tires kept going flat. They soon appeared about as nicked and patched as I’d commenced to feel. I could see my husband sitting more forward. One-eighth of his beard kept shifting where his molars
clamped and slid. Hunched nearer the windshield, he had a stranglehold on steering. In Cap’s side glances, I noticed him decide what’d be around a curve—his head fixed square on that very feature when it appeared. By now, Cap had quit asking locals. He was homing in on the bad old place like moving toward a sound. “Lucy,” said he, quiet. “We’re near it.” “I could tell,” goes I.

Behind me I hear a strange sound: it is our children holding still.

FOUR A.M
. in a tourist camp. A low-lying walnut grove, moon at three-quarters full, all my babies sound asleep. White shacks looking like a combination of necessary johnny houses and the ideal cottages songs talk of. I woke to find the Captain missing from our bed. Where to now? First I slipped next door, checking on our young ones.—This is not too dainty of a subject but it’s a fact of life: My children had pinworms. I don’t know if Yankee mothers put up with this. It was early fall and my kids played outdoors and sat right in the dirt. Worms were in the dirt and kids were, too. Meeting of the twain. Get the picture? What you going to do?