Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (85 page)

CAME
the year of drunkenness by accident. Shirl played Virgin Mary in our church Christmas Spectacle. Folks still mention the day: many a teetotaling and Bible-pounding Baptist got knee-walking drunk through no wish of their own.

Since Luke Lucas was Deacon, he donated forty-some gallons of cider, long in storage. For a man so known as tightfisted, this kindness seemed a switch. Fact is, the cider’d been in storage for right long. Lucas must’ve had his doubts about how hard the stuff was. His worried wife, plump Doris, loaded this heated brew with cloves, nutmeg, sliced preserved pears. That only made the children line up for
their
share. Everybody stood around waiting for the pageant to begin. It was late starting every year.

While folks milled about till the Mitchell twins quit tussling long enough to have their angel wings belted on correct, men/women/children kept bellying up to trestle tables for another ladleful of tasty mulled cider. The weather was warm that year. First sign: six people, outdoors, saying in a chorus, “Is it hot out here or is it just me?”

We’re now talking about Christians that hadn’t let one drop of devil water ever cross their God-fearing lips. To find yourself four sheets to the wind for the first time and on Christmas, that felt new.

Our churchyard was soon strewn with folks seated right slam in the bushes. They kept swallowing cup after cup—still sending staggering children for refills while they kept puzzling about what’d happened to them. Everybody felt overwhelmed with holiday warmth. There’d been such a line around the cider, I hadn’t got myself one drop. Pitifully clearheaded, I wandered from bunch to bunch. A straight-A student from my Normal School class, oldest son in a family of nine, reeled up to me and slurred, “What’s Thursday’s geography homework?” then angled off, muttering about responsibilities. One set of ladies, overcome, decided to hold a Bible lesson (in self-defense), but somebody was reading the part where Easter happens.

The ancient bachelor choir director, known for his tenor voice so high it stepped on certain sopranos’ toes, known for his begonias, known for once going North to the Juilliard School, where he had a quick but total breakdown, then come straight home, a fellow famous for the long patience he showed his own foul-tempered mother—the very choir director who’d been so taken with Ned the First and who wore a black armband long after the killing and who once admitted considering hisself Ned’s secret widow—
he
seemed changed today. I found him standing between the boxwoods and our church—he was beating fists against the church’s boards, and hard, loud, punching whilst muttering many bad words I’d never heard yet but someway knew were totally illegal here. His knuckles really bled. “Look,” he smiled, showing me raw fingers’ backs, the matching red marks printed on our white church. “Look, Lucy, you didn’t think I had it in me, did you?” and—glad-acting—went back to pounding.

I hurried to my own folks. Momma, plunked on cold dirt, was all but spread-eagle, had her skirt well up past ankles, not minding who saw. She kept touching Poppa’s cowlicks, saying that she wanted herself a farm. She adored turkeys, Irish wolfhounds, peacocks to drape every bush. She just loved Christmas and she dearly loved a snowy farm at Christmas. “Just think, Prince Consort, on our property you could go out and cut any Christmas tree you liked.”

“Hate farms,” he grinned, then went serious, holding up one finger: “‘The sweetest wings tour sourest by their needs; / Wilies that lily fester worse’n … deeds.’”

“Close,” Momma said and—in front of everybody—pulled his head her way, kissed him wet and full on (in) the mouth. Then they struggled to their feet and hurried home, willing to miss Shirley as the Virgin Mary. A mistake.

In the cemetery nearby, I couldn’t but notice Mr. Kingston chasing Mrs. Buxton, plump and the mother of seven. She quaked and danced and finally fell back onto a new grave. He said, “I’ve had my eye on you since we was eight, gal,” and they thrashed about. Well, such changes upset a child plenty, honey. Nobody hates surprises like dogs and children do.

I ran near tombstones, looking for my aunts. I passed a huge lady and her short mild husband. She was complaining, “DeWitt, for the past fifteen
minutes, I’ve felt distinctly sick.” He told her, “Ruth, for the last forty-eight years I’ve felt sick. For the last fifteen minutes, I’ve felt wonderful.”

In the midst of this hurly-burly, two well-known local dogs (both yellow), having followed their owners to church, now stood very still. Posed side by side, hounds only let their eyes move, catching a crazy behavior pattern never before glimpsed hereabouts, especially on the church grounds. Mutts seemed scared of how—if primed proper—even your strictest local Baptists could act more decidedly doglike than most casual dogs.—Worrisome.

I cut past our hefty bank president, cornered by four sketchy little boys, their hands out. Kids were just drunk enough to finally come up and ask the great man for a quarter (apiece, please) and—today only—he was stoned sufficient so he reached into pin-striped trousers and fished out a dollar gold piece for each big-eyed boy. “Gol-ly,” one said. That, sugar pie, is how long ago this happened. People still said Golly. Still meant it. Then, believing that the banker might change his mind, one kid yelled, “Scatter.” They all did.

Seeking everyday decency, I found my maiden aunts. Dressed alike in black, they perched at graveyard’s edge, one per headstone. They rested not twenty feet from where one fellow and another man’s upended wife still grappled, petticoats a type of salad that they swam in. Aunts—backs to graves—hadn’t noticed. Instead they were talking shop: piano. These three ladies were cruelly overeducated for a town this size. A wind blew and they all held on to their dark hats but otherwise seemed fine.

They addressed a pupil and, though the aunts looked okay from a distance, as I drew nearer I saw they were maybe making a mistake. Standing before them, Mary Eliza Woolrich, supposedly their best student this year.

Ruler, the oldest sister, said, “You call yourself talented?”

(Now, honey, everybody knows that a small-town piano teacher cannot afford to tell her students the whole truth about their long-range career goals.)

“Well,” argued the Lake, youngest of my aunts, “at least Mary Eliza here
works
. Imagination might not be her middle name. But our only gifted one in the last nine years could think of nothing but
MEN
. Myself I’d rather have a plodder like her here than some genius who quits. No—it’s a lie what I just said. I’m not myself today. Genius is always worth it.—Now run along, Mary Eliza, you’ve leached enough free coaching out of us for one day.”

I watched the girl weave away. I felt glad to notice: She was far too looped to understand what-all’d just happened.

Ruler pitched into a favorite topic. I understood that she was three full octaves drunker than her sisters. “I am often asked about Maestro Liszzzt’s nationality. By birth, he is Hungarian admintentlyly, admittided—I admit. And in Liszt’s social faddishness, in his easy morals,
un soupçon français
perhaps. His sense of design is, I’d be the first to add, not un-Italian. But, as a moral force, in sheer uplift, Liszt the idealizer—can only be called German, High Churman. His sweep, his …”

Her cowed younger sisters usually sat still during this but today they all spoke at onct. Lake said, “Oh, pack it in.”

Sea went, “You’re always talking Liszt.”

And I watched the two youngests skip away, stand to one side smiling, then start playing patty-cake. “Aren’t we something, Lucy?” Lake asked grim little me. “Why, I haven’t had this much fun since Andrew Johnson died.”

I swung around our church’s rear, needing peace, some pouting room. Shirley’s hefty mom sat slumped on back-porch steps, swilling her cup’s dregs, sucking cloves. Around her free finger, she now twirled Shirley’s silver halo. The Mrs. saw me, waved me nearer. “Feeling funny, Lucy. Maybe stage fright for our pet. Was up all night putting last touches on her costume—powder blue and white. I hate how the veil is going to cover up our darling’s curls—but you cannot have a bareheaded Virgin Mary. Everybody knows how Mary looks and I ain’t going to break no new fashion ground.—Here, take a load off your dogs. Been meaning to talk with you. Woman to woman like. Lucy, child, I see you sometimes a-studying me, squinting when I get out my brush set and go to freshen up Shirley’s curls again. Don’t judge me too harsh. For one thing, I’m a fool for holidays. Especially ones where she gets the lead.”

First off, the Mrs. claimed she wanted to make something clear: She didn’t blame me for how Summit Avenue was called Summit owing to its being the highest point for five counties. It won’t
my
fault that the blue-blooded folks who’d settled this town had picked the choicest view and coolest area for their own. Only natural. The valley was close, yes, and the peanut mill that made so much cash for those atop the heap did throw a heavy smell over certain houses at the big hill’s bottom, but, she wanted me to know, I was a child and innocent. “Thank you,” I said, unsure. She accepted.

“I like my darling having friends good as you. Let’s not hide our light under a bushel. Now, concerning our favorite topic, yours and mine, about how she came to be. I hail from way out in the country, swampland. You want a clove to suck? No? Mine is your own pappy’s home ground. You probably think your daddy’s folks are dirt poor. I knew the boy by sight, but not to speak. See, out Bear Grass way, Lucy, why
his
people are the rich ones—like your momma’s here in Falls. Give you some idea. The Honicutts owned a fine cabin, five whole acres.

“Us? We hardly had a full roof. Why, when it rained, only rained a bit less indoors than out. Young ones on a damp straw pallet—brothers and sisters of a age where they can’t help but to notice one another, nights. Daddy cut his foot, died of his jaw locking. Momma, on her own, had no more idea of how to farm than some city child would. The one pretty thing in that tatty hut: oiled paper for window glass. (Can’t afford glass, you rub cooking grease on a paper sheet, light gets through, some of the rain’ll bead up on it.) Pages got cut out of this
Godey’s Lady’s Book
my brother found by the roadside. One page—glued in the window near our sleeping spot—
it showed two beauties, Lucy. They were all rigged and stirruped in this lace and finery. Every time the sun came up, it showed me them. One was walking a squinchy little dog no bigger than a dinner roll. Both strolling in a park as pressed and like cut on the bias, as the ladies’ frocks.—Darling, that picture kept me going. Won’t much, Lucy, but it proved plenty for a thinking girl like me. It give me this notion, see. Oh, even then I knew how I looked. Maybe we didn’t own no looking glass but the ponds’ll show you enough. I saw I was too big-boned to ever wear them bows and sashes and suchlikes. But every time I studied the ladies from
Godey’s
, yellow as they’d turned and out of date as the styles already were, I felt I ought to be
around
a person that could get spiffed up that good. I’d then wade out in the swamps, I’d tie a pink ribbon round some cypress tree’s trunk. I’d slide the sash low, then tiptoe off and turn back, saying, ‘Middy style.’ I’d cosset the ribbon higher, then I’d check back, smiling, ‘Empire style.’ I longed—don’t think it silly, child—to just help dress somebody up each day.

“Thinking on this got me through, got me out that shack before my big brothers laid a unclean hand on me, it pulled me to this here fine hill-top city. When I hitched up with my Silas and we had us a girl—it was only when the nigger midwife, all compliments, handed me this child in a blue blanket, when the baby looked right at me and I noticed how her eyes matched that very blue—was then I seen that oh, the Lord God of Hosts, Stitcher and Finisher of Our Faith, why He’d give me exactly what I’d asked for. All them nights of wishing on the stars that you could see, due to a lack of roof (nice when it didn’t rain), all them dawns that held up two example ladies in a far-off park—I’d been rewarded.

“So you got to understand how I’m feeling today, nearbout drunk on it. My girl: Virgin Mary herself, pick of the litter. Our Shirley, she’s the answer to a simple woman’s prayer. Shirley is my Amen, with a dust ruffle around it. So you mustn’t think me too set on this one joy I been given. I knew what I wanted and it came true, came true out of my own big body here.—Darling? I’m probably the happiest woman alive.”

A FEW
minutes later, the preacher (knowing how crocked his sheep were but not willing to fess up to this and make them all feel guilty), he called us in to see the Holy Play. A few things did go wrong: The star lit up too soon and Bobo Kingston’s shepherd bathrobe fell open, him jaybird naked under it and too drunk to shut the thing by hand. Others, on the front row, helped. Then we found that our Virgin had gulped her own fair share of cider. Fact is, her mom had fetched extras for Shirl. That year the pageant used a real live baby (a little Buxton whose momma had been seen rolling amongst graves earlier). Halfway through the play, came time for Shirley’s speech. A long quiet fell. Even the nodders-off (it was hot in here) woke up for this part.

Shirl’s cheeks burned pink under her white tablecloth veil—she looked more perfect than the plaster manger scenes at Woolworth’s. But soon as
she tried talking, she appeared way too looped to recollect a speech memorized with my help and her momma’s. So instead, seated up there in straw as fresh and yellow as her hair, she was—I could tell—going to just make stuff up. “Don’t, stay still,” I longed to holler whilst I chewed my knuckle. Poppa had said we might help Shirl move up in life. I feared that my adopted friend might spoil her reputation forever. I knew something about that.

She spoke finally—sweet if a wee bit fuddled-sounding—she faced her sentimental audience, whilst the little Buxton pretty much behaved hisself in her arms. Went:

“This my own baby boy. He’s new. Nobody’d even let me inside a house to have him. Why, I tore up my own good coat to wrap this poor naked thing in. I had him out here in the straw like a yard dog would. The stable was all I could think of, wasn’t it, Joseph? I said, ‘Well, let’s try the stable,’ and so here we are. Ooh, someday folks will look back and say, Boy, was that ever tacky, not letting
them
in! Why, we should’ve been ‘obsequious.’ Did we ever slip up! But for now, nobody knows us. One thing, at least the animals have acted real nice and seem interested and peaceful about our being out here. They certainly have warmed things up, too. You need that with a baby this young. It’s cozy enough for now. I want more for this child, though. We’re trying as best we can for our new boy. This,” she held up the living child as he tugged one golden curl from under Mary’s veil for all to see, “this baby here,” Shirl looked out at her audience (her momma, standing near the back door, holding a hairbrush in one hand, weeping, the other hand covering her mouth), “he feels just like my very
own
little baby. He does. True, we may be mighty poor. And college for him is out of the question. But, you know, I’d just die for this baby. We just love our pretty pink little Christ child almost to death.” Then, overcome, she really hugged him. Our Virgin Mary sat right there and cried and cried. Couldn’t nothing stop her.