Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

  Slowed, tugging at his stiff white collar, Will now slid through the Utt garden gate. Their home looked like Simon had described it. Will took off his hat, held it to his chest, grinned a tinny awful grin (he felt this falseness and it pained him into grinning wider, faker). His features felt haywire and might do anything, already busy showing guilt first thing. He felt that awful swimming sense you get sometimes in church or at a overfancy concert where you know you are about to jump up screaming something nasty.

  Three dark older sisters, each in black wool, all wearing hair lifted into buns, stood, grave and smiling behind Simon’s exact eyebrows. Their faces looked like early tries at getting his one right. They lined up on the porch, eager to shake Will’s hand. Ladies smiled varieties of one fixed searching smile. Sisters had, they admitted right off, memorized all Will’s finer letters. Plainly they’d spent time imagining the last person to have seen their young brother alive. The Utts had allowed theirselves certain romantic thoughts concerning this striking Southern person. Ladies must’ve seen how bad Will’s spelling was (they were all teachers!) but they knew his words come right from the heart—which helps you overlook a lot. There’s many kinds of grammar, child.

  “Here he is at last,” Mrs. Utt sighed. “An answered prayer. We dearly hope that this might prove but the first of many visits, ‘son.’ But we consider today your true homecoming, William—if I might call you William?” William, he nodded. Child—what choice?

  Entering the house, smells of baking, of standards, righteous cleanliness. Lining this hallway, seminary diplomas written in foreign languages. Even the cottage’s plaster walls looked fresh-scrubbed. Will was glad he’d bought him a brown suit for this. Apart from business black, he only had a dressy gray one and he saw right off how that’d be rude, gray here. The brown did feel a little tight now. He toyed with his new black hat, its brim (a planter’s sunproof one) was wider than most worn this far north. Mrs. Utt’s fine voice explained that owing to William’s kindnesses since Appomattox, he’d given this grieving household the greatest comfort, did he know? He’d made their several crosses easier to endure. “Would it embarrass you, William, to understand how knowing you has smoothed most every acrimony one might tend to continue feeling toward the other side?”

  “The other cause, Mother,” an older sister corrected.

  “Yes, ‘cause,’ certainly … they coached me to say that,” she laughed. “But with you I need not stand on ceremony, sir. I feel that to my very heart and am so grateful for your coming all this distance.” The ladies in black each pulled forth fresh-ironed hankies folded into triangles, getting ready. It seemed to Will a cue.

  The widow led him to one corner of a dim family parlor. Here stood a little shrine to the dead boy soldier: cuff links, a small oak bear riding a sled (a toy Simon’d carved—with a good deal more skill, Willie feared, than his own watch crate showed), some blue baby booties, childhood daguerreotypes, two school essay prizes and, beneath them, the papers themselves, showing a fat steady script. The same design of sampler the sisters’d sent Willie hung framed above this altar. Flanking relics, two candles burned. Swallowing, wiping his wet palms along his pant legs, Will said, bold, “There’s something I better tell you right off. Something I reckon you all should’ve known all along.” “Splendid,” said Mrs. Utt, “just as you wish,” but seemed to wait on something else. Then Will remembered. The gawky civilian reached into his pocket then, he heard the lining start to rip, he fished forth the homemade box, turned to Simon’s sleek mother and handed it over. He said, “Here. I told him I would. And now I have.”

  Thanking him, she quickly set aside the wood-burned cask Will had made and decorated with such care. Right disappointing, her ignoring all the work he’d put into it. Mrs. Utt cradled a clicking watch in the palm of her right hand. Relieved as Will felt, he was also pained some to see another person touch it. He almost felt that she was getting to touch his personal privates. Odd. The chain trailed down her dark sleeve. She looked over at her three quiet daughters. One nodded. Permission. Mrs. Utt hit the latch. Time showed itself. Gold popped open in a rush of holy music almost perfumy, squirts of something pure unleashed in the close air of a Yankee parlor. Two sisters reached out and quick took hold of each other’s arms. One sucked air as if she’d heard her brother speak (and maybe, within that, her father’s voice cased within Simon’s own). Against long dark dresses, white handkerchiefs shivered and knotted.

  Moving slow and certain as some preacher at communion, Mrs. Utt faced the shrine and placed Simon’s watch atop its own coiled chain and at the very center. She spoke a simple prayer aloud and, after her Amen, wept in a orderly, almost planned-seeming way. Odd squeaks bellowed out of her, half-barks like a schooled seal might sound. Everybody waited. When she’d finished, everybody sat and acted right cheered.

  Draperies got pulled wide open. Will decided he’d now tell. Had to. The whole story. Sure did seem high time. Trying to live a life in Falls with Simon’s watch still ticking on Will’s mantel—it’d seemed, well, like a form of bigamy. In some way, Will’s own freedom—to buy land, to haul off and conduct a life both legal and civilian, personal—all that depended on his fearless honesty right this second.

  “I’ve got to say something out, ladies,” Willie Marsden, hat in hand, announced just as the food arrived. You could see it’d taken ladies whole days to make these pastries. Tea biscuits, heart-shaped, gleamed with gems of careful red jam on top. Beside these, round discs, frosted to look like watch faces. One had a little toothpicked drawing of a deer. Ladies had remembered the deer but forgot the chasing hounds.

  “Yes, do tell us all. Lovely. We must get to know each other ever so much better. Yes, but first, you have to be famished, considering the miles you’ve come just to be here with us.”

  The Widow Utt held a silver tray spread with buttery crumpets, browned just so, and still more watch shapes with little baked-on winding stems. Will understood: He hadn’t really had a meal or anything in three and a half days. Now, at the sight of all this thoughtful food, he felt half faint. Still, eating seemed out of the question. But as trays of other sweets appeared—he started understanding just how truly hard his telling this would be here. He refused cookies. He saw it hurt their feelings, so he added, “Later, maybe … looks beautiful, you-all sure eat beautiful up here …” He was playing the hick, child. They laughed but seemed confused. “Well,” he cleared his throat and picked up one of each treat. Ladies breathed again. “Well,” he smiled, “there’s much to say, seems like.”

  To sit here, your hat on one knee, big left hand full of sweets crumbling, with Simon’s one sister on your left and another to your right, with others facing you head-on, and you a person still not old but aging fast under these gray-blue Bible-believing eyes all trying and make you out to be a hero …

  “So,” the widow spoke.

  Earlier, on the porch, lined up, these sisters had seemed much alike. Now differences came clear. They soon grew lively—for flinty New England matrons (a style right mineral and fixed compared to the animal-and-flora of Southern womanhood’s humid waltzier type of heat). The oldest sister announced: Will might find amusing certain stories concerning her boarding-school pupils during wartime. It seems that one little girl misheard the word “Rebel” as “Rubble.” She imagined the advancing Rubble forces to be squadrons of gray stone men, formed of roots and mud, marching against far softer animal Northerners! Everybody laughed. Will laughed—late—but somewhat harder than the rest. He sat shaking his head No to prove this was just like children, was it not? Then he nodded Yes. Rubble.

  Sisters had been saving some one tale apiece. Each told each with an easy lightness. Their grace felt painful. He waited for his opening. He leaned forward like a runner at the starting line. Cookies crumbled in his left fist. The sisters’ smoothness made him feel more heavy, murderous and coarse. He’d once been two years younger than their Simon. Simon had been ten to twelve years younger than these sisters here. N
ow Will was already three and a half years older than Simon had been when he got shot dead by a certain nearby person. Will, sitting here, did figures in his head till he felt sick from tallying (“I should eat”). The age of fifteen seemed something to forever subtract from any future age of Will Marsden’s. Oh, but Will wanted out of here. Just run! Some mess. He felt embarrassed by his own superstitions. Would these teachers believe he’d expected many Northern houses to be painted blue? That he’d expected Yanks to still be swaggering around in war regalia? (Back home, gray uniforms were now illegal, only that prevented their being worn daily by many die-hard vets.)

  Ladies mentioned the room upstairs where Will would sleep tonight. It overlooked the churchyard and cemetery where Simon’s new marker stood. Will wondered if Simon’s body had been shipped back up here, but there was no gentle way to ask. Ladies’ interest in the watch hinted that Simon’s body like so many others had been buried in a hurry at the time. Willie grinned at further mention of that Rubble story. Wasn’t he that? A gray boy born out of a rocky hole. Compared to these fine ladies with their polished chintz and lace doilies, Will felt made of pond scum, scabby tree bark, stones—a Rubble soldier sure enough.

  “There really is something, like I said before, I’ve got to say out to you, ladies. It’s something hard.” He spoke too loud but at least he’d started. This room sure did seem—maybe owing to Will’s not eating for some days—to be drawing very far away and yet closing slow around his ankles like a set of shackles would. He recalled his mother trying to tie him safe in Falls.

  “Fine, please tell,” the Widow Utt smiled. “The second everybody gets here,” and she twisted toward a knock at the door, she touched her neck’s bun. “Fine—it’s op-en.”

  Neighbors started arriving. Soon in came two dozen more parishioners, the present minister, a whole children’s bell-ringing group from the sisters’ Academy, plus many brass bells in pine crates. Fully forty-five people filed in. More and more kept pushing toward young Marsden, eager to get introduced. Since he’d wadded pastry in his right hand, he used his left and saw people wonder if this might be due to war wounds. Folks stared at Willie—like looking for traces of Simon on him—seeking some family resemblance.

  Babies were held up for Will to kiss and they looked like normal babies, like present-day Rubble ones but fatter here. They’d won. Their folks had. Shy at being fussed over, Will kissed each child quick. His manners—while right good for a boy from a large farm outside Falls, North Carolina, pop. 1,100—had undergone some rough sea change during war. Now his own manners didn’t seem (to him, anyhow) quite wide or fine or deep enough for this event. For this, you’d need to be a statesman or, at least, a leading candidate for mayor.

  Will answered direct questions simply, trying to make his accent lessen as much as he could without feeling like a fake. Grinning till his jaws ached, Will begun finding first reasons not to tell.

  Soon every hallway, the whole cottage staircase, jostled with talking Yankee people, their tones all right angles and hurtful sharp turns. A little choir of girls stepped forward, showing more white gloves than there seemed sets of legal hands among them. Gloves shook brass bells, doing two popular songs of the South. It upset the North Carolina murderer among them. The sound of ringing metal recalled a watch’s fine hymn, it was like parade-ground marches or country church bells struck by miniés. Children played music that, four years back, would’ve got a Yank arrested. All this helped Will see how rough a public confession would now be.

  Oh, but even with this houseful, he longed to fess up to murdering the neighborhood favorite. These folks were eager for the war to feel ended. They liked welcoming a onetime Rubble come North on this awkward mission. Willie knew: In downtown Falls just now, a confessed Yankee soldier would be snubbed at best, stoned at worst. These folks seemed to consider his visit civilizing, a rite they’d waited on.

  The preacher who’d replaced Rev. Utt now rose and in a voice less rich than it seemed to plan to be, announced he’d quote a recent poem from The Atlantic Monthly. Rev. said it expressed the feelings of all persons present and, he was glad to say, it’d been penned by his second cousin, a Mr. Finch. The pastor cleared his throat to urge baby bell ringers to keep gloves off those clanky bells for now.

  No more shall the war cry sever,

  Or the winding rivers be red.

  They banish our anger forever

  When they laurel the graves of our dead!

  Under the sod and the dew,

  Waiting the judgment day,

  Love and tears for the Blue,

  Tears and love for the Gray!

  Will noticed that many around the room were upset. Even men, backed against the walls, looked near tears and Willie understood, jolted: they’d been soldiers too. They stood watching him. They could’ve killed him then and they tried but couldn’t. They might squash this Rubble yet. He’d come this deep into enemy territory, unarmed. Marsden fought back such fears in a roomful of girl bell ringers. Elbows pressed hard to ribs (he needed to half hurt hisself to keep concentrating proper). He waited only for the chance to leave. By now, a body’s spilling facts seemed nigh on to impossible.

  Others spoke of Simon. They smiled as Will sat picturing his dead friend. By now, however undeserved, he considered Simon a friend, a friend in passing. He listened to tales of Simon’s rowdy kindness, he imagined Simon’s chapped mouth moving, sounding something out for Will alone. Lips went, “These people here have suffered enough. Let them like you, buddy. Is that really so hard? They need to like somebody living and not just miss me dead.” Seemed to make sense.

  “I guess you all heard the one about why the ocean stays so cross and all?” There was a hush. Will understood he’d broke into the Widow Utt telling Simon stories. “Sorry.” Will turned, but she smiled.

  “No, please, tell, why?—Why does the ocean stay … angry, was it? Why?” Smiling, she glanced around, proving to others how pleased she was that their guest of honor—clumsy though he be with his fistful of dough—was trying to “enter in.”

  “Why? ’cause the ocean’s been …” Then, ashamed, Will mumbled.

  Others wanted to laugh but had to ask, “Because what?”

  “It’s mad because it’s been crossed so many times.—See, ‘crossed.’”

  Then chuckles. Eyes cut toward each other, proving they liked Will’s trying, even if he did mess up right bad.

  “Good one,” the preacher said. “We’ll have to see that one enjoys an afterlife in some future sermon.”

  His wife remarked, “He always says that.” Everybody laughed. You could tell the pastor didn’t like to be corrected, which made it funnier. Will started feeling like these really were real people here.

  Mrs. Utt continued her tale. “Out from dawn to dusk and year round too. We had one dreadful hurricane that got this far, remember, was it ’59? Yes, ’59, and our boy tied himself to the top of the oak tree, the huge one, past the church’s east gate, so he might see it all better. Julia somehow knew he was up there, didn’t you, dear? I got a ladder. Already boughs were snapping. Once we got him in this house and once I’d whipped him savagely, I’m not ashamed to admit, I asked our Simon how he’d even expected to live through a storm that size. You know what he said, remember?”

  Sisters on either side of Will—his honor guard—nodded, knowing Simon stories like catechism.

  “He said, ‘Oh, Momma, I could have gotten used to it!’—Can you fancy? Oh, we’ve had many a smile over that. ‘Used to it!’”

  Willie, who’d shot him, sat here, swallowing. “Hardly a saint, our Simon,” one sister smiled. But her saying this made Willie feel his friend, a preacher’s son, was more a saint. Mrs. Utt confessed that Simon had got most, if not all the family beauty for maybe three generations. Sisters nodded, smiling, plain faces pleased to remember their brother’s slightly finer looks. “Our only silverhead,” one said. A man mentioned Simon’s gift for whittling and handstands. Neighbors mentioned his volunt
eering to babysit and such.

  Marsden felt these comments to be aimed at him. He nodded in a few places. Big raw faces all around praised Simon. A baby crawling near Will’s shoes untied one lace. When the mother corrected her child, Will grinned. He’d started shaking from nerves and hunger but still felt unworthy of fine food. His wool suit grew soaked clear through (was it hot in here or was it just him?). Slow droplets trickled down his spine, over ribs and out starched cuff, sliding toward a fist of dough gone solid now. If only they would let me speak, Will decided as a buxom lovely lady schoolteacher rose to describe “the firecracker incident.” Others laughed. Grinning, Willie practically panted. More neighbors came packing in, standing on tiptoe to see the Living Reb. The teacher was saying Simon loved sledding “to a fault. It seems our Simon skipped class one day after a lovely snow, that eager to slide down our steepest hill, a sheet of veritable ice it was by then. It also happened, as things would have it, that Boston’s truant officer, the head one, had stopped for a hot toddy at Gerson’s Inn. His sleigh was out front waiting, tied at the slope’s very bottom, you see, when young Simon, the rogue, comes lickedy-split down the ice, never guessing that the sleigh square in his way belonged to …”

  “I killed him.”

  A creak and stiffening. Faces, still smiling, guessing the likely outcome of this story, turn, slow, towards the honored guest, turn your way. They keep grinning, not believing this they’ve heard. Silence starts off half cordial. Yanks believe you—socially ill at ease in this fine setting—have maybe leapt onto another subject. Yeah, you were speaking of another whole person. A war so often confused its survivors, right?

  Mrs. Utt, yet smiling, clears her throat, a sign that you should either relax or hush or explain further, please. The teacher, yet standing, blinks, waits to finish her dull tale. The Widow Utt—a good hostess—slides forward on her chintz side chair, hands clasped in lap, mouth pursed—not unkind—and she just nods. Like going, “You now have the floor.” The front of your white shirt (folks are definitely noticing) has got so soaked that people can see the pink of your chest, air bubbles, a nipple maybe. Pull your jacket shut. After swallowing a few times, sit here studying your hands, preparing what to say. But the hands (that did it) look so huge, haired, veiny things new-grown and stuck out in the air for strangers to see. Hide the hands. For two whole minutes there comes just the sounds of a hallway clock, of the shrine’s candles guttering, four babies chattering over nothing much, a daintier clicking from the unsheathed German watch across the room. “Let them like you,” the watch still says to you alone. It’s not too late to call this all a blunder, to change subjects and save everything.