I’m already transporting certain wee ones toward the stairs when he begins it. Twins wiggle awake, not planning to miss a thing. Baby proves too fast for me. Back down steps they’re stumbling. “Once …” He wins again:
ONCE, a red-haired Northerner, about forty, sat slumped against this roadside tree stump. He was still alive but clutched his whole opened chest, he rocked side to side with pain. The fellow’s rifle had fallen out of reach. He begged a passing file of Southerners to please step over, hand him the gun, or else help finish him, fast. He kept crying aloud, about the pain, “You cannot imagine, boys. No way you can imagine it.”
One ragged Rebel heard the Yank’s pleading, called, “What’ll you give me to?” Then he noticed the wounded Yankee’s boots. Probably pulled off a dead Southern cavalry officer, they looked nearly new. Fine buttery English leather.
“Hey.” The young Reb stalked nearer, stared down. “What size of a foot you got, partner?” Screaming it, the hurt man told.
“You’re in luck, pal. Afterwards, can I have these?” And standing before the sitting man, Johnny Reb lightly kicked at unworn upturned soles.
“Please. Yes, please. Yours. Free. Please.”
And so this bargain was struck. Begging the boy to hurry, the Northerner reached up and out, grabbed the Rebel’s rifle muzzle, pressed its metal to his own temple, crying, “Yes, now, yes,” and hung there, eager, gasping, acting glad all during. One shot did it. With blue smoke still hanging in the roadside air, the Rebel plunked down beside the dead man.
He tugged off his own worn boots, he chucked them into a ditch, he removed the better ones and, with such plain childlike happiness, pulled them on. “There”—he stood, kept striding back and forth, kept studying his own tired feet. These boots’ luxury, the comfort they’d already given him, it moved the fellow till he laughed then coughed then cried. He kept wiping his eyes with the back of either dirty fist, he kept stepping to and fro across the road, kept testing out this ease he’d all but forgot.
“Perfect,” he kept sobbing. “Perfect, perfect.”
I’M SCREAMING, “YOU promised to leave off your bloodiest ones. Just look how big-eyed the twins’ve got. Up them stairs with the bunch of you. Sir? I’m sick to death of your moth-eaten War. And on a school night!”
Then I help one huge ex-soldier lug living children towards blankets, pillows, dicey dreams.
I mutter at the back before me: Since a War’s spoilt his childhood, seems strange, Cap’s wanting to muddy his own kids’ with it. Hearing this charge, not turning, Captain explains straight ahead, “Look, it was my chance in history. What do you want from me, woman? Just because you never got your big moment, don’t try to rob me of mine.”
I wonder, Is it bad for our kids to know the truth so soon? Thanks to their pop’s grim stories, will the world go easier or tougher on them? In my either arm, I tote bug-eyed twins. One whispers, “The Yankee asked for it, right? So that makes it better. Hunh, Momma, hunh?” I say we’ll go over this at breakfast. For now, let’s think of finer sleepy-time, topics, okay?
Other kids follow, a pajama caravan. Baby pouts, “Baby want more war one.”
What can a momma hope to offer instead? Right off, I’m quoting a Stevenson poem, my best late-night balm. My poem hopes to be meat tenderizer, dream sweetener. I study young ones’ footed pj’s dangling from their daddy’s massy grip. I want these children spared. I chant my ditty toward my husband’s muscled back—like that’s the world—like I’m now asking it to let these babies all go safe. My poem’s “The Pleasant Land of Counterpane” by Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson.
When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go
With different uniforms and drills
Among the bedclothes, through the hills,
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets,
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
Whilst we put kids to bed, I remember: When I first memorized this, I was five, couldn’t read yet. I believed that “Counterpane” was spelled like “Pain”—with the I left in. I heard: The pleasant land of counter-pain, of not ever hurting. Only as a grownup, only when reading it aloud to little ones while trying and brighten Captain’s rougher bedtime tales—only then did I see the word in print. I went, “Oh dear.” Turns out, a counterpane is just a fancy quilt. Won’t such a noun as my pet, made-up “counter-pain.”—And don’t I know there’s no such place on earth as one where nothing ever hurts?
Still, I chose to hold in mind my peaceable kingdom—even if it had been founded on a mistake about the dictionary and human nature. I went on telling our children about this pleasant land of anti-hurt. That was where I wanted us to stay. Right off, it was so real to me. Still is. Some days, honey, it sure seems truer than this newspaper-headline world, this assigned one.
Kids helped me to invent: Our national flag would be a homemade quilt, or maybe a fine blue dress flying from a pole. Our national seal is a warm pie. Our official flower? Either the hollyhock or the sweet pea (we can’t decide betwixt them, and don’t want to hurt either’s feelings). Ours would be the Lion lying down with the Lamb land. Every night before getting my brood to sleep, we’d all add another orchid pavilion, tree house, or band shell. It’s a very clean place.
You might say: It’ll be a lot like here, honey. Home, only kind of defanged.
SO ONCE Captain scuffs downstairs to bed after planting kids beneath sheets, I linger a minute, I ask for further aid in thinking up our nation, still invisible, but with liberty and justice for all. Kids help me zone it. Seems to relax them like it does me. I hope to bypass any coming nightmares about folks’ basic meanness. It’s what I’ve always had to offer: the idea of a true safe home, of acting decent, a treaty spread—quilt-wise—border to border. My talent is this garden spot I am still making up.
Finally, I quote the poem a last time, slower. Where’s the war in me?—The time our garden shed caught fire, I tried and put it out. When my children beat up a new neighbor kid, I staged a little Appomattox on our vacant lot. First two years of marriage, I wouldn’t let my man keep even a squirrel gun in the house. Sure, I act as cross and short-fused as the next person but, hey, I don’t want to. I clean up after myself.
Captain claimed he’d had his moment, he’d fought for a whole nationality. He said: History allows some folks their one great chance. He got his. So what should I say mine has been?
HERE before the rolling chair swings low to sweep these eighty-odd pounds to lunch, I want to finally name my moment. It seems right important in history, too.—Yeah, I believe I know the title. Mine ain’t just penned up inside the dates of ’61-’65. It’s longer and I hope’ll go on clear forever.—Child, I think I’ll name my own … “The Civil Peace.”
I’m yet the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before her, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counter-pain.
Black, White, and Lilac
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chamber by wrong, that useth his neighbor’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work.
—JEREMIAH 22:13
WHAT’S black, white, and lilac? Honey, you think I’m feeding you a riddle—like how newspapers are black and white and read all over? No, this has a story for its answer. And a story, if truly and funnily so—why that’ll never gyp you.
Starts in 18 and 96. I’m yet a scabby freckled menace of a schoolgirl. Don’t push me. Our teacher goes, ??
?Thirty-five years ago, what occurred in literal hearing distance of us at Falls Lower Normal? I might offer one hint—it is like Lazarus in appearing, sounding, and smelling dead but in not being moribund quite yet.”
Up shoots many a peacetime hand. “The war! Our Struggle for Southern Independence, which fizzled but probably just for now.”
“Absolutely. And as there are many persons in our vicinity who fought or lived through said struggle—an assignment follows: For Tuesday, and I do not mean Wednesday, my farm-town slugabeds—go and find yourselves one. Ask calibrated questions, take shrewd notes. ‘History is the science of what only happens once.’ I shall need dates, reasons, food, and clothing of the period. I want a fifteen-pager, minimum—and punctuated to within an inch of its life. Please include a liberal sprinkling of the semicolons you all find so mystifyingly difficult. You are setting down a national document.—Boys are to pick male survivors—girls not … I mean, girls, females. The finished product will be here at the southeast corner of my desk, bright and early on which day, class?” We answered.
Bobo Kingston sighed, “Ma’am? Ma’am. That’s hard.”
We liked calling Miss Beale’s ambitions for us “strict.” In 1840, during her local girlhood, whilst wearing a arty black cape meant to hide her crippled back, Beale got nicknamed “Witch.” It stuck. Nicknames do here.
Anyhow, right off, I knew my war subject. I’d choose me Lady Marsden. She’d onct ranked among North and South Carolina’s richest people, male or no.
The victim now lived at Falls’ best rooming house, rent paid by her war-vet son (yet unrecognized to be my future husband). The Mangum Arms offered genteel quiet, seconds at dinners, towels aplenty. Even so: Lady Marsden had sure declined. During her famous Charleston debut in ’40, the woman had “come out.” During a famous local fire in ’65, she had “come down.” I found this to be of real human interest: Losing everything’s romantic. (Or so I thought till it later jumped me.)
Borrowing Poppa’s finest whittling knife, I sharpened three new yellow pencils. I even rebraided the left pigtail that forever curled sideways. Then young Lucille (not pretty but leastways clean) set out with a starter list: forty-five hard strict questions.
This happened in late fall (the season) in early Falls (the town). Time was, people burned leaves. You could. Time was, our village’s thousand elms hadn’t yet been carried off like by delayed plague from Egypt. Stately trees yet met and mingled over all streets leading to my topic. Time was, time was … Time. A humidity you moved through. Darling? when you’re young, the world seems planned.
In gutter pyramids of dried leaves, my every step crunched the Present, plundering layers of a smoke-and-leather-smelling past.
Like all good cub reporters, I’d wrote ahead for a appointment.
LUCY tiptoed into the boardinghouse—steep, coolish, manifoldly doilied. On one door, a engraved card: “Lady E. M. Marsden”—crucified betwixt rusted straight pins. Before knocking, I wised up, snuck back out, settled on a porch rocker. Mangum Arms residents sometimes dignified these chairs after supper—but, you know, not one soul ever rocked. That’s classy, honey. A way your Lucy here will never be.
I actively did not bob to and fro. Why hadn’t every girl in my class picked Lady Marsden? Owing to burn scars, my subject was sometimes called the Mummy. She never left that room in yonder. Folks claimed the poor thing’s mind was yet fogged owing to Sherman’s one smoky afternoon of local excess.
Our double-daring teacher lived somewheres in this very Mangum Arms. What if Witch nabbed me slumped out here? Imagine the shame: caught slacking off on your national document.
Remembering the black cape helped steel me. Every town the size of Falls (1,100 souls) yet has a her, Athena Genius. Adults bring in astronomy questions and, proud, their five-legged calves. Our settler of bets had a dowager’s hump. Witch suffered teeth so bucked she never grinned without one palm’s quick geisha dart, screening mouth’s pleasure. For me, her doubled back seemed a brain’s card-catalogue annex. I loved her—but feared I might turn out this bright, this dromedary homely. Child? sometimes—in a town so small—getting known as smart means being very brave.
Thanks to Beale’s example, a surge of boldness sent me plunging indoors, made me pound three times upon a living mummy’s door. Uh-oh.
After what felt as long as it’d took the Ancient World to mellow then rot into this present second, after I considered yelling “Trick or Treat” and running (it was October), the door opened one inch. The center of a black maid’s pretty face. Face goes, “Is you … the question girl?”
I smiled, “I sure is … am.” (Got goose bumps just from being called that. I thought, Ooh but this’d please Miss Beale.)
When in doubt concerning a password, child? try “Yes.” Door swung open on a rental room heaped with a mansion’s furniture. The serving girl, about my age, called at somebody hid under piled ormolu, bronze, brocade, “Mrs. Lady? We must be living right.—Comp’ny!”
Then I got handed a paint chart, samples of whites and off-whites. The maid passed me this like some everyday ticket of admission. I noticed: it was grimed from others’ nervous handling.
“Thank you.”
The room had no room in it. Sixty gilt ballroom side chairs were stacked to the ceiling, like a family of skinny Chinese acrobats. Before me, Biedermeier apple-wood lowboys, busts of emperors looking white and in need of seasoning as hard-boiled eggs. One huge dead palm plant failed to notice it’d browned in 18 and 65. On the far mantel, a glass gondola big enough to sail Baby Moses through bulrushes, clear enough to show him bottom mud. Nearer by, in two rows like army surplus, six marquetry armoires (each offering a different frolic activity of three shepherdesses in one glade—with not no sheep in sight). A narrow path wedged, broken-backed, betwixt. Seemed if Lucy didn’t know the next password, she’d be mashed by wardrobes. Inside such closets, great chandeliers dangled, lead crystal idly clinked. Against yonder hearth, a dozen family portraits tipped any old way, puritans scowling at the undignity of doing ramshackle headstands.
“You visiting the hallway, comp’ny?”
I tried a star reporter’s winning smile. Stepping in, I found a floor paved with Turkey rugs twelve inches deep, some muddy. Felt like the unasked-for luxury of walking on a stranger’s bed.
This wallpapered warehouse stunk of lemon oil, of cloves nailing oranges, some elegant underlying ash. Each knickknack smelled smoke-cured as any Smithfield ham. The maid in a lace cap, stepping on her own long apron, slammed the door, locked it, led me along armoires’ narrow avenue. I already missed the hallway. We seemed bound towards the farthest end of this collection, a corner where the burned collector was herself collected—so much cornered dust.
• • •
HALFWAY to my topic, the guide disappeared. I might of known. She’d dodged rightwards, either between armoires or into one. Across my path, the mirrored door of one chifforobe swung open. This room was pretty dim. Mirror creaked closer, blocked my way like some great unlatching wing.
I remember stepping aside to let the approaching stranger pass, then seeing a bowlegged girl do the same. I studied a scuffed pigtailed child clutching her pad, a list of questions, pencils, the paint chart like her underworld passport. Eyes bulged, the jaw slacked open in a way her mother would call “defective-appearing, Lucille.”
How crude the outer husk of your own intelligence shows up. From deep indoors, your mind can feel so glassy, quick, and rare. (Even with me up to this age, with my outside edges slacked and melting—still, in here, child, it’s ofttimes yet all mercury, a dance!)
—I peeked past armoire hinges, I saw my black Virgil wink then crook her finger. The door clapped shut totally behind me. I regretted that.
In a smoke-and-cedar-smelling box, blind, I backstepped onto quilts and—of a sudden knew—“The maid sleeps here. They consider it to be her room.” Which broke my heart. I figured: Miss Beale? God love you, with your bucked back and humped teeth, I believ
e your Lucy’s onto something.
From outside, a shrillness first seemed wind-down-chimney, tooting, “Who, who?”
Honey, by now I had goose bumps big as pearl tapioca. The maid opened our door just long enough to answer: “Be somebody bout wallpapering you mansion’s third-best parlor, silly, if you gots to know. A question girl come to axt you all bout colors.”
Onct our armoire was locked shut, I heard whispering. Listening, I pretty much had to. A mouth this close left mist in my ear’s conchy turnings. One free black hand fumbled cross my shoulder, stroked my left braid. In hisses, I learnt, “Sshe sstill look right bad. Sshe sstill think we out yonder at The Lilacss. Sstill think that Ssherman’s menss was Englissh, wass Cornwalliss’ oness. Sstill think the housse they burnt, the dresss they torched been her momma’ss, not herss. Sshe think thiss room so crowded cause the resst sshe house yet being redid by you decoratorss from Charlesston. Gotss to be mosst careful what you ssay. Wantss to know how sshe got hurt so bad? axt after sshe momma.—Lady Marsden don’t alwayss know her’s her yet, sssee?”
“OH,” I said in a street voice, then, ashamed, shushed, “oh.”
Honey, I had no more idea what she meant than the man in the moon. But I figured—it’d be like on-the-job training, you fake it till you know it so good that it’s soon faking you.
She touched my hand: If I agreed to these here terms, I could put any question I liked to the hurt one yonder. If not, this’d be a fine time to pleasse leave.—Well, I agreed, sugar. Wouldn’t you? Took gumption—being as I was just eleven in 18 and 96. But what choice? When a body’s this nose-deep in the scent of Story, why get shy? To this day—dead-elm-leaf brown as years’ve turnt me—I still love the ring of that: “Is you the question girl?”
Oh yeah, child. Time has bent me double as hairpin. Time’s twisted me out of a statement and into a request. But—Lord knows, I’m the question girl yet.