Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

  Come morning there it sat in Winona Smythe’s brambled side yard: a gray army tent propped—occupied.

  3

  I STILL own the letter. Winona willed it to my Captain. I got it next. Chain of command. Its writer was the gent who wondered aloud, would a war be “canary suitable,” who stopped Rebs’ carving up the Yankee sniper. See my bedside table’s top drawer? Sometimes I call it The Archives. Sometimes I call it the top drawer. Fish out that whole musty bundle. You wouldn’t believe what-all’s in there. I’m sure I’d be surprised by half this mess. Look, time’s turned my papers and me as brown as any good Cuba cigar. Here …

  August 19, ’62

  Dear Mrs. Theodore Smythe,

  We sorely regret to inform you that during the early PM of August 12, 18 and 62, your son, Private Ned Smythe, much beloved by his fellows-in-arms, was, in the line of duty, while being elevated to the rank of National Hero, deprived of his young life. The fatal skirmish took place roughly nine miles southeast of Cheatham, Virginia. The commandant (who was some distance from the locale of said incident) has asked me to explain that, at the time of your boy’s death, young Ned had scaled a tree, apparently scouting enemy fortification on the far shore. It was then that Yankee miniés found and ended his valiant young life. He was killed at once, and, insofar as it is possible to tell such things, without apparent pain.

  Though custom dictates that such letters as this inform the bereaved family of how respected and beloved their deceased soldier was, in Ned’s case, the task proves especially easy (and therefore, Mrs. Smythe, most difficult). His beauty of character, of carriage, and of person were remarked upon by all. His trusting genial air and constitutional fineness provided each of us, during fatiguing manoeuvres, with an odd margin of quietude and consolation. His singing voice alone was a gift enjoyed by some of the Confederacy’s highest-ranking officers. The night before he was taken from us, he sang for the men and with a perfect trusting composure that bespoke an admirable and genteel education.

  He leaves behind a friend from your hometown, a boy as yet (these seven days after the shooting) only fitfully able to continue. If you will permit me a personal note in what should perhaps remain a more official communication.

  Not long after one of our early victories, we had reason to encamp at a former mining camp along the Shenandoah Ridge. It had once been devoted to the excavation of either mica or gold. Its building showed the effects of years-previous abandonment. Pleased by this bivouac, both your son and his friend adopted, as boys will, a particular deserted cabin. They made it theirs during the four days we used the site.

  The hut had been formerly employed, to judge from scales and a remaining chalkboard on its wall, as an ore-weighing station. Late one evening, as I was unable to sleep, I found myself pacing and smoking, feeling singularly homesick. I chose to wander our camp. I carried a lamp and, as I passed this roofless cabin, my light chanced to fall upon some bright surfaces within. I stepped through an open doorway. One full burlap sack, patterned with a felicitous checkerboard design, rested upon the table between your son and his friend. Both boys had fallen asleep while playing marathon checkers. The “pieces” were shards of crystal which the boys had collected at our various camps, much to the consternation of our fond commanding officer who warned as how the weight of such souvenirs might well slow the lads when they most needed speed.

  On the aforementioned chalkboard, boys had marked up their scores. One youth’s side was called, according to the legend, “The Official Falls, NC, Checker Team,” and below it, a second such association had been titled, “The Other Official Falls, NC, Checker Team.” I am myself the father of two daughters not far from the ages of the children I encountered that night. I stood in the hut looking down upon these boys intent on passing time while seeking to somehow encourage themselves. The sack holding their game had become a mutual pillow. Only boys’ crooked arms prevented their young faces from pressing onto the quartz bits arranged between them. The children’s muskets were propped, at the ready, in a far corner. Boys’ fitful sleep would, I feared, stand them in poor stead for tomorrow’s long march. And yet, stepping forward, about to wake them, I hesitated. Something in their slumber, their very trustfulness bespoke a similar moment I had experienced in my daughters’ treehouse, one built with my own hands. I did not wake your son and his friend. I could not bear, Madam, to remind them of their current whereabouts and circumstance.

  As with all of us here, the boys lately witnessed instances of carnage which—had we been forewarned in the quiet days before Sumter—would have seemed literally unendurable. And yet, one survives! I found the small moment I’ve described to be so peaceful and consoling. I felt nearly guilty at the peace I let it give me. But I have forgotten myself and my official function here. It is very late. Other chores are before me. I was writing of your son, a young gamesman making the best of an inhuman situation. Of course, it forever stays human because, human, we are here, having to endure it. I must end.

  The camp is now so quiet, the countryside so peaceful. Even the twelve cannons I see across the way are all beaded with dew. It is inconceivable what noise and bloodshed might break upon us with first light. In addressing this to you, Madam, I seem to communicate with my own family and with all those persons I have written during these past two years. I have set down, usually at less length, roughly nine hundred such letters. I feel myself becoming half-accomplished at it. There are many things we should all remain quite bad at.

  It is grievous to consider that my years of education, my early attempts at diary-keeping and at clarity of expression—enterprises so blithely and romantically undertaken in my privileged youth—should be thus enlisted. I recall my boyish Odes to various seasons, to various young ladies of my acquaintance. Odes! Were I now to try one, its subject might be the miracle that any person should have found the time and hope to ever attempt such a thing as an Ode!

  Before first light, I must write three more families of three more men and boys I knew. If time proved less limited, I might send a second note of condolence to the mother of Private Marsden, so much a pair were those fine examples of Southern Boyhood. Please convey my sentiments. Her father, the late Judge More, was, I believe, in my father’s class at Harvard College. They often traveled to school and home on the same holiday trains.

  Closing, I can only leave you with reminders of the undoubted Rightness of our Cause. Be comforted, Madam, in understanding that your Child, while admittedly losing his life and being “untimely ripped”—has also Risen to the Threshold of that August Assemblage—The Martyrs to the Great Cause of Secession.

  I remain most respectfully yours, a brother in grief, a fellow parent, an aspirant to glorious Honor and/or the Aforementioned Martyrdom Itself.

  Officially and personally, Madam, I sign myself, with utmost sympathy,

  First Lt. Vreeland Hester, CSA.

  3:40 AM. In the White Oak Swamp, somewhere Southeast of Gaines’ Mill, Virginia

  4

  I MISS boiling my own water.

  I been in here fourteen years and, previous to that, a stove was mostly where you’d find me, something to complain about slaving over a hot one of all day.

  My husband liked his beef done nearbout raw—the children hated that. Seeing Captain’s so pink, they always chanted, “Nosebleed, nosebleed.” Where do kids come up with these things? You ever try doing a twelve-pound beef roast in your wood stove so meat’s one end’ll turn out red and the other a nice dark brown? Well, try. Mostly it’s in how you stack your firewood.

  But the water, the comfort of each morning’s water boiling.—Back then, I’d be the first one awake naturally. The kids were babies, and me I won’t much older. Dawn seemed my sloppy younger sister. Many’s the day I beat her downstairs. Right off, I’d stoke kindling in my Wedgwood stove. From the pump, I’d fill one favorite white enamel saucepan rimmed with red. I always placed it on a back burner. (Otherwise little paws grab handles and scald little heads.) To be up a
nd puttering in a big still-sleeping house, to hear the paper boy lob today’s Falls Herald Traveler more or less onto our front porch, to hear his bike click off, followed by the toenails of his dog on Summit Avenue’s bricks. To find that nighttime dark had gone a wet-wool gray as soon as you quit expecting light. From the window over my sink, our back yard looked to be a dresser drawer full of mist.

  I was never one to use a kettle. (Teapot whistles make me nervous.) No, I liked to see my water boil. Pearl bubbles gather around its edges (a family reunion, resemblances galore). Then they send family representatives up top to check. Finally you have the whole thing twirling into necessary violence. I like to smell my water, feel its steam uncurl. At this early hour, water offered Lucy her best company. Times, water felt too perfect to be local—it seemed international or better. A spirit friend. I’d be making production-line school sandwiches. Lay down your two dozen bread slices in a row, get you a goodly glob of butter—then run along the table—coating every last one, target practice. I could do it while half asleep right now and from my wheelchair here.

  My morning mood I gauged by water’s speed in boiling. If it happened quick, I felt more “up.” If it took forever, was going to be one of them days.

  Odd, the kitchen sometimes felt more crowded before my cast of characters woke and scuffed downstairs. Somebody would soon admit to unfinished math homework, another might show first polka dots of chicken pox (“Momma, I don’t feel so good”). But not yet, thank God. A crew of quieter, healthier ghosts rose with me, my list and honor roll trailing after, faint but real as steam. The water’d long ago been ready for coffee. I let it babble anyhow—just the way I let children natter about anything they pleased, me half listening to their staticky half-music. A jay bossed sparrows at our feeder. Later, Moxie, the Seeing Eye Labrador, would be underfoot—another mouth to stuff.

  I was often tired. That I know. Looking back, you don’t want to misremember and soften one little thing. That’d be wrong—I’d rather sound too harsh. And yet, I admit, at times and from this distance, misrecalling sure is tempting, child. Especially about our house before my others rose. The wall under the clock was penciled with their heights (changing each six months) but their initials constant. From this narrow bed-wide cell here, these partitions of yellow plywood, I recall my own home kitchen as being so huge—half a train depot and full of eastern light and, with water boiling, chummy-sounding as a fishbowl-sized reunion.

  Once the twenty-odd pieces of breakfast toast were under way, once all lunch boxes and thermoses were lined up and latched shut, once each was tagged (Baby’s full of complexion food, Louisa’s with that extra sandwich she begged for despite her little weight problem), once the sun—following Lucy’s good example—got the idea and trudged toward its monitor’s position overhead, then I would allow myself a first cup of coffee. Dear God but it was excellent! Having done a bit of work already always made my java taste the better, child. At fifteen, I learned to take it black. That way you’re freer. Freer of expecting extras. I had just one cup for starters but savored so before rushing upstairs on my unpopular mission of waking.

  Throughout, I left the saucepan boiling away downstairs, on guard, chitter-chatter, giving itself away to kitchen air. Sometimes I’d refill the pan. I told myself such steam would be good for all our lungs … But too, I just liked the sound it made bubbling, a heart-to-heart with morning light, itself, me.

  At this Home, staff people heat things up. We got no microwave at Lanes’ End Rest owing to six patients’ pacemakers. So even now, even in this world of rockets and all, water takes just as long to boil. Some things never change, which is good. Personally, I want to be cremated. Studying water’s boiling taught me how clean it’d all be. Fire will just have a conversation about you and with you, a real thorough conversation, I admit. You’ll meet fire. Fire will take a shine to you. You’re its subject. What will it say about you before it loses interest? I know how, in a quiet morning house, water makes party sounds, the angels of the elements all up and gossiping at dawn. Another-day-in-the-world’s shoptalk.

  If authorities let us have hot plates here in our cubicles, I swear I’d do me some water every morning of my life—just to smell and hear and feel it play across my face.

  Child, I sure miss boiling my daily own. You know what water is?

  Water’s family.

  5

  MAYBE I told you how our charity Home got its peculiar name. All this property was once owned by a merchant family, name of Lane. Our leafy dead end of the road kept being called the Lanes’ End of it. And when this cinder-block, glass-brick, and asphalt-roofed thingum got built on the cheap in 19 and 49, the name stuck. Lanes’ End.—Nobody can tell me it’s a friendly title for a body’s final dwelling place. I don’t like to talk against the officials but I think it’s sloppy of them not to be a bit more sensitive and to change it. Might as well call it: Funeral Home Annex. Senility Central. Or something.

  Reading the wooden sign’s WELCOME TO LANES’ END when your ambulance pulls up, well, it’s harder on the new people. By now us veterans make jokes about it. You learn to. Maybe that’s why we been around so long. That, and the love of our daytime TV show, My Children, Right or Wrong, plus little hallway scandals, and a basic knack for laughing things off. The old ones that can’t, ofttimes they go first.

  He who laughs—lasts.

  RECENT-ARRIVED women tend to mix in quickest. Though sore from travel, they wonder, What does one wear to dinner? A sign of health. New-here men take so much to heart. They care too much for their old idea of dignity—the dignity of a thirty-five-year-old boy, not somebody eighty-odd or over.

  Darling, you got to keep revising downwards how much to expect. Or—no—just shifting what you’ll settle for. I don’t want to scare you about getting up to this particular thin-aired timberline of time. But let’s put it this way: You got to be willing to change. Once you harden, the arteries do.

  6

  SEEN in downtown Falls, young Private Marsden was public now—pared of his mane, freed from passenger vermin (he almost missed them like they’d been his last war victims—and ones he might’ve saved, pets kept pearly in a jar). The boy dressed in civvies that at first felt uneasy as a robber’s disguise. But Willie soon looked regular in street clothes as you or me. He buggied across three counties reclaiming family holdings. He knew—if you plan to make decent money—you got to at least look in charge.

  Bound for his livestock yard, the boy passed other vets gathered in a pie-shaped park before our pretty Courthouse. Some got helped downtown by wives—these ladies were overjoyed to have their whole mornings quiet at home.

  Two bachelors lived life in matching wicker hampers. Friends lugged these legless one-armed fellows towards the sunny public spot, left them out—to air all day like laundry.—Passing, the stringy young Marsden forever touched his big hat’s brim and politely sidestepped this motley crew. Sure, he heard them jawing over old campaigns. He chose not to stop—seemed he had nothing much to add. Before the war, Will had considered these men cranks and yahoos. They seemed even more so afterwards. Only now—they felt the world owed them a living because they’d lost major battles in three states!

  They did get strange respect downtown. Small girls sat there, listening big-eyed, keeping clear of awful brown tobacco juice that vets spit with infantryman’s prideful aim. “Didn’t get any on you, did I, peaches and cream? Will you look at this curly head, fellows? I tell you that’s what we fought it for.” Ladies placed dinner leavings and mended shirts on park benches nearby—like small offerings set near some religious type of shrine. Child, now War was done, these roustabouts finally had all the leverage some people ever ask of the world: at long last, subject matter.

  So did Marsden but he kept his trap shut.

  The two in laundry hampers rested beside each other sunny side up all day at Falls’ dead center, soaking in whatever tales got told, both fleshy within oval baskets—like two huge willing nasty ears. Most o
f the vets had known young Ned. They’d heard about his mother’s convulsions on hearing the news. They knew how Winona Smythe had—for the first time in years—ventured off her own property. She’d stormed downtown and right into the First Baptist’s sanctuary during choir practice. She grabbed her donated art-glass pitcher and candlesticks from off the altar, all while screaming toward the steep-pitched roof, “I want him back, now. Or else!” This was the way our delicate choirmaster first learnt of young Ned’s death. Winona won’t exactly Mrs. Tact on tiptoes. The entire alto section had to help the poor director home. (In emergencies, you just couldn’t count on the temperamental sopranos. Altos’ll usually come through for you. I speak as one myself before time made my tunes go so colandered and crackledy.) Altos carried him up the steps to his one room as he taunted them, “That Smythe boy had more talent in his little finger than all you thirty years of dullard monotones combined. The voice at large in him. To lose his perfect pitch and the war! I loved him. Are you ladies shocked? Do be, please. Because, where does any of it get you, the keeping quiet? Where does it? Thirty years’ painstaking musicianship. For what, for whom? Who notices, what use?” The altos considered crying but didn’t, instead they cleared their throats, in perfect B natural, a tribute to him.

  Altos found his room lined with three decades’ pictures of the choir—Ned’s curly head was real recent and proved much circled here and there in red. Two at a time, for days, altos sat beside the bachelor’s bed, they feared he’d take his life. Near the bed, sudden casseroles cooled and hardened. Altos sat with him in pairs because he was, after all, a man alone and wearing pajamas (marked with cleft signs). These were churchgoing women, after all—even if they knew this bald lost gent was not exactly a major menace to unchaperoned womankind. Women were his best friends. That was it. Women stayed the ones he blamed and yet the ones he cried to.