Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

I soon listen to a singer out yonder yowling in his bib, doing another verse of “A Old Rebel” by Mr. Innes Randolph. Was Cap’s favorite song along with “Who’s Sorry Now?” later. He is musically joined by children coloring around my flawed legs.

  Kids sing like it’s some antique hymn. They hardly notice words learned before words meant a thing. A man and his babies croon:

  Oh, I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am.

  For this “fair land of Freedom,” I do not care a damn.

  I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won.

  And I don’t ask no pardon for anything I done.

  I was standing at my sink then, suddenly shaky. Ladies discipled around Cap, laughed at bitter-funny words, ignoring the harsh voice of my “lip singer.” I suddenly heard how deep he’d already sent his song into our children, down down their very gullets to a fishhook’s depth.

  “Too late,” I thought. “Will it ever end?” Can a body ever counter-pain it drowsy, then Appomattox it forever asleep? He’d walked the whole way home from war. When oh when would he finally get here?

  2

  BORN pretty rich, a only child, how come I’m in this ward for the openly broke? Well, start with the dowry. Twenty years after I married, I was flipping through my husband’s boyhood war letters, needing again to feel for him then so I could stomach him now. Out falls a note in my poppa’s crabbed script, it stated the amount: fifteen thousand dollars. First I set there feeling wonderful, finding I’d been considered that worthwhile. Then, slower, cheated. For one thing, I never knew a cent had changed hands … over me, over my head, like. I asked my darling Professor Taw how much fifteen grand in 1900 would amount to now. He judged: a quarter to a half a million. Imagine it. Me?

  When Poppa died and his will was read and Momma had been dead four years already, Pop’s Alma Mater got the bulk of everything, including proceeds from the house’s sale. Twenty-odd years later, my girl Louisa, scientifically minded, she visited Harvard to see the lab Poppa donated and named for his own kin. Lou told me that, by then, the school had changed a lot, but she finally discovered one bronze plaque near a door in the building where they store glass flowers. The marker read: “Given to celebrate the memory of Pearlie Gupton Honicutt and R. R. ‘Rusty’ Honicutt.” His farm-language parents. Louisa found a janitor, who opened the locked door. The room had once been full of Bunsen burners and student curiosity. Now it was a real large and, she said, real nice storage closet. So much for my fortune, child.

  I spent my life taking care of folks. Somebody had to, and I learned a lot. Now, of course, I wonder what else I could’ve done, without the others, solvent and alone. College material myself, secretly. Oh well. Lee’s favorite word was “Duty.”

  The odd part stays: happiness. How stubborn it is, whatever bracket you land in. When I think over the list of my losses and time’s take-backs, the household accidents, small everyday betrayals, the way your genius kids turn out to be just regular, if nice. Times, happiness surprises me. It keeps you as its hobby, Lord be praised. For some of us lucky ones, child, happiness stays our daily habit like any other. Happiness: that beautiful duty.

  TOWNSFOLK had long since titled him “a character.” Seems like characters can get away with lots, including murder. I was not held to be no official character myself, just the wife of one. Which don’t quite count. Nobody marveled anymore at my young age compared to his. Nine children later, the old man, he’d kept very still, looks-wise. And why shouldn’t he? His part in our babies’ arrival took just a few forward-bobbing seconds, a rocking chair with Johnny-jump-up heaves, one hiccup, muskets away, the itch soon gone.

  But, for me, each child meant spending nine months growing stationary as Mrs. Couch. Cap’s face was making only local stops. Honey, mine was the downhill Express, mine was the Speed Queen.

  We had fun, though. I ain’t saying that. One night when he was off seeing Sal Smith’s twin sons—both fathers now (Sal had died at age eighty-one, rich)—I went upstairs to check on my own sleeping kids. They all jumped out from nowhere, like to scared me witless. In comes Baby with a day-old cake from Harbison’s bakery (that Castalia patronizes so). Candles on it, my birthday. They’d all made hats. And no hat was a soldier hat, which pleased me. I sat at the end of Louisa’s bed—I accepted the usual hairnets. (I never ever wore one but my children ignored this since these were the cheapest thing at Woolworth’s in the zone marked LADIES. When I sold the house, I found one whole kitchen drawer was most full of them still in their packs. That was the worst thing that whole day. No, the worst was: The painters for the purchasers, a nice young couple working from the radio station, the painters painted over my children’s growth chart under where the old Seth Thomas hung. Our “ups,” Baby called that. “Mark my up,” she’d say.)

  But to get a cake I didn’t bake, store-bought new candles, all one color, not just gathered from the pantry piecemeal! I loved kids for remembering when I had clean forgot. I wondered why my husband stayed away from me so much. Was I harsh? Go on, tell me.

  CAP had been investing money, his and mine (the secret dowry, I mean). He’d picked a company that did long-shot oil-field schemes in the Louisiana bayou country. “How’s that sound?” he asked me onct. “Fishy,” says I.

  I kept wishing a gypsy fortune-teller would come to town. I kept hoping I’d finally get invited to do something responsible and smart-requiring, like teach Sunday school. I wanted to. People like me never got asked. Maybe others thought I was too busy with all my kids? Apart from Castalia, I had no real women friends to talk with. Her being black made her seem a shadow friend in others’ eyes. Made her mean more to me, considered off on the side but really ever in the foreground. With her, I didn’t need to apologize for nothing I did—or, worse, that he did. Hadn’t she known my old man inside out forever? She was old as him if way younger-looking. By now, what might still surprise Castalia, African princess come down in life? We still had our arguments. She was still a very touchy person, easily insulted.

  Pride maybe kept me away from neighborhood white ladies. Pride’s always there to take its cut right off the top of everything. It’s been my failing till right here recent. No, still is. Pridefulness can keep a person sort of alone—though I ofttimes have a crowd here near my bed. I see to that and am proud of it.

  Understand me: I’m sneaking up on the subject, a topic not unlike, well, wife beating. Now, here at Lanes’ End, we sometimes watch a TV talk show and they have the beaten woman sitting in shadows saying stuff like “He only hits me when he’s drunk. He’s bad for me but I love him. What can I do?” Burns you up. You want to shake her and say, “Leave, fool.” But me, I said those selfsame unproud things. Pride made me tell them to myself alone, and to Castalia, who knew anyway.

  He only struck me on a few weekends, only when tanked up for some big anniversary. Not ours, of course, but war ones. Might could be the day that Prothero got killed by cannon fire, or the day Cap plugged the young watch donor from up Massachusetts way. I’d be sitting there, darning the twins’ socks. He’d veer in smelling of Irish cheer but looking like Potato Famine. I’d announce that he’d forgot to sign the kids’ report cards—on the kitchen table for him—and that I needed school milk money by Monday, and I just sat nattering my usual blah-blah lists and lore, not a witty ambassador’s party quips, but important to the principals involved, you’d think. He’d pass my couch and something snagged me side the head, and there was, with us in the room, a sound. It was hand bone meeting cheekbone. It hung there. It seemed exactly the size of a piece of toast.

  Then regret struck him and he’d be rushing for ice, saying, “It’s not bad. Here,” and me feeling scareder of his help than usual hindrance. “Today’s our anniversary, his and mine, it’s Simon’s dying date, Lucille. That’s why.” I told him, every day meant another grisly holiday to him, another excuse for doing further dirt. Appomattox, Indian name, had occurred fifty-odd years back. He’d been there, remember? I wanted to be treat
y right. It happened just twelve times, sixteen, tops. For a real short while. Otherwise I would of been out of there. Look, ain’t I just told you? I got my pride.

  It happened seventy-something years ago.

  Even to tell you it now, I’m so ashamed, honey.

  CAS huffed up our porch steps and, seeing my lip, touched it without ceremony, lifted a corner of my mouth. “Cut the lip against you front teeth, look like,” she stated. Mouth swollen, I said, “Tut ze wip ginst fwunt teef.” We laughed. The laugh you’d only share with a veteran loved one, another veteran of the veteran. What hadn’t happened to us both already? Her clear from Africa and me starting more local.

  She settled for coffee, she pointed out: Only since Winona Smythe left town had Cap got so heavy-handed. Since he owned Winona’s house, still had the key, the man yet spent Thursday afternoons there in the empty place. Winona’s boy and now her: Seemed most of Cap’s more important pals were the Missing in Action. Times, it seemed he planned making one of me. Cap let Winona’s yard run back to weeds then shrubs, jungle regained its foothold, some twisted tribute to the absent Widow Smythe’s weird ways.

  Cassie, yet winded from climbing front stairs, promised she had some decent gossip for me. Then sat there gasping. I told her (ice on my lip): If you die before you spill them beans, I’ll never speak to you again.

  Word was that our own Mrs. Winona Smythe had run off with a Italian man—all round arms, sharp sideburns—some fellow sent here to re-tip the War Dead monument blown over in a storm. Rumors swore he’d taken the hefty woman and her every canary bird to the Pettibone Academy pour les Arts Equestriennes. Cas claimed that Mrs. Smythe had slowly rose up through its management ranks, from being bookkeeper to reigning full Madam. Winona’d put her missing years to good use.

  All this would’ve been common knowledge if the Riding School, two miles east of Rocky Mount, had been even slightly on the level. It won’t. Child, it was a house of ill fame. Imported fallen Yankee girls played like students. I sat openmouthed (which hurt the lip) as Cas explained how certain local bankers and bigwigs faked being interested members of the school’s board. And why? So men could pay frequent quality-control visits to check up on a certain new girl’s riding progress, her posting. They soon took little Agatha’s five-gaited saddle education in hand. All I knew about the school was: A lady from our church whose daughter really did ride, horses, she went out there to check on tuition, they told it was ten thousand dollars a year for “townies.” No local gent guessed as how some women in Falls—black ones especially—knew exactly what went on out there. Castalia, who knew everything about everything, mapped out the full setup for me. Named names. (She knew everything about everything except how to save herself—our usual blind spot.)

  But Winona, living there? The Widow Smythe who couldn’t even stomach the hypocrisies of First Baptist Church, who’d reclaimed her Tiffany glass off its altar? Winona who brooked no disagreement and who called sympathetic casserole bringers “leeches and their young,” Winona who’d onct told Cap she felt qualified to be a real ambassador someplace? Her at a whorehouse? Won’t that beneath a person’s dignity? Seemed unlikely to go from a homebody to a house mother. And yet, the more I thought about it (now eating my ice compress), the surer I felt: Nobody could’ve invented this. There are facts like that—standouts, ones so far into the next world you understand they got to be extremely genuine and local. “You didn’t make this up?” I asked Castalia, who, rightly, glared and pretended to try and stand, leave here.

  “Sorry. I know better. I just say that because Momma would. Nobody’s perfect,” and smiled, which hurt.

  I tucked info about Weird Winona to the back of my head. I refused to mention it to Captain. He must know. There was a lot we didn’t tell each other now. Unlike me, he seemed to have a bit more to withhold than which child got bad comportment marks at school. I felt glad for Winona, out there busying being the Head of Something—even if just of that.

  MY own momma, hearing man-handling rumors maybe, invited me to tea and, though the lip was yet puffy, I accepted. She stood in the foyer, said, “Ran into a door again, did we? How are the children? I hear that our Louisa’s papier-mâché volcano was the absolute pinnacle of the Science Fair.” And Momma dared me to tell all concerning my marked face. Her eyes, a sufferer’s, warned: If you can’t say something nice …

  So I said very little. I predicted Lou would be the next Madame Curie—only, Lou’d know to wear gloves whilst handling her radium. We’d had this talk before. I deeply wanted to drop the Winona whorehouse gossip on Momma but it was too good to share with somebody who couldn’t even look her own puffy daughter in the face.

  When I left, she slipped me a five-dollar bill (like a fifty now). “Do something with your … hair, or whatever. Broaden your vistas, Lucille.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said real sarcastic, and regretted it at onct. She meant: I hope the lip’s unswollen soon. Why can’t people say stuff? I chose to take some cash to “Lolly’s Palais de Beauté Féminine de Falls (avec manicurist on duty Vendredi and Lundi).” I went the whole hog, announced to Loll I’d want me both a wash and rinse. I did this twice a year, need it or no. My visits to the Palais dearly counted.

  I first put on my white pearl-button gloves. I used them only for weddings, funerals, and Lolly’s. Castalia gathered in my preschool brood at her place and let them slip Pet Condensed Milk to her latest baby minks. “Pet for pets!” Baby lisped, and Cas and me looked at each other. “She act like a certain Lady I done worked for.” “I’m afraid so,” said I.

  I was alone today—with nothing hanging on to me at either side. Felt like I might float away into the elm trees that’d grown so much since my girlhood. Even back then they’d seemed high enough a place, safe from groundlings and the trouble we then summed up in one word: BOYS!

  Lolly always squeezed in a spare appointment for me and did a real nice job. Loll give me more attention than any non-regular deserved. She’d been ahead of me in school (she was older, but held back—though she was really quick as she could be). I’d acted nice to her back then. She had a memory, Lolly did. I come in smiling. She always made a fuss. You can know that somebody’s trying hard to cheer you and you can still be cheered, if you are smart. Permanents were new then. I couldn’t really afford one, which is just as well since Modern Science has since proved they absolutely fry the person. A rinse’d do.

  Only one building in all of white-owned Falls was stucco painted a lether-rip wedding-cake pink. “Palais avec manicurist,” the sign said. Momma made great fun of it, but I maintain, Is Lolly’s work professional or not? That’s what matters. Classiness—blue-chip classiness—is something I been turning my back on since age four.

  The Palais, entire, was only about sixteen square foot, but oh, honey, so much can happen in so tiny a place. Felt like your getting in a sloshy lifeboat with six to nine other women and when you again set your foot on dry land you were stronger for the ride, real ready to stride home, but sensing you had really been somewhere.

  Lolly was her own best walking ad. She had a long horsy face, but that never discouraged her copying any hairdo seen anyplace in any magazine, on any human movie screen. If, later, Ginger Rogers in Wednesday night’s picture show at the Cameo wore her gold hair swept in one frothy teapot storm all to one side, count on finding a long-faced Lolly grocery-shopping in that very “do” tomorrow. If you called attention to it, Loll forever acted like she didn’t have the foggiest idea what you meant. “Oh, this? Just a stab at it. Ginger’s’s more extreme but she’s got the features to go with, me … well … I saw this photo taken of her talking at a garden party, talking with … David. I like Ginger, but she’s not up to the Prince of Wales. For all her moxie, it’s something a little coarse about our Ginger.”

  Seeing the “do” on Lolly, any local lady could then decide whether it might someway suit her. You heard women say, “You know if it turned out even so-so on Lolly, ‘s going to be fabulous on you. I beli
eve she even guesses that. If only she had a man … I mean she has men, plenty, from what she says, but Loll needs one good steady. Who deserves it more?” Lolly agreed, and said so often. Thing about Lollie (she spelled it either “y” or “ie,” depending on her mood and last night’s movie), her love life had been what you’d call checkered, plus her oft-described digestion was a mess. She was Falls’ one white double-divorcée. Lolly’s only son, a juvenile offender, had been in every federal prison on the map, but through each tribulation, her hair and nails remained a perfect wonder of the world. It almost seemed enough.

  She settled me at the sink for a hot wash. I dreaded her noticing my almost-down-to-normal lip, her feeling the two goose eggs on my scalp.

  My child Baby thought the sun rose and set in Lolly’s hair. Never the same twice, always a different shade of brown. Loll was savage in condemning peroxide and those who used it on anything but blisters. “I don’t dye people,” she said, proud. “Lolly transforms, Lolly improves, but this is not just some some crude henna hut. At Le Palais, I want to bring out the real woman underneath, not lay on a paint job that hides Inner Glow. Real beauty comes from Inner Glow, not bottles. All my customers have that certain something, Inner Glow. See anybody here that doesn’t?” We looked around at each other—all deformed in pin curls, slopped with lotions, egg whites tightening pouchy eyes—we figured we were all in the extreme outer progress headed smack toward Inner Glow. We gave each other the benefit of the doubt. Benefit of the doubt: darling, that’s what small town beauty parlors are there for.

  During the shampoo part, while she hummed her favorite tune, I leaned my head into her specially notched sink. Loll stood over me, wetting the scalp. I loved being here because I forgot everything. The kids were in good hands. I could’ve been anybody. Her pet song was “I Danced With A Man Who Danced With A Girl Who Danced With The Prince of Wales.” (And Lolly had, with two such gents, though she wasn’t mentioning no names.) Her first love was Edward but when he got kinged, she fixed on his nephew. Her shop walls were soon lined with professionally framed photos of her David—him wearing pure-white polo togs but never really playing. “Too refined to need to even try, at least publicly,” Lolly said. “His chin, I’m the first to admit, is a touch weak. But me, it works on me. It proves his Inner Glow even more. The boy’s nation feels his IG. I mean, don’t you want to just take him home with you late some Saturday night, and tuck him under a blue blanket and just see?”