Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

  She clucked as how Cap had not much more control in this than I did. I should go wash my face and calm some, go take my other children off into one room and tell them what this was about, because some of them—to judge from their faces—didn’t really know and I was scaring them myself. She knew I didn’t mean to, but I was. These strangers milling around Marsden property, it won’t fitting.

  I was inches from her jack-o’-lantern face, more of a mask it seemed as she aged. It grew extra chins in valance rings like her mink accumulated. I felt her list of instructions calm me, narcotic nearbout, it give me simple things to do. We all need, at such ransacking moments, such a person to step in and be specific and to help. What endless aid this woman had been giving me for life. How could I repay it? I think I wanted so much to be with Ned right then, I turned all that banked kindness on the person who’d been truest to me longest.

  I heard Louisa playing hostess and I knew it must be aging her. She hated outsiders, shyer even than I was. Nothing was coming at me right just now. I had maverick thoughts like how smells travel in my house—how while cooking cabbage for supper, the kitchen stays surprisingly unstinky but my linen closet, two rooms and a hallway off, seems to suck all odor to itself—household currents I could never figure. Now, my respect for this free slave, my pity for a missing son, my rage against the husband, it all registered as a desire so sudden it hit me in the lower spine, the wallop made my lower carcass dampen instantly the way tears can literally leap out of your eyes at certain news. Leap. I was here in her lap already. Was easy. I kissed her then and saw her eyes accept this as one type of kiss when it started, then eyes widen as the kiss opened to being another sort. Castalia kissed me back, but out of pity? I hoped not. I won’t ever know, I reckon.

  A collaboration, okay, but this became such a kiss that it grew like some thought we shared. All I knew was the great massive chifforobe fact of her below—and her mouth’s wit. I wanted to escape into her head forever. At the edges of us two, wrapped in her beautiful if someway tacky mink, I felt a crackling like some circus’s electric air. I heard people standing gabbing on sidewalk clear around our big old house. Thousands of dollars of free merchandise had just been given away by a seemingly crazy woman and maybe other prizes would pour forth and people waited on that.

  Again I heard Louisa opening our front door, Lou saying the word “thank” and the word “casserole,” already those were rolling in. How could women bake them so fast? Or did ladies keep some constantly on hand for any possible maimings of local kids, specifically Captain Marsden’s? I hated the feel of disorder in my home, I despised the notion of strange adults’ hands calming my twins, or Baby, touching Lou’s thin braids.—Cas now told me it won’t just me, she said as how the Marsdens had done killed Castalia’s mother, suffocated underground, they’d sold her poppa like potatoes. They’d let the overseer and his men touch the slave girls, babies practically. “You bend over in a field out there, you skirt ride up? men they come and have they hands on all you, couldn’t do much about it. So this just part of that, seem like. Just the latest. It’s something wrong with how it’s set up, seem like.”

  I nodded. I saw that. But, myself, I had other things to do, I was someway unbuttoning Castalia Marsden’s blouse. It was like the peeling of a planet. She must now weigh near three hundred and some, who knew? She looked down at buttons released, surprised, not shocked. “What? What you after, girl? Ain’t exactly no milk in there at my age.” “The sight,” I said. “The sight. Am I acting like a madwoman here? Because you can tell me.”

  She shrugged. “It’ll pass. You just getting used to the idea of him hurt. You gone get by, I reckon. We do. Got to, seem like.”

  THEN I grew real White on her, middle-class, regretful, I commenced to fasten her back up. I heard Louisa rise to the occasion of her brother’s blinding, saying to more food, “For us?” Castalia’s hand slapped my hands, their nervous buttoning back. “You think it’d help? ’Cause this’s the one request for anybody’s looking at ’em I’ve had all week …”

  I watched mighty hands undo thin cotton. I watched the dark flesh be a V and then a U and then be everything, dark as the mink framing all. I watched hands dip into the strained D cup of a overwashed bra, bleached to being furry nearbout. I watched both hands offer my own eyes these breasts. “So,” I said, not knowing what that meant. “Okay,” I said, and did feel better, seeing her, seeing somebody else. I wanted to hold Ned, or be a child myself. I don’t know what I was doing. Her nipples were salmon color inlaid in this ripe brown field. Her palms held breasts like scooping up great drinks of spring water. Her breasts right here, all used and perfect, badges, burdens, you name it, hers—they were Castalia’s. That was why I’d wanted them.

  “Thank you,” said I. “Can’t explain. But it helps considerable.”

  “Give us a last kiss and go about you business. Because getting these things back in’ll take a sight longer than whipping ’em out usually does. At my age, seem like everything’s a job.”

  We kind of laughed. I kissed her near the mouth but she said, “Give us one real kiss. Nobody been kissing you enough, that’s part the problem,” and we kissed. It held me against somebody living.

  ONE SKINNY white woman stood up from that couch, disgusted with her bloodied wash dress, straightening her apron and feeling a little single pistol was left careless in one pocket there. Miss Priss pinned her hair in place. It was me again, and back.

  “Go on out to them, go greet.” Cassie pulled fur over her bosom, modest suddenly and dearer for that. I saw it’d cost her, opening to me. Everything I asked of anybody costs so much. “I will,” I smiled. “I’m fine. I plan to kill him the first chance I get, and now I’m fine.”

  5

  WHEN I looked better I felt better (but that’s the middle class). A washed face, nice bandage on the hand, hair brushed, clean Sunday dress, new apron (with my one remaining pistol transferred from the pocket of that smudged first one). I circulated, shaking hands, meeting eyes. People seemed relieved. I saw they’d heard things about my being wild earlier. They hugged me like I’d been on a long trip but’d got back home. I told Lou she was off duty. I thanked her. I heard men talking out front and later realized our front porch had become a kind of company store, see, guns they were coming back. Men’d heard Captain was returning, and his buddies, they’d retrieved almost all the weaponry. Thank God I didn’t know this at the time—otherwise, I’d be in jail or the nuthouse now for sure.

  I excused myself, held another powwow with my kids in the girls’ dorm. I repeated the phrase “nobody’s fault.” Of course, they’d seen me try and burn his guns, but even so. You had to say “nobody’s fault” to kids this age. I recalled my Archie’s look at me, the un-smile, his accepting question, “Must This Happen?” I tried recalling other things. Nice stuff mostly.

  NEWS had reached us: Cap would be bound home late tonight, come to fetch me. I couldn’t believe he’d leave Ned alone on the child’s first night of blindness. But after everything else, why should this small lapse surprise? I wondered, are all men like this or was it just the luck of the draw? I pictured my son with his head bandaged, massive as a small world globe (the neater the bandage, the sadder the picture).

  Were there other children in Ned’s ward? Were the mothers there? I hoped. I hoped the nurses were not male ones.

  I entered our second-best parlor and talk hushed: one man ended a joke. The other conversation had been about Braille and some outfit in Lumberton that trained good Seeing-Eye dogs. I asked that the name be wrote down and given to Ruth or Lou, please.

  I excused myself and stepped in to try and sweep up glass in his ruint trophy room. It always soothed me, cleaning at times like this. Typical, my trying to go undo my nervy earlier damage. Here I’d just been staring at Castalia’s breasts, and now I was off trying and impress the world with my housework skills! I bent to scoop a pound of slivers, felt something sway in my apron pocket. “Oh,” I said, “this little th
ing.” I studied the last weapon left in the house besides my Sabatier butcher knives. Then, cheerful-like, I set to work, opening all drawers under his show racks. Three were rattly full of bullets—boxes colorful and pretty like they held good stationery or even candy. I squatted, pilfering ammo cartons, doing so with a great yawning patience, almost good humor—seeking the perfect tear-shaped bullets for this silver pistol, pearl-handled; It seemed plain for one of Captain’s fancy guns. I wondered if it might really work. Round and blunt, pointed/sharp, I tried many types till four fit snug in “the chamber.” I think it’s called chamber. Then I snapped shut and repocketed the thing, I glided off to be the kind of perfect hostess my momma, Bianca, always hoped for.

  Momma was there by then. Somebody’d gone for her. Somebody handed me a empty casserole dish with this note taped in the bottom: “Good for one rinse and set whenever you’re ready. Lolly. Your Inner Glow will get you through this mess, you see if it doesn’t.”

  • • •

  TWO A.M. and twelve casseroles (six topped with potato-chip crusts) later, we hear sirens enter Falls. The Lieutenant Governor’s motorcade roars up before our home, waking kids all over town, especially our own that I’d tried singing and lulling off to sleep. Children had prayed. This time Ned got mentioned first. Cassie’s in the kitchen in her mink, writing down which dish goes back to which house, tasting a corner of each casserole and the two unexceptional peach cobblers. Mother circulates, chin up, in dark blue. My poppa murmurs on the porch. Ruth drifts into groups, says things like “Can you even believe this, the poor things?” I go wait in the center of our foyer. One hand slips into my apron pocket.—Now, child, I see I was completely in another world. But who could point this out and stop me? I myself could not.

  The children are all out of bed, footed pj’s dangling through the banisters above and behind me, kids also facing the front door. Men gathered on the porch to smoke now greet somebody. I hear them offer the person condolences. Some neighbor says plain, “Here … these yours, I believe.” Then I understand my husband’s buddies, the Elks and Moose and Redmen, they’ve collected Captain’s scattered valuables. Men are handing back his precious guns, doing so before he even steps in here and sees us, sees me—before he explains. “A smart young nigger got your Aaron Burr dueling ones, boy ran fast but not quite fast enough, hunh, Charlie? There they are.”

  Front door flies open. Every soul in this house jumps. Behind me I feel children draw against each other, like bracing. Even Castalia behind me and watching from the kitchen, even Castalia flinches. Takes some doing. That scares me, her cringe.

  I’m feeling glad I just took the bandage off my paw. He’s always telling me I’m accident prone. Me! I look right good, I straighten my shoulders, and in he comes. For onct, I’m ready. I live here.

  What a tall and handsome heavy, heavy handsome tall man now barges in like owning the place, mammoth in his khaki, plaids, and brown. He’s wearing rubber waders, hip-high, frog-green. He seems broken-winded like he’s run a ways. I see he has been drinking. Who can blame him? I must, as ever, look up to him and something in his eyes turns me ways I’ve not planned going, honey. He is weeping, in public, tears move direct into his white beard. “Lucy,” he says. “Forgive me.” And so much that’s gone between us all these years is like some web gauzed from my sternum to his, my skull’s front side lacing to his own. I feel I’m sinking. Can I forgive myself forgiveness one more time, with all these people watching?

  Then, he sets something down, it’s a sack, he settles it beside the door a burlap tow sack stuffed with returned guns. Points and muzzles jab out. He has a white beard and his sack it’s stuffed, some Santa’s satchel, but corrupted—infection slung indoors for Christmas. I picture my Archie’s pink gums bared, Must This Happen?

  Above the white beard, one grown man’s face has aged five years. I see that and I feel for it and him. I do. His eyes look wild with a grief older than our hurt son. This haywire aspect touches me. It is mine. Nobody understands us, two sadsacks in love despite it all. I cannot help taking a step toward him. It would be right to hug him now, to know he’s helpless in all this as I feel standing here with a mob watching. I do that. I think it might feel fake but it’s sure worth trying. I want to be generous, or at least considered generous. Two steps nearer, I see he’s holding something behind him, could be flowers, for me. One second, I think he’s got a little child back there, alive or dead? I’ve started towards him. I’ll step on, I have to.

  My head comes chest-high on him, nipple-high. Men have nipples, too. In my apron, I release the little gun, hand-warm. Then he reaches behind him and right up in my face he jerks these shapes, dangle dangle.

  First I cannot see nothing but fluff. He seems to feel this is some justifying tribute, a apology. Man shoves six dead canvasback ducks toward my confused face. Neck-broke floppy, some still trail sad skummy reeds, and when I see one’s this-side eye and its gummy glazed hole, I am gone then.

  “Tact,” I say. “You’re all tact, sir. Now I remember who you are.”

  Nearby folks have gasped at what he’s done. We stand here with these strangers peering from four doorways opening on this hall. He has not hugged me. Our kids in the gallery behind and around me are waiting. My hand again finds metal. My hand is glad the metal’s still hand-warm, hello.

  “Lucy,” the vet says, hiding ducks he sees I haven’t liked. “It’s nobody fault, Lucy. The safety came off.”

  I’m thinking of our children all behind me. I want them to remember me as being a good person at this moment. I want to do right here and act openhanded as Castalia, not like him, scorekeeping. But I see that ducks are dripping on our pale hall floor, pink droplets coming down.

  “Your idea of a present? Dead things I should clean till they’re of use?”

  “The safety came off,” he says. “Could’ve happened to anyone. Ned’s really okay, considering.”

  “Don’t you even speak his name to me.”

  I pull it into light then. I point a weapon at him, cool, I feel so clear it scares me. I know exactly how this veteran will look, on falling backward.

  I hear my children rustle up behind me, a menace of whispering lifts from all rooms. Just that second comes a tap on the door and some old bachelor from down the street, in his bathrobe, holding three rifles, plainly scared of Captain for a long time and eager to endear hisself, sees fit to barge in smiling long enough to say, “I believe you’ll be wanting these,” sees my gun aimed right his way, grins, “’Scuse me, folks,” closes the door. Men! a club, a army.

  My wrist goes out at purest right angle. I mostly focus on the area between his eyes. My hand is shaking none at all. This nearbout worries me. “Children?” I say back of me. “Go to bed. Now.” They do not. I feel I’ve got to say, to him, “This is a real pistol and I loaded it.”

  “Seems highly possible,” his voice comes deep and rich and capable. “You’ve had any number of weapons in circulation all day long, it appears. Lucy, give me that. I cannot believe you’re doing this to yourself in front of everybody.—Forgive her, she has no idea … she’s grieving … she has not a clue what this means, doing such a thing in front of people. Lucille … look at you.”

  “How could you leave him alone? He’s never been away from home one night except at Billy Preston’s.”

  “Oh, he’s in good hands, the nurses were making much over him. I wanted to come fetch you back there, is all. Seems more your line.”

  “Taking care of them is more my line? Cleaning up after you, plucking your dead things?”

  “There are flash burns but one might well be saved.—You think I haven’t suffered over this, Lucille?”

  Castalia stands beside me. She has her hand out, palm up. The palm is copperish yet ivory and quite beautiful.

  “Sir, if you’d really suffered,” I ignore her, “you wouldn’t keep doling it out. The ‘safety’ came off the minute you were born. You stole my boy off from here and me. You’re misery, you know
that? You’re misery and need ending for your sake and all us others. You should thank me for letting you rest finally. Here’s Appomattox at last.”

  The gun shoves forwards. Castalia gets between him and me, there’s a great deal of her between him and me. “Better ways,” she’s saying sad to me. “Folks here. Children watching. Come on, girl. I ain’t got you this far to see you do this mess.”

  Hearing my kids mentioned, feeling very glad to look away from the somehow-father of them, I turn to see pajamas’ legs and feet, pink, blue, yellow, little white scuff-pad soles—very still now locked betwixt white railings. They could be on some Christmas card. I smile, even wave, I count them. But I find Ned is missing. Must still be at Billy’s. Then I remember. Then it seems I am the duck diving down to bite on something far beneath dim water, a bird who’s chose to spare herself through drowning. I am ending, having black and oily earmuffs put on, things like blinders grab my temples then claim my eyes so cold on either side. Cold on either side. I am falling backwards backwards into dark.

  6

  HONEY, here’s my famous grandfolks McCloud Scottish shortbread recipe I been promising, the one that snagged me so many State Fair blue ribbons:

  Take 2½ cups sifted flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, ½ cup confectioner’s sugar, one cup butter, some blanched almonds, candied cherries, or angelica or citron for on top and decorating as you like. Be “creative.”

  Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Child, you’ll want to work it with your two hands till the mixture’s right smooth and then feels blended. My visit to the hospital I am avoiding telling. You halve your dough then roll each half into four, a unit, say, six inches round and maybe half a inch thick. I know I didn’t ride with Captain, I must’ve had somebody’s car follow him, and me along with them. To see your son the only child in a bed up there on the Men’s Ward. To see him bandaged but perking to the sound of your familiar footsteps on the tile. His neck drawn up long and pert and delicate, head twisting your direction, a wad of orderly gauze big like some baby bird’s goggle eyes not open yet. Aiming almost your way, both his arms are pumping up and down, held out to where he thinks you will soon stand. With tines of a fork, outline six wedges into each round pie shape made. Place on buttered cookie tin. I’d brought him a note written by his brothers and sisters, all of them got to say four lines apiece and I read these to him, but in their voices. Tried. Managed Louisa’s, then I Little Xerxesed our twins taking turns alternating lines—and our youngests, and finally lispish Baby, easiest of all to do. I am right good at this type thing when I put my mind to it, and—for him that day—I was inspired. I almost wanted to do Ned for Ned. Encouraging maybe. Reminding. He laughed, like I knew he would, wanting to prove to me he was the same as before, though he wasn’t and would not be, never. His father waited in the archway at a distance, watching, keeping aside, feeling he should, the man all politeness now. I’d brung our boy some shortbread still warm in its toweling and he was nibbling that (no appetite, I saw) and Ned was smiling and nodding his head like eager to prove that he was brave and all, trying to laugh while eating and for my sake. I had pushed too hard with comedy at first. You know me, child. I fall back on that, a habit really. You’re terrified underneath. It was the best I could do at the start of my first sight of damage done to him. Preheat oven at, say, 275 degrees. He was in the ward and concerned men around all watching. The mascot, they had made him. Through no fault of his own. Men saying nothing, sitting there with their own woes and bandages and fevers, but listening to the mother of their new human interest. No privacy but you couldn’t blame them for that. Anyway, when had I ever known privacy? I thought of Ned, the First Ned, pet to a whole division and dead so long. I sat on the bed of this hurt boy, wishing I’d not let his poppa name him for a child killed at this same age. It was a mistake, names are contagious, I knew that now.