Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (30 page)

When Captain entered his own kitchen, stepped on glass, smelled booze in pools and saw it fringing drips down the walls, when he found two females clutching on the floor beside the stove, he took one step backward and said,
“Mother of God.” Someway it struck us as funny, his shock. Made us giggle some, two girls.

And as we saw the color leave a face beside the lamp’s smudged flue, Cas thought to call, “Get them cigars ready, Poppa-daddy.” First he didn’t understand. Then I was pointed to. “She gravid.”

“That helps. A little,” he said. The men were offering hands so we might stand again and she was soon gone. I heard him walk her to the wagon waiting on Summit. Sons carried out her personal effects. I was left here with the lamp in a kitchen full of broken glass and, seeing the broom yonder, being—preg, fifteen—a regular little Cinderella, child, I started cleaning up my kitchen for my life.

A WHILE BACK
, when you first started coming and see me, you said I ought to spill my tidbits for “history’s sake.” Oh, I don’t need that big a excuse. I like talking. Only got one subject: what happened next. Besides, “History,” who’s she? I been breathing a while, never met her once. I just saw people waking up for work and hoping to doze those twenty minutes extra. Later,
you
traipse in by the back door—loaded with names and dates and reasons. Then all that’s up in front of you appears to be history.

But at the time, child, history’s just keeping your rooms neat and hoping company’ll give you a little notice so you can tuck your extras under the bed. What you call history is really just the luxury of afterwards. History is how food the soldiers gobbled at 11 a.m. sets with them at two when the battle starts, how one snack’s heartburn changes everybody’s aim. Honey, history ain’t so historical. It’s just us breaking even, just us trying.

Darling, you know what history is?

History is lunch.

C
AP HE TOLD ME
over time in many ways and tries, this. Man said:

THEY’D GET
too close, Lucille. You’d yell for them to stay back. They wouldn’t. You saw they had their muskets ready. Officers forced you to or perhaps knowing that all your friends nearby were watching. Maybe just the scariness of another body rushing over the hill at you. You could see their faces. It might well be a nice face. Frequently it was. Two of my three were a good deal better-looking than myself, which I admit is not that difficult. One had a pipe clenched in his teeth. I took it out and slipped it in his tunic. Seemed only decent. The boy that gave me his pocket watch, his features were regular and plain. He had silver-blond hair and not just the yellow-blond sort which is certainly nice enough. Afterwards, every time, I bent down and checked. I felt it was my manly duty, recollecting the features of each fellow I shot.

At that age, what did I know? I mean they trained us to. The Lieutenant said, “Don’t pull on your trigger so hard, son, not to jerk it, Willie, that’ll knock your sights all off. Just squeeze it, squeeze it like you love it, like you’d squeeze your gal back home. You do believe in love, boy? As a gent, you do
love
something, right, son?”

“Yes, sir!” I barked.

In those times, a boy thirteen was bashful as a child now might be, oh, say around seven. Imagine—seven and out shooting strangers. Before the war, my father wouldn’t let me fire at quail. I couldn’t even target-practice
the bottles (nice green ones) lined along a wall behind our lilac hedge. Poppa said no boy should hunt before he’d shaved. A razor hadn’t touched my chin yet, and I had already killed three. I sense that you think less of me for that, but I’ll explain, girl, I’ll venture to.

You can be innocent of knowing about the birds and bees and so forth, and still manage shooting others effectively. Wartime was not a bit like what your schoolbooks doubtless try and tell you, Lucy. One thing, it was far and away muddier. To recall, it seems Virginia and Maryland were mud puddles with state capitals. We had far less food than anybody admits. Half of our division—the ones left standing—suffered scurvy by the end. You hear how an army moves on its stomach? Well, in that case, for the last two years we had, as you might put it, not a leg to stand on. We got corn pulled out of any field we passed (farmers and their children stood right in the road too, begging us not to steal it). We ate dandelion greens. Bad food, plus being fairly often scared my three years in, it meant at night I’d sit up in my blanket. A chopping noise had waked me. I’d come to smiling, Lucille, I believed the sound was my own bossy mother having servants cut up apples to be pies in our home kitchen. But it was simply my new adult teeth chattering. I would stretch back out, eyes open, arms locked against my sides. I’d get quite spastic, shivering so, and in July.

Antietam Creek, they named the battles after nearby bodies of water, villages, and churches. By then I was an old hand. My first few months in I had missed my folks’ farm but—after even half a year—it got so I’d lay awake missing the time when I
missed
everything the most. I was so young, the last thing that happened seemed the largest thing of all.

Had a plunge-loading flintlock, adult-sized, unlike me. You come to and it’s already in progress. You’d find yourself resting belly-down in a fairly comfortable ditch. I became a connoisseur of gullies, holes, burrows like rodents might enjoy. “A good hole.” Rebs fought each other for first dibs on the perfect gully. A decent makeshift grave, hand-dug, might, if picked correctly, keep you out of yours a little longer. And it is in just such a rut, with other soldiers bent double or hunched flat, dodging mostly left to right before your view, it’s there, in sight of the Dunkers’ church, that you spy one stiff-legged fine-looking Yankee boy. Notable because he’s coming right along the farm fence and towards your chosen hole here. “Hey,” you call clear across the meadow at the soldier fated for you. “Hey, this spot is mine. I dug it and am in it, go away, or else.”

But the fine boy in blue acts deaf. He moves nearer. In a type of trance. So, go ahead—chuck a handy rock at him, Lucille. Better that than a more permanent volley. You do, the stone strikes him quite effectively on his upper leg. Not noticing, he comes right on.

He’s one of dozens, hundreds out there—but he has your name on him. You see it. Your battle happens on this afternoon in a meadow full of flowers—seems odd. How the bees and monarch butterflies don’t notice one thing strange. They fly, busy, in circles from flower to weed among the
blurred lines of bullets. One big yellow farm dog, dragging its broken rope, pads everywhere, nose down, tail going. Yesterday this was a pasture, mostly his. The field’s being beautiful makes combat here (using that beauty to be cover) seem a good deal less necessary, my girl. The stillness of the hot day makes this scrambling feel uglier and crabbier, smaller. There’s such a thing as knowing when to quit but, uh-oh, that blond boy has been lockstepping, he has marched twenty-two feet closer since we checked last.

“Turn back,” you cup hand to mouth. “Look, do, because, or else, see?”

To be thirteen, underfed, so subject to long fits of nervous shakes. And now his rifle has shifted, its butt moves against his shoulder as he strides. There is the minute when you doubt you can think straight, followed by a sharp second when—to live, you know you must. You have been trained to squeeze that trigger like it’s everything you love. You’d best fire now. In deciding not to shoot, you’re opting not to live a minute longer. Is that what you want, is it, Lucy?

Okay then, give a warning shot. You’d better. You tell yourself, while mashing a beloved musket into place, barrel steady on your ditch’s bank, “This is just a way of wishing that one sleepwalking soldier elsewhere, not dead, more just
gone.”

His
gun is fixed right on your head. Two ticklish inches between your eyes know this. You wince a bit and fire above him. Doesn’t even slow the fucker down. Excuse me. His face stays very dull and you holler at it, “I told you, go back, last chance, don’t make me.”

You shut both eyes after using them to the very best of your ability, to aim, I mean. It’s really just one closing of one forefinger. Don’t jerk, mustn’t jerk. Squeeze. How smartly guns are made—so little does so much. Off it bucks against you. Musket’s kick forever makes you, the shooter, feel, for one bruised second, shot.

Peeking, you feel surprised then proud, then scared, and finally shamed to see your chosen boy heave sharply left and sharp backwards. His small cap and long musket go in opposite directions, landing among clumps of black-eyed Susans.

One blue uniform now rests face-up, heaving, blinking in a meadow that’s all blooming yellow-gold and green. Around him, others run, aim, scream, grab themselves, rush off. The farm hound trots over, sniffs the fallen boy and—tail wagging—lumbers away, paws huge, tongue out, happy. Your hurt soldier’s face looks fine, his chest not. Face dry, chest wetly opened in its upper right. You see this as he tries to prop himself on either elbow, and looks down at his chest as if staring a great distance. Then he gets interested, squinting toward this ditch of yours, a location where a crucial shot has flown from. Uh-oh. With his hat lost, blond hair standing in a funny crest, he tries standing, finds that too hard then starts to crawl this way. Really uh-oh. Bad tactics. He appears rational but puzzled by the logic of events that dropped him on his back and opened his young chest. Now, to yourself, safe behind your fringe of ditch-bank weeds and Johnny-jump-ups,
you say simply, “Don’t.” You see he’s not yet felt the full pain of being hit. He will, you know. You know this without pleasure, full of bitterness for him, though you yourself just shot him. Lucille?
you
figure all this out. I will simply tell it plainly and fast.

Earlier, while walking, a target, his face looked very vacant. Downed, it is all lit up with this strange intelligence, a care. Features are smarting but the pain seems almost some social embarrassment. Officers surely taught him
never
to move upright during firing,
always
dodge while advancing, do obliques, think obliques. Now he’s shaking his head sideways, perhaps remembering the rules as he drags over here. Either elbow pulls the upper body. He’s talking to himself and there’s an expression like a smile, but not a smile. You hoot instructions, try and guide him back toward his own lines. Under his pulled weight, a trail of wildflowers flatten. It’s terrible to see his pale grin as he gets nearer—like he’s recognized you. You picture yourself out there. Just now, a running Yankee tramples one whole leg of him. Volleys keep detonating left and right. He’s about to crawl directly into cross fire, he’s about to get his goddam head blown off. Excuse me.

And here we go, Lucille, here’s part I never manage to understand. It’s from your being thirteen perhaps. It’s pure insanity as you find somebody like yourself—but far, far stupider—leaping from your ditch’s safety, running through the noisy open, hollering at this boy (far bigger up close), “Here, let me.” He sees gray above him, scrambles backward, squeals, pats all around him, finds his musket’s too far off, grabs a rock instead, holds this up—his eyes too huge to bear—tries tossing it. The thing falls inches short, of course. He keeps crying up at you, “No more. No more now, sir.”

“Let me. Really. Here,” which means setting down your musket as you get a grip, as, without permission, you pull this boy to safety. Seeing how his chest is opened, you have grabbed him boot-first. You pull him face-up by either long leg—he is bouncing, groaning from the pain of being dragged. Till the both of you fall backwards, you in first, gasping, grateful, it’s your ditch again. Just then cannons really start and a great din of battle roars over where he was. And you look out to where your musket is. Oh dear.

What the fuck have you done? Pardon me, miss. Separated from your rifle, you’ve just pulled a Yankee stranger in this hole with you, is what. A mouse drags a cat through the small slit into its very home and has to know then it is certainly a stupid mouse and probably quite soon a dead one too!

You both hear you’re both panting. Even above the pumping of lead over the ditch you occupy—the sound of troubled breath, your own, means most. You are very scared to look directly at each other. Terrified, no doubt, for different sets of reasons but both sets quite likely very good. It hurts to turn your neck but finally you do, so slow in hopes that—hand to hand—he won’t now try to kill you back. Disarmed, in a hole, two boys, one hurt, one less so, stare at each other. Your mouths are both open like screaming, but they’re embarrassed to make sounds while doing so. You see how, up close, the other kid has blond-silver hair, thick dark eyebrows, spiky lashes.
This is plain since these eyes are definitely on you. His damaged right arm and shoulder shake, St. Vitus, uncontrolled. You recognize your own nighttime teeth chomping.

Then you do something pitiful. You smile at him. It is a disgusting display but all you can think of. He says, “Some mess, hunh?”

He chances grinning in hopes you won’t do him worse harm. The Yankee’s sweating a lot, clear drops are set side to side across his forehead. He seems to know where he is and how he erred by becoming so willing a target. He seems to feel that he will now—for his mistakes—be killed. Soon. Maybe bayoneted. With one red palm, he covers his weird smile. But he doesn’t apologize or plead. He hasn’t yet noticed how, in saving him (from your own shooting him), you dropped your musket way, way out there in the harmful open.

As a sign, you hold up both your hands toward him—palms foremost, wrists exposed to prove you mean no harm, not
now
. Not now you’ve probably killed him once. Enough. Some mess all right. Does he even know that it was you who plugged him? You hope he’ll blame most anybody else.