Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (65 page)

Doc Collier’d given me a medicine I spooned down all of them, this stuff turned worms a purple color. Made them easier to spot when, around midnight, worms came out onto their only porches—which also happened to be my babies’ private rectums. So I got up, pulled the cardigan around my shoulder, grabbed my pen flashlight, and scuffed off to be nurse.

Heavy walnuts kept dropping from trees, loud slaps, thudding like practice ammo in the dark. My seven oldest children were all heaped onto one bed, leaving the other empty. My beautiful litter, busy being each other’s covers, pillows. I smiled seeing so many arms and legs overlapped, blond cordwood. I turned each child over, untangling one from the others, yanking down undies, scouting—hankie at the ready for those minor worrying vermin.—How routine all this was for me. How odd to remember, with me this old, with them all now dead.

Worms!

Maybe Captain was off exploring on foot. Done, I finally wandered to our Ford, arms curled around myself, head down. I watched my moving shoes. I half admired my own plain shadow in the moonlight.

I knew my husband loved our children. Of course. Sometimes he lit up—watching them, he laughed his pleasure. Their back-talk sass pleased him more than it did me. “Shows their grit,” he’d say. “They’ll need it, Lucy—ease up on them.” But every summer night, he felt me rise from off the bed, he heard me shuffle in to check their backsides. Did it ever come to him to say, “Get back under covers. I’ll do that tonight”? No, child. Never.

I knew my husband loved his missing friend. But if that friend was alive, one cabin away and still a boy, could the Captain find love enough to get up, grab the flashlight, drag over, settle on the bed, tug those Confederate skivvies down, check? It give me the shakes—the picture of Marsden so big,
bearded and grown, helping his pal in a way that personal. Did he love that boy enough? Oh dear, yeah. Seemed to me, he did. And I hated him for it. Ned, I mean. Right then I hated Ned the First.

Cap sat, sleeping hard at the wheel, like ready to roll again. I let my flashlight play over his thick sheeny beard. Platinum watch chain glinted white. Why had the man brought all of us with him? Alone, he could’ve traveled at his own quick pace, could have chewed the fat with anybody, he might have bypassed all them wayside bathrooms that eight little ones—and a pregnant wife—require. Did I mention being pregnant? Honey, by then it’d got to be a right steady state—eight little ones in something like eleven years. So, yeah, I was, again. Number nine, the last, I vowed.

Dozing, Captain looked handsome. Awake, his opened eyes ofttimes prevented me from noticing him proper—eyes threw this zone like a helmet and a dare before his face.—Now I could safely admire him. Aloud, I said, “You’re a fine-looking man. What
good
does it do you?”

I switched off my light, settled on the running board, leaned against the rear door just in back of him. Our Ford’s springs squeaked as I set both feet on the ground, my mended maroon sweater drawn closer around me. Across the road, beyond a field, over a woods, the moon gave every stem a fine and serious shadow.—Dignity. Is that too much for a person to ask?

I sat here marveling at the headlock History still had on my man. I wondered, chilled out here, what tales I had to match his own. Sometimes I worried I was jealous of his charm around our watchful children. Above me, in the car, Captain now muttered—something about the three missing tent staubs, where were they? “Not again,” sighed I. Marshland behind the cabins sent a knee-high mist our way. Above walnut trees—black and lacy-looking—a yellow moon burned off to one side, cocked like a Saturday hat. Clouds kept interfering with moonlight so the brightness looked anemic, cramping, gaining confidence then losing face.

He claimed aloud he had to know who’d took that tent gear, and why. Child, I felt so bored of acting nice, of being Mrs. Nurse to every soul but me. Listening, I longed to give some marching orders. Then, not even expecting to, I yelled at Captain. Just said in a voice as strong and hard as your most superior superior officer’s, “Marsden, listen up.” Then I heard my husband—fast asleep—stiffen, his wide breath faltering, gone quiet as some bullied kid.

“Do this, Marsden. You run and get that Ned of yours, hear me? Go fetch your young friend right back to this spot. That there’s a direct order, soldier. Got me?”

I waited.

Two touring cars rattled past, headlamps on. A mule-drawn hayrick creaked by, slow, black children headed out to harvest something for somebody, nestled half asleep amongst the straw.—I’d been in on the ground floor of my husband’s nightmares all these years. Before, I had only told him to roll over, quit jabbering, calm down. Ofttimes that worked. But till
this minute, I’d never thought to holler, try and bluff my way into a sleeping head, to go—a double agent, so to speak—down into that bitter dreamed old war of his.

And what if it worked? What if I really finally managed to set up a person-to-person talk with this famous Ned I’d never heard the voice of? What should I
say?
I figured, Lucy darling, you’ll probably think of something. You usually do.

Biding my time till it seemed one boy
might
go bring another obedient boy, I waited. Cap kept rigid up front, I could practically hear his posture. I cleared my throat, swallowed. “Private Ned? I sent for you. You getting this? You present and accounted for?” I leaned shoulders back against the car doors, requiring support. I touched my throat, for company.

“Ned, son,” I made my voice dip froggy/manly as I could, “you sure have been a big help to us, boy. I mean, you’ve stuck right with us all this time. No shaking you, ever. Job well done. But, look, you’ve stayed on long enough, hear? You just got permission, from the higher-ups, the top in fact, to clear out. Congratulations, son. You got the orders every warrior wants. It’s over. Go pack. Singing voices count. Head home to your poor momma yet waiting with her birds. Go be civilian as possible, lad. Your days of service they just ended, honorable, too. So, bye-bye. You can leave us be now. Oh, and, son? That’s a direct order, son.”

I waited, braced for back talk, maybe a little whining. Oh but I longed to hear his voice squeak through that grownup snoozing at the wheel. Ned’s voice that would never ever stop being thirteen. But no sound came. Finally I hollered Private Marsden’s name. I had to know if his excellent dead friend was following commands. (Prayer: Dear Lord, in who I doubt, do let these discharge papers go through for my sake. Amen.)

“Is your buddy packed yet, Private Marsden? He fixing to clear out?”

A boy voice finally spoke. “Sir? in the woods yonder.”

I asked—hard: And what was he doing over there, following orders?

“Sir?” my husband told me, “he’s just crying and crying. And, sir? Sir?”

I give a snort. I sounded mean as a mean man can—which is mean.

“Sir?” The tone came out all pinched and reedy. “Sir? please don’t make him. If he goes, I’ll be in it all alone then, sir. Sir?”

A shout. I felt the chassis hop inches, Captain’s great weight jerking to. His own holler woke him back into a peacetime adult. “Wha …?”

“It’s okay, honey. I’m here,” speaks I. “The tourist camp, remember? Your babies are asleep. You were talking out loud again is all.”

“Had this dream. Had another one, Lucy.”

“What about?”

“It was then—only, I’d been … betrayed.”

I sat looking out at the road. Moon made all Virginia look gunmetal gray. Deeper in the walnut grove, falling nuts gave sharp stupid thuds, both grim and funny.

I thought, If I ever smoked cigarettes, I’d surely stoke one up right now.
At last he crawled out, he bent over me, said, “Night, buttermilk,” kissed my dry scalp, and then—rubbing his either eye—Cap dragged back towards our cabin. His bulwark back seemed wider than our rented hut. Either very early or very late in the day, Cap could act sweet as your secretly favorite child.

NOW
, alone, I pulled either foot up onto running board, tugged skirt down over knees. I clasped myself around the ankles. If it won’t for my age and experience, I could of been a girl. But I won’t one. Never would be again. Maybe one reason my old man looked so young so long, he’d never quit being basically a boy. I didn’t know if I’d been old since birth or if this present tiredness would finally roll back and leave me feeling a kid again.

Dawn was just trying to start, and I wondered what I’d of done if Ned hisself had answered up. I imagined the kid soldier, still off somewheres in the woods, leaning against a young tree, sobbing and sobbing. Poor thing. It won’t enough that he’d been dead for a half a century, I had to come along and ride that child still more. I didn’t hate him. He was—after all—like one of mine. Lost prior to my own turning up on earth, someway, he felt like my firstborn. But, oh, I wanted him planted finally, and stilled. Won’t nothing personal in that. Was for me
and
him. Oh, for a stake through his heart to let him
sleep
.

I pictured my own kitchen, my house standing alone without me—clicking like a empty residence does thinkingly click. And, you know, I wished that I was missing somebody. I wanted somebody back there in Falls to be missing me in a active way this very second. A person would wake with this same dawn, to mumble, “Wonder where my Lucy is
now?”
and then they’d slide back to sleep imagining me. I wanted my absence noticed, just half strong as Captain missed his Ned. I wanted it so bad. Who—in all of Falls—did I long for even partway as much? And who … who liked me back?

I ruled out all the ladies at church. I passed over my own fussy mother, who didn’t want to know the truth, which she called Morbid. And Poppa—who loved me because, half lazy, he almost had to. The older I got, the weaker he seemed—the sweeter, too, but helpless someway that made even three hours on the porch with him a torture. Almost by forfeit—I recalled Castalia. Cool, on fire, my first true enemy, a victim, another soul whose proportions seemed somewhat on the secret cathedral scale of mine. I pictured her in her orderly ruin of a house held up mostly by the mink cages around it. I remembered her pressing cold washrags to my forehead and how she always knew just when a scented compress had faded to plain room temperature. Her touch could feel almost rough but quit just at the edge of being careless. It felt all the truer for that. She had lately told me a few more stories about slave days—sometimes even funny tales from then. She talked about her plans for one huge mink farm—it always made me picture lettuces of minkskin, growing in a thousand plugs, rich brown and round
as her. She described the coat that she was growing for circling her own great girth, cultivating it animal by animal. I heard her voice, ripe-sounding, rolling from her bolster couches of breasts. I recalled her barking orders at my older children while I heaved to bring forth the next little rude one. I’d be stooped over a basin, thinking this should get easier with practice though it won’t. I pictured her hands—so gray-brown on their backsides—ivory in the underpalms. Work had burned palms with deep coppery pleats. Cassie looked out for her own six children, but had never bothered marrying any of their separate fathers. Seemed to me she’d squeezed the very best out of her men—good times, fine memories, their seducer’s charm, distilling from each: a single snifterful of crucial seed—one souvenir child apiece. Her men had sense enough to clear out, sometimes even before true happiness stopped.

I sat here in Virginia’s first light. I listened for my kids—none stirred yet. Castalia spoke of her former boyfriends so fond-like, if full of comic pity. Castalia could honestly praise each one’s tricks, talents, looks, styles of lovey-doveyness. Plus, she got to keep the kids without having all them extra bosses right there on her case full-time. Once at our house, Cap caught me talking to her over coffee (Cassie and me were hooked on the stuff, could put away ten cups a day—needed it, two cups per child, minimum, our day’s dark jazzy fuel). Maybe feeling jealous, Cap tried and make Castalia look bad in front of me. Undignified.

Our long cozy talks worried him. He didn’t much like how our children played mingled all day long in the white neighborhood. Even after his own long complicated history with Castalia, Cap still kept a eye out for her shape, her skin like smoked round glass. “How come you never married any of them, Cassie? Six children and not one spouse in sight. A God-believing woman like you, it seems you’d feel ashamed.”

She just laughed, a gilled edge ridged under each chuckle. “Ooh, I tell you—I done lived with all six of them men. All fine-looking, good with they hands, better steady company than
you
usually makes, sir. I tested them in this, checked them out at that, I give each one them pretty clowns a good fair tryout. But you know what, mister? Won’t even one of them my
type.”

He laughed at this. Had to. He recognized some truth in what she’d said, he knew her answer was fairer than his hard question deserved. I remember we all sat in the kitchen, holding identical white coffee mugs. Each of us looked each other over (appraising, tender, realistic, sobered). We sat here laughing like the equals that we were. Some of our children trailed in to ask something and stood in the doorway, not daring interrupt for once—jealous of our union, stepping from one of us to the other, asking, “What?
What?”
Kids felt cut out of it and they were right. We didn’t want no children in the room just then. They spoiled things. We were grown!

—I stood now, rubbed my lower back. Yeah, I’d feel the happiest to see Castalia. Did she half miss me? Was it her I loved? Was Captain just another of my children and Cassie some truer mother bulk, more my own and only
equal? Was this a stupid crush like my children sometimes got on teachers and friends’ older brothers? “Self-pity and jealousy,” I warned myself—the family curse. Sunlight broke through pinewoods across a field—the center of it red as your own eyelid closed against noon. Light let me read a sign, “Heart O’ Dixie Tourist Cabins.” It’d been hid in the dark all night, not nine feet from our black Ford. (Child, the word “motel” had not even been invented yet—all of this went on that long ago.)