Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (94 page)

Will would have no part of Lee. Lee seemed too fine to ever feel such sloppy stuff as now rocked his enlisted losers. Lee had always been too handsome to live, Lee too noble to ever need a real bath or to long for a snack or to break wind, even whilst imperially alone.

Little Marsden—secret-like—had come to flat out hate this Christian gent and others’ slavish praise of him. The hungrier Wee Willie felt, the more he longed to call Marse Rob aside and ask, “Look, where’s a certain fellow’s dinner, fellow soldier, hunh? Not to whine, mind you … even so … no shoes, this wet out here, to lack all miniés for my musket, and then starve on top of that. There are, sir, limits, sir. You invite people into your war, there’s a Southern hospitality thing you should remember.”

But Lee was made of platinum, not blood like us. Lee must eat communion wafers for breakfast and sleep with crowns of thorns under his
pillow. Lee could’ve led the side that would win today. Yanks invited him to. But, no, Lee rode over the Potomac’s bridge. From Move #1, a genius at martyrdom. Will had just one question for Lee: When can I leave here and leave you, sir? Lee = Leave.

Marsden opened eyes again, saw soldiers drawing to attention. Some slapped dust from uniforms or whipped hats cleaner against uplifted knees. The orator waited, front and center, hands clasped before him, about to pounce into his solo moment. Hoofbeats. Some fellows tilted forward, a few stooping lower to spare others their big heads.

Will had never told any soul his irreverent views of Lee, not even Sal still beckoning the lad downhill. Sal called: “Last chance … saw Traveler’s ears just now. Miss this, and your momma’ll wear your rump out with a switch and she’d be right to too, Willie mine. Come on. It’s history, son. If I hated officers less, I’d give you a direct order, Will,” and Smith smiled uphill, offering his snaggled loveless lovely smile. Finally he asked others to save two places and Sal ran uphill graceful as some makeshift goat. “You even
in
there, Will? People are so goddam disappointing. What is eating you?”

Marsden then whispered up at the friend who’d saved his leg that would sure make the long walk home much easier.
“Can
we yet, Sal?”

“Can we what, son?”

“Leave.”

“Leave … what?”

“Leave here. Leave it.”

“Leave me, us?”

“Leave. Because, see, Sal, we lost it. You lose, they make you leave, right?”

“First, you come and watch this—I’m not ordering, I’m begging.” His Adam’s apple bobbed from nerves as he kept checking over one shoulder. Sal explained: Willie’s army had been outspent, outnumbered, but never outclassed. And all thanks to one dude forty feet away. Sal gave Will the sternest, most fatherly of looks. Then he bolted, calling, “Suit yourself, ingrate.”

Because Marsden set up on the clovered culvert, because he twisted his head about three inches to the right, he could see it—right through the clear glass jar he held—defense. He could see it better than most soldiers by the road. The Boss was already upon them. Men along either ditch bank made the straightest two lines possible while men were quite this tired. Some even left viewing gaps for the wounded on the ground. Will saw hurt ones—pathetic in full sun—salute straight up at sky and for the longest time before Lee even got to them.

Downhill, the raggedest-looking bunch since children walked their crusade to the Holy Land. Men held each other up. The wood carver tossed a blanket over sweet-tempered letter-writing Lieutenant Hester, shot last night and already putting off a stifling sweetish smell beyond the ditch. Soldiers
didn’t want Lee to note one extra bad thing. God knows, he’d seen enough. They all had. Every platoon’s Cicero stood, face full of his planned long speech, but even from up here, Will could see: Nothing ceremonial was going as planned. Of the worst-hurt side, all too typical.

Here came Lee all right. No bodyguard. A squad of mounted officers followed one quarter mile behind. Will used his jar to keep from witnessing this straight. But, through glass, he knew Lee—even with distortions—you knew Lee from engravings, and from that one time with Ned. But now Will had a reason for studying Marse Rob. Hadn’t this man once sniffed a Ned Smythe doused with girl’s perfume? Hadn’t Lee heard one of Ned’s last “Last Rose of Summer”s? Lee’d become of interest and Will watched, lens of bees lowering.

Sal saw Willie notice now and stand. Sal clapped once and turned with relish toward the great man. Now
Sal
could watch.

Slow and stately, hushed, here Lee came. He first seemed calm in the confusion that his calm set off. No speechmaker could say word-one of the planned talks. The woodcarver held up Bessie’s thighs over assembled heads. Lee, high on horseback, moved along his muddied troops, a sweep of whisper spread before him. When fellows saw him setting straight on Traveler, the pearl-gray horse near famous as Lee, men’s plans changed. Not one person hip-hoorayed. No arm waved. You instead heard low and manly moans—hundreds of questioning groans told you—the Chief was here with us. Seeing him, that made you know we’d lost.

Even his proud horse advanced with a gait gloomy and half-broken. Maybe our horses
did
know. Seemed Traveler understood on behalf of all pack mules, Rebel Arab chargers, and enlisted quarter horses. He too was bound now to surrender, like
their
representative, and Traveler sure hated doing so.

Everybody’d taken off their hats. Down came gents’ broad-brimmed planter’s ones—if stained, off with rake’s dusty caps. Hats got mashed to chest, the way you do for a passing lady or some stranger’s funeral. Someway you knew Lee’s face better than your own after these years away from household mirrors. Lee’s uniform looked brand-new. It’d been sewn special for a Victory ceremony—kept back for that.

Men expected to be noisy, expected to toss hats aloft like the graduates at West Point, where Lee’d been second in his class and then the school’s head honcho before Sumter. But Will heard only stilted greetings spoken up to Lee, little grunts, questions, some male kind of keening. As the General drew nearer—fellows went stoop-shouldered, losing ramrod posture that’d cost them a good deal. They acted ashamed—like, by losing, they’d let their Lee down. And, to judge from studying him, proud as ever but stunned-seeming in raw sunshine—you saw Lee felt responsible. He seemed to bodily apologize toward men staring up, memorizing his every silver inch.

Then Will understood that something had gone really wrong, with Lee.

“No,” Will heard the voice of Salvador Cortez Drake Magellan Smith, a
bleat: “You know not, no.” First it disappointed Willie: seeing emotion leak out of this general amongst generals—right unseemly. Lee was a man over six feet tall. Here even in the saddle that showed. Plus, his horse was huge. Lee’s chest didn’t buck a bit. His chin was raised in a way that might appear vain in a gent ten years younger or one whit less religious. First Will noticed how some hurt soldier, in trying to touch the General, had left a whole red handprint on the horse’s shank. Then, slow, Will understood why every-body’d flinched. Imagine the headline: “Lee Weeps Here.” Unbelievable,
him
doing it. Water moved—orderly stripes—from either eye into the beard. Only later would Private Marsden figure: The General never undertook anything by accident. A gentleman is never unintentionally rude. Lee had chose to let hisself. It showed such manly strength. Was probably the kindest gift the Great One could still offer his men. Don’t you see?—His crying let
them
.

Standing troops now dragged nearer, stood facing one another, men flattened hats tighter over hearts. The closest fellows did what those miles earlier had done. Happened like they’d practiced this for years. Soldiers lifted tattered hats, soldiers held these at arm’s length. And through this double line of outheld floppy caps and hats, Traveler moved.

When the horse breasted parallel with your spot, you made darn sure your own hat’s soft brim reached, eased first along the creature’s potent foremost withers, then slid back across a crying person’s stirruped legs and over the shiny boots of Marse Rob hisself. Next your hat whisked against the animal’s smooth flanks again toward its silver tail—until your hat and hand moved once again into free civilian air—so lonely! Till finally your headgear dropped forward and touched the hat and hand of that enlisted man just opposite you.

Warriors all did this so gentle, the great horse never onct spooked. Lee’d passed. His stiff back, you saw now. Men in the roadway twisted sharply right face. They stood, not feature to feature now, but shoulder pressing another’s shoulder. They shifted two by two. Lee moved off from them for good to sign the cause away. Had to. Fact.

Bye, Lee. We have, sir, attempted honoring you. We sure tried. Pleasure to work for you.

Marsden noticed Volunteers already turning aside, fondling their old hats’ crowns. Surely men would show these stained felt scraps to waiting families. Everybody would try stroking a sweat-marked brim containing traces of the famous general and his almost just as famous horse. Who says magic don’t exist, child? History can make any greasy hat go heirloom.

The crowd commenced to settling, now melancholy as you’d imagine.

Marsden walked downhill, and not unjaunty. He felt ready. It showed. Will tucked the treasured pocket watch into its case. Boy lowered his jar—its ticklish bugs striking and restriking curved glass. He tied a rope around the jar’s notched lid, bound rope around his waist, where glass sometimes clanked against the butt of his sword’s handle.

Sal, still looking after Lee’s dust, turned toward Willie, face haunted.
“Did you see, boy? If Christ had got to live to be fifty-some, I bet you any amount of Northern cash Christ’d look just like that, nearbout that good. My girls are going to want to hear this part over and over, plus my twin boys—I still sometime forget my boys. You
see
him?”

The private nodded, shy, straightening the bugle’s red cord straight around his neck. “Yeah.” Then Willie added as how the General
had
looked right handsome, yeah, and it was good that it’d got beside Lee to where Lee was really crying. “But, Sal? after what-all we been through, Lee just—maybe it’s just me, but for me, he just didn’t look quite good enough, you know?”

Others, hearing, stared at Will, then snorted, remembering his tender age. He appeared real worked up over something.

“Sal, I believe I’ll be heading home now. Can we, do you think?”

Sal looked around, checking for Lieutenant Hester, noticed him there under a blanket where two sea-green dragonflies had landed, flexing wings. “Nobody around to ask.”

“That means we
can,”
Will said. And his adulthood started.

Then Smith held out one big freckled hand. He didn’t believe that Wee Willie (wiping messy eyes and a worse nose onto his sleeve)
would
shake. But how spiritedly Willie did. “I’ll say it to the rest, first,” Willie said. The lad then wandered, hurrying some, from man to man. He hugged a few, he threw fake punches at others, said, “Bye. See you. Bye now. ‘S been real.” And Marsden said every person’s name aloud like reciting this list of names broke a last fine chain that kept him tethered here.

“Bye, boy,” they grinned back, awkward. They needed time to make up speeches. The orator had just stormed into the grove, pacing, sick at having missed his chance with Lee.

Here were men who’d survived. The twenty left from a ninety-five-fellow unit starting three years earlier. Here stood some of the very ones that’d been swimming on Ned’s death day. These same fellows had buried that boy in a secret place near the millpond, they’d tied up Wee Willie to save him from going out too much at night when he felt wildest with some fool kid’s notion of revenge. Now the wood carver handed Will the last slick pair of thighs. “Take Bessie’s sister, for good luck. Free. No? Well, whatever. Soon you’ll start shaving, son. You’ll find out. Bye. It’s been a regular education, ain’t it?”

Some ex-soldiers asked if Marsden didn’t want to stay till other soldiers begun taking off. Wouldn’t he like to have company when he heard how it all turned out? Others planned remaining till they learned the exact conditions of surrender. (Later, when they heard the word “unconditional,” they would cuss a blue streak. Some even railed against their semi-holy Lee and even his departed momma.)

Marsden just said, “No. Now’d be better.” At fifteen he as yet stood about five foot five. In hugging pals, he’d grab whatever part of taller ones he could reach easiest: belt-buckled waists, a knee, unwieldy holsters.

Marsden noticed his best-loved red-haired corporal moping hangdog
near a dying fire, lips going, face crumpled. Will stepped up beside, tugging at one sleeve to get Sal’s proper attention. “Never thought we’d get to say goodbye like civilians and just walk off from one another, did you? For a while there, didn’t seem I’d have most of what I needed
to
walk on!”

Sal wouldn’t turn Willie’s way, Sal just wagged his big head no.

Corporal Smith finally said to his feet. “You just leaving for Falls, just like that? How you plan to get there, Will?”

The child lifted either boot for demonstrating. “Same way I’ve stumped all over Virginia and Maryland these years. How’d you think? We lost it, Sal. I mean, wake up. You been dying to go see your folks, the twins. Now you can set off for New Bern. Come
with
me?”

“Naw, got to see how it turns out. I don’t much like your hauling off like this. You got to see a thing
through
, son.—Besides, I got stuff to tell you before you walk off—only thing is, I can’t think of one pointer I meant to say.”

Then the Corporal shifted his back on the kid who stood here. The hum of bees was coming off him like a body sound, forlorn. “Say,” Will touched Sal’s back. “Why
does
the ocean stay so cross?”

Sal smiled but begrudging, “Not ‘cross.’ You can’t say ‘crossed’ in the lead-off. That’s the whole joke and you’ll spoil the answer part. Boy, you couldn’t tell a joke to save your momma’s life, could you?”

But Sal saw the former private’s half-smile, he understood Will had messed it up a-purpose. “Scallywag, you
must
be feeling better,” and he ruffled Marsden’s plentiful cowlicks.