The Widow of the South

by Robert Hicks

  But that girl of hers, Hattie she was called, was the prettiest thing, and some of the men noticed. A lot of soldier talk is just talk, and so there ain’t no sense in taking serious everything you hear. But sometimes you can hear something different in a man’s voice, something calm and harder than the regular bullshit, that makes you know that what the man is saying ain’t the usual bullshit. Could be he’s telling the truth.

  Jerrod and I started hearing that kind of talk around the card game a couple days before I watched the McGavock children go riding off, with their mother standing in the road behind, waving. We started hearing talk about that girl, Hattie. She was too pretty and too young and too trusting to be around men like us. I decided to tell Mrs. McGavock, and so I did. I told her that the thing that had almost happened to that girl Becky, at the hands of that broke-down old goat, might also happen to Hattie if she weren’t careful. Mrs. McGavock had her apron crumpled in her hand while she listened to me, and her eyes got darker and darker. I couldn’t tell if she was scared or angry. But then she told me to mind my own business and that if she ever wanted tips on child raising, she would be sure to come to me, but at the moment she was doing right fine, thank you very much. I figured she was angry at me for pointing out the danger to her own child, who was not just some country girl from down the road with a pistol in her pocket.

  Then I went and found that boy Eli. He reminded me of myself, or what I might have been as a boy if I’d had a sister to love and love me back. He was a scrapper, I could tell it on him, and I could see he didn’t let nothing get by him. He was taking orders for liquor from some of the men when I grabbed him by the arm and took him around to the back porch.

  “What you think you’re doing, Eli?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You mighty busy for doing nothing.”

  “Reckon so.”

  Tough kid. I didn’t scare him. I didn’t want to scare him. I had the awful strange feeling that I wanted the little kid to like me and that I wanted him to do right and not get him or his friends in bad trouble. I wanted to protect him, even if I was myself a gimp who could barely protect himself no more.

  “You friends with Hattie?”

  “She’s my friend’s sister. I know her all right.”

  “You know what happened to your sister, right?”

  “I know you walloped the hell out of a man over her. Thank you, sir.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and turned to go, like all I’d wanted was to be thanked. I hadn’t even been thinking about being thanked.

  “That same thing could happen to Hattie and your sister again if you and your friends and your sister don’t get the hell out of this place.”

  Smart kid. He knew what I meant right off. He knew these men almost as well as I did now. Like I said, he didn’t miss nothing.

  “We got work to do.”

  “Not here. Not no more. You get them and your sister safe, hear?”

  He was holding some crumpled Confederate scrip, and he looked down on it, and maybe for the first time he was seeing it weren’t worth much.

  “What do I do?”

  He looked at me with real fear, for the first time, in his face, and I knew I could make that fear go away, at least for a minute.

  “You go to Mrs. McGavock, and you tell her you been hearin’ the men talking about Hattie and Becky. Just say that. She don’t want to believe me, but she’ll believe you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she will. Now, git.”

  He tossed the scrip back at the men he’d taken it from for liquor, and on his way back into the house he turned and waved and said something I couldn’t quite hear. Sounded like See you, but I couldn’t tell. I remember thinking, though, that maybe I weren’t useless, after all. I also remember thinking that he sure did remind me of myself.

  Just as the McGavock children were rolling out of sight at the end of the driveway, I spotted those two other castaways, that girl Becky and her brother, Eli, walking down the drive away from the house. The dust kicked up by the carriage must have hid them. They walked purposeful without looking back, and I reckoned I would never see them again. Or, maybe more true, I’d be seeing folks like them again and again and again. They were people like me, who ain’t got shit, and I believed there’d be a whole lot more of us after the war had sorted itself out. I hoped they’d be all right, that they’d stay away from men like me. I was shocked that I felt that way, seeing as how I had barely known them. But those days at the McGavocks’ had felt like forever, and every little thing like the only thing in the world.

  At least Mrs. McGavock must have taken me serious about the threat, sending those two away also. No matter what she said.

  Later, after Jerrod and I broke up the card game and headed back into the house, I said something to Mrs. McGavock about watching her ship off her children. I said I reckoned it was the right thing to do, and she turned to me slowly like she was having to take things real slow on account of she was talking to an idiot.

  “I believe it is the right thing to do, but not for the reasons you’re thinking, Mr. Cashwell.”

  “And what other reason would there be?”

  She ignored me and traced with her finger the fancy pattern of the hallway’s wallpaper. She had a soft look on her face, like she was thinking of something that had happened long ago.

  “I do believe you and I shall have a conversation this evening. I shall bring you supper.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She squinted her eyes at me, and her face lined with sharp and dark wrinkles.

  “How do you think they’re managing in Nashville?”

  That was the first clue that I wasn’t going to be staying at the McGavock house forever. It’s easy to think that your circumstances won’t change once you’ve given up on changing them. But they get changed for you, sure enough.

  I had mostly forgotten about the rest of the army. I reckoned I was shut of them, that they’d gone off to somewhere and that somewhere would never include me ever again. Nashville was it? All right, I thought, so what? I didn’t mind the boys around the house. They were comforting, ugly and no count as they were. I just didn’t have no need of the regular army, if you understand me. But it occurred to me when I was back in my room again, waiting out the couple of hours until suppertime, that if they were fighting in Nashville and things didn’t go well—and they were sure not to go well after the beating we’d took—those boys would be coming right back on down the road to Franklin with the Union on their heels, and I was right in the path. Well, shit, I thought.

  I hobbled over to the window, where I could see a group of men who had strung a rope from a branch high up in a large poplar and were taking turns seeing how high they could swing and how far they could jump after letting go of the rope. They swung back and forth like boys, looking up at the empty branches and the dusty blue sky, shouting nonsense and then jumping over what looked like a big pile of old coats. They were boys, I guess. Some of them. And then I watched Jerrod get on the rope and try to hold on, and he was doing pretty good until the rope got to swinging good and fast. I could see he was having a hard time holding on and that the happy look on his face had turned and become fear. He let go of the rope at the top of its swing, and that was a bad misjudgment. Maybe it was because he couldn’t see so good with his one eye. He dropped straight down rather than gliding off and away, and he fell right into the pile of coats. He was screaming and thrashing and trying to high-step it out of there, and that’s when I saw it wasn’t a pile of coats, but a pile of coat arms and pant legs, with the arms and legs still in them. The other boys were shouting and whooping and pointing at Jerrod, who shouted curses at them and kicked the limbs out of his way. They were all so innocent, a pile of arms and legs was nothing to them. Didn’t symbolize anything, didn’t make them think about nothing. Just was what it was—a funny thing to see a man wallowing around in, dead and frozen things that didn’t mean anything in particular. I thanked Go
d that we had men like that, or boys like that, or elsewise we would have had our asses whupped by the Yankees years before. I had lost my own ability to jump over such a pile without thinking about it, and I envied them.

  My mother would sometimes trace some symbols in the air when she was nervous and wanted protection: an A and something that looked like a horseshoe. She said it was the name of God. The window was fogging up with my breath as I looked out at those dumb cripples and heroes, and I traced my finger through the fog and drew my mother’s symbols. I got tired then and went to bed.

  Mrs. McGavock didn’t bother to knock on the door. She came in with Mariah, and they bustled around with dishes and trays as if I was still an invalid who couldn’t get out of bed but had to take it on his back, and not a man who got up every day to gamble and jaw with the others. Mariah looked at me straight, as if she was daring me to say anything about it. She knew good and well I shouldn’t be having the mistress of the house waiting on me like that. Ought to be getting his sorry ass out of bed and off to wherever he’s supposed to get off to. I could see what she was thinking, plain as anything. She was right, too, and I liked her the more for it.

  When the food was all set out and ready to eat—we were having potatoes and some fried-up ham from the smokehouse, looked like—Mrs. McGavock sent Mariah off and bent her head to pray.

  “Come, Lord Jesus, our guest to be, and bless these gifts bestowed by thee. Amen.”

  I said it with her. As soon as she said, “Come, Lord Jesus,” I recognized the blessing and knew its words. I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d heard it before.

  “The Moravian blessing,” she said. “You know it?”

  I didn’t know what a Moravian was, but somehow I knew their blessing. Didn’t really know if there was such a place called Moravia.

  “Yes. I know it.”

  “You’re a religious man.”

  “No, I ain’t. I just remember things in my head, and I ain’t opposed to blessing food. Doesn’t really matter where it’s from, does it? It’s something to be happy you got, that’s what I know.”

  “You’re a regular theologian.”

  “May I eat, ma’am?”

  We ate without talking. I sat up in the bed, balanced the tray in my lap, and bore down hard with the knife on that ham. It had been kept up in the smokehouse a long time, was my guess. I didn’t have cause to complain, though.

  Mrs. McGavock was a hardy eater. It surprised me. She was so fine and pale and weak-looking I couldn’t quite picture her bolting back salt ham like she did. She acted hungry, though. She balanced a plate on her knees, which she had drawn together with her feet perfectly aligned below. She had an apron on, and underneath that she wore one of the black dresses she always was drifting about in, and for the first time I noticed that the black was faded and the seams had been mended a time or two. Between bites she’d sneak a glance up at me and then quickly turn her attention back to her plate and stab a little potato.

  “Why are you here?” I said.

  “What do you mean? This is my house.”

  “You may be thinking I’m stupid, but I really ain’t, and so I’ve noticed that I’m being primped and pampered like I was kin to you and you reckoned to inherit a lot of money from me. Is that how you-all got your money, by the way? Is this family money? Because I’ve looked around this farm, and I have to say it’s a sorry operation, and I can’t figure you’re making much money yourselves. So seeing as how I don’t know you except that you decided I needed my leg sawed off, I’ve got to say it’s a little mystery to me why I’m getting the special treatment while the rest of the boys got to sleep on the floor. But I’ll say this. You’ve done enough for me, even if right this moment men outside are using my leg like it was a goddamn toy. You’ve done enough for me that you don’t have to worry. Just tell me what you want from me, and I’ll give it to you. I got to settle accounts here shortly anyway, seeing as how it’s likely I ain’t going to be staying much longer. I got to get my affairs in order and get on with it. So tell me what you want.”

  My potatoes had gotten a little colder, and so I shoveled a few into my mouth. She’d put her fork down and her plate aside, and sat there looking at me with her hands in a ball on her knees, her mouth drawn in a straight line I couldn’t read. I was an ungrateful jackass, I knew that. I meant to be an ungrateful jackass, and that was the truth. I didn’t want to owe no one nothing and I wanted to be free, and the best way to do that was to settle your accounts and burn your bridges so there was no going back. And, anyway, I couldn’t understand her, and I couldn’t understand why she was so concerned with me, with what I did, with how I was treated. I had thought it was guilt at first when she put me up in this room and made things more comfortable for me. But I soon realized it wasn’t that, because she had not a fleck, not a spark, of pity in her eyes. She did not feel guilty; she would not have felt guilty if they had cut off all of my arms and legs and I had been able to do nothing but roll around and curse her. There was no guilt about her; she didn’t cringe and talk soft to me like a guilty person would. On the other hand, I sometimes caught her staring at me when I was playing cards or when I was trying to hobble around the yard for some fresh air or when she passed by my room late at night. I didn’t like being looked at when I didn’t know what was being seen.

  “You are my key. You will explain the things to me that I have not been able to understand. You can do this, Mr. Cashwell, because I saved you. I have known only the opposite in my life. The opposite of saving. The things dearest to me have been taken because I could not do what I did for you. And so I’m wondering, Should he be dear to me? Was he meant to be dear to me? And frankly, Mr. Cashwell, I’ve had a hard time coming around to the belief that you could ever be dear to me. I want you to explain to me why I wanted you to live and why I was able to make you live. Because I don’t understand, not really, and the answer is very important to me.”

  She was out of breath, and I was out of breath just trying to keep from interrupting. I didn’t have one clue about what she was talking about. She spoke in pieces of thoughts that I was supposed to understand, but I couldn’t put them together. I was just a soldier, just a shot-up soldier, and I didn’t want no more responsibility than that.

  She stared straight down on me and seemed very tall in her chair.

  “I don’t have any answers to any of that, ma’am.”

  “You do, you just don’t know what they are.”

  She relaxed in her chair, unclenching her muscles and folding in on herself. She smiled at me and scratched at the back of her neck, where her hair was starting to tumble down. I waited for her to speak again, because I was lost.

  “You don’t know what I’m talking about, I see that. That’s all right. I’ll know the answer when you tell me, even if you don’t.”

  I kept my mouth shut, swallowed the last of my potatoes, put the tray aside, and crossed my arms over my chest. I waited.

  “I suppose I’ll have to ask you the questions.”

  “I reckon so, but I want to ask you some questions, too, if you don’t mind, Mrs. McGavock.”

  “I want you to call me Carrie.”

  “Will you answer a question for me first?”

  “All right, then, yes.”

  “Don’t take offense at this, but I want to know what the hell happened to you to make you so goddamned odd.”

  I knew there was no way she wouldn’t take offense at that, but it was the only question I could think of to ask, and it was the first one that came into my head, and after the words came out of my mouth I realized it was a question that had been banging around in my head for quite some time, probably since the first moment I’d seen her. I didn’t know women like her. Didn’t know many women, to be truthful, but the ones I did know weren’t people like her. They weren’t rich and well-born, and if they had their secrets and wounds, they came by them honest, in ways you could see real plain. Her husband ran out on her. She don’t have much food. H
er daddy lay with her, they say. Her daughter died. Things you can point to easy enough, that’s what I’m saying. Now, I knew that Carrie had lost some children. I’d seen the big painting she had up in one of the rooms, three little faces in the clouds like angels, looking down on the world as if they were still alive and watching all of us. I guessed that was her story, but it still didn’t all come together for me. It was the painting itself that made me suspicious, I guess. What kind of person wants to have a painting like that hanging around? The women I’d known did everything they could to get on from the past, to burn the past behind them. This woman didn’t do that, and I wondered if it was just because I didn’t know enough women.

  “I’m odd, then.”

  “A little. A lot, actually. I don’t mean to offend you.”

  “I’m not offended.”

  She closed her eyes, and her smile drew farther across her face, like she had just thought of something to look forward to. She sat like that for a few minutes. Without opening her eyes, she started talking again.

  “What do you mean by odd?”

  “I mean, this whole thing right here in the house.”

  “The hospital, you mean? I had no choice in that.”

  “But you like it, I can tell. You like what’s happening here, as if you had wished it.”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “And that’s odd, ma’am.”

  “Perhaps. What else?”

  “What else?”

  “What else makes me odd? That can’t be all of it; you surely must have encountered the morbid in your time. Or have you been a sheltered man?”

  “I don’t know what you mean by morbid. But if you mean floating around this house like you were Death’s angel herself, always watching and watching and watching, and letting your children see the worst there is to see in this life like it was no more unusual than the circus, and talking about answers I might have, when I’ve never had any answers for anyone except when it was time to charge ahead and get shot at, and—”