Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  —WHICH came first, child, the rooster or the egg?

  YOU KNOW what comes on at one? Why, My Children, Right or Wrong. It’s one full hour of sin and eating out in restaurants. I hear it’s about the most famous of all soap shows. In here it sure is.

  When I got sentenced to this Home, it’ll be fourteen years ago, I wouldn’t go near Multi-Purpose, not while no soap program was busying the TV set. Owing to excess pride, I kept to my bed during every installment. Others could be heard in there, laughing and oohing and aahing. Just burned me up: “Fools, nobody on it is real!” I remember back in the twenties and thirties, neighbor women forever listened at Mary Worth on the wireless. While I hung up children’s clothes in our back yard, neighbors tried to trap me into gossiping about some people made up to sell Oxydol! I just smirked. I explained that I had nine children and one man in that real house yonder, they kept me guessing. “Just you wait,” my lonely next-door neighbor smiled, poor Ruth, brimming with some secret knowledge.

  Pride can keep a person off to herself. Folks in here couldn’t eat breakfast without referring to Lance this and Alexandra that. First I thought these two must be a orderly and nurse that livened up all rooms but mine. Just actors on a screen. Well, I grew more determined not to be no softhead, never to break down and join the wheelchair traffic jam at 12:45 p.m. Sheep.

  And due to such false pride, I missed the show where Debbie got born! There’s no going back. We pay for our mistakes. Soon enough, one orderly friend, no, one friend who is a orderly, he offered me a dare. Jerome claimed I was afraid of popular entertainment—like my momma with her airs and sheet music, trying and be grand and all. “Ha!” goes I. Somebody else offered me ten cents if I’d come see their show just onct. Woman claimed she wanted to discuss a particular character with me afterwards, needed my expert opinion on that scamp Dr. Marcus. See, his fault is—if it’s got a skirt on it, he has to at least try. Some women in here say he’s downright attractive (they think any doctor is). These old women claim that, slick and heartless as Marcus is, they’d know not to expect any permanent relationship off him. They say that, if he asked, well, they wouldn’t mind. Just once. For experience’s sake. Talk’s cheap.

  Anyhow, I made fun of folks that forgot their own living children and could speak of nothing else but Pleasantville this and that. So not two days after I accepted Jerome’s dare and then the dime, just two days into the show (20¢) I’m gumming through my midweek chicken à la king when I hear myself go, “All Lance needs is the love of a good woman, and you know I hate to say it but I worry over that day-care center owner and the way he keeps young Debbie mashed so much on his lap. True, he teaches her the alphabet real patient but his mustache is sneaky and it’s just something fishy about that one.” You could hear others’ gloating laugh as they chanted, “We got Lucy, we got Lucy.” Like kids! Well, I hung my head. Seemed I was already a My Children, Right or Wrong goner. For me, child, since then, there’s been no looking back. If you got a habit you can manage for free and from your wheelchair, why not?

  EVERY rest home in this area enjoys its own pet show. Others hooked on Children, Right send notes here, seeking pen pals. Everybody has a favorite adult character they want to discuss in detail but Debbie stays the child that holds all Pleasantville together. The main show here at Lanes’ End Rest used to be The Edge of Night. Then My Children came on. First day, our Magnavox in its overhead rack lit up with Lance minus his shirt and Dr. Marcus minus his (during some young bride’s ob/gyn examination yet!). Well, that turned the tide. Later, our men—to show they had noticed but with reasons cleaner than us ladies’—they said, “Young Lance there must swim.” Minnie fires back, “For exercise? with Stacey, Alexandria, Sara, and Chichi the Spanish-speaking maid around? For exercise, Lance doesn’t have to swim.”

  That got a laugh in Multi-Purpose till others shushed Minnie. She always breaks in with the loudest comments. I blame her 70 percent deafness. One woman couldn’t help correcting Min anyway: “It’s not Alexandria. It’s Alexandra. Everybody knows that. We’ve told and told you. Four actresses have played in her for the past six years but her name has stayed Alexandra. Alexandria is a city in Virginia.”

  “Egypt,” Professor Taw puts in.

  Everybody’s got to be right! Especially at this age.

  The Edge of Night was our hallway’s bread and butter for nineteen years till the vote went against it. Majority rules. With ours being a poorhouse home, we only have the one set. Well, Night diehards sure took it personal. You know what one woman did? You won’t believe me but would I invent it? would I bother to? She couldn’t afford her own TV set and she loved the people on Edge better than any living soul. So the first day Children came on to a full house waiting for more Lance “skin,” this stubborn woman wheeled herself to the nurse’s rolling medication cart (abandoned because staff was watching My Children too). She snatched many pills, swallowed everything, including one paper nut cup.

  They had to pump her stomach. Unconscious, she begged for Edge of Night—I believe I’m mostly telling this to give me time to collect my present self for what comes next in the life of a young girl.

  Bull Run Honeymoon

  I sleep, but my heart waketh: it is the voice of my beloved

  that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my

  love, my dove, my undefiled: for my head is filled

  with dew, and my locks with the drops of the night.

  —SONG OF SOLOMON 5:2

  QUITE the ceremony, quite a write-up. Pictures, everything. Even Raleigh sent reporters. Nobody knew how my mother’d swung that. Must of partly been the Captain’s community standing. Part was probably a little trick of Momma’s called cash bribery. (I suspect she sent the Raleigh society reporter a voucher for her prepaid carriage round trip, plus some tidbit of inherited personal jewelry.)

  Leaving church, I found a short hallway made of ex-Confederate swords crossed over our heads. I couldn’t really see the fun in that. My three unwed aunts (the local pinnacle of pianistic education) had made my traveling outfit by hand. It was silk-lined, a plaid organdy, the envy of all. I didn’t feel worthy of it, really. Adulthood felt like Halloween. My three kind homely aunts praised me as smart. What did they know? Everybody made me think I’d picked him. I guess I someway did. I was near the age he’d been when war ended. I soon caught on fast enough—like young Marsden had to. I came to after our first battle. That’s what I called the honeymoon. That was the storming of Fort Sumter all right and guess who played the fort?

  Wedding trip clear to Georgia. By train then buggy. Talk about dust. And me in the excellent new dress (it wearing me), dove-gray piping, ankle-length hem, the short bolero-ish jacket, cute. Cap acted real polite. Every ten miles he asked did I want watering, like I was some thirsty filly or had a bladder condition. He kept touching the brim of his big black hat each time he looked my way. I mostly wanted to get alone with his eyes, wanted to leave the rude suet remainder of him (them pink extra hundred and ninety-odd pounds) in the hotel hallway on some gilt chair where nobody ever sat. I would only save the parts of him I trusted. Oh, I thought I was getting a pup for Christmas: I didn’t know what a war was.

  Holding reins, Captain told me secret plans for turning his livestock slaughter pen into the Chicago of the South. Sounded good to me. I listened and was pleased with him. We looked nice together. Folks noticed. Then night came on. How old are you?

  —Will you check out this spotted hand beginning to wobble? Things I’m telling happened miles of decades back. A world ago. Feels about as recent as a sneeze. Oh dear, what time does your watch say? We only got a short while till the lunch chime sounds. My, how time flies when I’m doing all the talking. You booked for afterwards? Because, see, I believe I’m only getting started here.

  This recording machine looks too small to be American. So it is Japanese. See, living on a little island means they make the tiny things better, saves precious space. Oh, I read. They’re steadier workers than A
mericans are now. The winning-side Yankees are finally learning what it’s like to be beat by choicer equipment and finer factories. Be good for Northerners’ character, a bit of competition. Now it’s their turn for a little Appomattox ash-eating. Things shift. Woman down the hall blames these recent weather changes on the astronauts going back and forth in it. I said that, I remember. Slipping. You get tired. Lunch soon. Lunch helps.

  Still, I always figured I would tell my story to equipment homemade as me. How much film, tape, or whatever you got stowed in this contraption? Enough to string a whole long gabby life along? Because—listen, I’m deciding here—if you got the stuff to maybe try and glue them to, I sure got some things that want saving. Maybe I do only have the four good teeth left but, darling, I own around one million examples.

  There’s a old woman down the hall—not the astronaut one, another—I mean a real old woman (you think I’m bad) and she’s sealed in what we used to call a iron lung. Now it’s named “a life-support system.” That’s what stories are for me now—a goodly air bubble safe-deposited inside most every one. I now have stories like I onct had me children—a crowded table waiting, each with allergies and appetites. Oh, I could flat burn this little Japanese’s ears.

  But, first, draw a little closer. You think I’ve forgot the honeymoon part, don’t you? No, just stalling. I ain’t all that feebleminded quite yet. Just cowardly at times. You know how honeymoons are, honeymoons then, anyways. Nowdays there’s no shocks left. That, I figure, is better than the surprise element. Jerome will soon come fetch me for lunch and then My Children, Right or Wrong. You ever watch? Be honest.

  So. Honeymoon, him and me, a one-girl battle of Bull Run and you can guess who the bull was and what he aimed to run at. Now, in Northern histories of the war, they say, “Yanks at Fort Sumter were fired upon without no cause nor provocation.” Darling, that was me all over. And on my back to boot. Concerning bees and facts and birds and life, nobody told us girls zip. Zero. We had to find out at the time.

  Nice hotel outside Atlanta. Soon as we arrived, Captain found him another Antietam-surviving vet. They seemed to sniff each other out like brother dogs. Well, the two men started comparing notes, hill by dull and bloody hill. Captain left me in a tearoom off the lobby—all potted palms, polished brass, tassels on the tassels. I sat arranging my pearl-gray hem over my buttoned boots so everything’d look its best. My braids were hogtied in a honeymoon bun, Momma’s strong hands had secured them there to keep me from gnawing on them whilst nervous. (Momma said, “I don’t want to hear you had hair in your mouth, understand me?” Poppa demonstrated a person fishing a single curly one off the tongue. Momma blanched like this was smutty—a prediction for me. Myself, I only caught on a good bit later and I didn’t think it was either funny or too kind.)

  Setting there waiting for Captain to quit talking tactics, I bet I was prettier than I thought I was. Everybody fifteen is basically pretty, ain’t they? Just nod. Captain finally got our luggage upstairs with a handsome bellhop’s help. But when Cap came back down (hurrying so he could continue battle chat), he’d left the wallet in his dusty greatcoat. He called me over while jawing with the Georgian. (Odd that every lobby and bar had another Antietam survivor when you remember how the twenty-three thousand got killed in that one day.) Cap asked me would I please run up and fetch his money. He handed me the room key. I felt flattered, like I was his favorite trusted daughter, not his wife.

  Upstairs, I fumbled in his pocket. First I found a sealed envelope with our Falls druggist’s script across the back: “Have Leander hand-deliver to stockyard … French Letters for Capt. Marsden’s Honeymoon.” I shook the thing. I didn’t know that my husband could read French—I imagined him quoting foreign mail at me like poems. Another skill to be impressed by.

  Next I pulled out a hinged leather thing all worn from handling. I took it to a window, hit the little latch. It opened on a shiny tintype—a beautiful person stood pleased-looking under a mat of ringlets like a halo, only loopy with too much body. The choir robe’s starched collar rested open, the face wore only half a smirk. The face looked like it’d just started to consider becoming conceited but had decided against it and yet wanted to be given the wee-est bit of credit—even for that.

  Downstairs again, I handed Captain his billfold to pay for the several whiskeys he had ordered hisself and the new friend. Then I mentioned as how I’d found this too—I pulled out the picture case. He snatched it so fast his huge hand made a testy blur. He checked to see if I’d hurt that daguerreotype, he spun to see if the other vet—off at a pastry cart—might’ve noticed my mistake in bringing the picture.

  I had to ask, “Who is she?”

  “She!” says he, half roaring with a laugh. “I like that, she! This isn’t just some she, Mrs. This is my dearest friend on earth, ever. Was male as I am now. My late friend, Ned. I’ve told you.”

  “You said he was pretty. But I thought you meant only to you.” I grew quieter. Slow, my hand lifted to my own cheek, fingertips comparing this decent living face with the one saved under glass. Fingers knowing which would always be the plainer. If I’d had a braid loose, I would have gnawed the thing damp or brushed my thin lips with it, for comfort. “It’s just,” I told my husband. “I never before saw his likeness. It’s fact … a real beauty.”

  “He was.” The Captain opened the picture, pulled it nearer to gray eyes. “Is.—Waiter, some tea and cookies for the little lady here. Thank you. That all right, tea and cookies?”

  Then there was further war talk. “Did you by chance know Gunnery Sergeant John B. Morris, exceptional fellow, spine aplenty, severally wounded, and assuredly blessed with grit to spare, was he. Notably clever with his hands, too. Why, I believe it was on the eve of our first day’s battle, a lateral jamming had occurred in a firing pin on one particularly testy …” They really talked like that. History’d turned their daily talk to tin. How little bearing it had on anything that mattered, child. I tried to appear listening. Mostly I wanted to dunk my cookie in my tea. Didn’t dare. “You’re married,” I told myself, and it was like I’d said “you’re royal” or “you’re dead.”

  Then it got darker. Then we were headed (Cap and me) toward being locked in the same room as man and wife. I saw two sleek bellhops my own age watching us and laughing, knowing more than I did. “In for it now,” the prettiest one said and made his eyebrows go.—Could you slide a wee bit nearer, honey? Fine. I need to look at somebody during.

  CAP and me were no sooner alone together. He locked the door. His husbandly happiness seemed exaggerated by recent whiskeys, he leaned back against the door he’d locked. He whipped off his necktie then its stickpin and flicked those down. He grinned whilst the long unfastening commenced. Pants unbuttoned in them days. There were many buttons on those pants but—even so, child—not near enough.

  You could’ve knocked me over with a feather when I saw what-all had to fit where. He stepped nearer. A tumor, tree-root deformity. He had definite plans for what to do with which parts. I figured he’d thought up the deed. I didn’t have no idea on earth it was what you’d call a … classic activity.

  He was pushing fifty-one, and I mean pushing. Game as any dozen itchy roosters. And me? Skin-and-bones pitiful—no bigger than a dime. What-all he wanted to get me doing, honey, it was just this side of surgery. (You know when I said how, in battle, if lead was hard to get at, docs just took the whole leg off? Well, was something like that, only in reverse, like going in and using the whole blunt leg instead of tweezers.) Somebody had saved his leg, so why could this fellow not, in turn, save me?

  His hairy shoulders, crops of bristles sprouting on his back—my thin white ankles bent way up against them massy shoulders. Oh dear me. Oh dear dear dear me oh my. Cannot imagine, you cannot. Of course you can, but even so. Man had to mash a feather pillow in my mouth, see, I was screaming, not as a polite sign he should ease off, no, screaming to bring outside help in through yonder bolted door. Men’s pictures are up post of
fices for slimmer offenses than he tried on me that night. The hotel manager would not have cared to hear what noise I had banked up in me by morning. You think that when Cap got done with it onct, he stopped? No way. Seemed he hoped to prove what a live wire he still was, whatever his age. He offered steady proof of what I might expect for good, for life. At fifty, he could’ve given goat-glands lessons. Was his first honeymoon, and it was mine. Only, he’d been practicing up since 1860. Me, I was innocent as mutton.

  How old are you again, how much time we got left? I know I asked before—but, on both counts, it’s forever changing.

  RIGHT after, he dropped off to sleep and still on top of me. Talk about a heavy sleeper. I thought he’d died on me. I felt myself to be a small brown hearthside throw rug caught under the hugest possible loudest-patterned hotel-lobby carpet—Rhode Island trapped underneath and way out in the middle of all gaudy Texas.

  I lay looking up past one shoulder’s fuzz. Hotel ceiling had plaster baby angels mashed across it. Like a pie meringue of wings, curls, chubby elbows. I pitied those angels—bare to strangers’ eyes night after night. I felt for everybody. I thought, Well, this is married life so called. I remembered my mother, awake in our house and missing me, having to make do with Poppa’s stunts and fond teasing. I really could’ve wept for her. Chances were, she’d been through this mess too.—Jokers, mates were all jokers underneath, just waiting to try stuff, sick!

  I heard horses knocking in their stable out back. On the hotel’s first-floor veranda, tipsy salesmen bragged about their wares. A man and a woman one room away kept speaking in low tones—real angry but locked forever at this extra-reasonable level, sounding the fiercer for that. Maybe a brother and sister? No, married probably. I heard him snarl, “I’ll never get over it this time … never.” You could tell that they just loved to fight, how it was mostly what they had. I listened only because: no choice. My right arm had gone pins and needles from the pure weight of Captain. My chest was getting rheumy. But from the waist down, I burned so. Thigh muscles popped and spasmed like frog legs come alive in their final frying-pan jig.