Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (10 page)

I imagine the voice of the man I lived with all those years, honey. It drones like a ghost reading some account of its own onetime local life. By the time I knew him, the tone of voice was darker, harsher, rustier. But it’d stayed this same basic sound—low, slow, rich, a brownish river. Speech itself might later have gone fancier, in keeping with his fine family’s claims. Three years talking in tents and ditches had erased fineness from a boy that young. But, especially at night, even in old age, his tone could sound—at its center—just as stunned and simple as the kid Winona cornered when he was civilian and fifteen. I imagine the untidy Smythe house going dim with afternoon, rubberneckers still pretending to promenade to and fro on the sidewalk out front, birds cheeping, Willie’s labored breathing trying to get up the gumption needed, breath’s cashing in its chips for simple animal sounds that could then be sent toward civilized human speech … “Well, ma’am, to start out with, you know, Sumter, well.” He told War her way, tried. Inches at a go.

Across the dark room from him, Winona (a woman of steely wasted spirit, a person secretly starved for company, the secret kept even from herself), Winona listens, canted forward on the lime-crusted black couch, her face so still, her face a needy bottom-heavy blank.

SO
, when she’d broke him in some, broke him some, once she’d moved beyond his boy’s brittle pride, she started pulling more of it out—in pieces,
the way a dentist goes in after a broken tooth that’s got got got to come out, and quick. Slow learner, Willie—the okay businessman, the starting-to-be-adult, a son who acted kind to his own hurt mother—he’d begun, Thursday to Thursday, learning to tell things. Describing first days of recruitment, he’d find one detail in the mentioned mud and he’d set it aside for refinding his next time through. He gathered these choice facts the way he’d hoarded rock crystal off roadsides he marched along with Ned.

I sometimes wonder what might’ve come of him if Winona hadn’t made him. If allowed to keep stone-silent about his war.

Not sure.

One thing’s certain, I never would’ve noticed him. He might’ve become one of those returned Rebels—like the ones from this more recent war they lost in Asia (it mostly happens to survivors of the
losing
side)—ones who come unsnapped so suddenly, with a violent caving-in. A loud sound sets them off. Two days back, while waiting for this Home’s favorite soap show, we heard the TV news about this boy over in Greensboro, handsome fellow (they showed a yearbook picture) from a nice family, but who never held a job after the Army, never quite “over” being in it years back. He never quite got home from Asia—lost hisself somewhere in transit between Hawaii and the California coast, in salt air over nobody’s water. Regrets for what they made him do. Do your duty and he did, poor thing. Boy walked into his poppa’s insurance office and opened fire with two hunting guns, got the secretary and a meter man and his own poppa before he shot hisself. “Nice boy but a loner,” neighbors said after. “Eagle Scout but kind of kept to hisself,” they said. “Tried to fit in but couldn’t really. Well known around here but, now you think of it, had no real friends. Odd but neat.” Hundred years earlier, could’ve been William More Marsden, could’ve been if Winona hadn’t given him this way out, a steam-pressure release valve that let the sense and poison free.

Later, this hard-won gift for telling gave the man a way to come near other people. Nobody could believe a gift of gab suddenly spouting out of old rock face. But first tales only started giving Willie joy after he’d been through the whole war onct, and when he started going back, bumping into things he’d skipped during the first muddy trudge, finding mineral clues he’d left here and there—like Hansel and Gretel’s dropped bread. He told … was just one of the things we later had in common. Back in our happier days, neighbors would pop in, hoping to find my husband and me jawing, swapping tales, his trading tall ones and mine, medium high.

Nice to be considered entertaining. Nice to be funny when you know that the world’s so rough.

Some tell me I am a funny woman. Ha ha funny. Ha ha peculiar.

Ha ha.

THAT FIRST
year of talk, if, in telling the widow his early battle tales, boy Willie should lose his way, Winona might rise off the couch, come over,
matter-of-fact, crack him onct across the face. If that didn’t start the story up again, leading with her knuckle and the wedding ring, several times, she lightly lovingly blacked one of his gray eyes. Winona didn’t show no pleasure doing this—went at it like you lash your mule who’s stopped midroad. But, look, she got him through the war. She even pulled Antietam out of him, whole and steaming, glad for air.

By his third time through, Will started seeing how the entire thing might be someday rendered into hoistable blocks, the way you break a permanent-seeming camp for fast traveling. One turned out as “The Man Who Loved His Wife Too Much.” Another: “Simon’s Immortal Pocket Watch.” “Children During War.” “Death of A Harpsichord.” “The Tailor and the Leg.” Bilge and mud started showing shiny forms hid down underneath … Looked to be nothing more than a bubble on some pool of mud but when you reached down for it, the shape lifted, came up whole and solid and right delicate—blown Venice glass had been hid there, waiting among blood flecks, swampy puddles, broken reeds, and heat-warped cannonballs.

Only later would Winona ask him to come sleep alongside her in the small tent.

HERE
at Lanes’ End, Jerome, our favorite orderly ever, black
or
white, picks up spare change doing commissioned Ex-Lax cab trips to the Rexall at Browse ‘n’ Buy Mall. He buys so much laxative on consignment, the clerks make rude jokes. Even the local-born black clerks do: “This man don’t need another gross of Ex-Lax, he need a easy-to-take tablet form of atomic meltdown.” One thing about jokes, child: There’s only about seven of them, but they always seem to apply to most situations because—fact is—there’s only really about seven of
them
.

Now I ain’t criticizing Jerome, who’s practically like my own grandson, understand—but he
is
a paid Home employee. You ofttimes find him missing from duty, shut in some room setting a wealthier lady’s hair. (Plus dyeing several of the men’s, truth be told. They pay him as much to keep quiet as they do for the rinse job—and Jerome, trustworthy, lets it get no further. Than me. Don’t beg me for their names, please, sugar. My lips are sealed. Just use your eyeballs. One fellow, three doors down—on the left—he’s as orange as I-Love-Lucy’s.)

Jerome is saving up for his theater-seeing trip to London, England, next year or the one after. Him and Leonardo, his roommate, are going. Jerome’s been salting cash away for it since he turned sixteen, quit high school, and found this jack-of-all-trades job. Born dirt-poor, the gentleman is touched by the wand of ambition and talent. It ain’t no respecter of neighborhoods, child. Genius is a Democrat.—Our Jerome has Ideas. These are the people I like being near: the ones most
wanting
something.

Jerome is proudest of two virtues: his speaking voice, which is like black satin sheets that you worry will feel icky but onct you’re under couldn’t a crowbar get you out again. And his hands. “Zee golden digits,” he says, imitating a German accent copied off some war-movie late show as he kisses his own knuckles. Have you ever seen so many gold signet rings on such dark perfect hands?

For a fee (750¢–$4.50 depending on how deep into it you really want him to go) Jerome will offer his so-called Swede massage. Some folks in here just about live for Jerome’s weekly rub. Personally, makes me nervous to guess what a body (behind closed doors) gets for the full $4.50 (prior to tips). All I know is what I see and some of that, I tell. I
will
mention the scent of liniment and wintergreen alcohol trailing certain people’s wheelchairs for days—plus crooked smiles that can last up to a week. Women
and
men! I won’t say no more.

He did do my neck onct—a free sample. Had me yelling most unladylike. I give off more snap, crackle, and pops than the Kellogg’s Tap Dance Academy. By the end I couldn’t budge, just lay here groaning. Afterwards, I didn’t know should I feel proud or guilty. Minnie Lytton admits that Jerome gets right up onto the bed with her “for better leverage.”

“‘Onto’ or ‘into’?” asks our former physics professor, ever precise.

“You’re the scientist.” Min winks. “What have I got to do for you, a diagram?”

Jerome titles them Swede massages, I reckon he read that in some paperback. If our orderly, born in Falls’ own Baby Africa, is a Swede—then I am Haile Selassie, Lion of Ethiopia, but let that go.

And finally, always looking out for geriatric cash, Jerome gives speech therapy for your stroke victims, those who can still explain about their having a little pin money to spare. The famous Talking Lessons were invented by Jerome after his auditing every drama course at Nash Tech. I hear he is their all-time Night School Star. If he signs up for a course, others flock to be in it. Jerome can do whole Shakespeare speeches like a perfect Englishman. (He memorizes off of gramophone records from the Public Library. Has hopes of getting known for it in New York.) Some folks along this hall doubt just how famous he’s ever going to be beyond this hall. But his diction is a dream and his hands remain, for some, the one reason to go on.

Finally, about his speech lessons, I’ll just say: Didn’t Jerome get the Williston twins back to where they’re able to do the Pledge of Allegiance straight through without stopping? The Williston girls were a year behind me at Falls Lower Normal. Here recent, both had strokes in the same week, both lost partial speech, seemed the same partial parts faltered in each. Nobody could believe things worked out so tidy—but, look, them girls’ve been dressing alike since 18 and something, eating the same foods, and sleeping in one bed (they still do, though the nurses don’t like it one little
bit, I hear). I reckon it follows that Williston illnesses would come on in a matched set too.

Well, them sisters now do that Pledge like nobody’s business. Sad part, that’s mostly
all
they do. They just shush other people (“outsiders” they call everybody but their own two selves) and they practice their Pledge. I mean they do it constant. A retired missionary in here, she scolded Jerome for not making it the Lord’s Prayer. She said, “The twins might as well be building up some credits if they’re going to parrot one thing all day. I’m patriotic as the next person but, Jerome (here, take this free tract, illustrated), there’s higher things.”

“Lord’s Prayer’s too long. I done clocked it,” goes he in his toniest English accent, hand on a hip. “We speech pathologists choose shorter items so’s our stroke victims can get they chops around stuff sooner. They loves the joy of quick accomplish-ment, for you information, Miss Know-It-All!”

Jerome criticized is a Jerome real high and mighty for about ten minutes. When you’re self-made, you take blame harder. I know. Luckily, like me, he forgets insults fast enough. (We all need a short memory for some stuff, honey.)

Afterwards, Mrs. Missionary and myself counted on our fingers. He was right. Lord’s Prayer’s got fifteen lines not including Amen. We understood that, for the twins, fifteen—even Amen-less—would be overreaching. Anyhow them Willistons were clam-happy come July Fourth and Flag Day. See, our Home director let them lead.

OH
, we’ve had some good times here. Strange, you can be right in the middle of one of history’s golden ages and never even know. I mean, consider, darling: This we’re
in
might be one. Well, it could.

DEACON-SOBER
, home for some time now, the boy still hadn’t told anybody but Winona a single fact about his doings ’62-’65. If a good-natured stockyard employee pumped Marsden for news of his battle record, Cap might snatch his hat off the bentwood hat tree, he’d barge from the office, take long walks. Even during business hours, he headed towards woods where Ned and him had made the clever camps. Went on foot, Marsden, that owned so many horses.

Forced to mutter business lingo, you heard how his boy’s voice had fallen two full octaves. His baritone didn’t sound God-given but earned the way some smoker’s voice gets baked far huskier. Only, Marsden’s smoke was not your usual Turkish blend but such fumes as a horse artillery must breathe.

•   •   •

(
AND ME
? I’m off doing my duty—getting myself born to odd yet decent people. It is up near 18 and 85. I can’t wait till I am officially
in
this. Odd—even having gone this old—I can’t imagine ever being
out
of it. Anyhow, owing to my birth, here comes a clear little sideways brook, feeding—cold and fresh—into the warm muddied river of Captain’s widening life.)

AND IT
was one noon—whilst he headed from a profitable shoat auction towards the People’s and Farmers’ National Bank—Cap stopped to tie his shoe. The man of few words paused in earshot of battle chatter. Sole propped against a pyramid of welded cannonballs, he must have heard the tail end to one warrior’s flashy tale. Cap—twenty some years older than the war now, solid in the flesh and more mentally ripe—he maybe found them few words stronger than expected. You see, he stayed a while. He tied the other shoe’s laces, untied it, double-knotted it anew.

Next day, the One Who Never Told was back for lunch hour, dawdling like somebody taking a survey of park benches. He settled nearby, listening in that solemn way he did everything, eating a brown-bag lunch Castalia had packed—but chewing slow—like he hoped to surprise the sandwich. He sat still, then remembered to take a few goodly chaws.

Men’s stories commenced to working in him—you could tell. Some nail file that jiggles in a piggy bank’s thin slot till—whammo—out showers this long-postponed silver jackpot. Every talker in that Courthouse Square exaggerated certain facts. That was how you put your mark on a tale—what you chose to taffy-pull, fluff up, squash down. Still, each vet understood how holy a true story is. Even the men that played most fast and loose, they respected a real one. Especially them. A liar’s goal is to make up one that’s half as good as Real Life’s usual unusual. Ain’t a secret, child: storytelling is one kind of revenge. Maybe losers get better at it than the winning side. Honey, us losers have to be.