Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (121 page)

I excused myself and stepped in to try and sweep up glass in his ruint trophy room. It always soothed me, cleaning at times like this. Typical, my trying to go undo my nervy earlier damage. Here I’d just been staring at Castalia’s breasts, and now I was off trying and impress the world with my housework skills! I bent to scoop a pound of slivers, felt something sway in my apron pocket. “Oh,” I said, “this little thing.” I studied the last weapon left in the house besides my Sabatier butcher knives. Then, cheerful-like, I set to work, opening all drawers under his show racks. Three were rattly full of bullets—boxes colorful and pretty like they held good stationery or even candy. I squatted, pilfering ammo cartons, doing so with a great yawning patience, almost good humor—seeking the perfect tear-shaped bullets for this silver pistol, pearl-handled; It seemed plain for one of Captain’s fancy guns. I wondered if it might really work. Round and blunt, pointed/sharp, I tried many types till four fit snug in “the chamber.” I think it’s called chamber. Then I snapped shut and repocketed the thing, I glided off to be the kind of perfect hostess my momma, Bianca, always hoped for.

Momma was there by then. Somebody’d gone for her. Somebody handed me a empty casserole dish with this note taped in the bottom: “Good for one rinse and set whenever you’re ready. Lolly. Your Inner Glow will get you through this mess, you see if it doesn’t.”

•   •   •

TWO A.M
. and twelve casseroles (six topped with potato-chip crusts) later, we hear sirens enter Falls. The Lieutenant Governor’s motorcade roars up before our home, waking kids all over town, especially our own that I’d tried singing and lulling off to sleep. Children had prayed. This time Ned got mentioned first. Cassie’s in the kitchen in her mink, writing down which dish goes back to which house, tasting a corner of each casserole and the two unexceptional peach cobblers. Mother circulates, chin up, in dark blue. My poppa murmurs on the porch. Ruth drifts into groups, says things like “Can you even
believe
this, the poor things?” I go wait in the center of our foyer. One hand slips into my apron pocket.—Now, child, I see I was completely in another world. But who could point this out and stop me? I myself could not.

The children are all out of bed, footed pj’s dangling through the banisters above and behind me, kids also facing the front door. Men gathered on the porch to smoke now greet somebody. I hear them offer the person condolences. Some neighbor says plain, “Here … these yours, I believe.” Then I understand my husband’s buddies, the Elks and Moose and Redmen, they’ve collected Captain’s scattered valuables. Men are handing back his precious guns, doing so before he even steps in here and sees us, sees me—before he explains. “A smart young nigger got your Aaron Burr dueling ones, boy ran fast but not quite fast enough, hunh, Charlie? There
they
are.”

Front door flies open. Every soul in this house jumps. Behind me I feel children draw against each other, like bracing. Even Castalia behind me and watching from the kitchen, even Castalia flinches. Takes some doing.
That
scares me, her cringe.

I’m feeling glad I just took the bandage off my paw. He’s always telling me I’m accident prone. Me! I look right good, I straighten my shoulders, and in he comes. For onct, I’m ready. I live here.

What a tall and handsome heavy, heavy handsome tall man now barges in like owning the place, mammoth in his khaki, plaids, and brown. He’s wearing rubber waders, hip-high, frog-green. He seems broken-winded like he’s run a ways. I see he has been drinking. Who can blame him? I must, as ever, look up to him and something in his eyes turns me ways I’ve not planned going, honey. He is weeping, in public, tears move direct into his white beard. “Lucy,” he says. “Forgive me.” And so much that’s gone between us all these years is like some web gauzed from my sternum to his, my skull’s front side lacing to his own. I feel I’m sinking. Can I forgive myself forgiveness one more time, with all these people watching?

Then, he sets something down, it’s a sack, he settles it beside the door a burlap tow sack stuffed with returned guns. Points and muzzles jab out. He has a white beard and his sack it’s stuffed, some Santa’s satchel, but corrupted—infection slung indoors for Christmas. I picture my Archie’s pink gums bared, Must This Happen?

Above the white beard, one grown man’s face has aged five years. I see
that and I feel for it and him. I do. His eyes look wild with a grief older than our hurt son. This haywire aspect touches me. It is mine. Nobody understands us, two sadsacks in love despite it all. I cannot help taking a step toward him. It would be right to hug him now, to know he’s helpless in all this as I feel standing here with a mob watching. I do that. I think it might feel fake but it’s sure worth trying. I want to be generous, or at least
considered
generous. Two steps nearer, I see he’s holding something behind him, could be flowers, for me. One second, I think he’s got a little child back there, alive or dead? I’ve started towards him. I’ll step on, I have to.

My head comes chest-high on him, nipple-high. Men have nipples, too. In my apron, I release the little gun, hand-warm. Then he reaches behind him and right up in my face he jerks these shapes, dangle dangle.

First I cannot see nothing but fluff. He seems to feel this is some justifying tribute, a apology. Man shoves six dead canvasback ducks toward my confused face. Neck-broke floppy, some still trail sad skummy reeds, and when I see one’s this-side eye and its gummy glazed hole, I am gone then.

“Tact,” I say. “You’re all tact, sir.
Now
I remember who you are.”

Nearby folks have gasped at what he’s done. We stand here with these strangers peering from four doorways opening on this hall. He has not hugged me. Our kids in the gallery behind and around me are waiting. My hand again finds metal. My hand is glad the metal’s still hand-warm, hello.

“Lucy,” the vet says, hiding ducks he sees I haven’t liked. “It’s nobody fault, Lucy. The safety came off.”

I’m thinking of our children all behind me. I want them to remember me as being a good person at this moment. I want to do right here and act openhanded as Castalia, not like him, scorekeeping. But I see that ducks are dripping on our pale hall floor, pink droplets coming down.

“Your idea of a present? Dead things I should clean till they’re of use?”

“The safety came off,” he says. “Could’ve happened to anyone. Ned’s really okay, considering.”

“Don’t you even speak his name to me.”

I pull it into light then. I point a weapon at him, cool, I feel so clear it scares me. I know exactly how this veteran will look, on falling backward.

I hear my children rustle up behind me, a menace of whispering lifts from all rooms. Just that second comes a tap on the door and some old bachelor from down the street, in his bathrobe, holding three rifles, plainly scared of Captain for a long time and eager to endear hisself, sees fit to barge in smiling long enough to say, “I believe you’ll be wanting these,” sees my gun aimed right his way, grins, “
’Scuse
me, folks,” closes the door. Men! a club, a army.

My wrist goes out at purest right angle. I mostly focus on the area between his eyes. My hand is shaking none at all. This nearbout worries me. “Children?” I say back of me. “Go to bed.
Now.”
They do not. I feel I’ve got to say, to him, “This is a real pistol and I loaded it.”

“Seems highly possible,” his voice comes deep and rich and capable. “You’ve had any number of weapons in circulation all day long, it appears. Lucy, give me that. I cannot believe you’re doing this to yourself in front of everybody.—Forgive her, she has no idea … she’s grieving … she has not a clue what this means, doing such a thing in front of people. Lucille … look at you.”

“How could you leave him alone? He’s never been away from home one night except at Billy Preston’s.”

“Oh, he’s in good hands, the nurses were making much over him. I wanted to come fetch
you
back there, is all. Seems more your line.”

“Taking care of them is more my line? Cleaning up after you, plucking your dead things?”

“There are flash burns but
one
might well be saved.—You think I haven’t suffered over this, Lucille?”

Castalia stands beside me. She has her hand out, palm up. The palm is copperish yet ivory and quite beautiful.

“Sir, if you’d really suffered,” I ignore her, “you wouldn’t keep doling it out. The ‘safety’ came off the minute you were born. You stole my boy off from here and me. You’re misery, you know that? You’re misery and need ending for your sake and all us others. You should thank me for letting you rest finally. Here’s Appomattox at last.”

The gun shoves forwards. Castalia gets between him and me, there’s a great deal of her between him and me. “Better ways,” she’s saying sad to me. “Folks here. Children watching. Come on, girl. I ain’t got you this far to see you do this mess.”

Hearing my kids mentioned, feeling very glad to look away from the somehow-father of them, I turn to see pajamas’ legs and feet, pink, blue, yellow, little white scuff-pad soles—very still now locked betwixt white railings. They could be on some Christmas card. I smile, even wave, I count them. But I find Ned is missing. Must still be at Billy’s. Then I remember. Then it seems I am the duck diving down to bite on something far beneath dim water, a bird who’s chose to spare herself through drowning. I am ending, having black and oily earmuffs put on, things like blinders grab my temples then claim my eyes so cold on either side. Cold on either side. I am falling backwards backwards into dark.

HONEY
, here’s my famous grandfolks McCloud Scottish shortbread recipe I been promising, the one that snagged me so many State Fair blue ribbons:

Take 2½ cups sifted flour, ¼ teaspoon salt, ½ cup confectioner’s sugar, one cup butter, some blanched almonds, candied cherries, or angelica or citron for on top and decorating as you like. Be “creative.”

Sift dry ingredients into a bowl. Child, you’ll want to work it with your
two hands till the mixture’s right smooth and then feels blended. My visit to the hospital I am avoiding telling. You halve your dough then roll each half into four, a unit, say, six inches round and maybe half a inch thick. I know I didn’t ride with Captain, I must’ve had somebody’s car follow him, and me along with them. To see your son the only child in a bed up there on the Men’s Ward. To see him bandaged but perking to the sound of your familiar footsteps on the tile. His neck drawn up long and pert and delicate, head twisting your direction, a wad of orderly gauze big like some baby bird’s goggle eyes not open yet. Aiming almost your way, both his arms are pumping up and down, held out to where he thinks you will soon stand. With tines of a fork, outline six wedges into each round pie shape made. Place on buttered cookie tin. I’d brought him a note written by his brothers and sisters, all of them got to say four lines apiece and I read these to him, but in their voices. Tried. Managed Louisa’s, then I Little Xerxesed our twins taking turns alternating lines—and our youngests, and finally lispish Baby, easiest of all to do. I am right good at this type thing when I put my mind to it, and—for him that day—I was inspired. I almost wanted to do
Ned
for Ned. Encouraging maybe. Reminding. He laughed, like I knew he would, wanting to prove to me he was the same as before, though he wasn’t and would not be, never. His father waited in the archway at a distance, watching, keeping aside, feeling he should, the man all politeness now. I’d brung our boy some shortbread still warm in its toweling and he was nibbling that (no appetite, I saw) and Ned was smiling and nodding his head like eager to prove that he was brave and all, trying to laugh while eating and for my sake. I had pushed too hard with comedy at first. You know me, child. I fall back on that, a habit really. You’re terrified underneath. It was the best I could do at the start of my first sight of damage done to him. Preheat oven at, say, 275 degrees. He was in the ward and concerned men around all watching. The mascot, they had made him. Through no fault of his own. Men saying nothing, sitting there with their own woes and bandages and fevers, but listening to the mother of their new human interest. No privacy but you couldn’t blame
them
for that. Anyway, when had I ever known privacy? I thought of Ned, the First Ned, pet to a whole division and dead so long. I sat on the bed of this hurt boy, wishing I’d not let his poppa name him for a child killed at this same age. It was a mistake, names are contagious, I knew that now.

Ned, my Ned, leaned back in his starched pillows and took the shortbread from his mouth and put it on the bedside table after feeling for the table’s edge, and said the bread was so good he would save it. He said I did the voices right. “Do the twins. You get the difference. That’s what’s good, you get the difference between them.” Put cookie tin in oven. Maybe I said that. Preheat. So I
did
the twins, but not as good as earlier. I can’t repeat on request, which means I ain’t a true performer. He smiled though, behind the huge head bandage (so white) and leaned back grinning, shaking his head sideways, pleased in a man-sized bed. He kept shaking his head side
to side too hard maybe. And I felt pleased—I’d cheered him with my baking and my silly stunts. Okay. It’d be fine soon. It was a good sign, basically, underneath all of it. Cassie had lost all her folks and only
this
had grabbed me. We were lucky. One infant and one accident. Many had it worse. We’d get by. Then I saw this mark on his neck, and when I drew near it, I understood, child, it was moving, it was dark, his laughing had sent forth this exploring into daylight out from under gauze. One small red line had spilled under bandage and was now easing out from where the eyes has been. After removing from slow oven, shift to wire rack, allow to cool at room temperature. Decorate tops with almonds, bits of cherry, or angelica or citron as desired. Be “creative,” let yourself go.

Then break apart. You will not be dissatisfied.

I NOW
planned running away. Get out. Had to. Of course I first took Ned to “see” these schools in a car with a hired driver … who helped to teach me driving as we went. A handy skill. I didn’t want Captain Marsden along, glad-handing headmasters, throwing his name and war record around to open doors for our son. Captain was now living at the New Ricks Hotel near the depot. I asked him not to show his face for a while and no hard feelings. I said I needed time off. He was nice about it. I mean
really
nice. That was what perpetually confused you.