Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (97 page)

Well, the gal soon dodged forth, looking flustered, one palm pressing her cheek. “Why, you naughty old trooper,” she rolled her eyes. “He didn’t tell me
where
that particular scar was.” Others shrieked, basically pleased. Maybe they thought Captain was one of them codgers too old to do more than pinch, one with all his starch long since shot? Child, I knew better. He moped out then, looking shy but pleased with hisself—bobby pins biting his chin, ears bulking out stiff in sun—reminding me of his Lady mother’s ears after Sherm burned the perm clear off her, poor thing.

He stands there, playing with his fingertips like Ollie Hardy. The manicurist goes, “It’s all right. You’re probably keeping in practice for hand-to-hand combat.” A group giggle. I seen fit to clear my throat then. This’d gone about far enough. A few heads turned my way.

I ventured—loud—a ditty Momma’d taught me, “Fools’ names and fools’ faces always appear in public places.”

Captain blinked, he calls, “Oh, let me have a little
fun
, you stick!” And then he bellows this—which changes things—
“You
know I love you.”

Said it right in front of everybody. Almost made me drop a gravy boat. One thing about Captain Marsden—just about the time you’d give up on him, he’d sense it and he’d reel you in three inches closer, keep you dragging in his wake. He was a killer, that one. I hated how he knew I loved him. He used it.

One gloating old man resettled in his white bib. Here at my sink, wet fists on hips, I tried and gauge my feelings. I ofttimes do, sug. What
else
have I got? To be honest: The strange part was a steady kind of pride. All these foolish younger women drawn to my old vinegar puss like bees unto a honeypot. Why? His history? His charm? Some virile pull they felt under his joshing? They made a pretty picture, pastels clashing yonder in the sun. He croaked some choruses of “A Old Reb” and, around me, on the floor my youngsters took it up while coloring, hardly noticing that they sang.

Ned rested by my feet on a spot already worn bald on lino tile, then worn into the lino scrap put over
that
. (A kind of clock, the damage use leaves.) Ned was supervising our rude twins. I’d bought kids a big coloring book at the Woolworth’s, told them they could each do just one page per day. That way I found they took more care. “Momma? Are all skies blue? Aren’t some black? Night ones are.”

“Skies are every color that there is. What tones are certain sunset ones? Each child name three, please.” And as I hear a list of tints, I tell myself: If that young woman takes a certain man’s shoes off and starts filing them hoary toenails, I am
out
the front door, gone. Then I feel Ned’s finger moving up my ankles, swollen from bearing this many in quick order. His fingertips make clarinet stops along my shin. I peek down at Ned’s eyes, staring up, gray eyes—part spaniel’s, half angel’s. Maybe too local to be perfect, but almost as fine that anybody’s eyes
can
be in a town of just eleven hundred mortal souls.

Now Ned tells twins, his crayon tracing jagged blue marks across my leg, “Look ya’ll, poor Momma’s got very-close veins.” I laugh. What else can you do?

I soon listen to a singer out yonder yowling in his bib, doing another verse of “A Old Rebel” by Mr. Innes Randolph. Was Cap’s favorite song along with “Who’s Sorry Now?” later. He is musically joined by children coloring around my flawed legs.

Kids sing like it’s some antique hymn. They hardly notice words learned before words meant a thing. A man and his babies croon:

I was standing at my sink then, suddenly shaky. Ladies discipled around Cap, laughed at bitter-funny words, ignoring the harsh voice of my “lip singer.” I suddenly heard how deep he’d already sent his song into our children, down down their very gullets to a fishhook’s depth.

“Too late,” I thought. “Will it ever end?” Can a body ever counter-pain it drowsy, then Appomattox it forever asleep? He’d walked the whole way home from war. When oh when would he finally get here?

BORN
pretty rich, a only child, how come I’m in this ward for the openly broke? Well, start with the dowry. Twenty years after I married, I was flipping through my husband’s boyhood war letters, needing again to feel for him
then
so I could stomach him now. Out falls a note in my poppa’s crabbed script, it stated the amount: fifteen thousand dollars. First I set there feeling wonderful, finding I’d been considered that worthwhile. Then, slower, cheated. For one thing, I never
knew
a cent had changed hands … over me, over my head, like. I asked my darling Professor Taw how much fifteen grand in 1900 would amount to now. He judged: a quarter to a half a million. Imagine it. Me?

When Poppa died and his will was read and Momma had been dead four years already, Pop’s Alma Mater got the bulk of everything, including proceeds from the house’s sale. Twenty-odd years later, my girl Louisa, scientifically minded, she visited Harvard to see the lab Poppa donated and named for his own kin. Lou told me that, by then, the school had changed a lot, but she finally discovered one bronze plaque near a door in the building where they store glass flowers. The marker read: “Given to celebrate the memory of Pearlie Gupton Honicutt and R. R. ‘Rusty’ Honicutt.” His farm-language parents. Louisa found a janitor, who opened the locked door. The room had once been full of Bunsen burners and student curiosity. Now it was a real large and, she said, real nice storage closet. So much for my fortune, child.

I spent my life taking care of folks. Somebody had to, and I learned a lot. Now, of course, I wonder what else I could’ve done, without the others, solvent and alone. College material myself, secretly. Oh well. Lee’s favorite word was “Duty.”

The odd part stays: happiness. How stubborn it is, whatever bracket you land in. When I think over the list of my losses and time’s take-backs, the household accidents, small everyday betrayals, the way your genius kids turn out to be just regular, if nice. Times, happiness surprises me. It keeps you as its hobby, Lord be praised. For some of us lucky ones, child, happiness stays our daily habit like any other. Happiness: that beautiful duty.

TOWNSFOLK
had long since titled him “a character.” Seems like characters can get away with lots, including murder. I was not held to be no official character myself, just the wife of one. Which don’t quite count. Nobody marveled anymore at my young age compared to his. Nine children later, the old man, he’d kept very still, looks-wise. And why shouldn’t he?
His
part in our babies’ arrival took just a few forward-bobbing seconds, a rocking chair with Johnny-jump-up heaves, one hiccup, muskets away, the itch soon gone.

But, for me, each child meant spending nine months growing stationary as Mrs. Couch. Cap’s face was making only local stops. Honey, mine was the downhill Express, mine was the Speed Queen.

We had fun, though. I ain’t saying that. One night when he was off seeing Sal Smith’s twin sons—both fathers now (Sal had died at age eighty-one, rich)—I went upstairs to check on my own sleeping kids. They all jumped out from nowhere, like to scared me witless. In comes Baby with a day-old cake from Harbison’s bakery (that Castalia patronizes so). Candles on it, my birthday. They’d all made hats. And no hat was a soldier hat, which pleased me. I sat at the end of Louisa’s bed—I accepted the usual hairnets. (I never ever wore one but my children ignored this since these were the cheapest thing at Woolworth’s in the zone marked
LADIES
. When I sold the house, I found one whole kitchen drawer was most full of them still in their packs. That was the worst thing that whole day. No, the worst was: The painters for the purchasers, a nice young couple working from the radio station, the painters painted over my children’s growth chart under where the old Seth Thomas hung. Our “ups,” Baby called that. “Mark my up,” she’d say.)

But to get a cake I didn’t bake, store-bought
new
candles, all one color, not just gathered from the pantry piecemeal! I loved kids for remembering when I had clean forgot. I wondered why my husband stayed away from me so much. Was I harsh? Go on, tell me.

CAP
had been investing money, his and mine (the secret dowry, I mean). He’d picked a company that did long-shot oil-field schemes in the Louisiana bayou country. “How’s that sound?” he asked me onct. “Fishy,” says I.

I kept wishing a gypsy fortune-teller would come to town. I kept hoping I’d finally get invited to do something responsible and smart-requiring, like teach Sunday school. I
wanted
to. People like me never got asked. Maybe others thought I was too busy with all my kids? Apart from Castalia, I had no real women friends to talk with. Her being black made her seem a
shadow
friend in others’ eyes. Made her mean more to me, considered off on the side but really ever in the foreground. With her, I didn’t need to apologize for nothing I did—or, worse, that
he
did. Hadn’t she known my old man inside out forever? She was old as him if way younger-looking. By now, what might still surprise Castalia, African princess come down in life? We still had our arguments. She was still a very touchy person, easily insulted.

Pride maybe kept me away from neighborhood white ladies. Pride’s always there to take its cut right off the top of everything. It’s been my failing till right here recent. No, still is. Pridefulness can keep a person sort of alone—though I ofttimes have a crowd here near my bed. I see to that and am proud of it.

Understand me: I’m sneaking up on the subject, a topic not unlike, well, wife beating. Now, here at Lanes’ End, we sometimes watch a TV talk show and they have the beaten woman sitting in shadows saying stuff like “He
only hits me when he’s drunk. He’s bad for me but I love him. What can I
do?”
Burns you up.
You
want to shake her and say, “Leave, fool.” But me, I said those selfsame unproud things. Pride made me tell them to myself alone, and to Castalia, who knew anyway.

He only struck me on a few weekends, only when tanked up for some big anniversary. Not ours, of course, but war ones. Might could be the day that Prothero got killed by cannon fire, or the day Cap plugged the young watch donor from up Massachusetts way. I’d be sitting there, darning the twins’ socks. He’d veer in smelling of Irish cheer but looking like Potato Famine. I’d announce that he’d forgot to sign the kids’ report cards—on the kitchen table for him—and that I needed school milk money by Monday, and I just sat nattering my usual blah-blah lists and lore, not a witty ambassador’s party quips, but important to the principals
involved
, you’d think. He’d pass my couch and something snagged me side the head, and there was, with us in the room, a sound. It was hand bone meeting cheekbone. It hung there. It seemed exactly the size of a piece of toast.

Then regret struck
him
and he’d be rushing for ice, saying, “It’s not bad. Here,” and me feeling scareder of his help than usual hindrance. “Today’s our anniversary, his and mine, it’s Simon’s dying date, Lucille. That’s why.” I told him, every day meant another grisly holiday to him, another excuse for doing further dirt. Appomattox, Indian name, had occurred fifty-odd years back. He’d
been
there, remember? I wanted to be treaty right. It happened just twelve times, sixteen, tops. For a real short while. Otherwise I would of been out of there. Look, ain’t I just told you? I got my pride.

It happened seventy-something years ago.

Even to tell you it now, I’m so ashamed, honey.

CAS
huffed up our porch steps and, seeing my lip, touched it without ceremony, lifted a corner of my mouth. “Cut the lip against you front teeth, look like,” she stated. Mouth swollen, I said, “Tut ze wip ginst fwunt teef.” We laughed. The laugh you’d only share with a veteran loved one, another veteran of the veteran. What
hadn’t
happened to us both already? Her clear from Africa and me starting more local.

She settled for coffee, she pointed out: Only since Winona Smythe left town had Cap got so heavy-handed. Since he owned Winona’s house, still had the key, the man yet spent Thursday afternoons there in the empty place. Winona’s boy and now her: Seemed most of Cap’s more important pals were the Missing in Action. Times, it seemed he planned making one of me. Cap let Winona’s yard run back to weeds then shrubs, jungle regained its foothold, some twisted tribute to the absent Widow Smythe’s weird ways.

Cassie, yet winded from climbing front stairs, promised she had some decent gossip for me. Then sat there gasping. I told her (ice on my lip): If you die before you spill them beans, I’ll never speak to you again.

Word was that our own Mrs. Winona Smythe had run off with a Italian
man—all round arms, sharp sideburns—some fellow sent here to re-tip the War Dead monument blown over in a storm. Rumors swore he’d taken the hefty woman and her every canary bird to the Pettibone Academy pour les Arts Equestriennes. Cas claimed that Mrs. Smythe had slowly rose up through its management ranks, from being bookkeeper to reigning full Madam. Winona’d put her missing years to good use.

All this would’ve been common knowledge if the Riding School, two miles east of Rocky Mount, had been even slightly on the level. It won’t. Child, it was a house of ill fame. Imported fallen Yankee girls played like students. I sat openmouthed (which hurt the lip) as Cas explained how certain local bankers and bigwigs faked being interested members of the school’s board. And why? So men could pay frequent quality-control visits to check up on a certain new girl’s riding progress, her posting. They soon took little Agatha’s five-gaited saddle education in hand. All I knew about the school was: A lady from our church whose daughter really
did
ride, horses, she went out there to check on tuition, they told it was ten thousand dollars a year for “townies.” No local gent guessed as how some women in Falls—black ones especially—knew exactly what went on out there. Castalia, who knew everything about everything, mapped out the full setup for me. Named names. (She knew everything about everything except how to save herself—our usual blind spot.)