Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (106 page)

When time came to do that mug shot, I bolted. I won’t sure what got into me, I just felt the camera would turn into a cannon. I run into the house and the prissy photographer was asking Cap to
force
me to come back. “Fat chance,” Cap said. I waited at the back screen door, yelling—temperamental around company—“No way. I know how I look.”

Cap was too joyful then to mind much. He’d got our babies out there, had nine souls with him, what was one less? I watched through my kitchen window. The cameraman told my brood to look stern, like folks had in old-timey duty portraits. It scared me, seeing my wee ones there in the sun, fine eyes all sunk in shadows: he
planned
that. Ruth had got on the phone and—through no merit of her personality or hairdo—drew a crowd to her porch. There they were, watching the big time descend on side-street us. Lolly—with a new “do” for the occasion and in a smart polka-dot number she rarely wore—her eyeing Ruth’s straw. There stood Luke Lucas in his apron, and all our neighbors. But what bothered me most was, on the back row, going up on the tiptoes of gold dance slippers, Castalia. She was welcome here any hour of the day or night. But it’s being National Attention must’ve drove her to the sidelines, shy of us. She’d dressed. Under her fur coat, clothes this colorful made a crowd in theirselves. The glitter of cut-glass doorknob earrings I hadn’t seen since my being lugged across the threshold of this very house, me a lightweight bride. She now looked heavier and therefore sadder, Cassie did. She ate starch for snacks. Maybe she’d dressed in hopes of being asked into our picture. Maybe she should take my
own
shy place? God knows Castalia Marsden belonged in any Marsden photo, but she stood off aside on the gallery of Ruth’s instead. I was out of
Liberty
and so was Cas.

My own darlings, shouldering weapons, set their faces like Captain’s. Most kids were holding muskets taller than they were. Louisa gripped both a flintlock and our youngest, Archie, six months, and him grinning to beat all—baring his gums in a way that always cracked up both drunks and matrons. The photographer kept saying, “This is a definite wrap. That baby redhead just won’t quit. Does he ever stop smiling?”

Baby, eager to be “discovered,” said, “Archie even smiles at the sun.”

“Archie? An infant Archie? My dear, we’re onto something here.” My husband, keeping kids cheered during slow exposures, eager to entertain Ruth’s porch crowd and the Press, asked kids to sing every word of “A Old Rebel.” (I’d forever crammed them with Mr. Stevenson’s
Child’s Garden of Verses
whilst Captain force-fed this 1868 ballad, favored in every roadhouse of the sore-loser South.) Beneath the picture, the magazine later printed all
the words. Most Yankees had never even heard the secret cankerous thing, Yanks seemed to find it right cute. They didn’t know enough to understand what fear they should’ve felt. At my sink, I burned with shame whilst Captain, using the butt end of a dueling pistol for the conductor’s stick, led my sweet-toned innocents in verses I still know all too clear.

And there in my back yard, all cables from cameras, light boosters shaped like silver umbrellas reminding me of my dead mother-in-law under black-held parasols, a show we made. Like good planning, just the sec my crowd stopped singing their cute horror, I heard the Falls High Marching Band come pounding down our street. “Oh no.” I hit my kitchen sink.

After the band drifted off and Cassie hurt my feelings going home without onct speaking to me, I ventured forth. Cap never looked happier. He pointed to the guns just held by children, rifles now tilted in a kind of tepee Ned was making. “This,” Cap said, signaling at them weapons, “is history.”

I lifted Baby Archie from Louisa’s arms. “Sir,” says I. “Sir? This is.”

T
HE CHILD
born after our return from war, the one who’d ridden me during that scene at the sycamore, he got named Archie. Cap picked it. Told me I could name our future girls, him all males. Each boy was dubbed for a buddy of Cap, some gents alive, some Missing in Action.

Can anybody six months old be said to have a sense of humor? Yeah, I know from Archie. Even his name was ridiculous and he seemed to half guess this. “Archie,” a good joke. He arrived redheaded like some firecracker party favor, something built to break you up on sight. Louisa, spying the fire-engine hair, blamed my gobbling crayons during Arch’s brewing. “He will probably never be beautiful, will he, Momma?” “No,” I answered, holding him up, “but look here,” and—glad to be in air—he bared them gums and grinned till his eyes hid in folds. We laughed: he knew he’d made us laugh, then joined. Character, it starts so early.

From his wicker carriage parked on our Courthouse Square, Archie would beam at anything. Sun, dust motes, street sounds—all these made his fists roll like some baby fighter who planned to
grin
the opposition to death. People that’d never been good with kids revised their opinion upwards. Archie’s pleasure had just warmed them from under a much-used carriage’s cowl. His eyes were sea green like that wild man Samuel Honicutt’s, my jollifying poppa. I managed to make Archie’s middle name Samuel and Daddy took a extra shine to the baby who looked weirdly like him. Poppa set up a bank account marked “Archie’s Harvard College Fund.” He claimed the pip, even prior to teeth, appeared college material. After Captain’s Money Crash, seemed my kids would need such schooling help.

When I nursed our Arch, he’d play tricks. He’d leave off suckling me. I’d look down and find his face aimed square at mine. He had only quit to
get my attention. His eyes mirrored a mischief I’d long recognized as Lucy’s own. It almost tired me, seeing such energy re-arrive this fresh, so ready to try again. Next time he stopped nursing just to get noticed, I told him I had eight
other
kids and—not mean but definite—I set Archie on the floor. He didn’t cry, he seemed to understand this had some rough justice. Later, when my carrottop’s mouth quit pulling on my Shredded Wheat of a championship dug, I found his eyes fixed on me. But right then, he latched quick back on to Momma’s taste treat. A game! His eyes danced—he’d got both my notice and my thin blue-white milk. Something in the timing of this showed a flair. I can’t explain it. Strange that wit can come forward a goodly distance before talking does. Seeing my boy’s pranks at my own bosom, I laughed once in our quiet house—Seth Thomas chopping up eternity into a temporary salad. I laughed so hard it pulled my nipple free. Arch just kept staring where it’d been, grinning at my breast. Biting air, a joke. I could feel his weight twitch then with hiccup giggles.

Must’ve been October when things shifted, October because we were again arranging who’d be a bum this Halloween (burnt cork for beard smudge), who’d go as ghosts (my ruined sheets worsened with eyeholes), who’d be something original (“Go and make it
yourself
, child. Branch out”). Baby was eager to try a angel again, which meant my making wings. I’d
told
her to save last year’s. I remember I was pinning buckram feathers to a coat-hanger shoulder rack—the kids were glad to be home from school because there’d been three cases of scarlet fever out in the county. Was a hot fall afternoon, wide open, one pumpkin per house.

I break from wing creating and, straight pins lined in my mouth, reach towards Archie’s bassinet for to test his diapers. Child seems asleep when I lift him, arms loose-jointed all akimbo. Then I touch his forehead and the child’s so hot I yank my hand away and suck the fingers. Next I’m yelling at Louisa, pulling a pink cotton blanket over my naked child—blaming myself for not touching him onct since putting him down to nap two hours back—“Mind the others. I’m at Doc Collier’s. Get word to your daddy if you can. Our Archie’s fair burning up.”

Baby stood at the oval pier glass (one inherited from her vainest granny, Lady More Marsden). She tugged at her own left wing and said in baby talk, “Arch have burn up.” It stopped my heart, something in her idly mouthing that.

I was at Collier’s—a six-minute walk—in under two minutes, without no memory of locomotion beyond speed’s whistling over earholes.

Three people set in the murksome waiting room reading the only two
National Geographics
that’d ever been there. All local mothers of three or more had memorized each issue. One such person belonged to the church committee that’d recently sacked me. Plus, Emily Saiterwaite was there looking peaked. It won’t like me to cut in line out of order. But these three knew me and I held up Archie, me smiling like a idiot, “Seems … serious, excuse me, not that you all ain’t … serious.”

Nurse Milgrom—old as God and a heap more efficient—half stood from behind her desk. She touched Archie then jumped like I’d done. “Ice, we’ll be needing ice, come right this way,” and led. Her voice sounded low like Castalia’s, a grateful kind of baritone that made its every swerve matter. Fast, Miss Milgrom was down that lino corridor, her uniform rustling ahead of me like white wings or wonderful stationery. Things will work out, the rustling told me. I studied the child here in my arms. All I could think was selfish thoughts:

How I’d had him in me while waiting under the Virginia sycamore—how the sadness I lived through whilst carrying the funny gum-baring child had nearly killed me during my gray and longest tiredness—but what pleasure his silly rust-red presence soon offered. I told myself, lips moving: “If You take this child, Lord, I’ll never …” But I knew that all I had on my side were small-time actorish threats against a God who owns the theater and writes all plays. I knew I didn’t even directly believe in Him but, look, I
would
, to save this child.

“Ice.” When it was ready, Nurse took my red sleepy baby. From me. Lowered him into a porcelain vat of water so cold it seemed blue. Archie’s green eyes bulged so open then. He looked up at me and knew me, and his silent question run: Must This Happen?

He seemed soothed by my being here. Slow, most sunk in ice, he bared his gums—from pain but like a practice, too. It was what’d have to pass for now for smiling. I moved my hand to touch him, but was scared to feel his face. It would be very hot or very cold and which was worse? Collier stood behind me. Archie had gone redder than any of my children ever sunburned at their worst. Overhead a ceiling fan chewed nothing. I heard people mumbling in the waiting room. Concerned, they sounded. Doc and Nurse Milgrom made this whirl of white around a whiter basin: one pink-orange-purplish shape was in it—but the head was out of water, gasping like some witty little put-upon starfish. And Archie knew me. That’s what really gave me hope, see?

“I’m right here,” I said up closer. They lifted him from wet and bound him in a towel and I heard his teeth chattering, though Archie had no teeth.

Doc walked me out. I said, “He knows me, you saw.” “Good thing, fine sign, but this might just be scarlet fever, Lucille. It’s around. Keep close, we’ll maybe have to quarantine your others, I’ll send word they must stay at home. You wait on our porch. Captain been sent for? Good. Look …” He pointed at my ankle. It was bleeding some. Taking shortcuts across strangers’ lawn, I’d snagged a croquet wicket and the corner of one low fence.

“‘S nothing. Tend
him,”
I pinched Doc’s sleeve. He nodded behind smudged spectacles and left me.

The three patients got grave, seeing me, eyes on my ankle. “Sorry to bust in and all,” I shrugged and flashed my gums, a good sport. “It’s just … it’s just my boy, he … and they …”

I hated that somebody from First Baptist saw me here like this. She’d later say it was all God’s Punishment. That’s the way those people’s minds work.

The street was not busy enough. I paid attention to six potted plants along the porch rail. Several needed water, a spiny mother-in-law’s tongue plant, huge it was. Two young dogs nosed each other’s opposite end. A group of boys saw one mount the other, boys tried to break it up. “Let them,” I cried from Doc’s porch. Beside myself, I was, without quite knowing. “Let em.” I then added, “Sorry,” but boys cackled, “Yeah, Roy,
let
them fuck. You heard the old lady.” I sat in the single rocker—eager to run home and calm my others but scared about leaving here. If the Health Department came up and quarantined them with me gone, it’d shake them something awful. They’d instantly believe the worst of Archie and I could not have that.

He had recognized me. Yeah, I told myself, nodding, rocking. Excellent sign, Doc said so, yeah. Forty minutes I was out there on hold. Everybody knows how elastic time is. Those forty minutes, as a example for you, if they’d been shifted into land, not time—would’ve meant most of Antarctica explored on a person’s hands and knees. I was out there feeling very cold. I did not look at my own hurt place. The
new
bargain was—if I lost the whole foot then Archie could live. I pictured my husband, a child, his leg spared thanks to pistols held by a good friend. How might you thank the person for that? What could I offer, who could I rob to save that funny yam in yonder?