Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (108 page)

Today, with Yanks bout to bust me out of housework’s jail, I done quit being overmodest. It tiring.

If folks stays as far off and alone as our tribe done, you ain’t got no earthly picture of how outsiders might could view you. For them, is you gods? is you all Reba catfish faces? what? The only tribes living roundabout us (ones sharing this holy river that brung us water, fish, and the steady trickling we figure was the sound of everyplace on earth), they our enemies. Sometimes us wandered far to the edge of home territory, us find strange fiber ribbons and crossed bones tied to home-owned trees.

Some nights, we heard the hated strangers’ drums get rolling. Bad tribes be signaling among theyselves. Bout us! One hot evening when this far-off pounding rode the trough of river, Miss Reba decided us should talk right back. Playing hippo ham bones. Using our own genius drums. Slapping forty holy rhythm instruments, we begun right brilliant pounding, sure. Our steady pulse just seek to say, “Look out, we here.” Thing is, once you starts competing, you can’t quit till
others
does. All night, enemy shake and knocks keep cutting through miles of vine and bog, kept lulling mosquitoes big as you fist. Two days later, quiet settled. Nobody could say which tribe had left off message making first. Afterwards, evertime we heard war thumping from whatever direction, we challenged it with smart noises of our own. We got excellent at it. We meant such pounding to stand for long-distance warfare, only safer. But what happened: What start out as war turned into everyplace music. Answer, answer back. Sound good. We ain’t full enemies. We more a duet.

Us soon captured one skinny foreign-tribe girl, copper-colored, trapped while gathering fruit on our land. We felt shocked that so stranger a young lady spoke a language most like ours.

The King axted her many hard questions. She a mess of shaking, begging. Finally old Reba poke up from nowhere, “What does your folks
call
us?”

All us listeners look hard at one another, puzzled. Took a leap of mind to know that—past ourselfs—we might, by others, be
named
something.

Girl, she heavesome quivering, “You ones is called … ‘The Tribe That Answers.’”

Reba cough with joy, then done a satisfied jig. “And, child, what the name of you own folks?”

But now this girl look mighty troubled, staring round. “My tribe? … be onliest …
my
tribe. It … just … us.”

“Same here,” nods our quick-to-answer Auntie, hobbling off humming.

OUR ROYAL
work been mostly leisure. We took pride in getting good at it. That’s how come they caught us off our guard that day it happen. Of course, I personally were just a baby. Age three but still at suck. Now,
some
black folks out in you quarter, they’ll try and tell you (if they dared talk to you at all) that I been far too young for remembering all I swears I can. Some claims I won’t even born till we wobbled off that ship at Charleston’s pretty harbor. But, part my memory (some of everybody’s) is what I overheard. I always been one nosesome little child. (Who else round here done listened to your “Debut” lies and braggings umpteen million times?) You know them jigsaw puzzles—views of Europe—you forever lingered over out on the veranda? Well, it’s the same with my patching Mother Africa together. Find outside corners mashed to be a frame—two parts sky, two lowers land—then the rest just fall so neat in place. And every last trace of the whole picture I gone puzzle forth in high and fiery colors, it true. Trust me here. I’d stake my own six hundred dollars life on it. Castalia’s bout worth that now, ain’t she? You better listen hard—because, in thirty-two minutes, Owner Mine, I gone to be flat worthless. Once them Yankees hit here—on the open market—I ain’t going to bring one penny more than
you
would.

COME
the night before they grabbed us. Big dance, a few privileged elders (all uncles mine) wore outfits what tried looking like our holy local bird. Uncles’ getups never come no closer to the bird’s perfect color than say grape purple. But, for then, for that late on a humid jungle night, it’d pass for red, it’d do.

The Festival of Our Rare Red Bird, we talking. Round home parts, this one flying creature ranked as the most beautiful and hardly-seen. The only bird couldn’t nobody shoot no legal arrow at. That was owing to this sparrow-sized thing’s feather shade, a color we didn’t have one berry, no tint of clay nor any ground-up mussel shell to help make. I speaking Red here, Lady. Picture it.

Now for you, pale as mail-order powder, ghosting round this white room, wearing that blank satin wrapper and playing them mostly white keys (with a few black ones sneaked in on the back row to do the dirty work), Red must sound a wee bit raw. It were! So full of heat and hoping, about as cheap as life. That bird stayed so all-out for us, owing to how pretty Red look flying alive in a world made from a trillion greens. Seem like every tribe along our river had one color held to be most holiest. It been the tint most hard to make. Times, some local child’d find a dead one of our precious
birds, it feets up, eyes missing life’s smart shine. Child’d stay famous for a day or two, folks axting her where she turned it up, how come she checked
that
spot.

Only Reba, oldest person on record ever, only she got to save up bodies of every red bird what’d yet been found. In her way-off hut, she stowed some birds been dead fully thirty spans her own musty age—all handed down. By now, just greasy fluffs we taking Time’s word for.

Till the earth turned tables on us, was only three ways we could look on the holy red we craved so bad: When neighbor tribes made night raids and cut or kilt our own, or better, when us hurt them. (Though no blood looks redder than you own—expecially when it flow cause you done dropped a gravy boat!) Another was the red seen in once-a-month personal lady blood. But our favorite unslashed uncramping way stayed how these flamish droplets of birdlife sputtered past on high, making us fall onto our knees, heads tossed back, gaping.

Well, seem like the Bad Ones learnt about our tribe’s longing for redness. Soon as others figured how one hot color were such a craze with us, why we won’t safe no more. (Be careful bout letting anybody know what you loves most, Lady Ownership-9/10-the-Law. Whatever’s sweetest to you gone get turned to perfect bait.)

Happen the morning after our Dance of the Rare Red Bird, second-biggest “do” of our jungle social year. We been mostly dozing under different palm trees or deep inside cool palm-wood huts. Of a sudden, all dogs everywhere start barking louder than us ever heared and in a different whinnying pitch. Every child out making mud pies start quailing like the world’s done ended and this shrill sound be one last echo rolling back from then. Sleepers wakes, even some what’s been missing deep down with the sleeping sickness for long weeks now. We come to—expecting all our enemy tribes is raiding us at once with perfect timing, right when we the most hung over from our fine palm wine.

In your dark hut, you can’t help but notice, by ear, past dogs’ stunned yappings, our whole jungle—upriver and down—have grown still as death is dead. Cat’s got the tongue of every monkey, screechy bird, and wild boar, too. Scared air feel about to bubble like on boil. Finally, out our huts us run, we stops, then seen it. Most folks dives right back in. Once hid, our breaths just heaving, we looks to one another, not considering it possible that all this might be happening at bald-headed and everybody’s noon. No.

Because,

Along our brown slow river in plain sight during the bare-assed brassiest of broadest day, here rides one dugout canoe built bigger than our village’s whole straw council hall. Not a soul aboard it, here drifts a island-sized pontoon/tree house/temple thing rigged with rails and windows, with great palm-high poles spouting out the lid of it, these hung with broad stained sheets, each one blowing the floating place nearer nearer us and to our one home.

Till this, all we knowed bout floating was—things we made by scooping innards from logs, leaving such side bark as might keep water out and let us sit safe in. So a boat this big, unpaddled, was big news. But, oh, White Lady Mine, what make this thing the most outstanding and terriblest and way most beautiful of all, be its
color
. Because this huge slatted thing, bowed like a drum, point-ended as any anteater, it done been painted. And you know what shade? Good guess (you getting quicker with Man-cipation rolling in!). Why, yes, it bout as red as red can be.

Imagine you only seen maybe one gold coin in you whole life and then, up our local river Tar out there, glides the entire gleaming Confederate Mint (if they
got
one). A choir of cash registers clinking towards you, pay-drawers full of glitter yellow. Hurt you eyeballs. And oh, to feel Red coming, without a single sound (not one oar slapping).

Somebody’d guessed how good we dearly loved even one rouge cake’s own amount of what you white folks calls crimson. Made the village stomach turn with a most pleasuring fear, most fearful pleasure.

LADY
, I talking redder than the shiniest line of fresh blood moving down the driest blackest dusty leg in Africa.

CAN TOTAL
stillness get even stiller? Cause, it did. Even old Reba—what lived in her own snake-skinned shanty set way far off from us—even Reba got tuggled downhill towards this quiet. She finally stick/drag into a village what seem empty of all life, including dogs’. Hounds done barked first, then—following examples—jumped
behind
us. Now, in huts, dogs just eye-watered. Dogs smart sometimes. Not in the whole jungle were a single birdsong squirting. Expecially still, the simple-tuned red birds, stunned to know that, in the world of rainbow, they won’t near so rare as our jungle’d figured. Nothing but river gossip miles upstream.

Using her knobbly-topped walking stick, old body bare as anything, here come our pinched nerve of a blue-black Reba, late. Never married, never wanted, she look to be a sweet potato left some ages out in hurting jungle sun. We studying one what’s got three teeth left, but is still vain enough to brag bout them date pits. Her black legs so skinny they like snakes what’s swallowed rocks. From behind canoe-sized leaves, we all watch our tribe’s one unwed and most grouchy woman. She usually a-scared of nothing but how stupid others act.

Someway we hoping that, this once, Aunt gone scream and double over like we done done. Maybe Reba ain’t so brave, just nosy. We bet when Miss Reba sees that redness yonder, her stringy heart won’t hold. She now mumbling bout something, one stiff seed necklace chattering round her falling-off neck. We keep gripping heads and shoulders of the loved ones we hid with, we holding on to dogs, letting the smarter of scared dogs hold on to us.

First, her usual crotchet frisky, then she slown a bit—then crank, to,
full, stopping. Her hollow gummy mouth glump open, her old body grown dead stiff. But seem her crooked walk staff’s just way too interested for letting Reba stop. Stick itself, a good one she found when she was six then waited to grow into, it now drag Auntie nearer water where the Red Visitation wait.

Usually Reba only enjoy others’ accidents or fits. Now, in plain view, our Miss Mind Over Matter start materially jumping up and down, necklace made of common garden seeds just chippening every way it can. Cept for river whisper, these dried pods pepper forth the only sound for miles. Reba carrying on like a bad baby—meaning, yes, ma’am, she wet her own self, then start striking her very Reba mud puddle with that stick’s knob end. Arms doing wing flaps, she shout, “I dreamed all this. And, friends, it now
so
. Come out and see what Reba done thunk up.” Just
like
her, claiming. But the strangest part was hearing Reba call us “friends.” In two seconds, Queen Eater of Serious Snakes done got out “friends” and smiled. Strange. Her face wedge open like with its own first blinky look-see at the world.

(This sudden boat from noplace felt to us like one big typical dream, on a scale with such dreams as folks only dreams in Africa. I ain’t talking the weedy paltry chicken-scratch hot flashes what pass for a dream in
this
land. No, ma’am, I speaking big-scale—the kind us Africans only seemed to have while still in Africa. Dreams of living wrapped in perfect pelts. Dreams so rich and huge was just one the things we lost on our long trip over. Back home, in our greener country, a dream it slaved hard to outdo the jungle’s lushness. Some dreams could run you so river-deep, could twist your mind so many viny ways at once, you’d lose you footing, you’d drowned and tangle, both. Come morning, family’d find only a ashy one-eighth of you left in you straw hammock. The white milky self-part of who you truly been—like the sweetness you hears locked slopping round inside a coconut—why, that choice part stayed sealed in a dream too good to let anybody leave it alive. American dreams, compared to my home/monkey/orchid/jungle trances? why they just little windbreak stands of poplars. American dreams, they bout money. African ones—majority of nights won’t only bout magic, they
was
the rawbone magic its own slippery fish-snake self.) Right then, with Reba cackling out there, grinning welcome—the boat stirred. From one slot underneath—some force slid a walkway towards us. Seeing this, folks that’d stole inches free of hiding was right far back in. Reba mashed one eye shut, waited. Down boards did plunk on shore, planks tinted a red as harsh and fancy as the pretty rest.

Seeing how Aunt could pose within touching distance of such rougeness and still live, some our bolder royal children sneaked out, run right up onboard. King’s kids is brats, Mrs.! No news. Then dogs commenced usual bothersome barking. Next, mommas could scream for children to come back here this instant. Was then that all our banked-up jungle sounds—bird and monkey ones, the barely-there hum of The Sound You Could Never Name—all it start to life again but richer with a million thousand fears built
up inside ten minutes’ silence. With noise helping make us all feel someway safer and more us, we come inching into full safe sun. Talk about pretty, ooh that boat! If the thing itself look good, river reflections flat outdid it.