Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (66 page)

AND IT WAS
this very morning, not three hours later—us underway again and me nodding off, he stopped the car. I woke fast, so did the one baby in my lap. I looked over. There Cap sat, swallowing hard. Grinning like some bridegroom trying to hide his nerves and second thoughts. The few children awake in back had been playing their first games of Mules and Graveyards, counting, sounding sleepy but half interested. No farm in sight, no lake visible, just weeds and way up ahead a rusted mailbox, like a case of lockjaw on a stick.

Now all our young ones piled out. To them it was just another stop. Older ones led the babies into tall weeds to do their duty. Lou and Ned took charge, giving me a break. Captain still sat at the wheel. It was a misty early morning but he was perspiring pretty bad. “So,” he said, looking around. In the bushes, one of our twins still argued game rules, whether cemeteries canceled solid-white mules. True, I was yet holding the baby but I got out, I come around to Captain’s side, opened the door for him like
he
was the wife. The big fellow thanked me, unfolded hisself, patted down his graying brown hair, a single stubborn cowlick left, he buffed shoe tops on the backs of trouser legs, shining shoes. Like keeping a appointment. Somehow pitiful to witness. We all followed him. We had to.

I was getting aware of breathing—mine and the baby’s I held—my heart grew busy, expecting what? I glanced around, prepared for smoke, for rifle fire, a long scream, anything. I didn’t see no water yet. I just wished I
looked
better. We heard late summer bug sounds, a tractor working uphill maybe two miles off—it was that still out there. Captain hopped a ditch, us trailing after. My children had hushed. Even groggy, they sensed some change. Cap had cleared a little rising when he spied a low woods up ahead. Soon as he smelled the water beyond it, I saw his whole chest swing aside, front muscles locking like a horse’s shying from a high jump or from open flames.

“What?” I asked him, trying to be helpful, wondering if I could. I half heard the man. He kept whispering one foreign-sounding word, like trying to steel hisself and using it as a charm.
“What?”
I asked, feeling I had a right to know. Only weeks later would I figure what he’d sputtered again and again. “Gethsemane,” he said.

Needing no guidebook now, he was like sleepwalking, arms lifting partway
before him, half tripping over sticks and roots. Hurrying so. I lugged one baby on my hip, our youngest napped snug in the picnic hamper I toted. All our little ones pulled along after, ragtag, not wanting to get left. Soon as he saw water, Captain, stiff-backed, commenced to checking his Swiss pocket watch, like it might tell him how many holdout Yankee marksmen still hid waiting up them trees before us.

“Everything’s taller,” he said. Something in his voice caught my heart then, nearbout sideswiped it. I’d never heard him sound so plain unguarded. It reminded me again: he was a victim just like the rest of us. Different things get everybody: For him, war. For me, the setup, or what war’d done to him maybe. For my babies, what this mix—his battle past, and my stab at side-street peace—set off. Who knows? We all keep trying, darling.

I followed. You do that if you love somebody. Otherwise you leave.

My children huddled closer. Our group waded through a field of tall sedge. The back of the Captain’s black suit was flecked with green triangle sticky seeds. They’re called beggar’s purses, a good name since they’re worthless but’ll grab whatever’s unlucky enough to move past. My children’s hair was already spotty with these. I figured it’d give kids busywork once we got back to the Ford (we will, we
will
get back, I promised my own self). It soothed me for a second, picturing small hands going over one another like young grooming monkeys do.

I’d made the Captain wear his civvies on this trip. Said I wouldn’t be seen with no man sporting a feather in his uniform hat—especially when I didn’t even own one hat with a sprig of plume to its name. Too, I hated how that sword was always knocking against our Ford’s gearshift. One hint at how off-center war is: the awkwardness of living life with that size a weapon tripping you up. Whenever I called the Captain’s uniform vain and dandyish, he cited peacocks: how the man ones have more colors than a Rit Dye sample board at Woolworth’s, while the lady birds get born washed out, khaki being about their finest effort tint-wise. I’d scold him, “Don’t talk peahens to me, mister. I’m white as you, and not no hen. Besides—what’s the use of quoting Nature at a person if it only makes her feel worse.
That’s
not what Nature’s for!”

NOT
a marker, not one path. The gristmill standing on the far east shore was in ruins now. Vines had made a trellis of its waterwheel. Not one other sightseer. No battle had happened here. Just one boy got killed and only Captain Marsden remembered who.

A big blue heron at the lake’s far end flew off like a judgment on our nosiness, our family’s size. Everything got way quieter. Us, too. Bug noises—interested in us—tamped back a notch.

The shore narrowed more. Trees on our right, stagnant water to the left. I shoved children all before me, hoping none would slip and fall into that filmy mess. I remember thinking, What are we looking for? What are we doing here? He needed witnesses, I guess. You marry, it means you’ve
signed on as a witness to that person’s pain—meaning their history, entire. We trailed him—so he’d have somebody with him. Could’ve been anybody. But it was us. Required to, we all tripped along, fighting to keep up.

He stared to his right then. Saw one tree wedged among the many. They all appeared alike to me. Must of been the one. Because: Captain stepped left, Captain fell three and a half feet downhill, Captain sloshed away from us, Captain backed into the lake. He was getting the full view of it, looking up. He bogged knee-deep in bilgy mud among floating water hyacinths. He’d sunk to his thighs.

The pocket watch popped free of his vest pocket and—on its chain—swung back and forth above the shallows. Minnows, drawn to platinum, bunched there churning before him. Some fish broke water, leaping for the watch like they figured Time was edible, the fools. Cap’s vest and lapels were speckled like a telegram with green seeds set in rows. He mashed one hand around his throat, up underneath his brown beard. For every breath, his voice gave one moan. Fish kept stitching water all in front of him. He pointed up at that tree yonder.

Our children held tight on to one another’s sleeves and shoulders, they grabbed my skirt’s whole hem. On all sides I was soon sectioned like a pie, my honor guard. Captain finally saw us, gaping from uphill—our faces so worried about his toppling right into water. Proud as ever, he must’ve hated what pity showed in our wide eyes and open mouths. Lake weeds clinging to black britches, dripping, he now climbed, hands and knees at first, onto our mossy bank. He moved through our group—which split—on towards the tree. It was a big old sycamore. It’d grown a lot since that August day in ’62. But then, too, so had Captain.

Strange, this breeze came up, wide sycamore leaves turned to show their whitish backsides. I felt for a minute, against all my common sense, that the tree had someway recognized him. Then Cap, he shinnied right up into it. Muddy legs and shoes went last into the rustling green. He was now hid total from our view. This was early September. All at once, I felt the heat.

Ned, who’d heard about this tree his whole life long, whose very name was stuffed so full of this sad spot, kept bouncing all over, just dying to climb up after. But I clutched him by the wrist, no way would I let him budge. Our group stood looking up at one knotty sycamore, hearing nothing. Even the baby in her hamper was awake, her Marsden gray eyes open, fixed straight up. For a while it seemed my husband would never come down again. From behind broad leaves, no sound. For miles around us here, such stillness.

IT FELT
like that wicked old war—after too long a wait—had got its way at last, had finally sucked him up. I stood here, every neck muscle tightening from gawking overhead too long. I wondered: Girl, what will you do if it has finally funneled him up into its very craw? “Live, I guess.”

That was my best answer. And still is.

Then we heard the slightest cry. I figured he’d come upon a skeleton, something dangling up there still. I’m sorry, I just didn’t want my children near this. Was I wrong? I wished that I could drive the motorcar. I’d leave, I would. Up high, he parted greenery. He was nearer the treetop than it seemed any fellow his size could find support. A full fifty-five to sixty feet in air over the lake and us. Green divided, he popped out before it, all in black. Cap said, “Look, love.” He meant me. He never called me that at home. I felt like he’d just spoke to somebody else.

“Still here, it’s here.” His one arm crooked around a bough, his other held out what seemed part of a crisp old harness yet knotted there. Cap posed so high above the water. You knew that to just swing from such height into a lake so shallow would kill a diving boy for sure.

By kicking two limbs aside with a free leg, then pinning branches back, Cap could show us: One branch had someway swollen. He had a hold of something. Wood looked puffed, like bordering some tourniquet, the leather maybe wedged inside its deep grooved dent of bark. “I was right,” his voice bounced out over the lake and back. “All of it’s true.” He sounded fearful he’d been making up each word for fifty years.

Which bothered me. At my arm’s end, our child named Ned kept wriggling side to side, pleading to please go up, could he, could he please? (And I stood thinking just, Uh-oh. Was wondering, If Cap has talked about it so much when there was still some doubt, what now—which last few square inches of the man’s attention must I try and fit into next?)

The man held out a leather cord. It was half white, looked salty with age. My husband stood far up as an angel in the lush folds of this tree. Our heads tipped back so as to see him. He leaned forward, moving to test the rein’s strength. Our babies edged nearer me. Many short spines pressed against my legs. “Don’t, Daddy,” Lou whispered straight up. We expected he would now fall: break his neck. Canted forward, he was sure trying. I saw he’d half planned this. Maybe to drop, maybe to bust his skull in the same shallows where his friend’d died. I didn’t understand. His logic was diseased but, for him, it was logic. And yet, the leather, it held—supported even a man grown to this serious size.

After slumping forward, his watch a pendulum above us, after he’d heaved out like begging that line to snap, Captain tipped back to safety. Then, behind the crook of one arm, he covered his face, started making the shrill sounds of a boy upset. Crickets hushed a hundred percent now.

Finally my husband called down to us and the lake, “What’d he do? What’d he
do?”—
Like we had killed that child.

On ground, our children gave off unplanned little groans. Not understanding anything, feeling everything. I almost sobbed, for reasons of my own. Part rivalry. I knew that nothing I could ever do or say would compare with my real enemy—a boy-corpse since ’62. My crying jostled the hamper
I still held. Our baby girl started, loud, too. It got almost funny, all of us crying out here in the middle of nowheres, the noise.

Well, recovered some, Captain now wanted each of us—me and every last child—to come up in the high tree and be with him, to see the leather thong. Right now, he said, this instant. Fifty-five to sixty-five feet straight up. Well, honey, that’s where I drew the line. A mother she has to. Eight youngsters from age nine years to eighteen months. Half accidental, I let Ned’s hand aloose, he practically ran vertical, laughing as he commenced the scramble, hidden by full September leaves. He hadn’t yet connected death with the famous story of this place, was just glad to climb, a child. Even scared of Captain, I someway allowed our eldest, Louisa, to go struggling up too. Maybe to guard Ned? She went carrying her diary stuffed into the back of her skirt’s elastic. She’d said she was going to have a jump on her first school assignment, “What I did on my summer vacation.” (Big-boned, watchful, up she slid behind leaves, lost to me.) “Call them back,” I told myself. “No. They’re half his. Not half, but some. A portion his.”

Our youngests, hopping every which way, begged to go. They couldn’t half walk yet, much less scurry ape-wise straight up into air. Baby, she sure whined. “No way,” said I. “Baby
miss,”
she yelled, meaning she always missed the good stuff, fun.

Well the Captain glared down on me and gave what he now called a direct order. His face—seen from underneath—was a pink udder full of blood. He didn’t much like my staying on the ground, sparing my wee ones. Didn’t like that a bit. Wanted each infant to see one piece of cracked horse harness choking some treetop. I watched him frown and mutter down at me. Next his tone changed, he went, “But please, Lucy, I’ve come all this
way.”
And I felt for him then, I did. I knew that a softer decent-er woman would have passed her whole brood—whole life—into his hands. But, listen, staring up, I understood, I wasn’t so much scared he’d mistakenly drop one of my wee ones. Fact is, I felt spooked he’d
throw
one. Into the lake. On purpose.

I could someway tell he wanted to. I heard my eldests move higher, nearing him. I saw branches quiver with their minor added weight, tree’s tip nodding with a man’s great size. That sycamore kept shivering. I knew the Captain had some strange plan. Maybe he wanted to chuck a live child into water for a offering, maybe he hoped the sacrifice would let his friend swim ashore, awake and new, speckled with greeny film.

Captain waited for Ned and Lou to hand-climb within reach, he looked so odd up yonder. In black, one leg holding tree limbs aside, he was scoffing down like a naysaying Jeremiah, one minute nagging me up to him, next promising things like some sly salesman, saying Lucy this and Lucy that but looking grim and black there on high, looking like something hungry.

Honey, I shook my head No so many time I nearbout lost balance, I almost fell back in the lake itself. “No way, mister. You cannot have these ones of mine!” I was quaking so bad I had to set the baby’s hamper down
before I dropped it. I screamed, “Ned! Lou! You come down from there/this/second/and/no/questions/asked. It’s me or him, you hear? Get your bodies down here if you plan to stay living!”