Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus Page A

that’s mostly
all
they do. They just shush other people (“outsiders” they call everybody but their own two selves) and they practice their Pledge. I mean they do it constant. A retired missionary in here, she scolded Jerome for not making it the Lord’s Prayer. She said, “The twins might as well be building up some credits if they’re going to parrot one thing all day. I’m patriotic as the next person but, Jerome (here, take this free tract, illustrated), there’s higher things.”
    “Lord’s Prayer’s too long. I done clocked it,” goes he in his toniest English accent, hand on a hip. “We speech pathologists choose shorter items so’s our stroke victims can get they chops around stuff sooner. They loves the joy of quick accomplish-ment, for you information, Miss Know-It-All!”
    Jerome criticized is a Jerome real high and mighty for about ten minutes. When you’re self-made, you take blame harder. I know. Luckily, like me, he forgets insults fast enough. (We all need a short memory for some stuff, honey.)
    Afterwards, Mrs. Missionary and myself counted on our fingers. He was right. Lord’s Prayer’s got fifteen lines not including Amen. We understood that, for the twins, fifteen—even Amen-less—would be overreaching. Anyhow them Willistons were clam-happy come July Fourth and Flag Day. See, our Home director let them lead.
    OH , we’ve had some good times here. Strange, you can be right in the middle of one of history’s golden ages and never even know. I mean, consider, darling: This we’re
in
might be one. Well, it could.
11
    DEACON-SOBER , home for some time now, the boy still hadn’t told anybody but Winona a single fact about his doings ’62-’65. If a good-natured stockyard employee pumped Marsden for news of his battle record, Cap might snatch his hat off the bentwood hat tree, he’d barge from the office, take long walks. Even during business hours, he headed towards woods where Ned and him had made the clever camps. Went on foot, Marsden, that owned so many horses.
    Forced to mutter business lingo, you heard how his boy’s voice had fallen two full octaves. His baritone didn’t sound God-given but earned the way some smoker’s voice gets baked far huskier. Only, Marsden’s smoke was not your usual Turkish blend but such fumes as a horse artillery must breathe.
    •   •   •
    ( AND ME ? I’m off doing my duty—getting myself born to odd yet decent people. It is up near 18 and 85. I can’t wait till I am officially
in
this. Odd—even having gone this old—I can’t imagine ever being
out
of it. Anyhow, owing to my birth, here comes a clear little sideways brook, feeding—cold and fresh—into the warm muddied river of Captain’s widening life.)
    AND IT was one noon—whilst he headed from a profitable shoat auction towards the People’s and Farmers’ National Bank—Cap stopped to tie his shoe. The man of few words paused in earshot of battle chatter. Sole propped against a pyramid of welded cannonballs, he must have heard the tail end to one warrior’s flashy tale. Cap—twenty some years older than the war now, solid in the flesh and more mentally ripe—he maybe found them few words stronger than expected. You see, he stayed a while. He tied the other shoe’s laces, untied it, double-knotted it anew.
    Next day, the One Who Never Told was back for lunch hour, dawdling like somebody taking a survey of park benches. He settled nearby, listening in that solemn way he did everything, eating a brown-bag lunch Castalia had packed—but chewing slow—like he hoped to surprise the sandwich. He sat still, then remembered to take a few goodly chaws.
    Men’s stories commenced to working in him—you could tell. Some nail file that jiggles in a piggy bank’s thin slot till—whammo—out showers this long-postponed silver jackpot. Every talker in that Courthouse Square exaggerated certain facts. That was how you put your mark on a tale—what you chose to taffy-pull,