Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus Read Free Book Online Page A

(4). She already wore black for the sake of a husband, dead these six years. She snatched the thing. Our mailman—armed with smelling salts and extra hankies—stayed to be of use. He watched the lady turn away from him and start reading. Even after a hiccup at seeing the first line, she kept on, bringing the pages closer and closer to her face till, by the end some minutes later, she fell directly off the brick path and—making such sounds—went climbing through her jungly yard. They say it was most terrible to see.
    She didn’t crawl toward her house but went lunging among underbrush, holding the letter stretched between either tiny hand, using elbows and knees to inchworm her weight along. Beloved birds indoors, hearing such cries, went nearbout crazy. Canaries had remained Winona’s best and only friends. Her body stayed low to the ground—like some soldier’s when air’s plaited through with lead.
    Neighbors heard, walked, come rushing. Among them my own mother—who was not that yet—a thin strict half-spoilt heiress whose mission in life was to later whip me into ladyship and grammar and who failed at both, poor thing. Folks found courage, finally pushed open a creaking gate, they lifted Mrs. Smythe from out the chest-high weeds of her un-lawn. They helped the lady up porch steps into her house. Nobody had ever been invited in. The grocery delivery boy claimed it was the worst-kept white household in town, no cleaning done, ever. Widow Smythe’s staples were mostly oatmeal and pralines, plus birdseed purchased by the tow sack.
    Entering, folks hushed from the shock (“Not our polite little Ned”). Folks silently remembered small neighborhood decencies of his. Bound for school, how clean Ned looked. True, he placed live pigeons in the schoolhouse desk drawer of “Witch” Beale. But when they flew at her, she laughed!
    Visitors soon grew quieter from the pure strangeness of being in here. Overdue library books were stacked in columns clear to the ceiling. You wandered across scattered birdseed husks, in some spots inches deep. “Like sand on the beach,” said Momma every time she retold this later, “thick as sand on the beach.” The front parlor was paved with old newspapers, spongy layers that your shoes sunk into. This whole home seemed the whispery bottom of a single birdcage.
    Some neighbor girls strolled right into Ned’s room. They’d always wanted to. Nobody thought of keeping them out. Girls knew just where he’d slept. Hadn’t they seen his lamp in here while he did homework for “Witch” Beale? Girls found the little cell real tidy, a few wooden toys, some pictures (a grizzly bear, a deer) cut from magazines and tacked up just so. One child touched the small oak bed’s white blanket, found a single golden hair, she held it to daylight. Other girls gathered to touch it. “That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen,” one said, and, sniffling, girls retreated with their prize.
    Adults had propped up Mrs. Smythe—glassy-eyed—on a black horsehair chaise that proved she must let her thirty German-but-filthy birds fly free right often. Neighbors—waving the postman’s smelling salts under Winona’s big chin—were promising casseroles. During hurricanes and house fires, minutes after hatchet murders, the ladies of Falls had and have one ready answer for survivors: a nice hot casserole. It still works, darling, and I’m glad for it, having eaten many a one since I got too old for anybody’s letting me near a gas stove. (They tried calling me a public menace for cooking my own breakfast—alone at home, imagine!)
    Neighbors were already forming shifts to come check on Mrs. Smythe. Somebody noticed her breath steady a bit, her nostrils spread. She suddenlybellowed, “You
made
him leave. My one child. I should’ve kept him back. You know what he looked like? How he sounded? You led the brass band to my front gate. You’ll lose your war anyway. Watch. I just understood—I’ll