Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus

will, a particular deserted cabin. They made it theirs during the four days we used the site.
    The hut had been formerly employed, to judge from scales and a remaining chalkboard on its wall, as an ore-weighing station. Late one evening, as I was unable to sleep, I found myself pacing and smoking, feeling singularly homesick. I chose to wander our camp. I carried a lamp and, as I passed this roofless cabin, my light chanced to fall upon some bright surfaces within. I stepped through an open doorway. One full burlap sack, patterned with a felicitous checkerboard design, rested upon the table between your son and his friend. Both boys had fallen asleep while playing marathon checkers. The “pieces” were shards of crystal which the boys had collected at our various camps, much to the consternation of our fond commanding officer who warned as how the weight of such souvenirs might well slow the lads when they most needed speed.
    On the aforementioned chalkboard, boys had marked up their scores. One youth’s side was called, according to the legend, “The Official Falls, NC, Checker Team,” and below it, a second such association had been titled, “The Other Official Falls, NC, Checker Team.” I am myself the father of two daughters not far from theages of the children I encountered that night. I stood in the hut looking down upon these boys intent on passing time while seeking to somehow encourage themselves. The sack holding their game had become a mutual pillow. Only boys’ crooked arms prevented their young faces from pressing onto the quartz bits arranged between them. The children’s muskets were propped, at the ready, in a far corner. Boys’ fitful sleep would, I feared, stand them in poor stead for tomorrow’s long march. And yet, stepping forward, about to wake them, I hesitated. Something in their slumber, their very trustfulness bespoke a similar moment I had experienced in my daughters’ treehouse, one built with my own hands. I did not wake your son and his friend. I could not bear, Madam, to remind them of their current whereabouts and circumstance.
    As with all of us here, the boys lately witnessed instances of carnage which—had we been forewarned in the quiet days before Sumter—would have seemed literally unendurable. And yet, one survives! I found the small moment I’ve described to be so peaceful and consoling. I felt nearly guilty at the peace I let it give me. But I have forgotten myself and my official function here. It is very late. Other chores are before me. I was writing of your son, a young gamesman making the best of an inhuman situation. Of course, it forever stays human because, human, we are here, having to endure it. I must end.
    The camp is now so quiet, the countryside so peaceful. Even the twelve cannons I see across the way are all beaded with dew. It is inconceivable what noise and bloodshed might break upon us with first light. In addressing this to you, Madam, I seem to communicate with my own family and with all those persons I have written during these past two years. I have set down, usually at less length, roughly nine hundred such letters. I feel myself becoming half-accomplished at it. There are many things we should all remain quite bad at.
    It is grievous to consider that my years of education, my early attempts at diary-keeping and at clarity of expression—enterprises so blithely and romantically undertaken in my privileged youth—should be thus enlisted. I recall my boyish Odes to various seasons, to various young ladies of my acquaintance. Odes! Were I now to try one, its subject might be the miracle that any person should have found the time and hope to ever attempt such a thing as an Ode!
    Before first light, I must write three more families of three more men and boys I knew. If time proved less limited, I might send a second note of condolence to the mother of Private Marsden, so much a pair were those fine examples of Southern Boyhood. Please convey my