Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus Page A

sentiments. Her father, the late Judge More, was, I believe,in my father’s class at Harvard College. They often traveled to school and home on the same holiday trains.
    Closing, I can only leave you with reminders of the undoubted Rightness of our Cause. Be comforted, Madam, in understanding that your Child, while admittedly losing his life and being “untimely ripped”—has also Risen to the Threshold of that August Assemblage—The Martyrs to the Great Cause of Secession.
    I remain most respectfully yours, a brother in grief, a fellow parent, an aspirant to glorious Honor and/or the Aforementioned Martyrdom Itself.
    Officially and personally, Madam, I sign myself, with utmost sympathy,
    First Lt. Vreeland Hester, CSA.
    3:40 AM. In the White Oak Swamp, somewhere Southeast of Gaines’ Mill, Virginia
4
    I MISS boiling my own water.
    I been in here fourteen years and, previous to that, a stove was mostly where you’d find me, something to complain about slaving over a hot one of all day.
    My husband liked his beef done nearbout raw—the children hated that. Seeing Captain’s so pink, they always chanted, “Nosebleed, nosebleed.” Where do kids come up with these things?
You
ever try doing a twelve-pound beef roast in your wood stove so meat’s one end’ll turn out red and the other a nice dark brown? Well, try. Mostly it’s in how you stack your firewood.
    But the water, the comfort of each morning’s water boiling.—Back then, I’d be the first one awake naturally. The kids were babies, and me I won’t much older. Dawn seemed my sloppy younger sister. Many’s the day I beat her downstairs. Right off, I’d stoke kindling in my Wedgwood stove. From the pump, I’d fill one favorite white enamel saucepan rimmed with red. I always placed it on a back burner. (Otherwise little paws grab handles and scald little heads.) To be up and puttering in a big still-sleeping house, to hear the paper boy lob today’s
Falls Herald Traveler
more or less onto our front porch, to hear his bike click off, followed by the toenails of his dog on Summit Avenue’s bricks. To find that nighttime dark had gone a wet-wool gray as soon as you quit expecting light. From the window over my sink, our back yard looked to be a dresser drawer full of mist.
    I was never one to use a kettle. (Teapot whistles make me nervous.) No, I liked to
see
my water boil. Pearl bubbles gather around its edges (a family reunion, resemblances galore). Then they send family representatives up top to check. Finally you have the whole thing twirling into necessary violence.I like to
smell
my water, feel its steam uncurl. At this early hour, water offered Lucy her best company. Times, water felt too perfect to be local—it seemed international or better. A spirit friend. I’d be making production-line school sandwiches. Lay down your two dozen bread slices in a row, get you a goodly glob of butter—then run along the table—coating every last one, target practice. I could do it while half asleep right now and from my wheelchair here.
    My morning mood I gauged by water’s speed in boiling. If it happened quick, I felt more “up.” If it took forever, was going to be one of
them
days.
    Odd, the kitchen sometimes felt more crowded
before
my cast of characters woke and scuffed downstairs. Somebody would soon admit to unfinished math homework, another might show first polka dots of chicken pox (“Momma, I don’t
feel
so good”). But not yet, thank God. A crew of quieter, healthier ghosts rose with me, my list and honor roll trailing after, faint but real as steam. The water’d long ago been ready for coffee. I let it babble anyhow—just the way I let children natter about anything they pleased, me half listening to their staticky half-music. A jay bossed sparrows at our feeder. Later, Moxie, the Seeing Eye Labrador, would be underfoot—another mouth to stuff.
    I was often tired. That I know. Looking back, you don’t want to misremember and soften one