21 January 2003

Then There Was One

It is nineteen minutes to the hour, according to Bush House in London. There is quite a controversy over whether or not the Chancellor of Germany colors his hair or not. Believe it or not, there is more news, some of it significant.

A quarter of Britain's army is headed for the Gulf, a Heavy Regiment and an Air Mobile formation of two brigades of some very dangerous young men. I wonder if Jacko, my newly selected Brigadier friend and consummate paratrooper, is leading them. Whether he is or not, the deployment appears to be happening without the widespread support of the British electorate. If I was not a person of a certain age, I'm sure that the echoes of Suez would not occur to me. But they do. But there is the odd juxtaposition of France being in the opposition and the Americans leading the interventionist pack against a recalcitrant Arab State. And of all things, the Russians are claiming a breakthrough on the matter of the North Korean nukes.

In the lunchtime hours in the Mideast Two American civilian contractors were shot near a fast-food restaurant adjacent to Camp Doha, near Kuwait City. Their Land-Rover was shot up pretty bad. One is dead, the other wounded. They were contractors at the American base. Probably ex-military, that is how this works in the days of outsourcing. Ironic to die as a civilian going for fried chicken. But there is so much irony abroad in the lands that even I am sated with it. But I marvel at the nature of time. Lunch in the Gulf is early morning in London. The BBC has dispatched a correspondent to the scene, who has phlegmatically reported the incident in time for the early morning report from London to North America, framing the news day. Round and round we go, world spinning and the days passing like H. G. Well's flapping of a great black wing in The Time Machine.

We are all time travelers. We just do it very slowly.

Which is what brings us to the final resolution of a vast conflict. The Civil War is finally decided, and the Confederates won. It has taken a long time but we are finally at the end of it. The last remaining recipient of a pension from the Grand Army of the Republic passed away over the weekend. That leaves one woman standing, the last link to the millions in blue and gray who ended the formal system of slavery 137 years ago. The last one standing is a Confederate widow. She married young to an old man. She is alive today and drawing a pension of around $8 dollars a month. Doesn't sound like much today, but string it out over a couple centuries when a dollar was a real and you are talking about real money.

If somebody hadn't already done it I would use "Last Confederate Widow" as the title of this little tale. Unfortunately, it is already taken. There was a book a couple years ago called "The Last Confederate Widow Tells All!" by Allan Gurganus. He is a novelist and short story writer, and if you can believe the internet, he has been called "the worthy heir to Faulkner and Welty." He is from Rocky Mount, North Carolina, four years older than me, only talented. He paints and his works are displayed in public and private collections all over North Carolina. He has a lot of fans for his work, which is a "bittersweet examination of Southern History with the widow as a metaphor."

"Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All" won the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the CBS version of "Widow" won four Emmy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress for Cecily Tyson as the freed slave, Castalia Marsden. After Hollywood, Gurganus was a co-founder of Writers Against Jesse Helms, so I don't know what he is going to do in his spare time now that Jesse has retired. His next novel, second in a trilogy beginning with "Widow" will be "The Erotic History of a Southern Baptist Church." Gurganus has New England legend John Cheever as a mentor, which makes him suspect, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt. Cheever claims he is "the most technically gifted and morally responsive writer of his generation."

I am reminded of a German maxim of another era that went "When I hear the word Culture, I release the safety-catch on my Browning." Not that the Chancellor of Germany would, these days. He has other personal issues to deal with.

There are several war widow issues in the news this morning. The Chandrigarh Tribune of India notes that senior widows are being honored there, too. The oldest honoree was Mrs. Kartar Kaur, whose husband, Sepoy Gurdial Singh of the 60th Sikh Infantry, laid down his life fighting intruders in Kashmir in 1948, the year of independence and chaos. She is nearly 80, so this story is likely to have some legs. In fact, it might be a foot-race.

The real story of the last Civil War widow is weird enough as it is. Alberta Martin in the oldest living widow of a Civil War soldier. Her husband, William Martin, was just twenty years old when he served in the Confederate Army during the siege of Petersburg, right at the end of the late unpleasantness between the States. It wasn't until many years later, however, that Alberta met William, by then an 82 year old shopkeeper. She was 21 at the time. After William died in 1932, Alberta married his grandson Charlie. They were married for fifty years. Alberta is now 89, just seven years older than William was when they met. And of course it is entirely appropriate that the last survivor of the Civil War should be both Confederate, and African American.