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life. Honey, so few men have eyeballs for anything except the profit margin and is the lawn mowed. That was my Captain. A stranger, looking for a child of ours, once asked Marsden to please describe our little girl. Cap went, “Well,” and held up fingers of one hand like for counting off the features of his well-loved flesh and blood. “Well, she’s kind of … she’s about the size you would expect of a person her particular age and weight. Now her hair is in between brown and not, only lighter, and the eyes … what
are
her eyes, honey?—But why am I trying this. Her own mother’s standing right here. Men shouldn’t have to
describe.”
It’s a point of view, honey.
    And yet he slowly became one of the better storytellers in eastern North Carolina, which is—truth be told—saying something.
    Just back from war, Marsden installed his momma in rented rooms. He didn’t talk to her about his own sad deeds in the historic mud of Virginia and Maryland. She couldn’t yet speak, which spared her mentioning bad local luck—her getting in the path of Sherman’s firebugs. The Marsden farm had been leveled. Though she still lived and breathed, this lady’s personal best—her character, the priss and fun and fuss of her—was mostly leveled too. Her ruined face and arms and chest spoke three words: Scorched Earth Policy. In twelve minutes, she’d gone from Beauty to Monster. A story there.
    So, two well-brought-up souls just sat together. He would clutch his large hat on one knee. She would hold a teacup, sometimes a full one, more often empty, always white and always Spode. She slept with this safe in her palm like some child clutching its toy. And she never rolled upon or broke the thing, and rumor has it she was buried holding her favorite bone china, comforting in the casket with her.
    Lady Marsden’s two boardinghouse rooms were stocked with most of her plantation’s famous furniture. It’d been spared from Sherman’s flames by Mrs. Marsden’s slave girl, one Castalia. The fine Empire fixtures had—unlike poor Mrs. Marsden—escaped all fire damage except the stink of smoke. (One time as a child of eleven, I was let in there. The rooms were dark, thin paths ran betwixt best furnishings from a home of seventy-odd rooms. The smell of the mansion’s burning had lasted thirty years, was sucked deep into brocades, it coated apple wood and glazed the gilt. These rooms full of charcoal stink and marble masterpieces were occupied by a woman whose face looked like a rawhide fleece-lined moccasin left six months in the rain. Just the violence of her place’s smell scared me witless. This smell seemed so “old” to me at eleven. Seemed the war I sniffed harked back to Sparta/Carthage, not just Charleston and Atlanta.) But I get ahead of myself by getting behind. It’s a pattern with me, sugar. Look, ain’t nobody perfect. Here at first I’m trying hard to keep this all set in line. It’s tough, being a good housekeeper for pretty much total chaos.
    Alone together sat the Lady victim and her son. They rested, wordless, three, four hours at a stretch. Aristocrats, they were on terms with silence. They’d both grown up on the plantation, so far from anything but its own self, silent, respected, feared. They now felt comforted by the passing clomp of buggy traffic (Saturday was market day for the county’s colored and its white). The Marsdens liked sparrows’ squabbling with happy domestic meanness under boardinghouse eaves. Will sat fooling with his hatband. Lady More Marsden dangled one empty teacup out in air like expecting some slave (freed these several years now) to please come pour, please.
    Fresh home, Marsden worked regular hours. Had to. Was the one way he stayed half held together. Thank God for work! Willie yet owned the timepiece of that Yankee boy he’d plugged. He kept the thing wound and displayed on the mantel of his own rented rooms downtown. Years after Appomattox, Will yet had the gold