Excerpt is from the forthcoming "Love Stories for Wilkes Ferry: The Star-Shaped Scar."

The story is about my grandmother whose job was to arrange her grandfather's Confederate uniform on an empty chair at the dinner table every meal.

"The Vacant Chair" is a song from the Civil War.


THE VACANT CHAIR

We shall meet, but we shall miss him
There will be one vacant chair
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer;
When a year ago we gathered
Joy was in his mild blue eye,
But a golden chord is severed
And our hopes in ruin lie.

Chorus
We shall meet, but we shall miss him
There will be one vacant chair
We shall linger to caress him
While we breathe our evening prayer.

At our fireside, sad and lonely,
Often will the bosom swell,
At remembrance of the story
How our noble Willie fell;
How he strove to bear our banner
Through the thickest of the fight,
And uphold our country's honor
In the strength of manhood's night.

Chorus
True, they tell us wreaths of glory
Ever more will deck his brow,
But this soothes the anguish only
Sweeping o'er our heartstrings now.
Sleep today, Oh early fallen,
In thy green and narrow bed,
Dirges from the pine and cypress,
Mingle with the tears we shed.


GREAT GRANDADDY'S CONFEDERATE UNIFORM


My great, great grandfather, Jubel Jake McPherson, died in the Civil War. His brother Jesse brought his Confederate uniform home.


I don’t remember where I was when my grandmother told me the story about her grandfather’s Confederate uniform. That’s odd. Usually, when I remember a story from years ago, I have a photograph in my mind to go with it, a photograph of where I was when the story was first told to me.

But, I think DeeLee must have told me the story about the uniform more than once and this might have worked to drown out the memory of my surroundings on the original telling. My memory, the photograph connected to this story, therefore, is of the room where the story took place - the rough-hewn planks that made up the walls of the diningroom in the tiny rural cabin, the cracks where the daubing had worn away and streams of sunlight telescoped through to highlight the dust motes, the table that had been used to chop vegetables and meat, that may have had a body washed on it after death and then boiling water poured over it, a table that was used for every function in life even preparation for death. I remember the six chairs around the table, all of them mismatched.

This was the room where my grandmother, DeeLee, my great grandmother and my great, great grandmother laid out three meals a day (when they had food) for years. And it was the room where my great, great uncle, Jesse sat, mostly silent after the Civil War, with the women, and with the vacant chair.

It was DeeLee’s job, from the time she was old enough to walk, to set that table and to lay out my great grandfather, Jake McPherson’s, Confederate uniform.

The uniform was kept folded in the right-most compartment of the credenza that sat against the wall in the eatin’ room. After my grandmother set the table, she would carefully take out the folded uniform and put it in the seat of Great Granddaddy Jake’s chair. She would first put his hat on the table, unfold the jacket and drape it around the back of the chair. She would then button the jacket, careful not to put too much strain on the fragile thread that attached the buttons. When one of the buttons came off, DeeLee’s grandmother would replace it, but she hated replacing the original thread and kept the old thread, what was left of it, in a small round box beside her bed where she also had a locket of Great Grandadddy Jake’s hair tied with a ribbon.

DeeLee would next unfold the tattered pants and put them on the seat of the chair with the legs stretching out and down to the floor just like Great Grandaddy Jake was sitting there. Then, she would hang the hat on the right shoulder of the chair. Great Grandaddy Jake was, like me, left handed.

Every meal my grandmother ate in that house, the house of my grandmother’s grandmother, was eaten with Great Grandaddy Jake’s uniform on that empty chair, just like he was still there. And right before each meal, when they had all come together at the table DeeLee’s great uncle, Jesse, would give thanks for those men who fought and died for the “cause,” including his brother Jake, and swear to meet them in heaven.

DeeLee said that there were times when her grandmother would reach across to the uniform and take the sleeve of Great Grandaddy McPherson’s jacket and hold it, as if she were holding his hand. She didn’t say anything, just sat holding her dead husband’s empty sleeve, unwilling even after all those years to let him go.