Uncle Willie was always being kicked out of schools. Gramp said he must have a hard, horny growth on the back of his neck from so much sliding from the dean's office to the railroad station on his ear.
I remember the first time Uncle Willie was kicked out of Harvard. (It was a small mailer of smearing the history prof's wife's best Waldmanhund with mustard, and shipping him between the halves of a loaf of French bread to the football coach, then on a team trip to the wilds of Maryland.)
At such times, Uncle Willie always tried to come home after Gramp was in bed. Unless Gramp was having an affair with a ballet dancer or promising to send a young waitress to Rome to study singing, Uncle Willie could break in through the garden house tacked on behind the laundry room… and come down to breakfast the next morning, hands in pockets, vest pins all polished, and his hair in its balloon of lard.
Thai morning, when Uncle Willie had left Harvard's fencing learn to face some dog-college butchers from Ohio without him, he came down as usual and smiled at Aunt Fiona, who didn't like him.
“So!” said Aunt Fiona, running the flesh of her nose into wrinkles, as if the plumber were in the house again to see about the drains.
“On my ear,” said Uncle Willie, sitting down and hold- ing his head. “Am I overhung!”
“Where?” I asked, drinking my milk while holding my breath, so I would burp after every gulp just the way the Chinese did… or so Gramp claimed.
Uncle Willie looked at me. He was not fond of children, but he played up to me because Gramp could always be reached through me; and I was as honest as any politico.
“Morning, Stevie… the old bear up yet?”
Gramp came down the stairs just behind that remark. He looked at Uncle Willie as if he were wondering why people ever married. “Yes, I'm up… I don't bed down for the winter until January.”
“Good coffee,” said Uncle Willie.
“Home again?”
“I smashed the Bear Cat”
Gramp looked down at two eggs as if he expected them to pull a knife on him.…
Uncle Willie got up from the table and found Mama in the hall (she had just pulled me out of the dining room for feeding strawberry jam to my pet frog, Nero).
“What shall I do, Sara?” asked Uncle Willie.
Mama held me by one ear, and Nero by one leg. We both stopped wriggling to hear her answer. She said, “You mean there is more to it than just smashing the car?”
“I fear so.”
“Oh, dear,” said Mama, dropping Nero down the heating unit grill set in the floor. (Lucky the heat was off. I got him out three days later wearing a lace shawl knitted for him by friendly spiders.) “Oh, dear, Willie, you are in trouble.”
“Shall I go back and tell him more?”
“Well.…”
“Or shall I get a job on a cattle boat and go to England?” Uncle Willie was always going to get on a cattle boat.
I said, “May I have my ear back?”
Mama let go my ear. “Willie,” she said, “you face this out. You're a grown man.…”
“Of course.”
“Tell him everything.”
“Everything?” said Uncle Willie.
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Uncle Willie, squaring his well-padded shoulders, “thank you, Sara… I can always turn to you as a friend. You're right… I'm a man now.”
“Just tell him everything… one man to another.” I said. “Go in there and pitch, Uncle Willie.”
He nodded, swallowed a sad smile, and went back to the table.
Gramp was about to begin on Peaches Longstreet in Brandy, a dish he tried to have every morning (after the doctor told him to stop having Bourbon with his breakfast).
If you have brandy and some peaches, and care to make the item, here is Gramp's secret. Take a quart of strawberry vinegar, four sticks of cinnamon, two pounds of sugar, two ounces of cleaned cloves. Boil for five minutes, and add ten pounds of peaches—the big yellow ones. Be sure they are peeled with care, but leave the pits in (“The pit,” Gramp always said, “it's the bone the musclemeat of the fruit grows around, and it's full of flavor”).
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