Mama was getting a little wind-blown and a little weather-stained. In 1919 the modern comfort station had not yet reached the peak of perfection, and Mama had to recover herself in shabby hotels, inns only barely out of Dickens, and convened stables that were already turning cobbler's benches, hog buckets, wagon wheels, and the oil lamps of the hired hand into genuine rate collector's items of Early Americana.
Gramp was driving our Model T as we crossed into Virginia, and the ted mud roads bumped us and the small dusts of small towns covered us. His old journals read: Alexandria, Charlottesville, Roanoke, and the James River.
It was warm, it was darn sunny, and Gramp held the steering wheel like death's other brother and pulled the gas lever down (no gas pedal in those days) until we hit a neck-breaking thirty miles an hour. Suddenly there was a blur of color in front of us, then a scattering of feathers, a loud, lamenting crow of despair, and Gramp pulled up as a rooster staggered into a mad little dance and fell over on his back, his tattered stern feathers at half mast.
Gramp walked over and picked the creature up by its neck and looked it over in admiration. “Two of these used to lick a mule in the old days.”
“Now, Gramp,” said Mama, “put it down before you start looking for a bullfight.”
Gramp said, “Not in Virginia.”
“Can I have the feathers for an Indian hat?” I asked.
A large man with a shotgun appeared from behind some apple trees and nodded politely to Gramp. “Passin' through?”
“Yes,” said Gramp. “this hen just committed suicide.”
“Nothin' to live for,” said the fat man. “Ain't a hen. it's, I rooster.”
“Is it?”
“Ought to know.” said the man. “Raised im from a aig.”
“A what?”
“Aig. Ham and aigs. Bacon and aigs. What do you think that critter is worth?”
“No idea,” said Gramp, lowering his victim and taking out his cigar case and offering one to the fat man.
“Aigs from his harem, why I got people standing in line to buy.”
I looked at Gramp and looked at the shotgun, and somehow that scene has never left me. I remember every shadow, every sun heated detail, Mama stiff in the car. Gramp lighting the two cigars, the late departed harem-owner resting on the ground. I even remember the deep fat-backed voice of the shotgun owner as he pulled his cigar alive.
“Wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that rooster.”
Gramp said sternly, “Wouldn't give you a hundred, Wouldn't give you ten dollars. Give you five. In gold.”
The fat man looked at his smoldering cigar end and said. “Pretty good ropes you smoke, mister. Five it is and two more cigars … damn good cheroots.”
The gold changed hands. In those days there was still gold coin in the nation, and Gramp wore a wide money belt with lots of big old-fashioned green bills and some clinking gold coins around his stomach.
The man with the shotgun said. “I'll give him a nice burial. Only futin', he was a real Don Jewwanee.”
Gramp picked up the victim and shook his head. “I'll just take my bird along with me. Broke his neck banging into the front end of the car. A good clean way to go. No suffering.”
The fat man unloaded his shotgun and pushed his two extra cigars into the barrels. “It's your rooster, mister. Nice to have met up with you.”
He walked off among the apple trees, singing “The Bonnie Blue Flag.” Mama said in her crisp small voice, used only at those moments when life became much too big for her, “I am not traveling with that cadaver.”
“Now, Sari,” said Gramp, slinging the body on board. “It's a long way to Richmond yet, and we'll have to camp out soon. I'm going to show you how to cook a hen army style, in the field, better than anything they ever had at Delmonico's or Rector's.”
“Camp out?”
“Nothing between us and Richmond but Yankee-haters, squatters, and empty fields. Let's go.”
We got Emma the car going and we drove along beside the tall shadows of afternoon, Mama silting grimly in the back seat, not moving or looking at the brightly colored little body on the floor boards. Gramp and I looked at the road ahead, not wanting to hit any of the straying cows, for as Gramp explained. “I don't want to pay for any Holstein or Jersey. Besides, I can't butcher a whole cow, haven't the saws and knives and chopping blocks.”
Mama got more wind-blown than ever and said she was going to cat if Gramp didn't change the subject. Around dusk we came to a huge field with forests on either side, and Gramp pulled Emma up beside a small swift stream and we made camp for the night. The three of us put up a one-man top. Mama would sleep in the back seat—it was as big, almost, as a compartment on the Super Chief today— and Gramp and I put up what was known as a pup tent. “Called a pup tent, Stevie.” he told me, “because no self-respecting pup would sleep in it, only damn fool humans.”
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