Mama refused to pluck the rooster so Gramp built up a nice fire between some stones, got out the big iron pot, heated water, and sculled the rooster in. feathers and all. Then he pulled out the feathers, cleaned the pot, and set more water to boiling. Like a great surgeon performing his favorite operation, he dissected the rooster, inspecting it and its anatomy with professional interest until Mama said, “Gramp, it's not a patient. I'm getting real ill. I don't think I'll eat any of it.”
“Nonsense.” said Gramp, “I'm going to make a boiled soup and dinner. Spanish style. We have any real Spices? Onions, cloves, carrots, cabbage, if we have it, pepper, cinnamon. saffron, add some potatoes, a can of peas, we still have beef left over from last night? No beef, then smoked ham and the rest of the bacon.”
“What are you making?” Mama asked.
“Spanish boiled dinner. Cochin madrileño. Toss all that stuff into the pot. No leeks, have we? Well, we'll do without. They also cut in some blood sausages. Well, we'll use the rest of the frankfurters …”
“Cooking is an art, cooking chicken is an art. In China they make yi mai kai, chicken with nuts and barley. In the East Indies they shred it into ayam abon-abon. With noodles and eggs it's called aki tsuki in Japan, and …”
“The water's boiling, Gramp,” I interrupted.
“The soup, not the water.” He added the sections of rooster and stirred. “As a sambal in the Dutch East Indies, they eat it with spicy red peppers. In Haiti they cook it in a baiter called marinade de poulet; it's not true they leave on the feathers. Now with ham and rice in Equatorial Africa …”
“I feel ill,” said Mama, sitting clown on a large stone.
Gramp said, “You need milk, udder-fresh milk. Stevie, you get the tin bucket and we'll go to the farmhouse up the road and get some milk for Sari. Just keep stirring, Sari, until we get back. Work will take your mind off your illness.”
Mama said, “Are there any bears in these parts?”
“Nope, we ate them all when the Civil War was on. Ate crow. too. Crow isn't bad, tastes like spring fryers if you gut them and put them on a rifle ramrod and … All right, Sari, I'll stop talking.Just stir that boiled dinner.”
Gramp and I went up the road and left Mama weeping and stirring; thinking back, I can see how cruel we were to Mama and how brave she was, but at the time I was only interested in finding our what udder milk was.
The farmer sold us a gallon of milk for a dime and then let me try my hand at milking, but it wasn't a very well-trained hand, and the cow tried to mash in the top of my small bead with a kick. The cow was called Mrs. Davis, and Gramp explained to me on the way back to our camp that Mrs. Davis was much more a Yankee-hater than Jeff Davis, and I looked like innocent Yankee meat to her. I couldn't follow this kind of thinking very well.
Mama was asleep by the fire, wrapped in a blanket, the iron stirring spoon still gripped in her little hands like a weapon …
Gramp said not to wake her and he added a blanket to her shoulders and kissed her cheek, called her a damn brave beautiful woman. We took turns stirring the boiled dinner, and after awhile it began to smell very good. Gramp tasted it and said it was prime, “as prime as 40-rod whisky,” which was the strongest in those days. I guess.
Gramp got out our tin camping plates and ladled up sections of rooster and the boiled dinner, and then he woke Mama. Mama opened her eyes and said, “I dreamed I was dead and was laid out in the big front room at home. It was good to be home, and now you woke me up and we're in the wilderness.”
“Morbid, morbid.” said Gramp, handing her a bowl of food. “Here, Sari, clap yourself around this. Stevie, here's a man's share for you. Let's all stare together. You're in for a treat.”
I took a section of rooster in my mouth and chewed. I chewed a long lime and wondered why I was so tired. I looked at Mama, and she, too, was chewing. Gramp had his head down, then looked up and smiled. “Needs a little more flame.”
Mama said, “All Hell is what it needs,” and began to weep. Gramp said it would be all right, and we got more-wood and tried it again, but the rooster seemed to grow tougher with the heat. After awhile we just sat holding our aching jaws and feeling very hungry now, sipping milk. The pot on the fire bubbled and boiled, and Gramp tried to find some of the rest of the stuff in the pot, but too much boiling had kind of boiled everything out of it. so we drank more milk, getting really hungry.
When it was fully dark and big stars sugared the sky, Gramp said softly, “Let this be a lesson to you, Stevie. That bird spent so much time being in love that it hardened bis fibers toward the better things in life.”
Mama was really angry now. She said, “Like poetry and art?”
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