This hit Gramp hard. Mama's answer was repealed for years in the family, and Gramp never liked to hear it. He didn't now. “It's true, Sari, you show mc a man who boasts of being a great lover. and I'll show you a clown who's no real gourmet. He spends so …”
“Little pitchers,” said Mama, her code word for me. meaning. I used to think, that it embarrassed her to hear how much I knew about life.
Gramp kicked over the pot and put out the fire. Mama in her best cutting voice said, “Since you're such a gourmet. Gramp, I suppose this means all that talk of your lady friends isn't true?”
Mama could be very cruel when she was unhappy, cold, hungry, and tired. Gramp said, “Oh, go to bed.”
Years later in Madrid, when I had cocido madrileño, I could see how good it could be and how right Gramp was in trying to make it. But that cold, that hungry night on a lonely road was rather a bad time for us all. We almost turned back, but Mama was game at dawn and happy at noon when we got to Richmond and stayed at the Orwells'.
The Orwells were old friends of Gramp's. Old man Orwell, now “passed over,” as Mrs. Orwell said, had built railroads with Gramp. Young Mr. Or-well lived, Gramp said, in endowed idleness. but lunch was very, very good at their place. The usual fried ham and sweet potatoes and good apple pie and an okra soup. Gramp said something about “the South showing no imagination in its cooking, the same old ham and …” at which point he said “Ouch” because Mama on her second bite of pie bad kicked him under the table. She was very happy with the same old Southern cooking.
The Orwells invited us to a big party at the Confederate Hall that evening, the shrine where the battle flags and paintings of the great generals of the Lost Guise were hung. Gramp said the losers “lived high off the hog” and said he didn't mind going to see the foe in his glory. Mrs. Orwell, whose grand-father had made a fortune carpetbagging and stealing cotton to ship to Europe, said Gramp must be joking. The South was pretty sacred. Gramp said he knew the South had been brave in the War, he meant no offense to his noble foes, it was just that a lot of people who hadn't fought were getting a lot of fun out of it.
Mama finished her coffee, yawned, smiled, and said she was going to take a hot bath. Mrs. Orwell said Mama was very brave to travel so, and Mama said her great-great-grandmother had helped settle Kentucky with Daniel Boone Gramp looked at her, knowing Mama had made that up, but Mama just stuck out an inch of pink tongue at him and Gramp sighed and offered his cigar case around. Mama was going to be trouble before the trip was over. Mama was not forgetting that tough lover boy, the rooster in the pot. Mama never was the forgiving kind, anyway. She used to say, “I'm darn human, all of me.”
The Hall was a blaze of special lights, and a lot of the best people and some of the oldest were there. Mr. Orwell introduced Gramp as “a member of the well-known Longstreet family of New Orleans.” Gramp wanted to protest, but Mama gave him that look and he just snorted, “Damn hill-billy relative, that's all.”
A reporter came over and said to Gramp, “The inner shrine has paintings of Lee and all his staff. Genuine oil paintings.”
Gramp said, “Standard oil paintings.”
The reporter said, “All but General James Longstreet; he's hung in the hall.”
Gramp snorted, “What! Damn it, my father and his father were second cousins!”
Mama said, “Now Gramp, that's their problem.”
The reporter said, “You sec, the General took a job with the Union forces after the war. He became a postmaster in the U.S.A. Post Office.”
“An outrage,” said Gramp. “hanging a Longstreet in the hall. Who is the hanging committee here? A good name for them, ”
The reporter, smelling a Story, took Gramp around to meet some very nice people, , and after awhile someone got up and made a speech. Gramp wanted to talk, too, and started up from his chair, but Mama gave him the elbow, politely, while listening.
It was a bad evening for the old man, and when we got back to the Orwells', I went up to his room to tuck him in; he was lying there looking at the ceiling.
“There is fame for you, Stevie, hung in the lull with the ok! overshoes and the topcoats. And why? Because he had to earn a dollar and went to work for it. Old Pete Longestreet, we used to call him, biggest heard you ever saw and a pretty good general, and this is his reward. It makes you think. Stevie; I'm Certainly glad I was never anything higher than a major.”
“It worries you. Gramp?”
“It certainly docs.”
“Why?”
But by that time he was snoring lightly, and I let him sleep. There was an item in the paper the next day that “the Martin Orwells were entertaining Major Longstrasse and his daughter-in-law and her son, the Major having an interesting war record …”
Mama manage to hide it from Gramp and after a breakfast of bacon, steaks, pickles, fried eggs, and real coffee, we all started off again heading real west now. hunting the big rivers. Mama drove part of the way, and the stray dogs seemed to know that—they were Careful to step aside when they came out to bite our tires …
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