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.”
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?”
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 …
Around noon we stopped for lunch at a battered old house that could have fitted into Goue with the Wind and had a fine lunch that started off badly when the large colored man said, “Today is our chicken day … the specials of the house, yes sur, chicken.”
“No, thank you,” said Mama.
“Fried, stuffed with rice, sliced in wine sauce, chicken potpie with spices and candied crab apple, chicken patties and …”
Gramp said grimly, “The lady said no.”
“The prime delight of our menu, yes Sur, chicken à la King with lender baby peas …”
Gramp rose and said, “NO CHICKEN!”
We had fried catfish, a fine barley soup, shrimp in a red-hot sauce, corn bread, and a side dish of cold roast suckling pig in aspic. Everyone else had thicken in some form or other. Gramp felt fine until he read the newspaper after lunch and saw the old spelling of the family name.
He got even by sending a hundred dollars to the Richmond people to buy a fancy gold frame for General Long-Screet. They may have; the last time I was in Richmond a few years ago, the old boy looked pretty fancy in his frame. But he was still in the hall, not in the inner shrine.