Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

We were using the old blue china and the stainless steel cutlety, with place mats on the big oval table and odd-sized jelly glasses for the wine. The good stuff was all packed and stored, and the Salvation Army was due the next day for the leftovers. My mother called this last dinner a picnic, but she didn't wear her overalls to it. She had on the blue hostess gown with the purple flowers.

Dad looked four sizes smaller in his newly delivered summer uniform, and the tight stock collar was giving him trouble. He kept swallowing and twisting his neck. The two and a half stripes looked good, though; they made a nice contrast with Jimbob Buel's civilian seersucker. He was holding a glass of my father's Tavel rose', looking at the candlelight through the wine, the perfect Virginia connoisseur. He was probably thinking a seventeen-year-old snot like me was too young to know its virtues.

Well, I do know its virtues, Jimbob boy. Paul and I knocked off a bottle of it just last week, warm, a refined accompaniment to cornbread and beef cracklins.

Courtney Ann Conway squeezed my leg under the table. "Ah bet you'll be sorry, leavin' Mobile with all the pawties and all comin' up." I didn't answer right away. I was figuring how to get Jimbob into the Bankhead Tunnel, and pump a little mustard gas in there. If I could block the exits, and use two pumps, maybe....

"Josh, are you listenin' to me?"

"I'm sorry, Corky. I know I'll miss a lot of parties, but I really have to leave town. You know: the war and everything."

"You're such a brave and manly chap," said Jimbob. "I think it's charming of you to defend your country off there inUtah, or Iowa, or wherever it is."

"Mr. Buel, I forgot you were wearing khaki. The candlelight makes your clothes look more like seersucker."

"Now, Joshua," said Mother, very sharp and offended. "That is enough of that. Quite enough. You've been terribly rude this evening. Mr. Buel's asthma is well-known."

"Sorry again," I said. "Sorry all around." Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

"Josh," said my father, "have some more ham-with-CocaCola-sauce, Probably the last time you'll have it for the duration." He picked up a thick slice of the nasty stuff with the serving knife and fork, and I passed my plate. Glup. Good salt-cured Tennessee smoked ham. Perfectly decent Coca-Cola from Atlanta. Put them all together, you've got Secrets from a Southern Kitchen.

Jimbob's helping himself to another glass of wine; I notice he's not eating the ham. Corky's burping, soft and low, an exceltent thing in woman. I suppose the bubbles in the sauce got to her. And Amalie's sitting over there stoking it away, okra and ham on the fork at the same time, all stuck together with grits.

"I think the Navy's so romantic, Mr. Arnold. You look like a regulah ol' salt." Good for you, Cork. Even with your head full of cornpone you always say the right thing. I'll bet old Oscar Wilde is lying there in Paris right now, gnawing on his knuckles, wishing he could have made bright talk like that.

"Miss Courtney's absolutely right, Frank," said Jimbob. "You seem positively encrusted with salt. And to be a Commodore right off the...."Commander."

". . . Commander, pardon me, right off the bat like that, why, the Navy Department must have great faith in your seamanship. My family, of course, were usually Army, not nearly so fashionable."

"I'm considered a fair hand with a Dolphin-class sloop, I admit," Dad said, straightening up and looking a little keener. "It's a shame the Navy isn't using them this war. Last I heard, they'd converted to ironclads throughout."

"And rightly so, I maintain," Amalie said, poking her fork at Dad. She's been concentrating on the grits so hard she hasn't heard anything. Look at her sitting there like a big pale lady bullfrog; that concentration on the grits is paying off in fanny.

"Rightly so what, Amalie?" my father said, genuinely puzzled.

"That about the boats, with the iron on them. Much better. Didn't you say something about putting iron on boats? Well, I think it's a wonderful idea, and I'm only sorry they didn't think of it sooner. Frank, honey, would you pass me another slice of that delicious ham, and maybe a tee-ninecy spoonful of okra? Lord, Ann, I surely wish you'd give me the recipe for that deficious ham. Everytime I have it here I eat more than's good for me. Thank you, Frank. Little more grits? Thank you, honey."

"There's really nothing to it," said Mother. "The trick is, you're supposed to warm the Coca-Cola before you pour it over the ham. Then you just keep on basting. Lacey got it right the first time I showed her how." Yeah, she got it right, and she stiff cries every time she has to pour Coca-Cola over a country ham. You messed up the best cook anybody ever had, and I'm glad she's got a good job at the compass factory. They don't float that old needle in Coca-Cola.

"You do run a superlative kitchen, Miss Ann," Jimbob said. And you get a superlative amount of free victuals over here, too, don't you, Buel boy? When's the last time you missed a meal with us? Was it the time I had the mumps? Must have been. You wouldn't want to catch it and have that patrician Virginia jawline puff up. You wouldn't want somebody to safety-pin your pajama bottoms to the bed. If Grant's artillery had been a little sharper they might have hit your house and killed your grandfather, and stopped the whole useless line of Buels right there. Worst mistake of the war...