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by Richard Brautigan
The first time I met Lee Mellon the night went away with every totem drop of the whiskey. When dawn came we were down on the Embarcadero and it was raining. Seagulls started it all, that gray screeching, almost like banners, running with the light. There was a ship going someplace. It was a Norwegian ship.
Perhaps it was going back to Norway, carrying the hides of 163 cable cars, as part of the world commerce deal. Ah, trade: one country exchanging goods with another country, just like in grade school. They traded a rainy spring morning in Oslo for 163 cable car hides from San Francisco.
Lee Mellon looked at the sky. Sometimes when you meet people for the first time, they stare at the sky. He stared for a long time. "What?" I said, because I wanted to be his friend.
"Just seagulls," he said. "That one," and pointed at a seagull, but I couldn't tell which one it was for there were many, summoning their voices to the dawn. Then he said nothing for a while.
Yes, one could think of seagulls. We were awfully tired, hung over and still drunk. One could think of seagulls. It's really a very simple thing to do … seagulls: past, present and future passing almost like drums to the sky.
We stopped at a little café and got some coffee. The coffee was brought to us by the world's ugliest waitress. I gave her an imaginary name: Thelma. I do things like that.
My name is Jesse. Any attempt to describe her would be against my better judgment, but in her own way she seemed to belong in that café with steam rising like light out of our coffee.
Helen of Troy would have looked out of place. "What's Helen of Troy doing in here?" some longshoreman would have asked. He wouldn't have understood. So Thelma it was for the likes of us.
Lee Mellon told me that he was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and grew up in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina. "Near Asheville," he said. "That's Thomas Wolfe country."
"Yeah," I said.
Lee Mellon didn't have any Southern accent. "You don't have much of a Southern accent," I said.
"That's right, Jesse. I read a lot of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant when I was a kid," Lee Mellon said.
I guess in some strange way that was supposed to get rid of a Southern accent. Lee Mellon thought so, anyway. I couldn't argue because I had never tried a Southern accent against the German philosophers.
"When I was sixteen years old I stole into classes at the University of Chicago and lived with two highly cultured young Negro ladies who were freshmen," Lee Mellon said. "We all slept in the same bed together. It helped me get rid of my Southern accent."
"Sounds like it might do the trick," I said, not knowing exactly what I was saying.
Thelma, the world's ugliest waitress, came over and asked us if we wanted some breakfast. The hotcakes were good and the bacon and eggs were good and would fill you up. "Hit the spot," Thelma said.
I had the hotcakes and Lee Mellon had the hotcakes and the bacon and eggs and some more hotcakes. He did not pay any attention to Thelma and continued to talk about the South.
He told me that he had lived on a farm near Spotsylvania, Virginia, and had spent a lot of time as a child going over the places where the Battle of the Wilderness had been fought.
"My great grandfather fought there," he said. "He was a general. A Confederate general and a damn good one, too. I was raised on stories of General Augustus Mellon, CSA. He died in 1910. The same year Mark Twain died. That was the year of Halley's Comet. He was a general. Have you ever heard of General Augustus Mellon?"
"No, but that's really something," I said. "A Confederate general … gee."
"Yeah, we Mellons have always been very proud of General Augustus Mellon. There's a statue of him some place, but we don't know where it is.
"My Uncle Benjamin spent two years trying to find the statue. He traveled all over the South in an old truck and slept in the back. That statue is probably in some park covered with vines. They don't pay enough respect to our honored dead. Our great heroes."
Our plates were empty now like orders for a battle not yet conceived, in a war not yet invented. I said farewell to the world's ugliest waitress, but Lee Mellon insisted on paying the check. He took a good look at Thelma.
Perhaps he was seeing her for the first time, and as I remember, he hadn't said anything about her while she was bringing the coffee and breakfast to us.
"I'll give you a dollar for a kiss," Lee Mellon said while she was giving him the change for ten dollars of the rich queer's rock-on-the-head money.
"Sure," she said, without smiling or being embarrassed or acting out of the way or anything. It was just as if the Dollar Lee Mellon Kissing Business were an integral part of her job.
Lee Mellon gave her a great big kiss. Neither one of them cracked, opened or celebrated a smile. He did not show in any manner that he was joking. I went along with him. The subject was never brought up by either one of us, so it almost stays there.
As we walked along the Embarcadero the sun came out like memory and began to recall the rain back to the sky and Lee Mellon said, "I know where we can get four pounds of muscatel for one dollar and fifteen cents."
We went there. It was an old Italian wineshop on Powell Street, just barely open. There was a row of wine barrels against the wall. The center of the shop led back into darkness. I believe the darkness came off the wine barrels smelling of Chianti, zinfandel and Burgundy.
"A half gallon of muscatel," Lee Mellon said.
The old man who ran the shop got the wine off a shelf behind him. He wiped some imaginary dust off the bottle. Like a strange plumber he was used to selling wine.
We left with the muscatel and went up to the Ina Coolbrith Park on Vallejo Street. She was a poet contemporary of Mark Twain? and Bret Harte during that great San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1860's.
Then Ina Coolbrith? was an Oakland librarian for thirty-two years and first delivered books into the hands of the child Jack London. She was born in 1841 and died in 1928: "Loved Laurel-Crowned Poet of California," and she was the same woman whose husband took a shot at her with a rifle in 1861. He missed.
"Here's to General Augustus Mellon, Flower of Southern Chivalry and Lion of the Battlefield!" Lee Mellon said, taking the cap off four pounds of muscatel.
We drank the four pounds of muscatel in the Ina Coolbrith Park, looking down Vallejo Street to San Francisco Bay and how the sunny morning was upon it and a barge of railroad cars going across to Marin County.
"What a warrior," Lee Mellon said, putting the last 1/3 ounce of muscatel, "the corner," in his mouth.
Having a slight interest in the Civil War and motivated by my new companion, I said, "I know a book that has all the Confederate generals in it. All 425 of them," I said. "It's down at the library. Let's go down and see what General Augustus Mellon pulled off in the war."
"Great idea, Jesse," Lee Mellon said. "He was my great grandfather. I want to know all about him. He was a Lion of the Battlefield. General Augustus Mellon! Hurray for the heroic deeds he performed in the War between the States! Hurray! Hurray! Hurray! HURRAY!"
Figure two pounds of muscatel apiece at twenty per cent alcohol: forty proof. We were still very rocky from a night of whiskey drinking. That's two pounds of muscatel multiplied, squared and envisioned. This can all be worked out with computers.
The librarian looked at us when we came into the library and groped a volume off a shelf: Generals in Gray by Ezra J. Warner. The biographies of the 425 generals were in alphabetical order and we turned to where General Augustus Mellon would be. The librarian was debating whether or not to call the police.
We found General Samuel Bell Maxey on the left flank and his story went something like this: Samuel Bell Maxey was born at Tompkinsville, Kentucky, March 30, 1825. He was graduated from West Point in the class of 1846, and was brevetted for gallantry in the war with Mexico. In 1849 he resigned his commission to study law. In 1857 he and his father, who was also an attorney, moved to Texas, where they practiced in partnership until the outbreak of the Civil War. Resigning a seat in the Texas senate, the younger Maxey organized the 9th Texas Infantry, and with rank of colonel joined the forces of General Albert Sidney Johnston in Kentucky. He was promoted brigadier general to rank from March 4, 1862. He served in East Tennessee, at Port Hudson, and in the Vicksburg campaign, under General J. E. Johnston. In December 1863 Maxey was placed in command of Indian Territory, and for his effective reorganization of the troops there, with which he participated in the Red River campaign, he was assigned to duty as a jor general by General Kirby Smith on April 18, 1864. He was not, however, subsequently appointed to that rank by the President. After the war General Maxey resumed the practice of law in Paris, Texas, and in 1873 declined appointment to the state bench. Two years later he was elected to the United States Senate, where he served two terms, being defeated for re-election in 1887. He died at Eureka Springs, Arkansas, August 16, 1895, and is buried in Paris, Texas.
And on the right flank we found General Hugh Weedon Mercer and his story went something like this: Hugh Weedon Mercer, a grandson of the Revolutionary General Hugh Mercer, was born at "The Sentry Box," Fredericksburg, Virginia, on November 27, 1808. He was graduated third in the class of 1828 at West Point, and was stationed for some time in Savannah, Georgia, where he married into a local family. He resigned his commission on April 30, 1835 and settled in Savannah. From 1841 until the outbreak of the Civil War he was cashier of the Planters' Bank there. Upon the secession of Georgia, Mercer entered Confederate service as colonel of the 1st Georgia Volunteers. He was promoted brigadier general on October 29, 1861. During the greater part of the war, with a brigade of three Georgia regiments, General Mercer commanded at Savannah, but he and his brigade took part in the Atlanta campaign of 1864, first in W. H. T. Walker's division and then in Cleburne's. On account of poor health he accompanied General Hardee to Savannah after the battle of Jonesboro, and saw no further field duty. Paroled at Macon, Georgia, May 13, 1865, General Mercer returned to banking in Savannah the following year. He moved to Baltimore in 1869, where he spent three years as a commission merchant. His health further declined, and he spent the last five years of his life in Baden-Baden, Germany. He died there on June 9, 1877. His remains were returned to Savannah for burial in Bonaventure Cemetery.
But in the center of the line there was no General Augustus Mellon. There had obviously been a retreat during the night. Lee Mellon was crushed. The librarian was staring intently at us. Her eyes seemed to have grown a pair of glasses.
"It can't be," Lee Mellon said. "It just can't be."
"Maybe he was a colonel," I said. "There were a lot of Southern colonels. Being a colonel was a good thing. You know, Southern colonels and all. Colonel Something Fried Chicken." I was trying to make it easier for him. It's quite a thing to lose a Confederate general and gain a colonel instead.
Perhaps even a major or a lieutenant. Of course I didn't say anything about the major or lieutenant business to him. That probably would have made him start crying. The librarian was looking at us.
"He fought in the Battle of the Wilderness. He was just great," Lee Mellon said. "He cut the head off a Yankee captain with one whack."
"That's quite something," I said. "They probably just overlooked him. A mistake was made. Some records were burned or something happened. There was a lot of confusion. That's probably it."
"You bet," Lee Mellon said. "I know there was a Confederate general in my family. There had to be a Mellon general fighting for his country … the beloved South."
"You bet," I said.
The librarian was beginning to pick up the telephone.
"Let's go," I said.
"OK," Lee Mellon said. "You believe there was a Confederate general in my family? Promise me you do. There was a Confederate general in my family!"
"I promise," I said.
I could read the lips of the librarian. She was saying Hello, police? Vaudeville, it was.
We stepped outside rather hurriedly and down the street to anonymous sanctuary among the buildings of San Francisco.
"Promise me till your dying day, you'll believe that a Mellon was a Confederate general. It's the truth. That God-damn book lies! There was a Confederate general in my family!"
"I promise," I said and it was a promise that I kept.
Richard Brautigan
A Confederate General from Big Sur
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