A Confederate General From Big Sur. Richard Brautigan
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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 Brett Harte during that great San Francisco literary renaissance of the 1860s.
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 ⅓ 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 alphabetic 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 major 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.
Headquarters
1
THE OLD HOUSE where I took Lee Mellon to live, provided, in its own strange way, lodging befitting a Confederate general from Big Sur, a general who had just successfully fought a small skirmish in the trees above the Pacific Ocean.
The house was owned by a very nice Chinese dentist, but