“OK, so, military life is not for the foodie, Rob – you might want to rethink going to West Point.”
Nine-year-old Milton Trent had just come from quality eavesdropping on his father, Sgt. Vincent Trent, talking about the things he had eaten during his 20 years of service.
Five-year-old Lil' Robert Ludlow, hearing this advice, would not be dissuaded.
“Naw,” he said. “I gotta go even sooner because, see, they need a general of food to fix this!”
“He ate what?” eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow said when she heard about it from her best friend eleven-year-old Velma Trent.
“Yeah, there's all kinds of bush meat in the world,” Velma said, “and if it is living in or under a bush in the fields of the world, it becomes part of the field rations. Rations from the field and such.”
“That's actually why the Confederacy lost the Civil War,” Eleanor said. “The rations from the field ran out, and General Lee could not watch all of his men starve.”
“Well, I can see that now, because, ain't no way,” Velma said. “Obviously my people needed to be free and you hard-working Ludlows needed to have your slave-owning relatives stop looking down their noses at you, and all that is good, but just imagine. They must have eaten up every rat, every squirrel, and got even past Dad and his French buttered snails.”
“They probably ran out of butter long before all that,” Eleanor said. “My great-great-great-great-great-grand uncle, being a man of taste, probably called it quits right there – who is going to serve the army they love snails with no butter?”
“Robert E. Lee was a lot of things,” Velma said, “but that cruel? Probably not.”
“I mean, there's folks we can ask – hey, Papa!” Eleanor said.
“Yes, Eleanor?” Capt. R.E. Ludlow said.
“You think that our ancestral uncle Robert E. Lee would have served his men snails without butter, or that might be why he surrendered?” Eleanor said.
“What?” Capt. Ludlow said.
“See, my dad was telling my big brother Melvin about eating French buttered snails as part of service one year,” Velma said, “and we figured they must have eaten anything and everything else like the Army of Northern Virginia to get down to the snails, but Eleanor was thinking Gen. Lee drew the line at un-buttered snails and just went on and surrendered.”
Capt. Ludlow took a moment to wrap his mind around this as Mrs. Thalia Ludlow started laughing in the background.
“OK,” he said. “First, buttered snails with garlic are considered a delicacy in parts of France, so Sgt. Trent was actually eating very well on that occasion. Second, that dish with or without the butter was probably not well known in Virginia in 1865, so that wasn't the reason – however, Eleanor and Velma, your knowledge of history is correct in that the lack of sufficient food was a major factor in Gen. Lee's decision. By April 5, the army was digging for roots and tubers and peanuts. No report about snails.”
“I'm glad the snails were safe,” Eleanor said.
“Yeah, because enough really was enough of all that,” Velma said.
“Gen. Lee would have agreed,” Capt. Ludlow said. “Everything has an end, and also everything new has a beginning … a Virginia in which our families can be friends and business partners needed to begin sometime. So it did.”
“You know, your grandfather didn't always believe that,” Velma said to Eleanor later.
“Yeah, there was a bad few weeks there,” Eleanor said. “But he was just so hurt … the way he was raised by his father, how are you supposed to have your parents as Black kids when mine are dead from drugs? Papa was raised as a little racist at first – but then his grandmother took him and he grew up with all kinds of kids too on the mountain. It just took the Lord a little while to just pull him back again from the foolishness – you noticed he never stopped us from getting to know and playing together.”
“No, he didn't,” Velma said. “Good thing he has gotten to the right side of the Civil War again.”
“Yep,” Eleanor said, “because who wants to sign up to keep on losing?”