On the drive over, while telling Cal who he could
expect to see, I said, “Steve Paulie owns the place, but I
can never remember if he’s my third cousin or a second
cousin once removed.”
Cal was puzzled. “How do you remove a cousin?”
“Removed just means a degree of separation,” I said.
“Look, R.W.’s your first cousin because his dad and
your dad are brothers, okay?”
He nodded.
“Now if R.W. had a child, he would be your first
cousin, once removed. But if he had a child and you
had a child, they would be second cousins. Got it?”
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HARD ROW
“And if they had children, they would be third
cousins?”
“By George, ’e’s got it!” I said with an exaggerated
English accent.
“So what are Mary Pat and Jake to me?”
“Just good friends, I’m afraid, honey.”
No way was I going to try to untangle Kate’s rela-
tionship to her young ward. Enough to know they were
cousins even though Mary Pat now called her Mom.
Just as it was enough to know that the owner of Paulie’s
Barbecue House was related to me through one of
Daddy’s aunts.
Every Wednesday night, friends and relatives gather
there to eat supper and then do a little picking and singing
for an hour or so. It’s very informal. Some Wednesdays,
there aren’t enough to bother. Other times, there’ll be
twelve or fourteen of us. Before I married Dwight, I
would join them at least once a month for some good
fellowshipping as Haywood calls it, but this would be
the first time since New Year’s.
We ordered plates of barbecue—that wonderful east-
ern Carolina smoked pork, coarsely chopped and sea-
soned with vinegar and hot sauce. It’s always served
with coleslaw and spiced apples and a bottomless bas-
ket of crispy hushpuppies, and everything gets washed
down with pitchers of sweet iced tea.
“Want to split a side order of chicken livers?” I asked
Dwight and Cal.
You’d’ve thought I had offered them anchovies the
way they both turned up their noses, but Aunt Sister
was seated at the end of the long table and she called
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MARGARET MARON
down to say, “I could eat one or two if you’re getting
them.”
