The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (10 page)

She paused for a moment and put her pointing finger against the dimple in her cheek. “Now that I think on it,
‘
Prissy
’
fit her better than
‘
Aphrodite
’
. Anyway, she is a genuine Greek. Her
grandfather’s name was
Papadimitropoulos.
She and two of her brothers, Peter and Andrew, shortened it to Papas.
”

“Who could blame the
m?”

“
Another brother,
Harry
,
used Tropolos
. Nicholas
refused to shorten it, so the family gave him the nickname ‘Enchilada’ which
was short for ‘the whole enchila
da’ because the name was so long.
”

“
So Nicholas was the only one with a
nick
name,” I quipped, but she didn’t get it.

“So far as I know.
The
grandfather
came straight from
Athens to
Port Arthur and worked in the refineries until he had enough money to start a restaurant.”

Miss Gladys’ explanations of her casseroles often include more information abou
t
the person who invented them than about the ingredients
. I’ve found that asking questions merely delays the inevitable, so I
usually just
nod and smile.

It turned out that the meat,
starch, veggies, cheese and glue
in this case were
, respectively,
ground beef, rice, grape leaves, feta and Campbell’s Cream of Chicken Soup.

I didn’t know grape leaves were a veggie. The
feta made the dish a bit salty, but it was
otherwise
tasty, and I told her so.
I was thinking
if I dropped the feta, added some chopped jalape
ñ
os and used cilantro instead of parsley, it might be worth making. Casseroles create leftovers, but Tristan will eat anything, so…

“
I see you’
re reading
Ben-Hur
,” she said,
snapping me out of my speculations on casseroles. “My church group studied
that
last year.
What do you think of it?
”

“I haven’t finished it.”

“Then you have a trea
t in
store for you.”

“How so
?
”

She looked up at me with those twinkly blue eyes. “I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

“That’s okay. I
think a summary would help
.” Especially
since I’m not going to read the
thing
,
I thought to myself.

She poured me some sweet tea.

“It’s a story of two
boys
living in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus
, a Jewish one named
Ben-Hur
and
a Roman one named
Messala
. I know this makes me seem simple, but I found it helpful to think of them as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.”

“So it reminded you of Mark Twain?”

“Only the two boys. The writing was much more serious.”

That’s one word for it, I thought.

“
Despite their differe
nces
, they
were
fast friends.
Messala
eventually becomes a bigwig in the Roman army and is sent back to
Jerusalem
to make sure the Jews don’t revolt against Roman rule.
They try to keep politics out of their friendship
, but when Messala asks
Ben-Hur to help
him keep the
Jews in line
, Ben
-Hur says he wants freedom for his people.
Messala trumps up some charge against his former friend and send
s
him off to be one of those
poor souls who is chained to an oar and made to row a Roman warship. Did you ever see the movie?”

“I did
.
”

“
Then you
surely
remember the scene where the ship’s commander unchains Ben-Hur before the big battle.
When the ship is rammed and water floods the compartment where the rowers are, Ben-Hur
is able to escape since he is not chained to the ship.
He sees the commander
drowning because his heavy armor
is pulling him down. But
Ben-Hur [ype0" facesaves him.
I
sn’t that
just about the
most
heartwarming story
you ever heard
?
”

“In what way?”

“Don’t you see? Because the commander saved a life, his is saved in return.”

I wondered how much moral credit someone who chains a
person
deserves for later releasing him, but I kept that question to myself.

10

“You’ve barely touched your margarita.”

“I had two helpings of a dolmades casserole.”

“Miss Gladys?”

“Yeah
. S
he’s going international.”

“And the source of this dish?”

“Prissy Papas.”

She giggled. “That sounds like a name for a
fancy
Mexican potato dish.”

“There were no potatoes in it.”

“Let me guess
what it did have
–
g
round
lamb
,
rice, grape leaves, feta
and r ^ype0"
i
ns.”

Susannah knows Miss Gladys’
cooking almost as well as I do.

“
Close. It didn’t have
rais
ins, and it had ground beef instead of lamb. Which is a good thing because I hate lamb.”

“You’ve never even tasted lamb,” she retorted.

“I’ve never tasted bear either, but I know I hate it.”

“But you like goat.”

“That’s different.”

“The only difference is that you grew up
around
people who eat goat. If you’d grown up in a Basque family like me, you’d like lamb.”

I had to admit she was right.
I’
ve formulated over the years a set of theses
, each of which I call a
Schuze
Anthropological Premise
or SAP, which is also what some people think I am for believing them.
SAP number 1 is that any human being can practice any culture.

C
ulture is not biological. It is learned. The dead guy in
the
cliff dwelling above the Rio Doloroso ate
coyote
and
gophers
. If he had been born near
the Bering Sea, he would have eaten whale and seal.

Susannah
ordered another margarita
. I declined.

“Are you
really
not drinking because
of the casserole or is the real reason that
your new tooth
is
sensitive to the cold?”

“It’s not a new tooth, just a repair to
the
chipped one.
”

“I liked you
r snaggle
tooth
ed
look.
It worked well with the sunburn, the skinned nose and the cast.
”

“Tristan said it fit my pot thief image.”

“Maybe you should have left it that way.”

“Especially since I don’t have the money to pay for it. But I don’t think it would be acceptable for a dental hygi
enist to be seen with a snaggle
toothed man.”

She gave me one of her big rancher-girl smiles. “You finally have a date with Sharice?”

I returned her smile. “This Saturday.”

“That’s great, Hubie. You haven’t had a date since Dolly dumped you.”

“That was your fault, remember? She was jealous of you.”

“No, it was because you stole her dog.”

Ou
r laughing made me feel better.

I took a sip of my margarita, but
it was watered down from
sitting there
so long
.

“The truth is,” I said, suddenly in a serious mood, “It was
neither
you
n
or Geronimo. It was me. I was too dense to realize she was going through menopause. I should have tried harder to be understanding.”

“How do you know she was going through menopause?”

“Tristan told me.”

She looked astonished. “Dolly told Tristan she was going through the change?”

“No
. He
figured it ou
t
when I told him
this morning
about her moodiness and
her
complaining about being hot.
But I told you about her strange behavior months ago
. You
didn’
t get it, and
you’re a woman.”

“I’m not a woman, Hubie. I’m a
neskato
. That’s what my grandfather always called me. It means
‘
maiden
’
. You know – inexperienced.”