The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

  “This is the best tomato I’ve ever tasted,” I said. “And I’ve pickled the best.”

  They nodded. Not surprised. “Damn straight,” drawled one. “You should taste the summer Mooners, grown out of the ground, not a pot. They’re transcendent.”

  They and the rest of the group studied me avidly as I diced veggies and explained the history of pickling. “You need some bacteria in here,” I said, stirring dried cilantro into a small steel cauldron of potatoes, peppers, celery and oil. “Good bacteria requires friendly surfaces like wood. Some of the best cheese is made in wooden vats that host microbes in the cracks. Good cooking is all about the symbiosis of organisms fighting each other for our taste buds.”

  Sparkle Alvarez, the nursing mom, one of the valley’s fruit experts—blueberries, strawberries, and apples among her orchards—whispered to her husband Jevalt, a botanist from Central America, in Spanish.

  “What do you mean?” Jevalt translated. “She’s practicing her English, but some words are too big.”

  I grinned at her and explained in fluent Spanish, “A kitchen that’s too clean has no soul. No flavor.”

  Her eyes widened. She smiled. For the next five minutes we chattered back and forth like excited fans at a Luis Miguel concert.

  I carried the last pot of potato salad to a walk-in cooler, hoisted it onto a shelf among sides of ham and thawing turkey carcasses, then returned wearily, wiping my bruised hand on the soft linen apron that covered my blouse and slacks. I wiggled my bare toes on the cold stone floor. My soggy pumps lay in a corner beneath a metal prep counter.

  Everyone carried stoneware bowls of the finished potato salad in their hands, and we traded gratitudes via the bon appetit of kissed fingers to pursed lips. The Tomato Moon sisters pulled me behind them down a tunnel-hallway toward the applause and music of a karaoke machine.

  It lived in what Pug called the Wolf’s Den—a cross between a sports bar, a man cave, a frat-house TV room, and a co-op, family-friendly pajama party. There were dozing dogs, sly cats, a few pet raccoons, small monkeys wearing sweaters, and sleeping children among the sprawled audience for karaoke on a small stage in one corner. Another gaggle gathered near flatscreens showing Christmas concerts, ESPN highlights of fall football games, and A Christmas Story.

  Ralphie’s dreams of gaming Santa for a BB gun was a hit.

  There were couches, small tables, recliners and other assorted seating arrangements cobbled from a catch-all collection of furniture. There were a good hundred people in the Den, most of them looking mellow—and when the Moon sisters shoved me out of the hallway the karaoke machine went silent. Eyes turned toward me. I saw a lot of military patches on rugged jackets, a lot of holstered pistols and sheathed hunting knives, and a lot of damp boots drying next to thickly socked feet.

  The men were pretty tough-looking, too.

  “Greta Garbo MacBride,” one of the Moons announced.

  Silence. My welcome needed sub-titles.

  Behind an ornate, marble-topped bar sat some rough biker types in do-rags and cracked leather lounged on tall stools, and a blond woman in a denim jumper over black leggings mixed drinks and guided tall glasses under beer taps. On the wall behind her was a large framed poster with Little Finn River Whiskey in scrolling letters. On one side of it was a sepia photo of a vintage bottle with the caption 1915’s Best beneath it; on the other half of the poster was a modern color photo of an updated whiskey bottle with 2012 beneath it.

  Tradition and Pride Endure, a slogan said.

  I called out, “Who wants potato salad and pre-Christmas turkey sandwiches on whole wheat with fresh dill relish and sliced mushrooms drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette? Also, pickle-flavored martinis and a blueberry reduction on baked brie with a side of sugar cookies?”

  After a startled moment, smiles broke out and hands went up.

  One of the do-rags rose like a bandana-wearing African lion, carrying the fresh double of Little Finn whiskey he’d just been handed by Blond Tats. He offered it to me, and smiled. “The nectar of the mountain gods,” he said in a Boston accent straight out of Harvard. “Welcome, a great honor. A MacBride has come home.”

  Jay

  A song for Gabby

  DAWN WAS JUST three hours away. Christmas Eve was only a few hours old, and the Cavern couldn’t shield us from the pit-of-the night mood, emptiness and regrets. The long day had scraped ruts in my throat. My hands hurt, and my attitude was testy; I felt a vise squeezing my temples.

  “She’s got them eating out of her hand,” Pug told me. “And yeah, that’s not a metaphor. She’s feeding fifty late-nighters like they’re baby birds she rescued out of a nest, and they’re chirping and asking for more. You know the kind of after-midnight crowd that hangs out at the Den. The ones who’ve got no family to go home to and too many nightmares to fall asleep. And when the holidays come around their shit is stirred up, times ten. She’s their holiday mama bird. It’s the MacBride effect.”

  “Food is comfort,” I said. “Gabs and her brother and sister understand that. It’s that simple.”

  “Huh,” she said, as we walked out of the cold into the warmly-lit alcoves of the Den.

  Laughter and applause accompannied a group sing-along of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus as Pug and I rounded a bend in the wall lined with deerskins, old photos of the Little Finn Distillery and the Woolen Mill.

  “Holy sing-along, Batman. She’s Lawrence Welk without the bubble machine.”

  Up on the small stage, barefoot, with a mustard-smeared apron over her bedraggled slacks and blouse, her towering height and extraordinary hair filling all the available show space, Gabs waved a glass of whiskey with one hand and led the chorus with a microphone in the other.

  Platters of sandwich crumbs and nearly empty stainless serving bowls smeared with the residue of potato salad littered the bar top. Open jars of pickles sat on every mismatched table.

  Singing in loud unison, the crowd chorused, Oh, little town of Teaaaaaarrrrmannn . . .

  “They’re going to wake up in the daylight and hold their heads and regret this,” Pug shouted in my ear.

  No, they won’t, I thought. They’ll be in awe of the way Gabs soothed their hunger.

  As the last beats of the song faded from the big amps beside each end of the stage, Gabs took a long swallow of Little Finn whiskey and, as if drugged by the essence of her ancestors, found me instantly. She stiffened, shoulders back, chin up. She pointed at me in sly challenge. “That man, right there, can sing like a baritone angel.” Everyone turned to stare.

  She remembers. I nodded, bowing a little.

  Her eyes flared. “He has a great singing voice,” she continued.

  “Sing, Wakefield,” someone yelled. People began to clap in rhythm. “Sing, sing, sing.”

  “You don’t have to cave in,” Pug said. “I’ll break out the tequila and distract them.”

  “I can handle it.” I wound my way through the assorted chairs and mismatched tables, the recliners filled with snuggling couples, the dogs curled up by their humans’ feet on sheepskin pads, the aura of communal energy, the spirit of the tribe and the cave. Fire crackled on a hearth, and the scent of the stone and the earth reminded us all of this was real, and eternal, and essential.

  The welcome and warning in Gabs’s deep green MacBride eyes, tearing me apart with the challenge of our history and the promise of what we still might become.

  Gabby

  The song of our tragic people

  JAY STILL MOVED like a quarterback. Graceful and long-legged, the V of his thickening torso riding the powerful gears of his thighs. A long-tailed gray flannel shirt swept around his broad chest and ended just above the bulge in his cargo pants. He clamped his other hand around my wrist. “I need an assistant,” he said into the mic, his deep voice resonating off the stone walls.
“Stay put.” He tugged me closer to him.

  “Stay, stay, stay,” the crowd chanted.

  The real me is dangerous, he’d said.

  “What’ll ya sing?” asked Toby, the balding karaoke master who ran the music from a console in one corner. Toby peered at Jay over bifocals with sparkling holiday frames. Elton John in a dive bar. Atop his control panel sat a tabby tomcat with frayed ears, watching us through slitted green eyes.

  Jay leaned close to him, whispering. I tugged. He tugged back.

  Stay, Stay, Stay, the crowd kept chanting.

  Toby tapped a keyboard.

  The opening strains of Someday, from West Side Story, soared from the speakers. Violins and cellos, a low wail of melancholy passion.

  I froze. My God. Jay pulled me closer, facing him, and raised the mic to his lips. There’s a place for us. A time and place for us . . .

  The chanting stopped as suddenly as it began. He had a deep, wonderful voice, a little Sinatra, a little Southern—Harry Connick, Jr., resonant and soulful. He had sung the same song to me in bed, years ago, in Malibu.

  At the end I’d cloned my body to his, crying and almost begging him to hold me, to love me, to take me again. And he had. It had been the most amazing night of my life.

  His voice filled me, sank my body into an echo chamber of hot memories, made me remember how much I had loved him.

  And how much I always would.

  When the song ended there was nothing but foreplay-worthy silence in the crowd. His eyes asked me to forgive him. I tilted my head toward his, hot and teary. Come to bed, just come to bed with me and don’t risk saying another word, I started to whisper.

  “Tell her that E.W. says he’ll trade you the mining rights for Free Wheeler if you hand over Dustin and the two younger ones,” Denoto said loudly. She stood at the back of the room, black hair tangled around her face, her hands clenched by the sides of her camo pants. “Tell her you told him you accepted that offer.”

  Suspicion replaced the audience’s liquor-lubed awe.

  And mine. Jay’s eyes went dark.

  “It’s true,” I said under my breath.

  “There are circumstances,” he said grimly.

  I pulled away from him.

  He let me go.

  Gabby

  Marsupials in the morning light

  I WOKE IN THE snow-cleaned morning light of the Cavern’s guest rooms, with the copy of Caillin MacBride’s journal Anna had loaned me still open on my soft wool blankets. Sunlight filtered dimly through a lightly-curtained window overlooking the valley from my cozy, beehive-like compartment in the caves, where Pug had guided me after the debacle in the pub. She sympathetically handed me a tall glass of Little Finn whiskey and a bag of Cheetos. Both were empty, now. I had cried and read and finally gone to sleep at dawn.

  I jerked upright in bed. A small boy sat beside a dog-sized kangaroo in one corner of the small room. The light softly outlined the child and the . . . the giant rat with rabbit haunches, who had, somehow, hopped into my room.

  “Hey. Don’t be scared, Gabby. I’m just a kid. And this is Wally B. He’s a wallaby. Like a little kangaroo. I raised him. He eats grass and turnip greens and hay. Me and Wally B have come here to ask you to help my daddy. Because everyone says you’re magic. Like a witch. You have to help him, or else he might die.”

  Wallaby. There was a wallaby in my room. A large marsupial whose kin originated on the continent of Australia. In essence, a giant Aussie possum. He was nibbling several Cheetos I’d dropped on the stone floor.

  The small boy sitting patiently beside him, on a utilitarian wooden chair with a woven seat, had skin the rich color of old oak furniture, with black, gnarled hair and somber eyes as blue as Paul Newman’s. He wore a heavy coat over a Despicable Me sweatshirt and baggy jeans ending in loosely laced high-topped sneakers. Wally B lifted a Cheeto to his kangaroo-ish face with delicate paws or feet or whatever you called a Wallaby’s food-grabber. He was decked out for Christmas. He wore a sparkly, red-and-green knitted scarf around his neck.

  I hugged a barrier of wool blanket to my chest. I had gone to bed fully dressed, drunk and crying. Not a role model for a child. Even a precocious child, with a totem Aussie possum. I had a sad hankering for children of my own. Mine and Jay’s. God, forgive me. “Hi. How did you get in?”

  “I knocked. And then I rattled the door knob. You forgot to turn the lock. Anyhow, nobody locks many doors around here.”

  “Who’s your dad?”

  “Sergeant Vance.” He stood and saluted. His eyes were tragic.

  Timor Vance. Since Gus had spent all of his adult life in the army, I had a deep affinity for soldiers. I leaned forward. “At ease.”

  He lowered his saluting hand. “He hears things and sees things in his head. He jumps when the popcorn pops on the campfire. He gets confused sometimes. He’s got medals for saving people. But they don’t count, not now.”

  “Where’s your mom, sweetie?”

  He shook his head. “She left when I was just a baby. When Daddy came home from Afghanistan. She’s white. Like you.”

  “What kind of help do you think your daddy needs the most?”

  “Can you make him remember how to be happy? Everybody says you know what makes people happy when they eat.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alamonte Louis Worthington Vance.”

  “What name do you like to be called?”

  “Worthy. That’s what Dad calls me.”

  My heart broke. “Where is he, Worthy?”

  “He’s in the woods talking to God or angels or something. Will you come visit him?”

  “Yes. But let me ask some of the people who know him to come with us—”

  “No! He sent everybody away. He’s in hiding.”

  Oh my god. “All right, let’s go see what we can do for him.”

  I’m a MacBride. These people are my people. They need me.

  I pushed the blankets back and swung my feet to the cool stone floor. As if by magic, during the night my suitcase had appeared on a small dresser nearby. I’d change into something more practical than black city pants and a tear-and-Cheeto-stained white blouse. I grabbed Anna Shepherd’s intricate lace shawl off my pillow. Apparently, I’d slept with my face burrowed into its soft, creamy silk.

  I wrapped myself in the past. It was marginally less painful than my present.

  Jay

  An uneasy night becomes a tense morning

  “WAKE UP, WAKEFIELD, you ugly bastard.”

  Must be dreaming that voice. Sounded like Will’s drawl, but the endearment was way too endearing by Will’s public standards.

  I rolled over onto one shoulder and ignored him. Frost on my hair, campfire smoke in my nose, a snow-sprinkled sleeping bag, my mind on Gabby. I’d spent the post-singing hours drinking, walking and not caring where I slept.

  Finally, Santa Joe tracked me to the shadows of the distillery building, on a bluff near the river, and set me up for what was left of the night. I dimly recalled sitting beside a fire with him, smoking a joint the size of my thumb, while Joe braised marshmallows and link sausages on the prongs of a pitchfork he’d “borrowed” from the distillery’s loading dock. We had enjoyed music from a boom box linked to his iPad collection of the entire works of the Grateful Dead, Bob Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Bob Hope radio routines. Sometime around dawn I guided Santa Joe into his sleeping bag as he slurred the theme song from Hope/Crosby’s The Road to Morocco. Then I’d crawled into my own bag.

  Still thinking of Gabby and the look in her eyes. The disappointment hurt more than the resignation that followed. She kept expecting, hoping for, better. I could not explain my plan in front of the crowd, not with Denoto there, and not with the chance of other spies in the group. I did have a p
lan, though.

  Cold water hit my face.

  “Get up,” Will said. “Your woman’s missing.”

  Gabby

  Into the kingdom of Gallaghers

  I WAS MUD BOGGING with a ten-year-old and a wallaby at eight A.M. on Christmas Eve.

  “Hold on!” Worthy yelled like a stunt-driving pro, steering a four-wheeled all-terrain buggy through the Little Finn’s shallows. Water, river sand and pebbles spewed up on both sides. The sun was pink-gold and bright in a blue sky. The mountains, rising so close around me, were snow sculptures of misty clouds and glittering shadows. Wally B swayed placidly in the small space behind our sun-weathered seats. I held onto the roll bar with one hand and braced the other on a rusty length of rebar bolted to a three-foot section of two-by-four that substituted for a dashboard.

  Worthy calmly gripped the fat leather donut of a small steering wheel—which he was barely tall enough to see past. A fourth-grade Anakin Skywalker. “Splash,” he warned, as a wave of icy river water sprayed us. Wally B ducked his head. So did I.

  Then, thankfully, we were done. We climbed a sandy embankment and headed for a narrow dirt lane, surrounded by hundreds of sheep and their friends—dozens of white-tailed deer, several buffalo, multiple llamas, alpacas and burros, and about fifty ostriches.

  Ostriches. Most were nestled on the snowy ground in what appeared to be large divots they’d scratched out with their pronged feet. Their dark eyes and periscope-necked scrutiny followed us as we rumbled past. I resisted the urge to wave.

  We roared upward into the ridges. The valley was a giant bowl with a wide bottom and complex, stair-stepping sides; entire ecosystems could live on those ridges like separate kingdoms. We’d left the Tearmann ridges for the unknown wilderness of this one. “Do these hills have any special names?” I yelled, rocking and holding on.

  “They’re the Haints,” he shouted, shifting expertly as we climbed an offshoot of the trail through forested hummocks and deepening forest. “There’s all sorts of murdered ghosts in them! But they’re friendly to everybody except Wakefields!”

  My God. Even the children know the stories.