Pug snatched me by one hand. “You need to rest your teeth! Only an hour until the opening band!”
“Opening band?” I echoed, as she dragged me toward the RV.
“Just a few rockabilly steel guitar tunes to get people ready for a rumble.”
“It’s not a rumble. It’s six minutes of eating pickles.”
“It’s a soulful battle between good and evil! Think big, like these mountains!” She shoved me ahead of her. As we reached the RV I looked back over my shoulder at Jay, who was still deep in conversation with his minions or conscience or inner self. Was I wrong or right about him, or a little of both?
Hard to say which.
Jay
Blood will tell
“THE TIME APPROACHES,” Anna said in her soft Irish accent, “when only blood can speak to blood.” She sat in the center of her SUV’s back seat, wrapped in a thick, silver-gray wool shawl and matching cap. A wisp of her silver hair joined the mix around her forehead, as if she had been born in the wool. An Australian cattle dog sat beside her, regarding me with stony china eyes. On the other side was curled a small, curly-wooled Wensleydale ewe, a runt saved from death in lamb-hood by the valley’s resident veterinarian.
Most of the residents of the Little Finn Valley—three hundred people—crowded the rock ring, enjoying the guitar concert, the New Age rapping of distillery manager Jamal Little Bird, and the belly dancing of one of the Tomato Moon farming sisters. There was drinking, dancing and miniature goats.
The Finnians sprawled on camp stools and lawn chairs, or perched on the boulders with blankets around them and beers in hand, or wandered from Pug’s mobile lunch buffet with paper plates piled with food. Kids and teens circulated like flies around the perimeter. I looked for any sign of Dustin and the silver fairy twins. A small herd of sheep, llamas and Peruvians made their own encampment nearby. It was a multi-species event.
There were plenty of Santa hats, Christmas scarves, and novelty caps with plastic mistletoe attached. The mood was jovial but intense. Up here in Will’s Never Never Land, personal challenges were a way of settling small feuds amicably; a council existed for more cerebral cases, but in the rock ring, the opponents agreed to let fate, luck, skill and more luck decide the judgment. I’d seen ping pong matches here, bloody boxing duels, chess games and fencing bouts. But never a pickle-eating contest, before. And neither, I guessed, had anyone else in the valley.
I watched Anna, vowing quietly to learn more about her. She said it was important to understand all the intricate biological connections between our old families. I was intrigued by her conviction that a great-granddaughter of Caillin MacBride’s would, one day, be found, and that the fate of the valley depended on it.
Gabby
It’s the big dill of the day . . .
“SHOWTIME,” PUG yelled, sticking her head in the RV’s door.
“Coming.”
Going.
I bent over the commode of the narrow bathroom again, gagging on my finger. I dimly noted the thud of footsteps on the RV’s steps. Nothing came out of my throat. Satisfied, I flushed the efficient little toilet, then turned to the sink, cupping fresh water to my mouth, rinsing and spitting.
The bathroom door slammed open. Jay crowded in beside me, pressing me to the sink and walls, his hands rising into my hair, holding my head still as he studied me. His expression was rigid.
Defiance and shame heated my face. “Privacy is a right. It’s just for the contest. It’s not a symptom.”
“This goddamned so-called ‘challenge’ isn’t worth you raking your stomach out to solve your problems.”
“It is to me. I have my ‘raking’ under control. I haven’t done it much since childhood.”
His fingertips shoved into the hair behind my left ear. I tried to pull away, too late. He bent close, parting the wavy auburn strands. I braced my arms against his chest and craned my head back. “So, you’ve got a tattoo. What is it? Why hide it?”
“None of your business. Get out.” He snagged my fist, his reflexes still sharp enough to turn the score of a game in his team’s favor. We arm wrestled, shoving our bodies closer together, thumping the molded walls.
Over his shoulder I saw Pug peering around the doorway, wide-eyed. If we kept brawling we’d give her an even better story to tell everyone. I relaxed my fist inside his fierce grip. His belly pressed tightly to mine. He was hard against me.
Jay pried my wavy hair in various directions as he scrutinized the two simple lines of script in the tattoo. His dark brows flat-lined, and grooves of concentration formed around his mouth. “What the . . .”
He went very still. So did I.
Jayson Wakefield.
I will always love you.
Jay
She faces a tough challenger—and pickles, too.
I HAVEN’T LOST her. She never gave up on me.
I stepped up next to Will, whose entourage included men and women dressed like extras from the mountain districts of The Hunger Games. They carried holstered pistols and knives and things covered in skins I hoped weren’t human. And they glared at me as if I were a terrorist who needed waterboarding. Or might be a secret gov’ment man here to crack down on their hidden pot plants, unregistered guns and, at the moment, their betting ring. Money was changing hands; odds were being shouted all around.
“You’re the bookie?” I said to Santa Joe, who held wads of cash and a notepad.
He grinned around the butt of a cigar. “Don’t tell my brother. I hear he’s the sheriff over to Jefferson County way. Even if he’s up in Chicago for Christmas, pretending to be a Yankee with Tom Mitternich’s family.”
“I put one million dollars on Greta Garbo MacBride to win.” My voice carried in every direction. All conversation stopped. Everyone stared at me. “Okay. Ten thousand?” I shouted.
Joe flattened a beefy hand over a cracked and faded Mick Jagger on his sweat shirt. “Dude, I’d love to accept, but the house can’t cover that.”
“I’ll cover it,” Will said.
Joe jotted the pledge on his pad. “Done!” he yelled.
A frenzy of new betting commenced.
Will arched a dark brow. “I hope you lose, just because I want to see you pull the money out of your ass.”
“Always bet on redheaded MacBride women. One day we’ll find one worth betting on, for you.”
Clagg Sullivan drawled into a wireless microphone. “Challengers, start your . . . I dunno, start your stomachs?” He stood at the center of the strange arena. Shouts, laughter, and applause went up. He pointed a brawny hand at the scowling Denoto and then at Gabs, who looked calm, proud, but a little furtive, as if she feared everyone could see the flush on her cheeks.
I felt the crowd’s scrutiny on my face too, and almost heard the thud of Pug’s elbow nudging the message into everyone around her.
Denoto raised both fists in a victory V and took her seat behind a long folding table. At the other end, Gabs saluted the audience with a simple wave, then sat down on a folding chair before her own personal pile of pickles. Her red hair, like Denoto’s black hair, was pulled back tightly to keep it out of the way.
“Six pounds of pickles in six minutes,” Clagg yelled. “We’ve weighed both piles of pickles and we’ll weigh what’s left of each pile after the clock stops. If it’s close, the winner is the one who ate the most by weight.”
A pack of tongue-lolling dogs trotted across the snowy arena, looking up at their owners, who whistled to them to come in from playtime. A group from the valley’s drumming circle pounded a lead-up charge on their bongos, Celtic bodhrans, African djembes and Jamaican steels made from the tops of fifty-gallon drums.
Clagg pointed to a timekeeper seated on a fleece-lined blanket and holding a laptop. The woman posed a finger over it and watched him for a
signal. He pointed next to Gabs and Denoto. “Ready?”
Gabs nodded. Denoto shrugged, her mouth tight.
Clagg raised a tattooed hand. “Six minutes, six pounds of pickles . . .”
The drumming rose to a crescendo.
“Are you really ready?”
Yes, the crowd roared.
Gabs hitched her chair closer to the table. Denoto gave a grim thumbs-up.
“Eat!”
Denoto dug into her pile of green kosher dills, shoving the fat, pickled cucumbers into her mouth between bared teeth, gnashing them apart and slinging bits of brine and pickle skin flying in her wake. She swallowed three large ones instantly. The technique made men cringe and look away.
Gabs stunned everyone by picking up a knife and methodically slicing all thirty-plus pickles into bite-sized chunks—but never putting one in her mouth.
The drumming picked up volume. People held up smart phones and e-tablets to record the event. I shoved my fists into my pants pockets and concentrated on my legendary Wakefield poker face. Eat something, Gabs. Stop dicing and eat.
“Two minute mark!” Clagg announced. “Four to go!”
Gabs finally picked up a small chunk of chopped pickle, inserted it between her lips, and swallowed it without chewing. She picked up another, and then another. Occasionally she washed everything down with a swig of bottled water. Then went right back to eating. I began to relax.
My pickle queen owns this universe.
“Two minutes to go,” Clagg yelled.
Denoto had now slammed about half of her pile—fifteen pickles, three pounds of briny cucumber goodness—into her unsuspecting stomach. She’d lost speed and jaw strength, taking longer to tear each pickle apart. Her face began to contort every time she swallowed. Veins bulged in her neck.
Meanwhile, Gabs continued roboting pieces of pickle into her mouth and swallowing them with smooth gulps. Near me a woman said, “My god, it’s like watching a snake eat mice.”
Gabs’s pile of pickle pieces was shrinking rapidly, but it was impossible to tell if she was ahead of Denoto. Her hand-to-mouth rhythm accelerated. Getting a little nervous, I worked the math in my head. Approximately fifteen chunks per pickle, times thirty pickles, is 450 chunks. Divided by six minutes, she needs to eat about seventy-five chunks per minute. But she didn’t start until the third minute, so four into four-fifty is . . . at least 112 chunks per minute. That’s almost two chunks per second.
No way would Gabs clear six pounds of cukes at that rate. She’d only reduced her pile by about half, meaning about three pounds, and Denoto was already well into pound four, by my guess.
“Denoto’s face is starting to look greener than the pickles,” someone said.
Ah. True. Denoto had a glassy stare. Her cheeks were red, but the skin around her mouth was ashy white, except for the sections smeared with green flecks of pickle skin.
Pug shoved through the crowd and worked her round body between Will and me, craning to get a better view. “Denoto looks like the flag of Italy.”
Will coughed and chewed his lower lip. He smiled even less often than I did, but he was fighting a smile now.
“One minute,” Clagg yelled.
“She’s going into overdrive!” a woman shouted, pointing at Gabs.
Gabs paused, shook out her hands in preparation, then sank both of them into the mound of pickle parts. Shoving entire handfuls into her mouth, she tilted her head back like a sword swallower. Four massive chews. A giant gulp. Two more handfuls. Chew, gulp. Pickle juice dripped off her chin and onto her sweater.
“Fifty-five, fifty-four, fifty-three,” the crowd chanted.
Denoto was down to ten pickles but was moving slowly, sometimes missing her mouth and cramming a half-eaten pickle against her chin or jaw. She’d begun to sway a little.
Both she and Gabs had entered the territory of world-champion pickle-eating records. The pro level. The Show. The Super Bowl of kosher dill competitions.
More handfuls went into Gabs’s mouth. She was swaying a little herself, and struggling to swallow. But the steely look in her eyes revealed the pure light of pickled defiance. I swear her eyes were turning greener. She had been infused by the pickle spirit.
“Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight.”
I began to chant silently. Eat, eat, eat.
“She’s ahead of Denoto!” Pug shouted. “She’s going to hit the Big Six!”
Oh, my God, it was true. Denoto was barely moving, and had five pickles left. But Gabs was moving even faster than before, smashing double clutches of pickle parts into her mouth. Her cheeks bulged like a hamster’s. There was no shred of self-conscious vanity. She didn’t care what she looked like as long as she got the job done. God, how I loved that about her.
“Ten, nine, eight . . .”
Gabs’s pickle pile was down to four, maybe five, palm-sized scoops. She bent low and scraped the entire mound toward her open mouth, mashing a disgusting pulp of squashed pickle innards into her face.
Denoto wobbled, weakly lifting her last pickle to her lips.
“Five, four, three . . .”
Gabs raised her head. Every freakin’ piece of every freakin’ pickle was now bulging her cheeks out. She stood, chewing, head back.
“Down it, down it, down it!”
“Two, one . . .”
Denoto let the last pickle drop, untouched. Her head sank to the table. She clutched her stomach.
Gabs swallowed the last chew.
“Time’s up!”
The crowd roared. A handful of unlucky bettors, including Will, looked glum. People surged toward Gabs, whistling and applauding. She raised her pickle-smeared hands in victory as she turned, searching the crowd. Ignoring her new fame and her new fans, she looked only for me.
Funny, how my knees went weak, knowing that she was.
Gabby
The spoils go to the winner
YES, I PURGED my pickles. Jay knew about that, and even stood outside the RV’s bathroom holding a wet washcloth for me, as I finished. If I hadn’t emptied six pounds of vinegared pickles from my stomach I’d have been too sick, and too bloated, to do more than lay down and moan for the next several days.
As it was, I felt as if I’d had a balloon inflated in my stomach. My jaw hurt from chewing, my back ached from retching, my throat was sore, and adrenaline made me light-headed, on top of feeling scraped raw from the inside out. Jay and Pug shepherded me down the mountain and into a rattling old Ford truck she used for running errands between New Tearmann and the distillery. She draped a quilt around me. Jay tossed my suitcase into the truck’s bed.
Santa Joe, decked out in a lei of hundred-dollar bills he’d won from betting on me, appeared from somewhere and said, “Here, it’s good for what ails you. You need a bit of dough in your stomach,” then handed me a thick piece of bread smeared with butter. “My special-recipe butter. Cathy Deen loves it.”
With a wave good-bye from Pug and Santa and nodding at their suggestion we drop in on Dustin who was staying somewhere along the way to our destination, Jay drove across the Little Finn and along its western hills, winding deep between winter fields where wheat and corn would grow in the spring. I ate the hearty bread without asking any questions, getting hungrier and more relaxed with every bite. Somewhere in the back of my dazed brain Jay said, “Take it slow, that butter’s loaded,” but I was too tired to get the joke.
Deer and sheep moved in herds across my vision. The deer switched their tails at our intrusion, their white undercoat flashing beneath the winter-gray. “They’re so graceful,” I said in wonder. “They barely touch the snow with their hooves. They’re reindeer! They’re Santa’s deer! They’re about to fly, I should go kiss them!”
“Do you remember the time you kissed me outside the walk-in cooler at
the PB and S?” Jay asked. “When we were kids?”
I waved my hands dramatically. “No, I remember the time you kissed me. You wanted to kiss me, so I gave you an opportunity.”
“Do you remember when George Washington led Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo on a mission to save the empire from Darth Vader and the Pirates of the Caribbean?”
“What?”
“Just checking to see how many fantasies you’ve accepted as truth.”
I snorted. “You liked being kissed. That’s what I remember.”
He laughed. I restrained myself from saying how much I loved the sound. I leaned my forehead against the window and gazed at the herds that wandered this amazing valley. Among the deer and sheep were shaggy bison and, assuming I wasn’t just stoned and imagining it, some bovines that looked a whole lot like ordinary brown-and-white milk cows. I tucked Anna’s beautiful shawl around my neck. I was traveling through the enchanted land of Oz, with the Wizard at my side, and nothing else mattered.
When Jay guided the old rattletrap of a truck down a dirt lane into a snowy alcove in the mountain side, I gazed out the window at what appeared to be a shingled wood-and-stone fairy cottage among enormous oaks. “Bless your heart,” I drawled with a childhood southern twang. “Where’d y’all find this tree house?”
“Gone Southern much?” Jay joked gently.
“Reconnectin’ with ma roots.”
“Y’all is not singular; it is a universal plural, encompassing friends, neighbors, family, cousins, tribes, and nations. The Greater You All.”
“Y’all,” I said. “It means ‘you and whoever.’ Who is the ‘whoever?’”
“Anna sent us here.”
“Why?”
“John Bonavendier built this cottage for Caillin in the nineteen fifties.” Jay reached over and smoothed my tangled hair away from my forehead. “I think Anna believes Caillin has given us her blessing.”
“Is Anna secretly on your side, the same as Will?”