The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

  A brown and white SUV rumbled into view. Muddy with big tires, fog lights and blue lights on top and a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department seal on each side. A tall young deputy in khaki pants and a short-sleeve shirt stepped out; from the front passenger seat popped a sexy brown-haired woman in tight blue jeans and a tank top. She carried a big paper bag with twine handles. It bulged with mysterious contents. Her eyes crinkled when she saw the Us Against Them scene. She liked bad odds, I decided.

  The deputy opened the SUV’s back door. A little old man in overalls climbed out, and the deputy helped him put on a dark formal coat over the overalls. Then the woman took his arm to steady him. With her acting as his prop, the three of them headed our way.

  The warm June air brought a scent to me. Bread, buttery, rich. The woman smiled down at me as if she knew I was hypnotized. She reached inside the bag. “Here. You must be Jay.” Her mountain drawl was as soulful as the aroma around her.

  I glanced from her to Dad. He nodded. I took the plastic-wrapped biscuit she offered. It was bigger than a grown man’s fist and still warm from the oven. The aroma went through the shield of my skin and up my arm. I’d been biscuitized.

  “Delta, Deputy. I present Jayson Wakefield. Jay, this is Deputy Pike Whittlespoon and Mrs. Whittlespoon.”

  “Very pleased to meet you,” I said. My hand felt heavy and happy, holding the magical biscuit.

  Deputy Whittlespoon cupped my shoulder in a fatherly way, then stepped aside. “Thomas, this is Judge Rescule Solbert. Been retired a few decades but still sits on the bench once a month over in Turtleville—”

  “See here, now, you conniving Wakefield horn-rimming rock hound!” the ancient Jefferson County judge said loudly, shuffling toward Uncle E.W. Delta set her bag of biscuits down and hustled along beside him, though his agitated quickstep seemed pretty secure. He dug a veined hand inside his coat and pulled out a piece of paper, which he held up between wizened fingers. “Nineteen sixty-nine! The Dog House. We called it a ‘private club’ to keep the preachers and the church ladies and the law of a damn dry county satisfied. Jack Farmer and his daughters ran it out of what had been the old Little Finn River Road Toll Store. Had a coupla TVs, a pool table, some card tables, a bar, a juke box, dart boards. Had a cooler full of good beer and a locker full of better liquor.” He shook the paper under E.W.’s nose. “Little Finn River Road. You Wakefields know that name. You murderin’ bunch of thieves. Wiped out all those MacBrides back in the thirties, turned that whole valley into a tomb . . . your devil granddaddy, rot in hell, Augustus Wakefield—”

  The security men leapt forward. So did Delta. She planted herself between the judge and his goons, her hands on her hips.

  Her husband called out, “Don’t hurt ’em, pussycat.”

  E.W. sliced the air. “Old man, say what you’ve got to say.” Uncle E.W. drew himself up to his full six-four, disdaining the withered old mountain judge and his colorful details of the local road house. “Is there a point to this?”

  Judge Solbert grinned at him from behind Delta’s freckled shoulder, showing a fake-perfect bottom denture but no upper teeth.

  Judge Bulldog.

  “The point, Elba Wyatt Wakefield, is that I was there the night your daddy wagered this property’s digging rights in a poker game. And he lost. I witnessed the transaction and signed it.”

  Uncle E.W.’s mouth drew up in prune. “I assume you’re waving a copy of that so-called wager?”

  “Tee hee, you bet, you greedy bastard. Go back to Asheville and figure out how to gouge fortunes out of these hills somewhere else.” He shoved the paper into my uncle’s hand. “Mary Eve Nettie won the easement in that game. Won it fair and square. I knew Wakefields can’t be trusted, so I got a lot more witnesses’ signatures besides my own, that night.”

  E.W. glanced at the paper as if it repelled him, then flung it at his lawyers. They huddled over it like crows ganging up on a snake. One look at their combined stare of dismay said the snake was a big one.

  E.W. shoved past Delta and the judge, thrusting his finger at Dad as he advanced. “That goddamned right is useless to whoever this Mary Eve Nettie is! I’ll buy it from her!”

  “She’s my cousin,” Delta called, “and she knew what it was worth, and she didn’t want this place destroyed. She said so until her dying day.”

  “Then she left the access right to an heir.”

  “That would be me,” Delta said. “And you can go to hell. I’m keeping it.” She looked at Dad. “No offense, but it’s better off with me than with you, cause if I get ‘accidentally’ dead thanks to your brother, a whole of pack of hillbillies will wage war on him until the end of time. You can’t beat that.”

  Dad smiled. “No, I can’t.” He nodded to George. “Explain the legal fine points to E.W. and his team, George.”

  Lawyer George puffed out his chest in a way that said, Yes I got my degree at No Name U instead of Duke, while working as a waiter at a Red Lobster, so what? He rattled off a long explanation of the current status for a vague mining right passed down by inheritance from Augustus to William then parlayed out of William’s ownership via a poker game twenty years ago, now owned by Delta Whittlespoon.

  When he finished, Judge Solbert cackled. “That, fellows, is ten-dollar lawyer talk for ‘Y’all are up shit creek on this one.’”

  E.W. exploded. “That access right is mine, and I will regain it, Tommy, even if I have to twist your arm or break your neck or find your weak spot I will, and if you get in my way again—”

  “You’ve never frightened me,” Dad said, which I didn’t doubt, because Dad believed in guardian spirits, in angels, and said that powers bigger than any of us had made the stars and the earth, the rocks of ages, the eternity of love. E.W. and all his minions couldn’t beat that. But Dad’s voice had a thready sound I recognized. Probably a drop in his blood sugar. “Don’t even try,” Dad started, then halted.

  Lawyer George grabbed his arm. I tossed the shoulder pack and he unzipped it.

  “Dad, drink some OJ!”

  I got between Dad and E.W., who continued to head straight toward us, finger jabbing, face furious. A rush of things happened: security men running up, Deputy Whittlespoon jumping in the middle, but I focused on E.W.’s stomach. I was tall for my age, so when I drew back a fist it was level with my uncle’s breastbone. Because I went to an alternative education school (the courses included Spiritual Wealth, Leadership Ethics, and Community Living,) my sports were also alternative, meaning yoga and non-violent tai chi.

  I opted for something out of Dad’s collection of Kung Fu movies.

  I jabbed my uncle in the soft spot below the ribcage. Solar plexus. He clutched his chest and went down.

  Behind me, so did Dad.

  “HOLD HIS HAND, sweetie, hold his hand and pray,” Delta Whittlespoon whispered in my ear as Dad died. Her arms were around me from behind, her cheek was pressed close to mine, but we both sat there helplessly as Deputy Whittlespoon performed CPR and Lawyer George talked intensely to Dad’s cardiologist in Asheville. Dad’s big, thin hand was clenched so tight inside both of mine I thought he was holding on, but it was me doing all the holding. He seemed to be looking up at me but also at the trees and the mountains, the funny old buildings of Free Wheeler, loving me and all of that.

  Take care of it for us, Jay.

  I will. I swear.

  He saw farther into the heart of the air, the Appalachians, the universe, until finally he got so far away he couldn’t hear me begging him to stay.

  Uncle E.W. stood off to one side, holding his stomach, not even crying.

  Watching me, the heir.

  Gabby

  Smoke got in their eyes

  THE DAY I FIRST met Jay I was armed for trouble and in a mood to whack strangers. Again. Five sneaky neighbor kids, three street bums and two
dogs had tried to steal food from the front-yard smokers. It wasn’t like they couldn’t get free handouts. A big sandwich board right by the front walkway said, If You Can’t Pay Today, You Can Pay Later. Right beside that sign hung a big iron cow bell. All a person had to do was clang it. Me or Gus would come around from the back yard, bringing take-out boxes, and we’d fill them up, no questions asked.

  Only dogs and Daddy’s buddies in the police department got a pass on the clanging rule. Nobody else.

  Mama—Jane Eve Nettie MacBride—said God gave her and her children—me, Tal and Gus—the gift of food magic as our special way to offer love to others. To feed the heartsick and needy, to soothe the dispirited. After all, who knew when we might be serving up a buffet to an angel, unawares?

  Daddy—Stewart MacBride—however, said that God helped those who helped themselves, and that he and Mama were going to restore the Nettie-MacBride family names to their rightful place in mountain society. Make people stop whispering that they were cast-offs raised by kinfolk, both from histories rumored to be scandalous. Family was everything. Mama and Daddy’s merged pride would bring a golden glow back to the MacBride name. They would open a restaurant, like Mama’s cousin Delta Whittlespoon had done over at the Crossroads Cove, and it would be the best restaurant in Asheville.

  Daddy couldn’t cook, but he could be a redheaded Rock of Gibraltar. His first calling: Family. Taking care of Mama and us. Second? Taking care of the good citizens of Asheville and his fellow police officers, just as he’d taken care of his brother soldiers in Vietnam. Third: Making our family so rich that we could hire people to whack people who stole from the front-yard smokers.

  Family Family Family. Always Family. If you weren’t some kind of Family to us, you weren’t on the radar. Not in Daddy’s world. Or mine.

  Jay

  Jay becomes the landlord

  “TURN THERE, PLEASE,” I said to Lawyer George.

  He and his wife and their baby now shared the top floor of a 1910 piano manufacturing factory Dad had left me, just a block off the busy streets of Pack Square. Even after Dad renovated it, the high-ceiling, thick-beamed industrial loft was drafty and haunted; even when Dad was with me, it felt like we were floating on a forgotten cloud above the streets just one story below. I liked the feeling, still.

  Lawyer George steered Dad’s vintage diesel Mercedes out of town and down a steep hill into the old river district, where the shells of forgotten mills and factories moldered along the French Broad. Dad (and now I) owned three properties the city kept threatening to firebomb, but he had been talking to local artists about turning them into studios. Lawyer George had all of Dad’s notes about that.

  “Across the river?” Lawyer George said worriedly, as if we needed shots and a passport. He waved a hand against the summer wind. The Diesel Farter had no air conditioning. We puttered across the bridge above the French Broad and up the hill into the wilds of West Asheville. Kind of the ’burbs that time forgot. Some old brick store fronts lined the main drag that ran atop the ridge, forming a spine for steep, narrow streets that dropped down through thick forest and kudzu jungles. Most of the houses were little clapboard cottages from before the 1950s, and they weren’t in good condition.

  “Delta said this is where they live.”

  She said if I wanted to “do right,” I could at least make friends with Jane Eve—Emma’s daughter—and her family. Nobody would ever know if Arlo was Jane Eve’s father; he had been in prison for attacking Great-Grandfather when Jane Eve was born. The dates were vague; there had been another man in Emma’s life after Arlo went to prison. No one talked about the details, and Emma died when Jane Eve was just a few weeks old.

  So Jane Eve MacBride—a Nettie on her mother’s side—was probably not the Claptraddle heir, and I couldn’t give her Free Wheeler anyway, if she was. I’d keep very quiet about all that history.

  The less your uncle knows about the places and the people you love, the safer they’ll be, Dad had always told me.

  “I hope these people have electricity,” Lawyer George said. “Plumbing. A roof. I should have asked my wife to pack my camping gear.”

  We turned off down a lane where wisteria and trumpet creeper vine hung over the pavement in purple/orange chaos. We rattled past fallen mailboxes and overgrown foundations, skirting the fingers of cracked driveways that disappeared into the roots of trees that owned them now, and rounded a curve into what, by then, seemed to me to be a wonderland of nothing.

  That’s when the sides of the lane opened up, having been bush-hogged enough to let cars park on the sides. A line of cars two dozen long filled both sides, stretching down the shady lane and around another curve. Pickups and old sedans, BMWs and junkers, minivans and Jaguars. Even a couple of small tour buses.

  The hair rose on the back of my neck. Must be a funeral.

  Lawyer George drove slowly, arrowing between the narrow space left in the middle. People strolled past, casually dressed, many carrying take-out boxes and containers. Beyond the bend, a huge oak tree shadowed a big new metal mailbox painted white with MACBRIDE on the side in fat red letters. Parked cars continued past the mailbox and down a wooded hill.

  I gazed out my open window at an old cottage sporting fresh paint and lots of repairs, a sunny, mown lawn full of metal monsters I couldn’t quite describe, and a big side yard—over an acre—filled with picnic tables shaded by a couple of big trees plus tents and umbrellas. Every table was full of people, and every person was busy eating mounds of food off mismatched china plates.

  I pointed at an Asheville police car parked far down the lane. “Mr. MacBride is a police officer. It must be all right to park on the street. I’ll take over from here. You go in and discuss the lease offer. I’ll park the car.”

  After all, I tested at a learner’s permit level of maturity according to my teachers at Horizon. The Horizon Academy was that alternative-ed school. I had a feeling Officer MacBride wouldn’t be impressed by tests that included a section on psychic awareness. But I was a Wakefield and accustomed to certain privileges. Lawyer George hemmed and hawed, then shrugged and gave in.

  I was determined to be the master of my lonely fate and to honor Dad’s devotion to doing good things for the people around him, the community, the less fortunate than us. Somehow, this web of the spirit would hold our islands together, would keep their foundations inside us.

  Gabby

  “RALPH!” RALPH SAID. Then the dog in our family tore off toward the front yard, barking Ralph Ralph Ralph in all his big-part-Shepherd glory, meaning that another thief was meddling with the herd of fifty-gallon drums Daddy had hillbilly-engineered into the delivery system for Mama’s secret barbecue rubs and slow-cooking sauces. Two sides of beef, five slabs of pork ribs, an entire flock of chickens, and five deer haunches from last fall’s hunting season were at stake. Not to mention my pickles.

  “Stand down, Baby Sister, I’ll go this time,” Gus called. He liked to talk military-speak. Gus was already planning a career in the army, following in Daddy’s footsteps. But for now, my ten-year-old brother was serving KP duty, up to his elbows in a ten-gallon pot of unmixed coleslaw. He had mayonnaise in his red eyebrows and pieces of red cabbage in his brown-red hair. The white apron over his t-shirt and jeans was smeared with red barbecue sauce. He looked like he’d murdered a Cabbage Patch Doll.

  “I’m going,” Tal said, and scurried away from her plastic table full of cookie dough Mama had given her to play with. She was an inventive five-year-old, and practiced recipes that were often wonderful but often . . . not. At the moment she was putting cabbage in the dough.

  Gus jerked his hands out of the pot as she rushed past him. When he sank a freckled hand into her red braids, smearing mayonnaise and slaw on her forehead, she turned and stared up at him from beneath coleslaw bangs. He started laughing, and so did she.

  Not me. I grabbe
d the longest, thickest metal spoon from the mixing set on my table. We were all on the back screened porch, where a pair of big floor fans kept Mama’s outdoor prep area just this side of fly-free to avoid a health-department citation. The whole home-restaurant operation was scooting past the authorities on a wink and a nod because Daddy was a police officer—and because the mayor, the police chief, the fire chief and most of the city council were Mama’s customers.

  I left a tub of baked beans still in need of honey and a tub of mac ’n’ cheese waiting for grated cheddar. Mama and Daddy were inside talking to a suit-wearing stranger carrying a clipboard and a stack of papers. I wouldn’t interrupt them with another to-do in the yard; besides, I was a team player in a family business. I was good at being the family’s hit woman.

  The Boy was unlike any boy I’d ever seen before. I halted behind a big butterfly bush next to the house, watching him study the smokers while Ralph did a complete out-of-character transformation and licked his leg. Ralph had never seen a boy in our shabby West Asheville neighborhood wearing a white Polo shirt, tan chinos and fancy loafers. I certainly hadn’t, either.

  He was at least as tall as Gus, who often got mistaken for older than ten. He already had shoulders like a teenager, and long legs. His hair was black and a little shaggy. It didn’t quite match the rest of them. But then, neither did the wide leather cuff he wore around one wrist. Some kind of charms dangled from it. Topping off his fascinating attire was a bright yellow Sports Walkman, hanging from his leather belt. The ear wires dangled from his pocket. Ralph licked them.

  He had a Walkman. A Walkman! To die for.

  Chocolate ice cream covered in Reese’s Pieces. That’s what he loves more than any other food in the world. But he won’t ever eat it. Why?