One day, Delta tapped me on the forehead with a plastic light saber her grandson had left in the kitchen. “Use the force, Lucy, use the force,” she drawled.
Within a few weeks, they were lining up to hug me as they arrived and left. I told them about the sacredness of wool.
Did you know the good Lord gave us woolen animals from the earliest times for milk and meat and clothing and shelter? Do you know that wool is hypoallergenic, fire resistant, and repels water? Do you know that when added to bullet-proof vests it will stop a bullet even better? That it can be felted as hats, and shoes, and shelters and blankets? And that the most perfect grace of this gift is that it asks for no magic tools—just what God put on the ground in front of us. A rock tied to a stick will serve as a spindle to whirl raw wool into yarn. Two smooth sticks will knit that yarn into a shawl or blanket or cap or mittens.
Once I had them enthralled, they began to ask about the farm. I told them plainly that it was an honest, simple refuge for abused women and children; that some stayed there a long time; that those who wanted to work there in the cheese and dairy or the berry farming business, or helping with the sheep, could do so and earn good wages. That it was self-supporting and had a small budget, but that in recent years the board had added Cathy Deen Mitternich, which gave it a huge boost.
She brought money and her celebrity status, and a big commitment to giving something back to the community she credited with saving her life and giving her the love of her life, Tom Mitternich. So, plans were in the works to add more services, such as dental and medical help, and housing referrals, legal aid and education.
They warmed to the idea that their world view could accept Rainbow Goddess Farm. They began to gobble the cookies and biscuits, to talk to me about their lives, and to hint that they longed for the good old days of only a few years earlier.
Now that Tal was partnering with Delta to expand the café’s menu, a signboard on the veranda carried daily specials unlike anyone in the Cove had seen before. The poetry of Tal’s promotional lingo knew no bounds.
This week: The BaconZilla
“So big it might attack Tokyo”
Handcut wild-hog Coca-Cola marinated bacon
Your Pick: Butt Farms Mellow Goat or MoozaFella Cheese
Two Fresh-Laid Miz Ted’s Laidback Fat Red Hen Eggs
Topped with your choice of Delta’s winners!
(as seen on the “Kitchen Star’s Showdown” finals)
Kiss My Mama Cream Gravy
Kiss My Foot Red-Eye Gravy
The Crossroads Café. Where the Lard Cooks in Mysterious Ways.
I followed Delta from her truck parked in the side yard, where it joined a half-dozen other trucks and cars belonging to staff. The front lot was full, plus just past the turn-out, vehicles were pulling off at The PickUp Truck—Tal’s idea—a big food van that handled takeout orders.
“What are your Knights up to?” Delta side-mouthed as we went in the Café’s delivery entrance.
“They’re fascinated with Larry’s scientific determination to find rockycockers. They’ve been planting evidence. Tal bought them a pair of dinosaur feet from a Halloween costume supplier, and they glued extra rubber toes on it.”
“What’d they use for the toes?”
“Some items that were in Mrs. Z’s delivery of intimate ‘personal relaxation’ aids. The one Patton stole.”
Delta began to laugh. The grief under her eyes disappeared. She and Bubba had been close. I had no laughter in me, but I was glad she did. She even tolerated the fact that Cleo supported Kern in his campaign for sheriff. Against Pike.
Everyone knew Monzell was funding Kern’s bid to uproot Pike, the most respected sheriff in western North Carolina. Monzell had waited more than thirty years for revenge on Pike, who’d been a tall nobody back in the 1970s when he joined the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department. Just a raw-boned rookie deputy who’d served in Vietnam then come home to marry his sweetheart, Delta McKellan, one of the Nettie kitchen witches.
They said she put fierce angels on his shoulder. He seemed fearless because of her. She whispered secrets and advice in his ears. He became a man who stood up for fairness, honesty, and the rule of law. He won the respect of the voters and unseated Monzell’s grandfather, infamous Jefferson County Sheriff Denzer Jacobs Monzell.
The Old Nooser, people had called Denzer. During his twenty year reign of unsupervised judgment, more than two dozen men—and three women—had mysteriously found ways to hang themselves in the cells of the tiny Jefferson County Jail.
Three Whittlespoons, five Netties, and six MacBrides.
Not many months after Denzer lost the election—and not long after he gave a speech at the Turtleville Chamber of Commerce’s annual Biscuits and Politics Breakfast at the newly opened Crossroads Café, where Denzer shocked the 1970s business community by offering five thousand dollars for proof that Pike had used his wife’s witchcraft to seduce voters . . . Denzer was found dead atop the oldest formation of rocks in the forest at Free Wheeler.
Lying there, glassy eyed, bloated and choked, polyester suit stained with spit and vomit, tie torn open. His short gray hair littered with tiny leaves off a nearby huckleberry, fried to an autumn brown in the middle of July. His polished shoes had no walking dirt on them.
It was as if he’d been transported there, into the realms of the Nettie power.
Under his fetid corpse were ancient carvings of giant hands that archaeologists insisted were symbolic, not drawn to size.
Heart attack, was the official report.
The kitchen witches and their giants brought him to justice, the old people said.
Pike’s bitch of a wife murdered him, the Monzells said.
I touched Delta’s denimed arm. “Kern is part of your family, I understand. But that’s not the only reason you don’t confront Cleo for supporting him against Pike.” I searched for insights. Open the door, Opal. This situation is darkening into disaster. Unraveling. Please . . .
The truth about Kern could unravel everything. He’s the eye of a storm that started generations ago.
I blinked and came back. Delta held me by one hand. She was at ease with what she called the Cronehood of Cooking; her graying brunette hair shoved up in a messy bun; five small diamonds glittering from recent piercings in each ear. Her eyes would always be Young Elizabeth Taylor, and she would always brag that Cathy Deen Mitternich’s famous eyes came from the same hypnotic Nettie source.
“The past is what I can show you,” she said. “The future is a recipe it hasn’t tested yet.”
We passed a chalkboard listing work schedules. My eyes landed on this handwritten note in neon at the bottom—TREY MCKELLAN: DAYS MISSING SINCE RETURNED HOME FROM IRAQ: 672.
I see Kern behind you. All the time. Kern’s shadow. But never Trey’s. Why one son and not the other?
I know where he is. He’s in the woods with the rest of the Knights.
Cleo rounded a corner, sweaty from the kitchen, carrying a clipboard and a phone, her apron pockets stuffed with invoices and pens. “Stop staring at me,” she ordered.
I wrapped my shawls tighter around me. Be kind. She’s in mourning. “‘A false witness will not go unpunished.’ Proverbs 19:5.”
“Don’t you try to out-Bible me. ‘Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them.’ Leviticus 19:31.”
I raised my chin. “‘Judge not, that you be not judged.’ Matthew 7:1-5.”
Delta stepped between us. “Hush, both of you. Get on home for the afternoon, Cleo. Lucy, come with me. Let’s set on the porch. I wanna tell you about how Gus’s grandma and grandpa met. Right here in this house.”
Cleo glared at me as she pivoted to leave. “‘If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himse
lf.’ Galatians 6:3.”
“‘Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.’”
“Philippians 22:1,” Cleo supplied smugly.
“22:3,” I corrected.
She stomped back to the kitchen.
Delta smiled sadly as she zipped up the quilted jacket that dangled over her apron and overalls. “Gus is having a good influence on you.”
“ROSE NETTIE WAS born one of triplets—” Delta began, her socked feet propped on a small electric heater on the front veranda. Her rocking chair creaked and moved. Mine was rooted to the wooden floor. I leaned forward, all ears.
“—twin boys, and her separate, but all from the same pregnancy. It was said that when they were kids, the three of them together could call out recipes from the dead. By which I mean, any spirits who wanted to reach loved ones through the memory of food, which is one of the most powerful memories there is.
“So Rose and her brothers would be at a church picnic, or a family reunion, or a funeral—it happened a lot at funerals—and they’d get this look about them, like they were listening to someone only they could see. And they’d hunt out a person in the crowd and announce whatever it was the spirit told them to say—‘Cousin Maisie’s Pineapple Nut Bread’ and they’d chant out the ingredients and the baking time.
“Of course, that upset a good number of people. Scared ’em half to death. But others were brought to tears of joy. Turned out in most cases the recipes had special sentiments or had been lost and mourned. The spirits just wanted to get them back in the family.
“But the other thing the three could do as they got into their teens, was cook together. As if they were one person, a perfect team. Without talking out loud about what they were going to make or how to make it. Not using any recipes, and even coming up with dishes nobody around here had ever made before, or even knew what to call back in those years—this was the 1920s.
“That was when Rose met Sam. He was older, a lot older. This crazy, handsome rich man from the city, building this magic village on a huge piece of land he’d bought in the wild woods. My grandmother invited him to supper in this very house, back when it was her home and the center of her farm. He was her next-door neighbor, so it was only polite to ask him over.”
Delta raised a brow. “Especially since it would cause a lot of gossip, which Grandma loved to stir up. She liked nothing better than to shock people with her progressive ways. Sam was Jewish. There were plenty of people in this county who thought he might be hiding horns and a forked tail. And rumor had it that he’d left a wife from a wealthy family on the coast; that she lived with another man there. Whew. That was some strong pepper sauce for folks around here. You’d have thought we didn’t have far more lurid scandals going on, with roadhouses and whorehouses and sister-wives and husband-swapping and moonshiners and a whole lot else, but still . . .
“Anyhow, she asked Rose and the boys to make one of their odd dishes, something Rose had named ‘Muscadine beef and flatbed potatoes.’ It was a hard one, and could only be made when the season was right. They had to have spring onions and wild mushrooms, a bottle of muscadine wine, fresh tomatoes, and wild herbs from the woods. The rest was easier—some good stew beef, chunk bacon, a fat roasting onion or two, potatoes.
“So Rose and the boys got it all together and put on a show. There was lots more to the supper than just that—it was a feast. Grandma got carried away and invited some friends, then got out all her silver and china, and polished all the lamps and brought out the MacBride whiskey. Premium hooch. This was a good five years before the MacBrides would be murdered by the revenuers and the Wakefields, up in the Little Fin Valley.
“Anyhow . . . so up rides Sam Osserman, on a bicycle. The Trace was a dirt road then. There are mule-drawn wagons and Model-T’s outside, and he parks his bicycle right amongst them, pretty as you please. He’s all dusty but he still looks like the most elegant man in the Sears catalog. Everybody in the house was peeking at him from behind the curtains, including Rose.
“He’s got a big wicker basket on the front of the bike, with a lid on it, and he pulls out a big ol’ bouquet of red roses. Like a magician. Now they weren’t florist roses like we think of today; they were old-fashioned garden roses, but still, it was early for roses, so where did he get ’em? Afterwards, Grandma spent weeks investigating those roses. She wrote letters and even paid to put pictures of the flowers in the papers. But she never found a florist or a garden shop that had roses like that in bloom, that early.
“Anyhow, so Sam walks in, gets welcomed and dusted—his hat was hung on the butler you see in the back dining room today—and he presented the roses to Grandma, who called for Rose, then only sixteen, to bring a crystal vase and hurry.
“So Rose steps out of the back, with a long apron still draped over one arm and a beautiful vase gleaming in her hands, and she’s red-haired and tall and pink from the heat of the kitchen, wearing one of those slim dresses with the fine little flower prints on it, all sweaty and clinging. The story goes that she had old floppy boot-shoes on her feet, but I’m sure the effect was charming, because every picture of her was a picture of carefree life itself.
“‘This is our cook, and she’s a witch, a kitchen witch, as are all the Netties,’ Grandma said, much to the embarrassment of other family members, as usual. ‘Her brothers are witches, as well. They’re out back, making certain that the libations used in the main dish are up to par.’
“Sam looked at Rose as if the only magic he saw was in her eyes. The feeling must have been mutual, since she dropped the vase and cracked it.” Delta gestured over one shoulder. “It’s the one in the big cabinet by the main fireplace. I fill it up about halfway and put roses in it on her birthday, every year.
“So everybody sat down to this amazing dinner in this big ol’ farmhouse, with owls hooting outside and deer wandering by in herds among the milk cows, bears not far away, and even wildcats screaming in the woods back then. They ate by the light of big oil lamps. There were biscuits and rolls, and a broth soup, and then, the muscadine beef and flatbed potatoes came out. Rose and one of the brothers set a platter at each end of the table. It must have been a glorious sight and an even better scent.
“I’m sure Sam had trouble taking his eyes off Rose to look at the food, but finally he did. Now, everything I’ve told you up to this point, Lucy, is seasoned by people’s memories and tellings and re-tellings and romantic ideas. I can’t be sure it’s all true. But this I know for sure, because every version of this story comes down to this moment. Sam Osserman had traveled the world. He knew food, and wine, and women, and bicycles, and money, and who knows what else. He took a bite of the muscadine beef and flatbed potatoes, which Rose and her brothers had been given from the spirit world, and he looked over at Rose with wonder in his eyes. ‘I have found you,’ he said. ‘I have looked for you through so many lifetimes. And here you are, again.’
“She ran off to meet him in his wild woods that night. All he owned—beside a bank account full of considerable money—was a tent and a bicycle and some drawings for the bicycle town he called Free Wheeler. She was the spark that set it all in motion.”
Delta blew out a long breath and sat for a moment, looking out on the graveled parking lot and the paved two lane of the modern Trace. I did too, imagining Sam and Rose riding bicycles on the old dirt path. I wanted to stand up and turn around and walk back through time, inside the café when it had been Grandmother Nettie’s home. Seeing it that night, watching Sam and Rose meet.
“I know nothing ended well for them,” I said. “Tal’s told me about Jay’s grandfather trying to get the land at Free Wheeler for the mining rights. Framing Sam. Ruining him. How Sam ended up in prison. And Rose . . . when Sam went to prison, it destroyed her. You knew her, when you were a little girl, didn’t you?”
Delta nodded sadly. ??
?Her brothers died in World War II. She never cooked again after that. Never called out a recipe from the spirits, never had the magic again. She gave birth to her and Sam’s baby girl. My mother took the baby to raise. Rose just wandered the empty buildings and lanes at Free Wheeler. When I was no more than five, Mama sent me to follow her around. Told me to run for help if Rose got hurt or lost.”
Delta cleared her throat. “Rose was already hurt, and already lost.” Delta pivoted toward me in her rocking chair, a graying mama bear in winter clothing. She reached into a side pocket of her coat and handed me a small take-out box. “But her kitchen charms survived in her daughter and her grandchildren. So did her spirit recipes.”
I opened the plastic lid, inhaling cinnamon, butter, and rich pumpkin aromas.
“Candy roaster pie,” Delta said. “You think it’s pumpkin, but candy roasters are an old timey winter squash. The Cherokees grew them. Rose and her brothers started speaking in tongues at church one day. It wasn’t until later some of the old people said they were speaking Cherokee. That’s where this recipe came from.”
I lifted the sliver of pie to my lips and bit off a large piece. Chewing with my eyes closed, I realized I was crying and smiling.
Delta laid a hand on my sleeve. “Don’t tell me you can’t see what I see.” I looked toward the bare winter oaks at the edge of the parking lot.
The trees shank from towering giants to saplings. Their empty limbs sprouted thick arbors of green leaves. The Trace was no longer a paved two-lane; it was once again a dirt road. The Ten Sisters rose in deep blue-green splendor; the air was so clear that every tree top was etched against the sky. The only sounds were birds and the singing of insects in the high pastures.
Rose stood there, curvaceous in her drop-waist dress with its hem floating not far below her stockinged knees, and Sam, handsome with his mustache; wearing dusty knickers held up by suspenders and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up on thickly muscled forearms.