The Shoes Come First: A Jennifer Cloud Novel

by Janet Leigh

  ~

  I entered the house to find Gertie and all the Mexican women plucking the chickens. Geesh, I didn’t want to do that, so I gave Mrs. Opal the eggs, keeping a few for myself. I mixed together the flour, sugar, eggs, cocoa, and butter. I added bits of the chocolate and the special ingredient I had found in the drying shed. I hoped the pointed plant had the same effect as it had in the back of Zane Miller’s greenhouse. I coated the pans with the lard. Since I didn’t have a KitchenAid mixer, my arms burned from stirring until the batter was smooth and creamy. I carefully poured the mixture into a pan and looked around for an oven. I didn’t think about the oven thing. What if Mrs. Opal didn’t have one? Jeez, I could just smack myself. The lack of modern conveniences was starting to wear on me. To my right was the stove Mrs. Opal had used earlier. It was a huge black thing with a large pipe coming out the top and shooting up through the roof. There were two doors on the front.

  “Mrs. Opal, do you have an oven?” I asked.

  She stopped plucking the chicken and eyed me curiously. “Girl, it’s right there in front of you—open your eyes.” I stood staring at the large appliance. I reached down and unlatched one of the doors. It resembled an oven, but I couldn’t see any heating elements. How did it cook the food? The walls were warm, but not hot enough to cook my brownies.

  “Um, Mrs. Opal, I don’t think it’s hot enough,” I said as I slid my brownie pan inside.

  “Well, land sakes, girl, don’t you know anything about cooking? You have to put the wood in first.” She waddled over to where I was standing in front of the metal beast. She bent over, bumping me back a few steps, and grabbed some kindling from a basket on the floor. After she added the wood to an area on the side of the contraption, it heated up immediately. The first batch burned right away, but once I got the hang of the oven, the brownies came out picture-perfect. I made four large batches. Martha Stewart would have been proud. I was surprised at how delectable they turned out. Even on my best day, I hadn’t made such perfect brownies. Maybe it was the pure ingredients, not polluted with the preservatives of the future.

  Mrs. Opal rounded the corner. “What smells so good?” she asked, breathing in deeply.

  “It’s my secret recipe,” I said.

  “Oh, that looks to die for. Let me try one.” She reached for a pan.

  Red alert rang in my head. “Now, Mrs. Opal, they are for the party tonight. We wouldn’t want to run out before the guests had some.”

  “Absolutely, dear,” she said with some trepidation. I put the brownies up on top of the big silver box Mrs. Opal had proudly announced was her brand new icebox to cool.