The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

by Deborah Smith

  “What if they were?” Gus asked quietly. “What if Wakefields killed a bunch of our family?”

  “I killed Vietnamese men back in the early seventies, but I don’t hold any grudges now. And I lost friends to those Vietnamese soldiers. Times change. You let go. Those who won’t let go of old prejudice, they don’t see straight. They turn out like Mr. Sam.” Daddy sat back on his lean butt, which was cased in dusty painters’ pants, and slapped his knees. “Enough such talk. We got work to do.” He thumbed toward Mama’s proud outdoor sign, which had just been delivered that morning. It stood against one wall: The P, B and S Diner.

  Pickled, Baked and Stewed. Mama and Daddy named the diner for me, Tal and Gus. “Stewed” for Gus because they couldn’t come up with a better word for his cooking talent. “He’s goin’ to be a beer man,” Daddy announced. “He knows his brew. His stew.”

  “Ralph,” Ralph said, rolling around and wagging. We pivoted toward the shop’s heavy glass door between wide bay windows, where Mama planned to put tables with flower boxes on them.

  Jay Wakefield stood there with the rain slogging down on him, one fist raised to knock on the glass.

  I shoved my sandwich into a napkin and ran to let him in. A whoosh of soggy air and wet wind whirled rain, thunder and even a flash of lightning around him, as if the storm was spitting him at us. His black hair clung to his face. He shivered inside faded jeans and a white t-shirt and jeans. Even the laces on his jogging shoes shook. The talismans on his wrist cuff jingled.

  Mama came rushing out of the back. “Get those clean paint rags out of the storage room,” Mama told Daddy. “Let’s dry this boy off before he catches cold.”

  “I c-came to work.” His teeth chattered.

  “As what, a mop?” I said.

  His mouth flattened.

  Mama said, “Greta Garbo MacBride, a word, please, ma’am.”

  Shit.

  I followed her into a back room where our newly-leased kitchen equipment sat in the middle of the floor like cows that had gotten loose from a pasture. Daddy’s buddies from the police department were coming over that night to wire the walls for a commercial stove, ovens, and a cooler.

  Mama pulled me around a corner that led to a back door alley. “Jay lost his daddy no more than six weeks ago. His mama abandoned him and his daddy when he was a baby. He’s an orphan. And you, my sour pickle, are a mean little thing sometimes.”

  I winced. “I just . . . I don’t know how to talk to him. Why’d his mama leave?”

  “Because she was a prissy rich girl, and she married to get richer. She decided being married to a Wakefield with sugar diabetes was no fun—not to mention Tom Wakefield wasn’t interested in parties and mansions and buying yachts. So she went off to Europe and married a Spaniard.”

  “Good riddance.”

  Mama rubbed her forehead, releasing poofs of reddish-brown hair that, to me, symbolized her lack of pretense. She never “put on airs.” Tal said Mama’s essence was apple pie—pretty obvious, but I agreed—yet to me, Mama was a sweet gherkin, my favorite pickle. “That boy out there—” she nodded toward Jay’s direction—“held his daddy’s hand while he died. Cousin Delta said it broke her heart to watch how the life drained out of both of them at the same time, just in different ways.”

  “So Jay’s gonna live with that Lawyer George from now on?”

  “Yes. It’s a bad situation. His daddy and uncle were at odds. So he’s got no family. Except us now, if he’ll have us. Lord knows he needs us.”

  “I’ll be nicer. But . . . he makes me feel funny.”

  “Then just keep quiet.”

  That was going to be a problem.

  I went back out front. He put a hand to his heart, dripping water on the bare wood floor, forming a wide puddle. “If you don’t want a Wakefield around, just say so. I understand.”

  Gus rolled his eyes. “I can handle any trouble a Wakefield dishes out.”

  Daddy started fixing a plate. “Do Wakefields eat regular food so long as there’s no meat in it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I said loudly, “You’re dripping on the floor,” and stomped over to scrub him with a roll of paper towels I grabbed off the folding table. “And we have work to do. Because once we get done here, Mama says we’re going to a movie, and you better be dried off because you’ll stink like Ralph after he rolls in a puddle, and I’m not sharing my popcorn with you at the movie if you stink, ugggh.” As I scoured his hair, barely missing the gash on his forehead where two stitches sealed the wound from my serving spoon, he looked down at me as if I was crazy plus funny and somehow all right. Maybe his eyes were wet with rain or maybe not.

  Either way, I mashed them with the paper towels.

  He smiled.

  OVER THE NEXT year, the P, B and S Diner made so much money that Mama and Daddy were able to stop just renting the house in West Asheville and put a down payment on it. We stopped using the side yard as a restaurant—one step ahead of the county health department, even though the inspector was a customer and said he’d never seen a cleaner back-porch kitchen. Daddy moved the smokers to an alley beside the P, B and S and put in high chain gates on both ends, so they’d be safe at night. The aroma they gave off drew people from all over that part of the city. When street people came by, we still offered the Eat now, Pay later, plan.

  Mama and Daddy paid off the loan they’d taken to set up the kitchen and furnishings. Pretty soon Mama was getting written up in everything from the Asheville Citizen-Times to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Southern Living. Cousin Delta came over the Crossroads and the two of them posed for pictures that went all the way to Newsweek magazine under the headline: The Biscuit Witches of North Carolina Bring Their Kitchen Charms to Appalachian Cuisine On The Cusp of a New Millennium.

  The work was constant—for Mama every day, with Tal as her dough-happy mascot; for me and Gus after school and on weekends, for Daddy in all his hours outside his duty shifts, and for Jay, who became our new brother. He was there every day as well, dropped off by Lawyer George after “school” at the strange place he attended, and on weekends.

  The only dark moments involved Jay’s uncle. There were times when Lawyer George dropped in unexpectedly, looking grim, and then he and Jay would go into the diner’s little office and close the door. Even though Jay was too young to sign contracts and Lawyer George had been left in charge of all his business decisions, Lawyer George was training him, consulting, just as he’d promised Jay’s dad that he’d do. Jay would come out of those meetings looking angry, and he wouldn’t talk to me about any of it. He wouldn’t share anything with anyone. Daddy bought two pairs of boxing gloves and hung a boxing dummy in the back hall. Gus was put in charge of challenging Jay to boxing matches when he got that Look on his face. That helped.

  Other than those incidents, the years he spent with us were happy. We almost forgot that when he turned eighteen Jay would inherit millions, then more millions at twenty-one, and at twenty-five, several tens of millions, plus so many buildings and pieces of land that Lawyer George began teaching him how to use an amazing portable computer that he toted around, only the size of a big briefcase, to keep track of it all.

  One day, Jay would outgrow us. I tried not to think about that.

  I turned ten and decided it was time I kissed him.

  Jay

  Gabby likes the thrill of the chase

  ON HER BIRTHDAY, she locked me in the diner’s cooler because I refused to let her kiss me. I was twelve, she was ten. I’d spent months trying to ignore her eye batting; to dodge her, humor her, and most of all, not do anything that would make Gus, my best buddy, challenge me to a fist fight. But she was a redheaded piranha with lips.

  “Knock three times when you change your mind,” she said.

 
Finally, my teeth chattering, I gave up and knocked.

  When she opened the door I said, “I l-lied,” and stumbled past her.

  “Not fair!” she squealed. She slugged me in the chest. I was so stiff from the cold that I tripped over a crate of turnips and hit the floor hard. When I just lay there for a few seconds, blinking slowly, she bent over me, her big green eyes worried. “Jay? Jay!”

  I sat up, holding the side of my head and squinting at her. “I’m fine. Go knock down someone your own size.” Pretty witty, since I was a foot taller.

  Her face relaxed, the freckles riding a big, relieved smile. “But that’s too easy. You’re more fun.” She delivered the coup de Gabs by lunging forward and kissing me on the mouth—a soft, damp, smush of a kiss, untrained, unasked for, and unappreciated. And yet, I’ve never forgotten it.

  “Got you,” she said softly. “Forever.”

  She bolted out of the kitchen, leaving me to make up some damn good excuse for the knot on my head so Gus would never find out that his little sister had suckered me into a trap, knocked me on my ass, and kissed me against my will.

  Looking back on that moment, I knew it was Forever, too.

  Jay

  January 1991, the end of our childhood

  I admit I didn’t enjoy serving people the way Gabby, Gus and Tal did. I wasn’t a good “front” worker, as Mama MacBride put it. Yes, I called her that. I called Mr. MacBride “Sarge.” He liked it. He understood why I couldn’t honor him with Dad’s title. Anyhow, one-on-one with a customer, I didn’t like being treated like a servant. One time I heard a police officer buddy of Sarge’s mimic Yoda and say, “Strong the Wakefield is in that one, yes,” and everyone guffawed. Gabby came over and punched me on the arm in a show of support.

  But on Saturdays it was fun to sell biscuits, cookies and, of course, homemade pickles on the streets, something Gus, Gabs and I did every weekend if the weather was good. We roamed the sidewalks around Pack Square, Pritchard Park, Haywood Street and the Flatiron Building with shallow baskets strapped around our necks. Business was good and we got to keep twenty cents on every sale.

  I was more proud of my income as a street vendor than of all the trust fund money that existed in bank accounts I’d only inherited. We didn’t earn the fortune we’ve been given, Dad always said. It’s only ours to manage until we pass it along to the next generation. We have to prove we deserve the responsibility.

  But my street money was honest cash, mine alone, and I stored it in my bedroom at the loft, dropping each Saturday’s coins into an empty gallon coffee can I’d saved from the diner’s trash and washed. My money. My bank.

  My family.

  “Hotahotahotahota biscuits!” Gus sang out at the corner of College and Haywood. “Sausage and cheese, or only buttered if you please, fresh made, homemade, The P, B and S Diner, nothing finer!”

  And on the other corner Gabby bellowed, “Pickles on a stick, fat, fresh and thick, spicy or sweet, a homemade treat! Eat ’em real quick! Stick ’em in your mouth! Make ’em head south!”

  I, who simply stood across the street saying, “Hot food for sale,” in a low voice, stared across at Gus. We traded a strangled look. Gabs invented new chants all the time, but this one . . .

  Gus clamped a hand to his forehead. People were scowling at her. Or laughing. She looked bewildered and a little annoyed. I crossed the street as soon as the light changed. She shook her head at me. “What?”

  “Uhmmm, go back to last week’s holler.”

  “Why?”

  “Because otherwise Gus will come over here and explain why, and you won’t like it.”

  “Why don’t you just explain?”

  “Just go back to last week’s sales pitch.”

  Her eyes narrowed. The slightest crinkle at the corner of her right eye alerted me that I’d been had. “Because it sounds like I’m talking about penises?”

  An older lady halted. “What are you doing out here begging for money on the street and talking like that? Does your mother know you’re here?”

  “She sent me,” Gabby said solemnly. “We need money for an operation to save his leg.” She pointed at me. “He was bitten by a tarantula.”

  I was speechless. The woman looked down at the jeans extending from under my quilted jacket. “Where?”

  “I . . . no . . . ma’am . . .”

  “On his penis,” Gabby said. “But the poison spread.”

  She drew up like a mad hen. “Where are your parents?”

  “The tarantulas got them already.”

  I groaned. Steadying my basket with one hand, I grabbed Gabs by the sleeve of her long denim coat. “We’re going now. I’m sorry, ma’am. She’s . . . she didn’t take her pills this morning. We have to go.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not,” the woman ordered. “Just hold on. I’m getting to the bottom of this. Children on the street, in the cold, peddling food that’s probably not safe to eat—”

  “Hey, you take that back!” Gabs yelled. “These pickles are made by me! And these biscuits and cookies are made by Jane Eve Nettie MacBride, the best cook in Asheville. And if I want to stand on a street corner saying penis and telling people Jay Wakefield got bit on the penis by a tarantula—”

  I wrapped an arm around her waist and picked her up. She squealed. From the corner of my eye I saw Gus trotting towards us through a crowd on the crosswalk. I would bodily tote his sister to him, hand her over, and retreat to the piano factory until the memory of her joke faded from the hot red skin on my face.

  She was already chortling. “If you won’t have fun selling food then I have to show you how it’s done,” she told me over her shoulder. “So either get a chant or I’ll keep making up ones you don’t like!”

  Gus reached us and suddenly he was looking past us with an expression on his freckled face that stopped me in my tracks and froze Gabs’s laughter. She squirmed out of my grip. We turned to watch an Asheville police cruiser roar up to us, nearly bumping the sidewalk.

  Charlie Bowman, Sarge’s best friend, had tears on his beefy face. “Y’all need to get in,” he said.

  Gabby

  Jay’s uncle has been waiting . . .

  DADDY WAS patrolling the roads outside downtown that morning. He’d just finished working a fender bender when a tractor-trailer slid on a patch of ice and sideswiped him. He died in the ambulance.

  After his funeral, our little house was full of police officers. Delta commandeered the kitchen, since Mama sat on the living room couch with a thousand-mile stare in her eyes, with Tal curled up on her lap and Mr. Sam sitting beside them. Gus had gone down in the basement, where he and Ralph sat in the cold light of Daddy’s propane hunting lantern. Daddy had had a funny little hobby. Knitting. Said it was something his own daddy had done for relaxation. He’d taught all three of us, but only Gus took to it. So Gus was in the basement, his back pressed to its raw clay wall, with Ralph’s muzzle on his crossed legs, as he fumbled over the stitches of a gray wool scarf Daddy would never finish.

  I stood on a high limb of the oak tree in the back yard, coatless in the freezing air, naked branches grabbing my trouser legs and pullover sweater. I looked down at the gray-brown yard twenty feet below, wondering how it would feel to hit it head first.

  Wondering what Daddy felt when the tractor-trailer slammed into him.

  Jay stepped into the center of my target spot, looking up at me with his dark, sad eyes. “You’ve always told me his food angel likes cornbread. I smell cornbread in the air. Don’t you?”

  I shook my head. Couldn’t talk. My throat was full.

  He talked for me. Told me that his daddy died at a place called Free Wheeler, near the Crossroads Cove, and that Cousin Delta was there, and how she not only smelled like biscuits she made Jay think of biscuits, warm and comforted. A memory that soothed
him, later.

  I didn’t ask what he and his daddy had been doing way up there in the mountains or what kind of place Free Wheeler was. I just climbed down and went to him, crying without a sound. “Cornbread,” I finally said.

  He gave me a big hug and we stood there, me crying, him hugging. Slowly but surely, Daddy’s food angel filled us with the rich spirit of Daddy’s approval.

  Jay

  EVERYTHING WAS going wrong. Mama MacBride put on a brave face but her cooking magic was gone. She couldn’t remember recipes, couldn’t concentrate when orders flooded through the window between the dining room and the kitchen. Gabby and Gus wanted to stay home from school to help, but she refused. The waitresses tried to cook but they didn’t have the touch. Tal sat in her second-grade class not speaking to anyone and drawing stick pictures of Sarge holding cookies. Delta took over the restaurant for three weeks while Mama MacBride found something to take her mind off her growing fear that she would never be able to make a living for her family again. Lawyer George and I came up with a plan: he had the authority to hire people. Fine, then. Mama MacBride would be my personal cook. And she could cook whenever she felt like it. Or not at all.

  She turned the job down. I felt gobsmacked. Gabs grabbed me and gave me a sweet little kiss on one eyebrow, then she and Gus looked at me as if I were living on a different planet. “MacBrides don’t take handouts,” Gus said.

  Case closed.

  So in the end, it was decided to shut the doors of the P, B and S for “just a month or two.” Mama MacBride took a job on the line at a small company that made potato chips, pork rinds and cheese crackers. She put on a hairnet and jumpsuit; she came home at night with cheese powder caked on her jogging shoes and the smell of old grease on her clothes.