The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

by Deborah Smith

  He airlifted the stogie just long enough to say, “If you want to help save my cousins from E.W., get in. Why aren’t you wearing handcuffs? Damn.”

  Jay

  Together again, unnaturally

  Decisions are easy when you don’t have many choices.

  I know I hurt Gabs badly. I chose land, not family. That’s a sin to a MacBride. I swear to God I’d have done whatever it took to make it up to her. She wasn’t ready to trust me then, and I couldn’t undo my decisions now. I had to be the kind of man she wouldn’t trust just a little while longer. Until E.W. stuck his head too far into the trap to back out.

  I could only hope the end results would justify the means.

  And conversations are hard when one of us isn’t talking.

  We were roaring into the mountains above Asheville, and Gabs hadn’t said one word yet. The last time I’d seen her, she’d stared at me with eyes that had gone so black I couldn’t see the green irises at all; a blue vein had throbbed in her cheek, where the skin looked translucent. The freckles across her nose had turned into reverse stars. Her long red hair seemed to catch fire. She told me I was doomed. Then she walked out.

  “I didn’t have you arrested,” I said above the grim silence. “The handcuffs remark was just a personal fantasy.”

  Not a peep in response.

  I turned up the heater. The cab was dark and cozy-warm. I had music on standby, if she’d say the word. “Ask me anything you want,” I said. “I’ll leave out pieces of the entire truth, but I won’t lie to you directly.”

  I heard the agitated rush of her breathing as she finished mentally nailing all of her doors shut and pushing furniture in front of them. I let her build her barricades.

  “What will happen to those kids? You’re after Dustin, too, aren’t you?” she asked. “Charlie told me they’re all under E.W.’s guardianship.”

  “If I can get them to trust me? Nothing. Or at least not Straithern.”

  “Would he send both of the boys to Straithern?”

  I winced. She knew about my years there. I’d never told her; she’d done the research. “He’d send Dustin. Donny doesn’t even qualify as ring bait.”

  “Ring bait?”

  “The puppies they throw in the cages with pit bulls to teach them to kill.”

  Silence. She turned her face away from me, set her purse in the floor between her feet, and spread her coat over her legs. “You learned to kill?”

  “Metaphorically speaking.”

  The sound she made was low and quickly cut off by a hand to her throat. The sadness in it went through me. I focused on the dark road for several minutes, forcing the emotion into the back corners of my brain. Getting it under control. “Check out the picnic I brought for you,” I said. “In that backpack on the floor.”

  She rummaged in the canvas pack and pulled out a large jar of cayenne pepper flakes. That’s all the bag contained.

  We lay together on rumpled sheets in a room overlooking the Malibu surf. She held up the tin of hot pepper flakes and dangled it just above my thighs. “This is how much I love you. I’ll sprinkle it on . . . and lick it off. I can take the sting. Can you?”

  I stroked a finger along her cheek and smiled, then she opened the tin . . .

  She set the can between us. Was that a come-hither hint or a dream-on-you-bastard, gesture? A man can hope. A Wakefield faces reality. Her answer? Dream on.

  “What makes you think E.W. won’t send people to look for the kids up here?”

  I took a long drag on the cigar. “He doesn’t have to. He knows I’m going to bring them back.”

  “So . . . this is a game? These kids are pawns in a chess match between you two?”

  “Nothing’s a game where we’re concerned. It’s a war.”

  “It’s my war, too, Jay. I have good reason to hate E.W. And I’d like to see this fabled Little Finn.”

  “Good. I thought you’d want a piece of the action. In fact, I’m hoping you’ll be my ambassador. A fabled MacBride.”

  “The old moonshining stories? That’s not my family.”

  “Can’t be sure.”

  “Why would the people up in the Little Finn Valley today possibly care?”

  “They’re not normal. You’ll see. You’re a MacBride, and that name carries a lot of weight in this part of the mountains, whether you realize it or not. Especially at Fortress Du Bonavendier, for reasons I don’t completely understand. It’s partly because an ancestor of yours was also a Nettie, which means a lot up there. You’re my trading card. If I come bearing a MacBride, I’m halfway to being a trusted ally.”

  She hissed. Hissed. I was glad they took away her Taser at the police station.

  The soft, squeaking compression of her body shoving backward into the seat’s deep fleece-and-leather back told me she was on guard and unlikely to segue into a better mood. My stomach, already in a cold knot of disgust at how my relatively simple plan had already gone to hell, tightened more. I was counting on her to up my cred with the general populace. E.W. had to believe I was coming off this mountain with the kids. And Dustin. His spy had to tell him I could pull this off, win their trust and deliver his heir in exchange for the mining rights. I had to prove he cashed his blood like poker chips. I had to dirty the man so well that he’d never get clean in the public eye.

  I needed proof he was capable of trading his own blood for money. E.W. was about to hand it to me on a silver platter.

  She lifted her hands to her mane of damp red hair, which she’d shoved into a tortoise-shell clip as we left the police station. She re-secured the mass by pushing and twisting its long strands into a tight knot.

  “Getting ready for battle?”

  “Yep. If I get waterboarded tonight because I’ve helped with your scheme to screw E.W., it will frizz.”

  A strange thing happened. I laughed. She was the only woman who could pull real joy out of me, even for just a second. I loved being with her again.

  Time for the test. I handed her my cigar. Would she remember what she’d done with a similar one within the first thirty minutes of our doomed reunion, thirteen years ago?

  She took the fat, damp, phallic offering between her thumb and forefinger, sneering as if it were a stinking, rotten cucumber even her briny magic couldn’t save. Then she lowered her window. She heaved the very expensive, hand-rolled smoke into the soggy mountain night.

  Yep, she remembered. I laughed again. “You MacBrides are a hard people.”

  Gabby

  Into the Valley of the Shadow of Wakefield

  TWO HOURS NORTHEAST of Asheville, we entered the isolated heart of the Carolina Appalachians. Most of the territory is held in national and state forest, with only pockets of private land left. There were miles of dark hollows and unexplored ridges, hidden places brimming with unfound troves of history, the archaeology of forgotten Cherokee villages and the overgrown foundations of tiny pioneer cabins where people lived their entire lives without being recorded in any civic ledger. Some of them still did.

  The 1996 Olympic bomber, Eric Rudolph, hid out in these mountains for months before the FBI caught him. And then only because they got a tip. We’re in the cradle of a modern pioneer wilderness.

  Jay downshifted the truck as it crawled up ever-steepening two-lanes twisting around the rocky fringes of sheer drops that went down a thousand feet in places, making my ears pop. Occasionally a silver guard rail pretended to protect us from the pavement’s rim. My memories of the high Appalachians were postcards, dreamlike. The scent of blue air and a sea of clouds below eye level. Like visiting a world floating above the earth. A kind of heaven. The smell of evergreens and damp, cold waterfalls and the pickled brine of spring rain. Snowflakes sprinkled the windshield. The rhythmic whump of the wipers made my thighs warm.

 
Jay tapped the surface of his phone, and his playlist of our weekend’s greatest moments went silent. The deep rumble of the truck’s engine filled my ears. It geared down to a thick purr as he shifted again. The two-lane began to descend, and a few minutes later, trees closed in on both sides. We were deep into the mountain’s broad, shallow flank.

  We’re inside the arms of this mountain range now.

  Ahead, an opening in the trees yawed off into unknown forests. A thick metal arm blocked the entrance to a narrow gravel lane. “Time to leave reality behind,” Jay said, then swung the truck off the public road. We crunched to a halt with the truck’s grill almost touching the barricade arm. The arm’s right end disappeared into a thick control box with a stone base. The arm whirred upward. We drove past.

  The headlights glinted off a device up in a tree. A security camera.

  Checkpoint Ahead. Guard On Duty.

  “Is this where I throw my bong out the window and hide my guns?” I asked grimly.

  “No, this is where you lock and load.”

  “The bong, or the guns?”

  “Both.”

  A light winked through the bare winter forest. We crossed a wide stone bridge that surprised me with its vintage look—it seemed very old, as if the road had been built to reach it. Another curve came and went, then the road opened into a broad glen with a parking area in front of several log and stone buildings. There was a loading dock, a bulletin board under a porch, rocking chairs, planters bursting with hardy evergreen shrubs, old trucks, a goose-necked horse trailer . . . and several free-range buffalo. They stood around a sheltered feeding kiosk, pulling shanks of hay from a tall wire cage, chewing placidly. Mildly interested, the bull of the small clan lifted his shaggy head and watched us. The cows didn’t even bother to pretend they noticed.

  The buildings looked just as entrenched. Each had tall, barred windows across the fronts, but their back halves disappeared into the side of a hill. The roofs were flat and sodded. A snug little log shed stood atop the largest building. Security lights came on, filling our cab with antiseptic light. Squinting, I saw a radio tower reaching high above the tree tops, and I also saw five goats. They gazed out at us from the roof, standing in the rooftop shed’s doorway. They looked warm and happy, standing in a deep bed of hay.

  On the roof. Goats on the roof.

  “Goat Central,” Jay said. “Will’s father built it in the seventies. Jack Bonavendier. The locals come here for help in emergencies. Groceries. Propane. Medicine. Clothes for their kids. Any kind of emergency aid that they can’t afford or are too proud—or too skittish—to apply for from the government. Jack Bonavendier was the reason this forgotten community survived. Will is the reason it thrives.” He paused, as if redefining Will’s generosity. “Welfare for the lazy and uneducated. He builds loyalty with handouts.”

  “Or through kindness to those who are isolated and forgotten by the mainstream.”

  “Bleeding heart.”

  “Elitist Ayn Rand toady.”

  “Naïve bunny kisser.”

  “Right-wing capitalist.”

  “Foodie socialist.”

  “Corporate apologist.”

  “Artsy dreamer.”

  I reached for my door latch. The buffalo looked safe to me. I pictured them as steaks soaking in a pickly marinade. “I need some air.”

  Click.

  My door lock went down. I turned slowly to stare at Jay. “Nothing personal,” he said. “It’s not safe.”

  “The buffalo are dangerous?”

  “No, but the gorilla might be.”

  A thick thump imprinted the truck’s roof. I sank back as a dark face peered over the windshield at us.

  Call it an unfortunate girly instinct, but I leapt toward Jay with my own display of primate behavior, turning sideways and wrapping my arms around his neck as if he were an oak and I might climb him. The instant warmth and strength surged between us. His body felt wonderful against mine. He quickly wrapped his right around me and pulled me closer.

  I was staring at the upside-down gorilla face above us. Jay was looking at me. His breath, slow and careful, caressed my bare neck above my coat. “I used to look at the covers of Dad’s John Carter of Mars books,” he said quietly, his voice deep and luscious in my ear. “All those . . . bodacious women. They were always clinging to Carter, just like this. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time trying to imagine exactly how that would feel. To be having adventures on another planet, in terrible danger, with the most exotic woman in the universe pressing herself against me for protection. How incredibly exciting that must be.” He paused. “Now I know.”

  Turning my face towards his so slowly that each breath skated on a fraction of movement, I looked into his eyes and tried not to fall apart. It was the same as that time in California. All the tension, the unanswered questions, the awkwardness and anger and memories and heartache, all falling aside simply because we were this close, and suddenly lost in each other’s spell.

  Our chaperone began to slap the windshield with the palm of her hand. Hard. When that didn’t break our concentration, the hand disappeared then reappeared on Jay’s side, attached to a long, thick, furry arm that draped downward. The hand gripped his door latch and began jerking. Hard. The truck rocked.

  That did it. I pulled back, he let me go, but we both managed to trail our hands across a lot of territory on the way. I slid back to my own side of the seat and smoothed my coat. The dark face and deep-set eyes of our visitor craned downward beside Jay’s window. Dark gorilla lips pursed at him, then pressed against the glass.

  “I’m no Jane Goodall,” I said, “But I believe that’s a gorilla, and she’s hitting on you.”

  “She likes me.” Jay hit a button and his window purred downward. Prying the lid off a cooler, he reached inside and retrieved a cookie. “Here, Sheba.”

  Sheba reached a huge hand inside and snared the cookie. Holding it carefully, she climbed down and lumbered across the yard, disappearing through a doorway into a barn-like shed.

  Jay smiled. “Will keeps as many of the exotic animals as possible. If they can live here without being much of a threat to everyone else, they stay.”

  “Define ‘much of a threat.’”

  “The giraffes kick. The monkeys steal and bite. The kangaroos can rip a person up with their hind claws. They travel in gangs. Like politicians.”

  “How many kangaroos are there?”

  “No one’s sure anymore. Same as the buffalo. The Little Finn Company owns forty square miles of land here. Plenty of room to breed and roam.”

  Forty square miles.

  Jay lifted a finger to his lips. He nodded toward a small building, where smoke curled from a tall chimney. A light came on. A tall, wide-shouldered young man let a pack of dogs out. Mostly pit bulls, but also some herding dogs: big shaggy black Belgian shepherds and brindled Australian Cattle Dogs, bred from dingoes. The guard stepped onto the shallow porch. Following him was a short wraith, also draped in some kind of hood and poncho, and carrying a small satchel of some kind. Some kind of animal sat atop her right shoulder. A weasel? A monkey? Maybe a pet dragon.

  “It’s the Clagg,” Jay said, and hung an arm out the truck’s window. “Clagg Sullivan. Used to work for a drug ring up in Memphis. He’s clean now.”

  “Who’s his shadow?”

  “I don’t know yet. There are new refugees here every time I visit.”

  Refugees?

  His face hooded, a shaggy poncho swinging around his swaggering legs, the Clagg strode toward us. A rifle was slung by a strap over his shoulder. Ahead of him trotted the pit bills and cattle dogs and shaggy shepherds, their heads lowered in that way that said they’d charge if he gave the word. The wraith broke into a trot to keep up. Her shadowy pet curled a long tail around her forearm.

 
; The Clagg lifted a flashlight and beamed it into the already well-lit truck, illuminating his own face, too. He was young but rough, with scars across his black eyebrows and the bridge of his nose. Instantly he recognized Jay, and did not look happy to see him; then shifted his gaze to me. His eyes darkened. The hood slid back to reveal a shaved head with matching flame tattoos on either side of his skull. A guttural sound that might be a welcome rumbled from his throat. He touched an earpiece. “She’s here, Mr. B.”

  A tingle flashed up my spine at those words. I sounded important to Mr. B. That worried me.

  The wraith peered around him, still in the shadows.

  Jay nodded at her. “You have an assistant now?”

  “I am a registered nurse,” the wraith answered for itself, its voice feminine and lightly accented. “I work for Doctor Fortunato.” She stepped from the shadows, revealing a round face with dark eyes and olive skin. Black bangs shagged over her forehead. “My name is Woserit Elmessiri. But please refer to me as ‘Wren.’” She craned her head and gazed at me with the same intense curiosity as Clagg.

  “Wren’s an Arab,” Clagg added matter-of-factly. “Don’t be scared, she’s not Muslim. She’s from Egypt, and she’s a Jesus freak.”

  Wren frowned at him.

  “And the rat on her shoulder doesn’t bite. So don’t freak out.”

  “It’s a kudamundi,” Wren said staunchly. “In essence, a South American raccoon.”

  The Clagg shrugged. “She needs a ride down to the valley.”

  Jay nodded.

  The Clagg shined his flashlight at me again. Both he and the kudamundi-wearing Egyptian nurse studied me. “A MacBride,” Wren said in her soft accent. As if they’d never seen one before. As if I was the most exotic of the exotic beasts that roamed this wild outpost.

  Blood might talk, but in its own sweet time

  “LOOK. ECO-FRIENDLY Christmas decorations,” Jay inserted, making the distraction sound convenient and sharp. He downshifted as we entered a long slope beside a craggy wall of ancient bedrock. A fairytale tableaux of tiny icicles hung from every edge and crevice. It was beautiful and oddly heartbreaking.