The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella

by Deborah Smith

  “I had a word with Denoto,” Pug Barnsley shouted as she drove us wildly up the lane known as the West Tearmann Road. “And the word was ‘Shame on you! Shame shame shame! Where are your manners?’”

  My thoughts drowned her out. Her driving style slung me against Jay so often that he gallantly braced an arm behind me—and I was grateful.

  Pug’s melodic but high-pitched drawl took over again. She was giving me a five-minute overview of the valley’s truly impressive self-sufficiency. “The Sunflower Power fields are over thataway—that’s where all the big solar panels are—and the hydroelectric plant is back there on the far side of the river . . . everyone who lives in the valley leases their homes from Will for diddly squat in rent; he’s a great landlord! We all work at the distillery or doing jobs to keep everything tidy and in-deeee-pendent of The Gov’ment! Farming, carpentry, maintaining the solar and hydropower systems, or working at the wool mill. We generate all the electricity we need, and then some! And most of the food, and the best bourbon in the South!” she shouted, pumping the accelerator with a jogging shoe. Along with her pink jacket she wore thick tights with a sparkly, holiday poinsettia pattern. I judged her to be in her mid-thirties. In human years. In hobbit years, she was about two hundred.

  “The mill is for making textiles?” I shouted. As she swung the cart down a lane that paralleled the river, the roar of the waterfall filled our ears.

  “What’d you say?” she hollered, flying past the handsome structure then veering madly up the hills toward the pretty bungalows and cabins.

  Jay took the excuse to lean closer to my ear and fill in as tour guide. “The first wool mill was built on that site by the MacBrides and Gallaghers, in the eighteen thirties. The fabric that came out of the Little Finn Woolery was sold all over the mountains and as far away as Nashville.”

  “Until the feds and the Wakefields blew the mill to smithereens during Prohibition, along with everything else!” Pug yelled. She said it in a matter-of-fact, almost jovial way. Just another piece of tourist trivia. I expected pennants that said, “Wakefields are evil” to be for sale in a gift shop.

  I arched a brow at Jay. He arched one back. “So they say. There are conflicting stories about that raid.”

  “Massacre,” Pug yelled.

  Jay gave up.

  At the top of hills, she sped up, if that was even possible. The juiced-up former golf cart came over the rise, and all four wheels left the ground. “Hold on,” Jay warned, wrapping his hand in the back of my coat. Pug whooped with glee. When we landed, I bit the tip of my tongue. She slid the cart to a stop. “Ta dah!”

  Squinting through teary eyes, I got my first look at the heart of the tiny town my ancestors had founded in the eighteen hundreds; the town Jay’s ancestors had played some part in destroying in nineteen thirty, and which Caillin MacBride and her doomed, married lover, John Bonavendier, had begun restoring in the nineteen fifties. Jack Bonavendier had continued the project, basing the construction on notes and drawings Caillin had left when she fled from the murder charges, in nineteen fifty-seven.

  I immediately understood why they’d cared so much.

  It was like stepping into an Irish village of whitewashed stone and shingled roofs, the shop buildings fronted by deep awnings and rough-hewn benches, flower boxes and brick sidewalks. Everything was situated around a large stone-paved square with an old fountain in its center. The fountain was chipped and cracked, patched in the broken spots but left to look exactly as it was: a damaged but proud monument to What Had Been. Landscape lights illuminated everything, and handsome street lamps cast soft glows on the snowy patina. At the far side, the main street went another hundred feet and ended in front of an overgrown ruin of jumbled stones and, with just enough walls left to support what had once been a majestic steeple. And in fact, still was. The steeple I’d seen from below. “A church?” I asked.

  “That’s the old county courthouse,” Jay said.

  “What kind of shops are here?” I asked.

  “None,” Pug answered. “The buildings are all empty. Man, oh man, we could sell the shit out of our goods in these buildings. Host festivals and let folks tour the mill and shit. It would be great.”

  “But Will won’t let the outside world in,” Jay said. “So this place is . . . embalmed. A history museum. An empty tomb.”

  I looked at him in alarm. “That’s a little morbid. And paranoid.”

  “Ah. You’re beginning to see my point.”

  Pug clucked her tongue and nodded. “I love me some Will B, but he’s screwy. Anyhow, that’s the ten cent version of the tour, Gabs. Let’s go have some holiday cheer.” She revved the cart’s electric motor—not that it was obvious, since the motor made no noise. But she stomped the accelerator, that was for certain.

  We lurched forward, made a hairpin left turn, and plunged down a lane into the darkness of the slope beyond.

  The underworld known as New Tearmann

  ME. A PICKLING celebrity as well as a legendary MacBride? According to a large chalkboard under the awning at the entrance to the Gallagher Cavern, I was already on the holiday agenda. News traveled fast.

  Chapel guitar ensemble 8 p.m. Christmas Eve

  Midnight sing-along Christmas Eve, led by Rev. Bonnie Bee in the Cavern pub

  Library closing at 6 p.m. until Dec. 26

  Classes resume Dec. 26, 6—10 p.m.

  Food pantry by appointment only until 8 a.m. Dec. 26

  G. MacBride Vs. D. Overfield née Wakefield at the Rock Ring, Noon, Christmas Eve

  G. MacBride teaching the art of pickling at 3 p.m. Xmas Eve, in the Cavern kitchen

  (assuming she’s not seriously hurt at the Rock Ring event)

  “She was serious?” I asked.

  “You’re not fighting Denoto tomorrow or any other day,” Jay said darkly.

  I made him promise to keep his fists to himself, to just chat with Will about his insane girlfriend and watched him disappear into the folds of darkness created by solar lamps. Pug and I stood outside the Cavern—yes, Cavern, not Tavern. The stony hillside was dotted with stone-and-wood doors, and even a few windows set in the rock. It looked like a futuristic survival shelter, unlike the gentle whimsy of the Mill Falls bungalows and the abandoned charm of Old Tearmann. New Tearmann was under the ridge beyond the old town.

  “The caves go all through this area,” Pug was telling me, waving ruddy little hands at the craggy entrance outfitted with oh-so-folksy screen doors in front of heavy wooden ones. “This is where Wakefields came in and mined all the feldspar and mica they could find.”

  “I’m not going into any kind of caves,” I said, remembering the claustrophobic shed of foster care.

  Pug turned to me, suddenly serious. “You know what Tearmann means in Gaelic?”

  “Sanctuary.”

  “An Tearmann. Say it like un-CHAR-mun. The Sanctuary. The MacBrides and Gallaghers named the town Sanctuary. ’Cause they came here dirt-poor Scots-Irish from northern Ireland before the Revolutionary War, with their sheep and their copper pot stills, and this wild valley was a god-given dream come true. They made friends with the Cherokees and built farms and made whiskey and wove wool. They found their dream here. It got interrupted, is all.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “You’re looking at a suicidal former Miss North Carolina runner-up from ten years and seventy-five pounds ago. When I ate too many hamburgers and blew my chance at the state title—my mama’s dream of me being Miss America—she kicked me out. All I’d been raised to do was pose, smile and look pretty. I did a lot of wandering and a lot of drugs before I heard about this valley from Delta Whittlespoon.”

  “Delta!”

  “Yep, your biscuit witching cousin. My mama of the heart. She was in Asheville with Cathy Mitternich on a shopping trip a few years ago an
d I was working as a bartender, a waitress, and a street singer . . .” She spread her arms and belted a line from You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings. “And they put so much cash in my tip hat that I started crying, and Delta took me by one arm and said, ‘You need some love and a biscuit, honey.’ And the next thing I knew I was in the Cove, with people who liked me fat and sassy, just the way I am. Reverend Bonnie Bee came through on her way to here and . . .”

  “Reverend Bonnie?”

  “Will’s baby sister, Bedelia Bonavendier, Reverend Bonnie Bee, she’s a Presbyterian and an artist, also an army veteran, and she said, ‘Didn’t you grow up working in your parent’s restaurant in Wilmington?’ And I said, ‘Yep, that’s me, the shrimp and beer princess by the Atlantic,’ and Reverend Bonnie said, ‘My brother needs somebody to cook for the people who work for him up in the Little Finn Valley, and to run a pub for them.’ And I said, ‘I can cook some damn fine pub grub, and I know how to manage drunks in a bar, I used to be one,’ and so . . . five years later, I’m the manager of Gallagher Cavern Pub. We’ve got three hundred people living and working here, and there’s not a restaurant or a bar within thirty miles of this valley. So they can come here. I make them feel at home. I’m their mama. Their Delta Whittlespoon.”

  She dragged me over to a map framed next to the chalkboard. Out of the corner of one eye I glimpsed movement on a craggy ledge above the doorway. Several large housecats and a small monkey sat there, watching us. The monkey was wearing a sweater. A red and green Christmas sweater, with a snowman embroidered on the front.

  “There’s the classrooms. We’ve got about thirty kids in the valley. This section of rooms are their one-room schoolhouse. See the skylights? Doesn’t feel like you’re underground, at all! Doc Bolton—he’s a retired professor from down at UNGSU in Georgia, he runs it. Adults can sit in, and a lot do. Like for grammar and math and such. Doc brings in lecturers and shows documentaries and such. Last week he had a big audience for his History of the Caribbean Sea Trade movie. I suspect some came because they thought it was one of those Johnny Depp pirate movies, but they liked it anyway. And that—” she pointed to a large space—“is the the-a-ter. We show movies there, every night. Folks can watch on their TVs at home but you know, togetherness is important and everyone here is like a big family. Doc picks the flicks on every other night, then I get to pick the other nights.” She paused. “He picks movies with subtitles. I pick movies with fart jokes.”

  I was distracted, watching the monkey scratch one of the cats behind its tabby ears. “Why build so much of New Tearmann underground?”

  “Climate controlled, low maintenance, safer.”

  “No offense, but there’s a serious streak of prepper-ism here, right?”

  “End of the world Doomsday survivalist stuff? I guess. The history of this place says, ‘Don’t trust the gov’ment to take care of you.’”

  “Or Wakefields. The feud is still so raw.”

  She nodded. “Over money and liquor and family and murder and revenge and love.”

  “Love?”

  Shrug. “There’s always a lost love in stories like this. Come on. You need to see our fun side. Good people. Hanging together. These are folks who had no family until they came here. Including a lot of veterans the gov’ment kicked to the curb. Will’s daddy Jack was a Vietnam vet, you know? Really messed him up, by what he did there. Will and Reverend Bonnie couldn’t save him. Trying to rescue your parents from their worst devils is hard on kids, you know? Makes ’em either mean or saintly or both.”

  She pulled open one of the doors, set in the craggy wall of the mountainside. The monkey leaned over the ledge and chattered at the outpouring of light, warmth and laughter. Pug yelled at him, “Come here, you little long-tailed rat!” and he leapt down to her shoulder. She laughed. “Karaoke at the Cavern pub!” The monkey bared his teeth at me.

  I bared mine back.

  The strains of Dolly Parton’s I will always love you . . . ewww you, ewww you… drifted out on waves of amplified background music. My head filled with reckless wonder. It was one A.M., my knuckles hurt from punching Denoto’s chin, I was giddy from the aftermath of the vintage corn whiskey at Anna’s, nervous because of Jay, plus cold, exhausted, and searching for meaning in the midst of this tragic, mystical valley.

  “Will you let me cook? I need to relax.”

  “Cook? Shit, girl, you can make a whole Christmas buffet if you want to. All I’ve got ready for Christmas Day is ten frozen turkeys and some cans of pumpkin puke. Come on!”

  Claustrophobia be damned. There was a kitchen under this mountain. I followed her inside.

  Jay

  The battlefield beneath

  I FOUND WILL IN the cooper’s cave, a high-tech carpentry workshop the size of a small warehouse, tucked around a bend in the ridge facing the river. Here his crew built furniture, tools, fence posts and dozens of oak barrels every week for storing and aging the distillery’s corn whiskey. Oak was the only acceptable barrel material. Give that mix a year to age and it poured from the barrels as smooth gold—made of heirloom, high-fat corn and wheat Will grew along the fertile plain of the valley floor, just as MacBrides and Gallaghers had done for two hundred years.

  Wearing a thin bandage across the bridge of his nose, a sweat-soaked tank top on his massive chest, and a look of disdain on his scarred face, Will slammed a broad hammer into the stave of a future whiskey barrel. The scent of oak and sweat and charred wood filled me like a threat. Nothing covered by cologne, here. Raw manufacturing of wood and testosterone. Inefficient, primitive, but fulfilling.

  He glanced to the left, letting me know that Denoto lurked behind a motorized blade sharpener in one cubby of the walls. She stared at me as she honed a skinning knife.

  So much for that man-hug and double-shot of corn whiskey we were about to share. I put my game face back in place. Rev. Bonnie came in, adjusting the earpiece of her phone as she tucked it into a pouch on the belt of her Christmas sweater and tie-dyed red tights. A tall woman, curvy and strong. In some ways, a black-haired sister to Gabs. “You and Gabby are welcome here,” she said. “I told Pug to set you up in rooms on the same floor of the Cavern.”

  I saluted her with my bandaged hand.

  She grinned, smoothing a short bob back from her shoulder. “Women in the clergy are used to adulation. Especially in places where there aren’t many other women.” She had served two tours in the Middle East as a chaplain for the army. She had shrapnel from a roadside bomb in one ankle.

  Will looked us over sourly. First his sister, then me, as he bought the hammer down on a band of iron. “You lured Gabby here to show us you can control everyone connected to the history of this valley.”

  “If you think I control Gabs, you’re delusional. Talk to him, Bonnie.”

  Denoto bounced forward. “She’s a war trophy you can show off to E.W. Her and her sister and brother.”

  I gestured toward Denoto. “Call off your pet panther.”

  He nodded. “All right.” He looked at Denoto. “No fighting with Gabby MacBride. That’s an order.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but Bonnie cut her off. “If you disagree, I’ll convene the council and vote to evict you from this valley.”

  Denoto jabbed the knife into a sheath on her belt, gave me a look that said she’d like to carve off some pieces of mine that I cherished the most, and strode out of the workshop.

  “Thank you.” I said. “Now I’m going back to the Cavern and enjoy some fine karaoke while watching my back.”

  Bonnie stepped forward, her Cajun Bonavendier eyes intrigued. “You think Gabby could have taken Denoto in the ring?”

  I didn’t hesitate. I believed in my woman, whether she believed in me, or not. “She’s a MacBride.”

  Gabby

  In the Cavern’s kitchen

  THE BIG
COMMERCIAL kitchen of the Cavern was armed for bear: serving bears three meals a day that is.

  “So, when the zombie apocalypse comes,” I quipped to my audience of foodie farmers, “this is where the living will barricade themselves against the brain connoisseurs?”

  That earned me a few smiles, but also some somber nods of agreement.

  Okay, there were people here who believed in zombies. Or connoisseurs.

  The underground kitchen was incredible high-tech storage designed, solid stone walls and skylights overhead, also a tile floor inset with a bright, sky-blue motif. Smooth steel chimneys and stove hoods channeled the smoke of cooking up through the rock hood into the outside mountain air. On the far side of a long prep table, my audience sat, watching me like judges at a taping of Iron Chef: Cave Carolina.

  Three men, five women—one nursing a baby at the plump breast beneath her hiked-up holiday sweater, with a bright blue and yellow macaw on her shoulder. Farmers. They managed the corn and wheat fields tucked into the valley’s bottoms and isolated coves. They also ran the greenhouses that provided tomatoes and other vegetables year-round. Two of the women were the Moon sisters, brunette New Agers and horticultural experts, originally from South Carolina. They specialized in an heirloom tomato their ancestors had created. The state had erased their town, Morning Glory, from the earth. It, and the historic Moon Tomato fields, were now beneath forty feet of water, in a reservoir.

  “We’re rebels with a tomato mission,” said one, sliding a bowl of fat, red, winter-greenhouse Moons toward me. “This valley is the only place we’ve found that has the earth magic like our home.”

  I sliced a ’mater into quarters, then sampled it slowly, like a wine connoisseur. I wouldn’t sweet-talk them, I’d speak my truth. The flavors burst on my tongue. Savory herbs and spring onions, buttermilk and cornbread made with stone-ground kernels from heirloom corn, Cherokee and Creek corn, fat and ripe. Bloody Marys and aspic and juicy slices atop perfectly grilled beef burgers. The Moon sisters were the real deal. Tomato queens.