Wally B hopped over the low crest of garden fencing behind the seats; suddenly I was wrestling with a wallaby whose intention became clear: to sit in the safety of my blue-jeaned lap.
I gave up. Hugging Wally B to my wool scarves, layered sweaters, and other evidence that I came from Southern California and owned no “cold clothes,” I watched in awe as my pint-sized version of Richard Petty downshifted again. We zoomed up and over and around the ridges, coming to a vent in the mountainside and hanging a hard left along a deep fold in the mountain’s flank; a loamy gulch that probably turned soggy with the runoff from every rainstorm. Another left and we were deep in the steep folds of the Haints, bouncing on a rutted lane that snaked past an Indiana Jones world of boulders, winter lichen, and mysterious crannies that made dark pathways into evergreen forests of rhododendron and cedars.
Worthy swung the wheel up another tiny path. We followed a narrow fissure over the next ridge. He slowed the vehicle, stretching the toe of his dirty Michael Jordan high-top to reach the brake.
We crested a knoll, and he slowed even more. In my lap, Wally B stopped digging his agile front paws into my jacket. A tall, stacked-stone pillar rose from the naked vines of winter. I stared at the words fading in the carved face of a stone set in its top quarter. Glen Gallagher.
Down we went, into a forgotten cove so beautiful I expected spirits, still looking for revenge and justice, to burst out of the rhododendrons and gather around us.
Jay
The search is on
IT’S A WAKEFIELD tradition: Never show weakness or doubt in front of inferiors—which includes employees, stockholders, the general public, and low-ranking angels among the seraphim—basically, anyone who’s not a Wakefield.
For the first time in my life I paced anxiously in front of the outside world, cell phone to ear, breath puffing in the cold air as I alerted George to organize helicopters and call NASA about satellite tracking. I was wearing a rut into the banks of the Little Finn, while a dozen of Will’s minions prepped for the search to find Gabs.
Will suddenly blocked my way. His long, dark hair was bound in a ragged braid that hung from beneath a fleece-lined cap. The scar on his face looked purple in the cold December sun. Above us, over the Eerie Gals, a flock of bald eagles screamed in the sky. “Our tracker’s here. I’m giving her something from Gabby’s luggage to scent the dogs.”
I put the phone away and turned to study a short, sturdy woman with plaited gray hair, ten hoops in one ear, an inch-wide steel plug in the earlobe of the other, and onyx-black eyes in a golden-brown face. Beadwork and leather strips stained in bright colors decorated her heavy leather coat. Amulets hung from leather thongs around her neck. Her hiking boots, beneath what appeared to be a popular children’s show character printed on flannel pajama bottoms over sweatpants, had beaded laces. A pair of big, slack-faced bloodhounds stood beside her, sniffing my air as if I might need to be chased up the nearest tree.
“Tofu jerky, Wind Breaker?” she deadpanned, and held out a wrinkled stick of brown vegetarian not-so-goodness.
“‘Wind Breaker’ is the Cherokee name she’s given you,” Will explained drily.
I’m not hungry,” I replied to her. “But thank you, ‘She Who Walks With Dora The Explorer.’”
She scowled at me.
My phone beeped. I put it to my ear, again. “George?”
“No. Gabby’s with Timor Vance and his son at Glen Gallagher,” Dustin said. “They’re trading recipes.” Pause. “I don’t care what anyone says about you; I wish you were my dad instead of just my cousin.”
Click. My runaway teenage cousin was gone again, that fast.
Gabby
Sometimes, it’s as simple as Spam
DURING THREE tours of Afghanistan, Sergeant Timor Vance had been shot twice, lost two toes on his left foot to an IED, saved five of his soldiers and more than twenty civilians from sure death, and been honorably discharged on a medical disability after trying to strangle an officer who had ordered Vance’s pet dog killed. He came home to learn that his wife had left him and their son, that his Vietnam-veteran father considered him a loser for marrying a white woman and not finishing college, and that no employer wanted an ex-sarge who had joined the army at nineteen with only one year of community college, and whose only certain job skills were tank maintenance, kicking ass, protecting others, and being a loving dad.
No one had noticed that he’d been mentored as a teenager by a grandmother in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who taught him how to put the soul in soul food, and that he instinctively understood more about the art of southern barbecue—from the dry rubs to the sweet tomato syrups to the spicy vinegar tangs—than most smokehouse masters could learn in a lifetime. All they noticed was the silent anger, the withdrawal and the inability of a tall, dangerous-looking young black man to show them the handsome smile that had won him president of the senior class in his Tennessee high school.
Tim’s cocoa-hued face was carved with stress and exhaustion. He looked a lot older than his thirty years, but decidedly more relaxed than when I’d climbed out of the four wheeler two hours ago. If Worthy hadn’t been with me, I’m not sure what would have happened. Tim had been so wired that his hands were clumped in permanent fists. After a few heartfelt pleas from Worthy—“But Dad, she can help. She’s magic,” and a long scary silence, Tim had seemed to relax the tiniest bit and tersely ordered Worthy into the camper, then told me, “I wanted my kid to go to New Tearmann. To stay there. To have Christmas with normal people. Will and the others . . . they’ll take care of him.”
“So you can kill yourself out here and your body won’t be found until after Worthy opens his Christmas presents?”
More of his intense silence gave me an answer. He deflected his unspoken confession with this: “Aren’t you worried to be here alone with a big scary veteran who’s unstable?”
“My business partner was big, scary, and a movie star, meaning completely unstable . . . and I stabbed him in the ass with a pickle fork.”
He grimaced. His throat worked. He nodded.
My head filled with an image. A familiar can with a pull-top lid, a dark-blue label, and giant yellow lettering. A taste like thick bologna. Spam.
“Spam,” I announced. “It’s Spam. With . . . onions. No! Pineapple. That’s it. Spam with pineapple. And beans. And spices.”
He stared at me. “Who told you to say that?”
“I just know. It’s a talent.”
“It’s true what they say about you.”
“I’m special?”
His lips quirked. “Bossy and crazy.”
“You’ve talked to Denoto, I see.”
He stepped closer, searching my face. “Why did you say that about canned Spam?”
“That’s what you love. More than that, it’s what makes you feel loved. Spam with pineapple. Why? What does that dish mean to you?”
His handsome, tortured face convulsed as he struggled with emotion. “My mother was Hawaiian. She made a skillet stew. When us and my dad were stationed on the base in Hawaii, that’s where she got the recipe. Spam is a big ingredient there. They learned to cook with it during World War II. She’d make this dish with Spam and fresh pineapple and anything she had on hand. The three of us would sit down at the table with this giant dish of ‘Spam-apple Chili’ to ladle over bowls of rice or noodles. It was the only time I remember my dad looking happy. One of the few times we’d eat together as a family. He was pretty messed up from his years in Vietnam. It took something special to make him come out of himself. To feel something.”
I nodded. “Food is memories. Food is what we are, and who we were, and how we show love when we can’t put the love into words. When you ate with him, you knew he loved you. Those were the only times you could be sure. Now you’ve got your own images of war inside you. You haven’t been able
to figure out a way to set them aside. A way to eat in peace. With your son. But you can re-learn the joy. It’s never gone. It’s just been hidden too deep for you to taste it.”
Tim swayed as if I’d hit him with a wave of invisible energy. Then, slowly, as Worthy ran to him and hugged him around the legs, his fists unfurled. When I asked him if he had any Spam and pineapple in his camper, he hoisted Worthy into his arms. Hugging him, they went to fetch the makings of a new memory.
Now, Worthy slept soundly with Wally B huddled next to him, both of them wrapped in an insulated blanket, their heads pillowed on Tim Vance’s camo-panted thigh. Tim sat cross-legged on a tarp and blanket pad next to his campfire, attention focused on the laptop balanced on his free leg. I sat cross-legged beside him, the toes of my hiking boots almost touching the charred wood at the edge of the fire. I stirred a hearty combo of ingredients we’d pieced together from the canned goods in the old camper he and Worthy shared.
Beans, Spam, diced potatoes, jalapeños, crushed tomatoes, and “other” were simmering and merging their essences in a large, cast-iron skillet atop a low grill he’d made from a section of chain-link wire spread over stacks of flat rocks. In the “to be added last” collection, piled between us on the snowy ground, was a bag of raisins, a large chunk of goat cheese from the valley’s creamery, two large cans of pineapple chunks, and a blackened iron pot full of long-grained rice, which we’d boiled with some beer. A dark porter. It made me miss my brother even more than usual. Gus cooked rice that way. The porter’s burnt, chocolate-hued taste gave the grain a great edge.
Missing him had given me the idea. Now, Gus’s face was splashed across the laptop as he demonstrated for Tim.
“Like this, Captain?” Tim said, shifting a hand. He put his forefinger and middle finger to the inner edge of one black eyebrow.
“That’s right, that’s it, Sergeant,” my brother replied. “Tap the edge of your eyebrow while you say, ‘I own the feeling.’ Trust me, I know it looks stupid.”
Tim tapped. “I own the feeling.”
“Now say it while you tap the outer corner of your eye.”
“I own the feeling.”
“Now beneath the eye.”
“I own the feeling.”
“Now beneath the tip of your nose.”
“I own the feeling.”
“Now on the tip of your chin.”
“I own the feeling.”
“Now tap your collarbone.”
“I own the feeling.”
“Good work, Sarge. Let’s do the routine again. Take a deep breath and . . .”
I listened as they repeated another round of the therapeutic ritual. Though the tapping and chanting seemed bizarre, Gus said it was based in neuroscience and he’d seen it help soldiers redirect and release the tension in their bodies—and the terrible images of war locked inside that tension. I was very glad I’d been able to reach Gus in the dead of night at his base in Afghanistan. I loved my big brother dearly, and watching him work with Tim Vance reminded me of how proud I was of him.
Tap, tap, tap. Breathe. I stirred the stew and watched its fragrant essence wisp toward the bright blue morning sky. The Eerie Gals and Derry Fogs towered around us. The glen was large and wound off through sloping forest before vanishing into the consuming trees, mostly oaks. Beautiful, giant oaks. Sunlight came through their bare canopies and dappled the forest floor. I could just make out the remnants of stone walls, the nearly dissolved hulks of vintage farm equipment.
Tim’s campfire was centered inside the square of the main house; it must have been large and sprawling, judging by how wide the outline was. The aura of tragedy laid a silver mist over this beautiful spot.
When I turned my head a certain way I heard a waterfall in the hills to our right. A creek, probably a tributary of the Little Finn. This quiet paradise had everything the first Gallaghers would have wanted in a homestead—water, a gentle terrain that would have been easy to clear and cultivate, and what would have seemed like an infinite supply of trees for building barns and fences and homes. All of it blessed by the majesty of these eternal old mountains, wrapping them in protective arms.
At least until the end came. But quality endures, wasn’t that what Anna said? The Little Finn was rebuilding this refuge one misfit at a time, somehow the whole of their community would be so much strong than any one of them. I felt stronger from being there. I felt . . . MacBridish.
“Your brother wants to talk to you,” Tim said.
I jerked back to the moment. He pointed to the laptop, a cigarette now glowing between his thumb and forefinger. I inhaled its smoke greedily, recalling a phase in my life, after that weekend with Jay, when I’d smoked a pack a day of unfiltered Camels.
Being around Jay made me want to take up smoking again. And binge eating. And wild, cayenne-spiced sex.
I traded my long-handled spoon to Tim and set the laptop on one knee.
U.S. Army Captain Groucho “Gus” MacBride looked back at me from thousands of miles and several time zones away. His tall self was slumped on the side of his narrow bed in a tiny room lit only by a metal lampstand on a night table.
He wore his ancient USC t-shirt and desert camo boxers. Most notably, he wore a soft gray scarf Tal’s new friend, Lucy Parmenter, had sent him. My gaze went to one of his muscled forearms. It bore a wide bandage. His bristle of red hair, bleached nearly blond by the Afghani sun, was shaved to the scalp above one ear. I saw what appeared to be a sutured wound. His handsome face looked gaunt to me; his green eyes, too hard. This was not the Gus from a week ago, when both Tal and I had shared pictures with him over our phones. I now asked the questions I’d put aside until we’d gotten Tim sorted out.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
He held up a beautiful wooden thingamajig with a wide wooden collar on one end. “Tell Tal to tell Lucy I’m sending her this. I bartered for it from a woman at a local bazaar. She’s a spinner. This is an Afghan version of a drop spindle. Lucy will know what that is. Tell her it’s my thank-you for the scarf. Tell her I want more pictures of her. With or without sheep.”
I frowned. Tal had warned me that our brother instantly wanted to know more about Lucy, a reclusive fiber artist who lived at a farm near the Crossroads Cove—a farm staffed by women recovering from abuse. Gus didn’t know that Lucy seemed hopelessly damaged and far too skittish to appreciate his attention.
But this was not the time to explain that sad fact to my brother, who looked like he needed to believe in the power of love on Christmas Eve even more than the rest of us did. All those tours of duty in the Middle East were finally taking their toll.
“I’ll pass the word along to Lucy. Stop avoiding my question, Big Bro. How did you get those injuries?”
“All in a day’s work. Don’t worry about me. Collateral punishment.” His drawl was clipped. He was angry. “What are you doing in North Carolina with Jay?”
Neither Tal nor I had told him what had been going on in our lives for the past couple of weeks. He didn’t know both of us were back in home territory. He didn’t even know about Doug Firth, Tal’s new love. And he didn’t know that Delta had told Tal, Doug and me that our history with Jay’s family went back much farther than we’d realized.
“Oh, just shooting the breeze, catching up on childhood memories . . .”
“Tell me the facts, Sis. I know a lot more about you and him than you realize.”
“We’ll be in the camper,” Tim announced. He gallantly rose to his feet, picking up both Worthy and Wally B as he straightened, never taking his gaze from me. “For the record, Jay funds a veteran’s outreach center in Asheville. Big time. There’s a photo of a sergeant on the wall. Vietnam era. Stewart MacBride. Probably no relation to you.” He misinterpreted my silence. “Just thought I’d mention it,’ he said.
With that st
unning revelation, gently holding his son and pet wallaby to his camo-cloth coat, he strode toward the woods.
I released a long breath and struggled to clear my throat, then turned to find Gus still staring back at me sternly, from the screen. I said, “Do tell me more about your inside info on me and Jay.”
“After he tracked you down in California, he came to see me, too. We talked about what happened when we were kids, why he disappeared, and what he did to help us. He wasn’t asking for credit, he just wanted to set the story straight. He told me about Free Wheeler, and that Sam was Arlo Claptraddle, our grandfather. He said the mining rights are tangled up in E.W.’s control, but access is an issue. There’s the land, the access and the property.”
“He’s going to use his own cousins to get those mineral rights, Gus. Trade them to E.W. He admitted it.”
“He’ll never mine that property. His dad died there. It’s a sacred place. This isn’t about greed, Sis. This is about a promise he made to his dad. And to us, in a way.”
“He can’t sacrifice those kids. It’s not right.”
“I don’t think he’s going to. Are you willing to give him a chance? That boy we trusted? He’s still there.”
“I want to believe in him.”
Gus was silent, studying me across thousands of miles. A little smile grew on his lips. “Bossy stout.”
I put my hands on my hips. Bossy stout. In Gus’s terms, that was the spirit-beer that came up whenever I believed something wholeheartedly.
“I do,” I said hoarsely. “I love him. Always have.”
In the back of my brain, a deep, rhythmic whir bored upward to my ears. The whir became a fast popping noise, growing louder every second.
“Gabby,” Gus said sharply. “That’s a chopper in the background. What’s going on?”
My head cleared enough to realize he was right: a helicopter was closing in fast. “You tell me. Does Will have a secret air base here? What else do I need to know? Talk fast, Big Bro!”
“Will and Jay are allies. They hide it to confuse E.W.”
The Pickle Queen: A Crossroads Café Novella Page 15
