Sixty seconds later, the only thing left was yellow cake crumbs scattered on her scarf. She looked from them to the empty paper cup. “I am so sorry! I just . . . zoned out and gobbled the whole thing! I’m so embarrassed!”
Eve and I chuckled. “Happens all the time,” I said.
“What is this . . . a spell? You’re a professional baker or a wizard? Wizardess?”
“I never graduated from cooking school, but yes. Cooking is a family tradition.”
“Like Mommy’s Cousin Delta,” Eve said.
“You’re related to Delta?”
“Distantly. She and my mother are eighth cousins twice remembered, or something like that. Connected through Mary Eve Nettie. My mother’s middle name is ‘Eve.’” I gestured toward the back seat. “That’s why I gave the name to my little cupcake pusher.”
“Cupcake pusher,” Eve said merrily.
“You’re here for a visit?”
“It’s more like . . . we were visiting Asheville and decided to drop by.” A small lie. “I’ve never met Delta.” The truth.
“Oh. You didn’t call ahead? She’s not here right now.”
I almost stomped the brake. We were coming off a sharp curve, not so much “descending” from Little Sheba, but sliding down her side. “She’s not home?”
“No. And here’s the irony. You drove down from New York. Well, that’s where she is.”
I groaned silently. “Why?”
“She’s a contestant on Skillet Stars. The show on the Kitchen TV Network? She’s made it to the finals.”
Oh, my god. I’d made it such a habit to avoid seeing, hearing, or reading about Mark that I was clueless about his latest enterprises. He owned a stake in several Kitchen TV shows including the hugely successful Skillet Stars. Every chef who’d won the grand prize—a one-season contract for his or her own show on the network—had gone on to fame and fortune.
Delta was in the finals? Mark and his evil sister, Twain, had tons of personal files on every contestant. And here I was, trying to hide out right under their noses. I might wreck Delta’s chances. But how likely was it that they could figure out I was a cousin of hers?
Sweat beaded on my face. “I have to get my heater adjusted.” I rolled down my window a few inches. With my luck, Tagger would fly through the air and attach himself to the moving SUV. Nothing was going as planned.
“Oh, Mommy, look,” Eve sighed.
In my daze, I had not noticed. We cruised out of the lap of Little Sheba and into the Crossroads Cove.
It was as if a hidden kingdom wrapped us in its arms.
I’d seen photographs and paintings online—the Cove and the café were favorite subjects of local artists—but the quiet majesty of the place brought tears to my eyes. It was a small, flat valley surrounded by mountains. Pastures spread on each side. A creek bisected them, lined with bare trees and shrubs. Cattle, horses, sheep, and goats grazed on the brown November grass. An oasis of buildings were clustered at the base of the lower hills, swaddled in shade trees and nestled in the mountains’ arms. Patches of evergreens brightened the gray forests. The slate-gray sky and rising mist gave everything a patina of vintage silver.
Maybe, despite the problems, we could be safe here.
When Eve reached between the seats to stroke Lucy’s scarf, Lucy pulled it off and wrapped it around Eve’s shoulders like a shawl. “Welcome to the Cove,” she said.
Chapter Two
All lit up and Santa, too
WHITTLESPOONS obviously loved Christmas. The Crossroads Café looked like a glowing spaceship with a veranda for a command deck. The place had more glitter, more shimmer, more all-out twinkle than a room full of female impersonators getting ready for a Las Vegas show.
The gracious old farmhouse was covered in Christmas decor. Fragrant woodsmoke curled from two stone chimneys. I wondered if there was any danger they’d set the holiday stuff on fire. A full-sized plastic sleigh, Santa, and eight reindeer perched on the main roof. Multi-colored Christmas lights flickered on all the eaves and window frames. Giant Christmas wreaths, plastic inflatable Santas, snow globes, snowmen, and elves bobbed in the breeze accompanied by the hiss of various air compressors. Giant plastic figures were everywhere—the veranda, the yards, the corners of the dirt parking lots, like a village of inflated cartoon characters about to come to life. There were even several in the pasture that bordered the trees as if they’d been fenced in to keep the cows company.
All the strings of lights were set on full twinkle even though it was daylight. Fake snow had been sprayed on every window and door pane. An entire row of large cedar trees on the parking lot’s left edge were decorated in giant plastic ornaments, lights, and huge glitter stars.
Topping it all off: under one of the biggest oaks of the side yard sat a full-sized Nativity scene. It appeared to have been carved from logs via a chain saw.
The baby Jesus was covered in bark.
Eve squealed with joy. “It hurts my eyes!”
I had to admit, there was a major charm factor. Also a slight chance of retina damage.
“Joe Whittlespoon is in charge of all holiday décor,” Lucy said as I pulled into a large, graveled lot. “He’s Delta’s brother-in-law. Her husband’s older brother. He looks like a hippy version of Santa. He wears a Grateful Dead t-shirt under his Santa coat. Rumor has it that he . . . how can I put this in mixed company? Indulges in some special cigarettes while he decorates. Alberta says Pike will find him just standing on his ladder beside the eaves, smiling at a string of lights in his hand.”
I understood how the wattage could add to a psychedelic experience. And yet, a sense of welcome radiated from the glow. The café embraced me; so did the cluster of related buildings next door. No two were the same; some were little more than all-weather sheds, but all were folksy and friendly. GOOD FOOD AND MORE, said a weathered aluminum sign hanging from the café’s eaves.
The “more” included a post office, Bubba’s Pottery Studio And Gun Repair, a market stand with RAINBOW GODDESS FARMS on its sign, Smoochie’s Swap And Thrift, Joe’s Groceries And Wine Shop, The Café Gift Shop, and, in a weathered gray barn down the way a hundred yards, Whittlespoon Feed and Seed.
In front of Santa’s/Joe’s small grocery were two aging gas pumps, an ice machine, and what appeared to be a gigantic cage with a trip-wired door. A hand-printed sign was duct-taped to the steel-chain sides.
Rent this wild hog trap for $15 per week
(or barter for the rent by promising Joe some sausage).
The specific offerings of this funny little shopping mall were listed on a tall sign at the edge of the road.
Welcome to the Crossroads Cove
Established in 1832 by Billings Jefferson and Tawah Turtle Jefferson at the crossing of the Asheville Trace and Ruby Creek Trail Purchased fair and square from Tawah’s tribe in exchange for discounts at the Crossroads Trading Post Go twenty miles straight ahead to visit Turtleville, seat of Jefferson County Go sixty-five miles backwards, to visit Asheville Tennessee state line is “thataway”
What We Offer
Home cooking and Delta’s World-Famous Biscuits!
Groceries/Gas/Diesel/Kerosene/Propane
Beer and Wine (package sales only, for now)
Hardware/Farm Supplies
Camping/Fishing/Hunting Gear
Bait, Buck lure, and Bear Repellent
Post Office, Fireworks
Gem Shop, Pottery, Produce, Jellies, Yarn and Other!
Cabin Rentals and Camp Sites
Maps/Books/Music
AND WIRELESS INTERNET
I pulled into the parking lot and cut the Bronco’s engine. Somewhere, emanating from a hidden speaker, came the most classic and sentimental of yuletide songs.
Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindee
r.
Biscuit witch to the rescue
“TODAY’S BISCUITS are in Idaho.”
That peculiar and frantic-sounding claim was yelled by a pear-shaped woman with wild brown hair and a cook’s apron embroidered with THE LARD COOKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS AT THE CROSSROADS CAFÉ on the front. Her denimed legs pumped quickly as she bounded across the front parking area. I pushed Eve slightly behind me. The woman ran up to Lucy, gesturing wildly. “Dear Jesus, Bunny! They got routed the wrong way out of New York. No biscuit delivery today!”
Lucy backed up a couple of steps, going pale again. “It’s a Monday. Aren’t Monday nights in late fall pretty slow? I thought the dining room closed early on Mondays . . .”
“Not tonight! We’ve got a hundred people comin’ from the Mountain View Resort over in Turtleville. Special reservation they made back in the summer! It’s the fall conference of Western Carolina All-Church Music Ministers and Golf Club!” The woman raised her flour-dusted hands to the cloudy sky. “Jesus, I never asked to be in charge while Delta is up in New York City. Why has thou forsaken our biscuits?”
Lucy pivoted toward me. She wobbled a little. “Delta ships boxes of fresh-made biscuits to the café every day. It’s the only way she’d agree to stay in New York for the past six weeks and compete on Skillet Stars. Cathy Mitternich—her manager—rented a commercial kitchen in Manhattan so Delta can do her baking. People come here for the famous Delta Whittlespoon biscuits. Substitutes won’t do.” She gulped for air. “But this is an emergency. You make amazing cupcakes. Can you, by any chance, make southern-style biscuits?”
“Whoa!” the other woman said hotly. “’Scuse me, Bunny, but you’re asking some stranger to take over the kitchen tonight?” To me she said, “No offense, but who in Jesus’s Name are you?”
I hadn’t come here to broadcast my name, my mission, or my family connection to anyone but Delta. I should be meek, humble, dig the toe of my pink Croc in the soft dirt of this parking lot and say, I’m just a visitor. I can’t promise you much beyond an edible baked good.
But I was tired of being dismissed as a flake. Yes, I would always be the flighty baby of the MacBride sibling trio, the one who loved neither wisely nor well, but here, now, in this emergency, a baker was needed.
I was all that and a bag of dough.
I raised my chin. “My name is Tallulah Bankhead MacBride, and I’m a trained baker. I am the daughter of Jane Nettie MacBride, and . . .”
The aproned woman looked at me suspiciously. “Jane Nettie of Asheville? She ran the B P and S Diner.”
“ . . . who was taught to bake biscuits by Mary Eve Nettie, the same as she taught Delta . . .”
“ . . . you better be telling the truth.”
“And so”—I raised a hand, palm out and up, in glorious testimony to the Holy Crusted Orb—“point me toward the kitchen and get me an apron.”
A passion, a purpose, a goat
Doug observes . . .
SINCE THERE were five of us traipsing back and forth, not to mention two waitresses up front and a cashier, the café’s kitchen was a warm beehive of Hurry where tasty aromas rose up out of big pots and skillets, pans clattered, and everyone tried to study Tal MacBride without Tal noticing. Including me.
Watching this mysterious visitor make biscuit dough hypnotized me in more ways than one. She massaged it oh-so-light and fine. She stroked it. She even whispered to it, bending over the long wooden dough board of the kitchen with tendrils of red hair curling from beneath a hairnet and purple knitted head band with colorful bobbles on it. Her passion held me like a magnet. Never had a woman cast a spell on me so quick and so innocently. I had to step out to the porch off the pantry from time to time to let the evening chill calm me down.
Distraction. I needed one.
“May I whisk this mischievous daughter of yours outside?” I asked her. “She’s being far too well-mannered and quiet for my tastes.”
Tal raised shining eyes to mine. It was as if she’d been lost in prayer, caught up in ecstasy. Her eyes had dilated with concentration, showing vivid green around the dark irises. Her face was flushed across the nose and cheeks. Her skin glistened with the damp heat rising off the pots of vegetables cooking on one of the stoves, and her lips were parted.
Dear God, to have her look at me like that instead of at biscuit dough.
She blinked and came back to earth. “Eve’s spent a lot of time in commercial kitchens. She understands that it’s not safe for her to move around.”
Eve was a wee, sly sweetheart. She grinned up at me from a chair near the back door where she doodled with Crayons on a big notepad. “What’s outside, Doctor Firth?”
Very polite.
I said politely back, “Call me Doug, Miss Eve. What’s outside is a wily little goat named Teasel. He’s kind of become my mascot. ’Twas born a bit early and too small. I fed him with a bottle and let him sleep on my bed amongst my dogs and cats. Now he thinks he’s one of them. I half expect him to bark or meow.”
Her face lit up. “Mommy, can I go?”
A hint of concern clouded her eyes. Me, a stranger of the male variety, disappearing outdoors with her daughter. I said quickly, “Just right outside the door here on the side porch. No farther. The light’s on. Come stand at the window and watch as I make the introductions. Or step outside. ’Tis brisk, not too cold.”
“All right, then. Eve, wrap up good in your new scarf.”
She hopped off the chair excitedly and wrestled with the scarf, which was very long for a child to wear.
“Here, may I help?” I asked. Tal secured me with a nod of permission. I bent to Eve. “Hold this end in your hands, and I’ll hold the other. Then you spin about—don’t get addled and fall down!—and I’ll wind the scarf around you like a yarn burrito!”
She giggled. A minute later she twirled to a stop, wobbling and laughing and bundled not so much like a burrito with blue jeaned legs, but rather a blue and gold puffball. She peered at me with only her eyes and nose showing and waved her hands, which stuck out beneath the bottom side of the scarf. I tucked a top corner down the back of her neck. “There. And the extra thing is you’re well-padded in case Teasel butts you. I believe you’ll just bounce.”
With her chortles muffled behind yarn, I guided her to the porch. Tal stepped out behind us. I felt her gaze on me, and my skin tingled with more than the brisk air. A soft gold sunset lingered over Ten Sisters, and the late autumn nightfall had turned the side yard’s big shade trees into patterns of lacy branches against a blue-black sky, backlit by the last of the light.
Across the way, Joe Whittlespoon’s carved-log Nativity characters stared at their woody Christ child. Rotating spotlights of red and green moved across the carved hickory faces of the wise men, the pine-scented Mary and Joseph, the camel made of oak logs, and several log-and-tree-branch deer, which were not historically accurate. I pointed at them. “Santa Joe thinks Bethlehem had a deer-hunting season.”
A soft sound came from the shadows. I turned to find Tal laughing. What a warm and lovely bit of music.
Clackety clackety clank clank clank thud. “Bahhhh.”
Eve screeched lightly. She dodged a small black goat with a white blaze between his china-blue eyes. Teasel liked to bounce. To hop. And so he sailed out of the shadows of the yard onto the small porch, scattering several empty gallon cans waiting to go in the trash. He halted to gaze up at Eve. He liked children, especially the ones who were easy to knock down. He waggled his head at her. A warning sign. “Bah.” It sounded like a challenge.
“No, no, Teasel, bad Teasel,” I commanded, stepping over to block him.
“BAAAAAHHH,” Eve shouted back at him. She lowered her head and butted him on one shoulder.
Teasel bounded off the porch, flipped around, went “Baaaahhh,” and bounced back up.
“Bahhhh!” She butted him again.
He butted her in the stomach.
“Bah!” she squealed, and launched herself at him again.
The next thing we knew, Eve and Teasel were off the porch and on the ground together, chasing each other around the side yard under the light of the security lamp. They traded more butts and bahs. He hopped. She hopped.
I pivoted to look at Tal, worrying that she might want to headbutt me for introducing her child to Hippity Hop The Attack Goat. She clamped a flour-dusted hand to her mouth, and her eyes were wide.
Then she burst out laughing. She laughed in long gulps, bending over, holding her stomach. I laughed too, just out and out roaring with it, something I hadn’t done in years. I guffawed. I slapped my chest. Staggering, we somehow managed to collide at the shoulders, which only made us laugh harder. Eve and Teasel were still butting each other in the yard, and their new game had spread to us like an airborne elixir.
Finally we could only manage the strangled he-he-he people emit right before they began gasping and coughing. Red-faced and grinning like mad, we did what old friends do when their bones have gone soft from lack of oxygen. We propped ourselves on each other. I draped an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t pull away. She leaned into me and even patted me on the front of my plaid shirt.
I pointed at Eve and Teasel. “I hate to inform you, Mrs. MacBride, but your child is clearly a full kissing cousin to yon goat. Does her father have cloven hooves?”
Her laughter drained off. Her eyes snapped. She eased from under my friendly arm. My excellent sensitivity to a woman’s changing moods rang a loud alarm. I had my own brand of foul language for hard times, and I liked to think it was more charming than crude. It came in handy as her body language rolled through my brain.
I’m fecked. Completely fecked. She’s fecking mad at me. Feck.
“I’m not married,” she informed me. “And Eve’s father probably does have cloven hooves. Also a forked tail and red horns.”
The Biscuit Witch Page 4
