Yarnspinner:
lol
Biscuitwitch:
You changed lives the other night. But more on that, later. First, I have to get an answer to something you said while under the influence of Doug’s Scotch. What “sex toys” has my brother sent to you from Afghanistan?”
Yarnspinner:
Socks. Delicate, wonderful socks he knitted for me.
Biscuitwitch:
Socks.
Biscuitwitch:
Is there . . . there’s something going on with you, isn’t there? What you said about being scared. What’s wrong? I should have sensed it. You’ve gone totally citrus. You’re practically a lime jelly.
Yarnspinner:
I’m going to tell Gus the truth. I won’t pretend to be normal anymore.
Biscuitwitch:
Let’s settle one thing. On some level, he already knows you’re in deep pain. He knows what to expect.
Yarnspinner:
Then why does he keep talking to me?
Biscuitwitch:
Good gravy, Lucy.
Yarnspinner:
He won’t give up?
Biscuitwitch:
MacBrides are stubborn that way. Besides, he has food angels on his side. Just like you have your wool angel to guide you.
Yarnspinner:
I just don’t want her to pull the wool over his eyes.
———
January 23
Via phone
Lucy: Gus! Your voice is exactly what I need to hear.
Gus: Hello, Moonshine. Big full moon outside your barn at the farm. I checked it online. I feel you being awake. I always do. I feel you being sad. I always do.
Lucy: I feel you being sad. I always do.
Gus: Want to talk?
Lucy: No. I want to listen. I’m putting on my shawls and walking outside the barn. I’m going to look up at the moon.
Gus: I’m looking at it live from North Carolina on a computer screen. Makes me homesick. So you keep looking at it, and I’ll be looking at it, too.
Lucy: I like that.
Gus: I want to tell you a story from last fall. I walked into my office at the base and found a big, scrawled note stuck to a photo of Tal and Gabby on my bulletin board. Some wise guys had written in big letters, THE CAPTAIN’S SISTERS ARE HOT, AND WE BET THEY LOVE US SO MUCH THEY SENT FOOD IN THOSE BOXES FOR THE CAPTAIN TO SHARE. My sisters’ latest care packages were stacked on my desk. I slit the tape on the boxes with a sharp chunk of shrapnel I’d kept for good luck after my helmet stopped it from giving my skull a sun roof.
The aromas hit me like a hot oven when I pulled back the cardboard flaps. I heard rustling noises outside my open door.
“Is that cookies I smell?” someone whispered loudly.
“Naw, ’cause if it was cookies from his sisters, Cap’n would already be out here dealing us some chocolate chips.”
“I bet there’s jars of homemade sweet pickles, too.”
Open a box of Tal and Gabby’s food, and the men in my company materialize like first graders waiting for their morning snack. Most of them are twenty, twenty-one, just big kids compared to me. Too many of them scared, depressed, tired, lonely. I plucked a flat cardboard mailer from among the cookies. “Two cookies max per man. And don’t leave crumbs.” I stepped out into morning sun bright enough to burn our retinas. Dusty hands—black, white, and brown—darted into the box as I held it out. I handed out jars of Gabs’s sweet pickles, dills, and saved a jar of pickled okra for myself.
The soldiers stood there squinting, smiling, and eating. I didn’t smile much anymore, but I said a little prayer to the sky. Lonely, scared, depressed, demoralized, you name it. The food always helped. That didn’t mean it was any kind of magic or anything to hang a life’s goals on.
It was just good. Food from home was good.
When they were done, I yelled, “All right, who put that note on my bulletin board? About my sisters being hot?”
The group scattered like camo-gray cockroaches.
That was my life. I was satisfied with it. Not happy, but most people can’t say they’re happy. So what? What is happy? I was doing the job I felt I was meant to do. The only job I felt safe doing.
As I walked back into my trailer with the empty box, my cell phone beeped. Tal calling me from the other side of the world. She said something about being home, being in North Carolina again. Her and her girl Eve landing in the Cove, up in the mountains above Asheville, to stay with Cousin Delta at the Crossroads Café.
She said it was time Gabs and me came back, too. That we MacBrides were needed in those mountains. That we were given a gift of knowing things about what people are hungry for on a soul level.
And I said, “I don’t think I can help you and Gabby out much. I don’t know that I have a purpose there, now. Or that the MacBride family requires me as part of it.”
She said, “What good are pickles and biscuits without beer? You remember how Daddy loved the Ghostbusters movie, and we watched it with him so many times we could recite the lines? ‘Don’t cross the three plasma streams!’”
But that was when the Ghostbusters were the most powerful. When they crossed their three ghostbusting plasma streams.
I said, “Baby sister, are we fighting ghosts?”
She said, “Yes, Groucho Gus, maybe we are. But let’s talk about that later. I want you to meet somebody I just met. She works at a farm up here. She’s a shepherdess and a knitter. Like you. She wants to send yarn to you and your knitting group. I told her about the ‘Fighting Sticks and Hookers Platoon,’ and she’s intrigued. She didn’t know there are knitting and crochet clubs in the military.’’
“Awright, Tal, I’m not going to turn down a chance to score more yarn donations. I’ve got two dozen soldiers competing to see who knits the most scarves for village kids.”
“Good. Here’s a picture of her I took with my phone in the kitchen of the café.”
Moonshine, I was not ready to be anything other than polite. Tal and Gabby always pitched their friends at me. Bait to lure me out of the army and back home. They kept hoping one would hook me. It never worked.
But there you were. Across the curve of the earth. I cupped a hand over the phone, shading you from the sun. I drank you like a cold beer. And suddenly, I was hungrier than I’d ever been before.
I’m coming home on leave, in March. To North Carolina. To see my sisters and Eve and Jay. To meet Doug for the first time.
And to meet you. If you want me to.
Talk to me, Moonshine. I know we’ll have a lot to say when we meet in person. I know some of it won’t be easy.
Silence.
Lucy: I’d like to knit some socks for you. But I’ll need measurements of your feet. And photos. Do you mind taking selfies of your naked feet?
Gus: My feet are ugly, Luce. Freckled and knotty and blistered and callused, not pretty like yours. In fact my whole body is pretty rough-looking to be only thirty-five years old.
Lucy: I would dearly love to see your feet, no matter what. And the rest of you. I’m standing out here looking up at the moon. Come home in March, and let’s see how the bare facts look under the moon light when we’re together.
Gus: That’s all you need to say, for now.
———
February 12, two days until Valentine’s Day
Crossroads Cove, 9:00 a.m.
Afghanistan, 5:30 a.m., February 13, one day until Valentine’s Day
Via letter
Dear Gus,
In one month you’ll be here, at home. I decided that tonight, exactly thirty days from the day we’ll meet in person, I needed to write to you with a pen, on paper. Nice paper and a beautiful fountain pen with a casing made from
oak timbers that were salvaged when the Crossroads Café was destroyed by a tornado and fire some years ago. Delta only gives them to her favorite “cousins.” I suspect there are a lot of us, but still. I knew I had to save it for very special letters.
Tonight, you’re somewhere in mountains that don’t love you the way these old blue-green humpbacks do, and it worries me that you’ve been away from base for three weeks—the longest since I’ve known you—and I haven’t heard from you in all that time.
I know you’d contact your sisters and me if it were possible, and that we’d hear from the army if . . . well. I know you’re okay, just out of reach.
So I’m writing this old-fashioned letter, and the moment I hear from you, I’ll scan it and send you the scan so you’ll have it instantly—the best of the old and the new! Part of your Valentine’s Day gift.
I’m sure you haven’t been able to keep up with our ritual lately—using the Internet to share my night sky, here. I promise you I’ve come out here to the pasture faithfully, every night about this time, even though on occasion I’ve looked like a little human tent with my shawls and cloak covered in snow or sleet. Sometimes I can only stay for ten or fifteen minutes if the weather’s bad, but if the sky’s clear and the wind’s not high, I’ve spent half the night out here, watching our sky.
I’ve never fully explained this to you before, but I have a kind of talent, the way you and Tal and Gabby do. A psychic or intuitive ability that tells me a little bit of information from time to time. I never felt it until I came here, to the farm. Until I put my hands into the warm, rich energy of wool.
Wool’s a living thing—it comes from a living creature; it was grown from grains that the animal ate and air it breathed and water it drank, from the earth and the sky, from all the ancestors that animal ever had, going back to ancient times. The most ancient friends of mankind include the goats and sheep. Their wool clothed us, and their milk and meat fed us.
They’re a gift from God, my father would say. He was a minister. And I say, as a minister’s daughter, that I believe in angels. Specifically, wool angels.
Sometimes, when I’m working with the unspun roving or even with yarn, I get bursts of “news” about people. Mostly, it’s people close by. The first time it happened, I was terrified and disbelieving and thought I was losing my mind. Cathy was visiting me here at the farm. I told her—without knowing anything about her efforts to have children—that this time she wouldn’t miscarry, and she’d have twins.
Gus . . . I was right. She didn’t even know she was pregnant. But eight months later, she gave birth to her and Tom’s twin boys.
I’m telling you this because . . . all right, full disclosure. Not long after you and I met online, I made it my business to become your early warning system. I’ve worn extra wool garments since last fall; I’ve meditated and prayed with entire bags of wool roving piled around me in my room. I constantly wear the socks you made for me, and I switch one pair for the other when I rinse them out, so I’m always wearing one set.
All so I can remain on 24/7 guard duty—your blond, touched-by-a-wool-angel sentry.
So far, all has been quiet on the wooly front. I want it to stay that way.
The February moon is rising. A frost is upon the pasture. Beyond the shadowed lights of the sheep barn, the rest of the farm buildings—cabins, barns, sheds, the main house—stand out in that remarkable crisp light of the crystal-sharp, almost blue-black colors that come from winter.
When I turn to look over my left shoulder, I see an audience of several dozen sheep, llamas, and alpacas forming a stair-stepped woolies-scape in the barn’s main hallway. They’re watching me from the comfort of their straw bedding.
Usually, the crowd comes outside with me. They seem to be enthralled by the sky, just like me. Several of the herding dogs often come along, too. Most live with Alberta and Macy at the house, but the socially awkward ones gravitate to me. They come into my small apartment and make themselves at home.
I like that. We’re all here together. Us and the stars and the moon and wool angels.
Tal and Gabby say I “ain’t seen nothing yet,” until I see you at work in a kitchen, with your kitchen angels whispering in your ears. They say you’re a kitchen charmer.
I believe the MacBride foodie angels have joined up with my wool angel to protect you, you kitchen charmer, and that you’re going to stay safe and come home safe. I’ll be waiting out here under the sky until then.
Happy Valentine’s Day, my captain.
—Lucy
Heirloom Apple Pie and Homemade Beer
Dishes & Beverages of the Old South,
by Martha McCulloch Williams
Published 1913 by McBride Nast & Company, New York
“Cooking is not alchemy; there is no magic in the pot. The whole art and mystery of it is to apply heat and seasoning in such fashion as to make the best, and the most, of such food supplies as your purse permits.”
Apple Toddy
Wash and core, but do not peel, six large, fair apples, bake, covered, until tender through and through, put into an earthen bowl and strew with cloves, mace, and bruised ginger, also six lumps of Domino sugar for each apple. Pour over a quart of full-boiling water, let stand covered fifteen minutes in a warm place. Then add a quart of mellow whiskey, leave standing ten minutes longer, and keep warm. Serve in big deep goblets, putting an apple or half of one in the bottom of each, and filling with the liquor. Grate nutmeg on top just at the minute of serving.
Cobblers
Make from any sort of fruit in season—peaches, apples, cherries, plums or berries. Green gooseberries are inadvisable, through being too tart and too tedious. Stone cherries, pare peaches or apples and slice thin, halve plums if big enough, and remove stones—if not, wash, drain well, and use whole. Line a skillet or deep pie pan—it must be three inches deep at least, liberally with short crust, rolled rather more than a quarter-inch thick. Fit well, then prick all over with a blunt fork. Fill with the prepared fruit, put on an upper crust a quarter-inch thick and plenty big enough, barely press the crust edges together, prick well with a fork all over the top, and cook in a hot oven half to three-quarters of an hour, according to size. Take up, remove top crust, lay it inverted upon another plate, sweeten the hot fruit liberally, adding if you like, a spoonful of brandy, adding also a good lump of the best butter. Mix well through the fruit, then dip out enough of it to make a thick layer over the top crust. Grate nutmeg over apple pies, or strew on a little powdered cinnamon. A few blades of mace baked with the fruit accent the apple flavor beautifully.
Cherries take kindly to brandy, but require less butter than either peaches or apples. Give plums plenty of sugar with something over for the stones. Cook a few stones with them for flavor, even if you take away the bulk. Do the same with cherries, using, say, a dozen pits to the pie. Serve cobbler hot or cold. If hot, serve with it hard brandy sauce, made by creaming together a cup of sugar, a tablespoonful of butter, then working in two tablespoonfuls of brandy or good whiskey. Right here is perhaps the place to say once for all, good whiskey is far and away better in anything than poor brandy. Thick sweet cream whipped or plain, sets off cold cobbler wonderfully to the average palate.
Apple Custard
Beat four eggs very light with three cups sugar, one cup butter, cup and a half rich milk—the richer the better. Stir in at the very last, one quart grated apple, flavor with nutmeg or vanilla, and bake in crusts. If wanted richer, dot raisins seeded and soaked in whiskey, or shred citron over the top before baking.
Apple Dumplings
Pare and core half a dozen tart apples, stick three cloves in each, fill the core-spaces full of very sweet hard sauce, stick a sliver of mace in the sauce, then set each apple on a round of good short paste, and work the paste up over it, joining the edges neat and trig. Set close in a pan just big enough, p
our around a half cup of sugar melted in a cup of water with a little butter and lemon juice. Cover the pan and cook quickly until done—then uncover, brown, take up and serve piping hot with a very rich hard sauce.
“Apple Sauce Gone To Heaven”
Thus a poet names it, though I, the architect thereof, insist that it is wholly and beautifully mundane. To make it, pare eight firm apples, the higher-flavored the better, core, drop into cold water, as pared, let stand till you make the syrup. Take a cup of sugar to each two apples and a cup of water to each two cups of sugar. Bring to a boil, skim, clean twice, then throw in half a dozen blades of mace, bits of thin yellow peel from two lemons, a few bits of stick cinnamon, and one pepper corn—no more. Stick four cloves in each apple, drop them in the syrup, which must be on the bubbling boil. After the apples are in—they should just cover the pan, add the strained juice of two lemons. Boil hard for five minutes, turn over the apples, simmer till done—they will look clear all through. Skim out with a perforated ladle, letting all syrup drain away from them, arrange in a deepish glass dish, or pile on a glass platter. Boil the syrup until it jellies when dropped on a plate, then dip it by spoonfuls over the apples, letting it harden as it is dipped.
The New England Cook Book
Or
Young Housekeeper’s Guide—Being a Collection of the Most Valuable Receipts; Embracing all the Various Branches of Cookery, and Written in a Minute and Methodical Manner
—Author Unknown.
Published in 1836, Hezekiah Howe & Co, and Herrick & Noyes, Connecticut
“It is intended for all classes of society and embracing both the plainest and richest cooking, joined to such minuteness of directions as to leave as little as possible to the judgment of the practitioner, proving to the unskilled quite a desideratum, while in the hands of the head of the culinary department, it will prevent that incessant running to and fro for directions, with which housekeepers’ patience are too often tried.”
The Apple Pie Knights Page 5
