Hot Dish

by Brockway, Connie

“I’m broke,” Eric said, curling his fingers around his own bottle and sliding it closer. Ned regarded him suspiciously. Eric had worked over at the Lodge yesterday and Mrs. Hallesby always paid as she went.

  “I had to buy gas,” Eric said defensively, reading Ned’s mind.

  “I’m tapped, too,” Turv said before Ned could ask. “Wish we had some dope. Beer is expensive.”

  “Hey, look,” Duddie announced to no one in particular.

  “They’re talking about Fawn Creek. There’s Jenny Hallesby.”

  “Lind. She’s Jenn Lind, now, Duddie.” Ned sneered. It always galled him that Duddie Olson, who had about as much personality as that old pet cow of his, should own a bar while he didn’t. “She changed her name, oh, about a million years ago so she’d sound like she really comes from here.”

  Ned glanced up at the television just as Jenn’s face disappeared and was replaced by a girl reporter drooling over some guy and babbling about how he’d revolutionized modern American art. Hell. It was that fruitcake artist they were shipping in from New York. Okay, maybe he didn’t look like a fruitcake, but who could tell?

  Ned swiveled his stool all the way around and settled his elbows on the sticky bar behind him. “Well, now, about this little dearth of dope problem,” he said, liking the sound of the phrase. He’d heard it on an MTV reality show. “You can thank our asshole mayor for that, can’t you?

  “After all, he’s the one made us grade over an entire damn field of the stuff for his sasquatchtennial.” He yanked a fisted hand, thumb extended, toward the television set behind him.

  “It’s sesquicentennial,” Duddie supplied helpfully.

  “Yeah, fine, Duddie. The point is that while we work our asses off, for which we get paid crap and no thanks whatsoever, that guy up there on TV whittles butter and the whole goddamn state goes ape.”

  “I don’t think—” Duddie began.

  Ned cut him off. He’d had enough of Duddie’s commentary. “And Jenn Lind? What’s her big talent? Telling people how to fold their laundry!” The pure unfairness of it made him choke. “Why’d anyone want to fold laundry, anyways?”

  “She cooks, too,” Turv mused, sipping his beer.

  “Who gives a fart? I cook. No one gives me a couple hundred thousand a year to do it. And sure as hell no one has asked me to lead their stupid parade. This town sucks.”

  “It does,” Turv agreed. Eric nodded.

  “Where would they be without me?” Ned asked, warming to his subject. “I’m the guy that keeps the Pamida lot clear so that the minute it hits the stores, they can all rush out and buy the latest Jenn Lind DVD telling them how to wipe their butts! I’m a whole helluva lot more important to this town than some laundry folder or a butter-sculpting fruitcake from New York.”

  “Me, too,” Turv said, his eyes riveted blissfully on some inner vision of himself heroically leading the assault on Pamida’s snow-choked parking lot from the comfort of the front-end loader’s CozyKab.

  Turv’s vision didn’t bear comment. Ned was the head plower.

  “I bet he wears an earring,” Ned muttered, catching Eric’s eye. “That sculptor.”

  “I wear an earring, Ned,” Eric said reproachfully.

  “Yeah, but you aren’t near fifty. You’re still a young man.” Sort of. “Prime of life.” If you were a tortoise. “This Jaax dude is an old geez.”

  Eric frowned, not entirely buying it. “Well, they haven’t asked me to lead the parade either and I’m mosquito-control officer for the whole town. Can anyone here think what this place would be like if I didn’t pellet the sloughs with Bug-B-Gone?”

  Like that was as hard as using a plow. “Yeah, but that’s only part-time.”

  “It’s seasonal work. So’s plowing.”

  “I mow the ditches, too. But whatever. Point I’m trying to make is that we get paid crap. We get treated like crap. They forced us to plow under an entire year’s profit margin while they stood by and watched and no one even paid us overtime.”

  “You have to work twenty hours in a week to make overtime,” Duddie said.

  “Who asked you, Duddie?” Ned spun around. “Don’t you have a toilet bowl to scrub out or something?”

  Instead of answering, Duddie bent down under the bar and rose with an iron rod in his hand. Humming, he pushed it through the levers of the three spigots that delivered beer—so no one could help himself—locked it in place, and headed for the john.

  “What a dickhead,” Eric said, hopeful until the last click that Duddie would leave the spigots unguarded.

  “No. We’re the dickheads,” Ned said sourly. “We’re staring at five months of winter here, boys, with no dope, no money, and no credit.”

  Above the bar, a dated image of Jenn Lind’s head sculpted in butter reappeared on the television screen. She really had been hot. Even as butter.

  “—your last piece sold for nearly four hundred thousand dollars. What price would you put on the butter sculpture?” the television guy was saying.

  “I’m guessing it wouldn’t come out too well in an actual appraisal. It’s butter and it’s old butter, so it’s gotta have deteriorated, you know?” the artist said. “But it has loads of sentimental value for the people who’ve kept it all these years. And Ms. hind would probably say it’s priceless because it is a bust of her. And, well, the mayor of Fawn Creek thinks a lot of it. He’s named it co—grand marshal of the town’s sesquicentennial. So who knows what someone might pay for it for the right reasons?”

  “Doesn’t that just suck?” Turv grumbled. “No one’ll pay us overtime but the mayor gets all goosey about some stupid butter head just because this Jaax guy whittled it.”

  An idea jumped out of the backwater of Ned’s brain and flopped on the floor of his imagination like a landed northern on a dock. He slammed his palm down on the bar, making Eric’s empty beer bottle jump.

  “This town owes us. That damn mayor owes us. Well, I say we get what’s owed us and give the finger to the town while we do it! What d’ya say?”

  Eric and Jimmy looked at each other. In unison, they shrugged. “Yeah, sure, Ned. You bet.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  11:20 p.m.

  December 7, Thursday

  County Road 73

  Five miles northeast of Fawn Creek, Minnesota

  It was a beautiful night in the north woods. A soft snow had begun to fall and what could have been a monotonous silence was broken by the cheery vroom of a snowmobile.

  Dunk was in a good mood. For once, the locals hadn’t been full of crap. The snowmobile was easy to drive, the heated seat did keep his ass toasty, the heated handles did keep his fingers warm, the helmet did keep the snow off his face, and the trail he was following did lead straight across a big flat lake toward a tree-covered shore marked by some sort of windmill or something. The guy at the gas station hadn’t been too clear on what it was, only on the fact that Dunk would know it when he saw it—and again, Dunk smiled at the wonder of it all—he had!

  Another quarter mile, take the first turn right off the main path as soon as he left the lake, up a steep bank, then two hundred yards to the Hallesby barn, and hello, IRA. Or maybe a Keogh? He would probably be in a higher tax bracket by the time he started withdrawing, in which case it made sense to pay the taxes upfront. Then again, he was starting from a position of nothing here, and cash flow was important.

  He was still weighing the advantages of the various financial instruments at his future disposal and climbing the trail up into the trees when the headlights of two snowmobiles appeared ahead of him, their beams aimed toward a structure tilting drunkenly in the dark. The Hallesby barn.

  Which meant the snowmobilers were the Hallesbys—the current, but soon to be dispossessed, owners of the butter head. You might have guessed that old geezers in a nowhere town like this would get their yucks chasing around on snowmobiles in the dead of night. He eased way back on the throttle and considered his options.

  He wasn’t
worried. He could always claim that he’d followed the wrong trail, gotten lost, and was seeking help. But hell, if he waited long enough, they’d just take off on their own. So he pulled off the trail and stopped, idling the engine. Then he switched off the headlights and pushed the visor up on his helmet and waited, the engine purring comfortably between his thighs. With the snow growing thicker, it was hard to see, but Dunk considered that all to the good; this way the Hallesbys couldn’t see him either.

  He could make out two figures heading into the barn, preceded by the weak beam of a flashlight. Someone else waited on one of the snowmobiles. A north woods threesome? He chuckled. Then his chuckles faded. If that was the case, they could be in there a while.

  Dunk pulled off his chopper mitten, unzipped his snowmobile suit—also rented—and fumbled for a cigarette. Finding one, he cupped his hands around his Zippo light, sucked in a lungful of smoke, and peered through the peppering snow toward the barn. Visibility was going to hell. He could barely make out—bingo! There they were. The pair had reappeared sans flashlight, hunched over and lugging something between them.

  He pitched the cigarette into the snow. He had a bad feeling.

  Calm down, he told himself. Why would the Hallesbys take their own butter head on a joy ride in the middle of the night? They wouldn’t. Whatever they were carrying probably wasn’t the butter head at all, but a salt lick, or a hay bale, or some other rube crap.

  The pair hoisted whatever it was onto the back of the waiting driver’s snowmobile and strapped it on. Dunk’s bad feeling grew worse. He zipped up his snowmobile suit and shoved the snowmobile into gear, standing up in the seat to get a better look.

  The duo finished their task, got on the empty snowmobile, and was now easing around so that the arc of their headlight would eventually sweep across the back of the other snowmobile and reveal—Holy Mother!

  A huge, bilious face leered through the snow at him!

  Dunk jerked back, releasing the snowmobile’s throttle. The engine died. The face disappeared.

  Face? That had been the butter head!

  “Thieves!” Dunk shouted, slapping the visor down on his helmet and torquing the gas throttle. The snowmobile roared to life and bucked forward. For a second, he thought he was going to get dumped, but he hung on, hauling himself back onto the seat.

  Crap! Who besides him and Jaax knew about the key buried in the butter head? Obviously someone. There was no other reason in the world anyone would steal that … thing.

  Luckily, the trio ahead didn’t realize he was following them, or if they did, they didn’t realize he was not just following them but was after them, because they were diddling along and Dunk was drawing close fast. He charged up the slope, catching about three feet of air at the top before slamming back down on the trail with a bone-jarring thud and shooting forward. Bastards! Thieving bastards!

  As he chased them, the butter head tipped and lurched in and out of his headlight beam, smiling maniacally at him through the thick pelter of swirling snow, like an unholy reject from the Magic Kingdom.

  Behind the visor, he ground his teeth. It was not getting away from him. No way. A Jaax statue like the one in that crypt was worth a hundred fifty thousand dollars. That was what his pal who knew a guy who sold black-market art had said. Maybe more.

  The gap between them closed to thirty yards … twenty … ten. The driver of the butter-head mobile casually raised his arm and waved him ahead. Dunk pushed his machine right up on his ass. The guy turned his helmeted head. Ahead of them the second snowmobile with its two passengers slowed.

  Dunk rammed the visor up on his helmet. At once, the snow blinded him. He squinted and opened his mouth, shouting above the engine noise, “Pull over, asshole!”

  The driver lifted a gloved hand and gave him the finger. Then, like the damn thing had afterburners or something, the snowmobile—along with the butter head—leapt ahead in a roar of power and exhaust fumes. The other snowmobile followed suit, speeding off and leaving Dunk far behind, cursing at the guy who’d rented him the broken-down piece of shit he straddled.

  No. No way! He wasn’t giving up!

  Far ahead, he could see where the trail curved back down onto the lake. He could cut through the woods and down the slope, beating them to the shore. Then he would ram that son of a bitch! He didn’t give a rat’s ass if the butter head broke in a dozen pieces, as long as one of those pieces held a certain key.

  He jerked the handles around, heading down the steep slope, crashing through the underbrush, the skis under the machine slipping and catching, then bouncing up and over. He leaned forward and clung fast, tearing down the bank toward the lake.

  Piece of cake, he thought.

  The snowmobile hit a hummock and took flight.

  So did Dunk.

  Chapter Fourteen

  9:30 a.m.

  December 8, Friday

  Fawn Creek, Minnesota

  “I’ve only been here a half an hour and I’ve already gotten a seventy-five-dollar traffic ticket for parking on a snow emergency route during a snow emergency. I am telling you, Nat, I am standing on Main Street looking around right now and I count three—no, four—people on it. How do they come up with the balls to declare a snow emergency in a town of less than three thousand people?”

  Jenn held her new cell phone away from her ear and wondered if she could make the camera function function. A bank of teeny buttons etched in glowing neon blue symbols, like the eldritch ciphers on Frodo’s ring, gleamed up at her. She decided she couldn’t.

  “So,” she continued, returning the cell phone to her ear, “I move the rental car to the Food Faire parking lot, and as soon as I walk away, some jerk driving the city snowplow goes by and walls me in behind a three-foot pile of solid ice. Now I’m stuck waiting for the owner of the Food Faire to plow open the parking lot entrance.”

  “Tell me how cold you are,” her agent and business manager ignored her tale of vehicular woe and demanded with way too much glee. “Is it under zero? Does flesh really freeze in under thirty seconds?”

  “Sure. Why do you think so many Scandinavian women have beautiful skin? Minnesota’s answer to Botox.” Before Nat could frame a reply, Jenn’s voice dropped all disingenuousness. “No, none of my flesh is currently freezing. Mostly, because I dress appropriately. I have on a coat, a scarf, mittens. My feet are a little cold because my real boots are at my parents’ place, but other than that, I’m fine. Sorry to disappoint.”

  “Are you kidding? I want you healthy, babe. I got a vested interest in your nose staying on your face,” Nat said. “So if you’re not going to regale me with stories of people freezing various pieces off, tell me what cool present you are going to bring me.”

  “Nothing,” Jenn warned. “I left my checkbook at home, and all I have is an ATM card with a two-hundred-dollar daily limit on it, so once I pay the traffic ticket, I’ll be strapped.”

  “You know if you would be an American and use plastic for purchases, you could get me something really nice,” Nat said. “At least get a debit card with a higher cash advance.”

  It was a standard Nat comment and Jenn gave her the standard Jenn reply. “First, if you can’t pay cash for it, you don’t need it, and second, I don’t need a bigger cash advance.” She glanced longingly behind her at Smelka’s Café. It wasn’t the coffee she was longing for. It was Greta Smelka’s kringle: a soft, flaky pastry, yellow with butter, studded with toasted almonds, glistening with a thick gooey layer of glaze. She looked down at her thighs and vacillated. “Should I lose some weight?”

  In reply, Natalie’s disembodied voice crackled, split, and fused together into incomprehensible syllables.

  “What’d you say?” Jenn shook her cell phone, hoping to improve reception. She supposed she should count herself lucky she could make any contact with the outside world at all, even sporadically. “Natalie! What did you say?”

  Across the street, a middle-aged man stomping the snow out of the treads in
his boots outside of Hank’s Hardware gave her a “hard look.” Jenn knew that look. It was meant to undermine your confidence and make you feel guilty. Looks just like that had followed her around town her entire senior year after her ill-fated but highly flamboyant attempt to get divested of the Fawn Creek crown.

  “Nat, are you there? I can barely hear you! Try again—”

  Something came out of nowhere and jabbed Jenn from behind with the force of a striking cobra.

  “Ouch!” Jenn jumped sideways, almost losing her footing.

  She turned. No one was there. Her gaze dropped.

  A tiny and ancient woman, in a heavy blue cloth coat and with an improbably bright red ski cap pulled down around her crinkled little face, peered up at Jenn from behind thick, gold-rimmed bifocals, her bony index finger occupying the space between them. Her unblinking eyes were the watery blue of old rinse water.

  She looked like a garden troll.

  Jenn didn’t recognize her … or maybe she did. It was hard to say.

  The old bird looked harmless enough. Still, it wasn’t a hypothesis Jenn wanted to test. Just because a Scandinavian was tiny and antique didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. Witness her shoulder. She was going to have a bruise from that jab.

  “Hold on there a minute, Natalie,” Jenn said and lowered the phone. She regarded the old lady suspiciously. “Yeah?”

  “Excuse me. You’re Jenny Hallesby, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” Jenn admitted slowly.

  “That’s what I thought. I’m sure you don’t remember an old lady like me but I’m Hilda Soderberg. I was president of the lady’s circle over to Good Shepherd when you were in high school. You used to hang around the basement kitchen on funeral days. Always t’ought that was kinda odd but you were an odd girl. Good cook, though.”

  Mrs. Soderberg? Her Mrs. Soderberg? The woman from whom she’d surreptitiously gleaned so many recipes? Recipes and tips she brought to thousands of viewers in the Midwest and would soon bring to millions more? Mrs. Soderberg, the Lefse Queen?

  True, the old gal had never seemed to like her all that much but that hadn’t stopped her from teaching Jenn how to cook. The last time they’d spoken had been Jenn’s senior year of high school when Mrs. Soderberg had bitched her out for using a Brill-o pad on the Lutheran church’s best krumkake iron after the traditional Christmas cookie baking extravaganza. Jenn hadn’t seen her around town in years.