Sweeter Than Tea

by Deborah Grace Staley

  “No. I’m going to take a business course and get a job in an office. Meet a better class of men.”

  Mama rolled her eyes at me, but didn’t say anything. I walked them back to the Pontiac and waved until I couldn’t see the car anymore.

  No one on campus knew me or my sister except Joe Pelham, and there weren’t too many greasers at college, so normal-looking guys started asking me out. But I kept my distance. I was there to get an education. I’d think about dating after I got my teaching certificate. Besides, even though these were college boys, they were still boys, horsing around in the hallways, staging panty raids, acting like fools. Joe and I still studied together, and once again he approached the idea of dating.

  “Forget it,” I told him. “I’m not here to find a husband. I want an education.”

  The four years passed quickly. I spent my summers at home, working to earn more money for the next year to supplement my scholarship. Joyce got her business certificate and worked in a law firm in Atlanta. After I graduated and finished student teaching, I came home to a bedroom all to myself for the first time in my life. Joyce had moved into an apartment and hadn’t brought anyone to meet Mama in months.

  “Which is fine,” Mama said. “Haven’t seen one I liked yet. Bunch of culls.”

  “Even the lawyers?”

  “She’s only brought junior clerks and summer interns home, no lawyers,” Mama said. “And they weren’t the cream of any crop I could name.”

  But two weeks later, Joyce did bring a man home for Sunday dinner. He seemed fine, good-looking, well-dressed, looked Mama straight in the eye and smiled when they met.

  I brought in beers as Mama leaned forward on the couch. “So, where did y’all meet?”

  Joyce blushed, but Bill said, “In a bar.” He grinned at Joyce as if it were the biggest joke in the world. He tasted Mama’s beer. “Hey, this is really good. I’d love to have your recipe. I brew a little beer myself.”

  Right, like Mama was going to give him her recipe. She guarded it like it was holy.

  I could almost see the wheels turning in Mama’s head. Met in a bar, brews beer. Although Mama had brewed beer for as long as I could remember, she seemed to have a low opinion of others who brewed or even drank the stuff.

  Mama turned to Bill. “Would you like to see my little operation downstairs? Be careful of the second to the bottom step, though. It’s loose.”

  Mama, Joyce and Bill went downstairs where they spent a long time while I finished putting dinner together: pot roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, corn pudding. All that early childhood servitude came in handy—I could cook like a country granny. When I went downstairs to call them to supper, Bill stood near the bottom of the stairs. He watched me come down and reached out a hand to help me over the loose step.

  Mama stood next to the safe. She leaned down to swipe at the top. “Oh, goodness, I need to dust that thing off,” she said. She gave me a meaningful glance and said to Bill, “Would y’all like to go to the movies with us tomorrow night?” She and I hadn’t talked about going to a movie, but I immediately knew what she was up to.

  “I have to go to that baby shower tomorrow night,” Joyce reminded her.

  “Oh, too bad. Well, some other time.” Then she added, sounding like a really bad actor, “It’s a long one—I don’t know what time we’ll get back.”

  So transparent. Joyce would know in an instant what Mama was up to.

  I glanced at my sister to see her reaction. Nothing. Joyce gazed at Bill so raptly I expected cartoon hearts to leap from her eyes, stars to dance rings around her head. Of course, she hadn’t witnessed her boyfriend soaked and standing in a puddle of beer. Maybe that made it easier to forget.

  The next evening was almost a rerun of the Buck Bonnett show, with Sandy joining us down the road, and me jumping when she popped up at my elbow. Undergrowth and recent rain made our trek through the trees much worse. Wet limbs and leaves slapped us, soaking us all. We hid at the edge of the trees beyond the empty garden, which was stripped of even its cornstalks for winter.

  There came a pretty little white car with a black hood, foreign-looking, which pulled into our gravel driveway, raising a cloud of dust.

  “That there’s a Mercedes Benz,” Sandy breathed in awe. “Looks like a brand new ‘75 model. This guy has money.”

  “Probably one step ahead of the repo man,” Mama whispered.

  “He’ll have a rough time putting the safe in the back of that,” Sandy said. “Is there even a back seat?”

  “Shh!” I warned, as Bill stepped out of the car. He carried a tool belt which he slipped on, and then he grabbed a gym bag from the trunk.

  “What’s the tool belt for?” Sandy wondered. “And the gym bag?”

  “His safecracking kit,” I whispered back.

  This time Mama shushed us.

  When no one answered the front door, he went right in. We waited a moment, then rushed to the back and eased the screen open. Mama had left the big door open despite the chilly day—didn’t want to tip off Bill with our entrance.

  We listened for a few moments and heard only a slow, measured banging.

  “Is he trying to beat it open?” Sandy asked.

  “Shh!” Mama and I said.

  Muttsy came in from the living room and woofed, happy to see us.

  The banging continued, then a pause, then more banging. We waited another minute before we rushed inside and down the steps. Maybe we’d catch him before all the bottles smashed, before we were faced with a huge cleanup.

  “Stop!” Bill yelled. He knelt on the basement floor in front of the steps, hammer in one hand, a piece of two-by-four in the other.

  We crashed into each other but managed to stop halfway down.

  “Get off! Get off the steps!” he said.

  As we stood there in confusion he dropped the hammer, stood up and pushed the air with his hands, motioning us back up. “The whole flight needs to be replaced, but I was reinforcing the worst ones right now. Get off before the whole thing collapses. But slowly, one at a time.”

  Obediently, we headed back up the steps singly. The stairs groaned and creaked ominously. Sandy and I glanced at each other, she looking as embarrassed as I felt. We crowded around the door to watch as he put braces under steps and tested each stair. He was slow and methodical, and soon Sandy and I got bored and sat at the kitchen table to see how this all played out.

  Eventually he finished and hollered up the stairs, “I’m coming up. Anyone want a beer?”

  We all did.

  “Be sure to bring one for your own self, too,” Mama called. I would have assumed he would, anyway.

  Soon he came up with four beers and his gym bag. He unhooked the tool belt and stuffed it into the gym bag.

  “Sorry I just came on in. Joyce said it would be okay. I was pretty worried about those stairs,” he said, and tipped up his beer to take a quick sip. “Didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” He leaned back against the counter.

  Mama stood near the basement doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. Sandy and I still sat at the kitchen table.

  “Sit down,” I said.

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to go soon.” He turned to Mama. “This beer is excellent. You sure I can’t talk you out of the recipe? I’d pay pretty well for a beer this good.”

  “Pay?”

  “Well, yes, of course. If we could agree to a price, I can get the papers drawn up.”

  “Papers?” Mama asked.

  “The contract. For the recipe.”

  She tipped her head and frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  He hesitated, glancing at Sandy and me for help, as if we had a clue to what he was talking about. “That’s how I do it,” he said, speaking slowly, as if to a dangerous crowd. “I don’t wa
nt to get sued. Not that I think you’re going to sue me, but . . .” He trailed off.

  Mama straightened. “Why would I sue you if I gave you the recipe?”

  Again, Bill glanced around at us. “Because if it was a hit, you might decide I owed you.”

  “A hit? At hit at what, your backyard barbeques?”

  “At my brewery.” At our mystified expressions, he said, “Joyce didn’t tell you I own a small specialty brewery?”

  “No, Joyce didn’t mention that part,” Mama said.

  “Oh. I’m a brewer. I had a taste-testing and invited my lawyer and his assistants and secretaries. That’s how I met Joyce. She said her Mama’s beer was better than any we were testing that day. She was right.” He held up the bottle. “Good stuff.”

  “So you want to buy my recipe?”

  “Yes, if you’re willing to sell.”

  Mama frowned. “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Sure, I understand. You really need to get those steps replaced,” he urged. “I’d be happy to do it, but I’m not that good a carpenter.”

  “Yes, yes, I will,” Mama agreed, walking him to the door. When she shut the back door behind him, Sandy and I began to laugh. After a moment, Mama joined in.

  “So,” Sandy said. “You were wrong. He’s a good one.”

  Mama lifted her chin. “Just because he didn’t try to rob us doesn’t mean he’s good.”

  “He came over because he was worried. He fixed y’all’s stairs. He wants to buy your beer recipe. He doesn’t sound like an all-foam sort of guy to me. Sounds like a keeper.”

  Mama held out her bottle at eye level. “Hmm. My beer, famous. What do you say we call it ‘Keeper’?”

  The beer was a minor hit, and Bill was indeed a keeper. After I taught for a year I called Joe Pelham and asked him out, and we married two years later. And Mama? She’s dating Comb-over, who took her suggestion and shaved his head naked to celebrate their first year together. And he loves the Brut cologne she bought him.

  We still say “all foam,” at times. After hearing the new preacher, for example. Sometimes we even mean it in a good way. After Mama’s recent biopsy, she came out of the doctor’s office saying, “All foam!” We cheered and danced around, and didn’t enlighten the others in the waiting room. They could tell it was a good thing, though, and that was enough.

  Running Raw

  Susan Sipal

  George Jones’ lively rockabilly, “White Lightning,” toned from my cell, the ring I’d assigned to my best ridge-runner. Grinning, I checked my rearview mirror for any sign of a tail, then pulled into the entry of a gated community. The security guard skeptically eyed my mom’s old Camry wagon with its dents and sagging bumper, and I flashed him a snarky salute.

  Beyond him, neatly ordered lines of upscale townhomes were followed by suburbia’s obligatory McMansions. Their tiny yards displayed perfectly manicured lawns dotted with trees selected for their bright orange and red fall foliage, all at the peak of the season. Runners and bikers, in tight, designer athletic wear, raced along a paved greenway surrounding a man-made pond. A cookie-cutter development of the one where I’d lived until ten months, one week, and three days ago.

  I motioned to the guard, waving my hands about crazily, that I was just turning around, and then pulled a bootleg one-eighty to the exit lane and put my liquor car in park. Tugging my pink Fedora lower over my left eye, I slumped in my seat while I reached for the buzzing cell, but kept my gaze peeled on the road in front of me. When you run ‘shine, you must always be on the alert.

  The text on my screen glowed: Have arrived. No sign of the boiler here. What’s your ETA?

  I quickly texted back: 10 mins. Watch out for that blue Ford in case he followed you.

  Setting my cell back on the passenger seat, and making sure I’d not picked up any tails, I pulled onto the residential road, picking up speed slowly and carefully so as not to jar my precious cargo. It was too risky to drive on the Raleigh Beltline with the cache I was hauling. Going fast to blend in with the speeding traffic had left me many broken jars and lost profits.

  Careful not to draw attention with a granny-crawl either, I entertained myself and kept my anxiety at bay by imagining myself in a pair of Daisy Dukes, giving the law a spin around the courthouse. Finally, the red bull’s-eye atop the mega shopping Mecca appeared before me. I circled the jam-packed parking lot once . . . twice . . . three times. But that last was just to indulge my obsessive-compulsive tendencies. There was no sign of a blue Ford or lone driver lurking in his vehicle.

  With a relieved sigh, I spotted Tammy in her Elgrand minivan, her two youngest strapped in carseats waving out the rear windows, waiting for me at the far end of the grocery side. My second to last stop of the day.

  “Next week we’ll have to meet somewhere else,” I said as I hopped out of my car and met her at the back of my wagon. “If he was waiting at our usual meeting place, he must have detected my pattern.”

  Tammy grimaced and pulled her jacket tighter about herself. “Liz, dear, you know when it’s my turn to drive I don’t mind all the cat’n’mouse stuff. But a couple other members of the co-op are starting to get antsy. Afraid they might get into some legal trouble themselves.”

  “Nah. He’s not after the buyers. He’s after the bootlegger.”

  Tammy chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Well, just remember, if you get caught, I only suggested the business. You’re the one who grasped hold of it with both pails swinging.”

  As if I’d had much choice. But I didn’t say as much to her. As my best friend of seven years, she knew. She’d listened to me moan and complain after my severance package had been spent up and run out, and I’d been forced into this new venture.

  I looked to the curly-haired imp in her backseat, whacking her twin brother over the head with her sippy cup. “How are Gracie’s allergies?” Her skin appeared less red and splotchy than the last time I’d seen her, and I hadn’t heard the hacking cough yet . . . wails from the brother she’d hit, yes, but no coughing from her.

  A bright smile lit Tammy’s face, making her appear less the worn-out mother. “So much better, thanks to your raw—”

  “Shh!” I hissed reflexively.

  “Sorry.” She lowered her voice. “Goodness, Liz, he’s really put the fear of God into you, hasn’t he?”

  “Fear of the revenuers more like,” I said on a nervous chuckle.

  Taking a last sweeping glance of the parking lot, I popped my trunk and opened the larger of two coolers half full of filled jars.

  “Ruth’s so excited to get your delivery,” Tammy said as she switched a dozen half-gallon Masons into her own cooler while I kept watch. “Said she hasn’t been able to find a supplier since moving up from South Carolina.”

  “And you’re sure she’s cool?”

  “Bit weird, maybe, but not a snitch.” Tammy shrugged. “She’s one of those homeschoolers, homesteaders, keep the government out of my business types, but not enough acreage for a cow.”

  Lord, I met all kinds with my customers. I didn’t understand home-schooling. But, hey, she’d ordered five gallons of my secret recipe and had already asked about hooking up one of her friends to buy as well. My old crowd, the upscale hipster foodies, would cancel their order whenever something more important came their way. Like a weekend trip to the Outer Banks. Which I used to take, too. I’d sigh at the thought, but I was long sighed out.

  “And you gave her the password?” I asked Tammy.

  She held up her empty hand as if in a pledge and recited, “The cream always rises to the top.”

  Aunt Jessie’s voice echoed in my mind even as Tammy repeated her oft-quoted adage. But with my Aunt Jessie, it was usually delivered with a note of accusation over how I’d abandoned the farm and forsaken my family. I’d not risen properly.
r />   As I helped my friend transfer the now heavy cooler into the back of her minivan, Tammy continued, “I’ll text Ruth and let her know you’re on your way.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I was running late and needed to race home to give Mama her pills and start her supper. All this cat’n’mouse as Tammy called it, or struggling for survival as I was forced to think of it, made my daily runs twice as long as they used to be. When I’d first started this new career that had been forced upon me, I’d not taken the legal threat seriously . . . until that dad-blamed Department of Agriculture agent had developed a special interest in my white lightning, as I liked to call it if for no other reason than to aggravate Aunt Jessie.

  A banging drew our attention. Little Gracie was now whacking her sippy cup against the window rather than her twin’s head. Her bottom lip pouted out in a pose I thought adorable.

  Her mother must have viewed it from a different perspective. With an aggrieved sigh, she opened the back door and grabbed the empty cup from her darling daughter’s balled hand. “Okay, but you won’t get any more until we’re home,” she said to Gracie, whose eyes were now alight, watching her mom open a Mason jar and pour the white liquid into her cup. She reached for it with greedy, wiggling hands as Tammy rattled on, “I’ve got two stops to drop this stuff off, and I won’t be refilling your cup every time.”

  I chuckled, my heart warmer, lighter despite my friend’s irritation. As Aunt Jessie loved to remind me, my own biological clock was approaching midnight. I’d repeatedly pressed snooze on it and all family obligations to single-mindedly pursue my career. I’d over-timed and over-achieved my way to the position of director of finance with an international pharmaceutical company. But my labor became a casualty of the Great Recession, and I’d been running on empty for a long time.

  As I watched little Gracie chugging the wholesome, fresh milk, I wondered why something that brought such health and happiness to this family was considered a criminal offense. Why any government agency would spend their very limited revenue persecuting raw milk providers rather than violent criminals or corporate tax-evaders was beyond me. But it seemed like in the last three weeks, I’d become Special Agent Strate’s personal scape-cow.