Sweeter Than Tea

by Deborah Grace Staley

  Tammy closed her rear hatch door, and after giving me a quick hug, hopped into her minivan. “Now, Liz, you stay safe, and don’t you be giving them revenuers a wild ride,” she ended on an exaggerated Southern drawl.

  Yeah, she could laugh. But Tammy’d been the one to lure me into my now criminal ways. I’d worried as she’d agonized over Gracie’s allergies and asthma and complained about how raw milk really helped, but was so hard to find. And here I now was, sitting on a dying farm with four cows and loads of pasture, but no equipment to work it, all just an hour’s drive from the state’s capital. And thus my milk-shine business had been born.

  Tammy’s engine became a distant hum, and I corralled the gloom which had settled in with my friend’s departure. Try as I might to keep the difficulties of the run humorous and my spirits up, this was no game I was playing.

  I retrieved my cell and checked my GPS for the last stop, a new customer Tammy had met at her CSA. To fill up her now free time, thanks to our company’s cutbacks, Tammy had become active in her local, community-supported agriculture farm. While her layoff had probably been influenced more by twins on the way with two already in school, mine had been simple politics. I’d challenged the CEO on too many questionable accounting practices, and he wanted to reward a more loyal underling with my salary, if not my title. Though that would probably be handed over in a couple of months, once my lay-off had reached a years’ mark.

  “Fancy meeting you here again, Lizzie Bet.”

  The low, masculine voice behind me sent a frisson of stress sizzling up my spine. I whirled, finding myself eye to chin with the man determined to make my new life miserable.

  I crossed my arms over my chest as I cocked my head back to glare him in the eye. “How’d you find that out?” No one except Aunt Jessie had called me by my birth name since I’d left home after high school. Not even Mama, but then, in the last few months she’d rarely remembered my name at all.

  “Well, see,” Special Agent Strate squinted at me through his half-lowered eyelids, “it’s like this . . . When one’s going to issue a search warrant, and one must insert the searchee’s legal name on the form, one must find out what that legal name is.” He smirked, that snarky attitude I remembered from our last encounter.

  “Search warrant?” I screeched, my composure forgotten, my heart thumping wildly against my rib cage. “For what?”

  “Your car.” He jerked his head to my still open trunk and waved a paper in my face.

  My gaze shifted to the two coolers in the back. I had five tubs of raw butter left. Thank God they were under the false bottom I’d constructed to separate the butter and cheese below from the melting ice above . . . long before Mr. Nosy Boiler-pusher had taken an interest in my enterprise.

  “Go ahead,” I taunted him, mustering all the bravado I had learned from years of sitting across a corporate Board table.

  He simply quirked one dark bushy eyebrow, his gray eyes alight beneath. Was that the thrill of the hunt, or was he toying with his prey?

  Leaning against the side of my car, I crossed my arms and ankles. I did my darndest to pull off both an innocent, beleaguered glare and an expression of so bored, couldn’t care less, have nothing to hide. I refused to turn and watch, but listened to the unmistakable click of the cooler latch releasing, the swish and clink of his fingers running through the melting ice at the bottom. (God, let it be freaking cold!) No squeak of a pushed aside false bottom.

  But I didn’t grin, and I didn’t release the breath I’d been holding.

  Then, finally, the thump of the second lid closed sharply. Frustration perhaps? I hoped so.

  “Move aside, please.” His “please” was a bit tense this time as he waved me away from the passenger rear door.

  I watched this round. Couldn’t help myself, or the amusement I allowed to spread across my face as his movements became jerkier, finding nothing. As I knew he wouldn’t. I’d learned early on not to carry records with me. My detail-trained financial mind had to come in good for something with this new enterprise.

  He finally faced me, his arms cocked on his hips, a tic throbbing in his cheek. “You won’t get so lucky every time.”

  “You consider me lucky?” My amusement fled abruptly.

  Strate looked me up and down, from my Foxcroft satin tank to my slim Audrey pants to my Gucci ballet flats, all over three years old, but I still had my pride after all. Nothing else but that. I gave back as good as I was getting, however, letting my gaze wander disdainfully from his crisp business shirt to his dark pressed pants back up to his clean-shaven squared jaw and unsmiling face.

  “Why else would someone like you,” his gaze narrowed on my black freshwater pearls, “be selling illegal raw milk unless it was some sort of game?”

  I felt myself flush, but bit back a retort. My mother’s face, her confused dark eyes, floated in my mind. A sudden surge of emotion gripped me at the wasted years, years I’d spent away at college and building a career, when those eyes had been filled with determination to carry on without asking for help. And now that she desperately needed help, she couldn’t ask. I blinked hard.

  “You found nothing,” I said, controlling my voice through gritted teeth. “Can I go now?”

  He didn’t say anything for a long minute. Just watched me beneath lowered lids, his head quirked to the right. “Yeah. But you’ll be seeing me soon.” He lowered himself into his car, then looked back at me over his shoulder. “Soon as I can get a warrant for your farm.”

  As I watched him drive away, George’s “Moonshining” trilled in my pocket where I’d tucked my cell, but I no longer felt the sense of fun with the game I’d been playing. Desperation flowed hotly through me like that white lightning I’d pretended to haul. Agent Strate’s home invasion could do more than land me a hefty fine. It could wipe away all the slim security I’d provided for Mama over the last few months.

  I clenched my fists. Somehow, someway, I’d beat him at his own game, because the loss was just too great to take. Aunt Jessie would help. After all, aggravation was her specialty.

  “Evie, I’ve already told you a hundred times,” Aunt Jessie screeched as if Mama wasn’t standing only three feet away, removing jars of cream from the cooler which Aunt Jessie had just packed. “We’ve got to get all this milk and cream out of here before the feds show up. You’re slowing us down. Now go set back in your rocker.”

  I stopped myself from fussing at Aunt Jessie for fussing at Mama. It did no good. Plus, to see the woman who’d once singlehandedly converted a poor dirt farm into a thriving dairy and ice cream business wander aimlessly through the house, asking us the same questions over and over, made me feel like I’d stepped in the nastiest cow patty.

  “Why are you moving all my milk?” Mama asked again from the sitting room as she shuffled past the old cracked butter churn on the hearth and jostled it, making it rattle. “Shouldn’t you be tending the store?”

  “You ain’t run an ice cream parlor in two years, Evie.”

  Aunt Jessie’s nagging only drew attention to Mama’s confusion and made her lip tremble, reminding me of Tammy’s little Gracie. On Mama, however, the look was heartbreaking.

  Instead of letting myself slide into that emotional waste lagoon, I reminded my aunt, “I’ve already told you, Aunt Jessie. He’s not going to be looking for the milk itself. We’re allowed to drink our own. He’s going to be hunting for any kind of record showing that I’ve been selling it.”

  “Which is what dozens of milk jars will tell him, Lizzie Bet, if he has half a brain.” She eyeballed me where I was bent over inside the closet under the stairs, boxing up empty jars and lids. “And from what you’ve told me, he’s got more’n that. Have you hid that computer away?”

  I nodded and wiped my forehead on the sleeve of my flannel shirt. “It’s up in the attic in an empty Christmas tree box.�
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  Mama had drifted from the sitting room back into the kitchen and was hovering over the old chest freezer I’d converted to a cooler, looking at the jars of milk Aunt Jessie was drawing out to transport to her house a half mile down the road.

  “But what will I give my families?” Mama asked, her mind back in the past, where it seemed to remain most clear. She’d not had to supplement her farm workers’ pay with milk and eggs since way before I’d left home, though she’d continued to pass produce out freely whenever she knew someone was hitting on hard times.

  “You don’t have any workers anymore,” Aunt Jessie screeched back. “And we’ve left you enough to have with your grits along with some store-bought butter since Lizzie Bet has sold all I’d made.” Then she mumbled under her breath as to how that pasteurized mess wasn’t fit for man nor beast.

  “Good thing we don’t have any men or beasts in this house then, isn’t it?” Mama replied in one of her unusual moments of clarity.

  Her hearing was perfectly good. It was the mind attached to it that was not so sound.

  Two years ago, with one flourish of her dementia-guided pen, and me off in the Research Triangle Park focused on another rung in my career ladder, she’d sold off all the major machinery and pasteurization equipment for a fraction of its value. A fact Aunt Jessie would never let me forget, and had used mercilessly to draw me back to my “responsibilities.” “’Bout time you put all that financial learning to good use, for once,” she’d say, as repetitive as Mama.

  My primary responsibility, as Aunt Jessie saw it, was keeping Mama out of a nursing home and in the home where she’d been born, raised, married, widowed, and worked all her life. A farm that had been in their family, my family, for over two-hundred years.

  “Now go on, Evie.” Aunt Jessie ushered Mama to her favorite rocker by the bay window in the front sitting room, drew off her favorite crocheted afghan from the back of the chair, and covered her lap. “You watch out and let us know when that officer drives up.”

  My mother would never pass the warning. She’d forgotten the second after Aunt Jessie made the request. But old habits died hard. Mama had raised her younger sister and brother while Grandma worked in the nearby shirt factory as Grandpa tried to churn money out of a rock farm. Now Aunt Jessie was returning the favor by playing mom to her older, widowed sister.

  For the most part, Aunt Jessie was good to Mama. She spent long hours rocking beside her, looking over old photos, sharing memories of the time when Mama’s mind was the most clear. Shame I didn’t have time to sit and jaw, but I was run raw trying to milk four cows twice a day and keep the farm afloat.

  After loading Aunt Jessie’s car, I watched her drive away from the front porch, staring past the aging pecan tree, absently noting the heavy limbs with the browning nuts that had started dropping. Soon, they’d need to be gathered and shelled. My gaze drifted to the mule-drawn hay-rake off to the side of the gravel drive, the grass grown so high it nearly camouflaged the rusted machinery. With my milk runs taking twice as long now, I’d not had time to mow.

  Sighing, I mentally clicked off the check list of what I must get done before “he” showed up. The cows were milked and the equipment sterilized, ready for the evening shift. I’d given Mama her morning meds and fed all the animals. And lastly, I’d picked a pot of collard greens to cook for lunch. Menial physical chores I’d once ran away from were somehow now oddly comforting, like Mama’s bowl of warm grits on this crisp fall morning.

  Shaking myself mentally, I opened the front door and stepped into the sitting room. Mama rocked faithfully by the window. I scanned the room, from the heart mantle my grandfather had carved for my grandmother as a wedding gift, to the mass of pictures cluttering the top of the upright piano Mama had tried to teach me to play as a child, to the row of her old magazines cluttered along the edges of the stairs. I’d left no incriminating evidence behind. Of course, I wasn’t even certain Special Agent Strate would show today, but an old colleague, one who’d made the transition from layoff to government employee down at the state capital, had tipped me off that his paperwork had been approved late yesterday. So I expected Mr. Boiler-Pusher any minute now.

  I’d stayed up to the wee hours of the morning, reading online about raw milk raids in California, Wisconsin, Kentucky. About the thousands of dollars of someone’s labor in the form of raw butter, milk, and cheeses confiscated along with computers, even animal feed. About the families, even children, held under guard while their homes were searched.

  Ridiculous. Surely it couldn’t happen to me.

  “Wonder why the cat’s running scared like that?” Mama asked from her front window perch. “Sure is strange the way ol’ Tom’s skedaddling up the tree.”

  My curiosity pricked, I turned to see and heard the knock. Drawing in a deep, and admittedly rather shaky, breath, I reached for the glass knob and opened the door to those gray eyes I’d been getting much too familiar with lately. Aligned behind him were two police officers, a man and woman, both wearing bland we’re-here-to-do-a-job let’s-get-on-with-it faces.

  Seeing those blue uniforms, and the badge and search warrant Agent Strate held out for me to read, made me feel like a criminal. The coldness that froze up my chest must have whitened my face, because a flicker of regret . . . doubt maybe . . . tightened the corners of Strate’s eyes and lips.

  With minimal effort and well-trained efficiency—he’d have done well as a CEO—he directed his team while keeping my mother and me company, or under guard, in the front sitting room. He didn’t seem eager to talk, his sharp eyes taking in everything around him. Mama, however, kept plaguing him with questions, convinced he was the son of the local district attorney from years ago. Within the first half hour, she must have asked him a hundred times how he’d liked life in New York City and what had made him come home. He never once let her know she’d already asked him that and was actually rather charming and cordial in his replies.

  Me, however, he ignored. I watched the officers from my perch in the side window seat as they searched everything from the bottom of Dad’s old wardrobe, now stuffed full of canned veggies from the garden that I’d sweated over, to the barns—empty of equipment but filled with piles of apples and pears I was planning to preserve, to the old pack house with its eighty years of rusting farm machinery, back to the house to the attic. At which point, I busied myself with preparing Mama’s greens, with her puttering along behind me helping out, putting things away just as soon as I set them out.

  “Won’t you have something to drink, little Enos?” my mother asked, holding out a cup of milk to Agent Strate.

  Craning my head back to look into the next room, I eyed the cup, my eyes narrowing, my muscles tensing. With the thick yellowish cream floating to the top, it was obviously raw. But what could he do? It wasn’t being sold, and we were allowed to drink our own production as well as offer it to any pseudo-guests.

  He took a sip, then nodded his thanks to my mom.

  “Wait just a dad-blame minute.” I stomped to the doorframe between the two rooms. “You’re going to drink that?” I felt my eyes bugging out of my head.

  He merely quirked an eyebrow at me. “I was raised on a farm. Drank raw all my young life.”

  I couldn’t believe the hypocrisy I was hearing. Stepping into the sitting room, I thrust my balled hands on my hips. “Then why do you chase after me so?”

  He leaned back against the mantle and placed one palm casually over the paddle of that old cracked churn. His gaze, however, pierced mine with his accusing glare. “Have you ever seen a child sickened critically by some quack’s greedy, unsanitary practices? Lying in a hospital bed as her little body’s wracked with diarrhea and nausea?”

  The dark look in his light eyes made me feel as if I’d been kicked by a cow. Gracie’s rosy cheeks flashed in my memory. What if she’d gotten sick from my milk instead of
better?

  But no, I was always scrupulous about sterilizing the bottles, cleaning each of the cows’ teats, filtering the milk immediately, and testing it regularly. But I couldn’t say that to him. There could be no open acknowledgment that I did anything to prep for sales.

  I returned to stony silence in the collard-smelling kitchen as I finished preparing lunch for Mama, who promptly resumed questioning Agent Strate about his “daddy,” the prosecutor.

  At some point, I’m not even sure when, Aunt Jessie slipped back into the house and kept Mama company, and thankfully focused on the past, by looking through an old photo album together. As the time dragged on, I joined them, pulling up a footstool between Mama and Aunt Jessie. I stared blankly at black and white images of Mama and Aunt Jessie as girls jumping into a mound of cotton, of Mama dressed in coveralls riding the old tractor, and with the turning of pages, of colorful images of me under the grapevine, my mouth stuffed full as purple juice stained my lips.

  “See that. That’s my Lizzie Bet,” my mom’s voice rang out. I turned and saw her standing at Agent Strate’s elbow, holding out an old photo of me at graduation. She thumbed at the picture. “She graduated top of her class and then went on to Duke. Got a fine job in the city. All I ever wanted for her, even if I didn’t see her so much.”

  Aunt Jessie snorted. “She should have come home more often.” And she cut me a sharp glance from the corners of her eye. “Maybe you wouldn’t be in this pickle if she had.”

  I didn’t respond to the lure, but Mama spun on her. “Don’t you even think that, Jessie. Look at what I gave up for Mama and you and Gabe. I didn’t want my daughter tied down here like I was. I fought to make this farm pay so Lizzie Bet would have her choice.”

  “Mama . . .” I said, the words coming out a croak. But I’d never heard her say that before. Somehow, realizing how she’d never forced me to stay made me wonder why I’d been so wild to escape all those years ago.