Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

  • • •

  Jordy groaned, got to his knees, and got to work. He looked up at one point, and saw the little guy watching him from about twenty yards away. Jordy roared again, but the little guy didn’t move.

  He heard footsteps behind him, and saw it was Hobie.

  “Aw, shit. The one other guy that’s used his tag.”

  “Why, you see another one?” Hobie asked.

  “Straight ahead,” Jordy said, pointing to the fawn.

  “This his mother?” Hobie asked. “What the hell you shoot her for? She’s got a little kid.”

  “I didn’t see him.”

  “Look at him. He’s tiny. Late in the year for something so tiny.”

  Jordy didn’t look up as he tore the mother’s lungs out. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Won’t last long, probably. On his own.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. I woulda shot him, but I obviously just used my tag.” Jordy continued to cut and stopped at the deer’s nipples. “Aw, fuck, her milk sacs are full.”

  “Well, that’s some sad stuff,” Hobie said, staring at the fawn. “Let me help ya drag her outta here.”

  • • •

  Langford and Jordy’s dad commented on the beautiful doe as Hobie and Jordy dragged it into the garage. Langford laughed and said these two deer musta been a married couple. Jordy didn’t say anything about the fawn and neither did Hobie.

  “Adam called,” Trudy said. “You need to call him back immediately.”

  “Finally,” Jordy said, and took off his boots in the garage before going inside.

  • • •

  Hobie and Trudy still had one of those old rotary dial phones, the kind with the big chunky plastic handle. It was full-on morning and the kitchen smelled like Folgers and burnt toast. A napkin holder on the table, made out of black iron, had the inscription Although you’ll find our home a mess / sit down, relax, converse. It doesn’t always look like this / sometimes it’s even worse, and Jordy stared at those words as he heard the phone ring at his mom’s apartment.

  Adam picked up on the third ring. “Hello?”

  “Adam, what’s up?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “She’s gone, she’s gone.”

  “What? You mean Mom?”

  “Yeah, she’s gone.” He was crying. “Like half an hour ago.”

  “What? No. No fuckin’ way. She was fine. No fuckin’ way.”

  “We just helped her move to her bed—”

  “You and who? You and Mandy?”

  “No, some other nurse. Casey. Casey, she’s still here.”

  “Fuck!”

  “And she just started breathing real heavy—”

  “Fuck!” Jordy ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it at the kitchen sink. He grabbed the stupid black iron napkin holder with the stupid fucking quote and broke it in half and kicked over the fucking table and then Hobie came in there and grabbed him and said what the hell are you doing and Jordy swung at him but when Hobie grabbed his arms and he couldn’t move, Jordy felt all the fight leave his body, and all of his internal structures gave way, and it fucking sucked, but there was nothing he could do but fucking lose it right there on the cold, dirty brown linoleum floor.

  • • •

  He didn’t have anything to eat that day until he was on the way home with his dad. They stopped at a Subway attached to a gas station. When he placed his order for a foot-long meatball marinara with extra cheese and no vegetables, he wondered if the sandwich artist could tell that his mom had died.

  • • •

  The only person who didn’t want his mom cremated was his dad. As far as Jordy and Adam were concerned, he gave up his vote when he divorced her. His mom’s doctor said that her cancer was so bad, the only thing they could donate from her body was her corneas. Everything else had to go. They cremated her and split the ashes between them and their mom’s sisters. Jordy got his in a black film canister that had Scotch tape holding down the lid. There were white bits of bone in it.

  • • •

  Melanie planned the wake and the funeral, so they were way up in Duluth, where that side of the family was from. Of course, by then it had snowed a ton, and it was snowing that day, slowing down all the cars and the old people. He was a pallbearer, but didn’t have a black suit because he had never needed one before, so he had to borrow an old one of his dad’s, which was wool and smelled like a wet sock. Everyone told him how nice he looked, and that they were sorry, but otherwise people just stood around and looked at the ground and talked about the snow, clearly just waiting for the whole thing to be over.

  • • •

  In the church basement after the funeral, some old lady told him to eat something, and gave him a tiny ham and cheese sandwich on a Styrofoam plate. He sat down at a table with Dan Jorgenson and ate the meat part as he looked around the room. Despite the weather, a lot of people were there, under the drop ceiling and fluorescent lights, sitting at tables draped with cheap white tablecloths, drinking coffee and eating seven-layer dip and little sandwiches like nothing devastating had happened. He’d taken four Oxys over the course of that day and they were the only things that kept him from losing his shit.

  • • •

  He never would’ve admitted this to anybody, but almost the whole time he was thinking about Mandy. He did get a card from her, a beautiful white card that said With Deepest Sympathy on the front. On the inside, she signed it, “Love, Mandy.” But she didn’t come by the apartment like some people did, and didn’t return any of his calls or texts, ever. Jordy thought that was extremely fucked up. But he kept the card in his coat and looked at it sometimes.

  • • •

  Jordy didn’t want to stay at the apartment anymore, even though it was paid up to the end of the month and he would’ve had the place to himself, so he moved all of his stuff to his dad’s place in St. Paul. The only problems were that his dad never had anything good to eat and the TV was always on Fox News, which was boring as shit.

  “We gotta figure out what to do with all your venison,” his dad said in his kitchen, five days after Jordy’s mom died. “If you don’t want to eat it, give it away.”

  “Food banks probably don’t take raw deer meat,” Jordy said, taking the frozen, vacuum-sealed red blocks out of his dad’s noisy old Hotpoint freezer. His dad had inherited the super-old house from his dad, Jordis P. Snelling the First, who inherited it from his dad, Langford Hobart Snelling. It was in an old part of St. Paul that was now considered historic. Which meant that it had no dishwasher and old fixtures and appliances that were always humming and buzzing, not like the quiet, newer machines at the apartment.

  He stacked up the deer meat on the tiled kitchen counter and put them in plastic bags from under the sink, which his dad was probably saving for when he walked his dog, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Why don’t you give it to Adam’s girlfriend?” Jordy’s dad said. “She’s a chef.”

  This sounded fuckin’ awkward. Was he just supposed to knock on her door, and be, like, Hey, I met you twice, here’s an entire dead deer?

  “How do you know she even wants it?”

  “Because I called Adam, and he asked her, and she said yes.” His dad often liked to introduce topics for debate after everything had already been decided.

  “So, she’s expecting it, then?”

  “Yep. I think she’s real excited.”

  “Maybe I’ll wait for Adam to get off work first. And he can come.”

  “Don’t be a wimp about it,” his dad said. “She knows you. Just get it over with.”

  Jordy didn’t really want to get off his ass and get in the car and schlep a shitload of venison to some chick his brother was dating, even if she was nice, but it did seem like the best way to get rid of the stuff.r />
  Eva lived in a kinda fancy white two-story house on DuPont over by Lake Calhoun. It was right near a famous rose garden that some chick dragged him to one time. He liked the big old trees that lined the street; even with their leaves gone, they gave the neighborhood a sense of safety and reliability. As he lifted the cold, heavy bags of frozen venison from the trunk of the Buick, a totally hot female jogger ran past, staring straight ahead, wearing what looked like brand-new workout clothes, and all of a sudden he felt a million miles from home.

  Eva answered the door, smiling. He took an involuntary step back. It hit him that he hadn’t been smiled at in a while. Why she seemed so happy to see him, he had no fuckin’ idea.

  “Jordy, come in,” Eva said. “I heard you might come by today.”

  The house smelled like coffee and burning cedar, and the big, wide-open living room with the fireplace and the clean, new-looking furniture looked way nicer than any place he’d seen in a long-ass time. Two people, a stubbly-faced, tattooed man with black hair, and an intense-looking blonde woman—both probably in their thirties, hard to tell, but definitely adults—were on one of the sofas, each on their own laptop, and a young teenage boy sat on a brown rug and played with a smartphone. They all looked at him when he entered, and although they didn’t seem unfriendly, he felt like he was in the way. “I gotta get back on the road in a minute,” he said.

  Eva hugged him, hard. “I’m so sorry about your mom,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Jordy said back, patting her back once. He was surprised at first that she knew, but of course she did. “Thanks.”

  “It’s really tough, I know. My mom, she died when I was fourteen.”

  “Wow,” Jordy said, because what do you say to that? It probably sucks even more at that age. Looked like her mom’s death didn’t ruin her life or anything, though.

  “Oh, hey,” Eva said, keeping her hand on his back as she pivoted to face the people in her living room. “Everyone, this is my friend Adam’s brother, Jordy. Jordy, these are my cousins Randy and Braque, and Braque’s son Hatch.”

  Braque raised her eyebrows. “Friend Adam?” she asked Eva.

  “Shut it,” Eva said, pointing at Braque.

  Braque touched the kid Hatch’s back with her foot. “Hatch, look up from your phone for a second and greet our guest.”

  Hatch glanced up from his phone and waved once.

  Braque turned to Jordy and gave him a What can ya do? look. “The kid has loved those fuckin’ things since literally before he was born.”

  “I hate it when people misuse the word ‘literally,’” Eva said. Jordy noted that the grammar was corrected, but the swearing went unremarked.

  “What’s in the bags?” Randy asked, standing up to get a better look. He seemed like a guy who’d been through some shit; Jordy could just tell.

  “Venison,” Jordy said.

  “Sweet,” Randy said. “I love venison.”

  Braque didn’t take her eyes off of Jordy. “Eva doesn’t even have a picture of Adam. I was starting to wonder if he even existed.”

  “No more questions about his brother,” Eva said.

  He was curious why Eva apparently hadn’t told these people much about her relationship with Adam; Jordy knew a fair amount, and he wasn’t the type to hit his brother up for details. Adam had told him that he and Eva met like six years ago at a dinner party, so they’d known each other for a long time, but then like two months ago she came to his bakery to get bread for some event, and they’d been hanging out ever since. It was nothing covert or weird or anything. He didn’t know why Eva was being so secretive about it, but maybe she was just a private person. If so, he respected that.

  Eva smiled at Jordy, who hadn’t moved. “Sure you can’t take your coat off and stay awhile?” she asked him. “Lunch is just about ready.”

  “I don’t know.” He could eat, he figured, depending.

  Braque looked right at him again. “Listen to what your brother’s girlfriend is making,” she said. “A Savoy and Mammoth Red Rock cabbage slaw with homemade Spanish peanut oil dressing, and a vegan aloo gobi with Purple of Sicily cauliflower and heirloom Mercer potatoes. Oh yeah, and every ingredient was grown on property she owns or by local people she knows. How do ya like that?”

  Jordy hated to admit it, but he was a little confused. His first thought was, why all the trouble? Does she make such crazy stuff every day for lunch? Must be fuckin’ exhausting.

  “He doesn’t need to know all that,” Eva said. “It’s basically just coleslaw and a spicy potato cauliflower stew. Just beta-testing some stuff for the dinner this weekend.”

  “Cool,” Jordy said, not taking his jacket off.

  Braque grabbed Eva’s hand. “Hey, I’m gonna ask him,” she said, and then turned to face Jordy. “OK, Eva just got a huge offer to take over for Miles Binder on Cater-Mania. Do you watch that show?”

  “Heard of it,” Jordy said.

  Eva shook her head. “Not in a million years will I do that show, or any show.”

  Braque motioned around the room. “Everyone thinks she should fuckin’ do it.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “You’re being such an ass-clown. All the big chefs have TV shows. You should have a show, and a cookbook. You should have a shitload of cookbooks.”

  “I have way more exposure than I want already,” Eva said. “Maybe I’ll judge another baked goods contest next year. That’s actually fun and easy. This other stuff isn’t.”

  “You don’t even have any pictures or recipes on your Web site,” Braque said.

  “That’s right, I don’t,” said Eva, smiling.

  “I hate arguing with this fuckin’ chick,” Braque said, shaking her head.

  Randy laughed. “The trick is, don’t disagree with her.”

  Braque looked at the new stranger in their house. “What do you think, Jordy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. It made him fucking anxious to have all these people looking at him when he had nothing to say. “I think I gotta get going.”

  He glanced back into the living room as he opened the front door. Randy and Braque looked really bummed, as if Jordy was a star player quitting a baseball team or something. He supposed it was nice that they wanted him to stick around for some reason, but he hardly knew these people, and their arguing and questions were making him edgy.

  Braque sat up. “Well, say hi to your brother from us. I hope he’s half as cute as you are.”

  He nodded once, hoping in that moment never to see that Braque woman again.

  Eva picked up her purse from a rack by the door and followed Jordy out to her front step, closing the door behind them. “How’s a hundred?” she asked.

  “What?” he asked. His face was flushed with the cold outdoor air, his nose free of the warm smells of a strange home, and he hadn’t noticed that she’d followed him out.

  “A hundred bucks for the venison. I hope that’s enough.”

  Jordy was about to say that he didn’t need any money for it, but then for some reason he didn’t. “A hundred’s OK.”

  Eva handed him the money and hugged him again. “If you need anything—anything—let me know, all right?” She looked him in the face. “I’m thinking of you.”

  “Yeah, OK,” he said. She was a good person, and maybe even meant what she said, but he had no idea how to respond. “Thanks,” he said. He’d never said that word so much before this week, when he learned how perfectly it could shoot down further conversation. This woman had tried harder than most, and probably deserved better.

  • • •

  In the car on the way home, he wondered if he could have got more than a hundred. He always fucked up every kind of negotiation. But whatever. It was a hundred more than he had thirty minutes ago, and he needed it for more pills for when his mom’s ran out, which would be real soon.
He would just have to figure out where to get them. He had some ideas. He was good at that kind of thing. Or was going to have to be. Because this was another four-pill kind of day today. He could just tell already.

  BARS

  Who doesn’t like bars? That’s what Pat Prager wanted to know.

  • • •

  Pat sat in her kitchen and made a list in her head of all the people she knew who loved bars, whether they were light and crunchy Rice Krispies bars, sweet and tart lemon bars, or rich and heavy peanut butter and chocolate bars. That list numbered everyone. Kids loved bars, teenagers loved bars, Pastor Evan loved bars, and even Pastor Evan’s wife, Jenni, who always made such a show of skipping the bars—Pat had seen her in her car, eating them, after everyone else left Bible study. Cops loved them, firemen loved them, teachers loved them, her first husband, Jerry Jorgenson, now in God’s kingdom, loved them, and even her second husband, Eli Prager, who, between work and writing for that Minnesota Vikings blog on the Internet, always came up from his man-cave to sneak more bars.

  • • •

  Everyone knew that Deer Lake made the best bars in the county—one of them had won the Bars division of the County Fair Bake-Off six years in a row—and everyone knew that the best bars in Deer Lake were made by the women of First Lutheran Church.

  Pat didn’t like to toot her own horn, but her peanut butter bars had won the blue ribbon for Best Bars five of the last six years now. Still, she couldn’t rest on her laurels, because there were some really darn good bars out there. Like Sandra Bratholt’s cherry coffee cake bars, Frances Mitzel’s sour cream raisin bars, Corrina Nelsen’s lemon bars, and Barb Ramstad’s Kraft caramel bars:

  1 bag caramels

  5 tablespoons cream

  ¾ cup butter, melted

  1 cup brown sugar

  1 cup oatmeal

  1 cup flour

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 cup chocolate chips

  ½ cup nuts, chopped (optional)

  Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Melt the caramels and cream in a double boiler. Cool slightly. Combine the butter, sugar, oatmeal, flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix until crumbly. Press half of this mixture into a 9-by-13-inch pan and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with the chips, the nuts, and the melted caramel mixture. Sprinkle with the remaining crumbs and bake for 15–20 minutes more at 350˚F. Don’t overbake. Cut while warm. The caramels and cream may be melted in a microwave.