“I may have mentioned barbecue a while back?” I suggested when Andrews gawked.
“Yes?” he barely answered.
“Well, right there is a place where we could get some of the most amazing wild boar barbecue in the world.”
He eyed the building with great suspicion. “I don’t know.”
“You can also get a shot of something resembling whiskey that might make you go blind.”
“Well, then.” He grinned. “I’m in.”
He nosed the truck in the direction of the diner and parked in a patch of weeds near a new black Ford F-150. When we got out we both took a second to brush the worst of the auto glass from the seat and the rest of the cab, but without a broom and dustpan or, better, an industrial vacuum, we really didn’t have a hope, so we gave up.
“All right,” I warned him softly, “you have to expect the coldest shoulder treatment you’ve ever experienced. When we walk in the place, everyone will stare, all conversation will stop, and someone might ask us to leave.”
“But you’ll take care of it,” he assumed.
“I’ll take care of it.”
I began trying to brush the caked mud off my hands and my pants, with only moderate success. Andrews didn’t even bother.
The front of the diner had one door, no sign, a large, dark, dirty picture window, and was nearly covered by old and new kudzu vines. The door had once been painted blue, but time and neglect had nicely antiqued the finish. Its handle was black from dirt and car grease, the patina of unwashed years.
I grabbed it, tugged it, and stepped inside. Andrews was right behind me.
Two men in black Sunday suits sat at one of the five tables. Another man—someone with whom I had a vague acquaintance—leaned behind a counter in front of completely barren shelves. Everyone stared. All conversation stopped. The man I knew, the one at the counter, spoke up.
“We’re closed.” His eyes were bloodshot and his demeanor was darker than a junkyard dog’s. He was dressed in a white shirt buttoned to the neck, no tie.
“Ramsey sent us,” I said, staring him in the eye.
“Ramsey, he’s dead,” he answered immediately.
“I know.” I stood still and let all three men have a good look.
“How you think you know Ramsey?” the man at the counter asked after a moment.
“He claimed he went to bed with my mother,” I answered tonelessly.
“That would be Dolores,” one of the men at the table said. “He never talked about no other woman. You’d be her boy Fever, then.”
I didn’t move.
“What is it you think you want here, Fever?” the man behind the counter asked, pronouncing my name as if it were a private joke.
“You know exactly what I want,” I said plainly. “Five country back ribs, two whole ears of corn, some pinto beans, slaw if it’s fresh, and a glass of something wrong to wash it down with.”
Silence.
Then the other man at the table smiled. “I wouldn’t trust that coleslaw, but the pig is been done since sunup and it’s fine.”
I nodded. “And my friend here comes from England. He’s never tasted anything like your barbecue, or the—specialty of the house.”
The man behind the counter managed something like a smile. “Specialty of the house. I like that.”
He drew his right arm from behind the counter and brought up a very clean shotgun. He set it on the counter.
“We were just having us a little enticement ourselves,” one of the men at the table said, bringing a paper cup out from under the table where he’d been hiding it, “before we went over to Wednesday morning service.”
“Church service on Wednesday?” Andrews blurted out.
The man shook his head. “Damn, boy. You are from England. Say something else.” He turned to his companion. “You hear that?”
“Say something else,” the second man encouraged.
“God save the Queen,” Andrews obliged.
All three men laughed, and with that, the place thawed to a slightly more comfortable level of tension. In short order, Andrews and I were seated at our own table, the man behind the counter had gone out back to pull pork from a steaming pig, and another one of the men had gone somewhere else with the assurance that he’d be right back with the “specialty of the house.”
“How do these men know who you are?” Andrews whispered. “Do you know them?”
“I went to elementary school with the owner, the man behind the counter. His name is Travis. I haven’t seen him in a long time. I had no idea he’d be here. We don’t care for one another.”
Before Andrews could worry further, Travis appeared with plates of food to distract him, and set them down in front of us. I gazed at the meal before me. The pulled pork smelled like an autumn fire, burning leaves, rosemary, and sweet vinegar. The ears of corn were still in their husks; I could feel the heat from them. The pinto beans were the color of chocolate, in bowls of their own. I knew from previous experience with this food that those beans had been grown on a little farm close by during the previous year, picked late, dried, stored over the winter near the smokehouse out back. A few days earlier they had been cooked in bacon, bacon fat, bacon drippings, and anything else having to do with bacon that Travis happened to have on hand. I had once found a small tooth in a bowl of these beans. I had always convinced myself that it was part of a pig’s tusk.
Andrews was watching me, uncertain as to why I was just staring at my food.
“Are we going to eat this?” he asked, still whispering.
“Wait,” I intoned.
Seconds later, the other man returned with two large Mason jars that, at first, looked empty. But he carried them with such care that even Andrews soon realized they were filled to the brim with an absolutely transparent liquid.
“Ah,” Andrews said, nodding. “Specialty of the house.”
“Kick your ass,” Travis assured us.
The jars were set before us, and the three men all stood back. They were apparently very curious to know what reaction Andrews might have to their local cuisine and brew.
The only thing that gave Andrews pause was the fact that there was no silverware of any kind on the table and no napkin. Seeing his dilemma, I quickly picked up a piece of the boar between my first two fingers and thumb and began eating. He understood, and followed my example.
We ate for a moment in silence. He scooped up the bowl of beans and drank some down as if it were a thick soup. I began husking the corn gingerly, burning my fingers.
When Andrews stopped to breathe, he glanced at Travis. “This is the best pork I have ever eaten in America or in England.”
“Damn right,” one of the men agreed, shifting his weight.
They were still watching, anticipating Andrews’s reaction to the liquor we’d been given. I saw that our conversation with them would go no further until we tried, reacted to, and praised the drink. I finished husking my corn and picked up the jar, holding it steadily so as not to spill a drop. Andrews saw and copied.
As one, we sipped.
I closed my eyes. First a fire touched my lips, but the scent of September apples and hickory smoke made it bearable. Then my tongue lit up, first with a kind of smoky poblano pepper heat, then with a rich, bitter vanilla. I swallowed, and the finish of that first taste went on for thirty seconds: elderberries, charcoal, pipe smoke, more vanilla, and then, just when I thought it was over, a final volley of lavender.
I opened my eyes. “Best ever, Travis,” I said, as if a holy event had just transpired.
“God in Heaven,” Andrews agreed.
“Why is there a little taste of lavender in this?” I asked him. “That’s new.”
He nodded slowly. “Damn if you don’t have an exceptional pallet, Doctor. That batch was cooked over hickory wood and lavender stems. I believe it lends a bit of sophistication to the finish.”
“Agreed.” I took another sip. “Goes perfectly with the pig.”
&n
bsp; “That pig was one I got myself—about a week ago.” Travis smiled genuinely for the first time since we’d walked into his place. “They’re everywhere this year.”
“Cold winter,” one of the other men said sagely. “Extra snow.”
“What does your boy, here, think of the brew?” Travis wanted to know.
Andrews, not one for sipping, gulped five huge swallows without reacting at all. I knew that he’d done it to impress the men.
“It’ll do,” he pronounced lightly, “if you don’t have anything stronger.”
That did it. All three of the men laughed; one patted him on the back.
“He’s okay,” the man told me, grinning. “I seen this particular batch make a grown man cry. And he drank it like it’s water.”
“Holy water,” Andrews corrected. “Where I come from? A man could be knighted for creating a liquor this fine.”
Everyone liked that. Everyone sat down at the table with us.
“We got to get to our service in a minute,” Travis said, taking a seat right next to Andrews. “But I know you’uns did not come into my establishment just for this kind of breakfast. It’s fifty dollars, by the way. Each.”
“Prices have gone up,” I observed, staring Travis in the eye.
“Well,” Travis said politely, “the food is on the house, because you mentioned Ramsey, rest his soul. The hooch is five dollars a jar but this is a test batch, and since you correctly guessed the secret ingredient, I can let that go too. The hundred dollars is for the answer to your question.”
“What question?” I asked, still staring him down.
“You want to know who shot up your truck a couple of minutes ago.” He didn’t blink. “I’ll tell you, for a hundred dollars.”
“That seems fair,” I said immediately, reaching for my wallet. “Unless of course it was you who shot at me. Then it seems like cheating.”
“Well, it was a shotgun,” he responded, not offended in the least. “But it wasn’t mine.”
“And actually,” I went on, “I really did want Andrews, here, to taste your food and this fine drink. The only questions I came in here to ask were about my mother.”
“Oh.” Travis sat back.
“I know she lived here for the last several years of her life,” I told him, taking out too many twenty-dollar bills. “What a surprise to me when I learned that. I thought she died long before I came back to Blue Mountain. So I’m wondering if you ever talked with her, or knew anyone who did. I’m trying to get in touch with some of her relatives—that side of my family.”
Travis nodded, not looking at the money. “Why’s that?”
Something had made him tense up more, but questions about my mother often had that effect on people.
“As I get older,” I answered, “I discover I’m more interested in genealogy. I want to know where I came from. I have a lot of information about my father’s family, but almost none about my mother’s. We, I’m sure you can understand, did not get along, my mother and I.”
“Dorrie was a mess,” he said. “I am not unsympathetic. What I am is uninformed in this regard. She came in here to have supper almost every Tuesday night for a couple of years. She sat by herself, didn’t talk to anybody, didn’t look around. She came here every Sunday morning for a gallon of the good medicine and never made conversation. Just set down the money and smiled. I don’t believe that Ramsey ever got into her bed, but he did like to talk about it. I hope you will not be offended if I observe that your mother was a handsome woman even as she traveled into her fifties, and she did have a somewhat enticing reputation.”
“All right.” I patted the money on the table between us. “Who would know? About my mother’s family, I mean.”
“Couldn’t say,” he admitted, staring down at the bills.
“You know who might could have some information?” one of the other men began.
“Shut up, Wade.” Travis gave the man a cold stare.
Wade nodded and lowered his head. All cordiality was gone from Travis’s face. The room grew darker. There was a thunderhead rolling in over the mountains to the north.
“What is it?” Andrews asked before he realized that the conversation had turned strange.
Travis locked eyes with Andrews. “Wade misspoke.”
Andrews glanced around and read the situation. He held up his jar, already half-empty. “Okay. But he serves a right mean breakfast beverage, doesn’t he?”
Travis relaxed. Wade exhaled. The third man cleared his throat.
“It’s about time for us to get to the meeting, boys,” the third man announced.
Travis put his hand on the money but didn’t take it. “You care to know who shot your truck?”
“Why not?” I assented.
Travis scooped up the money and jammed it into his pants pocket. “Hunters.”
I shook my head. “That’s not worth a hundred dollars.”
“It is when I tell you why they did it.” Travis stood up. “They’re from this town—this piece of crap little town—and they still know they’re better than you are. They want you to get on back to Blue Mountain, get married to that nurse, and settle down. Stay away from here.”
The three men began to exit and avoided looking at me.
“They don’t want me here in Fit’s Mill,” I said.
“They do not,” Travis confirmed. “We got to get to our meeting. You’uns finish eating. When you leave, just flick this little button on the door and lock it behind you, hear?”
I nodded.
“I really enjoyed this drink,” Andrews called out affably.
Travis did not turn around as he left the building. “Hope not to see you again,” he answered back.
I sat back in my seat. Andrews continued eating. The men did not start a car or a truck, so it was clear to me that their meeting was close by.
“Do you think I should follow them to the meeting?” I asked.
“No.” Andrews shoved a huge bite of food into his mouth.
“You think we should just finish this and leave?”
“Yes.” He took a swig from his jar. “You didn’t get the information you came for, and it doesn’t seem likely that you will.”
I folded my arms and nodded. “All right, then. At least let me go over to my mother’s grave site, as long as we’re here, and then we’ll go home.”
“Right.”
“Grave, then home.” I leaned back, not moving at all. I’d barely touched my food and most of my liquor was still in its jar.
Andrews continued eating.
* * *
The yard where my mother was buried was a sad affair. Dead weeds and leftover leaves littered the ground and the gravestones. There were, perhaps, thirty such sites as hers. Some of them had only simple markers. None of them had been attended. Ever.
The wild azalea next to my mother’s grave was doing its best to add color and scent to the sullen air, but it was scraggly and sick, and might not see another spring. Several tortured shrubs were scattered about in no pattern whatsoever, and I finally realized that they were chestnut remnants. They served as the perfect metaphor for Fit’s Mill. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the American Chestnut was one of the most prevalent trees in the mountains. But chestnut blight fungus destroyed most of the old growth around 1900. After that, the species existed mainly as low shrub. The town had been a hub in the nineteenth century, the only gristmill in three counties. Before World War I it had been a relatively thriving metropolis with a bank, a restaurant, an ice-cream parlor, several other stores, and a Nickelodeon. The trip from other places to Fit’s Mill was an occasion, and often whole families would come along.
Now the town belonged to kudzu, and the cemetery was practically a vacant lot.
A single red cardinal cried out in what seemed to me an attempt to invigorate the gloom. I saw it sitting like a rose in its jagged, barren chestnut bush. Close by was its nest: empty and in disrepair.
The thunderhe
ad blocked out all sun, and gave a chill to the wind. I found myself wishing I’d worn a heavier coat. I moved, almost drifted, toward my mother’s grave. As I did, I felt myself weakening. My legs were heavy and unmanageable, my eyes struggled to stay open; my breathing was very loud in my head.
I took one more step, and there was my mother, sniffing the honeysuckle smell from the azalea beside her grave, and smiling.
“The Olympics were held in Paris in 1924,” she said. “It was quite a celebration. Sonja Henie was there. She was only eleven. After that she was a movie star in America. Also that year: Hitler was sentenced to prison, Robert Frost won a Pulitzer Prize, and Gandhi was fasting in India.”
“Mother?” I whispered.
“And I think you’ll find this interesting: the first mass murderer of the twentieth century—Fritz Haarmann was his name—he was sentenced to death in Germany. So he was in jail at the same time as Hitler. And after he died they put his head in a jar so that scientists could examine his brain. Haarmann, not Hitler.”
“Why are you telling me these things?” I managed to mumble.
I heard Andrews, somewhere in another world, say, “What?”
My mother sat down on her grave. “He was a sick man, Fritz Haarmann. A child molester put in the insane asylum. There’s no telling why he was like that. Of course, everybody will tell you it was his mother’s fault. Everybody always blames the mother. She raised him with poison. She’s the one who told him to go to France and kill T-Bone.”
“Fever!”
I heard Andrews shout as if he were standing at the mouth of a deep tunnel in which I was buried.
Then I hit the ground, and everything was gone.
16.
I woke up on my mother’s grave. Andrews was sitting beside me, talking on his cell phone. I knew he was speaking English, but I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. I seemed to have something stuffed into my ears. I was shivering, and it was raining. The overgrown azalea bush beside the grave did little to keep me dry. I tried to sit up, but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate.
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