Bread on Arrival

by Lou Jane Temple

  Bierocks

  For the dough

  2 cups warm water

  2 packages dry yeast

  ¼ cup sugar

  1½ tsp. kosher salt

  8 T. butter, melted, plus 3 T. to finish the buns

  1 egg

  6–7 cups bread flour

  For the filling

  1 yellow onion, peeled and diced

  1½ lbs. ground beef

  2 cups red cabbage, shredded

  2 cups green cabbage, shredded

  Salt and pepper, hot sauce

  Options: 1 cup yellow cheese, grated; ½ cup hard cheese, such as Parmesan or Romano, grated; 2 T. tomato paste; 1 cup diced cooked potatoes; 1 cup cooked rice.

  Dissolve yeast in ½ cup warm water. When the yeast bubbles, about 5 minutes, add butter, egg, sugar, and salt. Add flour and knead with a bread hook or by hand, approximately 5 minutes. The dough should be elastic. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with a dish towel or clear film, and set aside until the dough has doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down and let rise again, about 30 minutes. You can chill the dough at this time and resume the process later.

  In a heavy, large sauté pan that has been heated, brown the beef and onion together, adding a tablespoon of canola oil if the beef is too lean. Add cabbage after beef is brown and cover for 10 or 15 minutes over medium heat. Add salt, pepper, and a few drops of Tabasco or other hot sauce. Add cheese, rice or any of the options. Set aside to cool.

  When the dough has completed its second rising, turn out on a floured surface and roll into thin sheets. Cut into 5-inch squares. Place 2 T. of the meat mixture in each square, fold over and pinch edges together so that there is a smooth side and the side with the seam. Place seam side down on an oiled baking sheet and let rise 20 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees for 15–20 minutes. Brush with melted butter when they come out of the oven and serve.

  Six

  General Irwin Mills marched up and down the inspection line. The entire staff of the Milling and Grain International Studies Laboratory was at attention, getting the last word from their boss before the celebrity bakers showed up.

  “Name, rank, and serial number, and that is all you tell them, do you understand? We have to treat this as an enemy movement behind our own lines. I will be the one to give out information. I want everyone else to stay busy and productive. This interference is made necessary by the need for funds, so our work can go forward,” the general said sternly. “BIG BREAD has the ill-founded notion that these people can be of use to us some day. I’ve tried to tell them we go straight to the enlisted man with our program. Who needs the junior officers?”

  Several of the lab employees were shifting uncomfortably. They were used to the general using his military terms, but this time he seemed to really believe they were on some kind of military maneuvers, instead of simply having a bunch of bakers out for a tour.

  The general checked his watch. “Everyone, let’s all be together on this, down to the second. It’s twelve hundred hours, thirty-two minutes, seventeen seconds. Everyone goes for a thirty-minute lunch at twelve forty-five. You will then have forty-five minutes to get your areas in shipshape. The tour is due to be here at two.”

  Every square inch of the lab was already shipshape but no one said a word. The general hadn’t been himself all day. He seemed to be coming down with a cold or the flu but whenever anyone asked him if he felt all right, the general bit their head off. When the first person broke the inspection line and started to walk away, the general bellowed.

  “I haven’t said dismissed, have I troops?”

  Several people spoke up quickly. “No, sir. Sorry, sir,” and pulled the poor employee back into the line.

  “Remember, this is the enemy. Be careful what you say. Now, troops, dismissed. Carry on.”

  As the lab employees bolted for the door, the general stood rigidly at attention, watching them each cross in front of him to get away. Then, as the last one left the room, he spun around and pointed his finger accusingly in the air. “You told me you would let me know who the traitor was. We were married thirty-five years. The least you could do is help me find the traitor!” he shouted to the empty room.

  * * *

  Heaven looked around. “This is nice,” she said contentedly. They had moved ten miles north to Ernest Powell’s farm, where the crowd had been subdued by a big farm lunch. It had been billed on the conference program as a Mennonite lunch and, after Walter’s speech about the Mennonites being the root of all evil, the group was titillated to be surrounded by the descendants of the ones who brought ‘Red Turkey’ wheat to Kansas. And Ernest and the other Mennonite farmers and their families hadn’t disappointed, not that anything racy happened, but the lunch was great.

  The farm families had long tables set under big shade trees in the yard. There were vintage feed sack tablecloths draped handkerchief style over the tables and real china plates painted with faded roses and bluebirds. Ernest told them they always ate out here in the yard during wheat harvest, just like Kansas farmers had for a hundred years.

  The crowd loved that, being part of wheat history and all. They had started taking photos at GRIP but now they really went into high gear snapping off shots, what with the quaint costumes that the Mennonites wore. From what Heaven could overhear, almost every baker here had a freelance assignment to do a story on the conference for a food magazine or the food section of his or her local paper. No time was being wasted.

  The meal included exotic specialties like bierocks, a meat-filled turnover, and cherry moos, a sour cherry soup. There was also a delicious beef and cabbage borscht. Bread, of course, was well represented with loaves of Swedish-style rye, cinnamon-raisin, whole wheat-oatmeal, and dinner rolls called zwieback made of a soft buttery dough.

  Pauline was having her third roll with lots of butter and apple butter. “I thought zweiback meant twice baked. I’ve only known it to be that hard toast you give babies when they’re teething,” Pauline said with her mouth full.

  “Actually, there is another usage that refers to the double-bun structure of the roll, the smaller roll on the back of the larger roll, as in this case,” Dieter explained as he dug in to his second bowl of borscht. They hadn’t been able to shake him since the GRIP tour. Heaven was getting used to his authoritative ways. It was great to let someone else be in charge for a change.

  “Dieter, you’re a wealth of information,” Heaven said with only mild sarcasm. “And what about these beer rocks?”

  Dieter laughed indulgently. “B-I-E-R-O-C-K-S,” he spelled. “I asked Ernest, and he said they dated from the 1700s, not these particular bierocks that we were served but the recipe for the dish.” There was that appalling lack of a sense of humor again, Heaven thought. He had made it impossible for her to crack a joke about 200-year-old beer rocks.

  Dieter, blissfully ignorant of his own stuffiness, continued. “I’ve been a baker since I was eight years old. This is enough time to be interested about the history of the craft,” Dieter said as he pushed the borscht away. “You can tell these Mennonites spent some time in Germany on their way to the promised land. They are good with cabbage.”

  Heaven didn’t even consider mentioning to Dieter that Russians cooked cabbage too, but she seemed to remember from her Kansas history course in junior high that the Mennonites had been kicked out of Germany before they went to Russia. No wonder the cabbage was up to Dieter’s high standards.

  Ernest Powell suddenly appeared up at the head of the table. “Excuse me ladies and gentlemen. I know our short lunch period is over and the general will be expecting us in Manhattan very soon. I just wanted you to know that, despite Mr. Jinks’ doomsday report, we whose ancestors brought ‘Red Turkey’ wheat to this country are mighty glad they did.”

  There was applause from everyone. Ernest had taken it like a man before, and now it was his turn to dish a little back to Walter Jinks. “That does not mean I take lightly the sincere efforts on the behalf of mankind that Mr. Jinks has put fort
h. But there is room for more than one point of view in America. I’m sure you will all agree with me on that.” Heads nodded in the affirmative.

  “Now, he’s got ’em where he wants ’em,” Heaven whispered to Iris.

  “And so now, I would ask this distinguished company to grant me a few short minutes to speak to you sometime during this conference about a matter that is very important to me, and one that is germane to the subject at hand—bread.” Ernest looked around for someone with the authority to say yes. Program committee members huddled.

  But Dieter couldn’t wait for the ARTOS hierarchy to respond. He got up and clapped his hands for attention. “I know that no one who just enjoyed this delicious lunch would dream of refusing your polite request, Herr Powell. If nothing else, I will share some of my own time with you. I’m looking forward to what you have to say.” With that he strode down to the end of the table and slapped Ernest on the shoulder, as if they were both members of the same lodge back home in Düsseldorf. The committee members fluttered over to the two men, clipboards poised to work Ernest into the schedule.

  “Gosh, I wonder what Ernest is going to talk about. Maybe he’s made some great new wheat-farming breakthrough,” Pauline gushed as they walked toward the buses.

  Heaven looked at Iris and shook her head slightly, trying to indicate to Iris that she shouldn’t mention the bread machines. Heaven didn’t want to spoil Ernest’s moment, and she knew if Pauline were privy to the real topic of his interest, he would be the laughing stock of these baking snobs by the end of the day. Iris gave her mother a little conspiratorial grin and kept quiet.

  Pauline turned to Iris. “Do you want to come on the bus with me? There were a few empty seats. I bet Dieter will sit near us.”

  Iris turned to her mother. Heaven gave her a thumbs up. “Go on, honey. We only have fifteen miles to go. I won’t get too lonesome in that time. But you ride back to Kansas City with me later, OK? It’ll be our last ride together before you leave.”

  “Oh, brother, how corny. Of course I wouldn’t miss the trip home together. I learned things about you on the way here that you never spilled before.” Iris touched her mother’s arm and walked off with Pauline, and soon they were joined by their new best friend. Dieter Bishop walked toward the bus with his arms around both Pauline and Iris. “They look cute together,” she murmured to no one in particular. You know its bad, when as a mother, a dictatorial German baker looks like a better match for your daughter than an English rock ’n’ roller.

  Heaven went over to Ernest’s wife. She had seen him kiss her on the cheek and thought she could assume it was his wife, this being a religious community and all. “Mrs. Powell, I’m Heaven Lee. My brother is Del O’Malley. I really enjoyed the lunch and wondered if I might get the recipe for the bierocks from you.”

  Mrs. Powell didn’t look as amused about Heaven’s name as her husband had been but she smiled politely. “Let’s go in the house and you can talk to Sara Akers. She is the best bierock baker in the county. Lord knows, she could use a little compliment right now, something to cheer her up. Not that anything will ever be able to—oh—I’m sorry, you probably don’t know what happened. Our neighbors, the Akers, their son Ben was as nice a young man as you would ever want to find. He went to church without a whimper, made good grades in school, had a part-time job at the Farmer’s Co-op to help the family.”

  Heaven nodded sympathetically. “I heard my brother and your husband mention the accident last night, when Mr. Powell came to borrow some tables. Did Ben’s car get stranded on a train track?”

  Betsy Powell shook her head, her eyes filling with tears at the remembering. “At least that would make some sense of this horrible tragedy. He, well, it seems he ran into the train, or laid down on the tracks or something. His car was a mile away, out on their property by a river that the kids always like to swim in.”

  “So, a suicide?” Heaven asked as they went up the stairs to the kitchen door.

  Betsy clutched Heaven’s arm. “Heavens, no,” she almost yelled, with confusion showing on her face when she realized she’d used the word heaven to Heaven. Heaven realized that suicide was probably not acceptable as an explanation for these religious folks.

  They paused at the door and Heaven tried to set Betsy Powell at ease. “I’m sorry I even mentioned it. You can be sure I won’t say anything to make your neighbor feel worse than she already does.”

  The two women walked into a kitchen full of the murmurs of gentle feminine voices and the clanking of stacking dishes, with an occasional laugh punctuating the background noise. There were at least eight Mennonite ladies working on dish washing and clean-up, each in a prim, high-necked dress and bibbed apron, each with her hair tucked into a traditional net bonnet.

  Even with these signs of the unique religion of this group, the scene reminded Heaven of many Sundays at her grandmother’s house when she was a kid. A big meal in the middle of the day, after church of course, was the way Kansas families socialized. Sometimes an uncle or boy cousin would help clear the table, but back then the kitchen of a farm household was a female domain. Heaven loved hanging around the big girls, listening to all the gossip, which no one would ever think of as gossip but as news, even when she was small. She never took the option of going out to play with the other cousins. The kitchen was full of good smells and too much action to leave for some dumb game. Just like this one was now. Betsy Powell led her over to a big kitchen table. Two women were drying a mountain of silverware and placing it into piles to go back home with its owners.

  Betsy went up to one of the women. “Sara, this is Del O’Malley’s sister. She’s here with this baking group and wants the recipe for your bierocks.” Heaven noticed that Mrs. Powell didn’t introduce her by name and she decided not to confuse the issue. Instead she sat down and pulled a small notebook and pen out of her bag. Then she smiled sweetly. Mrs. Powell seemed to decide it was all right to leave Heaven alone with her neighbor and moved to the area of the kitchen where the leftovers were being divided for everyone to take home.

  “I must confess that even though I grew up here, I’ve never had bierocks until today,” Heaven said as she pushed the pad and pen over towards the other woman. “They’re delicious.”

  Sara Akers smiled wanly, then broke into tears silently. Heaven looked quickly around, not wanting Betsy Powell to catch this and think Heaven had made the grieving mother cry. Everyone was busy and the second silverware woman had gone over to the sink.

  Heaven covered the trembling hands of the weeping woman with her own and patted, then withdrew her hands, not wanting to appear too forward. She really wanted to hug her and make the hurt go away but she knew that was impossible. “Ben loved my bierocks. He would eat them six at a time. I can’t believe I’m never going to get to make them for him again,” Sara Akers said quietly, wiping her eyes with a linen hankie.

  Heaven could certainly speak honestly to this sad lady. “I have a daughter and I know it’s every parent’s worst fear. Everyone speaks so highly of your son.”

  Sara nodded. “Yes, he was a good boy, well adjusted and well liked. And you’re right about it being every parent’s nightmare. A child shouldn’t die before his folks. And not knowing why or how this happened is something I don’t think I can live with for the rest of my life.”

  “I know from my own childhood that the trains go pretty fast through this part of the country. Do you think he was walking along the tracks and it kinda snuck up on him?” asked Heaven.

  Sara shook her head. “Why would he do a thing like that? If I didn’t know better, I would think that someone did this to him but Ben didn’t have an enemy in the world. It just makes no sense.”

  “You mean that someone could have knocked him out or drugged him and put him there to die?” Heaven asked bluntly. Those questions sounded awful out loud but clearly this mother was searching for answers that weren’t necessarily going to sound pretty.

  “Ben did not take drugs or drink alcohol
. I think he may have had a beer once, but he told his father about it and promised it wouldn’t happen again. If he was crazy enough to be on that track that night, it wasn’t because of something he did consciously, I know that as sure as I know anything,” Sara Akers said as she took the pen in her hand and stared down at the paper.

  Heaven wanted to ask about an autopsy, but she was afraid it would cause a new round of tears. The body couldn’t have been in very good shape after a run-in with a freight train. She switched the topic of conversation to food instead, babbling on about Cafe Heaven while Sara Akers wrote out her bierocks recipe.

  Ernest Powell watched the two women from outside the kitchen windows. He was sure Del’s sister was a good person, after all Del was the salt of the earth. But anyone who went by a stage name couldn’t have much to talk to his wife and Sara Akers about. He would be glad when all these high falutin’ cooks went back to where they belonged.

  * * *

  General Irwin Mills was trapped by his mind in the bathroom stall. What’s more, the walls of the stall were moving, coming nearer, then farther in undulating rhythms. The general was crouched in the corner, wedged in between the toilet and the wall. Sweat was pouring down his face. Hearing someone come in, he stepped quietly up on the seat of the stool, bending down so neither his feet nor his head could be seen. The someone used the urinal and left. The general rushed to the men’s room door, throwing the bolt in place so no one else could come in. Immediately, someone tried to pull the door open and the general, crawling on all fours, took cover under the row of sinks. He sat there for five minutes or so. One of the sinks was dripping; other than that, it was quiet. The general got to his feet and looked in the mirror.

  “You sissy. Don’t let them see you like this. Get a grip, man,” he lectured himself sternly. The full salute to his image. “Carry on.”