He filled a basin with cold water and sank his face in it. It was most amazing. He was sure he could breathe under water.
* * *
Heaven looked up and down the halls. The Milling and Grain International Studies Laboratory certainly had better funding than GRIP, she thought as she glanced into the well-appointed test kitchens. The place seemed to be run like a well-oiled machine. Workers in hazmet-style jumpsuits were going about their business silently. In one room, two men were spraying what looked to be cheese dust in a rotating round metal drum filled with what looked to be corn chips. Two women were working behind a glass door marked Experimental Kitchen #4. Heaven couldn’t resist. She detoured in.
“What happens in here?” Heaven asked.
The two women looked startled, as if they weren’t used to visitors.
“The conference is down the hall,” one of them stammered.
“Oh, I know. I’m on my way there, but you two looked interesting. What are you working on?” Heaven asked, now relishing the challenge of getting some information from the women.
They exchanged looks, obviously weighing the trouble they might get into by giving out any info against getting this intruder out of their domain. “We’re trying to develop a fat-free doughnut,” the spokeswoman for the duo said.
“Neat,” Heaven said. “So you’re going to bake it?”
“Oh, no. It has to be fried. A doughnut’s not a doughnut unless its fried, the general says. Plus the sweet cake company that’s paying us insists on it,” the other one piped in.
Heaven made for the door. “Lots of luck. Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.” She continued down the corridor. They must love it when companies ask for stupid stuff like that. They could be working on an impossible project like that for years. Either that or they’ll have to use Olestra, she thought with a shudder. Of course, this place probably invented Olestra or helped invent it, she realized as she walked past another fully equipped lab.
Heaven rounded a corner and looked into a large amphitheater-style class room. The lecture had already started so she slipped into the back of the room and stood. General Irwin Mills was holding forth, eyes bright, his white lab coat starched to the it-could-stand-alone state. He had written his name and the name of the lab in block letters on the blackboard. It reminded Heaven of college. Anyone not signed up for Grains 101 please leave the building.
The general was sweating profusely, beads of water turning into trickles running down his face and head. Heaven wondered if he was nervous about having all the bigwig bakers here. He certainly had his speech prepared. “Of course we know that bread has the deepest penetration into people’s homes of any other food category. Seventy-five percent of women shoppers are employed and ninety percent of those feel pressed for time. That’s where the manufactured bread segment of grain-based foods comes in. Those women aren’t going to bake their own bread, no they are not,” the general exclaimed in a way that defied argument. “Forty-three percent of all bread is consumed as in-home sandwiches, twenty-two percent as toast, and sixteen percent as plain bread. That leaves eighteen percent for you, at least those of you who are affiliated with restaurants. That eighteen percent of bread that is consumed in restaurants is up three percent, making inroads against in-home consumption. By the way, fifteen percent of the American public ate a bagel last year, a rise of ten percent in the last five years.” The general said the word bagel as if it were part of a commie pinko plot. The fountain of bread statistics continued flowing.
“Last year the per capita flour consumption reached 149 pounds, up from the disgraceful performance of 1970 when it hit a historic low of 110 pounds,” he snarled, as if the bakers in the room had been personally responsible for the lack of interest in bread in the 70s. Then he pulled an easel out from the wall and stood erect and unsmiling next to it.
“You have probably heard of our work with hard white winter wheat, a grain that makes whole wheat flour bread that looks like bleached flour bread,” the general said proudly. “In the last three months,” the general intoned, wiping his forehead with a starched handkerchief, “we have had a major breakthrough here at the lab, one that the public is probably not aware of yet.” Now he had let everyone in the room know that he considered them part of the unwashed masses known as the public, not as the insiders they assumed they were. He lifted the cover on the easel and showed a display of food product boxes with the BIG BREAD logo. Then he pointed in the middle of the crowd. “We’ve been working together with a team from BIG BREAD in Kansas City. Mr. Patrick Sullivan is here today representing that research team. BIG BREAD assisted financially in the white wheat project.” An embarrassed looking young man stood briefly and sat quickly down. Heaven figured that white wheat gave BIG BREAD a chance to trick kids into eating something a little better for them.
The general forced a stiff smile. Heaven thought he must be getting the flu because now he was shaking as if he had the chills. “As some of you may know,” he sniffed and you could tell he was sure none of them knew, “we have worked with BIG BREAD in establishing a bio-genetics department here at International Studies. BIG BREAD has been very generous in their financial support. That department’s first research has been in the development of gene-modified wheat. This work has proven successful in creating plants more efficient in accepting various herbicides and insecticides while increasing their yield at the same time.”
Now the murmurs in the crowd that had started with the white wheat announcement reached a low roar. People were saying, “Oh no,” out loud. The general was undeterred. These pantywaist wimps might flinch at the words insecticide and herbicide but the general did not.
“I know that you started your day at the GRIP research facility not far from here so I am sure you will understand the implications of this next announcement. Our latest joint venture with BIG BREAD has produced a wheat clone that will produce year after year. A perennial wheat plant that will eliminate the necessity for retraining the world’s population to eat native grasses like animals as Mr. Jinks would have them do.”
“No, No!”
Heaven was startled by the intensity of those “Nos” coming from right next to her. They penetrated the hubbub the entire room was in. It was Walter Jinks himself, who must have slipped in the room after Heaven had. He was rushing down to the general with blood in his eyes, his hands outstretched as if to strangle the other man.
Before the agitated scientist could make it to the lecturn level of the room to do bodily harm, he was grabbed, by Ernest Powell, who had been sitting in the front row again. The general was red-faced, but seemed to be enjoying this confrontation. In fact, he seemed to be having the time of his life.
“I remember you. Jinks. During ’Nam, you came to Ft. Riley and disrupted the main highway with a sit-in. I was unable to get my food supplies for two days because of you and your mangy crew. I recommended running you all down with an APC at the time,” the general shouted as Ernest and two others tried to restrain Walter. Heaven remembered from growing up near Ft. Riley that APC stood for armored personnel carrier.
“You can’t do this, Mills.” Walter screeched. “You’ll poison the planet. You must be stopped.”
As Walter was being escorted out of the room, the general, who looked like he would love nothing better than to go out behind the building and have a fist fight with the distraught man, straightened his tie and once more addressed the group. “I’m afraid that that’s all I can tell you at this time about our amazing new wheat clone. Just know that you were here when history was made. The concluding part of the program today will be held outside. Because we store our own grain here at the lab, we thought it would be educational for you to see the entire process of what happens after the grain is harvested. Even though it is not harvest time, we have transported a truckload of wheat from one of our satellite facilities. We’ll imagine it just came from the field. We will demonstrate what happens to it from the time it comes to the grain elevator, through the milling pr
ocess. Please follow me to the back of the building, where our storage silos are located.”
The general marched out of the room, leaving a chaotic scene behind. Heaven looked for Iris and Pauline, who were waving at her as they made their way up the stairs to the exit. As she watched them someone tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped, edgy from all the confrontation.
“I just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Patrick Sullivan. I recently was transferred to Kansas City and your restaurant is one of the things that keeps me sane.”
It was the young man that had been introduced as a BIG BREAD bigwig. “Hi, Patrick. It’s that bad for you in Kansas City, is it, not that I don’t appreciate the compliment. Are you participating in this conference or did you just come out here so we could have a hate target?” Heaven asked as they stepped out in the hall. Patrick looked like he wanted to walk with her but she was still waiting for the girls.
He paused, unsure of what to do. “Oh, no. I’m a member of this group, and I’m in for the duration. We’re even going to have ARTOS tour BIG BREAD as a gesture of friendship. It’s funny, even with my Catholic background, I never really understood the role of the sacrificial lamb until now.”
Heaven couldn’t help but smile. “At least you have a sense of humor about it. And you can’t be surprised you’re not the most popular guy at this particular party. After all, your company isn’t exactly part of this artisan bread movement.”
Patrick pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose, something he did when he was nervous. “Someone had to do it, they said. I just wish … Well, I’m glad to meet you. I hope you’ll come to the tour on Saturday.” Just as he was getting ready to follow the crowd out of the building, Pauline and Iris arrived on the scene and Heaven could see him hesitate. But she ignored him. They had dirt to dish and they certainly couldn’t have him hanging around when they did it. He got the idea quickly that she wasn’t going to introduce him and went away.
“Poor Mr. Jinks,” Pauline wailed. “His whole career, years of work down the drain if General Mills has anything to do with it.”
Heaven slipped her arms through both of the young women’s arms and the three of them followed the crowd. “I wouldn’t deal Walter Jinks out of the game, yet. He probably knows more about perennial wheat than the whole company of BIG BREAD and everyone here at this creepy International Studies Laboratory put together.”
Iris was shaking her head. “If I tried to tell my friends at Oxford about this, they wouldn’t believe me, they’d think it was the plot of my next short story or something. Who knew a simple thing like wheat, or bread for that matter, could produce such passion?”
Heaven laughed. “Yeah, this is important stuff your Mom is involved in. I hope we can make it through the next hour without Walter punching the general or Ernest punching Walter. Everyone is so serious and sure they are the only one with the correct position. It does tickle me to see all these celebrity bakers be completely upstaged by a bunch of wheat farmers and scientists though. No one has been able to throw attitude around or have a diva fit. You have to take a number for that in this group.”
Pauline nodded. “It’s like they’re stunned and thrilled to be in the middle of it, all at the same time, sort of like being in New York the week of the James Beard Awards. Of course, I’ve never actually been to the James Beard Awards, but I can just imagine what it would be like, and I’ve read about it in Food Arts magazine.”
For the purposes of the outdoor demonstration, General Mills had a wireless microphone. He had given the group exactly seven minutes to troop out to the grain-elevator area, then had started his speech. Heaven walked slowly around the crowd, letting her mind wander, not paying that much attention to what he was saying. She had seen wheat coming off a truck many times before, falling down between grates in the unloading area. Two men were standing by the scoop truck, hazmet suits on and breathing masks in place over their noses and mouth. The general was explaining how dangerous grain dust was, pointing to the masks on the workers.
When the last bushels of wheat kernels had been scooped out of the truck bed, one of the men got in the truck and drove it away from the elevator. The general went over to the elevator motor and turned it on, pointing to the top of the elevator where a waterfall of grain began falling from the chute into the silo. The motor he activated was pumping the wheat that had been dumped in the holding bin below the ground up on a conveyer belt covered with a round metal duct to protect it from inclement weather. Heaven could see this was a real crowd-pleaser. People were oohhing and aahhing and taking lots of photos.
The general looked sternly at his audience, mopping his brow. He had been pretty agitated since the run-in with Walter. “Even with this round design of the storage unit, the silo, grain storage is very dangerous. Spontaneous combustion occurs an average of twenty-seven times per year in America resulting in five deaths and the loss of $120 million worth of product, because once these fires start, they are very difficult to put out and are usually allowed to burn themselves out. Eleven deaths a year occur from suffocation of elevator workers who accidentally fall into storage units,” the general explained in a way that let everyone know he had no sympathy for these poor hapless workers who must not have been following safety procedures. The general was very good at intonation.
Now he picked up a five-gallon plastic pail. “So we can follow this same wheat through the process, I will go up to the top of the storage unit and get us a sampling, which we will put through a very simple series of tests before we take it into our milling facility, the same tests for water content and purity that grain would be tested for at any storage facility in the country.” The general gave the microphone to one of his aides and hopped on a tiny metal platform on the outside of the silo. It was similar to the lifts that run on construction sites, but it didn’t have a cage around it, just wire fence material with a hinged gate that came up to about the knee. You just stepped on, turned it on, and up you went. The general seemed to be gliding up the side of the grain elevator on his own steam, like an angel or one of those levitating yogis in India. Heaven had to hand it to him. He had taken the mundane workings of every Kansas grain elevator and turned it into quite a show. The visiting bakers were enthralled, clicking photos again.
Then it happened.
General Mills, who had been looking down at the crowd with absolutely no expression one way or the other, reached the top of the elevator. The lift stopped. Instead of holding his pail over the rush of grain being fed into the top of the silo, he dropped the bucket, straightened his tie, pointed in the air as though to indicate something, opened the wire gate on the lift, and jumped. Jumped wasn’t really the word for it, because that implies an energetic movement. He just stepped into space, tumbling down with the same ease he had gone up, just a lot faster.
There was a moment frozen in time when the crowd couldn’t believe their eyes. Then there was a collective gasp, an intake of breath. It took those few seconds for people to accept the fact they had just seen a man fly to his probable death. The whole crowd then leapt into action, talking and running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off.
Heaven looked for Iris first, wanting to shield her daughter from this ugly reality. Iris and Pauline were standing with their hands covering their eyes. They looked like small girls do when the scary part of the movie comes on the screen. Heaven headed for them, deep in the crowd.
One of the general’s staff members ran over to the control panel on the side of the elevator and, in a panic, tried to shut off the grain pumping above. Instead, the chute swung wildly and rotated to the outside of the silo, the deluge of wheat now coming down on the prone body of General Mills.
“Call 911,” several people yelled. One of the hazmet boys ran toward the door to the lab. Heaven looked up just in time to see Patrick Sullivan calmly turn off the grain elevator engine, and with it, the waterfall of wheat.
Iris looked up at her mother and hugged her. “Mom, are you OK?
What happened? The platform must have given way or something,” she said. “Do you think he’s…”
Heaven nodded. “That silo looks like its about forty or fifty feet tall. Maybe he could survive if he fell in water, or even tall grass. But it looks like he landed right on the concrete and partially on the beginning of the metal grate. I’m afraid he’s dead.”
Dieter Bishop was directing a team of men who were uncovering the general’s body. They were coughing and choking and the air was full of grain dust.
Heaven couldn’t help herself. “Stay right here,” she ordered the two young women. She made a beeline for the side of the elevator where she had just seen Patrick Sullivan. He wasn’t there. Heaven looked around for Ernest Powell and Walter Jinks but couldn’t spot them either. She shaded her eyes and tried to look straight up into the sun at the one-man lift. As far as she could see no parts were dangling and nothing obviously broken was sticking out. It was hard to imagine anything breaking around the general. Heaven had a feeling he had been a maintenance freak from the spotless look of the place.
She walked over to Dieter, who stood up from kneeling over the prone body. He was coughing and wiping his face, now grimy from the dust.
“Try CPR,” someone yelled.
Dieter shook his head. “It won’t help. He’s gone.”
And so he was. Heaven shoved her way to the front of the macabre circle. Every part of the general’s body was going in a different direction. He looked like a puppet that some one had dropped in a heap. Luckily his eyes were closed and only one side of his face was showing, as though he had fallen asleep on the pavement. Heaven saw something that she didn’t quite understand. She leaned down for a closer look. The tip of the general’s tongue was hanging out of his mouth and it was black.
Cherry Moos
Cherry seeds are another thing the Mennonites brought with them from Russia to Kansas. One of the Old World recipes they continued to make was a cold dessert soup from the fruits of these imported trees. Again, this is a hybrid recipe, a little Mennonite, a little Russian—although the Mennonites wouldn’t approve of the wine.
Bread on Arrival Page 8
