Curds and Whey Box Set

by G M Eppers

  Snuggling on my Grandmother’s living room floor, I kissed Avis, but she said, “No funny stuff.”

  “You heard what Grandma said.”

  “I know. But I’m afraid we’ll knock over the urn. Also, it’s a really small house.”

  After a while, in the dark silence, she whispered, “Is it true Butte was there? He really pushed her?”

  “Yes. And if it takes the rest of my life, I will get him.” I’d already decided that. He had become my white whale, and I couldn’t imagine ever having a problem with that. He wasn’t going to fool me again. His saving my life in Italy had been merely an obligation. I clearly meant very little to him. He had a price. I didn’t know what it was, but I imagined it was much lower than one would expect. There was no amount that would make me change my opinion.

  “You mean take him into custody, right? Arrest him?

  I stared into the darkness and didn’t answer her. I was unable to agree.

  As one might imagine, the next morning Grandma’s house was a zoo. She had one bathroom to serve eight people and herself. There was some urgent dancing, some yelling and knocking, and I saw a couple of the guys sneak outside, even though it was about 35 degrees. Sir Haughty helped Grandma serve breakfast using a multitude of eggs, bacon, breakfast sausages, and corn flakes. The service was set for 11 a.m. and Miss Chiff, Knobby, and Dinny arrived as expected around 8:30. After the usual round of sad greetings, we piled into the rental cars each of them had driven from the airport. Grandma held the urn in her lap as I drove to the cemetery. We wouldn’t be burying her there. Her last wishes were not that prosaic. The service was in the chapel, though.

  It was a nice service with an impressive turnout. Mom had had quite a few friends in town as it turned out. Afterward, we had arranged for a light lunch to be catered to the chapel and we socialized for about three hours as Mom’s urn stood on a table surrounded by bouquets of exotic flowers. I began to appreciate the company. It was nice to stop thinking about what had happened and take on the role of host, helping Grandma make sure everyone had a seat, getting coffee refills, and encouraging people to get another Danish.

  As the crowd was just beginning to thin, Miss Chiff approached me. She wore a matronly flowered shift with a flared hem and a high lace collar over black dress slacks. “Is there someplace we can talk privately, Billings?”

  The chapel had a small anteroom where mothers could take their crying children. I led her inside and closed the door. There was two rows of folding chairs set up. We pulled over a couple chairs to face each other and sat down. “What is it?”

  “I’m so sorry to do this here, but I did want to give you as much time as possible.” I was curious. Time for what? “You know how much I admired your mother, and I’m so sorry about what’s happened, but, you see, it leaves me in a somewhat delicate position. You know this moves you from Coordinator trainee to Coordinator, don’t you?”

  “I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose so.”

  “And I understand you are still engaged to marry Miss Nicely?” She hid her eyes a bit, looking up at me from below as if hoping for a certain answer.

  “Yes.” I immediately got the impression it was the wrong answer. “But we haven’t set a date yet.”

  “You see, there’s a dilemma. I’d mentioned it to your mother, but I imagine she hasn’t discussed it with you.”

  I sat up straight. “What dilemma, Miss Chiff?”

  “Simply put,” she said, reluctant to say it out loud, “regulations forbid a marriage between a Coordinator and a subordinate.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Miss Chiff cleared her throat. “You will be unable to continue in your current position if you proceed with the marriage. I’m sorry, Billings. Surely you can see how such a relationship would compromise your command decisions. It’s very common in the armed forces.”

  “So, I have to choose between my career and Avis?”

  She put up a defensive hand. “Now, I’ve put a lot of thought into this. There are three options.”

  “Like?”

  “I’m not supposed to suggest this, but you could cancel the wedding. Stay exactly as you are now, with no official relationship. If that situation caused a problem on a future mission, there would be serious consequences, of course. The whole relationship would have to be kept off the books, as it were.”

  “I don’t think I like that option.” Avis was really looking forward to a wedding, and both of us wanted very much to take that step and become a legal couple. “What else you got?”

  “Well, as you know I need to assemble an entirely new CURDS team. You could take the leadership of Team C, or you can stay on Team A and the twins could move to the new team.”

  “We’d almost never see each other.” This seemed to be an easy decision. “You said three options, so I guess I’m going with door number three. What is it?”

  She paused, again reluctant. Then said simply, “Give up command.” I didn’t like that option, either. I’d trained for command. I wanted to follow in my mother’s footsteps now more than ever. She continued, watching as I processed this option. “It would also introduce problems of its own. I’d need to assign a new Coordinator to your team, and you’d have to choose a specialty. You could move to straight combat like the twins, but that would be like a Captain settling for a post as an enlisted man. It wouldn’t look good on your record, should you choose to advance later, that you would accept the lowest common denominator. And you would have to choose a specialty that does not duplicate anyone else on Team A.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t have to decide right now. As I said, I wanted to give you time to consider all the options. You’ll probably want to discuss it with Avis, I would imagine. There’s no hurry. The new plane won’t be ready for about two months. But with only two teams available, I’m afraid you will all be quite busy. And if you choose to take command of Team C, you would have approval rights on the team members, except, of course, that you couldn’t take the twins with you. I’m going to write up something in more detail, and I’ll send it with the monthly dispatch soon. You understand what I’ve told you?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.” She rose to leave. “Miss Chiff?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Do me a favor. Don’t say anything to the others about this. Not a word.”

  “Of course, Mr. Montana. Ms. Rosensglet , Mr. Olivieri and I will be leaving from here to go back to the airport. There is work for us to do in D.C. We need you, of course, but take all the time you need. We’ll muddle through until you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Miss Chiff.” She walked firmly out of the crying room.

  After I collected myself, I went back to the chapel lobby. Most of the people were leaving. The social event was winding down. Agnes and Avis came toward me. “What was that about?” Agnes hooked a thumb over her shoulder at Miss Chiff who was leading her traveling companions out the door. I didn’t remember greeting Dinny or Knobby, but I must have. The whole thing was mostly a blur already. “She’s sorry for my loss,” I said. “Just making it personal.”

  “She’s sweet.”

  “Yeah.”

  Father Oscar, who’d directed the memorial service, then came over to say his goodbyes. I slipped him an envelope with some money in it for his help. A short time later I carried the urn back outside, letting Grandma get inside the car before handing it to her to put on her lap. I went around and got behind the wheel. We got to her house and the process reversed mechanically until the lavender urn was once again perched atop her coffee table.

  We stayed one more night, booking our flights for the next morning, when we helped straighten up her house before packing our belongings into waiting taxicabs. I hugged Grandma until she complained, and we drove away. I watched the house disappear behind us.

  Flying commercial sucks in a lot of ways, not the least of which was that we couldn’t all get on the same flight. We were separated, cramped,
and I got a headache from the air pressure. There was no gourmet meal from Dinny. Just a package of pretzels and a complimentary ginger ale. Finally, we walked through the front door of the HQ. Knobby was nowhere in sight and his Prius wasn’t in the driveway. The house felt empty, even when we were all back inside. Using both hands, I carried the lavender urn upstairs to my room on the third floor and centered it on top of my dresser. The room seemed empty even with me in it. Roxy walked by and poked her head in. She was limping a little in her heels and her hair was a mess. She looked exhausted. We all did. “Top of the dresser? That’s not what she wanted.” As legal counsel, she was aware of everyone’s last wishes. She’d even signed as witness on some of them, but probably not on Mom’s.

  “I know. What she wanted will have to wait. And it might be illegal.”

  “Not if you ask permission.”

  Now there was a tall order. “How do I do that?”

  “I’ll help you.” She yawned, bleary eyed. “Tomorrow.”

  I really didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I didn’t want to think about it. “Good night, Roxy,” I said. I decided right then that I couldn’t sleep in that room. Not yet. I made sure the urn was well back from the edge and safe.

  That night we began the process that Grandma called “Life goes on.” The house creaked with people moving up and down the stairs, pipes thrummed with running water, and one by one lights were turned off. I was going to be sleeping in the twins’ room because I couldn’t bear the thought of sleeping alone with my thoughts just now, and I stood in the bathroom preparing to shave off the beard. I didn’t like it anymore. This was the last version of me that Mom had seen and I couldn’t move on like this. I wondered why I couldn’t see my Adam’s apple. It felt it was the size of a grapefruit, but my throat looked normal. I should have been looking at a freaking goiter. For the first time, I saw my Dad looking back at me in the mirror. I looked older. Immensely older. I was still only twenty-one and, what was it? One-sixth? It suddenly seemed like a very important fraction.

  I trimmed off as much of the beard as I could while I stood over the open toilet and flushed it away, then smeared shaving cream over the lower half of my face, fully aware that when I finished I would look even more like Dad. Well, I thought, the good news is I won’t go bald. The bad news is somewhere around forty I was probably going to turn stupid.

  I slid into bed next to Avis wearing just my boxer shorts. There was plenty of room in their king size bed. Avis put her arm under my head and I snuggled close to her. With her other hand she stroked my newly shaven chin. “Mmmmm.”

  “Did you really hate the beard that much or do you just like my aftershave?”

  “Both.” Avis grinned at me. Agnes had her eyes closed and appeared to be asleep. Avis kissed my forehead. “It’s been a rough few days. You okay?”

  “I guess so.” I lifted the light blanket and looked down at Captain Gung Ho. “It’s broken.”

  “I’ll fix it.” She turned as much as she could toward me and moved her hand from my cheek to someplace much lower. She worked slowly, calmly.

  “We’ll wake Agnes.”

  “Oh, she’s out like a light,” Avis said dismissively.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “She’s not lying,” said Agnes without opening her eyes. I could just see her face over Avis’. That meant that Agnes was okay with it. But I was feeling unusually platonic tonight, and Captain Gung Ho was the only part of me that was at ease. Maybe he really was broken, I thought.

  When I was around fourteen, and probably something like one third, Mom gave me The Talk. She did it by giving me a book called What Just Happened Down There? Tucked inside was a single condom. It was the smallest size, sort of a training condom, and it marked a chapter about how to use it. Mom said to ask if I needed more bookmarks. I’d grown into a respectable larger size long before I’d grown out of the need for actual bookmarks when I got my first Kindle ereader. If Captain Gung Ho came to attention, there was a supply of bookmarks in the nightstand.

  Feeling nothing, I decided to stop her hand. “Avis, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  She pulled her hand back. “Billings? Tell me what you need.”

  “It’s not that.” I told her about what Miss Chiff had said, and explained my three options.

  As Avis pulled her other hand back from behind my head, Agnes opened her eyes. “They can’t do that. Those are terrible choices,” she said.

  “They can do that,” I responded.

  Avis asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” There were other options I’d thought of, but they were equally bad. I could ask Miss Chiff if Knobby needed an assistant. I’d be out of field work entirely, but I’d only see the twins between missions, or even less if we were needed at one of the other headquarters. Or I could resign altogether and find a new line of work, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be allowed to see them at all then. It didn’t seem likely. Badger and Roger saw each other rarely, but they weren’t discussing marriage as far as I knew.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Avis said, sounding more confident, I’m sure, than she felt. “There’s plenty of time.” After a moment, she added, “but I kind of really wanted to set a date. Even a tentative one would be something. Methinks how slow this new moon wanes,” she said, quoting Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  “She lingers my desires,” I responded, finally getting in the mood. Shakespeare does it to me almost every time. Except when she quotes Titus Andronicus. That gets a little creepy. It’s how I know when we’re fighting. I kissed her on the lips.

  That’s when the strangest thing happened.

  I stopped breathing as I saw my mother suddenly appear at the foot of the bed. She was wearing the clothes she had died in, but there was no bullet hole. She didn’t seem pale. She wasn’t transparent. She was just Mom, big, or rather, short as life. She looked at the three of us lying together in the bed. “If you’re going to fool around, you’d better have a bookmark,” she said.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  CURDS and WHEY:

  #5

  To Havarti and To Hold

  By G.M. Eppers

  For Peggy and Erin

  Copyright © 2019 by G.M. Eppers

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing, 2019

  G.M. Eppers

  2064 Douglas Ave.

  Racine, WI 53402

  Table of Contents

  One If By Land

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Two If By Sea

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Three If By Chance They’d Had Planes in 1775

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Epilogue

  One If By Land

  Chapter One

  My mother is dead. I’m sure of it because her ashes are in a lavender urn that is sitting on top of my dresser a floor below me. But there she is, standing at the foot of the bed I was sharing with my fiancée, Avis Nicely and her conjoined twin Agnes. “Mom?”

  Avis pinched me. “Ouch!” I said, rubbing my arm. “What was that for?”

  “To see if I’m dreaming.”

  “You’re supposed to pinch yourself,” I said.

  “Who says?” The response was mostly unconscious on her part as she stared at the ghost at the end of the bed, who was currently standing with her arms crossed, probably tapp
ing her foot impatiently although it made no sound.

  My name is Billings Montana. I work for CURDS, which is Cheese and Uber Rennet Disposal Service, a somewhat militarized branch of the CDC which hunts down and destroys Uber in all forms. Uber rennet was created about a decade ago and ended up killing about ten percent of the world population. It turns out to cause Offensive Obstruction, an extreme form of constipation characterized by total collapse of peristalsis in the colon. Due to an unexpected addictive quality, a lot of people want to eat it anyway, and the harder it was to get the more expensive it got, which meant black market, mercenaries, smugglers, and various forms of illegal activity. So CURDS was created to fight against it. Until about a week ago, my mother was coordinator for our team, Team A, which is one of three based out of the Washington D.C. area. But most of Team C was killed by guerillas in the Congo, and shortly after that Mom was killed by Junior Krochedy, a member of the crime family that was financing the huge operation that distributed Uber cheeses through the guerillas.

  Junior shot her in the shoulder, puncturing her brachial artery and she bled out in about three minutes. She died in my arms at the bottom of a grave, or maybe she was even dead before I got there. There was too much going on to be sure. Junior was still up top and there were cops and it was pouring rain with thunder and lightning and mud and blood and I don’t remember if I was screaming or crying or maybe both. Yet there she was now, standing in front of me. I stayed under the covers - I was only wearing boxer shorts - but I sat up straighter in the bed. “Helena?” Avis and Agnes asked simultaneously.

  “Yes. It’s me.”

  “How -?” I seemed to be short of breath.

  “I’m not sure how,” Mom said. “Or why. Or much of anything really.”