There were actually two Honcho flags (red chile peppers rampant on a green prickly pear pod) flying over two tents. One was the check-in tent, where the contestants were already bringing samples from their cook-pots to be logged in, with the help of a half-dozen women under Fannie’s supervision. Edna Lund was organizing trays of samples, Lulu Burkhart was lending a hand, and even Roxanne Cody had been put to work, silver chiles and all.
The complicated procedures were established some years ago, after two or three untoward incidents demonstrated that a bunch of chileheads can’t be trusted to play fair when the grown-ups aren’t looking. At the meeting of head cooks that had taken place early that morning, each contestant received a 20-ounce foam cup (for chili), a quart jar (for salsa), or an eight-inch plate (for desserts). To the container was taped a coin envelope containing two slips of paper, each printed with the same number—the contestant’s entry number. The contestant was supposed to sign and pocket one numbered slip, leaving the second in the coin envelope. As the filled containers were turned over to cookoff officials at the check-in tent, they were logged in by contestant number, renumbered with a felt- tip marker for easy reference, and placed in waiting boxes. When the boxes were filled, they were carried by table monitors to a nearby tent where the judges were at work.
The judging for all three contests was held in the second tent, where a horseshoe arrangement of tables had been set up under a trio of fans. Two teams of three chili judges (one for the preliminaries, one for the finals) were to be seated on one side of the horseshoe. ChMrs. were arranged for the three dessert judges on the other side, and for the three salsa judges at the end. Table monitors — Edna and Lulu Burkhart were two of them —were beginning to bring in the first round of entries but otherwise the tent was empty of spectators—except for me, and I had to show my press pass. Cookoff officials learned long ago that it’s a good idea to keep the cooks out of the judging tent—behind a police line reinforced by rottweilers, if necessary. Judges face enough hazards without risking a confrontation with a cook whose chili they have spumed.
I pushed McQuaid to his appointed spot between the other two chili final judges, Darryl Perkins, the mayor’s husband and a chilehead from way back, and Maude Porterfield. Maude has served as Justice of the Peace for well over half her seventy-five years and her impartiality—the most important quality in a judge—is beyond question. She has officiated at this event since most of the cooks were in high school and knows what to expect. She wore a red bib over her green print dress and presided with all the solemnity of traffic court.
A minute or two later, the last three judges came straggling in — Bubba Harris, who looked like he’d much rather be out at the lake, catching bass; Fannie Couch, who had traded her post at the log-in station for a seat at the Sweet Heat table; and Jerry Jeff Cody, hot and bothered. I didn’t wonder, after his sizzling encounter with Roxanne. I waved at Fannie and she gave me a salute.
When the judges were settled, it was time for the blessing, offered as always by the Reverend Roger Beadle, who was dressed in the rusty coat of an old-time circuit rider. Originally attributed to a black range cook named Bones Hooks, the prayer is a tradition at cookoffs from D.C. to L.A. Politically incorrect it may be, but the judges won’t lift their tasting spoons without it.
The Reverend Beadle cleared his throat and raised both hands. “Lord God,” he said, “you know us old cowhands is forgetful. Sometimes we cain’t recollect whut happen yestiddy. We jes’ know daylight an’ dark, summer, fall, winter an’ sprang. But we hope t’heaven we don’t never forgit to thank you proper afore we eat a mess of good chili.
“We don’t know why, in your wisdom, Lord, you been so doggone good to us. The heathen Chinee don’t have no red. The Frenchmens is left out. The Rooshians don’t know no more "bout chili than a hawg knows about a sidesaddle. Even the Meskins don’t git a good whiff of chili less they lives round here. Chili-eaters is some of your chosen people, Lord. We don’t know why you so good to us. But don’t never think we ain’t grateful for this here ver’ fine chili we is 'bout to eat.”
The Reverend Beadle’s "Amen” was echoed around the tent, and it was time for the judges to pick up their pencils, study their judging sheets, and start tasting.
However pleasant such a job may sound, the judges are not out for a free lunch. They know the criteria (called the AATTA scale) by which the entries are evaluated — appearance, aroma, texture, taste, and aftertaste—and they know they’re going to taste some pretty fine chili. But they also know that a few weird people enjoy putting bizarre ingredients into their chili, and that a certain percentage of the cups will contain an unsavory brew that smells like Mount St. Helen’s, tastes like a toxic chemical dump, or has something swimming in it. These hazardous entries usually merit a quick stir with the tasting spoon, a hasty sniff, and a score of one or two on the ten-point scale. The salsa and Sweet Heat judges probably don’t run the same risk as the chili judges because their cooks take their cooking a little more seriously. But by the end of the day even they would agree that you can have too much of a good thing—even chile peppers.
The judges began with enthusiasm, camaraderie, and a few unprintable remarks about the most unspeakable entries. A half hour later, they had settled doggedly to work, and all you could hear was pencils scratching and an occasional irate "What’n the Sam Hill is this!’ I hung around to make notes for my newspaper article, and because I wanted to talk to Edna Lund, whom I had seep in the check-in tent, logging in the salsa and desserts and shuttling back and forth with boxes of entries to be judged.
I caught her when she wasn’t busy and told her about the situation at the Manor. She was a little distracted by what was going on at the tables, but when I mentioned Carita’s name, she gave me her full attention.
"Carita Garza?” She pushed her damp brown hair away from her face with the back of her hand. The judges were sitting under the fans, but it was hot as Hades everywhere else. My blouse was stuck to my back, and the sweat was running down my neck. “If that’s true,” Edna added, "I’m sorry. She’s a good worker, and smart, too.” "Then maybe you’d like to help her out. You’re at the Manor on a regular basis, and you know the staff. If Carita is innocent, you could do her a great favor by finding out who is really committing the thefts.”
She looked uncertain. “How would I do that?”
"By asking questions and keeping your eyes open.” She gave me a hesitant glance, and I reached for a strategy that might appeal to her experience. "Stay alert for anything suspicious, the way you would if one of your ranch employees had been stealing from you." It still sounded vague, and I felt uncomfortable. If Edna had been Ruby, I wouldn’t have had to give her operating instructions. Ruby likes to think of herself as a detective. She would have jumped at the chance for an assignment like this, and would have come up with her own agenda in about thirty seconds.
Edna frowned. "The ranch was an entirely different situation,” she said. “If one of the hands was stealing—and it happened, from time to time — I always knew it right away, and I gave the man exactly what he deserved, at the first opportunity. There was never any detective work involved.” She hesitated. “Still, I hate to see Carita get into trouble. The Manor doesn’t have enough good help. I suppose I can talk to Joyce about it.”
"Thanks,” I said, relieved. I had done my bit. Between them, Edna and Joyce could handle it. “I’m sure Joyce will be glad to — ”
There was a commotion at one of the tables, and both of us turned. Jerry Jeff Cody was standing up, scrabbling with his hands at his throat, and gasping loudly. "Help!” he croaked. He did a clumsy backward two-step, and his chair fell over. "Help!”
Edna looked alarmed. “Is ... is something wrong with him? Maybe we’d better call a doctor. It looks like he’s /wk."
"It’s nothing,” I said. "Every year, one of the judges gets up and jumps around like he’s on fire. It’s part of the show. Everybody thinks it’s funny.”
&
nbsp; Edna stared for a moment longer, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or be worried. Then she turned away. "Grown men,” she said disapprovingly.
"Musta bit on a chunk of chile pepper,” Bubba Harris said. He slid a can of beer down the table in Jerry Jeff's direction. "Wash it down afore it blisters your gizzard.” "Some of this stuff is hot enough to toast tonsils,” Maude Porterfield said dourly. She blew her nose on a paper napkin. "Seems like it gets hotter every year.” "That’s the problem,” McQuaid said, making a note on his scoring sheet. "They think they lost last year because it wasn’t hot enough, so they double up on the chiles.” Jerry Jeff's face was bright red and puffy, and his chest was heaving. He staggered backward and stumbled over his upended chair. He fell with a crash, beating his heels on the floor and grabbing at his throat, gasping and wheezing. One of the judges applauded, and another
whistled. Edna started to say something, then stepped back.
Darryl Perkins looked down admiringly at the writhing figure. "That’s some act, Jer old buddy.” He turned to McQuaid. "Let’s give this guy a showmanship prize, huh, Mac? You’d sure as hell think he’d scorched his gullet all the way down.”
"Exaggerated, if you ask me,” Maude said with an audible sniff. "Your performance last year was a lot more subtle, Mike.”
Jerry Jeff squawked out something that sounded like “Aw, raiht" gave a last, profoundly disgusted kick, and lay still.
"Way to go, Cody,” Bubba Harris said, and the rest of us laughed.
McQuaid frowned. "Nuts?”
"I wouldn’t be surprised.” Maude shuddered. "This is absolutely the last year I’m letting Jerry Jeff talk me into judging. After today, I quit. You guys can find another sucker."
McQuaid backed up his chair and wheeled over to the victim. "You okay, Jerry Jeff? Hey, get up.”
"Yeah,” Darryl Perkins said. "No fair you takin’ a break while the rest of us are slavin’ away.” He got up and splashed half a bottle of Lone Star over the red-faced man on the floor.
Jerry Jeff didn’t stir.
"Haul the sonofagun over by the door,” one of the salsa judges said. "They can cart him out with the trash.”
Somebody else guffawed. Then McQuaid suddenly- shoved his chair around. "Medic! ” he yelled. "Get somebody from the EMS in here, on the double! This is for real!”
I took two steps toward the door, but Edna had already beaten me to it. “I’ll go,” she tossed back over her shoulder.
The other judges jumped up and began to cluster around Jerry Jeff. Maude, an expert in such matters, knelt beside the prostrate man, her fingers on his carotid artery. "No pulse,” she said calmly, after a moment. “He’s not breathing.”
"He’s holdin’ his breath,” Darryl Perkins said. “When J J was a kid, he could hold his breath under water long- er’n any of us.” He toed J J with his cowboy boot. "Come on, fella. Get up.”
Bubba helped Maude to her feet. "Looks like a heart attack to me, ” he said grimly. He looked around. "Where the hell are those medics?”
Darryl Perkins shook his head, chuckling. "Man oh man, he’s good. He’s got you guys fooled.”
"We can’t wait.” McQuaid waved, galvanizing me into action. “China! Get over here and start CPR!”
I was on my knees over Jerry Jeff for the three or four minutes it took the volunteer medics to arrive on the scene, break out the defibrillator and the artificial airway, and get to work. But after three tries with the defibrillator—that horrible piece of equipment that looks and sounds like a medieval instrument of torture—the chief medic, a very young man, sat back on his heels and shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said, to nobody in particular.
Maude looked at her watch. "For the record, we’ll put it at 12:42. Somebody go get his wife. She was in the tent next door.”
"Put what at twelve forty-two?” Darryl Perkins asked with a dazed look.
"The time of death, you idiot,” Maude said sourly.
j» j* j» j» j» j»
Chapter Seven
Ah, ha, Texas Red
Makes the heat devils dance in the brassy sky The buzzards hover and circle and fly They know pretty soon everybody’s gonna die From eatin’ Texas Red Try a bowl of Texas Red.
“Texas Red”
Ruby Allmond, 1977
"What a way to go, ” Bob Godwin remarked in a tone of lingering admiration. “Dead from a bowl of red.” He took an order pad out of the back pocket of his faded jeans and glanced expectantly at the four of us gathered around the table. "So what’ll you have?" He chuckled dryly. "Chili’s real good today."
Hark leaned back in his chair. "A pitcher of beer and some nachos?" he asked the rest of us.
Ruby and I nodded, but McQuaid shook his head. "No nachos for me. I’ll have a quart of milk. My tongue’s scorched.” He thumped his chest with his fist. "Heart- bum, too. Some of that stuff was downright vile.”
"Serves you right,” Bob said cheerfully. "You want the best chili in town, you come here. Don’t go foolin’ around with them crazy amateurs. Remember whut happened to ol’ JJ, God rest his ass.” He cast an inquiring glance around the table, checking for other orders, then pocketed his order pad. “Well, you know what they say about the bear.”
“What do they say about the bear?” Ruby asked.
Bob shrugged. "Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. Today it was the bear that got JJ.” Having delivered that philosophical eulogy, he headed for the bar.
Bob is the proprietor of Bean’s Bar and Grill, a tin- roofed stone building next to the MoPac tracks and across the street from the old firehouse. He sports a broken heart tattoo on one thick forearm and a coiled snake on the other and lives in a trailer with a yard full of goats. You can go to Bean's to play pool, throw darts at a poster of a former governor posed on a white Harley, watch the Aggies beat the ’Horns on the TV over the bar, or blow an entire week’s ration of fat grams on one chicken-fried steak smothered in cream gravy, with a side of fries, onion rings, and Texas toast.
“I can’t believe he’s dead,” Ruby said unevenly. She and Hark were going out later that evening, and she was dressed all in white, white gauzy skirt, off-the-shoulder gauzy blouse, white sandMrs. She looked cool find pretty, but flustered. "What happened^. Was it the chili?”
"Yeah,” Hark leaned forward on crossed arms, his round face serious. He had spent the day in Austin and, like Ruby, had just heard the news. "Did I get it right? You said he was poisoned?”
"I can't believe that,” Ruby said. “Who in the world would want to kill JJ?”
“I didn’t say anybody wanted to kill him,” McQuaid replied carefully. "I’m guessing that he died of anaphylactic shock, an allergic reaction to some nuts that were in one of the chili samples. That’s what I think he was trying to tell us, there at the end."
Aw, nuts, he had said. Or at least, that’s what I had heard.
“Oh, so that was it.” Ruby nodded, comprehending. "Poor JJ,” she said. “I knew he was allergic to nuts. He mentioned it once.”
"You knew him well?” Hark asked. He had his eyes on Ruby, and I read a real interest there—no jealousy, just curiosity. During the time I’d known Ruby, she’d had a couple of near-disastrous relationships with men and several casual ones that hadn’t amounted to much. I found myself hoping that it would be different this time. There is a deep-down honesty in Hark, and a refusal to compromise his principles. I like him.
"No, not well,” Ruby said absently. "Not enough to grieve, I mean.” She was pleating one of Bob’s cheap paper napkins between her fingers. "I guess it’s not JJ’s dying that bothers me so much,” she went on after a moment. "It’s more that. . . Well, you never dream that such a little thing can be fatal. To have your life snuffed out by a peanut. It sounds so ... so trivial, somehow. Almost comic.” She shook her head sadly and I shuddered, remembering the man writhing on the floor at our feet, clutching at his throat and gasping desperately for air, while we applauded his last
agony. "It’s too bad, really,” she said, and put the napkin down. “Jerry Jeff Cody won’t be remembered for what he did when he was alive. If it’s true that he was killed by a peanut, that’s what people will remember.”
There was a long silence as we contemplated Ruby’s remark. Finally, I said, "It certainly wasn’t an easy way to go. I keep thinking that if we’d acted sooner, we might have saved him.”
"Nobody knew what was really happening,” McQuaid said quietly. "We all thought he was playacting, the way judges do sometimes. You've got to do something to break the tedium of sitting there all afternoon, dipping your spoon into that stuff.”
“But. . . bowl" Ruby asked. "I mean, how did he die? How does it. . . well, work?”
"The throat swells shut and the victim dies of asphyxiation,” I said. A pinball player in the back of the room hit a jackpot, and the machine began to clang noisily. Somebody cheered. "It’s a malfunction of the immune system. The body thinks it’s being invaded and releases a large quantity of histamine. That’s what does the damage. If the medics had shot him up with epinephrine, they might have saved him. But I asked afterward, and they said they didn’t have it with them.”
McQuaid cocked an inquiring eyebrow. "How do you know all that?"
"I read about it in a legal journal, in the report of a suit against a restaurant. The victim had specifically told the waiter about her allergy, but nobody told him that the chicken had been cooked in peanut oil. She survived, and took home a whopping settlement from the restaurant’s insurance company. The key evidence in the case was the waiter’s note on the order he turned in to the kitchen. He wrote, 'allergic to nuts,’ but nobody paid any attention.”
Hark pushed his mouth in and out. "I’ve known Jerry Jeff for a lot of years,” he said thoughtfully. "He developed that allergy way back when he was a kid. He’d bring it up every so often, so some well-meaning friend wouldn’t accidentally hand him something with peanuts in it.”
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