by J. J. Murray
“Oh, no, it’s true,” Dodie says. “Blanche had more practice cooking for a man. Blanche lost her first husband Larry Crabtree in the war, but she won Freddy’s stomach when the war was over.”
Constantly.
“Blanche won his stomach first, and then she won his heart.”
I’m not completely sure Mr. Simmons has a heart.
I stand and look at framed recipes for sweet potato pie, chocolate bourbon pecan pie, and cherry crumble pie. “These are Blanche’s recipes, too.”
“Her recipes were in that newspaper every dang month.”
I have to ask. “Dodie, if you didn’t like her, why do you have her recipes on your walls?”
“I may not have liked her for stealing my man, but I did like her recipes because Freddy liked them. I never married, you know. Oh, I had offers, but I never got over my first love.”
“That’s kind of romantic,” I say.
Dodie seems to be having a staring match with the green tumbler.
The green tumbler seems to be winning.
“Dodie?”
“Hmm?”
“I said it’s romantic that you never got over your first love.”
Dodie blinks and nods. “I waited so long for Blanche to die.”
Dodie obviously doesn’t think it is romantic.
“I had to wait a long time. Those Zenglers never seemed to die young. They all survived the Depression because of that mill of theirs while the rest of Kingstown lost babies to TB and their men to moonshine in Pine County and accidents at the train yards in Calhoun. And there were so many of them Zenglers running around living, right there in front of us.”
“How long has Blanche been … gone?”
“Going on thirty years. You were at the funeral fussing at your mama because you didn’t like your dress.”
I was twelve. My feet were too big and I was too tall and skinny. I lived in jeans and overalls, and I probably had grease under my nails.
“I dressed up real nice for that funeral, too,” she says. “I expected Freddy to get sweet on me again, but it was all water under the bridge. I don’t think he has missed Blanche since then. All he misses are the meals and the desserts.”
Mr. Simmons has never missed a meal. Or a snack. Ever.
“And he’s all alone on that big old spread.”
“He has Jack, his donkeys, and the cows,” I say.
“Jack is the stupidest animal I have ever seen. If you handed Jack a rock, Jack would eat it.”
So might Lovie, if it had a high enough metal content.
“Jack is a terrible watchdog. He lets anyone walk up to that house. It’s why I have only ever had cats. Cats have sense.”
“Dodie, really, where are your cats?” Please don’t say they ate your leftovers, died, and you buried them under those daisies out front.
“They ran off,” Dodie says, her eyes become dark brown dots. “All of ‘em ran off and went feral on me. I saw one the other day.” She shifts toward me. “He had to weigh twenty-five pounds. I raised him from a kitten, and he hissed at me. Can you believe that? I saw him messing with my kale, spinach, and collards, and I took two shots at him.”
Oh no! “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
“I missed high and to the left both times. Too much kick in my Winchester and the Bushnell scope needs adjustment. Or my eyes need adjustment. I was only trying to scare him, and he didn’t even move. Fat thing sat there sneering at me. By the time I had him sighted again, he had slunk off into the woods.”
I’m convinced Dodie has Alzheimer’s and maybe a touch of dementia. She’s shooting at her own cats in her garden! She should be in a nursing home or have in-home nursing care. I need to get her mind off killing her former housemates. “Dodie, why don’t you go visit Mr. Simmons sometime? I’m sure he’d appreciate the company.”
Dodie stands and takes my glass to the sink. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”
“Gray Creek’s low because of this drought. That Olds of yours should plow right through that creek and get up the hill to his house without any trouble.”
“I don’t see so well at night anymore,” she says. She rinses the glass and puts it into a wire dish caddy.
“Go during the day then.”
“When I was much younger, Freddy said he had to use a flashlight to find me during the daytime.”
That … made no sense.
“And now I’m much prettier at night,” Dodie says. “Darkness brings out the fire in my eyes. Freddy used to tell me that, too.”
“Well, go see him after sunrise. You know he’ll be awake.”
“Oh, I couldn’t,” she says, returning to her seat. “I’m strictly a to and from church driver now.”
“Freddy might want to reminisce over old times. Maybe those hot and heavy times you had in that truck.”
“He might not recognize me,” she says, tugging on an earring. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”
“But you were his first love, Dodie. A man should always recognize his first love.”
She drops her hand to the table. “Nope. Freddy was my first love. He never said he loved me. He only wanted me for my body.”
I cannot and will not picture little Dodie and “Tiny” together.
Okay, I did.
Ew.
“I used to have a nice body.” She stands. “Let me show you.” She leaves the kitchen and returns with a black and white pinup picture. “See? I had me a nice set of gams, didn’t I?” She hands the picture to me.
Dodie was quite attractive with a pile of hair and a come-hither smile.
“Had that done over in Calhoun,” she says. “Tried to make myself look like Betty Grable. Pompadour hair, white bathing suit, gold high heels. Of course, I didn’t have Betty’s long legs. What a scandal that caused.”
This picture wouldn’t cause a ripple now. “But you have the picture.”
She nods. “Freddy was already married when I had that picture taken. I didn’t have the courage to give it to him. I still don’t.”
“Freddy had to have some feelings for you,” I say. “Maybe he still does. And I know he’d love to see this picture. Maybe it will remind him of your relationship.” Over seventy years ago.
Dodie shakes her head. “I don’t think that man ever loved anything except that stupid dog, that stupid house, those stupid cows, Blanche’s stupid daisies, and that stupid old truck. Is my fridge fixed?”
“It should get cold in a few hours,” I say. “Keep your vents clear from now on.”
“Okay. What do I owe you?”
I stand. “Nothing. I didn’t have to repair anything.” I can’t charge her fifty bucks for removing a bag of rancid kale. “Thanks for the cookie.”
Dodie pushes the plate of cookies toward me. “You can take the whole plate if you want to.”
“No thanks. I’m trying to watch my weight.”
“I tried that, too. While Blanche ballooned into the size of one of Freddy’s cows, I stayed thin. Take my advice, Gio. Put some meat on your bones. A heifer has to be fat to mate. Skinny cows can’t mate. Men don’t like skinny women anymore.”
I can’t leave her like this. “I’ll take two more cookies if it’s all right. For later.”
Dodie smiles. “Okay.”
I put the cookies into my shirt pocket. “I’ll have them for dessert tonight.”
“They taste good warm, too.”
It would be better to grind these up and use them in potpourri. “You take care of yourself, Dodie. Try to stay cool.”
“You, too, dear.”
As I’m driving down the mountain, I want to toss the cookies into the trees.
But I don’t want to kill any trees.
I know. I’ll put these cookies next to the mousetraps in the shop. Even if it doesn’t kill the little vermin, it should keep them far away and make the shop smell like chocolate and cinnamon.
Chapter 5
After eating Dodie’s cookie, I need something t
o cleanse my palate, so I stop at The Swinging Bridge for lunch. I sit in my usual spot at a table for two looking out at Zengler’s Mill and Gray Creek. The restaurant’s décor is rustic log cabin meets Art Deco, with white tin ceilings hovering over mounted deer heads, a long bar with spinning brown stools, vintage metal advertising signs, and floor-to-ceiling indoor trees populated by clinging stuffed bears.
Helen Humphreys, who has been waiting tables here since I was little, bustles over. “Hey, Gio. The usual?”
“Sure.” My usual is a buffalo burger medium-well with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise, a side order of buffalo chips, and freshly squeezed lemonade. Yes, I’m eating my neighbors, and no, the “chips” are not, well, you know.
“Be right up,” Helen says.
As I’m staring at the mill, I feel a presence behind me. I look up and see Owen Bryan. “Hey.”
“Hi, Giovanna.” He hands me my lemonade and a straw. “Good to see you.”
I tear off the straw wrapper, slide the straw into the glass, and take a sip of my lemonade. “Fancy meeting you here.”
It is a seriously old joke, and he laughs.
I wish I could laugh. Owen was my first love, and unlike Dodie, I visit him too often for my own good.
On our first date at a ninth grade dance, I was three inches taller than he was, and resting my head on his shoulder gave me a crick in my neck. Over the next two years, Owen sprouted and filled out nicely, and we were inseparable until our junior year when he started taking Junior ROTC classes, became a soldier-in-training, and didn’t have time for me. I tried to make Owen jealous by letting Thomas Bradley, a sophomore, take me to my senior prom, but it didn’t work. Owen was too gung-ho for the military to notice, and after high school, he joined the Marines and saw the world. He didn’t even send me a postcard. Once he served twenty years, he came back to Gray County with a Japanese bride from Okinawa who can’t be older than twenty-five. I wish she wasn’t so gorgeous. She’s my height and has luminous brown eyes, long silky black hair, high cheekbones, and creamy skin.
“Mind if I join you, Giovanna?” Owen asks.
“No.” But your wife staring hard at me from behind the counter might mind.
Owen sits his six-two, 220-pound, military-hardened body across from me. He has broad shoulders for days, blond hair cut short, a chiseled face, a square jaw, a dimple, and blue eyes that never seem to stop dancing. He wears what all his employees wear: black jeans, black cowboy boots, and a red and black flannel shirt.
I wish I were one of his buttons.
Sorry. This man has been my fantasy for a long time.
“How’s that old walk-in freezer?” I ask.
“Good,” Owen says. “Great, actually. You saved me five grand for a new one.”
“Where’s my cut?” I ask, batting my eyelashes. Yes, I still flirt with him, and no, it doesn’t do me any good.
“I already paid you for your work,” he says.
I only charged him $25 an hour. I can give discounts to my fantasies, can’t I?
I rub my arms. “Your AC’s humming fine today.”
“Can you believe a few people have complained?”
“If folks around here didn’t complain, they’d have nothing to talk about.” I pick up the straw wrapper and roll it into a ball. I smile and wave at Kimiko.
Kimiko doesn’t smile or wave.
She hates me.
Owen smiles at me. “Giovanna, I need your help. I want to get the mill working again.”
This is the reason Kimiko hates me. Owen smiles at me, flirts with me, and works with me on any repair I make at The Swinging Bridge. Kimiko doesn’t know that “muove la coda il cane, non per te, ma per il pane”—“he who acts friendly does not seek your affection but a specific thing from you.” Owen sweet-talked me to death when his walk-in freezer died last month. I wish I wasn’t such a sucker for his blue eyes.
“You want to restart the mill,” I say. I look out the window at the old gristmill where men and women made flour a long time ago. Made of hand-stacked locust logs, the mill has an unmoving red metal waterwheel located thirty feet from Gray Creek. “As a tourist attraction, right?”
“No. As a working mill.”
“Why?”
“People pay top dollar for stone-ground flour.”
I flick the straw wrapper across the table at him. “What kind of people?”
“People who are health-conscious.”
I laugh. “Not people who eat here then.”
“We serve healthy food, Giovanna.”
Stop saying my name so softly! “You serve greasy fried chicken every Sunday.”
“One day of greasy food a week won’t kill anyone.”
“Unless they eat it fifty-two times a year.” Most of the congregation of Preston’s Chapel, which rests on a hill above the mill, swarms The Swinging Bridge every Sunday after service.
“I’m talking about New Age people, back-to-nature people,” Owen says. “People who go to Peace Goods to get their fresh-ground almond butter, flax, and organic fruit.”
“Let’s see, you’d have … three customers.”
“I’d have more customers than that. The nearest flourmill is eighty miles away in Nelson County. Our mill would have a monopoly on a five-county area.” He rests his massive tattooed arms on the table. “I need your help to make it work again.”
“It will take more than my help,” I say. “It hasn’t run for over fifty years. No one makes parts for them anymore, and there’s no guarantee people will want to buy your flour.”
“I would pay you very well,” Owen says.
“It would take you twenty years to make back what you’d have to pay me,” I say. “That mill is not a restoration. It’s a construction project.”
“Come on, it will be fun.”
“And it might be a waste of time and money,” I say. “A mill requires water, and that’s in short supply right now.”
“The creeks always come back. You know that.”
“Motts Mountain Creek and Gray Creek might decide to leave us entirely this summer through evaporation.”
“One thunderstorm and they’ll be roaring again. Come on, Giovanna. This job would be perfect for you. Think of the prestige, the free advertising, the challenge.”
He knows the right buttons to push. “Owen, the last time I walked through that mill, I was attacked by cobwebs.” The first time I sneaked into that mill, Owen kissed me. We traded hands and knocked teeth because we didn’t know what we were doing, and I had some splinters I couldn’t explain to my mama. “It’s still a mess inside, isn’t it?”
“I found the original plans, and I’ve already cleared out most of what we wouldn’t need. It’s ready for you to fix, and I know you can fix it because you can fix anything.”
Well, yes, of course I can, but … “Is business that bad?”
Owen looks side-to-side at the nearly empty dining room. “It ain’t that good.”
“It’s lunch hour on a Tuesday, Owen,” I say.
“This is what it looked like Saturday night,” Owen says. “I had to give a lot of prime rib to Delmer Farley.”
“You didn’t save any prime rib for me?” I ask.
“You don’t like prime rib,” he says.
“Lovie does,” I say.
“I’ll try to remember that next time.” Owen smiles at Kimiko.
Kimiko does not smile back.
Kimiko is a hard woman to please.
“You know, you could sell everything and retire somewhere with Kimiko,” I say.
Kimiko’s expression doesn’t change. I know she heard me.
“But I can’t leave the—”
“I know you made a promise to your daddy never to sell the place,” I interrupt, “but Owen, your dad was a dreamer.” Mr. Bryan was crazier than a hog in a peach orchard.
“My dad had a good dream, Giovanna. If Gray Lake had become a reality, we’d be sitting pretty and raking in the money. Dad was prepared to put T
he Swinging Bridge on a huge trailer and move it lock, stock, and barrel to the shores of Gray Lake. We’d be looking out on that lake right now.”
“He was going to …” Mr. Bryan was crazier than a turkey buzzard trying to fly away with an entire deer. “Right now it’s too hot to have enough water to refill your millpond. Do you still stock it with trout?”
“A few.”
“Are they swimming in circles on the surface and wearing sunglasses?”
He smiles. “No.”
We used to kid around like this when we were young. I wish we were young again. And I seriously wish Kimiko would come over to our table so she wouldn’t strain her eyes giving me the evil eye. Woman, I am no threat. Your husband is as crazy as his daddy was.
I only wish he weren’t so darn cute.
“I say sell out and move.”
“I can’t just up and leave,” Owen says. “This restaurant is a landmark.”
A landlocked mark. I watch Kimiko bang through the double doors to the kitchen. My goodness, her apron was tight. “Is Kimiko in a family way?”
“Yes, and that’s another reason I want the mill up and running. Have you seen what college costs these days? It costs up to a hundred grand for four years at a state school now. In eighteen years, who knows what it will be.”
“And a flourmill is your child’s ticket to higher education,” I say.
“Yes,” Owen says.
“What does Kimiko think of your plan?”
He sighs. “She doesn’t like it either.”
Smart woman. “She doesn’t like the idea or she doesn’t like the idea of you and me working together?”
Owen looks away.
“So … a little of both,” I say.
He nods.
“Face it, Owen. Your wife doesn’t like me. You didn’t tell her I was your first love, did you?”
“I … might have … let it slip.”
At least he was thinking about me. “And you promised me you were going to build me a big house on Motts Creek, and we were going to fish every day for our food.”
“Come on, Giovanna. I was fourteen. What did I know?”
I smile. “I’m messing with you, Owen. I’m happy for you. You’re going to make a great father.”