by Dave Balcom
“She’s there now, with you?”
“Actually, she’s cuddled up next to me on a lounge on the porch.”
“Definitely cool.”
After he was gone, she finally broke the silence. “You were worried about how they’d react, weren’t you?”
“Not really worried. I was maybe uncertain.”
“You guys never understand it. Aren’t you happy when they’re happy, even if their definition of happy is different from yours?”
“That I am.”
“Then why can’t you believe the people who love you won’t feel the same way about your happiness. You are happy aren’t you?”
“That I am.”
69
On Saturday morning she was up and dressed when I came down for coffee. She told me she had errands and asked if she could use the truck. I said of course. When I asked if she needed my help, she gave me a little tease of a smile, a mere shadow of how she usually teased, but it was a start.
Shirlee came up mid-morning to direct me in cleaning, and she announced that we were having “salt ‘n’ butter chicken” that night, and that I was in charge of food prep. She had a bunch of whole chickens down at her place thawing.
“What do you know about salt ‘n’ butter chicken?” I asked her.
“Just that for some folks a bit east of here, it’s not a holiday picnic without it. And I know that once you set it up for Jack, you can’t touch it. Unlike you, Jack can really cook on charcoal.”
I acknowledged that to be true. About four Jack showed up with the chickens, and we started halving them and getting things ready for a feast.
Jack made sure that we were appropriately marinated ourselves.
I took the livers, necks and stuff that’s always frozen inside the chickens, washed them up good in cold water, and divvied them up on three batches of double layers of tin foil. I then sliced up three green peppers and three Walla Walla sweet onions. I then opened up a box of salt and poured it on the chicken parts until they were white with salt: A leap of faith. Then I put the pepper and onions on and made little pouches of the foil.
“God almighty,” Jack said. “What is that, heart attack on foil?”
“Hors d’oeuvres,” I said. “Believe it or not, you’ll never taste the salt.”
Jack started the charcoal, pointedly making an issue that unlike some amateurs, this meal would cook when the coals were right and not before. We were expecting company to arrive after six.
Shirlee had strung red, white and blue bunting around the porch. I had had flags up front and rear all day. She had laid out a series of candles in bags that would lead people from the driveway to the back yard after dark.
The place had a festive air about it, but it was approaching six, and there was no sign of Jan.
She drove in minutes later. “I’m sorry,” she said as she rushed in. “I’ll be ready in just a few minutes.” She disappeared up the stairs at a run.
“That’s more like her usual self, pushing the envelope,” I noted to anyone who might be listening. Then I heard a car door slam outside and the first of our guests started arriving.
I had given the pot of melted butter and the brush and the salt to Jack. He was to continually alternate between basting and salting, turning the birds every 15 minutes or so. The salt serves to stop the butter from running off the birds and blazing up. The result would be perfectly glazed chickens, and surprising to anyone, without much of a salty flavor.
Randall and Lisa Albright had brought enough potato salad for 100 people and Skip and Lucy Petersen and their four kids had brought a similar quantity of beans. There were cakes and Jell-O salads, and the dining room table actually seemed to sag under the weight of the food that looked more than adequate for the 16 people on hand.
I was making rounds with beer and sangria when Jan made her entrance. She had on a pair of those pants women wear that stop at mid-calf, and that made her legs look four feet long, and a lacy white peasant blouse that showed her color and neckline.
I handed a couple of beers and a pitcher to Petersen whose jaw had dropped appropriately when he glimpsed Jan. I put my hand on her arm and smiled. She smiled back, and there was a light in her eyes. I felt she’d made a decision to recover. I breathed a silent sigh of relief.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please,” I began. The group on the porch quieted, and several folks outside next to the barbecue pit came in. I let everyone settle for a minute.
“I just want to introduce a very special person in my life. This is Jan Coldwell, from Michigan. Jan and I have been collaborating on a story recently, and frankly, she’s won a place in my heart… I would like it very much if you would introduce yourselves and take a minute to welcome Jan.”
I could hear Albright’s stage whisper in the background, “Collaborating on a story? That’s what they call that now, huh?”
The whole crowd broke up, and I saw Jan color just a bit. No way did I blush, no matter who says I did.
The rest of the evening went great. The hors d’oeuvres had been a great hit, so it was no surprise that everyone loved the chicken. Jan took center stage to tell about the Cadillac, Michigan tradition represented by the salt ‘n’ butter approach.
Just as the sun was making its nightly passage in those “colors not found in nature,” and while the youngsters on hand were crowded around the dying charcoal embers making “s’mores” with Randall and Skip supervising, I heard one of the little girls outside exclaim, “Look, a puppy!”
I was sitting with friends from Pendleton just as Jan, Albright and Jack came in all smiles. Albright had a little bundle of brown and white fur in his arms.
“What’s this?”
Albright put the puppy in my lap, and Jan kneeled down next to it.
Jack had the floor. “Jim, all of us know how much you miss Punch. And we can all only wonder just how long it’s going to take you and Jan to heal the wounds that you’ve endured the past eight weeks…” His throat frogged up a bit, and he paused to swallow his emotion.
“We just figured, this little girl here might help you both on the road to recovery.”
Albright spoke up. “She’s out of some great blood, Jim.” And then he addressed our guests, “I couldn’t break away today, just couldn’t. So early this morning Jan drove all the way to Boise to pick this little girl up, and then drove all the way back.”
There was a big round of applause.
“What’s its name?” Skip’s youngest daughter had worked her way inside so she could pet the little Drahthaar puppy. “What do you call her?”
“Judy,” Jan and I said at the same time. We laughed, and Jan said, “We’ll add another ‘Punch’ later, but now we have Judy.”
The older folks on the porch started laughing, the younger ones looked lost.
At that moment, I knew we were going to mend just fine. I didn’t know how we were going to work out the mechanics of our lives, but I also knew then and there that being with her was my next cool place.
-30-
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Balcom spent his adult life as an award winning journalist, writing, editing, and photographing local news and sports for community newspapers in a career that spanned 35 years and eight states. When he was no longer involved in the newspaper business, he turned to writing Jim Stanton Mysteries to satisfy his passion for writing. He and his wife, Susie, have two happily married children and a spoiled Yellow Labrador retriever to dote on between visits with their grandchildren. Like their hero, they love the outdoors; foraging, hunting and fishing at every opportunity.
Have you read all of the Jim Stanton Mysteries?
In paperback or E-books where ever books are sold
The Next Cool Place
The first Jim Stanton Mystery
Jim revisits his childhood haunts to solve a deadly mystery and finds the answer to the question of “how tough is tough enough” right next to him throughout the story.
Acorn
&
nbsp; Never falls far from the oak
One iconic Eastern Oregon ranch family. two mysteries 77 years apart, and questions play the definitive role in both solutions.
Sea Change
The final installment in the trilogy that launched the Jim Stanton Mysteries
Battered, broken, and bruised Jim comes back off the canvas to still kicking as he finds answers to his deepest held questions.
Song of Suzies
A young Jim Stanton’s first mystery.
The young editor is forced to dig deeper than the heart-breaking headlines to resurrect his newspaper’s reputation even as police have him tagged as a primary suspect.
Even When You Win
There is often a price to pay.
Jim and Jan answer a call for help from a couple who have won a $5,000-a-week-for-life sweepstakes prize for themselves and for one of their offspring only to be threatened that if they don’t pick the right beneficiary, all of their youngsters will die.
Fear at First Glance
Reliving shadows from the past
Jan’s high school class reunion puts Jim squarely in the sights of a madman who turns her Northern Michigan homecoming into a macabre quest for revenge.
Code Matters
In matters of moral codes, all codes matter
Jim and Jan find themselves defending the most indefensible of Jim’s acquaintances; a man who turned his intellect into a breach of everything that matters in Jim’s personal code of ethics.
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