Rhubarb

by M. H. Van Keuren

  Who would even realize that he was gone, let alone dead? His rent wasn’t due for a couple of weeks. A few accounts might wonder why he hadn’t shown up, but they’d shrug him off for at least a week. The next FastNCo. shipment was due at the storage unit—when?—he couldn’t remember. No one in Brixton would give him much thought. They’d think he’d gotten on with his life like he should have in the first place. He’d be dead in less than five minutes, and no one would care.

  Then he stifled a groan. Rick would care. He’d check FASsys and start calling and pinging him. Wonderful. He’d be known in the papers as Marty the missing Screw Man. Screwed Man was more like it.

  Was he going to be blasted into another dimension? Wormholed to the other side of the galaxy? Get up, you idiot. Say something. Groan and pretend you’ve been beaten up and forced into the truck. More chatter crackled from the CB, not alien but distant, staticky, meant for other ears.

  Martin eased his cell phone out of his pocket and checked the time. Almost midnight. Another minute clicked by. They would be there soon.

  A heavy object landed on Martin’s gut, and he couldn’t stifle a surprised cry. And then the world let Martin go. He tumbled off the mattress onto the Funyuns. His head struck a toolbox cushioned by the crocheted blanket. The truck shuddered, and Martin felt himself being tossed about the floor by physics and his own stupidity.

  Everything stopped, still and quiet, except for the vibration of the idling engine. Martin untangled his head from the blankets to find a shiny switchblade six inches from his face and a black duffel bag on his lap.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” said Glen, groping behind him. He kept his eyes on Martin as he found the CB handset and keyed the transmitter.

  ~ * * * ~

  The reddish-brown stain on the concrete floor resembled three, maybe four, tarantulas squashed together with an iron. Martin didn’t want to know how it got there, and yet he empathized, found it kindred. The man on the far bench had been snoring since Martin had arrived, but he woke with a nasty, phlegmy cough. He was dressed like he’d had a long day’s work at the chicken farm and had the worst hat hair Martin had ever seen.

  “What the hell time is it?” he asked. The reek of liquor wafted across the cell.

  “The sun’s up,” Martin said, nodding up to the barred window near the ceiling, which had been light now for a couple of hours.

  “That sucks. I’m supposed to be at work,” the man slurred. He staggered to the gate and shouted, “Derrick. Derrick. I gotta get to work.” He banged on the bars, then turned around. “What you in for?”

  “Reckless driving,” said Martin.

  “I didn’t even drive,” said the man, then shouted through the bars. “You hear me? I wasn’t going to drive.”

  A door buzzed and a deputy strolled into view. “Wells,” he said.

  “What about me?” said the drunk. “Come on, Derrick. I gotta get to work. Norm’s gonna fire my ass.” The deputy opened the cage and let Martin out.

  “Sally’s on her way,” said the deputy, clanging the door shut.

  “You didn’t call Sally. Dammit, Derrick. She’s gonna kill me.”

  The drunk’s shouts echoed after them. At a counter, someone handed Martin a Ziploc bag containing his wallet, cell phone, keys, belt, and shoelaces.

  Stewart waited in the lobby of the sheriff’s office.

  “Thanks for coming,” said Martin. “I didn’t have anyone else to call.”

  “What the hell were you thinking?” asked Stewart.

  “Can we just get out of here?” Martin asked, and led the way out into the late morning sun. Stewart’s Skylark backfired twice before it left the county seat and headed toward Brixton.

  “At least you didn’t have to pay bail. They’re not going to press charges,” said Martin. “I’ll pay you for the gas.”

  “Damn right, you will,” said Stewart, hitching his oxygen tank onto the seat beside him.

  “You talk to Eileen?” Martin asked. Stewart humphed. “I suppose everyone’s heard by now.”

  “You’re gonna get yourself killed. Or worse.”

  Worse? Martin didn’t ask. “You don’t know what I saw out there,” Martin said. “I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I know you believe it. That driver was not a human. He may have looked human. His truck might fool a Freightliner mechanic…”

  “So what? What did you think would happen? What did you think he was going to do for you?”

  “I thought he might take me to Cheryl, or show me the way,” said Martin.

  “You’re a fool,” said Stewart.

  “I never said otherwise,” said Martin. The passing mileage markers and Stewart’s wheezes punctuated a long silence until Martin said, “Someone has to do something, Stewart.”

  “You think I haven’t done everything that can be done?” asked Stewart.

  “What does that mean? What can you do?”

  “I’ve left messages on Cheryl’s phone. Either she’s listening, or they’re listening. Either way, if we haven’t heard back it’s ’cause whoever’s on the other end doesn’t want to talk. I don’t have what they want.”

  “You’re talking about the secret recipe,” said Martin.

  “Of course I’m talking about the goddamn recipe. You happy now? All that crap Eileen and Doris been filling your head with is completely true. Cheryl’s been taken for the godforsaken rhubarb pie, just like her mother. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it then, and there’s not a thing I can do about it now.”

  “You told them in the messages that she doesn’t have the secret?”

  “Of course I told ’em.”

  “What are they doing to her?” Martin asked.

  Stewart glared, and Martin made a mental note to never ask that again. But Linda had come back. Mentally ill, but back. What had they said? A couple of years later? Cheryl had only been gone a few weeks. She might still be okay, out there, somewhere. Was that consolation?

  “Why don’t you just give them the recipe?”

  “It isn’t that simple,” said Stewart.

  “Why?”

  “For one, no one knows it. It died with Linda.”

  “Then why don’t we call and tell them that we have the secret recipe and want to trade it for Cheryl?”

  “Think, Martin. They’ll want proof. Can you bake such a pie? Cheryl told me you’d never even had rhubarb pie. You think you’ll be able to fool them? Besides…”

  “Didn’t Linda leave behind recipe books? Cards? A diary? A shopping receipt? Anything?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve looked through it all a hundred times?”

  “Couldn’t hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes on it,” said Martin.

  Stewart took Martin straight to Herbert’s Corner and rolled up alongside the Subaru. Martin handed Stewart all the cash in his wallet and got out. He unlocked his doors as Stewart drove away. Then Stewart backed up and rolled down his window. “Will it keep you from hijacking semis? If I let you see Linda’s stuff?” he asked.

  “Scout’s honor,” said Martin.

  “You were never a Boy Scout,” said Stewart.

  “No, I wasn’t.”

  “Follow me home. I’ll give you what I got.”

  Chapter 12

  Handwritten on a loose scrap of paper stuck in a worn ring-bound copy of The Iowa Homemaker’s Cookbook, published 1956, by the Iowa City First Methodist Church Ladies’ Circle

  Mom’s Pie

  Fill

  4 c chopped rhu

  3/4 c sugar

  2 Tbsp flour

  Crust

  3 c flour

  1 c Crisco

  1 c cold water and crushed ice

  1 tsp salt

  Sugar and cin to sprinkle on top

  425 for 15 min, 350 for 35 min

  Martin held the piece of paper up to his living room lamp, flipped it over, even inspected the edge. It had the ragged top and green tint of a page torn from a steno pad. The author, presuma
bly Linda, had used a blue ballpoint pen. Her scrawled handwriting was hurried, unheeding of the lines, as if written for herself, and not for the pastor’s wife to include in the church cookbook.

  Martin had dug through the entire Black Velvet box, and this was the only thing that came close. Nothing in the box of recipe cards, nothing in any of the cookbooks, nothing even on that scrap could turn a non-pie maker into Mrs. Smith overnight.

  Why had Linda even written this down, only to tuck it into a book full of recipes for covered hot dishes, potatoes au gratin, meatballs, and Jell-O salads? Surely she wouldn’t have needed the recipe. She could probably have made this pie easier than he could pour milk on Frosted Flakes. Cheryl hadn’t followed a written recipe. She had gone from garden to pie—filling in from memory all the technical details of its fabrication that this scrap of paper left out. She’d had the tools at hand.

  Martin considered his own kitchen. His oven had never cooked more than frozen pizza and chocolate chip cookies from a tube. Rolling pin? No. Measuring cups? Doubtful. Knives? He had a couple that could probably cut it—rimshot. He had Cheryl’s pie plate, clean and empty, never returned, waiting on her kitchen towel, laundered and neatly folded.

  ~ * * * ~

  “No, we don’t have that,” said a Walmart worker emptying a box of bagged lettuce. “Don’t know that we’ve ever carried it.”

  Martin studied his cart. Flour, Crisco, sugar, cinnamon, a rolling pin, and measuring cups. Salt and ice he had at home.

  “Try Albertsons,” said the worker.

  Martin thanked him and almost abandoned his cart.

  Beep. “Making a pie?” asked the cashier. Beep.

  “Trying to,” said Martin. Beep. “You don’t know where I could find some rhubarb, do you?” Beep.

  “What’s rhubarb?” asked the cashier. Beep.

  At Albertsons, a produce stocker spent several minutes in the back, then returned with a shake of his head. “You should try the farmer’s market on Saturday,” he said.

  “I need some tonight,” said Martin.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” said the stocker.

  At home, Martin set his bags on the counter next to Cheryl’s pie plate. He opened the freezer, took out a pint of Brownie Batter Ben and Jerry’s, found a clean spoon, and collapsed on his couch.

  He pushed aside the cookbooks to make room for his feet on the coffee table. All those recipes. All those hours spent perfecting dishes to share with the church ladies’ circle. And what could he do? Burn frozen pizzas and epically fail to buy ingredients for a simple pie. The only person who could have taught him was Cheryl. He remembered her hands in the floury mixture, rolling the dough with those deft strokes, and crimping the crust. He could probably figure it out, but there was no time for a learning curve. She was the only one, thought Martin, and then stopped with a spoonful of ice cream halfway to his gaping mouth.

  ~ * * * ~

  “In example after example, we find that ancient cultures revered water for its healing properties. I don’t think it’s any accident that the Greeks associated Mnemosyne, the muse of memory, with a pool of remembering. Long before the Greeks, the ancients knew that water from certain sources healed, restored, and brought life. These carvings that have recently been unearthed in Syria clearly show ancient visitors preparing, offering, and administering water to humans.”

  “Do you have pictures of these carvings up on the web for the audience to see?”

  “We don’t yet, but we’re working on it.”

  “We’ll put a link on wakernation.com when those come available. Now, do you think that the visitors—extraterrestrials, if I’m to understand your assertion?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Do you think the extraterrestrials simply exploited local, Earthly water sources with healing properties? Or did they add something to the water to create these elixirs?”

  “That’s an excellent question, Lee. And it’s an issue to which we are devoting a great deal of time. If it is true that certain elements in these springs and water sources have naturally occurring healing properties, that’s an amazing discovery and a real validation for the homeopathic community. What a wonder to have Gaia herself confirm what we’ve witnessed so many times before. On the other hand, if the visitors used homeopathic techniques, and added their own compounds to the water, that’s also very significant. It means that certain sites, like Lourdes, Bethesda, Chilca, the Ganges, and many others were perhaps seeded with healing compounds by the visitors. We may be able to reconstruct these alien elixirs from the water’s own memory.”

  “We’re up against a hard break, but when we come back, Sandy, I’d like to hear how, exactly, you read the memory of water.”

  “I’ll be happy to stay with you, Lee.”

  “Great. Wakers, we may not know the secret ingredient for the alien elixirs yet, but I have the ingredient to heal your portfolio. Gold. Now, I’ve been investing in gold through TheYellowHoard.com for several years now, and I can tell you…”

  ~ * * * ~

  “No need to get your gun, Doris. It’s Martin Wells. I came the other night with Eileen.”

  Doris answered the door in her housecoat and shotgun.

  “‘Don’t get your gun,’” she said. “You think I’m a fool?”

  “I need to talk to you about the pie recipe. And…”

  “And what?”

  “I wondered if you could teach me to bake a pie.” She raised the barrels, and he put up his hands. “I’ve got all the ingredients in my car. Except the rhubarb.”

  “Well, get ’em and get in here ’fore all the bugs do,” she said.

  Doris didn’t put her gun aside until Martin set his Walmart purchases on her kitchen table. She peeked in the bags and said, “You keep comin’ around in the middle of the night, people gonna talk.”

  “I’m sorry to impose, but Eileen said you stay up late. I’m a big BI fan, too.”

  “So, you’re gonna try your hand at the pie?” Doris asked.

  “If they abducted Cheryl for the recipe, the best way to get her back is to give it to them. Maybe then they’ll leave everyone alone.”

  “Bring those muscles of yours,” said Doris. She shuffled across her living room, down a dark hall, and into a sparsely furnished guest bedroom. She slid open the closet and pointed to a footlocker. Martin carried it out to the living room.

  From her easy chair, Doris opened the clasps and lifted the lid. Martin got a whiff of ancient mothballs. She extracted several manila envelopes, a pile of stiff lace doilies, and a few photo albums, handing them all to Martin to set on the coffee table. Then she presented him with a little black book.

  “That’s the pie diary,” she said. “From 1986 through 1992, I baked pies every day I could get good rhubarb. Tried to do it like Linda each time, but changed a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Kept track real scientific-like. I’d seen her and Margie make ’em hundreds of times. You’d think I’d have gotten it, but I never did.”

  Martin thumbed through the diary. More sugar, less rhubarb, cinnamon in the filling, only red-skinned rhubarb, only the green, crusts baked separately from the filling, a wide range of times and temperatures. First one variable, then combinations. Then she’d tried odd ingredients. Carbonated water. Pineapple juice. Brown sugar. Maple syrup. Crystal Pepsi.

  “This is incredible,” said Martin.

  “There were a couple other gals tried it some, too, but don’t worry ’bout poundin’ on their doors tonight. You’ll be knocking on headstones.”

  “None of these worked?” asked Martin. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, Herbert had introduced me to some regulars. They’d taste ’em for me.”

  “Can I borrow this?” asked Martin.

  “I don’t have much more use for it,” said Doris. “But if it makes you rich, you count me right in for half.”

  “I promise,” said Martin.

  “Let’s make a pie,” she said, and slapped
his knee, hard.

  “I don’t have any rhu…” Martin began, but Doris waved him off.

  “Oh, I got rhubarb coming out my ears. Cut from the same plants Linda grew.”

  As Doris held the flashlight, Martin cut the stalks exactly as she commanded. She started barking out orders even as she hauled herself up her steps and back into the house. No Hell’s Kitchen wannabe chef would have left Doris’s kitchen without deep emotional scars.

  Doris slapped Martin’s hand away from the knife as he chopped the rhubarb. “Didn’t your pappy teach you how to hold a knife?” she scolded.

  “I’ve seen those Ginsu infomercials,” said Martin.

  She pointed the tip of the knife at his nose. “You gonna backtalk, you can get out right now,” she said.

  Martin had to measure everything exactly right, which was to say not at all. “Linda Laughlin never used a measuring cup in her whole life, and you ain’t gonna either,” said Doris. “Now, feel the weight of that, pour it back in there, and try again.”

  Martin kneaded the wet dough like a sissy-man. He used a rolling pin like a deficient chimpanzee. He handled the crusts like Jimmy Carter. This he didn’t understand, but her tone suggested that it wasn’t a compliment.

  “God gave you fingers, didn’t he? Why don’t you use ’em for something other than pickin’ your nose?” she scolded, making him recrimp the edge.

  Martin set the pie in the oven, closed the door, and flopped into a kitchen chair. Doris took one can of Rolling Rock from the refrigerator, popped the tab, and said, “This kitchen ain’t gonna clean itself, boy.”

  With more than half an hour left on the second bake, Martin folded a faded kitchen towel, embroidered with a crowing rooster, and set it on the counter.