Rhubarb

by M. H. Van Keuren

  Doris rocked in her recliner, listening to Lee Danvers interview an anonymous intelligence officer about UFO sightings near the HAARP antenna in Alaska.

  “Do you mind if I take a look?” Martin asked, pointing to the stack of photo albums on the coffee table.

  “Go ahead,” said Doris.

  The first album was filled with aunts, great-grandfathers, cousins in Army uniforms, babies in their baptismal finery, women in horn-rimmed glasses, and men wishing they were fishing in Norman Rockwell paintings. In the second book, shaggy-haired dudes leaned on muscle cars, three cousins in Toughskins rode one shaggy horse, women in bell-bottoms visited Carlsbad, and Herbert’s Corner held a company picnic. Summer 1983, according to the hand-painted banner strung between two cottonwoods behind the picnic tables.

  “Is this Linda?” Martin asked. Doris leaned forward.

  “Looks just like Cheryl, don’t she?” said Doris. “Used to think for a while that it was her everyone came for, not the pie.”

  “She looks sad,” said Martin.

  “Eighty-three? Margie, her mother, had passed not too long before, I recall,” said Doris. “And there’s me. I was pretty hot stuff, even standing next to Linda. I had my share of indecent proposals over the years. Don’t mind sayin’. You’d hit that, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what they say these days?”

  Martin laughed. “Is that what they say?”

  Doris chewed her lips and turned the page. Then another. “Here we go,” she said, tapping a page of shots of Linda and others in a kitchen. “That other one’s Corrie. She didn’t last too long.” Evidence of baking surrounded them, but nothing hinted at a secret ingredient. Linda had a smudge of flour on one cheek.

  “Is that Herbert Stamper?” Martin asked. A pear-shaped man with thin hair combed over a spotted scalp had joined the women for one of the shots. He wore a pair of thick, black sunglasses, the kind that fit over prescription glasses. Martin felt a chill. Stewart had worn ones just like them at dinner and again in his apartment. Indoors. After dark. “Eileen told me that you think Herbert was an alien,” said Martin.

  “Think? Woman don’t share a bed with a man for ten years and not know something like that,” Doris replied.

  “So he was?”

  “Well, of course he was. How do you think he knew all about them?” said Doris.

  “Those sunglasses. Did he wear them all the time?” Martin asked.

  “Never went without ’em. That’s how he could see who was and who weren’t like him. I told him they made him look like Truman Capote, but he never worried about appearances.”

  “What happened to the glasses after he died?”

  “Why?”

  “If it’s alien technology…” said Martin. Maybe Stewart got ahold of them somehow.

  “I have ’em,” said Doris. “But they don’t work anymore. They got all busted up when he was attacked. They knew to stomp on ’em.”

  “You don’t think he was killed in a robbery?” asked Martin.

  “Never did,” said Doris. “But what can you tell the sheriff? He ain’t gonna put down the truth in no report.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Martin.

  “Long time ago,” said Doris.

  “Do you have any more pictures of the kitchen, them baking pies?”

  “Maybe a few,” said Doris. She pointed and snapped her fingers at an album still in the trunk. Martin handed it to her.

  “That’s Linda with her hand in the dough. That’s Margie, her mom, there next to Herbert.” Margie, shriveled from years of smoking and work, stood proudly behind an enormous pile of leafy, fresh-cut rhubarb. “First pies of the season. I don’t know what year. Late seventies, I’d guess.”

  “Didn’t they ever stop smoking?” Martin asked. Both Margie and Linda had cigarettes dangling from their lips.

  “Never,” said Doris. “I used to warn ’em that those things would put them in an early grave. Look at me now. Was I wrong? Both them gals died of the cancer. I’m lucky I didn’t get it from all the secondhand fumes I breathed in over the years. Wish they had the smoking bans back then.”

  “Weren’t there Health Department rules or something?” Martin asked.

  “Health Department? In Brixton? Herbert hated the smoke, too. It’d make him wheeze and cough. I told him a thousand times to make them quit, or at least take it outside, but those gals were his golden goose. They could do no wrong.”

  Martin stood, staring a million miles through Doris.

  “Restroom’s that way,” she said.

  “No,” said Martin. “Book.”

  “Book?”

  “Black book,” said Martin. He found it on the table with the Walmart bags.

  “What’s gotten into you?”

  He leafed through its pages, and managed to speak. “Did you ever…?”

  “Out with it already, before they publish my obituary,” said Doris.

  “Smoke?” asked Martin.

  “I told you. I never smoked a coffin nail in my life,” said Doris.

  “But don’t you see? They did. You said they always smoked. They smoked while they baked the pies.”

  “You don’t think…?”

  “What else could it be?” asked Martin.

  “Now, why didn’t I ever think of that?” asked Doris.

  Chapter 13

  Gary didn’t look up from his Soldier of Fortune magazine until Martin cleared his throat. “You? Out harassing truckers again?” Gary asked from his stool.

  “I need to buy some cigarettes,” said Martin.

  “You don’t smoke,” said Gary.

  “I’m looking to start,” said Martin.

  “Start? People don’t start smoking. Is this another phase of your spiral into complete lunacy?”

  “Look, Gary, are you going to help me or not?” Martin checked over his shoulder for Eileen.

  Gary tossed his magazine on the back counter with a sigh and slid off his stool. He bellied up to the counter, framing himself in front of a hundred choices on the back wall. Red, green, blue, white, brown, yellow, black, lites, menthols, 100s, naturals, filterless, slims. Stacked like a wall of Lego bricks. Martin wondered how he’d choose if he really had wanted to start smoking. One pack of each to find his favorite? Did taste actually matter, or something else? Should he pick the brand least likely to get him beaten up in the nearest bar? Should he pick the one with the advertising model that best fit his demographic? Was he Kool? Did he belong in Marlboro Country? Did he have American Spirit? Or—why a Camel, exactly?

  “Okay, first-timer, what kind do you want?”

  Martin held out one of the pictures from Doris’s photo albums and pointed to Linda’s face. “This kind,” said Martin.

  Gary snatched the picture. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “She’s dead,” said Martin. “The cigarette.”

  “Just ’cause I sell them, I’m supposed to be some kind of expert?”

  “Come on,” said Martin.

  “Fine,” said Gary. He tossed the picture on the counter. “It’s your funeral. Those would be Pall Mall. You can tell because the filters aren’t tinted; there’s the stripe and logo.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Martin. “It’s an old picture. You think they looked like that in the eighties?” Gary glared under his brow. “Fine, a pack of Pall Malls. The most normal kind.”

  Without looking, Gary reached back, selected a pack, and dropped it on the counter. Under the shiny wrapper, it glittered as red and gold as Christmas. “Anything else? And before you ask, no, I do not know any crystal meth dealers.”

  “Just that,” said Martin.

  Gary plucked a little blue tube with a chrome top from a flimsy cardboard rack in front of the till and set it on the pack. “I assume you’ll need one of these,” he said.

  “Is there anything else I need?” asked Martin. “Never done this before.”

  “Cigarettes. Over eighteen. Lighter. Death wish. I think you’re good to go,” said Gary.


  Martin slapped a bill on the counter. Gary handed him the change. Martin dropped the coins in the take-a-penny bowl.

  “Oh, thanks,” said Gary.

  “Any way I could ask you not to mention this to Eileen?” asked Martin. Gary smiled, but not in any kind of pleasant way. Martin put another bill on the counter, but kept his hand on it. “Please.”

  Gary smirked at the paltry bribe. Martin retracted the offer.

  The Pall Malls somehow seemed no more deadly than all the candy, gum, snacks, beer, energy drinks, and packaged foods peddled in front of the counter—and definitely more honest. Instead of “Nutrition Facts,” the pack displayed an easy-to-read label warning him of his imminent demise. Twisted, government-mandated candor—the clause that refreshes.

  “You have a good night now,” called Gary.

  ~ * * * ~

  “So how would this work?” Martin asked.

  “You tell me. This is your harebrained scheme,” said Doris.

  “I think one of us should smoke the whole time, very near the whole process,” said Martin.

  “Well, don’t look at me,” said Doris. “If anyone’s doing any smokin’, it’s gonna be you.”

  “You’re sure you’re okay with smoking in here?”

  “Won’t be the first time,” said Doris. “Besides, I want to be here if this works.”

  “Okay, but I think you should do most of the baking. The pie should be as authentic as possible.”

  “Deal,” said Doris.

  “Ready?” asked Martin.

  “Quit your stallin’ and light up already.”

  Martin tore away the cellophane. He tamped the pack against his palm, sure he’d seen people do that before. He opened the hinged lid and gave the pack a little shake. One cigarette put its head up a little higher than the others. Martin sealed its fate and put it between his lips. One easy strike on the lighter, and he got a flame. He touched the fire to the tip of the cigarette, got a little flare, then smoke.

  “Try again. You gotta suck in a little, give the tobacco some air,” said Doris.

  Martin lit it again, and this time got a mouthful of acrid smoke. He coughed and his eyes watered.

  “That’s it,” said Doris.

  “Wonderful,” choked Martin, checking the smoldering tip. “Are you going to start?”

  “I’ll get started after you do. Come on. Obama’s in the White House, not Clinton. I guarantee you that Linda and Margie both inhaled.”

  Martin took a deep breath, exhaled, and then drew a lungful through the cigarette. He expected nausea and barfing—the usual after-school-special consequences—but the smoke arrived surprisingly easily. Martin felt an instant sort of buzz, but he couldn’t call it pleasing. More like oxygen deprivation.

  “Bake fast,” he said. And a few minutes later, he found himself cutting rhubarb in the dark, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Worst Steinbeck novel ever.

  ~ * * * ~

  The pie cooled on Doris’s counter as the first light of a new day crept through the kitchen window.

  “One more,” she said.

  Martin groaned. He had already kicked his eight-cigarette-a-pie habit after retching onto Doris’s driveway forty-five minutes ago.

  “You never know,” she said. “It could need to happen now, blend with the steam, work its way into those bubbles in the vent…”

  Martin lit one more. He sucked the smoke down his raw throat into his swollen, resistant lungs, and then exhaled onto the pie, as he had during every other step. His smoky breath had been stirred with the filling, kneaded into the dough, even blown under the top crust before Doris crimped it shut. He took a second puff, then a third. He couldn’t feel his face.

  He stubbed the vile thing out among the ashes and wreckage of its martyred brethren in a heavy amber glass ashtray. “That’s enough,” he said. She chewed her lips for a moment, then agreed.

  “You think we did it?” she asked.

  “Are there any other variables we might have forgotten?” asked Martin.

  “I woulda said we should make it in the kitchen at the Corner, but they took out the bakery back during the remodel.”

  “The flour, the water? Maybe Crisco changed their formula?”

  “They used all kinds of flours, different brands of sugar. Herbert’d buy rhubarb from anyone. That’s why everyone’s still got it in their gardens around here. There wasn’t nothin’ consistent about them.”

  “What was consistent?” asked Martin.

  “Margie and Linda. And I suppose the smoke,” said Doris. She grabbed his upper arm with a hard grip. “Boy, you might just have saved Cheryl. Except how’re we going to test it? You gonna chase down another trucker? Highway Patrol been told to keep an eye out for you.”

  “I don’t think we need to do that,” said Martin.

  ~ * * * ~

  Martin offered Doris a hand up the front steps, but she slapped it away.

  “Don’t you drop them pies,” she said.

  Martin knocked. After a long minute, Stewart answered the door. “Martin. Doris,” he said. He glared at the objects, covered with kitchen towels, in Martin’s arms. “What can I do for you?”

  “Smells like you’re makin’ coffee,” said Doris.

  “So what?” asked Stewart.

  “Well, invite us in already, you old goat,” said Doris, and pushed past Martin.

  “By all means,” said Stewart, getting out of her way.

  A few moments later, Doris cut into the first pie. She set a slice on a paper plate and put it on the table in front of Stewart.

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” said Stewart.

  “Try the damned pie,” said Doris.

  “You can drop the charade,” said Martin.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Stewart. Doris handed him a fork.

  After a quick, falsely thoughtful chew, Stewart said, “Rhubarb pie.”

  Doris cut a piece from the other pie, slid it onto a fresh plate, and handed him a fresh fork.

  Stewart took the next bite just as skeptically, but before he swallowed, Martin thought he detected a tiny tremor, the slightest tilt of the man’s head. Stewart cleared his mouth with his tongue and said, “They taste the same.”

  Doris checked Martin and then pursed her lips at Stewart. “Thought we had it,” she said. “Or maybe the boy’s wrong about you.”

  “Or maybe both,” said Stewart. “You remember when I was born, Doris Solberg. Now you think I’m like Herbert?”

  Doris shook her head. “He had me convinced,” she said.

  “You knew Herbert was an alien?” asked Martin.

  “’Course,” said Stewart. “Most everyone knew. Though some chose to pretend otherwise. Why did you think I was?”

  “The sunglasses you wore in my apartment the other night. Herbert Stamper wore a pair just like them to identify aliens,” said Martin.

  “Don’t know why that’d make me one,” said Stewart. He waggled his prescription glasses over his nose. “Sensitive eyes.”

  “Well, this is a bust. And it’s way past my bedtime.” Doris grabbed Martin’s forearm in another bony vulture grip. “Take me home, young man.”

  “Take your pies with you,” said Stewart.

  “You keep ’em,” said Doris. “Doctor’s doing a poor job of keeping me off sugar as it is.”

  “You know I don’t care for it much. Not since Linda passed,” said Stewart. “I guess they’re yours,” he said to Martin.

  ~ * * * ~

  The day had more than officially begun as Martin rolled through Brixton below the speed limit. Doris had been dropped off at home, and the pies and the pack of cigarettes sat in the passenger seat in her stead. One pie was as normal as a rhubarb pie could be. The other could be Cheryl’s salvation. He may have been wrong about Stewart, but the jury was still out on the cigarettes. Martin coughed, and phlegm scraped at his trachea. His lungs felt like a hippo with a bottlebrush had sat on h
is chest for an hour.

  He put on his blinker as he neared the junction. He should have left Billings an hour ago to get to his day’s calls. Another day of binning screws, sorting nails, assuaging complaints from assistant managers, and driving. More driving. Over roads he’d traveled a hundred times. Probably more.

  From the FastNCo. procedural manual for area representatives who find their lives, beliefs, purpose, and health in utter shambles and haven’t had anything to eat in the past twelve hours but ice cream and cigarettes:

  1. “Hi, Rick…yeah, I know. Not feeling very good. Bad cold or flu or something. Felt it coming on yesterday, but thought I was going to be able to shake it. I was up all night. Won’t go into the details. But I don’t think I’m going to be able to make my appointments today…Yeah. I’m calling them right after I talk to you…Hopefully tomorrow…Send a revised schedule, check. Writing it down…Thanks, Rick.”

  He hung a U-turn in front of Herbert’s Corner. The Brixton Inn was three minutes away. If he checked in now, maybe he could get a waffle before crashing.

  Part II

  1986

  They arrived in two identical black cars.

  The tires rolled silently across gravel. The engines’ hum blended with the breeze and the insects. They traveled dark, no headlights, no brake lights, no glow from the dashboards. The cars braked in unison, and three figures emerged. As they gathered on the road, wind and moonlight passed right through them and continued on their way across the prairie.

  A dog barked in the distance.

  Though silent as shadows, they strode awkwardly, as if unaccustomed to the ground beneath their feet. After they wobbled across the cattle guard, one tapped at a device on his wrist, compelling the only potential witness to fall asleep in front of a late-night movie. A half-drunk beer fell to the floor and dribbled onto the carpet. The others nearby, already asleep, moved into a dreamless state.

  The three beings turned into the third driveway on the left, mounted a little porch, and entered a trailer. One located a set of keys on the kitchen counter, acknowledged the others, and left. He backed the Ford Pinto out of the driveway and drove away. The night fell quiet again.