Lick Your Neighbor
Page 2
“Are you sure you don’t want some of my tea?” Andie asked from the table. “I made a whole pot.”
“Nope.”
“It’s Golden Monkey.”
Andie took a deep whiff of the steam rising from her cup and let out a long ahhhhh.
“Handpicked every spring in the Fujian province of China.”
“Oh yeah? Well this is Lipton,” Dale said. “God knows how it’s picked, where it’s from, or if it’s actually cremated human remains instead of tea leaves. But I know where it’s going. Down the hatch.”
Dale took a big gulp, swishing it around like mouthwash, and swallowed dramatically, finishing with a theatrical sigh of satisfaction.
“Why would you rather drink those powdery dregs?” Andie asked, “And don’t say it’s a slippery slope from drinking fine tea to getting so fat that a deranged serial killer makes you eat so much spaghetti your stomach bursts. I’m so sick of hearing that.”
“Then I won’t say it.” Dale checked his reflection in the microwave window. One hair was sticking up from his now combed hair. Dale licked his finger and plastered the renegade hair down. “But it’s still true.”
Dale opened the fridge and was greeted by the site of a whole salted duck hanging from a rope. The rope was tied around the duck’s breast and fastened to the fridge on a hook. Everything else in the fridge had been packed into the bottom two shelves to make room for the deep purple bird, which rocked slowly back and forth.
Dale sighed. “Something you want to tell me, Andie?”
“What? I’m making duck prosciutto.”
“You’re curing meat in our fridge?”
“Where else am I going to cure it?”
“What about my milk?”
“What about it?”
“It’s going to taste like duck now.”
“And that’s bad because…”
“Because I don’t want fucking Frosted Duckflakes for breakfast!”
Dale slammed the fridge shut. He took a step toward the kitchen table and almost tripped when his foot hit a small metal stand on the floor. “Ow! What the hell is that?”
“Oh, I forgot I put that there. It’s the base for the deep-fryer. It’s for tomorrow.” Andie took a sip of her tea. “You know, for the turkey. This whole oven-roasted bullshit just isn’t working out, no matter how much extra fat I use. The last turkey that came out of the oven was covered in so much pork fat it was practically oinking, and it was still dry. I mean the skin was crispy and delicious, but the meat? Blek. Meat should be moist and delicious. Like bacon. Hmmmmm. Maybe I’m going about this backwards. Maybe I should get a pig…and wrap it in turkey skin.”
“A carcass hanging in the fridge. Covering one animal in the skin of a totally different animal. You’re a serial killer aren’t you? Is there a pit in the basement I should know about, Andie? Is that where you’re keeping all these poor ducks, pigs and turkeys? Lowering them basting butter in a basket?”
“Fine. I’ll stick with the fryer.”
“You’re seriously planning on deep-frying our Thanksgiving turkey?”
Doing her best impression of a bobble head, Andie nodded her head enthusiastically.
“No!” Dale slammed his fist on the table, setting off a small tsunami in Andie’s tea cup. “No, no, no. No, damn you!”
“It’s supposed to be delicious.”
“I don’t care. And what is this thing?” Dale held up a syringe the size of a trombone. “Are we supporting an elephant’s drug habit?”
“It’s a flavor injector. For the turkey.”
“What are you going to inject it with?”
“Blue cheese.”
“For the love of Baby Jesus.”
“And maybe some duck fat.”
“Okay you know what,” Dale said, “this is out of control. It’s a foodpocalypse in this house! And what exactly is Tommy eating?”
Andie glanced at her son at the other side of the kitchen table. “A pumpkin spice gingersnap cupcake with maple cream cheese frosting and cinnamon pudding center. Did you have one? They’re pretty damn good.”
“For breakfast, Andie? Why don’t you just get a funnel and shove handfuls of lard directly down our child’s throat? Or why not just deep-fry everything we eat from now on? Don’t you think that cupcake would be better if it was dipped in batter and fried in a pot of grease?”
“Oh don’t be ridicu…you know what, that sounds good.”
“I’m serious! Look at our son, Andie. It’s like he’s in a food coma over there. He’s not even blinking!”
“Would you relax? It’s the holidays, Dale. You’re supposed to go into a food coma. Take gluttony out of Thanksgiving and what are you left with?”
“Oh I don’t know, Andie, the Pilgrims. You know, the good, decent people who founded this country.” Dale walked into the adjoining kitchen and stood in front of a small portrait of a Pilgrim man on the wall. The man had a bushy black beard and wore a tall hat. An etched brass plate on the painting’s frame read ‘John Alden.’
“And that includes my ancestor, the man who founded this very town, John Alden. These strong, wise men and women came to this country, which was nothing more than a vast wilderness filled with thick shrubbery, wild beasts, and half-naked natives, and they turned it into a great nation. With profound courage, wisdom, and industriousness they paved over the shrubbery, they put the beasts in zoos, and they made everyone cover their crotches with cotton. That is what Thanksgiving is all about.”
“The Pilgrims, Dale? Seriously? Men with belt buckles on their hats and shoes, women in dreary black and grey dresses, all of them with somber looks on their faces? You call that a holiday? Something to celebrate? I don’t think so. But a mile-high pile of hot delicious food on the table? Now we’re talkin’. Besides, it’s our civic duty to consume as much as we can between now and New Year’s. If we don’t, our economy will tank, people will lose their jobs, crime will go up, and before you know it, people you know and love will end up mugged, raped, and naked in a ditch. All because you wouldn’t eat one measly deep fried pumpkin pudding cupcake. You work for Ferdue, you should know all this.”
“Just because I work in poultry doesn’t mean I think people should gorge themselves on our food. Eat our chicken and turkey products, sure, but do so responsibly. I mean, do you think liquor companies want people to get drunk all the time? Don’t answer that.”
Dale sighed as he walked back to the kitchen. “You know what, I give up. You win. We’ll have deep-fried diabetes with a side of mashed obesity for supper tomorrow. Are you done with the paper?”
“Yep.” Andie pushed The Duxbury Times away from her. “Nothing interesting in there anyway. They didn’t even reprint the Missing poster for my Dad. You just know that if he was a kidnapped perky breasted blonde that his picture would be plastered on the front page for weeks.”
“Yeah well it’s a real shame Silas isn’t a perky breasted blond.”
Andie sighed. “Yeah.”
Dale drummed his fingers on the paper. “So, uh, nothing else interesting in here, eh?”
“Nope.”
“No fascinating articles on the recent discovery of a three-hundred year-old diary that was written by a certain founding father who shares our last name?”
“Oh. Your article.”
“Did you read it?”
Andie quickly looked away from Dale and stared at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. “I wish I could read people’s tea leaves. I wonder what mine say? I think they say that this is going to be the bestest Thanksgiving ever.”
Dale crossed his arms. “You didn’t read it, did you?”
“I was saving it for later. Like dessert.”
“Or like death!” Dale snatched the paper from the table. “I don’t ask you to be genuinely interested in the work I do with the Preservation Society. All I ask is that you pretend to give a crap about my hobbies and my heritage. That’s all a man needs. The illusion of significance.”
Dale looked at his wife for a moment and then bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “See how easy it is?”
Dale grabbed The Duxbury Times and leaned against the kitchen counter. He flipped to the back of the paper. On the last page, in the left bottom corner, there was a short article with the headline ‘Historical Society Makes Rare Find, by Dale Alden.’
Dale quietly read to himself.
“With Thanksgiving Day arriving tomorrow, your friends at The Duxbury Historical Preservation Society are pleased to announce a momentous discovery. While shifting through the town archives last week, Society President Dr. Theodore “Mayflower” Jenkins found a leather-bound diary at the bottom of a chest that was filled with old shipping records. The diary is that of John Alden, one of the original passengers on the Mayflower, and a founder of Duxbury. As the language and handwriting are both difficult to understand, Dr. Jenkins, who holds a PhD in linguistics, is currently translating the diary into modern English. For example, the unknown Native American word ‘Auwaog’ appears throughout the text, and much research will have to be done to find its meaning. As there are only two other known accounts of the first Plymouth Thanksgiving—both of which are very brief—Alden’s diary promises to offer fascinating insights into what daily life was like for the Pilgrims as they planted the seeds that eventually blossomed into the America we know today. Dr. Jenkins—”
“Oh speaking of Jenkins,” Andie interrupted, “he called when you were in the shower.”
“Oh good. He must be done transcribing Alden’s diary. Toss me the phone.”
Dale caught the phone and dialed as Tommy reached for another cupcake.
“Mayflower Jenkins speaking.”
“Morning, Mayflower. It’s Dale. What’s the good news?”
“It’s a goddamn fake.”
Dale swatted away a cupcake that was being shoved in his face by Tommy. “Say again?”
“John Alden’s diary. It’s a bunch of hooey.”
“Are you sure?” Dale asked. “It looked so authentic. It was so…dusty.”
“I was up all night transcribing it. The beginning starts out all right, but it quickly devolves. Some parts of the diary are not only highly improbable they’re downright, well, nutty. I tried to give the author the benefit of the doubt, and I did some research in an attempt to confirm his account. But some things in there are so preposterous that they’re beyond confirmation.”
“What about that word you said was interesting. Auwaog.”
“I did some digging at the library. The Auwaog were a small tribe of Native Americans who lived in Massachusetts. Not much is known about them since they disappeared soon after the Pilgrims landed, most likely due to smallpox. This so-called diary has another theory on what happened to the Auwaog, but it’s so preposterous and disgusting that I don’t care to repeat it. Besides, I wouldn’t want to spoil your holiday supper with such nastiness.”
“Do you think someone planted the diary for us to find?” Dale looked suspiciously at Andie. She winked back at him from over her tea cup. “Some wiseass playing a practical joke perhaps?”
“No, I don’t think so. It was most certainly written in the 1600s. I showed the diary to a friend of mine who’s a document preservationist and she confirmed that. But if it was indeed John Alden who wrote it, then he was either writing fiction or he was completely bonkers. I tend to believe the latter.”
“Now look here, Mayflower. That’s my ancestor you’re talking about.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Dale. Fish don’t talk, men don’t dance with deer, and turkeys are certainly not…hang on, someone’s at the door. I’ll be right back.”
Dale glanced at his son. “Tommy. Tommy.”
“What, Dad?”
“You have frosting on your face.”
Tommy wiped his mouth, completely missing the gobs of frosting on his cheeks and nose. “Did I get it?”
“Yeah you got it.”
“Dale? Hello?”
“I’m here, Mayflower.”
“Dale, I’m going to have to call you back. There’s a strange fowl at my door.”
“A strange foul what? Odor?”
“I’ll call you later. Go ahead and start writing up a retraction for the paper. Toodle loo.”
Dale flipped the phone shut and looked sadly down at the paper. “Toodle loo.”
“Something wrong with your fascinating article?” Andie asked.
Dale flipped the phone back open and dialed. “Yeah, everything.”
“Who are you calling now?”
“Margaret at Duxbury Times.”
“The editor?”
“Yeah.”
A dejected Dale walked into the living room with the phone to his ear. Andie shrugged and turned up the volume on the kitchen TV. A new cooking show was on. On screen was a silver-haired Southern woman wearing a bright orange shirt.
“Hey yall! Today I’m makin’ my favorite Thanksgiving side dish, Buttermilk Biscuit Sweet Potato Bread Pudding with caramelized bacon sprinkles and hot custard cream sauce!”
Andie and Tommy’s eyes met. Their prayers had been answered.
* * *
The old black rotary phone on Margaret’s desk rang, shaking in its cradle like a child having a seizure.
No one answered the phone at The Duxbury Times that morning. It kept on shaking and ringing on top of Margaret’s unattended desk.
Unattended, unless you count Margaret’s body, which lay beneath the desk, facedown and motionless on the floor. Her grey hair was a frazzled mess, her glasses shattered on the floor in front of her, and her lifeless eyes bulged in their sockets. Wrapped tightly around Margaret’s inflamed and bleeding neck was a pair of nunchucks.
Outside Margaret’s office, in the empty writers room, a man wearing all black was reading Dale’s article in the Times. He crushed the paper into a ball, threw it into the air, and then sliced it to pieces with a sword. Behind him, another man in black was calmly pouring gasoline over everything in the office.
And as the flames rose it was difficult to hear anything over the crackle and pop, but if you listened closely enough you would swear you heard the sounds of some light, intermittent gobbling.
* * *
Dale shrugged as he hung up the phone, and returned to the kitchen, where Andie was reading his article.
“That’s funny, she didn’t answer.”
With a barely suppressed smirk, Andie said, “Maybe she was dealing with all the fans calling in for you.”
“Yeah I guess so.”
“Hey maybe The Boston Globe will pick up the story!”
“Well they might of before, but not now. Wait a second.” Dale squinted at Andie. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Me? Never.”
“Look,” Dale said, “if you thought the article was really lame you should tell me.”
“I thought you wanted the illusion of significance?”
“I did. But now I’m thinking I could use some constructive criticism. It might prevent me from making mistakes in the future. Mistakes that make me and the Preservation Society look like damn fools.”
“Okay if you say so. Here it goes. Your article was a bit…mind-numbingly dull, you know? But not necessarily in bad way.”
Dale’s jaw clenched.
“I just don’t think anyone cares enough about the history of Thanksgiving to read an entire article about it,” Andie explained. “It would have been better if you talked more about what the Pilgrims ate at the first Thanksgiving and less about what they did. Like if you found an old Pilgrim cookbook! Now that would be newsworthy. I’d love to know how they made sweet potato casserole back then. Like, did they put marshmallows on top?”
“Of course they didn’t!”
“But how do we know for sure? These are the kinds of
questions people want answered, Dale. I mean, what’s more important? The food we eat? The bread of life? Or boring old John Alden’s lame diary, which is probably pages and pages of him going on about whether he should wear grey or brown pantaloons to church.”
Dale started to shake.
“Dale? Dale? Oh Christ.”
“I knew it. You think my family’s history is a joke. Heck, you think this whole country’s history is a joke! We are the mighty trees that grew from their seeds, Andie. Remember that!”
“Oh come on.”
Dale marched into the living room and ripped the portrait of John Alden off the wall. He kissed it, put it under his arm, and headed for the stairs.
Andie called out to him. “You’re not going upstairs to make out with that, are you?”
Dale did an about face, stormed back into the kitchen, opened his mouth to say something to Andie, and then froze. Through the window he saw the cops poking around in his backyard.
Andie padded up beside him.
“What’s wrong?”
Dale eyed the window significantly.
Andie looked out to see one cop peering into their shed, another one trying, and failing, to climb their tree with a knife between his teeth, and a third cop lying on the grass at Judy’s feet.
“What in the world is Judy doing?” Andie asked.
* * *
Judy fanned the pale face of Officer Gilly with a large novelty sombrero. Little did anyone know that the faint smile on her tear-stained face came from a memory of her now dead husband wearing that same sombrero over fifty years ago while making love to her on their honeymoon. Did she really shout “Fuck me, Senor” over and over? Oh my, she certainly did.
“It’s okay, Officer,” Judy said, “it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I reacted the same way when I first saw him up there.”
Gilly brightened up a bit. He had just vomited all over Judy’s feet and was feeling kind of down about it.
“You did?”
“I sure did.”
While Gilly and Stitch shared about as tender a moment as two people could possibly share while admitting they both just threw up, Dale was in the kitchen losing his shit. He hopped around and shook his hands like a little girl.