Baker's Blues

by Judith Ryan Hendricks

  We sit for a few minutes without talking. Then she smiles.

  “About the firewood, then?”

  “Well…it was fall when I moved up there, and it was starting to get cold at night. I discovered that this cute little house I’d rented had no heater. Just a wood stove…so I called and ordered a half cord of wood and this guy came to deliver it…and he looked awful.”

  “Awful?”

  “He had really long hair. Long, wet hair, filthy baseball cap, grungy clothes. And he smelled like dirty socks. Of course he was delivering wood all day in the rain, but still…I told him later he looked like the psycho killer handyman…Anyway, then he offered to come in and show me how to use the wood stove—”

  “Did you let him?”

  “Do I look that stupid?”

  The kettle begins to whistle, and her head falls back and she laughs, a true laugh.

  We spend the evening at the kitchen table. When the tea is gone, I brew another pot; when the candles burn down I get two more. I tell her the stories I thought I’d forgotten. Our first dinner at Lofurno’s. How he drove me to the hospital in the snow when I had appendicitis. I tell her how pissed off I was when he left for Alaska, the song he wrote about the bakery closing, “Queen Street Gentrification Blues,” the night he climbed up to the roof to cut down the bakery sign for my partner, Ellen. Even the disastrous dinner with Suzanne.

  I talk till I’m hoarse and I’ve run out of candles and we’re both awash in tea and red-eyed from laughing and crying and not sleeping. Now I’ll spend what’s left of the night going to the bathroom, but it’s worth it, the way she hangs on every word. It’s suddenly clear to me that this is all she really ever wanted. Not an analysis of his depression or a blow-by-blow account of our disintegrating marriage. She just wanted to know about her father. Who he was and how he lived in the time before she met him.

  Wednesday morning she’s up, showered and dressed before I even put feet to floor. I fix myself an espresso and find her sitting on the patio, combing out her hair like windblown silk. Her suitcase waits by the door.

  “I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon.”

  “I’ll come back if you’ll have me. I can’t fly home for every school break.”

  “Maybe you could come for Thanksgiving.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Charles runs out, flopping across her feet in a futile bid to prevent her departure. She combs her fingers through his coat.

  “Lovely, isn’t it? The way animals make you feel adored, even after you’ve completely stepped in it.”

  I pull up a chair and set my cup on the umbrella table.

  “Think of it as getting a lot of prerequisite bad stuff out of the way early. So you can move on.”

  “Yes, the question is move on to what.”

  “To everything. Your life. Your right livelihood—”

  “If I even have a right livelihood.”

  “Of course you do. You’ll find it and it will become your anchor. You won’t be able to imagine doing anything else.”

  She laughs. “So why is it that everyone tells me I’ll find someone else, and you tell me I’ll find work?”

  “You will absolutely find someone else, too. Someone wonderful. But work is where you find yourself. That comes first.”

  We both smile at the same moment, and she leans over to put her arms around me.

  twenty-nine

  By 1:20 PM I’m leaving Anacortes on WA Highway 20 spur, driving west along the water towards the ferry terminal, windows down, CD player blasting “Hotel California.” The Orcas ferry doesn’t leave till 3:30, but the lines are long on summer afternoons, and I’m taking no chances. When I pull up to the ticket booth, I turn off the music.

  The agent casts an approving glance down the length of the Elky and smiles. “Nice ride,” she says. “Where to?”

  She runs my credit card, tells me to get in Lane # 5 and adds, “You’ve got a little wait, but it’s good that you’re early. We’ve been running full all day.”

  I park the truck and clip Charles’ leash to his collar, even though he clearly feels it’s unnecessary, and we head over to the snack bar. Then with a latte for me and a paper cup of water for him, we head for the narrow strip of beach where people are walking their dogs. Even on the hottest summer day the breeze carries a freshening chill, and today I can just make out the ice cone of Mt. Baker through the haze. Cormorants perch on pilings, spreading their wings to dry, gulls and terns call and dive and soar.

  While I watch the birds, Charles scrutinizes a pair of retrievers and a Daschund puppy, investigates various items, alive or otherwise, littering the strand. He’s going to smell like seaweed or worse for the rest of our journey, but today I don’t mind. I reach in my jacket pocket for my phone to take a picture of him and then realize I left it in the truck.

  I’m tired. Even Charles is tired, and he hasn’t done anything but ride shotgun for four days. I could have done it in three, but we both like to get out and stretch every few hours, so we probably hit every rest stop between L.A. and Portland. And now, after four days, here we are…where the road ends.

  It came to me after Skye left for Davis…the idea for a road trip. I was planning to fly up to have a look at the house and scatter Mac’s ashes. But why not drive the Elky?

  It’s been a good trip in spite of a few small glitches—I’m embarrassed to say I ran out of gas on the 17-Mile Drive. Our motel in Eureka was the scene of a high school soccer tournament awards banquet and a bunch of teenagers partied all night long. We had to have the wheels balanced in Eugene. Nothing terrible, but I’m ready to be on the island.

  By the time Charles lets me know he’s ready to head back to truck, the ferry lanes are full, and cars are lined up from the toll booth back towards the highway. It’s easy to spot the Elky by the little cluster of people—mostly guys—standing around checking it out. A few of them say hi or just smile and say “nice truck” before they drift away. If I was a guy they’d want to hang around and talk cars, but they probably imagine—correctly—that I don’t know anything about the mechanical stuff. Or maybe they think the man who owns the truck will be showing up soon.

  I rub Charles down with his old towel, he hops in ahead of me and we settle in to wait. In the distance I can see a ferry just clearing Fauntleroy Point on Decatur Island and, even though I know it’s too early to be ours, the sight of it causes something to rise in my chest, like bubbles in a glass of champagne.

  Then I notice the blinking light on my phone announcing a missed call. When I punch up recent calls, the top number jumps out. Rafferty’s Café. I sit and look at my phone till the display goes dark.

  For the last few weeks I’ve debated calling Alex. He is, after all, a good friend. It would be perfectly natural to call and casually mention that I’ll be on the island for…awhile. And yet…I’m reluctant to stir things up. I don’t want any expectations—his or mine. Or maybe I’ve just been afraid to find that my imminent arrival elicits only polite disinterest on his end. In any case, I’d already made up my mind to come. So I postponed the call. And the longer I waited, the more impossible it seemed. And then I was leaving, and it seemed not only impossible, but pointless. I’d be there in four days. I figure whatever we need to say to each other will be said in good time. Or not.

  But now the little blue light on my phone is blinking at me insistently. I look at Charles and he returns my gaze noncommitally.

  Before I can start over-thinking it, I hit the call button.

  When he answers I say, “Did you know I was thinking about you?”

  “No. But I was hoping. Actually, I was just calling to give you some news.”

  My heartbeat slows to a thud and I wait, expecting to hear that he’s getting married. Or selling the café and moving to Hawaii.

  “I’m going to be a grandfather.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said when Dustin told me.”

  “Wait. I thought
Dustin was starting Stanford this month.”

  “Chris—his girlfriend—is pregnant. Both mothers are having a meltdown…I just got back from Seattle last night.”

  “Oh…” I sit for a minute, picturing the slender, serious boy who delicately lifted sheets of pasta out of the machine, now a young man with a baby on the way.

  “I was trying to talk them into waiting till Christmas break to get married. They’re both eighteen, so they’re going to do what they want…”

  “Which is…?”

  “Get married, go to school, have a baby…like, oh, no problem.” He sighs.

  “So, Alex, what were you doing at eighteen?”

  “Working the line at some dive café in the International District. Getting drunk, getting stoned.” He sighs again. “Getting married.”

  “And you made it through okay.”

  “That’s still up for debate. I just didn’t want him to be stupid like I was. He had everything going for him. Which is what I told him.”

  “I bet that made him feel good. Like he was a has-been at eighteen.”

  “Yeah. That’s when he told me to fuck off.”

  “Well, I have some news, too.”

  “Like what?

  His words are drowned out by the blast of a ferry horn.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “Um…the ferry.”

  “What ferry?”

  “Anacortes. That’s my news. I’ll be there about five.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you call me?”

  “How about I buy you dinner—”

  “Damn it to hell, Morrison.”

  “And I can tell you about my plan to make bread up here in the summers.”

  “How does that work?”

  “We can discuss it at dinner. Okay?”

  The silence is long.

  “Okay,” he says finally. “But I’ll cook.”

  “Geez, Alex, don’t you want to relax?”

  “Nah. Park on the street and come around to the patio door.”

  “There’s just one problem…I’ve got Charles with me.”

  “Who?”

  “Charles. My dog.”

  “Does he eat burgers?”

  “Medium rare, no salt. But can he come in? We’ve been on the road four days and I hate to leave him in the truck.”

  There’s a pause and then the laugh I remember so well. “He won’t be the first illegal in my kitchen.”

  At 4:45 in the gold and blue afternoon the M/V Elwha bounces in slow motion against the Orcas Village ferry landing and the ramp clangs down.

  Charles is standing on his hind legs in the passenger seat, nose pressed against the glass, watching people scramble to their cars. When I put down my window to inhale that peculiar, specific combination of fresh salt air and diesel fumes, the sounds wash in along with it—the noise of car engines turning over, people talking, laughing, music. The atmosphere is electric, like a party about to happen.

  After the pedestrians are cleared—the hikers, cyclists wheeling their bikes, a few guys wearing their kayaks on their heads, then the motorcycles—finally the AB removes the blocks from the tires of the car in front of me and the driver edges forward. My turn. I release the parking brake, let out the clutch, and follow him down the ramp, joining the parade on Horseshoe Highway.

  I drive slowly, drinking in the familiar winding road, lined with blackberry brambles, wild sweet pea vine and delicate umbels of Queen Anne’s Lace. We dip into shadow, then rise into a bright meadow where horses graze. Past the farms of Crow Valley, past the golf course. The ramshackle barn painted over each spring by successive graduating classes from Orcas High School, layer upon layer, till it seems the paint is all that’s holding it together, an archeology of hopes and dreams.

  Now the road begins to climb, and the blue water of East Sound is suddenly visible through the trees on our right. Nose out the open window, Charles is gathering in the island scents. I reach over to rub that little white patch on his chest.

  “Here we are, Charlie. I think you’re going to like this place.”

  September

  The campsites are empty now, and the air is still except for a few gulls, swooping and diving. The high bank above me is thick with Madrone trees. He always liked their twisted red branches and peeling, papery bark.

  A sudden shadow of motion between boulders catches my eye—otters! Two of them. I get just a glimpse of their pointed little tails as they disappear into the water.

  I sit on a half-submerged rock, pull the tin box out of my daypack and set it next to me. Inside is the plastic bag of “cremains.” It doesn’t look like ashes, more like coarse sand, granular bits of gray, black, white, brown.

  So, Mac…here we are, saying goodbye again. As many times as we’ve done it, shouldn’t it be getting easier?

  I unzip the top and stick my hand in, withdrawing a fistful. Look at it. Rub it back and forth against my palm. I’ve always imagined that we all possess something tiny but indestructible at our core, an essence. Like the germ of wheat. Whatever that essence may be, it’s not here. How could this handful of grit ever have been Mac? His eyes, his smile, his voice.

  I tilt my hand over the water and open it. The heaviest bits sink, the rest floats on top in a little mass, jostled by the water’s motion but reluctant to disperse. Some of it clings to my skin.

  Another handful.

  You know I wouldn’t change anything, don’t you? If I had to choose, I’d still choose being with you. No matter what came after.

  I lose track of how many times I repeat the motion…gathering, sifting…until suddenly the bag is nearly empty. There’s a tightness in my chest, a knot stuck in mid throat, a voice in my head. Oddly, the voice isn’t Mac. It’s Gabriel Kenmore Cleveland.

  You get one great dog in your life, darlin’, and one true love.

  All due respect to Gabe’s granddaddy, I’m not sure that’s true. And even if it is, don’t you still have to go on as if every dog is your one great dog and every love is your one true love?

  The wind gusts, chilling me through my jacket. I shake out the bag over my hand, close my fist and plunge it into the icy water. I sit there till the cold begins to burn and my fingers grow numb and stiff.

  When I finally uncurl them, the pain makes me cry.

  Acknowledgements

  While I was doing research for Baker’s Blues, I kept thinking about that Nietzsche quote, “And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

  There were a lot of mornings when I woke up with an unfocused sense of dread, of sorrow, of regret. I didn’t know why, I only knew how I felt. Call me a slow learner, but eventually I realized that I was spending my days reading books about depression, talking to people who were depressed, trying to imagine what it would feel like. And after a while, in a very small way, I began to find out.

  This is not to say I experienced anything like full blown depression—simply that I now have a profound respect and empathy for people who do. And also for the people who live with them. So I’m grateful to the writers of those books, and the people who shared their stories with me on the depression message boards. And the people who live with depressives and somehow manage to hold things together.

  Thanks also to Jo-Ann Mapson, trusted writerfriend (yes, it’s one word) and first reader, and her husband Stewart Allison, who designed the beautiful cover, for their help and encouragement in bringing this project to completion.

  For educating me in great detail about wood-fired bread ovens, I’m indebted to my friend Stewart Brittner, whom I’ve never met in person, but with whom I’ve exchanged many an email.

  And to Susan Thomas, my best foodie friend, who’s never too busy to talk about the intricacies of bread and baking. Okay, any kind of food, really.

  And of course to my husband Geoff who still makes my world go around.

  About the Author

  Armed with a degree in journalism and a short attention sp
an, Judith Ryan Hendricks worked as a journalist, copywriter, computer instructor, travel agent, waitress and baker before turning to fiction writing. Her work has been translated into 12 languages and distributed in more than 16 countries. She lives in New Mexico with husband Geoff and dog Blue.