“Oh, it blew up,” said Mom in the most genial voice.
There was silence on the other end for a very long time. Then the receiver exploded with all the fury Aunt Priscilla’s angry words could muster.
Guster didn’t feel like hearing it, so he hung up the phone as quickly as he could. A minute later, Mom did too. She was grinning from cheek to cheek when she came into the kitchen.
Mention of the plane made Guster wonder — what had happened to Braxton and the Buttersmiths? It pained him that his friends had been lost at sea.
As the summer wore on, Guster could not help but feel changes at the farmhouse, all happening right under his feet. Henry Junior started saying real words like “No” and “Yucky.” Zeke decided to visit the dairy to see where milk really came from. Mariah was determined to get her pilot’s license one day.
Mom seemed the most different of all. She moved about the kitchen more easily now. As a gesture of goodwill, Felicity had sent Mom home from France with all of her published works, as well as a few of her secret recipe books. They took a special spot on a shelf above the stove, covered in blue and red canvas with golden letters. Sometimes, when Mom approached a new recipe that she did not understand, Guster could overhear her muttering to herself in the kitchen, “Mixed not by the hand that pleases for wealth, but by the hand that nourishes for life —”
Mom seemed to have more of a knack for cooking now; maybe it was because she had cooked with her hero and seen a real pro at work. Or maybe it was because she had been the one to make the greatest recipe of all time. Guster could still taste the dirty corn fed to the chickens Mom used in her casseroles, or the foul rain that fell on the almond trees, but there was something different about her meals now. A new confidence and conviction that Guster could taste.
On certain nights that summer, when it was late, Guster would tiptoe down to the kitchen and sit under the window where he could stare at the moon. He would take the eggbeater with him and wind its crank back and forth, the silvery glow of moonbeams shining over its metal gears. It was at those times that an incredible amount of stillness filled his heart as he remembered the most delicious spoonful he had ever tasted. Sometimes, it was with sadness. Always, it was with fondness.
He knew, ever since he’d found the eggbeater in the wreckage of the kitchen, that such nights could not last: the time would come to bury the eggbeater. In the middle of July, he wrapped it in an old tablecloth and locked it in a metal box. He scratched the words “When all men make peace, this shall be their dessert” into the side of the metal, because it was something Archedentus would say. Then he lowered the box down the abandoned well in the backyard.
On his way back to the house, a switch flipped inside his mind, soft as a whisper, as the memory of a single, subtle taste from the Gastronomy of Peace returned to him. It was a tiny taste — a taste he’d almost overlooked in the soufflé’s myriad of flavors. It had been faint among so many rich ingredients, like a single voice in a crowd, or an ant calling from a leaf on a tree across the canyon — faint, but true. It was a taste as real as the Johnsonvilles; it was the taste of the farmhouse; it was the taste of Mom’s fingertips as she cracked eggs or sprinkled sugar. It was the taste of her sweat, as she labored to give them their daily bread. It was the taste of one who had created his life. A taste he would have taken for granted, had it not been mixed with the soufflé.
The memory of the tiny taste grew, day by day, as did Guster’s craving for it. He wanted it; he needed to taste again from the hand that had made it.
Finally, at the end of that summer, Mom pulled a loaf of home-baked bread from the oven. It looked too dry and heavy, but Guster thought he could smell a hint of something in it — the touch of his mother’s hand. “Can I have a slice?” he whispered to her.
She gave it gladly. It was delicious; it sustained him; he had another, and then another. For the first time he could remember, his tiny belly was full. And he never felt more at peace. From then on, he wanted more.
A week before school started, Guster lounged on the porch after one of Mom’s hearty lunches when a plane buzzed overhead. Minutes later a sleek black car pulled up in front of the farmhouse. Guster looked up from the checkers game he and Zeke were playing to see who was driving it.
An old man dressed in a dark suit with a twinkle in his eye stepped out. “Is your mother home?” he asked.
“Braxton!” cried Guster. He and Zeke rushed to hug him.
The old pilot patted the boys on the back as he followed them into the house, a picnic basket slung over one shoulder.
“I came as soon as I could,” he said. “The Buttersmiths took me to the mainland after they woke up from their naps. They send their greetings.”
A little piece of Guster mended itself back together. He never thought he’d see Braxton again. And from the sound of it, Torbjorn and Storfjell had gotten home safely too.
“After Ms. Casa took control of Casa Brand Industries again, she hired me to be her personal pilot. We let bygones be bygones and all,” he told them as soon as they were seated at the kitchen table. He laughed. “She sure made a killing on the documentary about the Cult of Gastronimatii and the story of the great Archedentus that aired on her show. That alone rocketed her back into the limelight and won over her fans. I don’t know if anybody believes it, but they eat it up anyway. She never mentioned the Gastronomy of Peace. So no one knows the full story,” he said, winking at Guster.
“Nor does she know, that I’ve been saving this for you,” He set the picnic basket on the table. “A gift,” he told Mom, sliding it toward her.
Mom opened it. Astonishment crossed her face. Inside were a few shavings of rich, dark chocolate. Guster recognized the smell immediately.
“Mr. Arrivederci is none the worse for wear about him and Ms. Casa’s arrangement, especially after he found out she wasn’t the thief. She supplies him with a small amount of sugar every year, since she knows where to get it. In return, he supplies her with some of his special chocolate from the vault. For the life of him, he can’t figure out what makes Felicity’s sugar so much better than anything he’s ever tasted,” Braxton said, grinning. He chuckled. “I think you and I both know the answer to that.”
“Which brings us to this here,” he said, motioning to the chocolate. “Not exactly the One Recipe, but if you add a few ingredients to these ol’ Dark Milk Bricks, Mabel, I’m sure you can whip something delightful up.”
“This stuff’s worth a million dollars a pound,” said Mom. Her eyes lit up. “You mean it Braxton?”
“I do,” he said, nodding. “There are always a few extra shavings left over here and there from Felicity’s work.”
Mom took the basket, chopped the chocolate into bits, and emptied them into a metal bowl where she mixed it with cookie dough. She took a small vial of vanilla extract from a necklace around her neck, unscrewed it, and added a few drops. Then she dropped a dozen spoonfuls of dough onto a metal sheet and baked them until a warm, near-perfect aroma held the kitchen in its arms. Mom opened the oven and removed the fresh chocolate chip cookies a few minutes later.
The family ate their cookies on the porch in silence, engulfed by the magnificent flavor of the chocolate that so few had known.
Braxton promised that, from then on, he would come once a year, at the end of every summer, to bring fresh ingredients and news from Torbjorn and Storfjell.
Zeke said with mouth full of awe that he would never tease his sister again. Mariah hummed to herself, and Henry Junior cooed softly. Henry Senior was flabbergasted. They savored each bite carefully, until all the cookies were gone, and one by one, they went inside to ponder the things they had tasted. It was a glorious night on the farm.
Guster and Mom did not leave the porch for hours. They sat, licking the last bits of chocolate from their fingertips. The night crept up, and the fireflies began to glow. It got quiet, and Mom asked Guster a question, “Do you think the world will ever be ready to taste the Gastronom
y of Peace?”
Guster did not know what to say. He was a little surprised that his mother would ask him such a question. Archedentus had probably wondered the same thing before he disappeared, centuries ago. “I certainly hope so, Mom,” said Guster. Whatever happened to the world, whatever came of it, for that moment, it didn’t matter. Then and there — with Mom, with the Johnsonvilles, on the farm — he had never felt such a full measure of peace.
Further perilously delicious adventures for Guster and the Johnsonvilles coming soon in:
EVERTASTER — The Delicious City
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In between books, Adam Glendon Sidwell uses the power of computers to make monsters, robots and zombies come to life for blockbuster movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean, King Kong, Transformers and Tron. After spending countless hours in front of a keyboard meticulously adjusting tentacles, calibrating hydraulics, and brushing monkey fur, he is delighted at the prospect of modifying his creations with the flick of a few deftly placed adjectives. He’s been eating food since age 7, so feels very qualified to write this book. He once showed a famous movie star where the bathroom was. Adam currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter where he can’t wait to fall into the sea.
CONNECT WITH ADAM GLENDON SIDWELL ONLINE:
Website: www.evertaster.com
Facebook Page: www.facebook.com/Evertaster
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