Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales & (22 page)

Footnotes

1. Much of this account occurred before the King became the President, but as that makes little difference, we shall refer to him throughout as
the King
.

2. These statements of "... starving" and "... help" were broached in such a roundabout way in the specialized language of emissaries, possibly developed in order not to imply or insult, that we have condensed their expressed observation to seven plain words, so as not to exhaust the paper supply.

3. We are no dog experts, but
something
with sharp teeth and bug-eyes scrabbled at the end of a chain.

4. In saying
We do not eat cheese
the King properly meant
they
, as
we
was known to indulge mightily in cheese, though not the cheese that the emissary had been charged to offload.

5. The story here is modified in the interest of good taste. As told by locals, the stabber is you and the stabbed is your mother-in-law, which shows both a sense of universality and an underdeveloped sense of humour.

6. We, along with the Little Emissary, are outraged to have discovered this obvious case of smuggling. She tried to find out the source but could not, and when one day she came upon the Emissary of the Questionable Corn, he was not, it seems, to blame, though it took him a painful while to convince his hot-tempered accuser.

7. This page of the Little Emissary's journal is terribly confusing, as she first wrote
He gives me a sense of be
and then crossed out
be
and put
me
and then thought
be
was more accurate but wrote
Is that pretentious?
and crossed that out, as
that
seemed pretentious and at this point she was getting terribly confused.

8. In speaking of maybes, it must be noted: This account is true and accurate in every respect with some exceptions in order not to imply or insult, such as possibly the size of the King's dog, the chocolate sprinkles, and the weather. The corn details are absolutely accurate to the last gasp, as is the fact that for the multitudes of Öm, there has never been a summer of Raspberries Romanoff, though they do have a tasteless and popular mother-in-law joke. As for the King, now President, he
does
have a broad, white-toothed smile, but modern Kings and Presidents
do.

The Ocean in Kansas

There was a farmer who lived in Kansas who never forgot that trip to the ocean he took as a little boy. So he planted himself a field of conches so he could hear the sea.

His neighbor liked the idea of hearing the sea, which he had never seen, but he was hard of hearing and couldn't figure where to get those shells, so he planted a field of tall poles, each topped with a shiny red ear trumpet, and they worked so fine that he dragged his rocker out to the porch and thrilled to the sound of whitecaps, breakers, becalmed seas, all at the beck of the wind, soon as he closed his eyes.

Across the highway, the man who owned the only gas station for miles around was partial to the look of them ear trumpets sprouted so flowery from the flat ground. But the two fuel bowsers right in front of his picture window sure obscured the view. So he took them out and was half-delighted, but still couldn't see well enough. He bought himself a spyglass and dragged his sofa right up to the window, and was right tickled. From dawn till even the curved silhouettes merged with the blackness of a moonless night, you could find him stretched out on that sofa, waving the spyglass this way and that following the sway of the ear trumpets in their field.

Since there was nothing to stop for at the gas station any more, the cars and trucks took to whizzing by. The traffic got faster and faster and louder and louder, till after a time, it got downright annoying.

The gas station man walked up to the highway edge, and was nearly blown off his feet by a semi-trailer that had just honked fit to shake the clouds from the sky. The gas station man planted his hands on his hips and thought mighty hard, just how to solve his problem.

Across the highway, the first farmer had wandered out, too, to stand in front of his house by the highway. And so had the second farmer, who scraped his boot against a ragged edge of tar, mighty bothered.

It took a while, but each gradually realized that his misery had company.

"Whad ya think we should do?" they all yelled to one another.

"Cain't hear prop'ly!" they all yelled back.

So eventually they all met in the open space where the bowsers had been.

"Your tractor still work?" the first farmer said to the second farmer.

The second farmer was a might insulted. "Course it does. Didn't you see me plantin the rest of my place out just last week?" The noise had gotten so bad that he'd only just finished covering every square inch of field in ear trumpets, and they still couldn't pick up the ocean well enough to shut out that highway noise. He shot back, though he knew the answer. "How bout your old John Deere?"

"Good as yours at least. But you should know, if you've got your eyes open," the first farmer answered. Because he had been working just as hard, and his fields were now conches from the highway to the farthest fence.

The gas station man was silent. He wasn't no farmer, and had nothing to say.

But the conch man turned to him. "You got that 'CLOSED' sign from when your place sold something?"

The man who used to sell scratched his stubble. "Gotta look for it ... Lemme see." And being that the three of them regarded the ocean builder as the innovator of the neighborhood, the man who used to sell gas wandered off.

The other two waited for five minutes, till he returned with the sign.

"Let's put it up down the road apiece," said the innovator.

And they did.

And then the two with the tractors went back and got them and drove them back and dug the highway up.

That night the three men had a party, each in his own place, hearing, listening, and looking until the looker spied a twister coming but there was no time to tell the listeners, who had their eyes closed.

The man who used to sell gas watched the tornado as it swept the ocean up in a crash of conches, then slipped over to the neighbor's fields and plucked up all them ear trumpets in the scariest, magicalest, glitteringest funnel ever seen.

Then the twister hopped over to the very house where the man with the spyglass watched. With a snap like a thousand candy canes breaking, the twister picked up the house, gave it a twirl, and dropped it just behind the 'CLOSED' sign, plumb in the middle of the highway that was.

Within a month, the farmers replanted. Then the three men worked together to replant the house with the picture window back in its original spot. But it must have been an unlucky season, for the next twister only a day later picked up the house and the watcher in it, and turned them into an even magicaler funnel, this time with no one to watch, as the other two had their eyes closed, entranced by the angry sea.

Monterra's Deliciosa

- 1 -

On special occasions, everyone in a two-hour radius would turn up at Lulu's, the steakhouse on Route 35. It had a parking lot that equally welcomed battered pick-ups or a good harvest's splurge of a Chevrolet sedan, and none of the traffic jams of the big smoke of Cedar Rapids. Red-painted clapboard, Lulu's looked like a small barn—and like a barn, Lulu's had no sign.

You'd have a beer first, settling in your vinyl bench seat; then the fried chicken livers; then the pork with applesauce. Always just an inch-thick slice, grilled, with thick homemade cinnamon-scented smooshed apples heaped on your fork; and those real fluffy mashed potatoes that God designed to make fluffy adipose tissue. For dessert, cherry pie with fresh cherries from the farms all around. Just what people would eat at home—Randy's mother could cook it all just as well, but it wasn't at home, was it?

His first visit was the messiest. He was in a highchair, and his father got spattered with applesauce. Everyone laughed, and Kermit Wilner came over and scooped him up and took him over to his and Velma's booth so Randy's parents could have a romantic night together—their first night out since Randy's grandpa Olof Grossnickle drowned in a grain silo, and the farm became "young Carl's place" (with a lot of unasked-for help from every farmer around).

That was the problem. Everyone was so nice. Everyone always helped everyone else. And everyone was always
there
.

They were there to slap you on the back and ask if you were going to be the baseball player or the farmer of the family. They were there to look thoughtfully but not utter a word, if you did your work but just kept to yourself—Randy's way.

He was a good, studious boy. Both Carl and Eldora granted him that. But with broods of six being the average for every family, it was common that one or two chicks would come out different. Most of the irregulars escaped to Chicago or New York as soon as they could, to work at anything that involved never coming back to the farm. Randy was unusual in that he had his nose pointed in a particular direction from before he could read.

When he wasn't helping to feed the pigs, muck out their yard, pick up the poisoned rats before the dogs ate them, sit with his dad on the combine harvester, help mind the claptrappity corn sheller come harvest-time, or in other ways, pretend to be the farmer he'd rather be torn to shreds by a pack of hunger-frenzied crocodiles than grow up to be, Randy escaped into his books, thoughts, and the kitchen,.

Randy devoured every cooking manual on public loan by the time he was thirteen. He didn't want to raise pigs like his father. He wanted to cook them.

~

October 10, 1968. The TV uncharacteristically on during the day, and the family glued to it, munching popcorn with automated jaws. It was Game Seven—the deciding match of the World Series. Mickey Lolich, the Detroit Tigers' second-best pitcher, had pulled Detroit up from the dead in Game Two, and now it was a duel to the death between him and star pitcher Mike Gibson of the Cardinals. Mike was pitching. "Strike three" had just boomed out over the speakers, which meant that Gibson's arm had just broken his own record. How it would end was too close to call. The final game of the year had always been a family occasion, first gathered around the radiogram, now the TV.

Today also happened to be Randy's 16th birthday, the first day he could legally work. He left the living room while Gibson was winding up for another pitch. A quick stop by his room to pick up a paper grocery bag he'd packed with stuff, and Randy snuck out the back door. He'd left a nice note on his bed, but there was nothing more to say. Good-byes would have embarrassed everybody. In his jacket pocket, he carried his birthday presents—a card signed, "love, everyone", and a hundred dollars. He was a long way walking to anywhere. He stuck out his thumb at the first truck that came down the road, and to his surprise, it stopped.

~

Carl Grossnickle was sad, but not too sad. In a place like Farbold, Iowa, a son like Randy is better away than walking around—an itch everyone is just dying to scratch. Randy's mother Eldora was distraught. That boy could
cook
. Eldora had lived a wonderful life these past years playing hooky from her kitchen every time Randy came through the door and quietly moved her away from the stove. Now she'd have to get back in there, and as far as those darned pies for the Iowa Fair ... Eldora wondered faintly if God was punishing her for her Grand Prize winner (Randy's and her little secret). Randy's sister would be no help. Beverly openly despised cooking but loved the huge combine and could fix engines as well as Carl. She was delighted Randy was gone. God willing, the farm would one day be hers. There was only little Eugene in the way now—and he wanted to be Mickey Mantle.

Carl was secretly glad about Beverly, and thought that Eugene would grow to be the baseball player that Randy looked like he should have turned out to be. But God had his own inscrutable ways, and He had called Beverly to farm. Built like a brick shithouse, but when did that matter when a woman is a good worker? They'd be watching Ed Sullivan, and she'd leave without a word and he'd find her minutes later with a sow about to farrow. She had a sense, just like she would pick an ear of corn, and just know by sucking the milk from a single kernel: it's time to harvest.

It was sad that Randy was gone, but Carl wasn't worried. That boy would do well somewhere in his own world, strange as he was.

~

At first Randy travelled around learning. He'd taught himself to read French perfectly. Had to, he'd decided. When he found a Larousse in the untranslated form in a used book store in Topeka, he began to memorize the thick book's recipes in the same tongue.

He first learned commercial cooking diner-style. As soon as he had the short-order lingo down and knew the repertoire down to the bit of dye that you had to put in the macaroni and cheese, he began to add to the expected menus. Everything made people who'd eaten his food turn the snouts of their cars around to go back to that anonymous feed-up place with the food like nothing else they'd stuck in their faces before. Till the day he decided to call stuff by its proper name.

"What the hell is this?" the owner of Randy's present Diner/Eat Here groused at him when he saw
rillettes aux pommes
paperclipped to the plastic menu as Special for the Day. Randy put a custard cup of something brown on a plate that he filled with fried apples and a mound of mashed potatoes. Albert armed himself with a fork and dug into the cup first. Sausage? The fork wandered to the apples. Then potatoes that didn't taste like no diner potatoes to him. He wasn't gonna let the customers eat this. He thought something over as he chewed. "Randy, boy. You're fired." He put his fork on the counter, and reached in his pocket. A wad of bills came up, big ones. He counted out six, and handed them to Randy. "That's your pay, and to get you to Chicago."

Randy was about to speak, but Albert was reaching for another custard cup, and lifted up his left hand. "Before you go, take the special off. They can have chili. The bus, Randy. Go."

Randy was still rooted to the spot. Albert was ready to get angry till he noticed Randy's eyes. "What's the biggest city you been in, Randy?"

"Here."

Here
was St. Louis. Before Randy had left home, the furthest he'd been was the Cedar Rapids Library.

Albert cursed his soft spot and dug into his pocket again. This time he plonked the wad into Randy's hand, and closed both hands over the boy's. "Go to the Fairchild. It's around the corner from the bus station. They're honest. Buy some cook's clothes from Lowell's. Look 'em up in the phone book. Then find your French restaurants. You're through with diners. Now don't make me mad. Get lost."

~

So Chicago it was. It was in this initially terrifying city that Randy learned that only city people trust eating something—no,
like
to eat something that has a name they can't understand.

He liked the city—the way people don't know you, don't give a damn about you. The hardness of the restaurants. The bitchiness. Who, back home, was bitchy? The kitchen work was unfair, fast, demanding, and when the chef was in a bad mood (which was practically always), look out for your head! Randy soaked up learning like fresh bread does gravy.

Randy was good-looking in a wholesome sort of way. Those clear blue eyes. Pink fresh skin. He got his share of passes, first from the waitresses, then the chefs—but it soon became clear to each one that Randy's lusts lay in food. The making of it. The spoon, the saucepan. The thermometer to gauge the exact temperature. He carried a stopwatch to gauge the exact time.

By the time Randy's twenty-second birthday rolled around, the average television viewer had laughed at Julia Child's little foibles in the kitchen enough that French restaurants should have been better than they were. But they still made French onion soup from warship-sized cans of commercial stock and gluey processed cheese. Sauces were still herbed wallpaper paste, not the delicate reductions that he had taught himself to create back home on his mom's range. Time after time, the chef in Le Something after Le Something Else had more to learn from him than the other way around. He hadn't made much money and had made no friends, so he couldn't set up his own place. He could have gone to one of the schools mushrooming up for aspiring chefs to get a swanky position somewhere, but, really, they were so far below him, that he couldn't bring himself to go just for the piece of paper. Instead, he flew to Mecca: Paris, France.