Poisoned Soil: A Supernatural Thriller (25 page)

Rose paused and read the last sentence slowly in her own voice.

You’re eating at your own risk
.

“He’s just covering his assets,” John said with a wink, as he elongated the first syllable of “assets.”

“Kinda takes the fun out of it,” Rose quipped. “Sounds pretty scary, actually.”

“Relax, honey. I don’t think Nick Vegas would do anything to risk his reputation,” John said. He pulled the chair out for Rose and took her hand as they walked down the stairs toward the garage.

***

John pulled the Lexus IS 350C around the gravel circular driveway that fronted the antebellum home, and parked after passing two dozen cars and two television vans that had already arrived. He walked around to open the door for Rose, a chivalrous act that Rose had resisted for years before finally relenting to John’s loving gesture. She smiled and took John’s hand as he helped her from the car. They walked, hand-in-hand, up the graded gravel drive and glanced into one of the vans as they passed. Three technicians were busy on high-end computers rendering real-time video of the visitors’ arrival and the chefs’ preparations. A cameraman stood at the base of the steps at the entrance and trained his camera on the two of them as they approached.

Don’t trip!
Rose said to herself as a cameraman filmed her climbing the stairs of the front porch.

“You okay there, hon?” John asked.

Rose smiled nervously, but continued looking at the stairs. “Just don’t like these cameras,” she whispered.

John patted her hand to ease her as they arrived on the front porch.

“What kind of house is this?” Rose asked as they stood in the breezeway. John began to answer, but a kindly face at the top of the steps asserted itself.

“Why, this here’s a dogtrot, ma’am,” Wade Ferry said. “Or a possumtrot, if you prefer.” He smiled at John and extended his hand. “Howdy, John.”

“Hi, Wade,” John said, shaking Wade’s hand enthusiastically. “Thanks so much for the invite, really.” John looked to Rose. “Wade, you remember my wife, Rose, don’t you?”

Rose extended her hand and smiled at Wade, knowing him as both a kind man and an investor in John’s company.

“Well, sure I do!” Wade said. “I never forget the face of an angel.” Wade was grinning ear to ear as he took Rose’s hand and kissed it.

An image of Rhett Butler flashed in Rose’s mind. She smiled, but didn’t blush. It was a cliché response, but an appropriate one just the same, she figured. And it was a nice thing to say.

“Why do they call it a dogtrot?” Rose asked.

Wade turned and pointed his arm through the breezeway that ran from the front porch to the back porch. “Dogs were free to just trot down this here breezeway,” Wade said. “Unless you lived out in the sticks. In that case possums might run through here so some folks call these homes possumtrots.”

Rose smiled in amusement.

“Of course this is a modernized dogtrot,” Wade continued as he pointed out the accordion glass doors framed in rich mahogany that could be closed to secure the breezeway and protect the six-inch heartwood pine floors that ran throughout the house. The enclosed rear porch had both skylights and ceiling fans that made sitting comfortable in the cushioned wicker furniture. The rear porch was crowded with the members of 50-Forks who had been invited to gather two hours earlier for their business discussion and introductions.

“Well,” Wade said, “Mighty happy you both could make it. Y’all go now and enjoy yourselves.”

John and Rose smiled and walked into the breezeway, taking in the lingering aromas of roasted meat and, Rose thought, candied yams. To the right and left were the main rooms of the 1830’s home. The entrance to each had been enlarged to impart both the feel of separation and of being in one large room that swept the house.

In the breezeway all eyes were directed to a centerpiece table. High above the table hung four beautifully cured whole hams, each hanging by its black hoof. The star attraction on the table below was a whole roasted pig’s head on a platter, eyes and teeth intact. The platter was stylishly decorated with forest flora and acorns from the north Georgia mountains. On an adjoining table behind the head was a fifth ham resting on a Salamanca, hand carved and made by Nick’s own father. In true Spanish artistic design, the two-inch hardwood base of the Salamanca itself had been carved in the shape of a ham leg. A heavy, stainless steel open ring, secured to an arm that rose and curved a foot higher than the base, formed a cradle for the ham hoof. The butt portion of the ham rested on its own hardwood cradle on the opposite end.

About thirty guests stood around the table and in the breezeway, watching a very serious man expertly shave razor thin pieces of the ham with a long knife. Nick Vegas walked up beside him as he did so and held court as cameras zoomed in.

“This is an art form!” Nick began. “The man who wields the knife has to know precisely how to do this, how to shave thinly along the grain to extract maximum flavor. In Spain this man is known as a Maestro Secadero and he oversees the entire process of curing, grading, and slicing the ham,” Nick added as he flashed his smile for the cameras.

By now, both the front and rear porches had emptied and Nick was surrounded in the packed breezeway by almost fifty guests, each of whom, other than John and Rose, had written a check for $75,000 to join Nick’s exclusive 50-Forks Sales & Marketing group. “Look how thinly he slices it,” Nick said, as he rolled his arm toward the ham in the manner of a maître d’.

Nick held up a translucent slice of ham and looked through it. Then, he rolled it in the shape of a cigar and savored it, kissing his fingers to his lips as he rolled his eyes. “Mmmmm!” he said, as he waved for his servants to plate small samples for each guest. “Sliced in this manner, at room temperature, the marbled ham will literally start to melt. Go on, taste it for yourself.”

“Is this mold on the side?” one woman asked, pointing to a white powder that lined the edge of some of the slices. “Is it safe to eat?”

Nick smiled reassuringly.

“Yes and it’s fine to eat,” he said. “You’ll be getting a lot of mold tonight. We have local, raw milk Camembert cheese featured in the first course and a local, organic blue cheese we’ll use for the dessert course.” The woman and a few other guests took the slice close to their nose first and inhaled the meat and mold as if their nostrils could instantly confirm Nick’s stamp of approval. The cameras panned and zoomed, capturing the expressions of the guests, who both wanted to act as if they were the recipients of culinary bliss for the camera and, literally, were overcome with the explosion of delicate and complex flavors on their palates. The phrases uttered through the mouthfuls of one of the world’s most prized meats varied, but conveyed the same satisfaction.

“Oh, wow!” one woman exclaimed as her husband simply mumbled, “Jesus!”

Another lanky man held his mouth open with apparent disbelief at the explosion of flavor. “Holy cow!” He said.

“No, this is no cow,” Nick said with a smile. “It’s a pig!”

The cameras caught the laughing faces as the group discussed the intense flavors and marveled at how very little salt they could taste compared to any ham cured in America. They walked closer to the centerpiece and pointed to the ham leg, asking questions of Nick as if he were a curator at a culinary museum. With everyone intoxicated by the taste of the delicacy on the table, Nick shared his vision for introducing a food culture to Georgia and the southeast.

“These hams, along with Kobe beef and Beluga caviar, are among the most prized foods in the world. The problem is that the
real
Jamón Ibérico de Bellota hams are only available in Spain and not available in the U.S. due to
your
U.S.D.A.” Nick made sure he pronounced the U.S.D.A. as U.S. “
duh
” for the camera, eliciting a roaring response from the group.

“The U.S. duh does allow one company to export a cheap knock off from Spain, and they charge a hundred dollars a pound for that!” Nick said. “But it’s garbage compared to the real thing. You see this black foot? You won’t see that on their ham, as the U.S. duh forbids it to be imported anywhere in America.” Nick pointed to the black hoof that pointed up to the ceiling from the Salamanca. “That black hoof is the only proof that you’re eating the real thing,” Nick added. “That you’re getting the real pata negro or black-footed Iberian pig that grazed freely on acorns, or bellotas as we say in Spain.”

The guests hung on each of Nick’s words and marveled at the dark, ruby red slices of ham, seeing it not merely for what it was (the leg of a pig) but rather an exquisite human accomplishment of mankind, in a class with the Egyptian pyramids, Picasso, or even the space shuttle.

“We have taken a beautiful animal, a pig, and made it into so much more. Something far more elevated than what nature created.” Nick said. “We have taken it and created art!”

“I’m not so sure the pig, or P.E.T.A. for that matter, would agree with that assessment, Nick,” one of the unsmiling faces said. Nervous chuckles surrounded the centerpiece as eyes fell to the floor.

Nick turned his gaze to the man and then cast a mischievous smile. “I’m all for P.E.T.A.” Nick said to the shock of his guests. “People Eating Tasty Animals, right?”

The group roared as the camera panned back from the lone vegan in the group to the carnivorous frenzy surrounding the pig’s head.

“If the U.S.D.A. doesn’t allow the black hoof to be imported, then where did these come from?” a woman asked. She was a senior vice president of marketing at IBM, and the $75,000 membership fee to network with so many other high ranking marketing gurus in this intimate setting hadn’t been an afterthought in her multi-billion dollar budget. Nick had known that would be the case for each of the contacts that Wade had cultivated from his executive recruiting days, and that once a tipping point of membership was achieved, everyone would want in. That’s exactly how it had played out, with all ten 50-Forks Clubs selling out within six months, each with its fifty paying members. Using the existing restaurant staff he had in each city, and with virtually no investment in the private meeting homes, Nick would rake in over $37 million dollars in membership fees the first year alone. He could afford to splurge on celebrity keynote speakers and extravagant dinners to create an over-the-top experience.

“Great question,” Nick began. “These hams didn’t come from Spain. They came from Spanish-breed pigs that were acorn-fed and cured right here in the Appalachian Mountains!”

Nick took in the wide eyes of his audience and continued.

“There’s a little island off the coast of Savannah called Ossabaw Island. A few centuries ago, my people, the Spaniards, decided to do a little exploring and came over this way,” Nick said smiling. “They brought pigs with them, the descendants of today’s true Iberian pigs, and left them on the island for the next wave of Spaniards to hunt and eat. At some point we stopped coming, and the pigs learned to thrive on the island on their own. The locals call those pigs Ozzies, short for Ossabaw.”

Nick stood in the center of the room with cameras both focused on him and on the faces of his guests. It was exactly where he liked to be, the center of attention, the focal point of culinary delights and connecting people to what he called
real
food. Not the tasteless garbage that he looked down on in America as people slurped and shoved paper bagfuls of trash into their mouths while driving, thinking they were eating.

“A farmer raised and cured these in the southern Appalachian Mountains,” Nick added, “just like my father did in Spain, and his father before him.” A producer for The Food Channel stood in the back of the room and signaled Nick, indicating they should sit. “Now please, let’s take our seats and enjoy a marvelous dinner.” Nick concluded. “We can talk more during dinner.”

As the members moved to one of the two very long rectangular tables on each side of the house, Rose walked to the centerpiece with John and several others who wanted a final glimpse of the star attraction. Rose zeroed her eyes on the head of the pig, taking in its expression and trying to decide if it had been happy or sad when it lived. She was far from a vegan, but she knew that P.E.T.A. stood for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Certainly any vegan would have sprinted far away from the centerpiece by now, she thought, as she eyed the lonely gentleman who had questioned Nick on the treatment of animals. As she thought of her conversation the day before with Angelica about factory farming, she leaned closer to examine the pig’s head with John and others watching. A cameraman followed her right index finger as it touched right between the pig’s eyes.

“What is this?” Rose asked herself and those around her. They all looked closely at the shape of the letter X that intersected right between the pig’s eyes.

“I dunno,” John said. “Maybe it split there during roasting or something.” He had long been a vegetarian for health rather than for animal cruelty reasons, but John couldn’t hide his grimace at the gruesome incision.

“Looks like someone marked it with a knife,” another man said as he hoisted a glass of champagne to his lips.

“Well,” John said, “I wouldn’t want
that
job! Marking a pig while he was still alive. I mean, look at the tusks coming out of that thing’s mouth. That thing could kill a man, easy.”