Jacob’s and my rods, crisscrossed in the truck bed, didn’t slide or fly out on account of their weighty reels. We made sure the lines, tied as taught as a fat corpse’s noose, wouldn’t bird’s nest on us. My translucent Lucky Craft crank bait and his topwater Tennessee cave salamander rattled together in the back as we rolled by our memories from yesteryear. The placid two lane Clarksville Pike insouciantly dragged on, like a harmonica melody in a drought, past the clay pigeon range and maximum security prison on opposing sides of the road, over the opaque Cumberland River filled with log sized catfish and mutated brim, the mile-high trash mounds flooding into it from the neighboring dump, to the uprooted little arrow shaped tin sign faintly reading Lake Marrowbone lily-livered in the face of a massive gateway into Jake’s Country Sausage. I shot my first Benelli and completed my TWRA hunter education program at that range under the instruction of a Charlie Fugua. When my dad was a boy, water skiing on the river with my Aunt Wendy, a yardbird swam aggressively toward them before they frantically motored away. My grandpa, Adolph, lost his pet alligator in that river. Within a week, some bastards of fishermen butchered the thing to hang on the wall at their local watering hole. When we needed a buck we were Holland Bro’s Hauling. We’d wear orange vests and hard hats at the dump when we disposed of a long day’s work. The wobbly arrow pointed to a beautifully barren body of water boasting a shack, no bigger than an outhouse, where we’d ask Mr. Pepper what was biting that day. We’d stick a rusty hook through a piece of raw chicken liver and tie the slimy blood dripping nugget off on an empty jug of Purity sweet acidophilus, then toss that sucker from the john boat. Every Christmas morning, mama made her famous sausage casserole using her grandma’s, our great grandma GiGi’s recipe and of course, spicy sausage processed at Jake’s.
Miles were driven and gone, devoid any traffic related signs or signals until the intersection at Alice Road. Dangling from a lone wire, the malfunctioning light hung like a lantern and flashed red, yellow and green all at once. There were no banners, balloons or indicators of any sort that an establishment existed on Alice Road, but there was one at its dead end. There was a magical place there. The drive is simplex, up and down a paved hilly road, ending at an inviting driveway that split under a hand carved mahogany sign welcoming visitors to Holland Hill.
To the left, there’s the vibrant green field with an Eastern Red Cedar standing alone at its core. Toms strut throughout its pasture, showcasing their glorious beards and awe inspiring spurs. The overripe grapevines form a fragrant maze on the right. Smack dab in the middle of these scenes, the lincoln log Holland Hill Vineyard makes its presence known. There’s decks on every face, hammocks littered by leaves in all the corners and a stone waterfall in the back feeding into an asian carp inhabited pool overlooking the rest of the facility downhill.
Where the driveway split, a steep brick path egresses into the forest winding downward and offering photo opportunities for Lake Marrowbone on the outskirts of the property. The path bottoms out and its bricks transform into a cobblestone bridge, individualized by two boys’ handprints, moving over pristine water and opening up to a whole new sorcerous realm of Holland Hill swallowed by bosomy hills of above that conceal it with their towering trees. Looking left, there’s a crisp valley that seems to have no end. At the outmost edge, its grass meets a flooded timber fit for a watercolor. Here, ceremonies transcend periods of time. Black and white photos, only envisioned in a historic volume on the Old South, come to life. Grooms men in baby blue knickers held up by red suspenders, white button downs and straw homburgs surround their best mate. The father-in-law, dressed to the brim in a cream seersucker suit, gayly walks the bride to be, with her hairdo’s dandelion flickering in the breeze, down the aisle bordered by the spectators’ chairs crafted from Tulip Poplar stumps. Cobblestone foregoes the valley unto Spring Creek Inn, proud home to a variety of occasions and guests, at the center of it all. The shimmering creek runs along its side after traveling under the Beech built bridge. Pictorial peacocks wade across its waters. Playing in the water and turning up stones in search of crawdads, those majestic birds looked prehistoric to a young lad. The oriental gazebo sits on the creek bank. Nearby, former guests’ quotes are engraved on stone benches surrounding the dandified fire pit. Further back, there’s a hundred year old tobacco barn rich with musical history from the farmers who picked their banjos inside where they fired their product. Rudolph-Holland Tobacco Co, transporters of pete moss from Germany to the States, was born and died here in these woods. The grounds are blanketed by an abundance of arrowheads and ancient burial mounds grown into trees from the Chickasaw planting seeds in the chests of their departed. There’s hiking trails every which way on the three wooded hills. Whitetails breath in the honeysuckle aroma, rutting and feasting on the blackberry and rasberry bushes intertwined with barbwire fences in the clearings atop all the peaks.
My nostrils flared taking in all that Holland Hill encompasses, and then a cold sensation was bestowed upon me below my ankles. Was I wading in the creek beside peacocks fanning their deep purple blotched jade feathers? My eyelids lazily rose and I saw where the elephant embroidered, gem crested comforter had ridden up above our feet. Easing out of bed, I slipped into my moccasins at the foot of the bed. I pulled the covers back down around my wife’s feet and tucked them in tight before softly kissing her on the forehead. After scratching all of my morning scratches, working out a kink in my shoulder and walking off the morning wood, I crept downstairs. The sun wasn’t quite up, but the paper had come. I loved this hour, because I could walk to the end of the drive in nothing but my boxers and moccasins without worrying about someone seeing me to pass judgement.
Looking down on the rolled paper at my feet, its bag moist from the morning air, I found peace in hesitancy to pick it up, staring through the blurry bag at the black letters lined up against white space, and drifting back into my dream with thoughts from below the hills, thoughts of her. As steam emitted off the underside of my gonads and out of my boxers, I naturally placed my hands in the putrid pits for warmth and my vision moved upward, to my left then right, noticing the norm that I’d grown accustomed to, that I’d left Holland Hill for. Counting as far as the street’s misty manner allowed me to see, I sprouted fingers from my fist for every porch with a rocking chair and tree with a tire swing until I had no more hand left to count. If it were daytime, there’d no doubt be my littlest and some number of her clones in their own yards, running a monopoly on the neighborhood with lemonade stands, chess squares in our yard, oatmeal and raisin cookies at another, sweet tea on a table there and fudge yonder.
Back inside, I grabbed a quart full of old fashioned from the fridge. The milk had been rinsed out and replaced by Woodford Reserve, angostura bitters, a dusting of sugar, orange slices and mashed cherries. I plopped down at the kitchen table to read the sports section, but couldn’t help noticing a pair of eyes peering at me from beneath the tablecloth. Chevy, our two-year-old Goldendoodle, was hinting at the prospect of food.
I asked in a high-pitched schoolboy voice, “You want some grub, Chevy?”
The bag of dog food in the laundry room had run its course. Staring at the empty bag, time stood still for a moment and I completely forgot what I was doing. I thought about my dream, coming in from an unsuccessful hunt to the invigorating smell of her breakfast, drinking coffee with her on the porch and watching the hummingbirds skim the creek’s surface. My pupils did a number behind my eyelids opening and closing like stage curtains, and I was back. Chevy was in for a treat. It was one of those days. He’d get the scraps and my babies would get the works.
Dreams often brought on cooking, and cooking brings her back to me. In the kitchen, watching dough rise and grease pop, it’s like she never left. The quart’s loss of density combined with a giddy feeling her ghost bequeathed to me put me in some sort of slaphappy food frenzy. My great great uncle on my mom’s side was the mastermind behind a big nanny pancake. It’s essentially an oversized flapjack but there’s an art to it. Matter of a fact, his nickname was big nanny and he was one large individual. Dad added his own twist onto the classic, chocolate chips and a cartoon’s visage. Recall the kiddy flick marked by a flying squirrel, Rocky, and moose, Bullwinkle? The latter hits home for me. Some seven hours down 30-A, under rainy circumstances, us kids cozied up on the couch in our beach house and scarfed down piles of friendly moose. Now, the griddle, glossy from lard, hissed in yearning for batter. I thought of dad and those rainy Florida days every step of the way. My hand opened like I was calling for a crowd’s applause, and the chocolate chips fell hard into a white floury godsend of goodness. I adeptly ladled the mixture onto the steel face in three meticulous motions for each product. One heaping plop for the head, followed by two kindred flings to create his antlers. I dotted the biscuits just like she taught me. The country ham had been cured longer than my Suzie had years. For two weeks, it’d been bathing in Crisco behind the closed doors of my office. That was the only place our eagerly drooling Chevy couldn’t get in to sink his teeth in the hock. Boiling water morphed with ground-corn to “splode dem grits” as she’d say in tribute to Appalachian ancestors. What’s grits without red-eye gravy though? Once the ham wrapped up in the oven, I removed its excess grease. It took me nothing but some black coffee to deglaze the pan before pouring the newly flavored roast and grease concoction into a container. I eyeballed one to one ratios, and just like that the gravy’s primed. Sizzling, bubbling, rising; everything was falling into place. Preparation of drinks stuck to the morning’s status quo of culinary righteousness. She wouldn’t have done it any other way. I got out two glasses, hand blown in front of me on the streets of Port Louis, to fill with my world famous orange julius for the youngins. Mallet in hand, I crushed a block of ice, tossing its remnants to the cause. My forearm numbed pressing down on the clamp to squeeze every last drop of out of those seedless Moroccan Cadaneras. The sweetener poured in and sat on the juice like an oil spill on a lake, disrupted when Purity milk came splashing onto the scene. I three fingered some nebulous amount of powdered egg whites, and the pinches fell in line. As always, the discreet driblets of vanilla extract did their part. A dab will do you. Last but not least, my signature modification on the standard formula, I dumped a dash of cinnamon into the polished product. A cup of joe was always enough to please my big girl. Sijo Zalak, my old friend who’d driven my lost ass up and down India, sends me a spice filled care package every other month. In return, his druthers are forever one of two things, some fresh Rebels’ game day gear or the latest and greatest in country music. I grabbed a sack of recently arrived Munnar grains and brewed us a batch.
I jumped up on the granite, turning up the quart and watching the timer tick away. This reminded me of her too. All aspects of cooking brought her back to me, like she never left. I remembered how I used to sit on her counter and marvel over the perfected one handed egg cracks. My five-year-old mind was flabbergasted by the absence of shells in her bowl. Even with two hands, I’d always leave fragments floating on the golden goo. Those itty bitty bits were a bitch and a half to fish out, but she didn’t care as long as I was having fun at grandma’s. The timer beeped a foreboding beep that let me know I’d done good and she’d be proud. Chevy elongated his pink mop of a tongue, shining the floor brighter than it was the day we closed on the house, and I assembled three plates for my babies. The act of cooking and its consequential memories was enough to fill me. Well that, plus Chevy and I had been snacking on slivers of ham throughout the entire process. I proudly marched up the steps without any worry of dropping the plates, eyes fixated on our cracked open door emitting only the slightest of light from the sun shining through our drapes. She taught me how to block out distractions, maintain my burden’s balance and focus on the location of the intended beneficiary. I’m glad she did too, because breakfast was heavy today. Three Bullwinkle Big Nannies, squares of Irish butter melting at their meridian, rested in the middle of each plate. Thick molasses cascaded down the stacks, pausing between each layer. One succulent thick cutlet of country ham, with just the right amount of fat on its rind, rested against the moose. The grits looked like volcanoes with effervescent red-eye gravy ready to erupt from their centre. “Splode dem grits,” she’d say as my spoon penetrated the gastronomic natural wonder. I gave them two cute biscuits, as fluffy as animated clouds, with the perfect golden-brown tint. One could partner with a helping of ham, and the other could join forces with locally produced Rice’s strawberry preserves that I artistically spread on the plates’ rims. There’s no right or right or wrong remedy, simply a matter of preference as either will make you want to smack your kids.
Chevy was behind me every step of the way, man’s best friend there to catch my misstep or more likely hoping for overboard morsels lost to the stairs. I was going to our room first, then to my boy’s and lastly my little princess’s.
As the hinges on door creaked open, my wife rolled over in bed, peacefully arching her back like she does, and gave me the yawning look with a cutely curled upper lip that makes me fall in love with her all over again every morning.
“Jazz, baby, I made breakfast.”
She sat up against the throw pillows and said, “Aw, honey. You didn’t have to do that.”
I rested the plate on her blanket covered legs, warming her lap, and handed her coffee to her.
Her drowsy eyes, gazing at Chevy wagging his tail behind me, opened up a little bit to ask, “I see you had your sous-chef with you too.” She nervously forced a smile. “My boys didn’t make mess now did they?”
I’d been too tipsy and in the moment to notice Chevy’s batter crusted beard and syrupy teeth.
“No, no, you needn’t worry.” I looked back at a filthy Chevy. “The sous-chef took care of that, honey. If there’s any more work to be done just bark your orders at him,” I chuckled.
Jasmine dug into the gritty volcano, its red-eye gravy erupting, then she took a bite of Bullwinkle. She washed her chocolate stained teeth off with a gulp of coffee. Next, her two biscuits were assembled just as I’d envisioned. She did one with country ham, salty as it should be and sweet from a sluggish stream of molasses now maneuvering between all of the foods, and the other with some seedy fresh preserves. Her diaphragm collapsed with a sigh of satisfaction, nodding at the plate as if to let it know she wasn’t done yet. Marking her next moose for obliteration, she quizzically surveyed the extravagant breakfast then turned to me before going in for round two.
“You dreamed about it again didn’t you, Lee? There. Her. Why not go back? You love it there. What’s there to loose, babe? I think you owe yourself that for this breakfast if nothing else,” She smiled.
“Jazz, I don’t know. In my dreams, it’s how I remember it. How I want to remember it.” My heart and mind skimmed through images of Holland Hill and Gab that I’d tucked away in the back of my head for safekeeping. “But, but say I do go back? I do, and it’s not the same and my memories are shattered, dreams diluted.”
This wasn’t the first time she’d made such a proposal. I always entertained the idea too. On more than one occasion, I even agreed. When push came to shove though, I never could pull myself to actually get in the truck and just do it.
“If not for yourself or for her, do it for our babies.”
Jasmine spooned a heartfelt bite of grits, holding it out for my consumption like she did when our baby boy came into the world. I leaned in and my teeth scraped across its silver curve.
“Ok,” I said.
Her face lit up. In the past, when I seemed to be convinced, my responses were always drawn-out and rehearsed. The simplicity and tone in my one worded voice was her assurance.
“I love you, Lee Holland. A trip to the world that only previously existed in their favorite bedtime stories and this feast. If they didn’t hit the jackpot today.”
Jasmine pushed her fork across the plate’s molasses pond, soaking a severed antler, and I headed down the hall to be the dad that mine would be proud he raised.
I quietly entered my baby girl’s room dimly but colorfully lit by a nightlight resembling a rainbow trout. After setting a plate down on her white wicker miniature table with matching chairs where all the stuffed animals sat in anticipation of their next tea party, I blew Suzanne a kiss and slipped back out the cracked door to allow her as many dreams as I could.
The doorknob had barely been turned to Hilton’s room when he shot up and proudly welcomed me, “Morning, Pops. I’ve been awake a long time.” No doubt that whippersnapper was sound asleep five minutes ago, but I’d never refute him. He always found pleasure being erect in bed by the time I flicked the lights on, reason being then he could tell his mama at breakfast that he woke up as early as his daddy.
“Look at you, bearskin. I don’t know how you do it. Your old dad just crawled out of his bed.”
Hilton’s walls looked like those of a taxidermy shop. He was nine years old, but my boy knew how to tell a pintail’s whistle from the flutter of a woody’s wings better than a clerk in the ammo section at a Gander Mountain in Stuttgart, Arkansas. Scooting backward to situate himself for breakfast, the blankets fell off his chest and unveiled a scrawny torso swallowed by a shirt from my glory days. It was gray with permanent blots of god knows what all over it, holes to the point of seeming intentional, pits torn at the seems, two maroon grappling figurines at the center with RPA in big letters below, all seasoned by blood, sweat and tears. Hilton went to work on his plate like a champ. He couldn’t thank me because that would mean I’d been up before him to make it. In our house, we abided by the spanking law in the case of swear words or the absence of mams, sirs and thank yous where they ought to be. Breakfast in bed was the exception that we’d attribute to some cookery Kris Kringle of sorts. My little trooper was always the first up.
“Today,” I leaned in and gave him a fatherly thumb’s thump on the side of his head, “I’m taking y’all to Holland Hill. I reckon it’s an eyesore. But mind you, son, it’s a favorite place in the world for more than just me which is why I want you to see it.”
“Seriously,” bits of pancake cud spewed out past his ham flossed chompers, “cool beans.”
I usually would tell him not to talk with his mouth full, but I didn’t, not today, not this morning.
“Finish up your food, wash your pee-paws, brush your toofers and get dressed for the day.”
On the way out the door, I paused in the frame and smiled to myself. “You’re welcome, bearskin. I whipped that up last night after my episode of Bonanza.”
Turning the corner out of Hilton’s room, I saw down the hall where Suzanne’s door was ajar. I anxiously walked with a little pep to my step and singing in tenor two, “Ducks on the pond, ducks on the pond. Rise and shine, ducks on the pond.” Simple as it is that was her favorite way to be woken up. To go to bed, she liked the nursery rhyme mama made her for whenever I’d be gone hunting. “Bye, baby bumpkin. Daddy’s gone hunting. To catch a rabbit skin. To wrap his baby bumpkin in.” Jazz’s voice was so soft, capable of convincing our whole duck club to come home to our wives if it wanted to. A few months out of the year though, knowing the bonds that thrived there, she didn’t once complain. She’s a sweetheart like that. I arrived at Suzanne’s door to find her hands, full of squashed pancakes oozing chocolate, innocently rubbing a guilty Chevy licking grits from her four-year-old twinkly face.
“I see you’re already up and at em, princess.”
She giggled, “Hi, daddy. I thought you or mommy was coming to ’ducks on the pond’ but Chevy did. Can he do this tomorrow too? It tickles and I like it.”
“I don’t know, Suzanne.” I went in her bathroom to turn on the tub. “I bet he’ll do ’ducks on the pond’ for you again, but only if you’ll take a good bath now.”
“Yes sir,” she shouted, flinging her pj’s behind her and running in after me.
“We’re going to Holland Hill today.”
“To your gab’s?” she slid into the running bath with her mass barely displacing its water above her bottom’s crack.
“That’s right. So come on downstairs once you’re all dressed, baby girl.”
When Jazz and I chose the name, Suzanne, we imagined abbreviating it with Suzie. We liked that, but my boy’s admiration for his dad’s favorite pastime backfired. Hilton, merely trying to teach his little sis a thing or two about hunting, told her that a suzie is a type of duck. Indeed it is, a female mallard, but our baby girl didn’t like that one bit. I remember her saying, “Daddy, you kill suzies?” Hilton tried to make good on the statement, claiming that a drake is a male mallard, “Sissy. You know my best friend, Drake Chinnery? We shoot drakes too but doesn’t mind. He’s the best hopscotcher in class.” Jazz and I, knowing a lost cause when we saw one, thought it best to let our girl go back to it in her own sweet time. So for now, she’s simply Suzanne, princess, sissy to Hilton and any variety of nicknames inclusive to baby.
Beard trimmed and body squeaky clean, I slipped into a pair of wranglers then poked my head through a beige long john tee. Ariats? No, Boulets for this day. My pointer fingers punched through the loopholes, frosted tight by past hunts, curling in and tugging as I pressed my heel down firm with ankles wriggling in rotating fashion til the leather submitted. I leapt up, threw on my Filson jacket, smacked on a worn navy cap needlepointed at the center with a cotton boll and clopped downstairs to assemble the troops. Jasmine climbed into the truck’s cab to fasten Hilton’s seatbelt and clamp the plastic jaws down tight on Suzanne’s baby seat, before taking her place in the passenger seat of my black and beat up GMC Sierra.
Antebellum homes were staples of Dooley, Tennessee, their presence and the property value clearly dwindling with every mile closer in the thirty-seven from our house to Holland Hill, but sights growing in natural beauty. Turned left and a ways up Creaking Crane Avenue, our house shrinks in the background with each turn of the tires. Past the tire swing hung under our weeping willow, the farmhouse red front door fades into creamy white faces opened in twelve spots by hazelnut chocolate shudders, resembling the contrast of frosting, gingerbread and cinnamon candy on an edible home for the holidays. Further gone, eventually all to be seen is our russet roof setting like a sun on the pavement in the rearview mirror. From there, it’s one slave built stonewall after the next, out of Dooley unto the highway with poverty stricken homes of hillbillies working and struggling to live below the line, then there’s open country, the great outdoors, its glory, and alas Julep, its local icons, Alice Road and its best kept secret at the road’s end, mine and Tennessee’s forgotten treasure, Holland Hill.
We’d hardly pulled out the driveway when Suzanne’s voice sounded from the back, “Story, daddy, story. I want a Holland Hill bedtime story. Hold my hand, mama.”
Jazz twisted around to take Suzanne’s little mitt in her motherly palm, “Baby doll, that wont put you to sleep? You don’t want to be groggy when we get into the fresh outdoors.”
I looked up in the rearview mirror and saw a pathetically shaking flushed face boasting big eyes of desire, her lips’ corners pitifully turned down, a Chevy taught tactic no doubt, and her arms crossed like a grumpy Cherokee, an original guilt tripping device she’d developed on her own by the time she could walk.
I released a spent breath, halfheartedly smiling out the corner of my mouth, and looked back at her in the rearview mirror, “What do you want to hear, princess?”
“A story with you, daddy. And Uncle Jake.”
“Gab?”
“Duh, daddy. You can’t cook.”
I leant my head over the console and whispered to Jazz, “This whole little myth our family buys into, the cookery Kris Kringle.” I pulled back and chuckled, “It hurts, baby.”
Jazz tossed her head back in amusement and gave my shoulders a couple of massaging squeezes to relieve every tension and soothe any ache.
“Uncle Jake and me, you say. And of course Gab, because I can’t cook.”
Suzanne is in the rearview, nodding with a silly expression of approval.
“Hilton, buddy, you alright back there?” I was worried on account of his silence in story criteria.
“Dad, I’ve learned to just sit back and wait for the story in times like these. Once sissy crosses her arms, no one else’s opinion matters.”
I reached back and slapped Hilton’s knee with a laugh and a lingering rub to acknowledge his maturity in the toleration of his sister. Clearing my throat, I prepared to speak in Suzanne’s favorite bedtime story voice, a deep and southern narrative delivered with vocab well beyond her years. She usually couldn’t make heads or tails of the stories but would say, “Use your pretty words daddy. Green eggs and ham is not pretty.” If I stopped to try and explain what something meant, she’d waive my attempt until I returned to character.
“Boys and gals, revel with me in a tale we at Holland Hill call the Wedding Cake Heist. I want you to close your eyes and envision a set of feeble hands meticulously decorating, delicately caressing the pastry bag, and filtering pastel frosting, so as to make every layer isometric and every flower crafted perfect.
Guests arrived early, on time, casually late and rudely past any norm, sporadically walking through the foyer into the garden room, as we called at Holland Hill, to marvel over the picturesque five-tier wedding cake. Supported only by fleshed flowers, daring to withstand the use of gaudy but safe pillars, the base’s five foot diameter diminished one foot at each layer as it climbed to the top. Rolled fondant, sugary and pliable, ceaselessly coated the exterior for a proper surface to sow roses of buttercream. The insides, as fine a white as the linens used for the bride’s vail, were light and spongy with an abysmal marzipan maze burrowing throughout to create unmapped caverns of sudden almond flavor. The top layer swayed above its subjects with a bride and groom figurine trembling at the rap of guests’ shoes shaking the sod floor below the table. The garden room was a sight to behold. Its floor was on par with an Augusta green and its wall, one giant sheet of glass, looked onto a majestic flora of exotic plants and a pond with exquisitely carved stone angels standing guard to the glossy water mirroring green violet-ear hummingbirds in courtship dives buzzing from their vibrating wings. There’s no telling how much time was spent in the cake’s preparation. It very well could have been an extraordinary amount of time, only there was no telling an embellishment, from a white lie, from a slight truth, from a fact, when your grandmother was called upon. Gab claimed the masterpiece took no more than fifteen minutes of prep time, aside from the baking of course. She once did a five-tier cake for the Queen Mum in just twenty minutes, verified by Buckingham Palace Master Chef Gabriel Tschumi, so maybe it’s true. Wit aside, the cake was artistry at its finest.
Presence dissipated from the garden room into the awe-inspiring ballroom, where ceilings were high, chandeliers were precious and hardwoods were waxy slick for the ceremony. The staff was in high gear, half running drinks and half clearing plates, while line cooks slaved away preparing one course after the next. To the elderly eyes of Gab, occasionally popping in to check the cake’s stature, the green violet-ears and their unvarying buzz on the other side of the glass were all that laid claim to the unmanned cake. Wedged into one of the room’s corners, the draped table had a blind spot shedding no light on the ground between its tablecloth and the wall. If it did, one may have spotted two pairs of little feet poking out from below, one in boots and the other in sandals.”
Suzanne perked up and poked Hilton in his ribs, “Daddy’s in the boots.”
“If it did, there wouldn’t be a story...
Unbeknownst to anyone and everything but the birds, your Uncle Jake and I snuck underneath there when the guests made the switch to the ballroom. Earlier when everyone was in the garden room, so enamored by the cake, we snuck about the ballroom to steal a bowl of olives off the bar that we brought with us to fill up on under the table. They exited out of one door and we scurried through another. We were told to stay upstairs and play in your Grandpa Jody’s old fort, but that was asking a whole lot. Shoot, we were boys, five and seven years old, spending the night at a bed and breakfast during a wedding.
First and last course came and went, devoured on sight, until all of the plates were cleared and back in the kitchen for washing. Despite newborn food babies, tummies growled at every table in eager anticipation of their slice and lazy mouths aggressively guzzled champagne with a desire of drunk munchies forming for their soon to be frosting filled cheeks. Gab, observing her well-served guests with literally and figuratively raised spirits, paced into the garden room for the cake’s final inspection before its risky transfer to the ballroom. With a sharp left through the doorframe, she faced the table to find a cloth that was now boasting gifts galore and accompanying nosh plates of white delight, then the cake and frosting from before. Everything was to the T and how she’d left it, all but the absentee top layer with its cold footed bride and groom. Flabbergasted to the point of being mute, her mouth sanctioned none of the syllables she sought to shout but her insides screamed to high heavens for Miss Ruth and Miss Sally. If it did, Jake and I may have been scared into lifting up the table cloth and giving up our treasure.
If it did, there wouldn’t be a story...
Cooking was in our blood and we were hungry to play a most important part on this most special day, making our grandma proud to have grandsons so adept at her career.
Gab, scolding the staff, ordered them to retrieve the cake’s base at once and roll it to the kitchen as stealthily and speedily as possible to avoid visibility from the ballroom. She was hard at work, hoping to crank out another top layer before anyone noticed the missing original. The head bridesmaid who saw to every detail of the wedding, Patricia Melhoff, arrived to the garden room and freaked out upon her discovery, saving no syllables for herself. She faced the table to find a cloth that was now boasting gifting galore and accompanying nosh plates of white delight, then the top layer from before with its bride and groom from before ready for wedlock. Everything was to the T and how she’d left it, all but vanished four layers that the top layer had once graced. Patricia exploded through the kitchen’s forest green door swinging in response, feistily fussing at Gab who focused on the cake and paid her no mind. She’d heard Patricia’s shrill voice boom from the garden room, ‘Where on God’s green earth is that cake. Ughh,’ and just in the nick of time was able to throw a sheet of wax paper over the replacement top layer that she was coating with fondant.
Still focused on the cake, she said, ‘don’t worry, dearie. I’m just tending to some last minute preparatory details to ensure it safe passage on the cart’s way into the ballroom.’
Gab dreaded Patricia’s inevitable question, ‘And the top layer?’ said in a perfect medium between soft and snarky.
Worried her gambit had run its course, set the pastry bag on the counter beside her and slowly looked up to confidently answer, ‘Yes, dearie, I’m taking care of that too.’
‘Don’t mind that. Everyone’s starving and it looks perfect. So let’s wrap up that prep and get that sucker rolled in. You’re an angel, Miss Gabriella’ she said in the cheerily unsettling voice only characteristic of a head bridesmaid and headed out the still swinging door.
I know what you you’re wondering, princess, how your Uncle Jake and I resisted eating the cake?”
Suzanne rubbed her belly to signify she couldn’t have resisted and giggled in unison with Hilton’s remark, “Wasn’t really wondering about Uncle Jake so much as you, there, Paps.”
“Hey now, your daddy was a tan bag of bones those days. Jake was the pudgy one.”
Hilton gave a classic Holland boy smirk with a nod to continue the story.
I saw Suzanne’s hand raise in the rearview to happily verify, “It’s not over?”
“No, no. Not yet, baby goose.”
Suzanne fittingly clapped her hands, the way she does in a game of patty cake, to let me know she was ready.
“If we hadn’t, there wouldn’t be a story...
I’m still surprised we didn’t at least try to put a dent in it, but those olives stuffed us to the point of clammy foreheads and watery joules.
An unexpected event unraveled for all, raising questions about the cake’s past. The same time Gab arrived back to the garden room with the bulk of the cake, perplexedly scratching her white bun, Patricia dropped her champagne glass in the doorway of the ballroom. Again, Gab faced the table to find a cloth that was now boasting gifting galore and accompanying nosh plates of white delight. Everything was to the T and how she’d left it, all but the absentee top layer with its cold footed bride and groom runoff yet again. There was no cake in sight besides the bottom four layers on the cart that she steered with fist tightly clinching in wake of a disheveled corner of the tablecloth shedding light on a pair of boots and sandals.”
Suzanne, grinning and so sure of it this time, reasserted to Hilton with another poke in his ribs, “Daddy’s in the boots.”
“Now, princess, don’t mess up the narrator’s flow. If I was, there wouldn’t be a story.
Waxy slick floors make for the superb sliding, which is why Jake and I only ever wore our socks in the ballroom, a fact Gab was well aware of.
Patricia’s shattering glass may have well been the cue to my song. Jake and I, with the top layer hoisted above and amid our barely sustaining shoulders, marched to my attempt at a classic wedding verse, ‘Here comes the bride. All step aside. Dn, dn, dn, dn, dn…Her comes the bride. All step aside for the pretty bride.’ With our fingers indenting its sides and frosting falling like guano, we simultaneously accomplished a jerky jig into a sock slide. Leaning backward for a textbook halt at the bride and groom’s table, our fatigued arms gave out and the cake crashed into soon to be Cindy Campbell’s gowned lap, beautifully blending a splendid white between their two tones. Gab appeared in panic at the doorway, cupping her hands on her flushed cheeks and wrestling with the decision to intervene immediately or see how things pan out since the damage had been done.
We were shown mercy thanks to Cindy finding Jake and me as cute as a button. Better than that, a real godsend, she hunched over and kissed me on the forehead, ‘Do you two sweetie pies want cake?’ We vigorously nodded as Chett Campbell said, ‘Dig in, boys,’ reaching into Cindy’s lap for a hunk of frosted goodness like he was trout tickling a big ole brown. I followed, shoveling a handful into my mouth, still recycling my watery joules’ spit. Jake went in with two hands, proceeding to smear it all up and down his animated mug.
If we didn’t, the story would have ended there...
As frosting diluted in my palm that had begun to rapidly produce sweat, a queasy visage powered through on Jake’s cream covered face and began sweltering sweet white liquid. I opened wide for a mouthful-of-cake muffled, ‘thank you,’ but an olive based, fondant coated vomit spewed out instead of words. Jake, whose socks now sported a nice milky green coat, shot me a scowl then a look of sheer embarrassment to Cindy as the same alcoholic, confectionary concoction oozed through his fingers that tried to cover his mouth and shield her from his jam-packed cheeks.”
Wagging her finger, Suzanne yawned, “Daddy, don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“That’s right, baby, and stand clear of the olives, your morals of the story.
Patricia was ready to throw us in the pond outside of the garden room and not let our adolescent nostrils, currently dripping misplaced puke, ever feel the air again.
You know, Hilton, your Grand Jody was thrown in on his wedding night by my Uncle Ned. Mama’s never let Ned live that one down.”
Hilton’s tired face smirked in the rearview, “No shenanigans between you and Uncle Jake to speak of?”
“Son, like Grand Jody and Uncle Ned told me and Jake, ‘another story for another day,’” I sarcastically said in an over serious voice, offering my fist for some father-son knucks.
“Cindy motioned to Patricia as if commanding heel, then swiped two fingers through her frosted gown and waved a royal salutation with a sugary flick to the other doorway, ‘Miss Gabriella, these two are adorable. After they wash up, please allow me a dance.’
Gab lit up relieved, thankful we pulled off the wedding cake heist, knowing our slightest bump of the table would have offset the cake into a collapse capable of ruining the night altogether. Her mind was truly blown we’d managed to avoid contact down there, and moreover amazed we transported it bar back style to the ballroom without a single portion plummeting. Cooking was in our blood and we played a most important part on this most special day, making our grandma proud to have grandsons so adept at her career.
That’s all I got for y’all.”
Hilton arched his stomach forward to pop his back and gave me thumbs up.
Jazz leaned back and took Suzanne’s hand in hers, “baby, do you need anything explained?”
Looking at Hilton like she wanted him to speak up, “Nope, not if he doesn’t. I got it all. Did you?”
“Yeah, sissy, ‘Daddy’s in the boots,’ right?”
Shaking my head in disapproval of his teasing, I stared out to find the uprooted little arrow shaped tin sign that faintly read Lake Marrowbone had been replaced. A typical white-lettered green rectangle put it on par with the massive gateway into Jake’s Country Sausage, stealing its local identity and washing away my memory. The miles seemed to drive themselves gone just like they had when Jake and I did it. There were still no traffic related signs or signals until the intersection at Alice Road. Dangling from a lone wire, the malfunctioning light still hung like a lantern and flashed fainter red, yellow and green than before, still as broken and all at once. There were still no banners, balloons or indicators of any sort that an establishment existed on Alice Road, and now one didn’t. There used to be a magical place there. The drive is still simplex, up and down a paved hilly road, but now it ends at a driveway overrun by weeds that splits under a shabby hand carved mahogany sign welcoming no one to Holland Hill.
To the left, there’s still the vibrant green field with an Eastern Red Cedar standing alone at its core. Toms still strut throughout its pasture, showcasing their glorious beards and awe inspiring spurs. The overripe grapevines are still there and have grown monstrous, now forming an even more impossible fragrant maze on the right. Smack dab in the middle of these scenes, the Lincoln-log Holland Hill Vineyard is overcast from untrimmed bushes. There are still decks on every face but some have buckled, hammocks are still littered by leaves in all the corners and a stone waterfall in the back still feeds into a pool that’s now mossy with no aquatic life. The only remnants of the Asian carp are a few skeletons gnawed to nearly nothing by raccoons and opossums.
Where the driveway split, a steep brick path still egresses into the forest and still winds downward. Photo opportunities of Lake Marrowbone are no longer offered due to wild brushwood and unkempt undergrowth. The path still bottomed out and its bricks still transformed into a cobblestone bridge. Two boys’ handprints endured erosion, surfacing as clear cut as ever. I could still see the history. We moved over pristine water and opened up to a whole new sorcerous realm of Holland Hill, swallowed by bosomy hills of above that concealed it with their towering trees. My dreams are still intact, memories whole. Looking left, there’s a crisp valley that seems to have no end. At the outmost edge, its grass meets a flooded timber fit for a watercolor. Here, ceremonies transcend periods of time. Black and white photos, only envisioned in a historic volume on the Old South, come to life. Watercolors were not diluted, but permanently dried in my mind. Cobblestone foregoes the valley unto Spring Creek Inn, the once proud home to a variety of occasions and guests, at the center of it all. The shimmering creek still runs along its side after traveling under the Beech built bridge that only has more character now. Pictorial peacocks still wade across its waters. I can remember playing in the water and turning up stones in search of crawdads, and how those majestic birds looked prehistoric to a young lad. The Holland Hill below the hills is not lost on me, but it looked different to my family. I know it did.
Jasmine surveyed the scenery she’d seen previously as my girlfriend. Now, my wife observing everything out of the passenger seat with that new perspective, she recalled certain elements, past pleasures resonating in her memory, most delighted by my chirpily childlike face and her awareness of how important the place was and is to me. And it was. Hilton peaked out over the windowsill, looking down and considering the ground I’d tramped when I was nine years old. Longing to fire a shot and startle sound sprung off trees throughout the same land that I grew up hunting, he pensively gazed on grass, dirt below it, decayed leaves on top, the earth there, its history. Suzanne saw a bedtime story before her own eyes. It was that too. I’d told many a magical tale from below the hills to my princess.
To them, Spring Creek Inn was a deteriorating mass of wood with a green tin roof and uncannily captivating vacant inside with a rich past.
Once upon a time, the rustic cabin was the center of a picturesque bed and breakfast. The hidden gem in Julep, Tennessee played host to countless weddings, corporate retreats, artists of all sorts seeking inspiration, and random passersby.
A Julep legend holds that Eldridge Abagnale stayed the night, not one but two times in a span of ten years. Gab told me, “He walked in my door and removed his hat, like a gentleman should which let me know he was one, and had wild hair sticking up in the air like this,” gesturing her hands above her head like she’d just won a game of bingo, “and these intense eyes. He looked deranged, but obviously this was the look of a genius.”
She always joked about their initial conversation.
“ ‘Hello, dear. May I trouble you for some southern hospitality, perhaps a bed and food, if you don’t mind.’ I believe that’s what he said to me... I still feel silly today, but I’ll attribute it to being star struck. My response was, ‘I love your theory of relativity.’ ”
Gab was no physicist, but a hell of a cook. It’s a good thing ole Abagnale didn’t call her bluff and ask what she loved about his ‘theory’ because she didn’t know a darned thing about it. She opted to let her cooking do the talking for the rest of the evening. My Grandpa Adolph could scarf down more beer and brats than any man in Tennessee, making Gab a Southern chef equipped for pleasing a German gut.
Slaving over supper, she cooked up all of Adolph’s old favorites, their scents wafting throughout the Vineyard until Eldridge ’s feast was ready. An odor that’d place someone in a Köln pub whooshed out the kitchen door as she kicked it open, balancing his feast in the air above her. Heaps of sauerkraut, stacks of sous from Holland Hill hogs, horseradish for his kick, hard breads, rye-wheat, pumpernickel and pumpkin seeded rye, cabbage doused in white vinegar, blood sausage and black sausage of geese shot on Lake Marrowbone and processed at Jake’s. Eldridge was stuffed to the point of loosening his belt, painfully pleased, and still had her stolen to tackle. Filled chockfull with homemade marzipan, chopped candied fruits, nuts and spices, she sliced him off a quarter of the powdered sugar dusted loaf and watched him struggle through it with a tired metabolism and tenacious grin.
After dinner, sitting together in the living room, Eldridge imbibed a plethora of German beers, Adolph’s brew that Gab hadn’t touched since his passing and said she wouldn’t offer anyone but a German, herself not being a drinker except for the occasional wine over holidays when she teetered with inebriation. Steeped with quality Holland Hill hops and yeast at the same latitude and longitude as Germany’s Rein River, fermentation yielded a product heavy and hoppy that the foam could tolerate a golf ball’s density, and Eldridge impressively put them down. Gab creaked back and forth in her rocking chair, needlepointing away with love in every stitch. Eldridge belched louder with every press of Gab’s heels on the ring ridden cedar, until the croak of his burps transformed into a roaring snore capable of overpowering even a flea infested kangaroo in a rocking chair.
Sun rising and warming his wrinkled forehead through the window, he endorsed one last thunderous rumble from his mouth, alerting Gab of his awakening, and gasped back into a normal breathing pattern. Propping himself up on the sofa, he found his fedora draped with the scarf she’d been fashioning the night before, needlepointed with “Genius in Julep.” He sat up, still in his brown checkered suit from the night before, and called Gab for another pint. Entering the living room, she hushed the genius, sticking a glass of orange juice under his crinkly noisemaker of a nose.
“You can come on out on the side deck and have some breakfast with me. Juice, coffee, tea, water or what have yuh, but you’re done with the beer, Mr. Abagnale. The mind is too important of a thing to be meddled in the morning, and there’s a lot riding on yours that others can’t do so shape up, sugar.”
Gab had been up cooking before the hoot owls sounded wakeup to the rest of the forest, everything sizzled, bubbled and raised, fallen into place before the sun peaked up from below the hills, ready for Eldridge ’s consumption. She served him up a Holland helping of Jake’s Country Sausage greasing golden-brown biscuits, a pile of godsend grits luging melted butter down onto a molasses drenched hotcake posted up against a poached egg sprinkled with an original curry concoction good on anything edible, a dry seasoning and sauce that Jacob and I christened Gab’s Magic.
That was basically the extent of the first occasion Abagnale found his way into the backwoods of Julep, but seven years later, there was a knock on her door, a brilliant knock.
“Hello, dear. May I trouble you for some southern hospitality, perhaps a bed and food, if you don’t mind,” he bashfully said in an awkwardly coy tone that seemed strangely fitting for a genius.
Gab embraced her friend, because that’s what they were, friends. Rarely guests may have stayed the night and left never to be heard from again, but there was no staying away if you joined her for breakfast the morning after. The side deck was her personal sanctuary, where she’d drink her morning coffee, pray, think about loved ones, living and lost, watch the birds and feed the deer. It was a special place that only a select few were invited, so as not to taint its past with the company of anyone she found fake. Home to superlative conversation, Gab’s best life lessons, a spot reserved for those she thought could learn a thing or two sitting there with her and those who she thought had something she could learn from them.
Eldridge took her by her hands, “Your German is as good as in the homeland, I’d like a Southern dinner this time. A side of sausage biscuits and grits as well, please.”
“Now, Eldridge ,” Gab said smiling, “I can fry you up some hot chicken with greens and cornbread. Whatever Southern fare your heart desires, a smorgasbord with a little bit of everything if you’d like, but you’ll wait until morning for your biscuits and grits, sugar.”
The second occasion of Abagnale in the backwoods of Julep unfolded not all that different from the first time, same drill, aromas wafting about, this time Southern infused, her kicking the door and balancing his feast, his eating like there was no tomorrow, her needle stitching thread, her rocking chair creaking in a contest with his crinkly nose snoring, her cooking breakfast, hoot owls hooting, sun rising and their side deck discussion, but this time he’d drank sweet tea.
Due to Gab’s natural tendency to exaggerate stories, with an absence of witnesses at the supposed scene, there was never certainty of truth or if she was just blowing smoke. Regarding these stories, the bulk of the Manhattan Project evidently did occur in remote areas of unspoiled Tennessee, so there’s that valid plausibility. Locals, some more red than others, said stuff like, “Abagnale in Julep, shit, we’re moving up.” I believe this happened on account of the nonchalant way she told the story, like it was no big deal, when anyone normal wouldn’t stop running their mouth if that happened to them. But Gab wasn’t normal. For another reason too, she had a fedora in what she called her chest of knickknacks, claiming it was his from the first visit, that he’d left it for her as a thank you for the scarf and something to remember him by. I can attest to the fact that there was a fedora in there and juicing up the story further, I’ll say a pair of Bobby Carmel’s sunglasses was tucked inside that fedora. Her chest of knickknacks was full of former guests’ treasures, anything to remind her of fond memories with friends.
Holland Hill really did have an impressive list of regulars casually strolling in to visit with Gab, the likes of country music royalty with occasional geniuses. Chucky Mills stopped off for fried chicken with so much frequency that his wife started coming three times a week for cooking lessons until she had the recipe down pat. His wife’s attempts never actually met Chucky’s standards set by Gab, but one morning he sat on the side deck at Holland Hill, pulling apart fried chicken for his honey drizzled biscuits, deep in conversation. After that, for the sake of a happy wife, he pretended her chicken was the best he’d ever eaten. Visiting Holland Hill, Chucky would rub his wife and say, “Miss Gabriella,” sucking a drumstick dry, “My gal might just have you beat, darling.” Recognizing the impact of their conversation from the side deck, Gab took great pleasure in Mrs. Mills flattered smile and winked across the table at her blushing bearded friend. On the subject of the sunglasses, April Prescott used to drop Bobby off with Gab for a stern talking to on the side deck, knowing he’d always return a better man in some way or another.
Drawing nearer Spring Creek Inn, I thought now there are no more white horses and affluent guests at Spring Creek, no pretty peacocks, cooking lessons, breakfasts or boys burglarizing cakes. As we continued down the worn cobblestone, Suzanne stirred in her baby seat, pointing forward, “Daddy, someone’s home.”
Thinking the worst, a nervous tingling sense of scare shot up my spine as I imagined some vagrant meth heads or god knows who had made a home there.
Jasmine grabbed a hold of my jacket sleeve, “Honey, she’s right. There’s smoke coming from that window there.”
Fearfully observing the cracked open kitchen window and releasing my foot off the gas, our wheels’ crackling on the dead leaves below ceased, “Jazzy, we’re alright. I’ll check it out.”
With no cars in sight, I presumed it was a bum that could be scared out by the prospect of an abrupt voice but I elected to take my gun so nothing was left to chance, for Jasmine’s piece of mind.
Quietly opening the door and stepping down, I tilted my seat forward, “Hilton, the Benelli under your seat, hand it here.” I grabbed a handful of three and a half black clouds, shucked two shells in the chamber and tossed one at Hilton, “Bit bigger than ducks huh? You stay here and watch after your mama and baby sister. Keys are in the ignition, I’ll be back in a second. Dad’s got not a worry in the world right now, son.”
Ten paces deep, I saw where the kitchen light was on, smoke still creeping out the window, the door open and secreting its bulk. Strategizing, contemplating between a firing a shot off or yelling for the intruder’s surrender, my nostrils breathed in the smoke and its aroma that was eerily reminiscent of the Gab’s cooking. Handprints still settled, trees still grew, creek still flowed and air still smelt the perfect mixture between comfort food and Holland Hill honeysuckle. Miraculously to me, nothing had changed and nothing was lost, not on me.