Now & Then Page 7

  “I —”

  “Only you happen to know a lot about explosives and computers and rescuing people from Lucite jail cells.”

  “I also know a lot about cooking and cleaning. But anyway, those gang guys aren’t from St. Alban’s.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Their car had Georgia plates.”

  She studied me a moment. “Is that the sort of thing pencil pushers notice?”

  I got back on the subject of our kitchen helper. “I’m sure Tracy was just happy to get the job. This is a pretty tough economy for a small town like this.”

  “True,” she said. “But that makes it even weirder that everyone in town is stupidly happy all the time.”

  I couldn’t argue about that, so I focused on my tasks. Rachel did the same, and we continued working until we’d done all we could to make the kitchen spotless. Then we went upstairs and Rachel rewarded me by letting me watch her change into her bikini.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said, raising my eyebrows.

  “Don’t even think about it, horn dog. And don’t bother pouting, ’cause it’s your own fault.”

  “My fault?”

  “I can’t help it if I used up all my energy being your scullery maid. So I’m going to go relax in the sun and bronze this body until I’m Brazilian.”

  “You can do that without feeling the slightest bit of compassion for my, ah, predicament?”

  “Yup. Oh, and I’ll be completely unavailable sexually until...” she looked at her watch. “Three o’clock. If you can’t wait that long, you’ll just have to find another way to work off your frustration.”

  I smiled. “I know just the thing!”

  “Eew.”

  “Eew?”

  “Men. Ugh.”

  I had no idea what she meant, but when she headed to the beach I changed into my khaki shorts, grabbed an EpiPen, and drove back to the sand dune that housed the fire ant colony.

  Chapter 16

  “ARE YOU ALL set for the pig roast?” Tracy asked, cheerfully. “I’ve never been to a Fourth of July pig roast, never even eaten a roast pig. Have you ever even roasted a pig before, or is this your first time?”

  “Tracy,” Rachel said. “Shut the fuck up and let us work!”

  “Sorry, I talk when I’m nervous.”

  “I talk when I’m nervous,” Rachel said, in a high-pitched voice filled with sarcasm.

  “It’s okay, Trace,” I said, and caught a warning look from Rachel.

  It was the last Monday in June and we’d had an unexpected run on the kitchen. We’d just finished serving our first standing-room-only when a charter bus pulled up in front of the inn and dumped twenty-four female senior citizens in our doorway. Beth had taken one look at the crowd and raced out the door to make a grocery run. I was frying some maple sausage links with sliced apples to take the edge off their appetite until she returned. Rachel was squeezing oranges as fast as she could, and Tracy was washing a rack of glasses, waiting for Rachel to fill the first pitcher with orange juice.

  Oh, and Rachel was getting a bit testy.

  “You don’t have to take up for Little Miss Tits,” she informed me. “Though I don’t blame you. She’s done everything she can to get your attention, short of giving you a blow job.”

  “Oh my!” Tracy said.

  “Rachel,” I said. “Relax. And Tracy?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “No blow jobs.”

  She looked at me without expression.

  “I mean it, okay?”

  She giggled. “I wouldn’t even know how.”

  “I wouldn’t even know how!” Rachel mocked. She grabbed an orange and hurled it at Tracy’s head. It missed by an inch and continued picking up speed until it slammed into the side wall of the dining room.

  Tracy’s lip began trembling. Her eyes filled with tears.

  An elderly woman screamed in the dining room.

  Which caused Tracy to scream and run out the back door. Or maybe it was the knife Rachel held, or the curl of her lip, or the gleam in her eye. I poked my head through the serving area, smiled, and said, “Where you folks from?”

  One of the ladies was halfway out of her chair, but she paused when she saw me. The others appeared nervous, but hadn’t bolted yet. She sat back down, tentatively. A lady sitting at her table said, “We’re from Valdosta.”

  I glanced back at Rachel and gave her a look of disapproval. In return, she flipped her middle finger at me. I turned back to the ladies, showed them my best smile and, doing my best to imitate the friendly banter used by the locals, said, “Well, we’re mighty glad to have you folks with us today, and that’s a fact!”

  “You sure about that?” the lady said, pointing at the dripping orange stain on the wall.

  “I’m sorry, I should have warned you,” I said. “It’s an old St. Alban’s custom. Like the ceremonial pitch in a baseball game, it’s our way of welcoming you to The Seaside.”

  The group looked skeptical, but rewarded my bullshit with light, scattered applause. The lady doing all the talking said, “I’ve been to St. Alban’s before, but no one ever threw an orange at me, or screamed in the kitchen.”

  One of the other women said, “You’d think they’d throw something softer.”

  Another said, “Or at least something less messy.”

  Another responded, “Well, it’s Florida, after all.”

  The Valdosta lady said, “You’re missing the point. They shouldn’t be throwing anything at all.”

  I said, “Your appetizers will be out shortly.”

  The lady who thought we should be hurling something softer said, “Come here, Sonny Boy, I want to show you something.”

  I walked over to her. She pulled out her wallet and opened it to a picture of a baby.

  “This is my new granddaughter,” she said proudly. “Isn’t she gorgeous?”

  I hoped my wince wasn’t obvious. Was she kidding me? Personally, I thought the little freak looked like Moms Mabley. But I smiled and said, “Wow!”

  She kissed the picture and put it away. I turned and started heading back to the kitchen, thankful she didn’t feel obliged to show me the rest of her brood. But after I’d gotten a few steps I saw another photo, one I recognized from the posters around town.

  “Is that Libby Vail?” I said, pointing to a small photo another lady was studying.

  She smiled a kindly smile and said, “I pray for her every night.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “They sell them at the tourist shops on Main, near the old train depot. Such a sad story.”

  I nodded and continued my journey to the kitchen.

  Though I didn’t get a chance to tell Tracy, I was, in fact well prepared for the Fourth of July pig roast. A full house for the B&B meant six couples, and they’d been booked months before Rachel and I showed up. We were counting on a double capacity breakfast Saturday and Sunday, and since the Fourth fell on Sunday this year, Beth had talked me into doing a giant pig roast on the beach Sunday night. We’d put a sign in the window and sold a hundred tickets at forty bucks each. After food cost and labor, Beth should net a cool three grand.

  Other than losing Tracy and having to clean the orange mess from the wall, we managed to get the charter bus ladies fed without incident. Having one less set of tits in the kitchen seemed to have a calming influence on Rachel, but I knew she wasn’t up to handling the entire food service alone during the busiest week of the year. She’d turn on me for sure, and probably with knives instead of oranges. Knowing the rest of the week would be difficult for Rachel, I persuaded Beth to hire two of her lady friends to start that afternoon and work through the holiday weekend. I even managed to get Tracy back, though it required an apology from Rachel.

  “I’m sorry I threw an orange at you,” Rachel said.

  “That’s okay,” Tracy said.

  “And?” I said.

  “And I’m sorry your big fat titties flop out whenever Kevin’s arou
nd,” Rachel said.

  “That’s okay,” Tracy said.

  It wasn’t much of an apology, but Tracy needed the job.

  Chapter 17

  LIKE SKINNING A cat, there are many ways to roast a pig. The most common is on a rotisserie over a fire pit. But since the right type of rotisserie costs hundreds of dollars and would have taken too long to ship, I defaulted to the ancient Mumu method of burying the pig and cooking it with hot rocks.

  The art of cooking an entire animal underground was perfected by thieves in the mountains of Crete, who used to dig pits, build fires in them, and bake large stones until they became white-hot. Then they’d steal some lambs or goats, throw them in the pit, and cover them with leaves and dirt. These pits were so well insulated that the thieves could stand on top of them comfortably in bare feet during the cooking phase, even as the animal’s owners came looking for them. This manner of cooking produced no smoke or odor, so the stolen animals seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Ten or twelve hours later, after the owners had given up looking for their stock, the thieves would dig up the perfectly cooked meat and enjoy the feast. Then they’d bury the remains in the pit, a perfect crime.

  I roped off an area behind The Seaside and spent a couple of hours on Saturday digging the pit. Then I filled it with Georgia fat wood and local kindling. Around two o’clock, Hardware Store Earl and two of his sons picked me up in the family truck to steal some cooking rocks off the shore of Fernandina Beach, near Fort Clinch State Park. To be precise, these were ballast stones from 1800’s shipping fleets that had been tossed overboard by crew members in order to make their ships light enough to anchor close to shore. After a few hours of wading, lifting and carrying, we’d gathered enough stones to fill the pit. As we started loading the stones into the truck, the strangest thing happened. The wind that had been blowing from the south shifted slightly to the east, and a chill hit the air for a split second. I looked out to sea and saw a storm gathering on the horizon.

  We loaded a few more stones as the wind started whipping the shore, lifting sand crystals into the air and hurling them at everything in its path, including the four of us. I shielded my eyes and chanced looking out to sea. While the sun behind us shone brightly, the sky before us was jet black, above a dark ocean of angry whitecaps and menacing waves.

  It was that uneasy moment when one force of nature is about to take on another.

  A long, low, distant rumble served as our warning, and another chilling gust of wind hit us from the east. The saw grass around us began bending at a severe angle. Somewhere behind us, a screen door slammed against its casing, threatening to burst its hinges. I’d never seen such a powerful storm appear out of nowhere, but here she was, picking up speed, heading our way.

  ��Better jump in the truck!” Earl said, so we did, and just as we closed the doors all hell broke loose, and the wind made the most God-awful shrieking and howling noise I’d ever heard. It sounded almost like a child’s shrill wail, and I could have sworn I heard cursing in at least three of the four languages I speak. It was so loud we covered our ears with our hands and winced in pain. The sky was dark around us, and the rain pelted our car so hard I could barely see ten feet out the window. I thought of the fragile screen door and looked to see if it had taken flight.

  I couldn’t see the ground floor of the store, because the rain was hitting the street and bouncing up several feet, making the visibility twice as poor. But something on the roof caught my eye, a shape so incongruous and absurd I hesitate to even mention it. Just to clarify, I’ve never seen anything like it before or since, and I’m not even sure I saw it then. As I said, the storm was all consuming, and visibility practically nil.

  It appeared to be a young woman.

  If I had to guess, the shape I saw could have been a teenage girl, with long black hair and eyes that seemed to glow yellow, with a vertical black line in the center, like a jungle cat.

  Fine, I know what you’re thinking, but guess what: it gets even crazier!

  She was laughing.

  Right, I know. But if it was a young woman standing on the roof with her arms raised heavenward, she seemed to be looking right at me, and yes, she was laughing. Laughing or howling or wailing…and if I hadn’t known better I could have sworn the shrieking sound that I’d believed to be the wind, was actually coming from her! Okay, I’ve told you what I saw, and now you can haul me away, because when I blinked my eyes and craned my neck, trying to get a better look at her, she disappeared.

  Yeah, that’s right. She disappeared into thin air.

  I was about to ask the others if they’d seen her, but...

  But the hail started.

  My previous encounters with hail had been small pebbles that grew to larger pebbles, and then back to small as the storms came to an end. These hail storms were loud and fun and sometimes damaged a car’s paint job. Earl’s truck was several tones of rust, primer, and in a few places, actual paint, so paint damage wouldn’t have been an issue in any case.

  But the St. Alban’s hail didn’t work that way. It started huge, the size of cranberries, and quickly escalated to golf balls that hit us so hard and loud it actually drowned out the sound of the shrieking. Or maybe the shrieking had stopped when the hail showed up.

  Either way, the pounding was nonstop. Unyielding. The damage to Earl’s truck quickly moved beyond a simple paint job, as the windshield cracked in several places and jagged lines were spidering in all directions across the glass. The rear window was faring even worse, with numerous impact points that looked like bullet holes.

  Nor was the damage confined to the windows, as hail relentlessly hammered dents into the hood of the truck. From the sound above us, I knew the roof would be even worse. The sound of hail on metal was so intense, it sounded like Blue Man Group was pounding the truck with sledge hammers during a prolonged finale.

  “Holy shit!” one of the boys yelled, and the rest of us laughed.

  “How you like them apples, city boy?” Earl shouted, though the hail hadn’t got quite to apple size, to my knowledge.

  “It’s amazing the windows are still in tact!” I shouted.

  “They won’t last much longer,” Earl yelled.

  Then, as suddenly as it started, it was over.

  Except for one delayed crash, where something fell from the sky and struck the truck bed so hard it shook the chassis and buckled the tires.

  “The fuck was that?” Earl shouted.

  The sudden silence was so strange, we all just sat there a moment. We looked out the windows, then at each other. We’d come through it, whatever it was, and the four of us had a story to tell for the rest of our days.

  “Don’t get out yet,” Earl said. “Whatever that last one was, might not be the last one of ‘em.”

  I agreed. “That wasn’t a hailstone,” I said.

  “What then?”

  I thought a minute. “Could be a meteorite, or a piece of a space satellite falling to earth.”

  “In the middle of a hail storm?”

  “Best guess. Of course, we could always just get out of the truck and take a look.”

  “You first, then,” Earl said.

  We started laughing. The sun came back out and I climbed out of the truck and the others followed. Then we looked in the back and found what had made the noise.

  Not a meteorite.

  Not a piece of a space satellite.

  It was a cannonball.

  “Someone fired a cannonball at us?” I said.

  “Never know,” one of Earl’s kids said. “This used to be a pirate town. Lotta people still think of themselves as pirates.”

  “Probably just got picked up by the storm, carried awhile, and dropped on the back of my truck when the wind died down,” Earl said.

  “Looks ancient,” I said.

  Earl took the ball from me and inspected it carefully. He removed his cap and scratched his head. “Now this here might be worth something,” he said. He placed it on t
he floor of his truck.

  We finished loading the ballast rocks into the back of the truck and talked about the storm, comparing it to everything else we’d experienced in nature.

  At four the next morning I built a huge fire in the pit and roasted the stones for more than two hours. Then Earl and his sons helped me wrap most of the pig in aluminum foil and carry it out to the pit. We removed a few of the small center stones and stuffed them inside the pig to facilitate the cooking. The hot stones created a lot of smoke and loud sizzling sounds as the pig seared from within. We wrapped the rest of the pig in foil and placed it carefully in the pit, and covered it with banana leaves and hot stones. Then I removed the ropes I’d used to cordon off the area, and raked a couple of feet of sand over the top of the pit. By the time we finished, if you didn’t know where the pig was cooking, it would be impossible to tell.

  Satisfied with our effort, Earl, the boys and me went back inside and I fed them some shrimp grits and country ham biscuits with red eye gravy. We sat and talked about the storm and drank coffee.

  At one point I asked them if they’d seen anything on the roof of the store.

  “Like what?” Earl said.

  “I don’t know, I just thought I saw something up there.”

  “Like a cannon?” one of the sons said.

  We all laughed and I changed the subject.

  Beth came down to start putting things in order for the big Fourth of July breakfast, and I got up to help her. The men left. It felt comfortable, the two of us working together. We didn’t talk much, and didn’t feel like we needed to.

  The way I figured, it would take about eleven hours for the pig to be fall off the bone perfect, which meant dinner would be ready around six o’clock. In the meantime our guests could enjoy the beach, play golf, or shop in nearby Fernandina Beach. Rachel and Tracy would serve drinks to the beach group, Beth would run a shuttle service for the others, and I’d handle an all-day food and beverage shift. The pig roast would be over by eight-thirty, at which time we’d shuttle our dozen house guests to the big fireworks display at the Fernandina Beach marina. All in all, it would be a Fourth of July to remember.