Sarah Black's Blog: Book Report, page 12

Gabriel's Playlist!

Gabriel’s Playlist- Music for Some Quiet Dance Time in the Garage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYHxGB... SUPER FREAK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcATvu... ADDICTED TO LOVE!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK2HAN... LA BAMBA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-W_i... SHAKEDOWN! (talk about a silver fox!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuz... WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN!

Okay, I confess I was dancing to Super Freak when I was 21. (Also dressing like the girls in the video, hee hee!) I was also dancing to these songs this morning, because Gabriel’s playlist is the one I use when I need some dance time to keep from going mad.

So what were you dancing to when you were 21?

Whose Side Are You On, Anyway?

I nearly stopped writing The General and the Horse-Lord about halfway through. The problem? Martha. She was sitting in the car with the general, and she was telling him what she had done to try and ruin his life. And I was like, you go, girl! You want a baseball bat? I’ll tell you where Gabriel has his pickup truck parked.

I was totally on her side. I thought she was being a little too restrained in her revenge, because, I mean, these guys had cheated on her! They had been cheating since before she was married! She deserved some revenge.

But wait a minute, the guys, they’re the heroes, right? How can the ex-wife possible become a Valkyrie in the middle of the story? So I stopped to think about it all.

When you’re writing the rough draft, you do it intuitively, what I call ‘doing it like Kerouac.’ Just let the words flow like a river. Then when you start to revise, you think about things like motivation, behavior. Why does he do that? What am I really trying to say? Once you can be clear about what your point is, you can revise to hone the point.

So I’m trying to think, why was I so totally on Martha’s side? Well, I’m a woman, of course. There is no woman in the world who wouldn’t look at this situation and hand Martha a baseball bat. The fact that she is very self-contained and proud meant she did it a different way.

But John and Gabriel, they had been in love for years before Martha ever entered the picture. They would have made a life together, and it wasn’t Martha who kept them apart. In a different world, they would have made different choices. When basic human rights are kept from people, they’re not the only ones harmed. The harm flows down over all the people they love, the people they know, even just the people who stand as witnesses.

We’re all harmed when human rights are denied. In this story, John and Gabriel were not the only people hurt. They tried in their own ways to contain the pain, but it flows down, over Martha, over the kids, over Kim, who watched this growing up. I decided all I could do is write the story and not take anyone’s side. Martha, I totally feel it. I am going to find you a wonderful guy to fall in love with, I promise you, somebody who deserves a woman as smart and strong as you are. Just be patient.

I'm blogging today!

My blog tour for the new book is really more a blog visit, since I'm just going to visit a couple of friends and talk- today I'm visiting Scattered Thought and Rogue Words (love that name) and talking about soapmaking and my characters. Dreamspinner is giving away a copy of the book for a commenter, so come on by and visit!

http://scatteredthoughtsandroguewords...

Soundbites Contest for The General and the Horse-Lord!

Sound Bites from The General and the Horse-Lord- pick your favorite!

Tell me the quote you like and why for a chance to win a copy of the book, out Apr 5 from Dreamspinner!

(1)“You’re saying you want me to shoot you in the head if the bad guys are closing in?”

(2) “I did jerk off to a picture of an Apache attack helo when I was in high school.”

(3) “The entire world can’t stop work to brainstorm with their dicks in their hands, fun as that might be.”

(4) “I am the king. You’re the knight sitting at my round table. That’s the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family.”

(5) “All you want to do when you’re fourteen is snatch up a broadsword and hack something to pieces, then find a big rock and fuck it to death.”

(6) ‘Another sausage! And bring one for my friend!’.”

(7) “Sometimes I go out into the garage for some private dance time. Anything to keep from going mad.”

(8) “…don’t tell me how I need to follow your Greenpeace PETA pacifist butt into a gay bar…”

(9) Other than the tequila, there was nothing in his stomach besides Pepto-Bismol.

(10) “What was the point of throwing the wok?”

(11) “You left last night before the Kitty Cats did their Elvis medley!”

Everybody Wants Pie in My House

Everybody wants pie in my house. Me, the kid, and even the fictional characters currently living with us. It’s spring, and the markets are gearing up. We went to a new neighborhood market this morning that is waving the local, sustainable flag and tasted our way around the store. I brought home a couple of Mexican Mocha soft biscotti from Deda’s Bakery. This is on the tag: “We believe in the liberal use of butter, cream, sugar, and eggs. We believe in generous amounts of frosting.” It gets better from there. I’ve tasted their biscotti and they do believe in butter. I may not be able to eat for the rest of the day but that’s okay. I’m in the camp that would rather eat two biscotti laden with butter and sugar, and then eat nothing but snap-peas until my blood sugar levels off. The other camp is the one where biscotti are gluten free, cholesterol free, salt free, sugar free. And you can have more than one a month.

I could argue either side of the fence. My stand is strictly because I adore the way good food tastes. I get really excited about a new Basque sheep’s milk cheese. I mean, really excited. Such as the new sheep’s milk cheese I have just tasted from the Black Sheep Creamery. Like, Oh. My. God! And now I am thinking about a nice, golden Riesling to go with, and I passed a winery the other day that seems to mean business with their Riesling. But let me get a grip--we were talking about pie.

I have my grandmother’s pastry thing. I don’t even know what it’s called, but it’s a little hand tool for mixing flour with butter and lard, a wooden handle, and attached are wire loops that look like a rainbow. My mother used this to mix flour with Crisco, but my grandmother used Sno White Lard. This lard and flour was used as a base for gravy, which went with every meal. Also biscuits and pie crusts. There might have been fancier pastries but that generation was a poor family with a lot of kids, so we stuck to biscuits and pie crusts.

I haven’t made my own pie crusts in years, and I don’t know that I have ever cooked with lard. But when I lived out with the Navajo, I ate lots of food with lard. Frybread was cooked in lard. Pastry was made with lard. Ditto refried beans. Piecrusts made with cold butter and lard together are the lightest, flakiest, most delicate piecrusts in the world. I say that as a foodie who has eaten way too much sheep’s milk cheese today, along with my biscotti from Deda’s, enough so I will be on snap-peas for the rest of the weekend and well into next week.

The characters in The General and the Horse-Lord are in a second book I am currently writing. This is a bit of an anomaly for me, because I usually am finished with characters and move on- but novels leave a lot of room to explore, and these guys are still living in my house, talking about pie. They start to talk about sex, but since they are walking the streets of Albuquerque, and they are not the kind of people to talk about sex in public, they have to turn their conversation to lard.

Gabriel reached down, captured his hand and held it against his warm skin. “This is how you touched me for the first time. And I could tell by your face you were trying hard to resist me. That’s why I peeled out of my flight suit right in front of you. I wanted to give you every assistance.”

“It was appreciated. I know where we can get some pie.”

“Mannie’s?”

John nodded. “They use lard in the crust, along with butter. I wish I didn’t know that, but now I do I can taste why they have the best piecrust outside of Navajo land. One of the cooks is Navajo. She told me if I wanted a piece of real fry bread, she’d drop a piece for me into bubbling lard. That’s how she said it, too, bubbling lard, and for some reason it sounded good, fry bread cooked in lard.”

“We both need to get our cholesterol checked,” Gabriel said, and took his hand. “We split one piece of pie, now I know about the lard, then back home to our salads. I remember when I was a kid, watching my grandmother make tortillas with corn masa and warm water and a little bit of lard. I loved those tortillas. I’d sit at the table and she would cook a bunch over the griddle, and every batch she’d slide me one hot off the stove.”

a little bit of the new book!

The General and the Horse-Lord by Sarah Black coming April 5 from Dreamspinner


General John Mitchel and his favorite pilot, Gabriel Sanchez, served together as comrades and brothers-in-arms for more than twenty-five years. They followed the warrior’s path: honor first, and service, and the safety of the tribe. Their own needs for love and companionship were secondary to the mission. Retirement from the army, however, proves challenging in ways neither expected.

When old warriors retire, their armor starts falling away, and the noise of the world crowds in. That changing world sets up longings in both men for the life they might have had. After years of loving on the down-low, the idea of living together in the light seems like pure sweet oxygen to men who have been underwater a little too long. But what will it cost them to turn their dreams into truth?

Excerpt:
When the coffee finished brewing, John carried a couple of mugs into the living room and handed one to Gabriel. He set his cup down on the coffee table and settled down next to him on the couch. “So what’s been happening with you? You’ve been in practice about six months. Is the law what you were hoping it would be?”

Gabriel had his nose in the cup, smelling the rich coffee. “Yeah, it’s good. Fine. Not….”

Not like the army. He didn’t need to say it. John felt it too. “You miss it still?” Gabriel nodded. “Yeah, me too. But it’s a young man’s game.”

Gabriel had finished law school the year before, deciding on a midlife career in public service. John also suspected he was doing it to make Martha happy. She’d been a good army wife, following him across the world, managing the family while he was deployed. John thought she would like being a lawyer’s wife. “I don’t like the young lawyers right out of school much. I sound like an old man, looking at them and thinking what a bunch of selfish, spoiled little pricks they are. Money, money, money. You could take the whole crowd of them right off a cliff following the sweet green scent of money. I don’t know, John. I look at them and think, who the fuck is left? Where are the leaders? Is there an ounce of fortitude in any of them? They get hysterical when they can’t remember the pocket where they stowed their phones.”

John picked up his cup and drank the coffee down. “Now you know why I had a shit fit and pretended to flunk my entire freshman class. Not that I think it did any good. I just wanted to see if any single one of them would stand up and admit they hadn’t a clue because they’d bought their papers.”

“Did they?”

John shook his head.

“I like the practice, though. It’s like the law firm of last resort. For the clueless and the desperate. And the broke. I don’t think I’ll ever have a pot to piss in. But I’m always happy to stick a thorn in the fat asses of the establishment.” Gabriel reached out and took his empty cup. “You want a refill?”

“No. I think I’m going to grab a quick shower. Finish what’s in the pot if you want.”

John stepped into the shower off his bedroom, gave himself a brisk scrub-down. He toweled off and wrapped the towel around his waist. Gabriel was waiting for him, sitting on the side of the bed. He’d undressed down to his boxers, clothes neatly folded over the back of a chair. He stood and reached out, pulled John closer by the towel around his waist. He leaned forward, moved his warm mouth across John’s shoulder, up his neck. “I love the smell of Dial soap on your skin.” He pulled the towel away and gathered John into his arms. “My old friend. I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.”

“Hello, Gabriel.” John reached up, traced his fingers along Gabriel’s strong jawline, across a mouth that had always curved into a smile at his touch. Gabriel moved his hand down into the curly brown hair that covered John’s belly and chest, still mostly brown, with just a few notes of silver. Gabriel said the silver looked good, matched the color of his eyes.

Caravaggio was Not a Pimp!

I’ve always felt that fiction can give a clearer, more honest picture of a person or event than written history. Caravaggio is a good example.

Historians study primary sources- ledgers, letters, court documents, paintings, and secondary sources- other historians’ writings, and they study the milieu and they come to conclusions that can be verified with their primary source documents. When they make an educated guess, they usually tell us they are guessing. Only in the last generations of historians, though, were conclusions so carefully documented.

Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote the biography of Caravaggio titled A Life Sacred and Profane. It’s an excellent book, very well researched, very exciting to read. I am not convinced, though, by some of his conclusions. He concluded that Caravaggio’s time spent with prostitutes, as evidenced by his many paintings in which a prostitute stood in for the Virgin Mary or various saints, and his penchant for roaming the streets at night armed with a sword, and his tendency to get into fights, suggest that Caravaggio was a pimp.

Mr. G-D, you are such a man! I love your book, don’t mistake me, but Michelangelo Merisi has not been proven to be a pimp by your evidence. Insomnia might cause a man to roam the streets at night, as he did not have TV to watch, and you do not have to either sleep with the girls or run them as their pimp to hire them as models. I bet they had good stories to tell. They were probably charming company. If I was a prostitute in 1602, in Rome, I might like to hold the baby Jesus and be painted for days rather than my usual occupation.

Peter Robb made a similar masculine-historian mistake when he discussed M’s obvious love affair with Cecco, the young boy he painted in Amor Vincit Omnia. This adorable painting was taken as evidence that Michelangelo Merisi had taken this boy as his lover. Because God knows men do not love boys in any way but sexually? Hello? Anyone heard of a father?

As a fiction writer, and as a mother, I have to look at these bits of evidence in different ways. What does love look like, anyway? Does it have a different color or a different smell, if it belongs to the world of sexual love? Is love a different animal between mother and child and between painter and the boy who grinds his paints? How would the man who painted those paintings look at the world? What would he see, that’s different from what I normally see? How is he going to look at this delightful rascal of a boy, and what is he going to do with what he sees? He’s going to paint him, of course, as the most gorgeous little imp of love. There is nothing sexual in this painting, but it is all about love.

Caravaggio painted Cecco as the little Cupid because of the way he sees the world. He painted the prostitutes of Rome as saints and virgins, because he saw their divinity, their beauty and grace. And I think he recognized that we could all walk different sides of that line, depending on circumstance. Looking around at a culture where family and race and rank were everything, he saw we were mostly alike. And then he painted what he saw. Maybe he enjoyed sticking a sharp thorn in the backsides of the wealthy and the noble. Ahem! Who doesn’t?

Maybe I’m looking at his actions through the lens of how I see the world. I’m always willing to give a person the benefit of my doubt. I am going to approach Caravaggio with the assumption that he is not the worst case scenario (pimp and pedophile). My experience has been that I see the world as covered with a dark cloud when I’m in a piss-poor mood, not when the sky is actually dark with cloud. So I try to step back and reserve judgment, and remember that people are basically good, and will usually turn toward love, like they turn toward the sun, when they have the chance.

His paintings tell me a story of a man who sees with a clarity and a light that the rest of us might be missing. So to bring the truth about Caravaggio to the page, I’m going to read about those primary and secondary sources, and read all the conclusions, and study the paintings. And then I’m going to step into his skin and try to see what he sees- and tell a story about this man. That’s what fiction writers do that historians do not, and why we get the facts wrong but the truth right.

The New Book!

The General and the Horse-Lord

The new book is out April 5 from Dreamspinner!

General John Mitchel and his favorite pilot, Gabriel Sanchez, served together as comrades and brothers-in-arms for more than twenty-five years. They followed the warrior’s path: honor first, and service, and the safety of the tribe. Their own needs for love and companionship were secondary to the mission. Retirement from the army, however, proves challenging in ways neither expected.

When old warriors retire, their armor starts falling away, and the noise of the world crowds in. That changing world sets up longings in both men for the life they might have had. After years of loving on the down-low, the idea of living together in the light seems like pure sweet oxygen to men who have been underwater a little too long. But what will it cost them to turn their dreams into truth?

The Mystery of Fan Fic, and Jane Eyre's Soap

Jane Eyre Makes the Best Honey-Lemon Soap!

I never got that thing about writing fan fic. Stories about Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock? What? What planet were they on when that happened? Was Mr. Spock in pon farr? I thought Vulcans just liked to fight when…oh. No. Absolutely not. I can’t think about this. I need to put this in a small box in my mind and lock it away.

But my recent obsession with soap-making has led me down the fan fic garden path. What kind of soap does Hester Pryne use? The first time I tried to read The Scarlet Letter I became so infuriated I threw the book. Literally, and I am not the throwing-the-book type. My third effort, age 52, was the first time I made it through the entire story. Darling, I am going to make you some wonderful soap, not that any soap can make up for those men around you, but some soap that will lift your battered heart just a bit. Some rose clay, for gentleness, but with a tiny scent of the wild pine forest.

What kind of soap does Lord Byron use? Something just a little bit over the edge, because he was one for pushing the boundaries. He was the guy that drank too much, loved too hard, laughed too loud, tried to swim too far. Wrote too beautifully. Hard to love him in person, I imagine. Too exhausting. He must have known the way people drew back from him just a bit, and he was never sure what he had done to push them away. I need to write him a scene, just a small story, so we can see into his lonely heart, and give him someone who can love him. What kind of soap? Something exotic and fresh, a strange combination. Sandalwood and Black Pepper?

Captain Ahab needs some soap, some strong soap that will lather up even in salt-water. He needs more than soap, actually. I’m concerned. He needs medication and therapy, but for now we will just offer up a clean-smelling bar with seaweed and coconut. I’ll offer up the soap and then get out of his way. This man and his obsession could take us all down.

Jane Eyre needs a special soap. She is THE romance heroine, the umbilicus mundi for romance writers. She needs a rich, sweet-smelling soap, so that when she lowers her tired face into her hands at the end of the day, hands full of creamy lather, she can close her eyes and remember Mr. Rochester. This was the only time of day she let herself think of him, let herself remember. The way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. The way he turned his head so eagerly to look for her when she walked into the room, always with that smile. She lowered her face into her hands, scrubbed away the dirt and traces of tears, and smelled Mr. Rochester just for a moment.

Okay, so now I get fan fic.

Love Story with Squash

Awake or asleep, Rebecca dreamed beautiful dreams. She dreamed of a small organic market garden, maybe four acres of butternut squash and Blue Hubbards; this garden would provide the produce for the casual and eclectic restaurant where people would learn again to love the flavors of food. She even dreamed of her small restaurant as a stone, dropped into the lake of American obesity. Future generations would look back and point to four acres of squash, and say, that’s where it started, right there. That’s when they started to get healthy.

She was a sturdy girl with wide shoulders and strong hands, a long ponytail the color of oak, and on her days off she liked to drive around in her pickup truck and look at land for sale. She was looking for four unimproved acres of rural Oregon, and she must have walked a hundred, studying the slope and the trees and the fertile earth, dressed in a warm barn coat with a corduroy collar and hand knit socks inside her Wellies. Her mother had an alpaca in her back yard, and she sheared and spun his fleece every year and knit the yarn into socks. The alpaca gave about seventy pairs of socks a year. Rebecca knew that her mother wished it was seven hundred.

Rebecca came from a long line of women who had dreamed big when they were young--grandmother, mother, aunts, cousins. These voices urged caution, higher education, a back-up plan, perhaps a husband. Her cousin Adele, the cousin who knew her best, suggested soup.

The problem, Rebecca thought, with Americans and squash was they didn’t know how to cook it. Also, their palates had been ruined by all-beef patties and too much salt. They didn’t know how to cook, they didn’t know how to eat, and they didn’t know how to wait. Soup was a very reasonable first step. After talking the problem over with Adele, Rebecca decided to ask her boss at Denny’s, where she worked as a waitress, if she could make her soup and serve it to the customers.

“I want to make soup with my organic squash and serve it here at the restaurant,” she said.

Mr. Vick looked like he was thinking hard about what to say to her. He wore a black polyester tie and white, short-sleeved uniform shirt. “The thing is, Rebecca, that this is a franchise. Denny’s has a set menu. According to our contract, we can’t add squash soup.”

“I love the flavors of squash,” she said, “especially butternut and acorn and pumpkin. Blue Hubbards, too, and there are some very interesting new varietals coming out of Israel. But maybe not everyone shares my taste. My cousin Adele says I should get some people to taste the soup before I invest in the land.”

“The land?”

“Four acres. I want to have a small organic market garden, specializing in root vegetables and winter squash. Then, I would use that produce to open a restaurant. Specializing in squash. Like, cooked into something.” She waved her hand. “I haven’t gotten that far. But soup for sure.”

They studied each other for a moment. Mr. Vick rubbed across his forehead. “If you used the commercial kitchen here to make the soup,” Mr. Vick said, “you could sell it at the farmer’s market. Or you could make the soup here and offer it to the rest of the staff, as an initial experiment.”

They eventually agreed that Rebecca would work the long shift on Saturday, 0600 to 1700, and she could make her soup and keep it on the back burner for the staff to eat during the day. That would give her two shifts worth of tasters.

Rebecca was as happy as she could ever remember being when she arrived the first Saturday at 0500 to start her soup. She had saved two weeks’ worth of vegetables from her CSA share for the stock, and she roasted butternut squash, a couple of Acorns, parsnips, turnips, and some Yukon Gold potatoes for the soup. Denny’s was quiet, a dark night turning into a cool and foggy morning, and the restaurant smelled like coffee and bacon and roasting root vegetables. Mr. Vick came in early, too, and watched what she was doing in the kitchen.

“So this is the soup?” He looked into the big stockpot. The celery tops were floating on the surface of the simmering water.

“No, that’s the stock. The soup is going to be made with the stock, and then all these veggies.” She cracked open the door of the oven, and he looked inside. “I’ve got some turnips and parsnips, as well as the squash. I thought about adding a beet, but that would mess up the color.”

“Are those potatoes?”

She nodded. “Potatoes are the most popular of the root vegetables, but not the only ones. The roasting really brings out the richness of their flavor, something between nutty and sweet.”

“Hmm, nutty and sweet.” He rubbed his chin, and she noticed, not for the first time, the dark hair that grew on the back of his hands. He had strong hands, like a farmer’s. “I was wondering if you had thought of a name for your soup.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I’ve just been thinking of it as squash soup.”

“The thing I’ve noticed, managing this Denny’s, is that names seem to matter to people. The familiar names and the silly names seem very popular. I can’t begin to explain why. But not many people understand squash the way you do. They might be more inclined to try the soup if it sounded a bit more familiar.”

Mr. Vick had won a scholarship to play football for Oregon the year Rebecca was in the third grade. He was home by Thanksgiving of his freshman year and never went back, to football or to college. He’d come back to Denny’s, where he’d worked as a short order cook in high school, and had worked his way up to manager. None of the waitresses knew what had happened to end his dreams, though they speculated a good deal.

“You mean call it potato soup?” She poured a cup of coffee for him, then one for herself. “Potato soup is a good example of what I’m fighting against. You take a healthy, simple food and you pour in the cream and butter and salt until it’s a bowl of heart attack soup. Old fashioned potato soup is really good, though. My grandmother used to make it with baked potatoes and onions and milk. She said baking the potatoes was critical.”

“My grandmother made potato soup, too. I wonder if you could call it something unique, like roasted potato soup?”

“The soup is going to be goldy-orange,” Rebecca said. “The color might throw people off.”

“Then what about Golden Potato soup?”

“That sounds perfect,” Rebecca said. “Thank you.”

“Oh, of course,” Mr. Vick said, his neck shading red, and he went back to the front to roll silverware in napkins.

She made ten gallons of the Golden Potato soup. It was probably too much, but she was hoping that people would like it so much that they would eat seconds, and ask her if they could take some home. By lunchtime, the soup was rich and thick, filling the kitchen with the warm smells of sage and browned butter and roasting squash. It was a lovely golden color, and it tasted like a cupful of autumn leaves, like Indian summer sunshine. Denny’s was busy by noon, but none of the customers asked about the smell. They ordered burgers, as usual, with fries on the side.

Mr. Vick had a large bowl of soup for lunch, and then ate seconds. The cook tasted a cupful, winked at her and told her she was hot shit in the kitchen. He was looking at her ass when he said it, though, so she thought his opinion was suspect. The busboy wouldn’t try any soup. The other two waitresses deferred: one was lactose intolerant and the other was doing Atkins. By late afternoon, when the lunch crowd cleared out, she was left with about nine gallons of soup.

She was tired, as much from the excitement of the day as anything. Moderate to low enthusiasm was adequate for a first try. She had taste buds. She had a nose. That pot of soup was the best soup she had ever eaten. Her first commercial pot of soup! It was as good as she had hoped it would be. She ate a bowl herself, swallowed with her eyes closed and dreamed about standing in a garden with a shovel, turning over rich, black earth in early spring.

By four she had customers in for the early-bird specials. An elderly woman, her walker parked next to the booth, told Rebecca that Denny’s smelled good. “It reminds me of something, I don’t know. Something I’ve forgotten? A lovely, old-fashioned smell,” she said.

Rebecca looked around the restaurant. Mr. Vick seemed to be watching her, but when she met his gaze, he looked quickly away. “Would you like to try some soup? It’s on the house,” she said. “It’s called Golden Potato soup. A new recipe.”

“What’s in it?”

“Potatoes, turnips, parsnips, butternut squash, and acorn squash. Vegetable stock, milk and butter and sage and cinnamon!”

The old lady clapped her hands. “That’s what I smelled! The sage and the cinnamon. Yes, my dear. I would like to try some soup. Are you sure it’s on the house?”

Rebecca nodded. “Absolutely.”

She raced back to the kitchen, stirred the pot. It had thickened over the course of the day, but she didn’t want to try and thin it out, not when she had a live taster on the hook. She filled a cup and carried it to the table.

The woman bent over the cup, her eyes closed, smelled deeply, then she tasted a small spoonful. She leaned back, fingers stroking the purple silk scarf around her neck. She swallowed another spoonful and uttered a small sound of distress in her throat.

“What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”

Rebecca was horrified to find the woman looking at her with tears in her eyes, tears sliding down her worn cheeks. “When I was growing up, we had a small farm in Oklahoma. My father left, looking for work. This was the depression, you know. My mother and my grandmother, they grew all the food we had to eat. This soup reminded me of what those years tasted like. I had forgotten. I don’t think I’ve tasted turnips in soup in fifty years. It reminded me of being hungry.” She pushed the soup across the table, like she couldn’t get it far enough away.

What could she possibly say to this? Rebecca handed the woman an extra napkin for the tears, patted her tiny shoulder.

“Darling, don’t mind me. I can cry over sunshine, when the day’s been cloudy. It was lovely soup, I promise you. I’m just not feeling very strong today.” Then she reached for her walker with shaking hands.

“Don’t go without eating!” Rebecca was ready to cry herself. “What would you like? Let me get you something. You can take it with you.”

The old lady wiped across her cheek with the back of her hand, made a little tsk of impatience at herself. “Nothing, thank you, my dear. Enough is as good as a feast, as my grandmother always said.”

Rebecca walked her to the door. Then she went back to the kitchen, pulled the huge stock pot off the stove. She put the lid on and set it on the counter. The cook grinned at her and pulled his smokes out of the pocket of his apron, offered her one. She shook her head. Mr. Vick looked into the kitchen, studied the stockpot, but he didn’t say anything.

Rebecca finished her shift. It had been a very long day. Mr. Vick looked tired as well. He kept looking at her like he wanted to say something. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it. She was beginning to suspect that he had eaten seconds of her soup just to be nice! She didn’t need false encouragement. He didn’t understand the power of her dreams. She needed honest feedback. Those damn turnips! If he had just told her four hours earlier the soup tasted like the Great Depression, she wouldn’t have forced it on a frail elder.

She heard the screams before she smelled the smoke, then the alarms were going off, red lights flashing, and the customers were racing for the exit doors. Mr. Vick ran into the kitchen, then spun in a circle, looking for the fire extinguisher. She grabbed one from below the waitress station and followed him through the doors. He held out his hands and she threw the extinguisher to him. The grease pan below the grill was on fire, grease and flame spreading across the floor. The cook was beating at the smolder on the bottom of his apron with a cup towel.

Mr. Vick pulled the pin and squeezed the nozzle, pointing the fire extinguisher down at the floor. A dollop of foam, and then the extinguisher was fizzing, blowing air. The second extinguisher was on the other side of the grill, unreachable. The cook was shouting, pointing at the back door. The fire was climbing up the grill, scorching the walls, filling the kitchen with oily black smoke. Mr. Vick grabbed some towels, threw them at the fire and tried to stomp on them. They soaked up the grease and caught immediately.

“It’s an oil fire,” he said, eyes zinging like pinballs in his head. “We can’t use water. Water just spreads it…”

Rebecca grabbed the stockpot. It was heavy, the soup cooling thickly, and she dumped the pot out on the fire, nine gallons of beautiful squash soup across the kitchen floor. She watched it smother the flames, suck the oxygen out of the fire. Mr. Vick leaned back against the counter, set the empty fire extinguisher down with shaking hands. “Wow. I’ve never seen soup do that.”

The cook was laughing like a loon from across the kitchen. “Golden fucking potato!”

The oily black smoke was replaced just for a moment with the rich autumn smell of roasting squash, sage and cinnamon. Rebecca stared down at the mess on the floor. That was good soup.

Rebecca turned around and walked out of the restaurant. She passed through the crowd of customers in the parking lot and got into her truck. She reclined the seat and closed her eyes. Adele was wrong. She didn’t need tasters. She needed four fertile acres planted in heirloom Blue Hubbards.

She was calm by the time Mr. Vick opened the door and handed her in a couple of Kleenex. “I’m coming back in,” she said. “I just needed a minute. Mr. Vick, I gave some soup to a customer. She got upset and started to cry.”

“I know. I saw it.”

“I’m really sorry. I’m not sure what happened, to tell you the truth. But I shouldn’t have done it.”

Mr. Vick straightened, looked back toward the restaurant. The fire truck was turning into the parking lot. The crowd of customers out front applauded when the fire fighters jumped down from the truck and picked up their axes. “I’ve got to go. Will you come in tomorrow? Help with clean-up?”

Rebecca noticed that, by the ceiling light of her Ford Ranger pickup, Mr. Vick’s evening whiskers were growing in very thick and dark. “I’ll be here.”

“Have you found your land? The four acres?”

She looked at him in surprise. “I’m very close.”

He smiled down at her. “Good.”