Carla Kelly (9 page)

ulia had no more than a vague recollection of that evening, spent shivering in bed, trying to get her feet warm. She woke once in the middle of the night to sidle closer to Mrs. Marlowe, warm in a flannel nightgown. She heard a man snoring in the front room, thought of her father, and settled deeper in the bed.

The sun woke her in the morning. She sat up, listening to kitchen sounds instead of rain, and the men talking in low voices in the front room. Her traveling suit was nowhere in sight; Mrs. Marlowe must have put the garment out of its misery.

Someone—she hoped it was Alice Marlowe—had rummaged through her trunk and found her clothes. She had only one hairpin remaining, so she brushed her hair until it crackled and bound it at the back of her neck with a piece of twine lying on the dresser.

“Sleep all right, Miss Darling?” Marlowe asked when she opened the door. He looked at her with some concern. “Allie took your dress to the burn barrel.”

“She is kind, indeed,” Julia replied.

Mr. Otto stood up and stretched. “There's a rumor that Alice Marlowe is so kind that she warms the water before she drowns baby groundhogs. Isn't that right, Alice?” he called into the kitchen.

One cannot accuse my boss of being overly sentimental,
Julia thought, as she edged past Mr. Otto into the kitchen. Alice Marlowe looked up from the cinnamon rolls she was slicing with a thread. “You were so busy sleeping this morning that I couldn't bear to wake you,” she said. She deftly arranged the rolls in the pan, covered them with a cloth, and placed the pan in the warming oven. “Would you please make coffee while I gather the eggs?”

Julia winced.
My sins have truly come home to roost,
she thought,
and much sooner than I thought they would.
Her eyes wide with dismay, she stared at her hostess's back as Mrs. Marlowe took a basket from the shelf. “I … I don't know.”

Mrs. Marlowe reached for her shawl. “Of course you can! I expect your coffee is far better than mine.” She leaned toward Julia. “I can't imagine anything more important to a rancher than good coffee.” She opened the door. “It's not every day that I have a graduate of the Boston Cooking School in my kitchen. Think of this as your moment to shine.”

Julia sat down at the table and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Coffee would be the one thing she never learned to make. With painful clarity, she saw that first week's schedule tacked to the bulletin board by the practice kitchen. “Coffee” followed “The Making and Care of a Fire,” and came right before “Mixing Water Bread.”

For one uncharitable moment, she blamed Miss Farmer. When Julia arrived two days after class began, Miss Farmer had wanted her to come early before class to catch up. Julia had assured her teacher that she was adept at laying fire in a cookstove and that she would never, ever have to make coffee at home in Utah.
This finishes it,
she thought.
I have a terrible suspicion that Mr. Otto may not forgive bad coffee.

It was failure too soon, she decided as she sat at the table again. Had she come so far, lost a lovely suit and hat, and turned her complexion red to give up so quickly? “I won't go home,” she said softly, already dreading the smug way Ezra Quayle would look at her.

“I hope not, Darling.”

Miserable, she looked over her shoulder. Mr. Otto was leaning against the door frame and regarding her with what, even in her extremity, looked like a kind expression. After Alice's comment, she knew that his expression would change when she confessed that she had no clue how to create coffee. She gazed back, but his expression did not change. She took a deep breath.

“Mr. Otto, I have another confession,” she said. “Do sit down.”

“I can't take bad news on my feet?” he asked, but again, it was not unkind. “So far I have managed to bear your confessions with some fortitude. I promise not to stagger around and tear at my hair.” He sat down anyway and looked at her for a long moment. “I overheard Alice. I suppose you are going to tell me now that you can't make coffee.”

She could tell from his expression that he was joking with her. She avoided his eyes to concentrate on the intricacy of the tablecloth's design. She looked up. He was frowning now.

“You can't make coffee,” he said in a flat voice.

She shook her head, thinking with what panache she had created bisque of lobster and bombe glace in that practice kitchen.
Why could you not have that instead?
she thought.
You want something as ordinary as coffee.

“I can't make coffee,” she echoed, fearing that he might say something she really didn't want to hear, and who could blame him?

Mr. Otto was quiet for a long moment. In misery, she listened to him drum on the table with his long fingers.

“Could you try, Darling?”

She looked up, wishing that he were not so inscrutable, or his voice so level.
I wonder if he is angry,
she thought.
How do I tell? Either he is the soul of patience or more desperate for a cook than any man living.
She could have been mistaken, but as she worked up the nerve to look at him, she imagined that he wanted her to succeed.

“I mean, I just make it with a handful or two of coffee beans and water with no tadpoles.”

He obviously wanted her to try. She nodded. “I have my cookbook in the crate, and there is a recipe for coffee.”

Brave man, he did not waver. “Get on your shoes, and show me which crate. The wagon's by the barn.”

When she went outside, Mr. Otto was already standing in the wagon bed. He had removed the extra tarpaulin that Marlowe had pulled over everything last night, shaking off the water. He gave her a hand up into the wagon bed. “Which one?” he asked.

She indicated the smaller crate. As he pried up the lid, she remembered how stiff Ezra Quayle could be when she disappointed him. She relaxed. Mr. Otto seemed perfectly at ease. He almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

When he pried off the lid, she looked at the trunk. She sniffed; the oil of cloves bottle must have broken. She picked up the almond paste, wondering if everything would now smell of cloves. She picked up the extra copy of the Book of Mormon, sniffed it, and set it back.

Mr. Otto picked up the Book of Mormon and ruffled the pages with his thumb. He put the book back into the crate. “While I do expect coffee, I hardly think it's worth too many frowns and certainly no tears.”

Relieved, she searched through the straw until she found her cookbook. She turned to the recipe and handed Mr. Otto the cookbook. She continued to paw through the straw, which eventually produced a wet measure and two dry measures in one-quarter increments. She showed them to her employer. “These are measuring cups,” she explained, pointing to the markings on the side. “I have other cups with markings in thirds.”

“Fannie Farmer doesn't just toss in a bit of this and that?” he asked after he replaced the lid on the crate and helped her from the wagon bed.

“Heavens, no! She taught us scientific cookery, Mr. Otto. Don't look so dubious,” she added.

“I can't help it.” They walked back to the kitchen.

Mr. Otto held the measuring cups and looked at them while she took Mrs. Marlowe's coffeepot to the sink and rinsed it out, counting her blessings all the while that it was granite wear, just as Miss Farmer insisted upon in the recipe.

Taking a measuring cup from Mr. Otto, she portioned six cups of hot water from the stove's reservoir into the pot, and set the pot on the cookstove. In a brief time, she heard the hiss of water heating.

Alice had returned with the eggs. Glancing at the recipe, Julia took the biggest one and cracked it into a bowl, shells and all. She added precisely one half cup of cold water, and then the coffee, which Alice, at her instruction, measured from the tin. “Imagine such a thing as cups to measure with,” the woman murmured. “We do live in a modern age.”

“Level measures, too,” Julia said. “I can't tell you how many times Miss Farmer had us run a knife just so across the top of a measuring cup or a teaspoon.”

When the water was boiling, Julia added the coffee and egg mixture to the pot and stirred vigorously, as the recipe indicated. To her dismay, the coffee was cloudy.
Please be right, Miss Farmer,
she thought. After another glance at the cookbook, she set the pot on the range and adjusted the damper again for a hotter fire.

“Do you have a pocket watch, Mr. Otto?” she asked.

Her employer drew back in mock alarm. “I cannot believe Fannie wants you to add my watch to the brew,” he said, even as he handed it to her.

She sighed and looked at the watch. “The coffee is to boil exactly three minutes, Mr. Otto.”

“Egg and all?”

“Certainly,” she replied, hoping that she sounded more confident than she felt.
Why on earth would anyone put an egg in coffee?
she asked herself.
And shells, too?

While they all watched the three minutes pass, Marlowe joined them in the kitchen, draping his arm compan-ionably over his wife's shoulder. He looked from one of them to the other, a grin on his face. “Is absolute silence part of the recipe?” he asked finally. “Paul, I think we had more fun in here the night that Doc splinted my leg on this table.”

“And certainly more brandy,” his wife commented.

“Doc does appreciate an occasion,” Mr. Otto said, not taking his eyes from his watch. “Three minutes, Darling. What happens now? Should we stand back? Duck?”

She ignored him. With her heart pounding just under her apron bib, she carefully removed the calendar page that Mrs. Marlowe had given her to plug up the spout. After another glance at the cookbook, she added the remaining half cup of cold water and held her breath.
Heavenly Father,
she prayed to herself,
please let this coffee be wonderful.
Her petition almost made her gasp.
What am I thinking? More to the point, what on earth is Heavenly Father making of my petition?

“The colder water carries the grounds to the bottom,” she said, wishing for an authoritative ring to her voice, which sounded childish to her ears.

“Egg shells, too?” Mr. Otto asked, peering into the pot.

I most earnestly hope so,
she thought. “Now we set it on the back of the range for precisely ten more minutes.”

“Exactly ten minutes?” he asked.

“Precisely,” she said, crossing her fingers.

He shifted in his chair to look at her. “How can you really predict
anything
done on a cookstove?”

“Cooks do it all the time, Mr. Otto. It helps if you lay the fire right and then use good coal or the right wood when it catches,” she explained as she sat down beside him. “I looked at Mrs. Marlowe's fire, and it was fine.”

“Little River used to just heave in a log or two when the mood was on her,” he said. “I've seen her stuff a log through the stove lid and let it burn down.”

That does not sound promising,
she considered, remembering Charlie McLemore's disparaging remarks about the Double Tipi's kitchen. “Is … is Little River still there?” she asked, hopeful of denial.

Her employer handed her four cups. “Funny thing about that, Darling. When I told her that I was getting a cook, she left the next day.” He smiled. “Makes me wish I had said something years ago. I got a letter a couple of weeks later from my uncle on the Wind River Rez. Said she showed up one morning and announced that she was cooking for him now.”

“Oh, dear,” Julia murmured.

“It's worse. He also told me that he had decided not to leave me part of his herd when he dies. Darling, retribution is swift among the Shoshone.”

She laughed and looked at the pocket watch. Her smile vanished. Feeling like the Queen of France in a tumbrel, she lifted the coffee pot from the back burner. Alice, her face red with the heat, was stirring down the lava-like oatmeal. She smiled her thanks when Julia slid a trivet under the pot.

She had hardly moved the pot from the stove to another trivet on the table when Mr. Otto held out a cup. Marlowe covered his face with his hands. “I can't stand the suspense,” he declared.