Rhubarb (16 page)

Martin had dug through the entire Black Velvet box, and this
was the only thing that came close. Nothing in the box of recipe cards, nothing
in any of the cookbooks, nothing even on that scrap could turn a non-pie maker
into Mrs. Smith overnight.

Why had Linda even written this down, only to tuck it into a
book full of recipes for covered hot dishes, potatoes au gratin, meatballs, and
Jell-O salads? Surely she wouldn’t have needed the recipe. She could probably
have made this pie easier than he could pour milk on Frosted Flakes. Cheryl
hadn’t followed a written recipe. She had gone from garden to pie—filling in
from memory all the technical details of its fabrication that this scrap of
paper left out. She’d had the tools at hand.

Martin considered his own kitchen. His oven had never cooked
more than frozen pizza and chocolate chip cookies from a tube. Rolling pin? No.
Measuring cups? Doubtful. Knives? He had a couple that could probably cut
it—rimshot. He had Cheryl’s pie plate, clean and empty, never returned, waiting
on her kitchen towel, laundered and neatly folded.

~ * * * ~

“No, we don’t have that,” said a Walmart worker emptying a
box of bagged lettuce. “Don’t know that we’ve ever carried it.”

Martin studied his cart. Flour, Crisco, sugar, cinnamon, a
rolling pin, and measuring cups. Salt and ice he had at home.

“Try Albertsons,” said the worker.

Martin thanked him and almost abandoned his cart.

Beep. “Making a pie?” asked the cashier. Beep.

“Trying to,” said Martin. Beep. “You don’t know where I
could find some rhubarb, do you?” Beep.

“What’s rhubarb?” asked the cashier. Beep.

At Albertsons, a produce stocker spent several minutes in
the back, then returned with a shake of his head. “You should try the farmer’s
market on Saturday,” he said.

“I need some tonight,” said Martin.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said the stocker.

At home, Martin set his bags on the counter next to Cheryl’s
pie plate. He opened the freezer, took out a pint of Brownie Batter Ben and
Jerry’s, found a clean spoon, and collapsed on his couch.

He pushed aside the cookbooks to make room for his feet on
the coffee table. All those recipes. All those hours spent perfecting dishes to
share with the church ladies’ circle. And what could he do? Burn frozen pizzas
and epically fail to buy ingredients for a simple pie. The only person who
could have taught him was Cheryl. He remembered her hands in the floury
mixture, rolling the dough with those deft strokes, and crimping the crust. He
could probably figure it out, but there was no time for a learning curve. She
was the only one, thought Martin, and then stopped with a spoonful of ice cream
halfway to his gaping mouth.

~ * * * ~

“In example after example, we find that ancient cultures
revered water for its healing properties. I don’t think it’s any accident that
the Greeks associated Mnemosyne, the muse of memory, with a pool of
remembering. Long before the Greeks, the ancients knew that water from certain
sources healed, restored, and brought life. These carvings that have recently
been unearthed in Syria clearly show ancient visitors preparing, offering, and
administering water to humans.”

“Do you have pictures of these carvings up on the web for
the audience to see?”

“We don’t yet, but we’re working on it.”

“We’ll put a link on wakernation.com when those come
available. Now, do you think that the visitors—extraterrestrials, if I’m to
understand your assertion?”

“That’s correct.”

“Do you think the extraterrestrials simply exploited local,
Earthly water sources with healing properties? Or did they add something to the
water to create these elixirs?”

“That’s an excellent question, Lee. And it’s an issue to
which we are devoting a great deal of time. If it is true that certain elements
in these springs and water sources have naturally occurring healing properties,
that’s an amazing discovery and a real validation for the homeopathic
community. What a wonder to have Gaia herself confirm what we’ve witnessed so
many times before. On the other hand, if the visitors used homeopathic
techniques, and added their own compounds to the water, that’s also very
significant. It means that certain sites, like Lourdes, Bethesda, Chilca, the
Ganges, and many others were perhaps seeded with healing compounds by the
visitors. We may be able to reconstruct these alien elixirs from the water’s
own memory.”

“We’re up against a hard break, but when we come back,
Sandy, I’d like to hear how, exactly, you read the memory of water.”

“I’ll be happy to stay with you, Lee.”

“Great. Wakers, we may not know the secret ingredient for
the alien elixirs yet, but I have the ingredient to heal your portfolio. Gold.
Now, I’ve been investing in gold through TheYellowHoard.com for several years
now, and I can tell you…”

~ * * * ~

“No need to get your gun, Doris. It’s Martin Wells. I came
the other night with Eileen.”

Doris answered the door in her housecoat and shotgun.

“‘Don’t get your gun,’” she said. “You think I’m a fool?”

“I need to talk to you about the pie recipe. And…”

“And what?”

“I wondered if you could teach me to bake a pie.” She raised
the barrels, and he put up his hands. “I’ve got all the ingredients in my car.
Except the rhubarb.”

“Well, get ’em and get in here ’fore all the bugs do,” she
said.

Doris didn’t put her gun aside until Martin set his Walmart
purchases on her kitchen table. She peeked in the bags and said, “You keep
comin’ around in the middle of the night, people gonna talk.”

“I’m sorry to impose, but Eileen said you stay up late. I’m
a big BI fan, too.”

“So, you’re gonna try your hand at the pie?” Doris asked.

“If they abducted Cheryl for the recipe, the best way to get
her back is to give it to them. Maybe then they’ll leave everyone alone.”

“Bring those muscles of yours,” said Doris. She shuffled
across her living room, down a dark hall, and into a sparsely furnished guest
bedroom. She slid open the closet and pointed to a footlocker. Martin carried
it out to the living room.

From her easy chair, Doris opened the clasps and lifted the
lid. Martin got a whiff of ancient mothballs. She extracted several manila
envelopes, a pile of stiff lace doilies, and a few photo albums, handing them
all to Martin to set on the coffee table. Then she presented him with a little
black book.

“That’s the pie diary,” she said. “From 1986 through 1992, I
baked pies every day I could get good rhubarb. Tried to do it like Linda each
time, but changed a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Kept track real
scientific-like. I’d seen her and Margie make ’em hundreds of times. You’d
think I’d have gotten it, but I never did.”

Martin thumbed through the diary. More sugar, less rhubarb,
cinnamon in the filling, only red-skinned rhubarb, only the green, crusts baked
separately from the filling, a wide range of times and temperatures. First one
variable, then combinations. Then she’d tried odd ingredients. Carbonated
water. Pineapple juice. Brown sugar. Maple syrup. Crystal Pepsi.

“This is incredible,” said Martin.

“There were a couple other gals tried it some, too, but
don’t worry ’bout poundin’ on their doors tonight. You’ll be knocking on
headstones.”

“None of these worked?” asked Martin. “How did you know?”

“Oh, Herbert had introduced me to some regulars. They’d
taste ’em for me.”

“Can I borrow this?” asked Martin.

“I don’t have much more use for it,” said Doris. “But if it
makes you rich, you count me right in for half.”

“I promise,” said Martin.

“Let’s make a pie,” she said, and slapped his knee, hard.

“I don’t have any rhu…” Martin began, but Doris waved him
off.

“Oh, I got rhubarb coming out my ears. Cut from the same
plants Linda grew.”

As Doris held the flashlight, Martin cut the stalks exactly
as she commanded. She started barking out orders even as she hauled herself up
her steps and back into the house. No
Hell’s Kitchen
wannabe chef would
have left Doris’s kitchen without deep emotional scars.

Doris slapped Martin’s hand away from the knife as he
chopped the rhubarb. “Didn’t your pappy teach you how to hold a knife?” she
scolded.

“I’ve seen those Ginsu infomercials,” said Martin.

She pointed the tip of the knife at his nose. “You gonna
backtalk, you can get out right now,” she said.

Martin had to measure everything exactly right, which was to
say not at all. “Linda Laughlin never used a measuring cup in her whole life,
and you ain’t gonna either,” said Doris. “Now, feel the weight of that, pour it
back in there, and try again.”

Martin kneaded the wet dough like a sissy-man. He used a
rolling pin like a deficient chimpanzee. He handled the crusts like Jimmy
Carter. This he didn’t understand, but her tone suggested that it wasn’t a
compliment.

“God gave you fingers, didn’t he? Why don’t you use ’em for
something other than pickin’ your nose?” she scolded, making him recrimp the
edge.

Martin set the pie in the oven, closed the door, and flopped
into a kitchen chair. Doris took one can of Rolling Rock from the refrigerator,
popped the tab, and said, “This kitchen ain’t gonna clean itself, boy.”

With more than half an hour left on the second bake, Martin
folded a faded kitchen towel, embroidered with a crowing rooster, and set it on
the counter.

Doris rocked in her recliner, listening to Lee Danvers
interview an anonymous intelligence officer about UFO sightings near the HAARP
antenna in Alaska.

“Do you mind if I take a look?” Martin asked, pointing to
the stack of photo albums on the coffee table.

“Go ahead,” said Doris.

The first album was filled with aunts, great-grandfathers,
cousins in Army uniforms, babies in their baptismal finery, women in
horn-rimmed glasses, and men wishing they were fishing in Norman Rockwell
paintings. In the second book, shaggy-haired dudes leaned on muscle cars, three
cousins in Toughskins rode one shaggy horse, women in bell-bottoms visited
Carlsbad, and Herbert’s Corner held a company picnic. Summer 1983, according to
the hand-painted banner strung between two cottonwoods behind the picnic
tables.

“Is this Linda?” Martin asked. Doris leaned forward.

“Looks just like Cheryl, don’t she?” said Doris. “Used to
think for a while that it was her everyone came for, not the pie.”

“She looks sad,” said Martin.

“Eighty-three? Margie, her mother, had passed not too long
before, I recall,” said Doris. “And there’s me. I was pretty hot stuff, even
standing next to Linda. I had my share of indecent proposals over the years.
Don’t mind sayin’. You’d hit that, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what they say these
days?”

Martin laughed. “Is that what they say?”

Doris chewed her lips and turned the page. Then another.
“Here we go,” she said, tapping a page of shots of Linda and others in a
kitchen. “That other one’s Corrie. She didn’t last too long.” Evidence of
baking surrounded them, but nothing hinted at a secret ingredient. Linda had a
smudge of flour on one cheek.

“Is that Herbert Stamper?” Martin asked. A pear-shaped man
with thin hair combed over a spotted scalp had joined the women for one of the
shots. He wore a pair of thick, black sunglasses, the kind that fit over
prescription glasses. Martin felt a chill. Stewart had worn ones just like them
at dinner and again in his apartment. Indoors. After dark. “Eileen told me that
you think Herbert was an alien,” said Martin.

“Think? Woman don’t share a bed with a man for ten years and
not know something like that,” Doris replied.

“So he was?”

“Well, of course he was. How do you think he knew all about
them?” said Doris.

“Those sunglasses. Did he wear them all the time?” Martin
asked.

“Never went without ’em. That’s how he could see who was and
who weren’t like him. I told him they made him look like Truman Capote, but he
never worried about appearances.”

“What happened to the glasses after he died?”

“Why?”

“If it’s alien technology…” said Martin. Maybe Stewart got
ahold of them somehow.

“I have ’em,” said Doris. “But they don’t work anymore. They
got all busted up when he was attacked. They knew to stomp on ’em.”

“You don’t think he was killed in a robbery?” asked Martin.

“Never did,” said Doris. “But what can you tell the sheriff?
He ain’t gonna put down the truth in no report.”

“I’m sorry,” said Martin.

“Long time ago,” said Doris.

“Do you have any more pictures of the kitchen, them baking
pies?”

“Maybe a few,” said Doris. She pointed and snapped her
fingers at an album still in the trunk. Martin handed it to her.

“That’s Linda with her hand in the dough. That’s Margie, her
mom, there next to Herbert.” Margie, shriveled from years of smoking and work,
stood proudly behind an enormous pile of leafy, fresh-cut rhubarb. “First pies
of the season. I don’t know what year. Late seventies, I’d guess.”

“Didn’t they ever stop smoking?” Martin asked. Both Margie
and Linda had cigarettes dangling from their lips.

“Never,” said Doris. “I used to warn ’em that those things
would put them in an early grave. Look at me now. Was I wrong? Both them gals
died of the cancer. I’m lucky I didn’t get it from all the secondhand fumes I
breathed in over the years. Wish they had the smoking bans back then.”

“Weren’t there Health Department rules or something?” Martin
asked.

“Health Department? In Brixton? Herbert hated the smoke,
too. It’d make him wheeze and cough. I told him a thousand times to make them
quit, or at least take it outside, but those gals were his golden goose. They
could do no wrong.”