The City Baker's Guide to Country Living (4 page)

I had yet to meet the elusive Chef Alfred, who had somehow escaped being a part of the hiring process.

“But he won't know where to put the sauces,” I said, trying to sound calm. I was used to having complete creative control.
Hell, I was used to working every night and plating the desserts myself.

“I'm assuming the sauces go on the dessert?”

“Yes.”
This is Vermont,
I reminded myself.
No one from the
Times
is going to show up tonight with a photographer.
“If you don't need me for anything else?”

“No, that's fine.”

“Great.” I grabbed my purse, a beaten-up old canvas bag left over from my bike courier days, and headed out the kitchen door.

“Miss Rawlings?” Margaret called. “Speaking of stray dogs, could you please remove yours from my sitting room?”

I stopped and turned around, a weak grin on my face. “Salty? In the sitting room?”

“On my best love seat.”

I opened my mouth to apologize, but by the time I could take a breath she had turned on her heel and disappeared back into the office.

I swung open the door into the dining room and hurried to the front of the house. Sure enough, I found Salty stretched out on the floral love seat closest to the fireplace. He thumped his tail loudly at the sight of me, his long, spotted tongue hanging casually out the side of his mouth in the warmth of the fire.

“Come on, Salt,” I called, tapping the side of my thigh. He took a long stretch like Superman flying, gracefully slid his long body onto the ground, and loped ahead of me, his claws tapping on the wood floor.

 • • • 

I walked into the apple orchard. The ground was thick with fallen fruit, bright red and gleaming against the green grass, and
the air was heavy with the heady scent of rotting apples. My clogs slipped on the pulpy ground, and I made a mental note to buy sturdier shoes to walk to work in. It was funny to think of the walk through the apple orchard as my commute. In Boston, my walk to the Emerson had included a jaunt through both the Public Garden and the Common. Despite the lush beauty of the willow trees, there was no mistaking the parks for the country. Even at dawn there were always people there—junkies asleep on benches; tiny, elderly Chinese women practicing tai chi by the ponds and gathering ginkgo seeds; and the club kids, with their jet-black hair and ripped tights, still drunk and giggling, stumbling and smoking as they headed to catch the first train back to their apartments for a little sleep before school.

Salty and I stopped at the cabin just long enough for me to trade my chef's coat and clogs for a purple fleece jacket and a pair of Converse low-tops before heading out. The maple grove beyond the sugarhouse was burning with color. An old carriage road curved through the trees, the path trimmed with glowing golden ferns, their long bodies stretched back and bent. Salty ran with abandon, stopping short to catch a scent on a tree stump, pricking up his ears and running off again while squirrels squawked their panicked warnings to one another from the branches above. Occasionally the wind would rustle through the branches, sending red leaves to fall gently at my feet. I walked until the maples thinned and blended with oaks and pines.

I had been walking uphill for some time when I came to a clearing. A rolling field stretched before me, with recently shorn hay, spiraled like jelly rolls, dotting the landscape. Halfway down the field there was a small shed with a tin roof and in the
distance a white farmhouse dwarfed by a red barn, complete with a big vegetable garden and acres of apple trees and evergreens. It looked like the plastic Fisher-Price farm my dad had given me one Christmas. I wondered if a cow would moo when I walked into the barn.

I lay down on the grass in the sun. Puffs of white clouds moved smoothly across the deepening blue sky. Salty emerged from the woods a minute later and was pawing at the grass beside my head when I heard the unmistakable scratch of a bow being drawn across fiddle strings. The sound was faint at first, the tentative pull of horsehair on metal. But I could picture fingertips twisting the little fine-tuners in the silence that followed. Then the notes of “Angeline the Baker” rang out across the field. Next came “June Apple,” then “Little Sadie,” old-time classics. I lay back down, tapping the rhythm with my feet and hands against the grass, watching the occasional hawk or crow soar by. As dusk began to creep in over the farmhouse, the tunes slowed down. The music must have been coming from the little toolshed, but it sounded as if the trees themselves were playing. When the last note ended, all I could hear was the whistle of swallows' wings cutting through the sky.

I was three trees deep onto the carriage trail when I heard it. Long, slow notes in a minor key dragged across the lower strings. I leaned against a thin pine and slid back down to the ground. The drone of a double stop—two strings being played together. I didn't recognize the tune, although it felt as familiar to me as my own skin. My body grew still; not a single cell wanted to miss a note. The tune wound back to the beginning again and again, each round more mournful than the last. Salty sat down next to me,
aimed his snout up to the sky, and began howling. The music stopped abruptly. I leaped to my feet.

“Shhh, Salty, quit it!” I grabbed him by the collar and turned back into the woods, the darkness surrounding us. I strode ahead, but Old Salt kept stopping and staring back over his shoulder toward the clearing.

 • • • 

Back in the sugarhouse, after I fed Salty some kibble and warmed my hands on a cup of tea, I dragged out the black cardboard case that I had stashed under the futon. I flicked the latches and opened it for the first time in sixteen years. The banjo was out of tune, its strings dusty from years of neglect. I rubbed them with the cuff of my sleeve. My father had bought it back in the sixties, before I was born, and had kept it in pristine condition. The rim and neck were carved out of parchment-pale maple. An abalone inlay of pinecones danced down the fingerboard. Milky mother-of-pearl tuning pegs dotted the top. The wooden tone ring gave it a deep, quiet voice, like the hoot of a great horned owl. Only the head revealed how often he had played it, a dark, shiny stain under the strings where his frailing hand had worn into the clean, white surface. My left hand stretched into the chords he had taught me, the memory of them stored in my muscles, and with my right I began to strum, searching for the notes of that lonesome tune.

 • • • 

The Friday night after my first week working at the Sugar Maple I took the back road from the inn into town to meet Hannah, wanting an excuse to drive closer to the neighboring farm and hoping to hear the fiddler again. But when I drove by the long dirt drive to the little farm, the only living creatures I saw were two dairy goats,
who eyed me with cold curiosity. Halfway down the mountain the shoulder widened and three cars, with their headlights still on, had pulled over on the side of the road. With a loud buzz, my cell phone sprang to life, and a moment later I heard the three sharp beeps, like an accusation, letting me know I had a new voice mail. A cell service hotspot. I gripped the steering wheel and pressed my foot on the gas before any more calls could come through.

 • • • 

The blue and yellow neon sign on the roof of the Black Bear Tavern lit up the dirt parking lot, which was packed with pickup trucks. Two bear statues, cut roughly with a chain saw, guarded a windowless door like library lions. As I pushed my way into the bar, the scents of spilled beer, cooking oil, and stale cigarette smoke greeted me. I found Hannah hunched over a table toward the back, wiping off the last patron's crumbs with a paper napkin.

“I hope this is what you had in mind when you asked to see ‘local color,'” she said as I slid in.

“It's perfect.” I had been craving a night like this, someplace dark and anonymous, away from the formality of the inn. Across from us was a long wooden bar, every stool taken by a man with a broad back sheathed in flannel. The bar was tended by an older guy with a thick red beard and a sweatshirt with a picture of wolves howling stretched over his belly. Above him hung the mounted heads of moose, deer, and elk. They looked down at the drinkers like Saint Francis and the Virgin Mother giving their blessing.

“I've only been here a couple of times,” she said, dipping a napkin into her water glass and scrubbing at a sticky spot on the table. “It's not Jonathan's kind of place.”

“Well, thanks for slumming it with me. I've spent this whole week in only three places—the inn, the sugarhouse, and the woods.”

“The woods?” Hannah was trying hard not to laugh. I could tell by the way she pressed her lips together. “You're becoming quite the Vermonter already.”

I threw a balled-up napkin at her. “I have to find something to do with my time now that you've lured me out of the city.”

At the far end of the room an elegant-looking man with a long blond ponytail and a white shirt tucked into neatly pressed jeans was tuning a stand-up bass.

“Ooh, you didn't tell me they have music here.”

“Only on Friday nights,” said the waitress, who appeared just then. “Can I get you girls something to drink?”

Hannah ordered a glass of grapefruit juice and I ordered a whiskey. The bar was quickly filling up. Some women were trickling in with boyfriends and husbands, while others arrived in packs, giggling and flirting with the bartender.

“You'll settle in soon. Have you met Alfred yet? He's an amazing chef. And isn't Margaret sweet?” Hannah took a long sip of juice, avoiding my eyes.

“Sweet?” I raised my eyebrows. “Have you ever bitten into a raw cranberry?”

“She's just a little stern. Wait till you get to know her.”

“If I ever do. I've only seen her for a total of twenty minutes this week, and all she does is ignore me or take a little jab.” I took a long sip of my drink. “I don't know, Hann. A year is sounding a little long.”

“You stayed at the Emerson for three.”

“Yes, but the Emerson was . . .”

“Exhausting?”

“Stimulating.” I drained my glass. “And Boston might not be New York, but it has lots of things going on.”

“Things you could never attend, because you were always at work.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“Don't even think about it. You made a promise.”

“A promise isn't a binding contract.”

“In Guthrie it is.” Hannah twisted her wedding ring around her finger. “You have to stay.”

“What's up with her, anyway?”

“Margaret?”

I watched Hannah take a sip of her drink. “And what's up with the juice? The last time I saw you drinking juice you had taken up jogging. And I am not going jogging with you. Don't even ask.”

“Would you ladies like anything to eat?” The waitress was back. Hannah ordered chicken soup and a side salad. I ordered the grilled cheese with French fries, along with another whiskey and a beer chaser.

“I should be asking you the same thing.”

“I'm not drinking juice.” I held up the whiskey glass. “See, nothing to worry about.”

Hannah smirked. “I wasn't worried. But you should keep an eye on the drinking.”

“We're in a bar.”

“People notice things around here. Believe me. I'm just saying.”

I rolled my eyes. “Anyway, have you seen her office? There's like, a million ribbons hanging from the ceiling—”

The crackle of a microphone sputtering to life interrupted my thoughts. The bar was packed. All the tables were full, and the spillover crowd stood in small groups laughing and talking. It seemed as if everyone knew one another, like at a high school reunion. Two other men about the same age had joined the bass player. One was dressed in a navy blue mechanic's jumpsuit with the name
Harold
embroidered on the breast pocket. He was carrying a mandolin case. The other I recognized as Tom Carrigan, the dairy farmer. Tonight he looked sharp in a blue dress shirt under a black vest, guitar slung over his shoulder.

The waitress put our plates down and disappeared into the crowd before I could ask after our drinks. I was scanning the room for her teased-up hair when I saw the bar door open. In stepped the man from the apple stand at the farmer's market. He was dressed in jeans and a white button-down shirt under a thick knitted sweater in a shade of blue that reminded me of the sky at dusk.

“Liv,” Hannah said.

“Hey, Martin,” Tom called from the stage. “Want to join us?”

Martin waved, but didn't stop before he reached the bar, sliding onto a vacated stool at the end. Next to him stood a full-grown stuffed black bear, emitting a silent growl.

“Livvy.”

I wouldn't have described him as handsome, but he looked like something you would admire in nature—like a fox or a hawk—something that would stare you straight in the eye before disappearing into the woods.

“Livvy! Where are you?”

“Oh. Sorry.” I turned my attention back to Hannah. “What were you saying?”

The waitress set down three cardboard coasters and put down my beer and two glasses of whiskey.

“I only ordered one,” I said.

The waitress jutted her chin toward the stage. “One's from Tom.”

I raised my glass toward the stage, then knocked it back in one swallow.

Hannah craned her neck. “Who were you staring at? And who's buying you drinks?”

“Oh, just Tom, the dairy guy. In the band. Are they any good? I wonder if they're going to start playing soon.”

“Livvy, I'm trying to tell you something.”

And as if on cue, the man wearing the jumpsuit, Harold, stepped up to the mike and said, “Evening, everybody! We're the Beagles! Your local all-Eagles cover band!” And with that the band broke into a bluegrassy version of “Peaceful Easy Feeling.”

“What is it?” I shouted across the table.