That Dish at Gracie's Café

By K. Lyn Wurth

Bootleggers, Betrayal, & Barbecue

Darkwater Creek 1930

Folks in this Nebraska town had little to lose, thanks to Albert Hollingwood's criminal enterprises, but the soup is thinner now and times are harder.

Paul and Gracie Kohlberg run an auction house café, bootleg elderberry wine, and struggle to k

• Language: English
• Publisher: True to Story Publishing
• Release date: Nov 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781945217067

K. Lyn Wurth

K. Lyn (Kelly) Wurth writes short fiction and novels about Great Plains and Western experience, history, health and family life. Her first novel, The Darkwater Liar's Account, and the two River Saga books, Seven Kinds of Rain and Remember How It Rained, unfold in her family's home state of Nebraska. Her short fiction has been published in Women Writing the West's LAURA Journal, The Broadkill Review, The Examined Life Journal, St. Anthony Messenger and an anthology, The Arduous Touch: Women's Voices in Healthcare. Still inspired by a lifetime of Great Plains and Rocky Mountain experience, Kelly now writes in rural Iowa, where she lives with her husband, David.

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Prologue

Not every story is a parable, thank goodness. If you were to take this tale too seriously, it could almost be one, but don’t strain yourself by digging for a deep, religious lesson. As is true of nearly every parable, though, this story meanders around human failures and hopes. It begins in the middle of a mess.

The attentive, voracious reader of parables may have already noticed, however, that barbecue inspired the most famous parable of all. Hunger, love, and smoked ribs—not religion, right intentions, or even orthodox belief—called the prodigal son away from the hog pen and husks and back into his family. Meat caramelized and fat dripped down to pop on glowing coals while love, as blinding and as powerful as smoke, rose up as incense. Only then were a parent’s broken heart mended, a do-gooder brother’s jealousy satisfied, and heaping helpings of communal forgiveness served. And while the detail is not mentioned in Scripture, one may assume that the prodigal’s homecoming dinner concluded with generous slices of pie.

Here is fair warning: as you consume these words, you may experience cravings for meat or reconciliation. And as the story digests, you may pop a button, need to let your belt out a notch, or stretch out for a nap. But while you are still alert and hungry, I quote my grandmother, as she would call out from her home and Laura’s Café kitchens, Settle down, now. Let’s eat.

WANTING

1

Debtors

Darkwater Creek, Nebraska

January 1930

---

Paul tossed his wrench into the toolbox and fished rolling papers from his overalls pocket. The Prince Albert can already sat on top of his workbench, so Paul laid out a paper, tapped some tobacco on it, and snapped shut the hinged tin lid. Then he rolled the paper and licked it, to seal the edge. Striking a wooden match on his overalls seam, he leaned against the tractor’s steel wheel and raised the flame to the home-rolled between his lips. He squinted, drew and held his breath, and waited. Damn. After all that, the gasper eased him only a little.

Paul coughed and wondered if he was catching a cold. He didn’t need that, not with everything else going on. Paul drew a few more times and waited for better feelings that didn’t come. He was too anxious, and there was that scratchy tickle in his throat. He wouldn’t mind a day in bed, to rest and sip Gracie’s homemade chicken soup. He could feel like a kid again, taken care of and safe. He could pretend he hadn’t made such a mess.

Paul glared at the end of the burning cigarette, asking both himself and the gasper, What good are you? The problem was too serious to smoke out. He hadn’t found a way to tell Gracie, but the bank lurked and threatened their future, and behind the bank stood Albert Hollingwood. Problem was, you never saw Hollingwood—you only saw Quoyle and Dietz, a fist or a knife, and Paul figured they’d be on him soon. He was two monthly payments behind, with not enough cash to make good on one. Now a baby was due any day. Paul looked over his shoulder a lot when he went to town.

There was that throat tickle again. If he got sick, at least he wouldn’t have to be seen in public for a day or two. Not a bad excuse, but it would be even harder to fool Gracie about sickness than it had been to keep her from knowing other things.

So far he’d kept their financial disaster from Gracie because the woman trusted him. They also had plenty of essentials in store—lard, sugar, flour, and rows of Mason jars lined the cellar, while cattle and hogs stood in the yard, ready meat. There was a hog sugar-curing on the oilcloth-covered cellar table now, thanks to Gracie pestering him to slaughter last Saturday.

Just as well, Paul told himself. The bank won’t get that one.

Nobody in Paul’s family was hungry yet, and Gracie was good about stretching the soup, mending, and making things last. Whatever dry goods and staples Paul recently picked up at the store, though, he’d signed for, on credit. Yesterday Mrs. Baumgarten pursed her lips as she added new debt to his long list in the book. Paul’s stomach had knotted up, and so, to discourage her from telling tales to her Kaffeeklatsch, he’d lied and said he’d bring a payment Friday. The old bat frowned and looked right through him, certain there would be no payment.

Paul sighed out smoke. At least the bank wouldn’t talk to Gracie. She wouldn’t know a thing until it was too late because a wife’s name was never on loans, and a man’s business was his own. Even greedy bankers respected that code. Still, Paul knew the jig was up. He’d have to pay, one way or another. The Kohlbergs could lose the second-generation farm, the house, and the mechanic shop. It probably would’ve been smart to rent a space for the shop in town instead of having it here to be repossessed. But nobody saw '29 coming, not even the rich.

Since the stock crash last October, every business in Darkwater had felt the pinch and was forced to cut spending. Paul now rigged his own equipment with baling wire instead of buying new and expensive parts. He could hardly blame his customers, then, for not bringing their cars and tractors for service. Paul cut his prices, but that hadn’t helped. Folks just didn’t have two pennies to rub together.

Still, how do you tell a woman about to have a baby there may be no roof over the cradle? Paul hated to think he could fall back into sharecropping. It had nearly made Paul cry to see Gracie haul bedbug-infested mattresses from their tenant huts to burn them in the yards. On more than one farm, she’d scrubbed walls and floors with bleach, just so they could sleep there. God help him, Paul couldn’t do that to her again, not after coming this far. Not when she’d worked as hard as she had at the café and brought them up in the eyes of the town.

Paul fished a bottle from behind his workbench, uncorked it, and swigged. He didn’t intend to get drunk. He only wanted to settle his nerves for some serious thinking. There would be a race at the speedway next Saturday night, and Paul had heard Henry Gustafson brag at the hardware store that he’d dropped a new Chevy straight-six engine into his '28 Model A. Paul couldn’t imagine why he’d do such a fool thing. He had to see to believe it, but if the thing didn’t explode, that sort of power could win. Most folks figured Henry for a blowhard and a long shot because he showed up drunk and skidded into the raceway wall nine times out of ten, so that’d help the odds. If Paul could scrape together five dollars, he might make a hundred in one night. That could keep the wolf from the door.

Paul took another deep swallow of gin and grimaced as he replugged the cork. Enough, now, he told himself, tucking the bottle back in its shadow. Better check on Maisie.

Crunching over cold, crisp grass between his workshop and the house, Paul dropped and crushed his cigarette butt under his boot heel. He tried not to wonder if Esther Carlson would show up at the raceway. She’d been there more often since her husband died. Maybe she’d wear that dress, the one that shushed like leaves on a tree, and that perfume that reminded Paul of flowers and spice.

Paul coughed, sniffed, blinked in the cold wind, and scratched his day-old whiskers. Buck up, fella. Forget your sore throat and forget Esther. You’ve got trouble enough.

For once his luck ran hot, and from the five dollars he’d borrowed from the offering plate, Paul cleared a hundred-and-fifty damned dollars betting on that Model A. To repent of that particular sin of theft, and to give thanks for its loaves-and-fishes return, on Sunday morning Paul dropped in an extra five on top of the five he’d taken.

Pinching the investment funds hadn’t been much of a trick. He’d been an usher the previous Sunday and, because Paul moved his plate through the congregation fast, he had a long moment alone in the narthex. Before the other ushers met up with him to walk the full plates back to the pastor, it was no big deal to slip out a fiver. Nobody suspected a thing.

Paul shifted and the pew creaked. It did make him feel good to remember how Mrs. Baumgarten had looked both surprised and a little miffed when he’d paid off their account. He’d bought a few weeks’ grace with the bank too. So where was the harm or the sin? Paul was taking care of his family. Isn’t that a man’s job?

Seeing him drop the five-dollar bills in the shining brass plate, Gracie glanced up at him, wide-eyed, and frowned at his pious generosity. He squeezed her hand to reassure her and felt a little relieved. One sin might be covered, but what should he do about that other? It had been a little thing, maybe not even a real transgression. Just a joke, a compliment, and a brush of his lips on Esther’s as they stood behind the speedway concession stand. Paul hadn’t meant to touch her. The gin probably wasn’t a good excuse—but that sweater she wore, damn.

Paul loosened his tie just enough to allow an easier breath but not enough to earn a tighten that knot, buster, this is church look from his wife. His stomach fluttered. Guilt is a funny thing. It shows up too late to stop a guy, then doesn’t know when to leave, even when the pleasure’s hard to remember. Not that he could forget the shape of Esther’s bosom under that rose-colored wool. She’d practically taken his hand and set it there herself. Paul glanced up at the varnished wooden cross behind the altar and promised to shy away from Esther at the next race.

Paul looked down at Gracie’s belly. It strained the buttons on her Sunday dress, a sure sign the baby would come soon. After a few months, Gracie would turn toward him again in their bed, ready for their usual fun. It was good, their being extra careful these days. Gracie had been so sad after Paulie, and this baby was like an egg basket that held all their hopes. He missed Gracie’s body something awful but told himself to be patient. Gracie was doing her duty as a mother, and Paul could hold up his side.

Lawrence sat beside Paul, folding a piece of paper into a triangular hat or boat. Paul rested a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder and when he looked up, Paul raised his chin to encourage his son to sit up straight. Lawrence did and went back to folding. Restless, when she found no room on her mother’s lap, Maisie crawled up on her father’s. Paul felt the tickle of the little girl’s hair on his sensitive, razor-burned skin and the warmth of her arms around his neck.

Dear God, I have a lot to be thankful for, a lot to live up to. Paul swallowed the lump in his throat, closed his eyes, bowed his head, and moved his lips in a silent prayer, a decision to be a better man. The kind God might approve or at least forget to punish.

When they stood to sing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, Paul harmonized his tenor with Gracie’s lovely alto. She smiled up at him and he put his arm around her, glad to touch her through her love of music. All he really wanted was to make her smile.

Gracie rubbed her stiff arm. She’d like to cuss that Ford’s stubborn crank the way Paul would, but she wasn’t much of a cusser. She nodded and sniffed, instead, more than a little proud of her small and mighty self. Even in this bitter cold, after only two muscle-wrenching tries, she’d primed the engine and charged the cylinders.

Frost clumped on her eyelashes and blurred her vision, so Gracie blinked, then reached through the driver’s window to check the brake and the spark advance lever. After she opened the throttle a bit, she turned the key. The coil box sizzled under the dash.

Paul! she cried over her shoulder. Where in tarnation are you? I wouldn’t mind a little help. Where is that man?

No answer. Back in front of the pickup, she cranked with her left arm while gripping the fender with her opposite hand. It was tough for a gal her size, but since Paul hadn’t heard or cared to answer, Gracie kept moving. She was already late, so she’d do it on her own. Besides, she was wiry and strong. One hard half-turn to the right kicked up that old engine, and Gracie brushed her hands together. So there. No man necessary.

The Ford gassed out fumes, groaned, and caught in an uneven time. Gracie climbed onto the torn leather seat from the passenger side and shivered at the chill under her thin coat. The two gallon jugs of elderberry wine she’d hidden under the flip-up seat cushion clinked together softly and poked her backside, so she shifted her weight. Better. Once Gracie advanced the spark lever, the engine smoothed out, so she switched the key to magneto to conserve the battery.

Her breaths drifted and froze a white patch inside the windshield. Gracie glanced at the barn. Still no Paul. Maybe he spied on her from back in the shadows, or maybe he heard her get the old rust bucket started without him. That’d put a cork in his wisecracks about women drivers.

If she’d gotten it wrong, Paul would’ve sauntered out, shaken his head, and announced she’d flooded it again. This time she might’ve told him off instead of biting her lip and suffering his excuses. They both knew she never flooded the engine, but Paul wouldn’t admit—was probably too scared to admit—the truth. It was easier to stuff his greasy shop rag in his back overalls pocket, kick a tire like he was mad, lean in over the cold engine, and fiddle with parts he couldn’t replace. Then, even as much as he loved her and knew better, he’d mumble about how she’d done something wrong or not at the right time.

Paul couldn’t admit what they both knew; egged on by his wife’s sweet talk, twisted together with baling wire, and fueled by ethyl and God’s grace, the '16 Ford was not long for this world.

Thank you, Lord, Gracie muttered. At least she wouldn’t need to flag down some farmer at the Republican River bridge. To hitch a ride, she’d have had to leave the wine in the basement. This way, she’d sell two gallons out the café’s back door by noon. Gracie cupped her fingers in front of her mouth and breathed on them, only to grimace when she again clutched the icy steering wheel. The cold bit her finger bones.

As she motored ahead, Gracie looked up at the house. There her girl Maisie gawped down from the kitchen window with her hands smashed against the glass. She always left sticky prints Gracie would have to wipe clean later. Gracie felt annoyed, but then she considered leaving one print on the glass because little girls grow up, hands and all.

Oh, well. What’s another mess? Gracie smiled and waved at the bob-haired girl, then steered over the rocks and frosted grasses. It was hard to leave the kids in the morning, but Gracie reassured herself. Even after Lawrence set out for school, the five-year-old would be fine with Paul close by, in the barn.

It tickled Gracie to picture Lawrence opening his tin lunchbox that noon. This morning while the kids slept, she’d dotted brown mucilage on the bottom of Lawrence’s lunch pail and unwrapped one Lifesaver to stick it there. Once he’d finished his sandwich, Lawrence would see it and try to pick it loose. Given how determined that boy could be, Lawrence might eventually pop it free. Gracie had tucked the rest of the candy roll in his coat pocket for him to find at recess.

He’d really gotten her on Sunday with that prank balloon he called a Boop-Boop-A-Doop under her chair cushion. It sounded so loud and real, she’d blushed. Paul swore he hadn’t helped Lawrence, but Gracie couldn’t figure how or where her son had bought such a thing without his father’s help. It was funny, though, she’d had to admit, even as she warned Lawrence his teacher might not think so. Gracie was already plotting how to answer Lawrence’s prank with one even funnier and more surprising.

Still smiling, Gracie turned her mind to work. She planned her pies; three apple, three cherry, and two lemon meringue would do. The lard, salt, and flour were already pressed into coffee cans in the icebox, mixed the day before to chill overnight. Now Gracie had only to sprinkle in cold water, pat the dough, and roll out soft circles for crusts. She followed the habit in her mind for the quiet comfort of knowing. Drape and shape the dough over the pans, fill with the shining fruit, set the top crust, pinch and trim the edges, brush with milk and sprinkle sugar, and, finally, slice the vents for steam. Like dance steps, the tasks tapped a rhythm in her mind.

After seven years of practice, five days a week, Gracie could probably bake pies in her sleep. And on mornings like this, Gracie sometimes wished to sleep in and only dream of baking, but she doubted she could. She’d been working since she was eight, after Pa left them and Ma sent the girls out for hire. Those days, like these, had begun at four in the morning. Back then, Gracie had not only done her own cooking, cleaning, and laundry chores but Hazel’s too.

Hazel was eleven months older than Gracie, but she’d been a lazybones, content to let her little sister carry her load. Still, Hazel mattered. Somewhere out there, Gracie had a sister. Although Gracie hated to think it, because the thought felt like a failure of love, Hazel may never have been quite right in the head. Truth was, maybe when Hazel acted lazy or wrong, it didn’t count so much against her as it would for somebody else. Up until he’d run off, Pa would make fun of Hazel. He’d swear Hazel got dropped when she was a baby—she was no-account, sure, but by only accident, so it wasn’t her fault.

Ma had been a wreck after Pa ran off, and Gracie had learned fast to be good and lay low. Hazel had trouble in school, though, and fought back like a cat. Gracie could hardly blame Hazel for that—Ma was a steel blade of a woman who could draw blood with a word. Finally, after their last big fight, Hazel ran away to Tulsa, where she fell in with big-time bootleggers and whoremongers. Gracie pressed her lips together, remembering her own visit to that big city—Hazel had sat up on that hotel window sill, sloshing a liquor bottle in her hand. She wore nothing but her slip as she sang and called out to men who passed by. Despite her shock, though, that day Gracie had to laugh, as she did now in remembering.

Well, goddammit, if it ain’t my dear sister Gracie! Hazel had cried from on high. She took a long pull off the bottle, hiked up her slip, and clambered back in through the window.

Despite the shady situation and her sister’s state of half-dress, Gracie had grinned and tingled with anticipation. When Hazel came running out that open hotel door in a blur of pink satin, Gracie set her feet wide and braced herself. Hazel’s love always hit you like a stiff south wind, even before her big, soft body followed through. It had started as a game when they were little girls. Hazel would rush in to bowl Gracie over, and Gracie would hold on against the inevitable tumble, into the grass or onto the rug.

That day in Tulsa, Gracie kept her balance, though, and squeezed her big sister tight. Hazel could sure hug. Gracie hesitated to excuse sin or sinners, but Hazel’s clean scent was as warm as vanilla, cloves, and a golden cake in the oven. Of course, men would find Hazel’s love hard to resist. Some might even try to pay Hazel, just to get closer.

Blinking back that idea, Gracie shook her head and squinted through the fogged, icy windshield at the open road and frozen ground. Winter in the Republican River Valley was a palette of white and grays. Frost whiskered the weeds in the ditch. Wildhagen’s fat Herefords munched knee-high cornstalks in the Kohlberg’s windswept field, and their silver breaths settled back on their forelocks like icing on cakes.

Gracie was counting on Wildhagen’s rent, due next week. It wasn’t much, but it would help, she mused. Then, startled back into seeing, she hit the brakes for one of his Herefords, a big mama that blocked the two-track road. Steam rose off its back as it dipped its head and blinked against the wind. Gracie motored closer and slowed to a ka-chugging pause, but the cow ignored her, so Gracie honked the oo-oooga horn twice. Blowing strings of snot and puffs of disgust, the Hereford swung her white-masked face to glare at Gracie, then looked away. The cow was wide with calf out of season, same as Gracie, the driver realized, only the cow was downright surly about it. Gracie climbed out and waved her arms to bluff the beast, but it was slow to lumber back into the ditch. Darn it. A section of barbed wire looped down on the ground, something she or Paul would have to fix later or Wildhagen would complain. If any of his cattle got lost or hit on the road, that old coot might use it as an excuse to withhold the rent.

Gracie held up a warning finger to the cow and hollered, Stay off the road! The cow snorted steam and white-eyed the bossy woman as Gracie climbed back in the truck. Sure enough, as Gracie stepped down on the gas, she saw that beast clamber back up. Nothing more stubborn than a cow.

Three kinds of pies, Gracie reminded herself, accelerating past the oncoming Hereford. In the second café oven, Gracie planned to brown and slow-cook beef roasts with onions and carrots in a cast iron pot for hours, until the meat caramelized. She’d prepare steaming kettles of mashed potatoes, buttered corn, and creamed peas on the top burners. Then, once the pies were golden brown, she’d pop in four sheets of buttermilk biscuits—a favorite with the farmers who flocked in for Freddie’s livestock sale. With food warming in the old stove’s top drawers, Gracie could flip hamburgers and butter-toasted cheese sandwiches off the shiny grill like hot coins, to serve them on blue-striped, stoneware dishes.

Order up, she whispered, smiling.

Lord, Gracie thought, help Paul remember to come to town, to keep the register during the auction. It would be a full day’s work for her whole crew, extending long into the night. If he came, Paul could perk and pour the coffee, dish up the pies, empty ashtrays, and clear plates as they stacked up. As always, he’d entertain customers with his jokes, backslapping, and gossip. He’d surely usher a few farmers at a time back into the storeroom to sell little glasses of Gracie’s wine. Everybody liked Paul. When he showed up, he was good with people in a way that serious, responsible Gracie could only wish to be.

But whether her husband showed up or not, it was her hard work to do and her café. She’d set the whole thing up and painted the window sign with her own hand; the words Gracie’s Café curled over the glass in flowing, pink-and-green letters. Inspired by a sign she’d seen in Hastings, Gracie had edged the curves with white paint, to add dimension.

It was also Gracie who had chased out the mice and crows, then scoured that abandoned little corner building with a scrub brush and bleach. She’d whitewashed the walls too. Gracie had asked around two counties to find that used cooking stove east of Darkwater Creek—a twenty-five-year-old, six-burner beauty, a steal at twenty dollars—and she’d hauled it back with a wagon and mules. She’d stopped up the stove cracks with her homemade paste: equal parts wood ash and salt mixed in cold water. Then she’d baked it hard so the stove was tight as new.

Ten years of egg money she’d stowed in her cream can advanced the first month’s rent and covered her staples, flour, lard, and fruit. The elderberry wine Gracie fermented at home in her cool cellar drew in customers and brought in a few extra dollars for café improvements. The milkman delivered butter, milk, and cream every morning, but Gracie brought fresh eggs from her own leghorns.

That first month, Gracie could only afford to serve coffee and pie. Cherry, apple, sour cream raisin, and lemon meringue slices paid the second month’s rent with a little to spare, so then she bought a big cast iron griddle for farmer-sized breakfasts and hamburger sandwiches. The following month, she added a stovetop deep-fat fryer for chicken.

When he returned last summer and saw Gracie suffering in the July heat, her cousin George had built her a bigger, zinc-lined and cork-insulated icebox. George’s invention not only kept food cold, but he also rigged up a fan to blow over its chunk of ice, to cool the back rooms a little. With George’s freezer, Gracie could add sundaes and pie à la mode to her hand-lettered menus. Ice cream brought in the church ladies and card clubs, so for them, Gracie showed off a new dessert each month.

Gracie ran her new place so clean and fed her customers so well, Freddie Drake, the auctioneer next door, waved cash in front of her. He wanted her to accommodate his auction-goers at her café two nights a week, but given the word around town about his shady doings, Gracie set their deal down in writing. She took the chance, hoping to build a back room and set up more tables. It paid off.

Pride may be a sin, but Gracie couldn’t help feeling it and she wasn’t sorry. Here she ran a nice business in Darkwater Creek when she had only a fifth-grade education and no rich relatives to set her up. Even Paul couldn’t bail her out—his mechanic’s garage, his few shorthorn cattle and Duroc hogs, and his forty dry-land Nebraska acres barely kept the Kohlbergs fed. Gracie’s man Paul was a sore spot and a joy. He whined too much when he was sick. He could make her cry when he drank and grouched, but then again, he could be sweet and had never raised his hands to her. He flirted, played his harmonica, and sang to get any girl’s attention, and he usually got it. Ladies liked him as much as he liked them, and his flirting made Gracie so jealous she nearly showed it.

On the other hand, when Gracie took life too seriously, Paul could make her laugh. He was charming and handsome. Together in their saggy bed they’d so far made four children, with two still living and one on the way. Gracie blushed thinking about the way they touched and moved and burned together, a feeling so good she almost couldn’t stand to think about it. At fifteen, she’d fallen hard when they locked eyes at that Moose Lodge dance. Still, she’d made him court her a year without even a kiss. Good thing she’d held him off. Their Lawrence came a short nine months after the wedding, and this was a town where folks marked their calendars to keep track.

The pickup bumped up out of the two-track, clanked the wine jugs together, and jolted Gracie back to the present. The baby kicked her ribs as if reminding, be careful, mama. This one might be a Saint Patrick’s baby, by Gracie’s count. She pictured pearl-sized fingertips and toes but tried not to remember them on Paulie, her baby lost to whooping cough two years ago. That loss still jumped out now and then to stab Gracie, steal her breath, and cloud her usual sunny disposition. She’d had a hard six months after the funeral and sunk into a frozen, dark place, but her grief had finally eased. The idea of this baby cheered and yet terrified Gracie. She couldn’t bear losing another, but women did bear such things, no matter their weight.

If only Paul didn’t like the whiskey quite so much. It kept him at a distance when she needed him the most. But Paul had never been able to say no to a drink, not even that night of their first date—she’d discover later, her fine dancer of a beau couldn’t keep time with any old ragtime, foxtrot, or waltz