Chapter 10 - The Table We Built
October in southwest Missouri is the only month that tells the truth.
The humidity that crawls out of the river bottoms all summer long finally dies, the scrub oaks on the ridges turn the color of dried liver and old copper, and the high, blue sky stretches out so clean and cold you can hear an axe hitting green hickory two miles away across the hollow.
The table sat in the center of the clover pasture.
It was thirty-two feet long, built from four eight-foot slabs of three-inch white pine that Lee and Otis had planed down by hand, resting on heavy cedar posts that Uncle Ned had sunk eighteen inches into the dirt with an iron bar.
It wasn't fancy. There were no white linen tablecloths. There were no paper flowers from the hobby shop in the mall.
There were just forty-two mismatched white ceramic plates that Aunt Trudy had collected from the church basement sales in Clever, three galvanized wash tubs filled with clean creek water and fifty pounds of block ice, and five gallon-jugs of sweet cider from the press in Billings, sitting beside two cases of cold Busch Light in the brown bottles.
The Tank had been running since midnight.
Forty pounds of prime brisket point, thirty-five pounds of pork shoulder, and eighty links of the coarse-ground garlic sausage that Mr. Gidley made at the custom slaughterhouse in Halltown. The smoke rose straight up into the clear autumn air, a thin, sweet ribbon of blue post oak that smelled of brown sugar, sea salt, and fifteen years of iron seasoned by grease.
At three o'clock on Saturday afternoon, the cars began to turn off Farm Road 142.
They didn't stop at the cattle guard. The heavy galvanized chain was gone, coiled up in the bed of Ian’s truck where it belonged.
Uncle Ned came first, his old blue flatbed loaded down with four wooden benches from the Grange hall, followed by Aunt Trudy in her floral dress, carrying two four-quart glass dishes of her vinegar slaw covered in aluminum foil. Then came Hayden with his guitar case in the back of his conservation truck, and Quinn with three dozen warm yeast rolls wrapped in clean tea towels from her mother’s kitchen.
Vivy was thirteen, and she had spent three hours that morning helping Frankie tie wild yellow goldenrod and purple aster stems into the mason jars along the center of the pine boards.
Frankie’s sign wasn't on the ground anymore.
It was nailed to the south corner of the smoker, right above the firebox where the heat kept the paint dry.
The purple letters were bright in the afternoon sun:
HI, EVERYBODY. COME HUNGRY.
The word Grandma had been painted over with three coats of white acrylic, and right across the middle, in bold, black carpenter's pencil, Otis had written:
THE VANCE-CALLOWAY PLACE.
Lee came down the back steps of the house at three-thirty.
She didn't wear a white dress. She wore a pair of clean, dark denim trousers, her best leather work boots with the brass eyelets polished, and a cream-colored wool shirt that her sister had sent from Oregon, unbuttoned two inches at the throat to show the thin silver chain I had given her for her thirty-fifth birthday.
Her hair was down, hanging dark and straight across her shoulders, smelling of cedar soap and the mint she had picked for the tea.
Bo walked beside her.
He was wearing his good boots, his hair combed flat with water, his hand resting easy and loose in Lee’s palm. He didn't look at the road. He didn't look at the timber. He was looking at the meat board where I was standing with my twelve-inch carbon-steel carving knife, slicing through the brisket point with that long, effortless draw that lets the rendered fat pool on the wood like gravy.
"Mama," Bo shouted, running the last twenty yards through the clover until his knees hit the timber frame of the cutting bench. "Uncle Ned says I get to hold the tongs for the sausage!"
"You wash your hands first, buddy?" I asked, looking down at him.
"Washed 'em twice," he said, holding up two red, scrubbed palms that smelled of lye soap. "Otis checked 'em with the flashlight."
"Then get the tongs," I said. "The hot links are coming off the grate right now."
Lee walked up to the bench, her shoulder brushing against mine as she reached for a clean piece of butcher paper.
She looked out across the pasture.
Uncle Ned was sitting on the end of the Grange bench, his pipe going, showing nine-year-old Ian how to tune the low E-string on Hayden’s guitar. Aunt Trudy was laughing by the cider tubs, her hand on Quinn’s arm, while Frankie and Mabel chased a yellow butterfly through the dry goldenrod by the fence line.
Down at the blacktop, a single vehicle slowed down as it passed the gate.
A 1997 Ford F-150, the color of dried clay.
It didn't turn in. It didn't tap the horn.
It just idled on the shoulder for twenty seconds, the engine ticking through the cool air, before it accelerated slow and heavy toward the west, its red taillights flickering once through the dust before the timber took it out of sight.
Lee didn't ask who it was. She reached out, took my thumb in her strong, work-roughened fingers, and gave it one slow, steady turn until our knuckles locked together against the warm wood of the cutting board.
"You ready, Dawn?" she asked.
I looked at the meat, dark with pepper, sweet with smoke, sliced thick and honest for the people who had come to sit down without asking for a permission slip.
May you like
I looked at the children running through the clover, their boots kicking up the dust that belonged to them, their voices rising clear and bright into the high Missouri sky.
"Yeah, Lee," I said, picking up the heavy steel tongs and lifting the first slab of brisket onto the white pine table. "I’ve been ready all my life. Let’s feed our family."
