Emmetsburg: Sixty-seven

“Didn’t catch your name,” said John.

“My god, where are my manners?” he smiled, still working the handle of the old square coffee grinder around and around. “J.L. Swanson.”

“John Perkins.”

“Irish lad,” the farmer observed

“Grandparents were born in Cork.”

“Great great grandfather carried a musket under George Washington,” said J.L.

“That so? What’s the J.L. stand for?”

“James was my father. Grandad Laughton proved himself under General Taylor against Santa Anna in Forty-seven. Took a Mexican Bayonet through the hip at Fort Texas.”

The coffee, the chops, the peacefulness of the kitchen, the warmth and familiarity of J.L. conspired to invigorate what had already been a raging hunger.

“Fought with Pershing in France,” said John. “Recognize a European flavor to the place.”

“My Beatrice, she was born in England. Reckon immigrants are a good thing for this country.”

“How’s that?’

“Remind us what we came here for. Keep us from getting too set in our ways. Tell us we're all one strange new country from seeming out of place.”

John smiled to himself. “Just as soon be set in my ways, if that’s all right.”

“Assume the whole country’d go for that these days,” J.L. fired back with a wink. He put the coffee pot on the stove and poured in the grounds. One by one he cracked three fat brown chicken eggs into the skillet then dumped the used eggshells into the coffee pot. J.L. scrutinized John a moment, just as John looked off through some tortured thought.

“Things can’t be so bad for such a handsome young fella. Got your whole life ahead of you.”

John shook the thought away, something about Louis and what might have happened had he just gone by that ditch. He forced a smile, looking past J.L. as bright sun poured through a gap in the storm clouds and set the farm yard and fields aglow.

“Few things to figure out,” he said softly. J.L. retuned to the skillet, pulling at the eggs with a spatula and turning the chops over. “”Said your wife had passed?”

“Lord took her 2 years ago this past May,” said J.L. with an appropriate mix of pain and joy and confused resignation. There was a sense of peace about it as well, as if it was less a parting than an interruption, as if she’d gone away to relatives and would be along shortly.

J.L. sighed heavily and pulled down a basket of fat powdery white biscuits from atop the icebox. He set the basket on the table near john and pulled away the small towel revealing the small mound of biscuits. As J.L. returned to the stove John took one of the biscuits, peeled it in half and took a bite. It crumbled between his teeth as pillowy bits that all but dissolved instantly in his mouth. They awoke a memory of Anna’s cooking. Instantly his palette deciphered the eggs, country lard, the flower and fresh country butter as deftly as a connoisseur might unravel the cask, soil and grape inherent in a rare wine.

“First year...” J.L. Began, the words trailing away. He paused, tensing a bit. John could see it in the man’s shoulders, a certain weight, a degree of disappointment (even injustice) no amount of faith in a creator could absolve. “Strange thing losing a spouse.”

J.L. was quiet again. He smiled to himself. The memories of Beatrice were impossibly entangled with so much more than her loss. He saw her face the first time they made love, the day she gave birth to their son, Jeremiah., passed now these 20 years. His memory too was married inseparably between church, Christmas’ impassioned arguments, the ebullience of Jeremiah's first love and the ensuing heartbreak, and the final agonizing breaths when the influenza took him. The memories might have easily carried him away. Instead he found John’s eyes. Indeed, J.L. was in fact saved by them. He saw something of Jeremiah’s searching and need in them.

“Forty-two years. Can’t hardly recall a time before I knew her,” he said, as the eggs crackled and spat from the skillet. J.L took a pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper and sprinkled them on the eggs. He smiled into the pan a little sadly.

“The key to perfect eggs is to season them before their cooked.”

“Lifetime, huh?”

“Heck, can’t even look into a mirror without seeing her there beside me.” He sighed deeply.

“How’d you get over that, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Don’t mind,” J.L. said simply. “Never get over something like that. But you get a little better at going through a day.”

He drew two plates from the cupboard. He placed a pork chop on each plate, then two eggs for John and one for himself.

“Good biscuits,” said John.

“Can’t take credit,” J.L. set a plate down in front of John with a well used knife and fork. John studied them, suddenly aware of details he’d never noticed before. Small, inconsequential things, like the harmony of light and shadow, and the drama where they met most assuredly. He measured the predictable rhythm of leaves pushed and pulled by the wind out in the yard, and the richness of colors around him. He was just as aware of the slight mustiness of J.L’s coveralls and his warm musk, reminding him of his grandfather. This sudden revelation, these colors came to him so powerful that it indeed seemed a confirmation of Louis’s predictions, and that, in fact, this was indeed the day he would die.