C A L I F O R N I A
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"The High Altitude Cookbook" first
appeared in Sun Dog: The Southeast Review. The collection's about
a small mountain town not unlike |
LAST FRIDAY MORNING I wouldn't even get out of bed until I had turned
on my radio. The oak trees are yellow now, and the light looked so strange
I thought we must be having an eclipse. I whirled the dial around to see
if the news said anything, but there were just a bunch of men talking about
Castro. I guess there wasn't an eclipse after all.
Dad gave me this radio when I turned eleven. It has a little leather case
and an earplug. He told me I should always keep extra batteries for it.
Sometimes it scares me when I tune in and I hear this siren. I have to wait
a while before they say, "This has been a test of the emergency broadcast
network." I decided to keep a diary, so if our civilization disappears,
like the lost city of Deadeye, New Mexico, we won't be gone without a trace.
When I walked into the kitchen Friday, Mom was cooking up a storm, as usual.
"This oven has to be re-lit every time, Summer," she said. "It's like being a pioneer."
The cabin's kitchen is little. The stove has four burners but they're so close together we couldn't use them all unless we cooked on doll dishes. There aren't any cupboards, just open shelves. The refrigerator hums mightily day and night. We have the rifle hung up over it. We rented this cabin for cheap after Old Miners' Days. There's only one other house on our street.
Now that my brother and I are in school all day, Mom gets the housework done early. She was up before it was light Friday and she'd been moving things around. She took down the water colors of squirrels and sailboats that the last people left and got rid of the plaid bean bag ashtrays. She'd hung her cowboy hat on Dad's sculpture of a naked woman.
"I've got a souffle in the oven now," Mom said. "I think it's just about ready."
Mom writes western stories like grandfathers buy at the drugstore, but she was having a hard time with her new one. After she read everything in the Bernard Grover Library, Mom took up cooking in a big way.
But the souffle fell. Mom said she should have made adjustments for the altitude. "I should have remembered. I lived in the mountains the year your granddad was cured of tuberculosis."
Win and I walked down to catch the bus. The town is just two stores, plus a gas station and the post office. They cleared away some trees there, on the south side of the main highway, so we can look down and see the city, where Dad works. Sometimes clouds make the city disappear.
We moved to Cedar Lake thinking Dad would have time to sculpt. He did construction all summer but now that it's fall, things have slacked off, and there isn't enough work for him. He went back down to the flats and got a job, so he's never in the mountains and the rest of us always are. Usually he can't even come home on weekends.
Mr. Grimes is just back from the Peace Corps. He's the fifth and sixth grade teacher. He wants us to listen to the news so he makes us give news reports every morning. Kit gave her report that Pebbles Flintstone had been born. Patty said snow was forecast for the next couple days. I liked that-I hadn't been in the snow before. Mr. Grimes asked if anyone had heard President Kennedy the night before, but only Belinda had. I had my radio in my bag, and I offered to turn it on then, but Mr. Grimes said forget it.
Kit was whispering to Patty. "Belinda has a crush on President Kennedy. That's local news. And any day now she'll get a bigger bra. That might be a story."
Belinda was the other new girl, and she cried all the time. I was stuck doing everything with her, because everyone else had chosen their partners. We weren't anything alike. She was tall and had dark curly hair and she already had to wear a bra. Everybody knew from when we dressed for P.E. It looked uncomfortable. Kit and the rest of us wear white cotton undershirts, so bras are out.
"I'll never, ever wear one," Kit said as we went down the hall for square dancing. And then she yelled, "Hey, Belinda-look down your blouse and spell a-t-t-i-c," and her partner Patty laughed. Belinda and I danced together, too. There aren't enough boys to go around.
Belinda and I got Chile for our report country. I wanted Argentina. I've never heard anything about Chile on the radio, and Kit already has two stories on Argentina.
Chile is like this big string bean. It's cut off from its neighbors by the Andes Mountains. I told Mom they have cowboys there but they're called huasos, not gauchos.
Belinda cried because we opened the egg for the fourteenth day of our embryology experiment.
"That's a baby chick!" Belinda said. "And we've killed it!"
"Belinda," Kit said. "This is science."
In the school cafeteria my milk had dirt in it. I took it back to the cafeteria lady and she said, "Honey, you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die." A peck is quite a bit but I wonder how much I've eaten already.
"Want the rest of my hot dog?" Kit said. "I hate it."
Kit hardly ever sits with me, but Patty left early that day. Kit has no dad and she and her mother live above the R&P Market. Once Kit said she was allowed to date.
"Belinda's dad is sick," Kit said. "I think he has tuberculosis. He's going to die."
Belinda never told me. She was standing over by the window, looking out.
"Next week they're moving back down to the flats, because he can't take the altitude here. He's forty-one," Kit said.
I'll be fifteen when my dad is forty-one. That's a long time.
"What are you going to be for Halloween?" Kit said.
"A cowboy," I said.
"I'm thinking of getting a horse," Kit said. "Hey-when do you think our next upside-down year will be?"
"What?"
"Like last year." She wrote 1961 on her napkin and turned it over. It still said 1961. For some reason that gave me the creeps.
In the afternoon this funny siren went off and Mr. Grimes said, "OK. This is just an air raid drill. Do you all remember what we do?"
It's a strange kind of drill because instead of leaving the building you get under your desk on all fours and face away from the windows and cover your eyes. We did that while Mr. Grimes shut the blinds.
After a while Kit said, "How do we know when we're done?"
And Mr. Grimes and everybody laughed.
He said, "A second siren is supposed to go off," but it was a long time until it did. I slid the radio out of my bag and clicked it on. Mr. Grimes heard Chubby Checker and yelled, "Summer, turn that thing off." We waited some more.
"If someone drops a bomb we'll all just cook anyway," Belinda said. Kit told her to shut up.
Belinda came over after school so we could work on Chile. Mom gave us some high altitude cookies. I made a flour and water model of Chile, and painted it red and yellow to show population. The mountains didn't look right. Dad could have helped me.
When my little brother left the bedroom, I said, "I'm sorry about your dad, Belinda."
Belinda looked at me like she couldn't believe I had said that. Then she threw her head down on her arms. I was used to seeing Belinda cry, so I sat there while she did it. I sort of wanted to pat her arm but I knew she would think the wrong thing if I did.
After a while she wiped her face and said to me, "Do you think your mother will ever have more kids?"
"I don't know." I said. "Too bad they never do anything in Santiago."
"He isn't coming back, is he," Belinda said. She had a funny smile on her face. "That's what everybody says about your dad, you know."
I didn't know. I'm never going to make any friends in this place.
"My grandfather was cured of tuberculosis," I said.
Mom says if I want to play loud rock and roll I should go out in the pine trees. So when Belinda left I went outside.The only good thing about this place is being outside. Huasos and their families live outdoors all year round, riding cattle across the Andes. Mr. Grimes said that above 10,000 feet, like in the Andes, you can see stars in the daytime. I've never seen stars in the afternoon, but that day the sky was awfully dark blue. If you lie on your back the trees come up around you in a circle. The wind made their branches wave around. I couldn't hear any chain saws for a change. I turned the radio way up anyway.
Back inside Mom was putting away a bunch of canned food and bottled water. It was already dark-the sun goes behind the trees by four in summer, earlier by October.
"It's good to be prepared for emergencies," she said. She'd bought candles and even bullets. We were ready for anything.
"Can you believe there's no mountain cookbook in that Grover Library?" she said. She was adjusting another a recipe for six thousand feet. She could cook in Chile! The wind sounded like bowling on the roof.
"I guess if I want one I'll have to write it. I wish I'd been better at chemistry."
As I was finishing the dishes the electricity went out. We opened up the new box of candles. Win went to bed but Mom and I sat up talking. She looked worried. I watched her face flicker.
"Do you listen to the news on your radio, Summer?"
"Not much."
"Well, you discuss the news at school, don't you?" she said.
"Sure. We have news reports every day."
"Did you talk about Cuba in class today?"
I wished she'd said Chile. "South America."
"You know this has nothing to do with it, don't you? The electricity, I mean."
Something weird was going on-we'd had that air raid drill. But I wasn't sure what the electricity could have to do with Cuba. A coyote howled outside and made us both jump. Do they even have electricity in the Andes?
"There's no reason to worry, Summer. You know, your Dad insists we keep that gun here," she said. "Things will work out. Kennedy's a pretty smart man, except for being a socialist."
"What's that?"
"The first step toward being a communist."
There-my heart was thumping in my throat. "Why would the Communists want to blow us up, then?"
"They don't. Get to bed now, Summer."
"If they close the road because of snow, how will Dad ever get back?" I said. "Do you want me to stay with you tonight, Mom? It's supposed to get down to twenty-eight."
She sleeps alone in the big double bed, and Win and I are crammed into the little room with just this screen for privacy.
"We'll all sleep better in our own beds," she said, but she put her arm around me. "You really miss your Dad, don't you."
I got in bed and turned on my radio. I used the ear plug so Win wouldn't whine. It was cloudy outside by then. Mom says when it's cloudy you can hear stations farther away. Once I got New Mexico. I want to hear South America, but that's impossible.
Chile is mountainous country, too. The mountains come right down to the sea, and some of them are dead volcanoes. The Indians speak Inca languages.
There was mostly news on that night. The president and other men kept talking, but I didn't want to hear about the end of the world. I tried new stations. Finally I heard a soft voice through the hiss, speaking a strange silvery language. It wasn't Spanish-I didn't know one word of it. I tried to stay awake and listen till I heard where it was from, but I fell asleep and when I woke up there was just a buzz again. I turned it off and heard the refrigerator humming.
In the morning there was snow on the ground. I keep trying to find that station again but I never can.
Copyright 1998 Catherine deCuir.
All rights reserved.