Bacon and sausage sputtered in a huge skillet, the focal point for every silent someone in the room. Blue flames from the stove’s eye lapped across the bottom of the pan as excited beads of oil rained down. The Old Man in charge of the cooking jumped and grunted at those that found his arm as he turned the heat down low.
Across the room, coffee sloshed in a pot that clattered into and out of place almost without pause, filling one cup after another until empty. Then it was held under the tap at the sink to catch a stream of ice cold water, pumped electrically from the camphouse’s well. The glass pinged ominously at the temperature shock, but the chemical engineering of the old Pyrex proved its worth once again. The Old Man fed the machine fresh grounds, dumped the now-tepid water into its reservoir and flipped the switch to drizzle the pot full once more.
The room was crowded. Supplicants awaiting sustenance were divided equally between sitters and standers who were constantly swapping, but their voices were silent. It was too early for anything but coffee. Most hunting camps feature late nights and early mornings and, when the two overlap, the passage is best suffered in silence. Only the sounds of cooking rattled in the air.
It was almost breakfast time at deer camp, and the meal would need to hold its eaters through most of the day.
Heavy coats were unzipped, taken off, piled or propped, then put back on and left open. Their wearers turned and stepped, leaned and stood, sat, stood again, restless but silent. A quiet crowd is quiet but, still, it is a crowd.
People shuffled into and out of each other’s way, making room at the coffee pot, room at the table, respecting the room required by the cook, always the morning’s chief and only celebrity.
The room was hot in the way only a camphouse in cold weather can be. Floorboards creaked and condensation pooled at the base of each single-pane window over the sink and on the door.
To this was suddenly added another draught of convection as the oven’s door was snatched open. A pan of nearly-burned biscuits was yanked out, a sheet of raw dough circles flung back its place and the door quickly slammed shut.
“I thought you were supposed to be helping me watch those,” the Old Man said, looking at me as I sat at the kitchen table, eye level with the little window through which the biscuits were to be observed. Through the greasy, yellowed glass, I suppose I could have said if the pan was on fire, but answering finer points of biscuit browning was well beyond its ken.
I continued to stare across the top of my coffee, head braced between my palms, elbows resting on the red and white checkered cloth.
“Uhn,” I said, made surly by the accusation, and the hour. “I don’t much like biscuits.”
“Good,” he said. Crumbs flew across the room as he chiseled into one with a fork. “You won’t much like these either.”
He took the meat off the heat before it could blacken as well. He drained the oil into a large coffee cup, then made a small ocean of sawmill gravy to soak the biscuits into edibility, spilling too much pepper into it along the way. From the pantry he retrieved a jar of the one kind of jelly we had on hand, plunked meat, biscuits, jelly and a slowly-cooling washtub of gravy onto the table and declared the meal served. A dozen pairs of hands grabbed flatware and moved to dig in.
“You know what makes this meal special?” he asked, as the line of eaters loaded their plates, mumbled “thanks,” and went in search of a spot to sit and take nourishment. I surveyed the results of his cooking and was at a loss.
“Somebody thought enough of you to make it for you,” he said. “If you don’t especially like how it turned out, that gives you something to aim for when you’re doing it yourself. But never forget to be thankful.”
“I won’t,” I said, offering a promise I’ve done my best to keep. Especially while improving on the cooking he produced.
Kevin Tate is a freelance writer. Email [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 24 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
