Kitchens of the Great Midwest (27 page)

“I wondered why she wasn’t chiming in,” Pat said.

“Know what I like about you, Pat?” Celeste said. “You’re real. I think you’re the most real person I’ve met here. There’s not one fake or pretentious thing about you. I can’t tell you how much I love that.”

“Thanks,” Pat said.

Celeste glanced at her dashboard GPS and turned left down a country road. “I’m glad we’re friends,” she said.

 • • • 

Because they were participants, they got to park in the free lot close to the main food tent, where all of the judging contests were held. By 9:15 a.m. it was already eighty degrees; it was going to be a scorcher.

They stepped onto the grass and followed an old man in a bright yellow vest to the tent for registration and to hand in their bars. It was important to do this fairly quickly, so the bars suffered no adverse effects in the heat.

Upon entering, Pat’s senses were overcome by a fog of cinnamon, ginger, chocolate, vanilla, and buttery pie crusts. The long tent was filled with more than a hundred people, mostly women, many holding fresh baked goods, with a few pies still softly steaming from their vents and folds.

Celeste, of course, couldn’t believe it. “What a place,” she said at last. “What an honor to live in a part of the world that loves good old-fashioned baking.”

“My mom used to say, have a house without a pie, be ashamed until you die,” Barb said, and they walked forward, through the boys setting up folding chairs, toward the registration table at the far end.

 • • • 

“Well, I don’t know about you ladies, but I could go for some food after this,” Barb said, once they found out what line they were supposed to be in.

“Can you save my spot? I want to go see who the judges are this year,” Pat said.

Barb looked at her as if Pat had just suggested they run across the fairgrounds, take off their shirts, and streak the demolition derby. “Knock yourself out,” she said.

Pat never cared much for that phrase, but decided that now was not the time for her opinions, so she just stepped out of the line and said she’d be right back.

“Hey there, Pat,” she heard a young woman’s voice say as she entered the tent.

Pat turned around and saw it was Susan Smalls, a real nice young woman from church. They had just talked recently because Susan was married to an Afghan War vet who was medically retired and still looking for a job. Eli was trying to help them out by getting her husband an interview at UPS, where Eli had worked since his machine shop went out of business in River Falls and they moved to Minnesota—maybe the company that had saved their family could save another. So far, sadly, their prayers hadn’t been answered, and Pat had been trying to avoid Susan until she had something good to report.

“Sure is a warm one out,” Susan said, smiling. A three-year-old boy twirled between and around her legs, and Pat admired the young woman’s short, practical haircut and modest makeup on her pretty round face.

“You can say that again.”

“How’s the family? Are they here?” Susan asked.

“No, this year it’s just me and a couple of friends. What about yourself?”

“Oh, my husband’s here. He got a job at the mini-donut stand.”

“Oh, which mini-donut stand?”

“The Lutheran one.”

“Well, of course,” Pat said, and the two women laughed.

“Say, I hate to pester you about this, but you heard from Eli’s boss at UPS yet?”

“No, not yet. But I’m sure we will any day now.”

“You think it’s rude to send the résumé again? In case it got lost the first time?”

“I don’t suppose it could hurt.” Pat touched the corner of the pan under Susan’s arm, eager to change the topic. “So what are you entering this year?”

“Something new. They’re called Resurrection rolls.”

“Resurrection rolls?”

“Yeah. What you do is, you put marshmallows in melted butter and then roll them in cinnamon sugar. Then ya wrap ’em in crescent roll dough and put them in the oven for twelve minutes. Then—this is important—while they’re baking, read John 20, verses 1 through 18.”

Pat tried to think of what it was. She didn’t know John 20 off the top of her head.

“‘Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb,’” Susan said. “And the same thing happens to the marshmallow. You take ’em out of the oven, break it in half, and the marshmallow is totally gone. He is risen.”

Pat smiled. “Resurrection rolls. Now that’s a shoo-in.”

“Well, I’m not gonna lie. I sure could use the first prize in Miscellaneous Baked Goods. This year it’s a Target gift card worth fifty dollars. The way this one is growing, and with my husband between jobs, well, it would be a help.”

Pat nodded. That fifty-dollar gift card was no small potatoes, but the first prizes in each of the Bars, Pies, Cookies, and Cakes divisions were Target gift cards worth seventy-five bucks. The big leagues.

“Well, good luck, Susan, I’m pullin’ for ya.”

“I’m glad I’m not competin’ against you, Pat,” Susan said. “God bless.”

Now at the far end of the tent from registration, Pat angled to sneak a look behind a partition at the judges’ table. The judges were never announced ahead of time, and were different every year, to prevent corruption, but they were always present for registration. She took in the six faces, all of whom she knew, and then she took a deep, sad breath, swallowing the hard fact that God had saved His most difficult test for last.

 • • • 

The judges were:

Victor “Sexy Venison” Strycek:
An unmarried, twenty-eight-year-old firefighter born and raised in the town of Deer Lake. Three years ago, to raise money, the firefighters had published a “hunks” calendar; Victor’s page (November) featured him shirtless, at a grill, frying up venison steaks. It was not an unattractive photo, but since then, all of the young people called him “Sexy Venison,” and now he even answered to it. There was absolutely no chance he’d vote for anyone but Celeste Mantilla.

Sister Lois Freehold:
A Catholic nun from Deer Lake, Sister Lois was on the judging panel every six or seven years, and the only year she’d been on the panel since Pat had been entering her bars was the one year Pat got a red ribbon instead of a blue one. A strong Catholic entry from St. Boniface in Deer Lake, or St. Elizabeth Ann Seton in Deer River, would get this woman’s first-place vote, no question.

“Aunt” Jenny Sjoholm:
Aunt Jenny was the bulwark of central Minnesota’s baking community. She’d been the chairwoman of the Baked Goods Judging Committee since 1976. An enthusiastic supporter of Pat Prager’s bars.

Clarence Peterson:
Eighty-year-old Clarence Peterson was a legendary local mechanic who could “fix any damn thing without a heart or a computer,” or so he said. There were two big strikes here against Pat: She and
Eli never brought anything to Clarence for repair, and he’d never been a judge on a baked goods panel before. Those types, especially the men, always went for pretty faces and rich treats.

Ross Peterson:
Make that three strikes against Pat. Ross was Clarence’s mentally handicapped grandson, who was a savant at small engine repair—a Rain Man of riding mowers. Another thing: They were both Methodists, so even though First Lutheran Church in Deer Lake had dominated Bars for the last seven years, a strong entry from Calvary Methodist Church would now have two automatic first-place votes.

Miss Minnesota Runner-Up Rachael Bauer:
Now things may have been looking up. Everyone knew that skinny girls didn’t like buttery sugar bombs that made them fat and ruined their complexion. But then Pat recognized the immodest dress on the person talking to Rachael. Celeste and Rachael were talking and laughing! They knew each other! Celeste just moved here, for Pete’s sake. How could this have happened?

Also, what kind of baked goods judging panel had three men on it? One was fine, but three? This was obviously a P.C. overcorrection to last year’s six female judges. And of the three remaining women, one was Catholic, and one was somehow friends with that horrid Celeste. This was bad, this was real bad.

 • • • 

Pat got in line behind Barb and Celeste at the registration table, where two old women in floppy sun hats took their names, their recipes, and their bars.

“Celeste Man-teeya?” one of the old women asked, pronouncing Celeste’s last name in what Pat would later learn was the proper Spanish style.

“No, Mantilla, like vanilla,” Celeste said.

“Where you from originally? It’s such a pretty last name.”

“My husband’s from Florida.”

“No, originally, originally.”

Celeste sighed. “He’s half French, half Cuban.”

“I knew it,” the old woman said. “Being from Florida.”

“Are you going to ask for their family trees as well?” Celeste said, glancing at Barb and Pat. “Go ahead, we have all day.”

“Just asking,” the old woman said. “My husband and I had our honeymoon in Cuba in 1955. Beautiful place.”

“Well, we wouldn’t know.”

“Guess we better get this line moving.” The old woman looked up at Pat. “Next.”

 • • • 

Despite Barb’s earlier request for some food, she first wanted to show Celeste the 4-H Livestock Judging Area. Celeste was still whining about the racism of the old lady at registration; Pat would never admit it outright, but she got some pleasure from seeing Celeste get a little miffed. Some small thing had to go wrong for Celeste Mantilla today in order for Pat to feel that the Lord would restore a sense of harmony and balance in the world.

“What do you think, Pat?” Celeste asked her as they entered the dusty poop fog outside of the Pig Barn.

Pat was shocked to be asked for an opinion and didn’t have a ready answer. “Well, you can’t control other people, but you can control how you react to them,” she said, because somehow it was the first thing that came to mind.

Celeste stopped walking and nodded. “Wow,” she said. “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard in a long time.”

With that, Celeste seemed to cheer right up. The three women walked into a punishingly hot wooden building that smelled something like hay, dirt, and excrement being baked in an oven. There, they winced together
at the lazy, prizewinning pigs, and the incident at registration was never spoken of again.

 • • • 

The awards for Bars were the second of the day, at 12:15 p.m., after Miscellaneous Baked Goods at noon. Each judge had six points to allot for each entry: three to a first-place vote, two for a second, and one for a third. Three times, Pat’s bars had gotten eighteen points—meaning all six first-place votes—including last year. She already knew that this wouldn’t happen this year, and had set her sights on winning a red ribbon, or at least a white one. She had never been to County and not won a ribbon before. Ever.

 • • • 

On their way back to the main food-judging tent, Celeste and Barb stopped at a stand and ordered Hot Dish on a Stick. Pat, not hungry, stuck to a bottle of water. Pat noticed Barb’s pale Nordic skin growing red under the late morning sun and gave her some SPF 50, which Barb only reluctantly accepted because she said she wanted to get tan. The results were only twenty minutes away and Pat was amazed that neither Barb nor Celeste seemed anxious.

Barb was talking about the best time to buy clothes at T.J. Maxx. “The one down in St. Louis Park is the only one in the state with a Runway section,” she said. “If you get there on Tuesday or Thursday after the new stock gets delivered, you can get a Marc Jacobs dress for, like, ninety-nine dollars.”

“Marc Jacobs, or Marc by Marc Jacobs?” Celeste asked.

Pat had no idea what they were talking about. “It’s almost fifteen minutes to noon,” she said. “We should really get to the tent and get good seats for the results.”

“Marc Jacobs,” Barb said. “And take it easy, Pat, we’ll be done in a minute.”

 • • • 

Because Celeste was such a slow eater—not used to food on a stick, obviously—and a slow walker in those stupidly awkward red-bottomed heels, they didn’t get back to the food judging tent until 12:03 p.m., just after the results for Miscellaneous Baked Goods were announced.

“Next up is a County favorite: Bars,” Sister Lois Freehold was saying into the microphone as the women entered the back of the tent. “We have our first-, second-, and third-place winners decided, and we’ll hand out the prizes in about ten minutes.”

Pat saw Susan Smalls on the other side of the tent, and from the look on her face, Pat knew that Susan hadn’t won the fifty-dollar, twenty-five-dollar, or even the ten-dollar Target gift card for Miscellaneous Baked Goods winners. This was a woman whom Pat knew could sure use a little money. It was heartbreaking to look at her standing there, tired and sweaty, next to her clingy, quiet three-year-old boy who was dressed in too-small yellow elastic shorts and a too-large “Big Dogs” shirt with a stain on the front. Hardworking people don’t dress their kids like that when they have a choice.

Sister Lois was at the mic, and it hit Pat—why was Sister Lois speaking? Aunt Jenny was always in charge of these kinds of things. Pat stood up from her white folding chair and saw a strange blond middle-aged man sitting in Aunt Jenny’s chair.

“Excuse me,” Pat said to Celeste and Barb as she moved past them into the aisle. “I gotta see what’s up with the judges.”

 • • • 

As Pat approached the judges’ table, Sister Lois met her gaze, and looked at Pat the way a principal looks at a student who’s been kicked out of school.

“Mrs. Prager, please wait for the results to be read,” Sister Lois said. “Like everyone else.”

“Who’s this?” Pat asked, pointing at the unshaven middle-aged man in the chair where Aunt Jenny once sat.

“That’s Aunt Jenny’s son, Stevie. Aunt Jenny got heatstroke and her son has to fill in as a judge. Now please return to your seat.”

This Stevie, whoever he was, stared straight ahead without acknowledging this exchange. This creeped Pat out even more.