The Chicken Sisters(55)

“But your mom says your sister had it wrong,” he said. “If that’s so, I’m sorry.”

He turned and went back into the trailer, not waiting for a reply. Mae hurried after her mother, carrying the box, which was so cold against her stomach that it hurt.

“Amanda did this,” she said angrily when she caught up.

Barbara shrugged. “Just put the box in the truck,” she said.

“But—”

Barbara turned back and glared at Mae. “Amanda doesn’t matter right now. Just put the box in the truck.”

Mae slid the box onto the open back of the pickup and went for another. With effort, she stifled her urge to shake the placid man in front of her, who was calmly handing her boxes as though he hadn’t just destroyed all of their plans.

Twelve more boxes, and Barbara slammed the gate up.

“Goddamn it, John Calvin, we’re going to have a hell of a time defrosting these.”

“I believe it.” He stood looking after them as they got into the cab. “You take care, now,” he called. “Good luck tonight.”

The minute the doors slammed, Mae burst into speech. “What the hell happened? What are we going to do with frozen chicken?”

Her mother turned the key and backed out of the driveway. Mae could tell by the set of her face that she, too, was angry, but Barbara didn’t answer her until they were down the drive and out on the road.

“Amanda went over there this morning and told him you were planning to switch over to organic chicken, and so he sold her our order.”

“But that’s crazy. I’m not—I didn’t—”

“You must have said something to somebody. Stuff like that gets around, Mae. You can’t just mouth off here.”

“I didn’t! I didn’t say anything to anybody but you and Aida. And that’s not even what I meant! I just wanted to know if it was organic! It doesn’t even matter—this is better than organic.”

Mae knew things got around here; her mother didn’t have to teach her that. She grew up here. And for John Calvin to believe she would mess with a deal between their families that was four generations old was absurd, no matter what Amanda had said. Amanda had gone too far. Way too far. She wasn’t going after Mae anymore but Barbara, and a whole night’s receipts, and she knew good and well that their mother couldn’t afford that.

“I swear I didn’t say anything to anyone, Mom. I didn’t. This was all Amanda.”

“I don’t know what happened or who said what, but that’s what he thinks, and this is what we’ve got, and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

Barbara sat rigidly behind the wheel, turning carefully at the four-way stop, and even as angry as she was, Mae couldn’t avoid the fact that her wild-woman mother, known for flying down the back roads with a cigarette dangling out the window, had turned into a very cautious driver. She was getting older, and Mae didn’t want to think about what that meant—except that it made what Amanda had done even worse. This was playing dirty. She and Nancy both. And Mae hadn’t even done anything. Not anything that would really hurt Frannie’s, anyway.

Not yet.



* * *



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Safely defrosting whole frozen chicken meant a water bath, and not a warm-water bath, which might work faster, but an ice-water bath. The water and ice had to be changed at precise intervals and precise temperatures. They bought twenty-four white five-gallon buckets and bags upon bags of ice, filled the buckets at the hose, and began throwing the chickens in. The chickens had been prepared for sale, essentially shrink-wrapped, and for a while, they kept them in the plastic, moving them from bath to bath, and dumping the water baths out as the ice melted, but once they were able, they hacked the chicken into fryer pieces and then sealed the pieces into bags and kept going. You couldn’t wear gloves for that work. Only hands could press the chicken breastbone in just the right spot to crack it for the scissors; only fingers could scoop the bloody ice out of the neck and the folds of the skin.

It was miserable, and it had to be done. If they couldn’t defrost the chickens in time, they couldn’t open tonight. The chefs would come and find—nothing. Food Wars was over.

Andy sulked at Mae for the first hour, sharing Barbara’s conviction that she was to blame for this, then cracked a few dark jokes as the whole thing grew more and more ridiculous. Barbara worked in stoic silence, and Mae spent the entire time conducting an imaginary conversation with Amanda that started with How could you? and then listed all of her sister’s sins against their mother and Mimi’s. You’re here all the time. You can see her. She’s obviously getting older. You may be pissed at me, but do you want to ruin her? This place raised you, and you want to burn it to the ground?

She mentally reviewed everything she’d said since she showed up in Merinac. She’d done nothing to John Calvin, said nothing about the farm except to her mother, and that hadn’t been bad, even. She’d been thinking of the farm as part of the Mimi’s story, not something to be excised from it. Because the Mimi’s story was killer. The longer she thought about it, the better it got. Mimi’s was a piece of authentic American history, and the original Mimi a heroine, an early feminist. Frannie’s was a copycat, run by men for most of its years and now so far from its origins that it was unrecognizable, with its long menus and the frozen foods truck parking out back once a week. Cheesecake, biscuits, French fries . . . who knew what else they just yanked out of a bag or box and threw into the oven or onto the plate? Would Nancy and Amanda bother to defrost all this chicken, or would they just say the hell with it and steer customers toward meatloaf and burgers?