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The Old Gray Goose

Written by Terry Howard

Grantville
Thanksgiving, 1635

"Why are you not happy, Herr Benito? We have a half day off." The new butcher's helper, Hans Knefler, glanced over at the man he'd been assigned to work with out of the corner of his eye as they walked home from work. Benito never looked particularly happy to Hans.

"Kid, if we didn't work in a grocery store, it would be a full day off. You know all about Thanksgiving, right? The Pilgrims, the New World, the Indians, yadda yadda. Big deal! Back up-time, we used to call it Turkey Day. Almost every family cooked one. Shoot, I knew a family of vegetarians and even they cooked a turkey. On Thanksgiving we ate turkey and watched the Macy's Parade on TV. And then we could watch football. All day. I loved it."

"They all had Spanish turkey?"

Benito snorted. "Not at these prices. Back then we had big farms that raised thousands of them and shipped them out dressed and frozen. Benito paused for a moment. "Man alive, I miss home. Really I do."

Hans asked, "Are you having turkey?"

"What do you think I am? Rich?" Benito countered. "The price is ridiculous. They're imported from Spain. Only reason Spain has them is because someone brought them back from Mexico. Maggie O'Reilly had some young toms she sold us at the Spanish import price—and I mean to tell you she was smiling when she did it, too.

"We used to sell it retail at a dollar, dollar ten per dressed pound. If nothing happens to her layers, Maggie will die rich because she let her little girl breed turkeys for a 4H project. I hear a lot of people went hunting this week, but I don't think there were all that many wild turkeys to begin with."

Hans was thinking Benito was whining rather a lot for someone who had such a good job and nice house. But then Benito snorted a half laugh.

"No, kid, we're having goose and dressing. Goose is fine. I can't afford turkey. I won't pay that kind of money for one and I probably won't live long enough for the price to come down."

****

Benito knew he was feeling sorry for himself. Heck, he was probably wallowing in self-pity, come to think of it. On the other hand, though, he certainly hadn't asked to get stuck here. Everything was different, seemed like. Food, clothes, prices. Walking all over the darned place. He missed his car. He missed the food he was used to. And he missed the old Thanksgiving celebrations.

Until someone started importing corn, Benito's wife made a white bread dressing when she baked fowl. Benito hated it. Now she bought dried corn and ran it through the blender to get meal. Which didn't make a lot of sense to Benito, since there were millers all over the place. The fact was, she'd asked for corn thinking she was getting corn meal from the bulk counter at the store. It never crossed her mind that someone might want whole corn to make hominy so she didn't say corn meal or corn flour, as the down-timers were calling it. She was too embarrassed to take it back. Now she liked the finer meal she got out of her blender better than what the store sold. They only had cornbread on special occasions, even though it was getting cheaper now that they could import dried corn from Italy.

He missed cranberry sauce, the jellied kind, from a can. They'd only had it on Thanksgiving. He really didn't like it all that much. Most of it was thrown out every year but it just wasn't Thanksgiving dinner without it. Cranberries were just one of the many things that would never again be the way they should be.

Here he was—past retirement age and then some—working full-time and then some. It certainly wasn't what he'd expected to be doing when he was sixty-six—darn near sixty-seven.

In the first year after the Ring of Fire, when everyone was scrambling to get through the winter, he pitched in like everybody else. The government tapped an experienced meat man, Mark Burroughs, to run part of the food supply project. Someone had to cover the meat counter at Johnson's grocery store. So Benito went to work for the interim while Mark was on a short term-leave. That was over three years ago. With Mark being part owner in "Ice and Slaughter," along with being the government meat, health and safety inspector, there was no way he was ever coming back from the leave of absence. The job was Benito's for as long as he wanted it. Without a social security check, he needed the income. Which was another thing that he missed, for sure. No check. Had to get a job. No wonder that old bat, Veda Mae Haggerty was so bitter. She was in the same boat.

"I'm lucky Mark ain't ever coming back," Benito mumbled. A meat counter was about all the physical labor he wanted to handle these days. Besides, without cable TV what would he do with himself, anyway?

"What did you say, Mister Genucci?" Hans asked.

"Oh, sorry, kid. I was just thinking about how things used to be."

"It really must have been something, living up-time I mean."

"Well, yes and no. It's kind of odd. The big difference in the job, other than the prices, is the return to paper wrapping. Cellophane and Styrofoam are gone. All the fresh meat stays iced down in the glass-front butcher's counter until it gets wrapped in paper and sent out the door."

Benito continued chatting away. "Of course, there were things you can't get at all any more, like lobster, king crab, and shrimp. And there's a long list of things you can only get once in a while. Take veal. When we have it, it's real veal. Someone's cow drops a still-born calf and the meat inspector passes it. It's not some box-raised milk-fed yearling steer, like veal used to be.

"We still get mostly beef and pork, always did. What's weird is that some of the pork is wild boar. About the only thing that hasn't been in our meat counter is dog and cat. Though, I wonder if a couple of the rabbits we sold weren't off of someone's roof, to tell the truth. We even sold squirrels once or twice.

"The quality is what it is. It isn't like you can call the supplier and raise a fuss. Hell, we should be thankful we got a supplier," Benito said. "Shoot, for that matter we should be thankful to be alive and I should be happy to have a job instead of griping about having to work."

"You would have a job, Mister Genucci. They need you."

"Thanks, kid, but I know better. I'm lucky Mark Burroughs' left to help set up a slaughter-house or I'd have your job instead of mine." They'd reached the turn to Benito's house. "Well, here's where we part company, kid. See you tomorrow. Remember, you're going with me to the slaughter house in the morning so be here at a four thirty."

****

The goose was good. Benito had picked out the best of the lot, after all. The stuffing was perfect. His wife had something she claimed was cranberry salad made with dried berries from Poland. They might have been cranberries—he couldn't tell the difference—but it just wasn't cranberry sauce. Still, he had to brag on it. And there was no football on the tube. The Sound of Music just was not an acceptable substitute.

He went to bed early.

****

The alarm went off. It was four in the morning. Again! Benito shut it off so his wife could get another three hours of sleep. His clothes were hanging on the back of the bathroom door so he didn't have to rummage around in the bedroom. At a quarter after four he was out the door.

Hans was waiting at the street corner and they took the long walk out to the slaughter-house and got there about five. What was now "Ice and Slaughter" used to be a big old barn. Now it held the cold storage along with the ice-house, the dairy and the ice cream company. They built a slaughter-house just up hill from the barn and a smoke house, downhill, off to the side.

Benito happened to be there when Slick had pitched the idea to Mark.

"Hey, Mark. I've got an old antique hand-cranked cream separator tucked away in the barn," Slick said without preamble, right in the middle of the conversation Mark was having with Benito about the meat counter at the store. "Got an old commercial ice maker stashed in there too. It'll need its Freon recharged. They got some down at the body shop . . . well, I guess it ain't really Freon, but they tell me it will work. Anyway, I was told you would have to sign off on it before they use it. I want to turn part of the barn into cold storage for milk."

"That's a mighty big barn you've got. How are you going to do turn that drafty old thing into cold storage?"

"Well, the back half of the lower level is underground. I figure I can stack hay bales three deep across the middle and fill the floor overhead with straw. That should hold a couple of semi-loads of stuff."

"Not big enough. But if we stacked the entire outside of the barn with three or four bales of straw and covered it with tarps, we can turn the whole thing into a freezer. If we can find enough straw bales. They'll cost a bundle, that's for sure."

"Think that would work? There isn't that much milk to keep cool."

Mark's eyes lit up. "No, but there's meat too. How would you like to be part owner in a slaughter-house?"

So they'd gone and done it. Somehow. Benito didn't like to think what that straw had cost. If it was straw. For all he knew, it was pine needles doing the insulating. Or even sawdust. But it worked. The second year they boxed in the outside. The loft was filled with loose straw and the ice maker set into the wall with the back side to an office to so the heat off the condenser helped keep the staff warm in the winter. Mark figured the basement would freeze and the second floor, which had its own ground level entrance at the back of the barn, would make a refrigerator. They ran the ice maker 24/7 until they had enough ice so the barn stayed cold.

Benito laughed as he and Hans trudged up the hill to the old barn. "There was some question as to whether the ice maker Slick had would make enough ice for it to work. It almost worked too well. They had to scavenge foam board out of someone's pole barn to hang on the ceiling of the lower level to keep the second floor from freezing up too."

"Herr Benito, why do you call him Slick when that is not his name?"

"Back when, he always had a scheme going. He was always trying to pull a fast one. He'd buy junk and put it in the barn and try and sell it as antiques. That's why he had the cream separator and the ice machine to begin with. Good thing it worked, I guess. Well enough that Mark doesn't want his old job back."

Oh, there were people who griped about conflict of interest and profiteering, over Mark being part-owner of the slaughter-house. But where were they when there wasn't an ice-house? Mark, Meryle Grooms, Slick and some others got the ice- and slaughter-house up and running at their own expense when it was needed most. Benito figured they deserved whatever they got out of it. Some people can't stand seeing someone else get ahead.

"Anyway, the meat grinder and the band saw from the store found their way out here. When Mark wanted them, Old Man Johnson said okay, as long as we got first dibs on meat. That's why I have to walk out here every morning to look over what they've got hanging in cold storage. That will be your job just as soon as I think you're up to it. At least we get to ride down to the store with the delivery wagon.

"Everybody knows Johnson's has the best meat in town. It don't matter anymore that they we're the smallest of the three groceries. Having the best meat will keep us in business. Though I never thought I'd see the day wild venison would be in the meat case next to goat and sheep."

The aged quarters of the day's stock were loaded on the delivery wagon with the morning's ice while he watched and Hans helped. Then they rode to the store. "Good morning, Mister Genucci," Carl greeted him cheerfully.

Benito made a sound somewhere around a snarl that had no clear meaning. He hadn't had his coffee yet. While the ice and meat were unloaded, he'd have a free doughnut and a cup of coffee with the baker.

When the ice was in the meat counter and the meat was in the walk-in refrigerator, Benito would be ready to start the day. The ten-by-twelve cooler, which could hold about two days worth of meat, would be about half full. Anything left in-house on the third day was sold at or under cost to the relief agencies. They expected cheap meat and they got it. If there was very much meat left on the third day, Benito knew he wasn't doing his job.

The baker had a cup of coffee ...