“Shoot.”
“You gotta try the pork steak at least once, babe. You come in here year after year, and you never once tried one of my pork steaks.”
“You don’t even remember my name. How do you remember if I’ve had your pork steak or not?”
“Have you?”
“No.”
“Here,” Mammy sighed, and started wrapping up a pork steak, in addition to the half-rack of ribs. “On me. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“You really don’t have to – ”
“Kid, you’re hurting my feelings. Okay? I make these with love. You’ll see. You take this home. Heat it up int he oven – not the microwave, I mean it – in the oven at 350 for six minutes. Don’t overdo it. It dries out quick. Just six minutes and you’ll have yourself the best piece of pork you ever tasted.”
“I mean,” Seay shrugged, “if you insist.”
“Just remember to thank me later, yeah?”
“Well,” Seay said. He frowned inwardly. There probably would not be a ‘later.’ This was their last summer at the lake before heading off to college.
But Mammy caught his inward frown as plain as if it had been right there on his face.
“What?” she frowned, too. “You not coming back?” This happened sometimes. Sometimes a summer regular would stop being regular. They’d come in one last time and wish her farewell and treat this old crone who sold barbecue out of a shack by a lake like she were their own dying family member. “This goodbye, then?”
“We start college this year,” Seay said. He looked Mammy right in her one good eye. Or was it the other one? Well, he had committed to this one. “Tracy and me. We might not make it back next summer.”
“Why not? College kids come back to the lake all the time,” Mammy grunted. “I should know. They’re terrible tippers.”
“Yeah?” Seay chuckled. Mammy was to him like the carpet in his and Tracy’s stuffy Hobbit bedroom, smelly and discolored and utterly irreplaceable. One with the lake. He really would miss her.
The next time he looked her in the one eye, he realized a second too late that he was tearing up. He tried to glance away again. But she caught him.
“Aw, Sweetie, it’s okay,” Mammy snorted kindly. Her own tears came freely and easily. She finished ringing up Seay’s order, slid it to him, and then put her freshly ungloved hand on his as he reached out to accept it. Her palm was warm and dry and tough on the outside, but soft on the inside. “It’s just barbecue.”
“Y-yeah, I know,” he said. He choked back his weird, inexplicable grief. He was still off-balance, wasn’t he? This was not like him. Feeling things in public? In front of Mammy, of all people?
She gently squeezed the back of his hand. He continued to grasp the freshly packed meal she had handed him.
“You’ll be back,” she grinned at him. “Know why?”
“Because I’ll have tried your pork steak?”
“Ha!” she snorted. “That’s right, Shaun! You always were a smartass, weren’t you? Aw, come here kid. Don’t cry.”
Seay wasn’t crying. Was he?
Mammy sidled out from around the counter. She took him into her big, pimply arms. She hugged him to her greasy apron. He feigned a reciprocal hug. But with her big, dense breasts pressed into his body, he felt afraid to inhale or exhale. She gave him just the one quick, sniffly hug. Then she released him. It was a loving, gentle gesture. This smelly old business was her life. These customers who grew up and went away, they meant something to her. She wasn’t always so lucky to get to say goodbye before they disappeared. So sure, she could cry with them, and give out the occasional hug.
“Th-thanks, Mammy.”
“You’re alright kid. Go find your sister. Have a nice night.”
“We will,” Seay promised, holding up his purchase proudly.
“How many minutes you going to reheat that meat?”
“Six.”
“At what temperature?”
“Three-fifty.”
“Good boy. Get on out of here. Go grow up into somebody good, would you? We got enough bad ones.”
“I’ll try,” Seay said. And he jangled the bell again one last time on his way out. He stepped back out into the grey afternoon heat. A giant cumulus was passing in front of the sun. Cicadas were picking up. But there was no wind. No storm was brewing. Everything was fine. He was good. He was a good person.
He walked slow to give himself time to get back to baseline, psychologically. His boner had, at least for now, mercifully subsided. Thank you for the assist, Mammy.
A truck crackled by, driving slow as it passed. The windows were already down. Old-timey country music played softly on bad speakers. “Howdy,” said the driver. “Howdy,” said Seay back.
Seay never, ever said howdy except for when he was at the lake. The word felt alien to him, even after all these summers, like he was butchering another language whenever he tried to say it. But if any of the locals could tell, they were too polite to say. The driver trucked on, slow as ever. He pulled in at Mammy’s, paused to wave through the window at her, and then went and parked in the tiny strip of gravel parking lot around the side. Seay kept peeking behind him. The old driver didn’t get out right away. He just sat there in his truck. Seay stopped peeking. He felt weird.
Seay rounded the corner. He was trying not to feel weird. He was going to collect his sister. He had gotten their dinner, as promised. He wondered if he should have maybe ordered some sides, too. Potato salad, beans, whatever. But he figured they had chips and veggies and stuff at home. Milk and soda in the fridge. They’d make do.
He mounted the hollow wooden porch of the candy “shoppe.” His last few flip floppy steps to the door were ridiculous. He let himself in. The smell of much polished wood and sweet-smelling foodstuffs greeted him. Candy sugar wasn’t the only scent on offer. The shop also sold giant cookies, bricks of fudge, and hot cocoa made-to-order. He found his sister hemming and hawing in the back, in front of a wall of shelves of giant jars of serve-yourself candy. She had a plastic bag on one arm that hung heavy. In her other hand, she held a fresh, empty baggy.
“Peach rings?” Seay suggested.
“Got ’em already,” Tracy said. “I have a quarter pound left until I’m at three pounds even. I’m trying to decide if I want bears or worms.” She pointed with a plastic scoop at the two rainbow-colored options sitting side-by-side on the shelf.
“Worms,” Seay said. “No question.”
“But bears are less of a commitment. You can just have a couple. With worms you gotta’ commit.”
“Are we having barbecue or candy for dinner?”
“Both,” said Tracy, nodding decisively. And she put a little scoop from each giant jar into her baggy. “Is this okay?!” she called out to the friendly old cashier. “That I mixed them?! They cost the same!” The cashier nodded bucolically. “Thanks!” chirped Tracy. She plopped the worm-bear baggy along with the fat bag of other goodies on the scale. It was slightly too heavy. She plucked out a worm and popped it in her mouth. “There,” she said, satisfied. And she shoved the sack of goods into Seay’s arms. “Now go pay for it.”
“Hold this,” Seay sighed, and traded her the barbecue.
“Ribs and… Eww, is that pork steak?” Tracy grimaced into the paper bag. “What are we, hillbillies all of a sudden?”
“She gave it to us for free.”
“Good,” Tracy screwed up her nose as she sniffed the little paper-wrapped parcel of perfection. “What even IS pork steak?” she said, pretending it didn’t smell incredible.
“You should at least try it,” said the sweet old shop owner. Her spun-up hair looked like grey cotton candy.
“I’ll stick with my peach rings, thank you very much,” said Tracy tartly.
Seay paid with Mom and Dad’s card, and the twins exited the candy shop. The one big cloud had passed, was now making its way behind the hills behind the town. The cicadas had quieted again. The sun was back to its old blistering self. They walked in sweaty silence, chewing candy, and thinking separate thoughts. But as they rounded the mailbox at the end of their own cabin driveway, Seay finally spoke up.
“I’m gonna miss this walk,” he said.
“Yeah,” Tracy said. “It’s a good walk.”
“But we won’t miss the heat.”
“No,” Tracy said. “We won’t.”
When it was very uncomfortably hot at the lake, you complained about the heat. It was tradition.
When they got inside, both twins kicked off their flip-flops, stripped down to their undies, and flopped down onto the sofa. Tracy turned on the TV and began looking for something to watch. Seay arrayed their spoils on the coffee table in front of them. Then he went to grab paper plates, paper towels, and two solo cups full of soda. Easy clean-up, he figured. Since there was no way Tracy was planning to help him do any dishes.
They decided on old cartoons. They ate. They wiped their fingers clean of rib grease and barbecue sauce before every time they dug into another baggy of candy. At some point, Tracy brought her legs up onto the sofa, and laid them across Seay’s lap. This was okay. She asked where the pork steak had gotten off to. Had he eaten it? Seay hadn’t. He had put it in the fridge, knowing neither of them wanted it. He figured Mom or Dad might want it. He could tell them how to reheat it, if they were interested. But then he went to rest a casual, brotherly hand on his sister’s calf, and realized she had shaved her legs. When? How? What?
“I did it after you got out,” she shrugged, her blue eyes still glued to the TV screen.
“Why?”
“Why not?” she frowned, and looked at him. She nibbled the last bit of meat off her last rib bone. Then she dropped it onto her paper plate, and bent sideways to set the plate down on the coffee table. “Why, does it freak you out?” Tracy smirked. As she asked, she clenched her calf muscles against his thighs.
“N-no,” Seay blushed. Her calf muscles were so smooth. Creamy to the touch. “I just hadn’t… Y-you were out of there so quick. I hadn’t realized you could shave that quick.”
“It wasn’t quick,” she said, squinting at him. Then she broke into another grin. “You must have just lost track of time.”
He had left the bathroom, gone upstairs, and immediately started jerking off. She had interrupted him only a few moments later. He’d barely had time to get a good rhythm going…. And yet, here were her cleanly shaven legs. Proof of a sort he’d lost track of time. He reddened, embarrassed, and a little unsettled. His horniness was getting unreal. It was warping his sense of time. Place. Sibling boundaries.
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