The Pantry
The pantry seemed like any other ?tall wainscoted cupboards painted pale green and pink held shelf after shelf of salting crocks and pickled provisions growing low as we reached the end of winter. There were sacks of flour and boxes of brown sugar and tea. Then there were the canning jars, scores of Ball and Atlas canners of languid blue, vegetable remnants of past summers paled in acrid cider vinegar and swam in the murky glow of our candle: garlic green beans, bread and butter pickles, Brussels sprouts, pinky wrinkled tomatoes and small white pickled pearl onions. As I passed the light along the shelves Lucia emitted a little gurgle ? like that last bit of sudsy water disappearing down the sink. She pulled my arm back down the shelf so that the light was once again thrown on the canning jars. These were not pearl onions after all ? Lucia and I leaned forward into the low shelf ? distorted and enlarged by the embossed blue glass were dozens of little eyeballs, unblinkingly staring back at us from inside the sealed jar. Moving through the gloom we sent spiders scurrying as we swept aside the webs and blew dust from the other jars; there were pale blue mushrooms, crow's feet, and bloated toads ? their cloudy golden eyes reflecting back the flame of our candle. The wrinkly pickled tomatoes at second sight appeared to be some un-named organs, which we found less disturbing than the jar labeled "Henrick" in a jittery scrawl containing an oozing milky-white substance.
It was at this moment that we heard footsteps enter the kitchen. My sister and I stood as still as summer air before an evening storm, as we listened to Molly making her way around the kitchen, scraping through pans and opening cupboards. Then her foot falls made a direct line for the door of the pantry. The footsteps stopped and the iron latch lifted ? then there was a pause. Lucia and I scrambled, she in one direction and I in another. In a small alcove behind the shelves I hid amongst the hay in a crate that held the last of the acorn squash. The musty smell of Timothy grass and squash bugs replaced the sulphurous smell of my extinguished candle. A beam of white morning light pierced the darkness lighting up the jars in front of me. The silhouette of Molly's full-figured form danced in the glass of twisting pickled garlic scapes before me as it advanced into the pantry. She stopped in front of me ? her soiled apron, with its pattern of pale blue and white flowers, filled my vision. She shuffled the jars on the shelf ? grabbed one (Henrick) ? and disappeared back into the kitchen.
I emerged from the hay, brushed the spider webs from my hair, and struck a match from my pocket to light my candle stub. The light broke out into the darkness, and the lid of the blue and white fifty-gallon crock lifted in the corner and my sister's head emerged.
"that was close," I whispered "lucky you found an empty crock"
"it wasn't quite empty" she mumbled ? A vinegar brine squished out of her shoes as she stepped out of the crockery and brushed damp dill from the hem of her dress.
Composed by Dr. G on Sunday, Nov. 30, 2008
Gentle Reader Responses
Loryienne says:
Oh ... I am agasp!!! ... a jar of Hendrick??? ... What happened to simple burials in the cellar floor as in "Arsenic and Old Lace" vintage????
Tory says:
What a pickle Lucia is in.
Rosemary Renlund says:
...Henrick?...
Oh dear. Henrick?
My dearest beau Henrick, who was never again heard from after the war?
It cannot be.
Oh, where are my smelling salts?
Tara says:
At least the crock that Lucia hid in didn't also contain Henrick.
(Pickle! bah!)
Molly frightens me...
Elena says:
Is Molly a witch?
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