the introductions. “Liz, this is Mabel Jordan, Susan Lee, you know Grady, Tom Fellers, Gail, Alice, Aaron, Trudy, Jane-this is Bett’s mother, Elizabeth, everyone.”
“Zach, you pour,” Bett shouted over the ensuing chatter.
The glasses were all set out. Zach started filling them from the last crock of the previous year’s mead. The women moved about the room, aproned and laughing. They were all neighbors, most of them from nearby farms. The first time Bett had mustered the courage to tentatively suggest a gathering of the local clans, she’d been panic-stricken when they actually swarmed in. Farm women were bossy. It came with the territory. The ones who didn’t want honey wine were already fussing through her cupboards looking for instant coffee or tea.
“Less dirt,” Mabel, a tall, skinny woman with iron-gray hair, told Elizabeth, peeking over her shoulder. “The consistency has to be just right when you put the honey in it.”
“I beg your pardon?” Elizabeth was staring in horror as Grady and Tom Fellers took off their shoes in the doorway, then their socks. Both disappeared. Minutes later, they returned from the downstairs bathroom with bare, and clean, feet.
“Got the brew going?” Grady asked Bett.
“I’m getting it, I’m getting it,” Susan Lee told him. “You just set yourself down.”
Bett started the burner under the big kettle and measured in a quart of apple juice, two quarts of water and two pounds of honey. She bumped into Zach, whose arms steadied her as she whipped past him, and knelt to get out a 9-by-13-inch pan from the bottom cupboard. She found two, gave her startled mother a quick hug on the way back up and then poured the mixture of colloidal oatmeal and honey into the two pans. In a moment, both pans were on the floor, and Grady and Tom had planted their feet in them.
When she glanced up again, she was a little afraid Elizabeth was going into shock.
“Bett, what do you want me to do?” Alice shouted.
“Hmm. Cut up three cloves, if you would, then the juice of two lemons for the brew-” Bett popped a large piece of cinnamon bark into the huge kettle and started to stir. The liquid was simmering, wafting a tangy fragrance into the air. Suddenly, she stiffened.
“I’ve got the yeast, two bits. Not to worry.”
She flashed him a smile. Her mother flashed her a panicked look that said,
“Mud’s about ready, Bett,” Mabel announced.
“Did you add the honey?”
Dripping a cupful of it across the once-spotless floor, Bett raced to that counter to add the correct proportion of honey. “Ready, ladies?”
The other women were sitting down in chairs next to the tables, scarves tied around their heads to protect their hair, their faces uplifted and brightened by irrepressible smiles. Bett glanced around. She’d planned on five. She was missing one-her mother.
Elizabeth was on her hands and knees, trailing people with a rag. Firmly, Bett took the rag away and maneuvered her mother gently into a chair beside the others. “Wouldn’t you like a mudpack? Come on, it’s fun, Mom.” Her mother didn’t answer. Bett started at the head of the line with her bowlful of mud and honey and stuck her hands in it. She couldn’t help laughing. She was very sorry her mother wasn’t enjoying it, but as she coated each upturned face with honey mud, she couldn’t help but start chuckling. Grady didn’t help matters; he was slapping his knee as he watched the women. She put some on his nose in passing; he only laughed harder.
“Alice and I are widows, too,” Susan Lee told Elizabeth. “Had a terrible time adjusting, both of us. Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t know what to do with the farm. Never thought things would ever work out again, and Alice had kids still in school, didn’t you, Alice?”
When Bett got to the end of the row, Elizabeth’s face was-rather stiffly-upturned. Very, very gently, Bett slathered the mixture on her mother’s face.
The women kept up a steady stream of chatter, looking vaguely like creatures from a horror movie as the mudpacks slowly dried. Bett had never really understood why Aaron came, except for the fun of the chaos and the drink of apple-cider vinegar and honey she always gave him for his arthritis, but he was keeping up his usual monologue. He dragged a chair over by her mother, who had undoubtedly never considered carrying on a conversation with anyone of the opposite sex while sporting a mudpack on her face. Aaron was an old chemistry teacher turned farmer, white-moustached and tall, and his background showed.
“See, the bees secrete an enzyme that breaks down a chemical something like hydrogen peroxide-you know, like you use on a cut. It’s a natural mild antibiotic, honey is, and it’s got a water-drawing property-precisely what it does is draw water from the bacterial cells and make them shrivel up and die. See what I mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Elizabeth said faintly.
“And not that there’s any cure for arthritis, but the vinegar and honey together work pretty well to reduce swelling and take away the pain. It’s a soother, inside and outside. Unpasteurized stuff only, we’re talking about here. Do you have hay fever?”
“No.”
“Well, if you did, honey’s a natural antihistamine as well.”
“That’s very nice,” Elizabeth said.
“The girls like it for a face pack.”
“I can see that.”
“Which is again because of its moisturizing properties…”
“Zach, how’re we coming?” Bett took a second and a half out for a sigh. She’d been running around like a mad thing. Zach tugged her in front of him, with both arms resting on her shoulders, a very awkward position from which to stir the kettle on the stove. Still, Bett relaxed, cradled back against his chest, inhaling that fantastic sweet and spicy smell rising from the kettle.
“I’ll be ready to strain in five or six minutes,” he told her, nuzzling his chin on the crown of her head.
For just an instant, she closed her eyes. The next instant she opened them, startled-and delighted-to hear a different tone of laughter in the noisy group behind them. She peeked around Zach. Her mother was laughing.
Bett glanced up at Zach. His blue eyes were doing a tango, waiting to meet hers. Bett was honey from crown to toe. He couldn’t see any part of her that wasn’t sticky. He had a wayward urge to lick off the shiny spot on her cheek, but controlled himself.
“Why don’t you come over for coffee tomorrow, Elizabeth,” Susan suggested. “I’ll show you how to do that jelly roll. Takes time, I’m warning you, but it isn’t all that hard if you watch someone else do it the first time…”
Zach didn’t exactly know how their honey harvest had mushroomed over the years. Bett had learned beekeeping from a retired neighbor, and had loved it starting with the first spring, but only realized in the fall exactly how much honey there was going to be to jar and sell. Zach had poked a “bee” in Grady’s ear, suggesting that one or two women neighbors whose farm season was over might like to help her. “One or two” expanded to a wide group, all bringing their old-time recipes for mudpacks and arthritis cures and remedies for fallen arches. Bett had searched out the old English recipe for mead. The neighborhood theory seemed to be that there was no fun in having half a mess; you might as well go whole hog.
Bett, fool that she was, had encouraged them. Bett had the uncanny ability to gather people of all ages together and bring out their spirit of fun. The thought of a formal dinner party would have panicked her-she’d told Zach a thousand times she just wasn’t the type to cope with large groups of people. He let her go on thinking that.
Between the two of them, laughing, they strained the mixture in the kettle, added the yeast and poured it in the big earthenware crocks to cool. Bett disappeared from his sight then, her blond head popping up here and there during the next two hours. The mudpacks were washed off; the washer was started; one crew tackled the floor and another miraculously produced dishes for dinner. Then there were the dinner leavings to clean up.
Zach watched his wife, a very small locomotive in nonstop action. She was humming most of the time. Quick frowns were replaced by quick smiles, her face vibrantly expressive, her body lithe and free in action, totally feminine.
He loved that lady.
