If Bread Could Rise to the Occasion Read online

  “Gram, is there a chance we might not be able to . . . go back?” I asked as Gent seemed not to see us; he searched the area where we were standing as though he was looking for someone, but his eyes didn’t quite land on us.

  “Look down, Betts,” she said.

  I did and saw that the cement below my feet was distinctly aged: pitted and broken. But that wasn’t the case a foot closer to the building and a foot closer to Gent in the open doorway. There it was smooth and even. Gram moved her foot so it straddled both.

  “I was once worried about the same thing, but then I noticed that neither of my feet disappears even when they’re in both places. It wouldn’t be prudent to get into any sort of discussion regarding time, time travel, or even what in the hellfire it is that you and I can see, but I’ve never had any problem stepping out of that door and coming back to . . . well, to now,” she said. “But, Betts, you don’t have to do this. I keep telling you not to let this stuff get to you and then I bring you here. I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. “No, I want to go in. I just wanted to make sure we can get back out.” That was mostly true. Bottom line, I didn’t want to miss the . . . opportunity, if that’s what it was, no matter how much more slippery the slope just became.

  I took a step forward and onto the smooth concrete. Gram moved with me.

  “I’ll be,” Gent said, “you are the spittin’ image of Missouri, girly.”

  Gent’s use of girly was just what I needed. A sense of silly suddenly washed over me and I smiled at Gram.

  “Yes, well, Gent missed out on that whole gender-equality and political-correctness stuff,” she said. “His intention isn’t to offend. He thinks he’s adorable and friendly, and he is, but perhaps more appropriate for an earlier time.”

  “Missouri Anna Winston, I can surely speak for myself.” He took off his cap and swooped his hand in a welcoming gesture. “Pleasure’s mine, ladies. Come in, come in.”

  “He was seventeen when he died?” I mumbled to Gram.

  “Yes, but very self-assured,” Gram mumbled back.

  Though I’d never found a safe way to enter the dilapidated building, I had been hoisted up enough to peer into a window. Then, I’d seen only a large open space strewn with junk, leaves, and mysterious items I thought must have been remnants of old machinery.

  But in this state, and even in the dim light, the place was magnificent, and before I could even consider giving Gent my full attention, I had to soak in what I was seeing; something that was so detailed with touches of its own time that it could never have been duplicated accurately in the twenty-first century.

  The floor wasn’t the concrete I’d seen a moment earlier; it was made of dark wood planks and looked fairly clean. Briefly, I thought about how difficult it must have been to keep it that way, but there was too much to see to dwell on the floor.

  Since windows lined the top of the entire building, I figured that the solid wall I saw not far away must have been placed in the middle of the long warehouse-type room. There were ovens lining the entire wall; I didn’t count, but there must have been fifteen to twenty of them. Set apart but still in front of the ovens, there was a long rolling conveyer belt that was probably a good four feet wide. Set back farther, toward the windows, were two long rows of shelves.

  I didn’t understand how the details contributed to the sense of old-fashioned until I looked more closely. The oven doors were made of lead, ornate with curlicues and big handles. The shelves weren’t metal like the cooking school’s shelves, but were wooden and worn perfectly. There was something ragged yet not unappealing about the conveyer belt.

  “I couldn’t have ever imagined this, Gram,” I finally said.

  “I know, it’s extraordinary.”

  We’d followed Gent but slowly enough to lag more than follow. He’d noticed my curious stares and waited patiently. Finally, I turned my attention to him. “I’m Betts. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You, too.” Gent winked and then bowed. “Any granddaughter of Miz’s is a friend of mine.” He stood straight and put his hands on his hips. “Though I gotta tell ya I swear to kingdom come that I never thought I’d meet anyone new ever again. I love coming back to talk to Missouri and visiting my family, of course. Do you suppose I’ll get to meet more people?”

  “I hope not,” Gram answered.

  “I suppose you’re right about that, Miz.” He turned to me. “Did she tell you about how we were best buds when we were growing up in the country, Betts? Oh, Lordy, we has us some fun, we did.”

  “She mentioned it. She said you had the entire woods to yourselves and that you were wild and out of control.”

  Gent laughed. “That we were. We were the self-appointed king and queen of the entire state of Missouri. We made thrones of downed trees and we stole towels and sheets—they’d be drying on lines and we’d just steal them to make capes.” Gent suddenly looked distracted and he scratched at his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever remembered that before, have I?” he asked Gram.

  “Of course you have. It just takes a little time, some memories come back,” Gram said.

  Gent scratched his head again.

  “Come on,” Gram said, changing the subject, “let’s introduce Betts to your family.”

  I thought Gent might have preferred to focus on remembering something, perhaps more about their towel thievery, but the intensity with which he was thinking made me wonder if there was something more serious to the story. An instant later, though, his attention snapped back to me and Gram.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start with my momma.”

  Being inside the time-warped bakery wasn’t like floating on a cloud or walking through a foggy scene. It was lit funny, but it was just a normal place, normal for its time period at least, which made it simply weird. Everything from the past was there and in a condition that made it seem real. But, as our focus shifted to the different items, those items became better illuminated. I’d learned that when I was in close vicinity to the ghosts in the dark, they would become more dimensional, more solid, but this trick of light was more about bright and dark than it was dimension. The items in the bakery looked continually solid, just not always properly illuminated.

  I’d already seen Gent’s mother standing in front of the long conveyer belt under the ovens. Her back had been to us and it was clear that she was doing something with her hands. But as we stepped closer to her and gave her our full attention, she and her space became brighter. She was short and very thin but clearly strong, her shoulders and back straight and firm.

  “Mother, some people to see.”

  Gent’s mother turned and smiled.

  “Missouri Anna, well, it’s always such a pleasure,” she said. “And, oh my gracious, I don’t understand.” She looked from me to Gram a number of times. “It’s you, but younger.”

  “No, Ellen, this is my granddaughter Isabelle Winston, Betts. And this is Mrs. Ellen Cylas.”

  “I’ll be darned. You are the spittin’ image of your grandmother.”

  “So I’ve heard. It’s good to meet you.”

  “You, too. I didn’t know I could ever meet anyone again. It’s more than good, it’s pretty wonderful. Is it because she’s your relation?” she asked Gram.

  “Probably, but we don’t know,” Gram said. “Ellen, you know I’ve never really understood any of this.”

  “Well, whatever it is, it’s just lovely.”

  The same intense focus I’d seen on Gent’s face a moment earlier suddenly swept across Ellen’s face.

  “Mother?” Gent said.

  “Ellen?” Gram said.

  She snapped back to attention a second later.

  “Gent, I remembered something, something you and Missouri didn’t get to finish, something the two of you didn’t take care of. It was like I almost remembered the details but they went away again. I don’t know why it happened all of a sudden.”

  “The same thing happened to me, Ma. Maybe it’ll com
e to us soon.”

  “I don’t know,” Ellen said. “It was something bad.”

  I was thoroughly confused, but it wasn’t unusual that these ghosts threw me for a loop. Gram stood next to me and I noticed that even she seemed unsure.

  “What’s going on?” I asked her quietly.

  “I don’t really know,” she said.

  “This isn’t normal?”

  “No. Shaky memories are normal, but something bigger is going on here. Maybe we’re upsetting them. Or upsetting something. I think we should leave.”

  It was way too rude and inappropriate to point out aloud that Gram had never before been concerned about upsetting the ghosts. It wasn’t that she didn’t care about them. It was that she’d come to the conclusion that no matter how you felt about them, they weren’t coming back to life and they weren’t going to become any deader, so concern for them was a waste of time and energy.

  “I’d like to stick around and see what happens,” I said. “You okay, Ellen?”

  She looked at me for a moment as if she’d forgotten I was there, but then she smiled again. I hadn’t met his father yet, but Gent looked like his mother, with almond-shaped dark eyes and big V-shaped smile. Ellen wasn’t an unattractive woman, but her looks worked much better on her seventeen-year-old son.

  “I am fine, so happy to meet you. Wait, I already said that.” Ellen laughed. “I should get back to my bread. Excuse me.”

  She turned and faced the conveyer belt again. Her arms, hands, and shoulders went to work, but whatever they were working on was invisible to me.

  I looked at Gram and didn’t need to tell her what I wasn’t seeing. She figured it out.

  “If you step closer, you’ll see the bread,” she said.

  I moved next to Ellen and the bread she’d been working on appeared on the belt. She was slipping oblong, perfectly browned loaves into paper packaging. She was quick as she grabbed a paper bag from a spot behind the belt and slipped it over a loaf of bread. This maneuver took her between two and three seconds for each loaf and she didn’t miss a beat.

  The scents were suddenly there, too. I sniffed deeply.

  “You all right?” Ellen said.

  “It just smells so good in here.”

  “Does it? I guess I never noticed.” She turned her attention back to the conveyer belt.

  I stepped back, and in one blink, the bread and the aromas disappeared.

  “You were right, Gram. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced,” I said.

  Her forehead crinkled and her lips pursed tightly. “Me, too, Betts. At least, I thought that the first time it happened. This is as strange as it gets, or at least as it has ever gotten. I’ve never experienced anything odder than this. It’s probably good to know that.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Come meet my sister and my daddy,” Gent said, signaling us deeper into the big room.

  With each step, the spaces we moved into lit up a bit more. I took a deep breath and realized I was calming down. It would be impossible for this experience to be dangerous, wouldn’t it? We were in the middle of something that was bigger than imagination but smaller than reality. Like the Puff Pocket itself, we were in some pocket of time that surely protected us from harm. It had done so for Gram, apparently. I was becoming more certain that we would be fine.

  “This is my dad, Homer Cylas,” Gent said as we approached a table.

  As the space lit, a big, happy man stood from the stool he’d been sitting on and wiped his flour-covered hands over his middle and then put his fists on his hips. He was dressed like Gent and Ellen, all in white, but the ends of his short red hair curled out from underneath his cap. The red was so bright that it was almost cartoonish.

  “Missouri Anna, it is always a pleasure. And this young woman must be one of yours, she looks just like you did.”

  “This is my granddaughter Isabelle. It’s great to see you, Homer,” Gram said.

  “The feeling’s mutual, Miz. Lovely to meet you, Isabelle. Boy, if I could remember, I’d tell you stories about Missouri that would curl your hair like the Missouri humidity. If we’re here for a while, I bet I’ll remember something. These two were always getting into trouble.”

  Right as he said trouble, a noise sounded from an even farther and deeper space in the bakery, from a short wing that jutted out from the center of the building.

  It didn’t immediately register with me that Gram had made her own noise, a small one, a squeak maybe.

  “What was that?” Homer asked as he turned toward the louder sound.

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Gent said, but it sounded like maybe he did know, or maybe thought he knew but didn’t want to say.

  I looked at Gram. She’d put her hands on her hips, too, and was chewing at her bottom lip again as she looked into the murky space toward where the noise had come from. She studied it. Hard.

  I leaned a little closer to her and just happened to catch the glance between her and Gent. They knew something about the noise, but with that glance they told each other not to talk about it.

  It was just a random sound. What was the big deal?

  “Gent, what was that?” A young girl emerged from the shadows and stood next to the table. A second later, Ellen joined us, too.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Betts, this is my sister, Jennie.”

  Jennie might have been ten when she died. She had also been a beautiful child who would have surely grown into a stunning woman if she’d been given the chance. She didn’t look like anyone else in her family and had been blessed with a heart-shaped face and long blond curls. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that flowed down to the middle of her back. Her white cap was slightly off-kilter like her brother’s, and she looked like a child who could have modeled for an old-time soda pop advertisement or a Norman Rockwell portrait.

  “Betts. What kind of a name is that?” she asked me.

  “Short for Isabelle,” I said.

  She thought about it a minute and then said, “I like it.”

  “Thank you.” I hadn’t looked before, but now I noticed that the rest of Gent’s family wore shoes. Jennie’s were a clean bright white.

  She turned back to her brother. “Gent, what was that noise?”

  “Nothing, I s’pose.” He reached for her hand.

  I swallowed the lump that suddenly grew in my throat. It was normal to feel at least a little sense of sadness regarding the ghosts and the fact that they were dead. They weren’t sad, but seeing the young Gent and Jennie together definitely touched that sympathetic nerve.

  Gram cleared her throat. I looked at her, but she was looking at Gent. He shook his head slightly and shrugged.

  I wished I knew what they were secretly and silently discussing. The rest of Gent’s family seemed not to notice or care.

  “I think it’s time to go, Betts,” Gram said.

  “You just got here,” Homer said.

  “We’ll come back,” Gram said.

  But an instinct rocked my gut and told me that we never would. I didn’t understand how that knowledge was so clear, but it most definitely was.

  “I’ll be out to the school to see you, too,” Gent said, though I heard doubt in his voice.

  Gram squinted, thought a moment, and then nodded. “Looking forward to it.”

  Gent released Jennie’s hand and then hurriedly walked us to the door. As we moved away from the others, they became more emerged in darkness, but not pitch blackness. I could still see them as they moved back to their now invisible tasks.

  Weird.

  Gram reached for the door handle as Gent looked directly at me. “You know, you’re welcome here anytime. If I don’t come to the door, we’ve gone, but we’ll be back someday. We always come back.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Was he inviting me to return to the bakery, perhaps without Gram? Maybe I was reading more into it than there truly was.

  “Come along, Betts,” she said as she moved throu
gh the open doorway.

  I followed but looked back and waved to Gent as he disappeared and the current boarded-over door reappeared. The scene changed with a simple fade—past to present, old-time to just plain old and run-down.

  I had to stand still and stare at it a moment. It wasn’t easy simply to accept what Gram and I had just done. I’d been scared to my toes when I first realized I was able to talk to ghosts. That moment had been cold and gut churning, but this was different, this was more denial than fear.

  “You okay?” Gram asked.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled at the funny lilt to my words. Okay, so maybe I was a little shaken.

  “Come on, let’s get home. We can talk about this stuff forever and a day and still not understand it.”

  “Wait.” I grabbed her arm. “What about . . . Well, you didn’t get to talk to Gent about the fire.”

  “Too soon.”

  “What was the noise, Gram?”

  “Gosh, Betts, I don’t think anyone knew.”

  But she did, I was sure. However, I knew Missouri Anna Winston better than I probably knew anyone. It wasn’t the time to push her. I’d regroup and approach it all again tomorrow, after we’d both slept at least a little and had some good strong coffee in us.

  “Let’s go. Time to get home,” I acquiesced.

  Even in the mostly darkness, I saw relief flash in her eyes before she gave me her hand. “Help me down and then I’ll grab you from down there.”

  We were off the platform and in the Volvo quickly. As she steered us away from the old building, she turned up the CD player, I suspected to make it more difficult to have a conversation. So, it was while Tim McGraw was singing “Something Like That” that I happened to look back. I was certain I saw a shadow in one of the broken-out bakery windows; something that looked like a man in a cowboy hat and reminded me a lot of Jerome.

  I about twisted my head off my neck as I craned it for a better look. There was nothing there but a space where a real window used to be. It was hiding a blackness that in turn hid things that were even more unreal than the cowboy shadow itself.