The Baker

He shed his coat and donned an apron.
“You’re sure you want to do this?”
“Well,” he said, “here your dough sits waiting for the baker’s hand. Tell me what happens if you let it go till morning?”
“It goes flat, but that’s happened before. I still knead it and shape it into loaves. It’s just that they turn out flat. It still is bread and tastes like bread. I don’t throw it away.”
“How long did you say it would take to rise before putting it in the oven? If memory serves, about two hours does the trick.”
“So it is. You said you used to help your step-mother Sarah Johnston with the bread? Very often?”
“Often enough. And I call her mother. Call? Well, far as I’m concerned she’s very much alive, probably baking bread too, right now, unless it’s a cherry pie, like when I visited her not long before I boarded the train to Washington City.”
“And you’re sure you want to do this?
“Mrs. Matcham, how many times do you want me to say it? Now buckle up my uniform and let me go to it.”
It was just the two of them in her kitchen, herself the widow risen from the dead and her time-traveling visitor, the sixteenth president of the United States. They had had an early Sunday dinner at the Little French CafÈ, then seen a movie, East of Eden, and come home. There was no dropping him off at the Orrington Hotel where he had spent Saturday night. There’d been no talk of what to do once the evening wore on to night.
It was when he was touring her kitchen at lunchtime that he had discovered her old one gallon crock covered with a damp tea towel. He’d lifted the towel from the rising dough—sourdough, dating back to her grandmother, and taking its time. “Bread,” he had said. Then sniffing it and declaring how it smelled like home. “Haven’t had a moment like this since I was a youth and about to turn twenty-one.” Then in the car after Raymond Massey and James Dean he had brought it up again, “What about that bread?” And she gave in. Or was it the excuse they both were looking for?
At any rate, here they were in her kitchen. She added a teaspoon of Arm-and-hammer baking soda to the dough and a cup of white flour. “This here’s the tin of whole wheat flour—it’s dark bread I bake most every time.” She caught her word choice and syntax—already she was sounding like him—but it couldn’t last, she knew that. And nothing for it but to let the moment shape itself, her impossible visitor rolling up his sleeves and taking his stance at her kitchen table.
“You sure this table isn’t too low for you?”
“None of that. The coward’s way is an ugly way. Alrighty,” he said, pouring the dough onto the floured board. And then he was all business, turning the dough back on itself, rotating it as he went, up and over, round and round, adding handfuls of flour as he went. Twice as fast as she ever managed it. “Think this’ll make about three loaves. You call ‘em French. Good enough. Do you ever braid them? That’s what Mother Sarah does. Says it gives you more crust and more crunch. Her very words.”
“Sometimes,” said Joan, not used to having anyone but herself in her kitchen.
“My Daddy didn’t like to see me working like this, said it was woman’s work and I belonged in the fields, but Mother shooed him away and he knew better than to argue. He was a slave-driving man, a term I don’t use lightly. But come twenty-one, I was a free man. I kissed Mother Sarah good-bye and left home for good. We shed tears that morning, me and Mother. There, that should do’er. Pass me that knife if you please, and we’ll divide ’em up. One two three loaves. It’s like geometry, a 120_ angle, and then divide what’s left.” His hands were flying like the wind. “Now for the braiding. There. Set the hourglass. Now what shall we do?”


-I think this is a story of my mom and Lincoln making a loaf of bread.

The Step Mother, Mid-April, 1865

            Mid-day and a break from chores, though chores of a Saturday were hardly worth considering. She was sitting by the fire in her rocker, her knitting in the basket alongside, Mrs. Stowe’s book on the table at her elbow. Something about the day didn’t feel right, though she couldn’t put her finger on it. From the moment she woke, she was uneasy. It wasn’t a dream, not that she could remember.

What was that dream? Hopeless, an old woman chasing after dreams, who ever heard of such a thing? Dilly-dallying when she had yet to clean the ashes out from the stove. And there it was, plain as day. The trick is to give up the chase. She was taking a cherry pie over to Prudence Twilley and half-way along realizing she’d forgot the sugar—nothing worse that a sour cherry pie. Could they sprinkle sugar on top and make up for the lack of sugar inside? Like having your coffee with cream once the coffee is drunk. And she’d lost one of her shoes, not that she minded walking barefoot—it’s easier to wash clean a foot that a shoe any day. So there she was hobbling along one-shoed with her sour cherry pie covered by a tea-towel and the next thing you know she’s tripped on a root and is down on one knee, working her way back onto her feet, and the tea-towel here, the pie over there—face-down. She brushes off her skirt best she could, picks up the pie tin, the pie no worse for wear—that’s the magic of a dream for you. She took a pinch just for a quick taste. Sweet as honey? How could that be? Now she has both shoes. Things are picking up. But which is the way to Prudence’s? She lost her bearings. Good thing it’s a dream or she’d say she’s lost her marbles. The road stretched out in either direction, each direction about the same as the other. Tears were running down her cheeks. And that’s when she woke up, the dream now as fresh as a daisy. And the tears still running. It wasn’t the first time a dream had been forgot and then came back like a water buffalo.

            She had been a widow for close to half a dozen years. She didn’t think about Thomas much these days, a hard-driving man, though a good enough man considering. Witnessing the murder of his father—another Abraham—when he was but a boy, shot dead by an Indian. A terrible memory to carry forward. To his dying day that was the dream that would startle him awake, crying What? A severe man at home. There was no comfort for the loss of his daughter Sarah, the apple of his eye, to die that way, so neglectful. Spilt milk. And the day his son come of age, that was that, a kiss on the cheek for his step-mother and a close hug, and he was gone. Never did the father see his son again. It’s the price you pay, the father hard-driving, the son at twelve with the strength of a grown man, his axe ringing in the woods, the two of them doing the work of three men. What the son said after the election and before going off to Washington City, how he loved her as true as any son can love his mother. That apple pie that she had baked that mirning was a real pie with real sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and piping hot when they sat at table, with good coffee fresh from the grinder. He had seconds and then thirds. True, she loved him as one of her own, always had.

            She remembered his sitting at her feet as she read aloud, the Arabian Nights his favorite, unless it was that Crusoe book. Even back then he relished the idea of working for yourself, and no one saying git up you lazy lout. Thomas, if only you knew. The President of these United States, your own son.