The Proof of the Pudding is in the Eating by J C Laird (ap literature book list .TXT) 📖

THE PROOF OF THE PUDDING IS IN THE EATING

Viola carefully pruned the aconitum plants before leaning back on her haunches and surveying her handiwork with an approving smile. Their delicate blue flowers were among her favorites, accenting their brethren: the yellow, pink and white buttercups surrounding them. She had several rose bushes, azaleas, and other colorful plantings in her flower garden, but she found them a little gaudy for her taste, preferring her aconite buttercups for their dainty, but elegant blooms. She picked up the small trowel and began digging up the errant weeds attempting to invade the flowers’ domain, dropping their remains in the plastic five-gallon pail sitting next to her.

Almost finished, the booming voice of her husband interrupted her work coming from the rickety, wooden front porch. “Where the hell’s my lunch? It’s almost noon,” he bellowed.

Viola jumped up with a gasp and a groan, her back and knees creaking in protest, her bad right knee shooting her a sharp reminder to move slowly. She quickly threw her trowel into the bucket, followed by her threadbare gardening gloves. “I lost track of the time, I’m acomin’ Stan.”

Her husband stood there for several seconds staring at her, stern-faced, one fisted hand on his hip, the other holding a half-empty bottle of his beer of choice, Pabst Blue Ribbon. Wearing baggy, faded blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a stained t-shirt stretched to the limit by the pot gut sagging over his belt, “Stan the Man,” as he liked to call himself, presented an almost comical figure. His semi-bald head and sparse mustache didn’t help. Viola didn’t even consider smiling but kept her eyes fixed on the front of his t-shirt with its worn message: Savannah, est. 1733, Georgia. Stanley had been a truck driver stationed out of Savannah when Viola met him when she’d been waitressing at Louie’s in Toccoa—

“And I don’t want any of them damn leftovers from yesterday neither,” he said, interrupting the memory. He took another swig of his beer before turning and leaving, slamming the cabin’s screen door behind him.

Viola retrieved the hand clippers from the pocket of her sundress and expertly snipped several lengths of various buttercups to spruce up the drab interior of their home. Flowers in hand, she rushed up the steps and into the house to fix Stanley his lunch.

The football game came on at one o’clock and her pig of a husband didn’t want to miss it. Their old TV decked out with an even older set of “rabbit ears” for its antenna, only received three channels, one of which was carrying the game on this fine Sunday. Viola figured the ancient 32” television must have weighed 100 pounds, and she was surprised they even made those weird set-top antennas anymore. But they worked and the three channels were free, which was A-Okay with Stanley.

Stanley wolfed down the last of his grilled cheese sandwich, polished off what remained of the mountain of macaroni and cheese, took a swig of beer to wash it down, belched, and pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m going to watch the football game now,” he announced as if Viola needed enlightenment. He stood and headed for the living room but paused in the doorway. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

Viola was already filling the sink with the dirty dishes. “Meatloaf and mashed potatoes,” she answered.

“Don’t forget the peas. Dessert?”

“Chocolate pudding,”

Stan grunted his approval and disappeared into the other room, and Viola went back to doing the dishes. Depression enveloped her like a dark, oppressive cloud imprisoning her much like the cabin and the isolated foothills of the Ozark Mountains had done. Once upon a time, she had tried to convince herself that her life was better now than it had been in the past, but as time went on that had become more and more difficult, then impossible.

What she had thought of as her boring, dead-end days at Louie’s Diner had now become nostalgic, wistful memories. Viola had dropped out of high school and left home at sixteen with few recriminations from her alcohol-soddened mother. She stayed with her widowed Aunt Matilda for several months in nearby Toccoa and had providentially found the waitressing job in town, crusty old Louie merely grunting his acquiescence when she told him she was eighteen. Eventually, he even rented her a small room in the rear of the dingy restaurant, allowing him to liberally dock her wages, meager as they already were, but it had allowed Viola a modicum of independence. And so, began three years of mind-numbing drudgery.

Then along came her knight in shining armor, Stanley J. Tannenbaum. A long-haul truck driver, he had enchanted her with tales of far off places and imagined adventures. Although 20 years her senior, and sporting a blossoming pot gut and thinning, wispy brown hair, he had been eagerly attentive and interested in her. Viola had no illusions about her physical attributes: short, flat-chested, thick in the waist, butt, and legs, with a decidedly flat and unimpressive face. She had basked in the glow of his increasing romantic attentions. She looked forward to his infrequent stops, and more so to his occasional layovers at the nearby truck depot on Route 6.

Finally, he had suggested Viola accompany him on a trip to Toledo, Ohio. Just a short hop, there and back—a week at most. Viola, having never taken any time off from her job because she never had anywhere to go, was grudgingly given a week’s vacation by her boss, Louie. So, fate and the open road beckoned, and Stanley and Viola were off.

While in Toledo they visited Stanley’s cousin, Amy Palter, and her husband Tom. They lived in a rural, poverty-stricken area on the outskirts of Toledo in a decrepit mobile home but had welcomed the travelers with open arms. It was during this overnight layover, while the truck was being loaded at the depot, that Amy gifted Viola with a healthy aconite plant from her flower garden next to their mobile home. Viola had been fawning over the garden and vowed to have her own someday—that day coming sooner than expected

On the way back to Savannah, Stanley suggested that he had the perfect place to plant her own flower garden. Dropping off his rig in Savannah and reclaiming his Ford pickup, they had driven up into the Ozark foothills where Stanley proudly showed her his cabin in those same picturesque hills. Viola had to admit it was a beautiful spot, remote and unspoiled. The remote part hadn’t caused her any apprehensions at first, and she jumped at the chance to marry him when he had proposed, thoughts of “happily ever after” chiming in her head.

It hadn’t taken long for those thoughts to begin their long, slow crash to earth. Not long after they had settled in Stanley had suffered a back injury helping the workers load his truck at one of the terminals. He eventually recovered but was never the same, ending up on disability, then Supplemental Social Security. But the changes in Stanley had started before that; the accident was merely frosting on the cake allowing him an income without working, or even trying, which suited him perfectly. Things had come full circle, and Viola’s dreams had been crushed in those Ozark foothills.

She was a virtual prisoner. Stanley had an old Ford pickup and kept the keys on his person. The same with the cell phone, although there was no reception unless you went the half-mile to the end of their driveway. No landline, of course. The mailman delivered once a week to the mailbox at the end of the drive every Wednesday, but Stanley always stayed home on that day. Their nearest neighbor was over five miles away and Toccoa almost ten. She seldom went into town, and only with Stanley.

Stanley hadn’t become physically abusive, although Viola figured it would happen sooner or later. Viola had slowly become inured to a life of drudgery and boredom. But even her ennui had its limits, and of late she had begun having thoughts of, and a craving for, life without Stanley. She could probably walk to the nearest neighbor or even Toccoa itself, or maybe dash to the postman’s car on a Wednesday with her tale of woe. She might be able to swipe Stanley’s truck keys without him knowing and make a run for it, but he would probably just hunt her down and, besides, she didn’t have any money. Stanley kept a stash, she knew, but where it was hidden was the problem. But the nugget of revenge was smoldering and growing within her like a cancer. The fat pig had stolen years of her youth. She couldn’t get them back, but she could make him pay dearly… somehow.

And the “somehow” soon crystallized in her mind and heart. Stanly didn’t mind her receiving gardening and related magazines in the mail. The month past she had waded through a lengthy article in the local Gardening Monthly magazine about the attractive aconite plant. Viola didn’t understand all the scientific mumbo jumbo or the long Latin names for it, although she did like one of its alternate names, wolfsbane. But what had caught her attention was the adamant warning concerning its highly poisonous qualities, used in that capacity as far back as ancient Greece. And she had a new recipe to try it in…

Viola watched Stanley wolf down two large helpings of meatloaf, mash potatoes, and peas, interrupted only by a couple of deep belches in between. Silently, he studiously stirred his peas in with his mashed potatoes. Her Prince Charming didn’t like to waste time with conversation during his meals. Viola picked at her food as she watched him make short work of the mountains of food, looking on with distaste but keeping her expression neutral, even managing a smile here and there.

Stanley washed down the last mouthful of food with a gulp of beer and a burp. Finished, he gave her a grudging look of appreciation, then in a condescending tone, “That was good, Viola. You said something about puddin’ for dessert, didn’t you?” he asked.

She pushed back from the table. “Yes, chocolate pudding, a new recipe. I hope it’s not too sweet.” Viola doubted it. Stanley had a huge sweet tooth. She retrieved two bowls of the dark pudding from the refrigerator, his in his favorite large plastic bowl, hers in a smaller pink one. She placed them on the table.

“Whipped cream?” he questioned.

“Sorry, almost forgot.” Viola headed back to the refrigerator.

Stanly grunted his disapproval as she returned.

Viola sat down and watched as her husband started shoveling the pudding into his maw. “Seems a little grainy and a bit sweet but I like it,” he managed with his mouth full, whipped cream leaking from the corners.

“I’m so glad you’re likin’ it, Stan,” she answered, smiling. And it should be sweet she mused. She had to use a ton of sugar to mellow the bitter taste of the ground up aconite roots in his portion.

Stanley picked up the can of Reddi Wip and squirted a mountain of the foamy whipped cream into the canyon of his waiting mouth. He belched and sighed. “You did good Viola,” he managed before burping again. “I think I’ll grab a beer and watch a little tube for a while. Maybe later we can have a little romp in the hay,” he said with a knowing wink, leering at her.

Viola managed to keep the smile pasted on her face. “That sounds like a mighty fine idea, Stan. I’ll just clear the dishes, grab you a beer, and you can go and relax.” She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she set the dishes in the sink and opened the