“Could be Redhook. Or Red Stripe, or Red Tail, or Red MacGregor, Red Horse, Redback, Red Erik, or Red Dog. It could be Black Dog, Laughing Dog, Sun Dog, Turbodog, Dogfish Head, Hair of the Dog….”
“I kno-know about that!”
“…Black Eye, Black Gold, Black Mac, Black Butte, Blue Label, Blue Moon, Blue Heron, or Pabst Blue Ribbon. It could be, as long as we’re doing colors, Great White. It could be Lazy Boy, Beach Bum, Dead Guy, Fat Tire, Rolling Rock, Three Philosophers, or Delirium Nocturnum.
“In Japan, it could be Kirin, Asahi Super Dry, Yebisu, or Sapporo.”
Gracie knew about Sapporo, as well, but she didn’t say anything.
“In Germany, there’re so many it’s impossible to know where to begin. And Belgium has 365 brands, one for every day of the year. The Czech Republic…”
“What about Co-Co-Costa Rica?”
“The national beer of Costa Rica is Imperial, although I don’t know why you’re so interested in that toy country. Anyway, enough brand naming. It could go on all day.” She’d led Gracie out onto the loading dock, where delivery trucks would eventually come to pick up the kegs or the cases of bottles. On the dock there’d been a splash of sunlight, like a puddle of spilled lager, and Gracie went and stood in it. Her jaws quit banging their drumsticks.
Hovering like a miniature helicopter, a rescue chopper for wounded ladybugs, the fairy, with a serious face, announced that the time had arrived “to learn the truth of beer.”
Gracie, who’d recently been paying studious attention to all the tanks and tubes and materials, was surprised and confused. “But I already learned…”
“No, no. You’ve learned something about the chemistry of beer, the technology of brewing, that’s correct, but a brewery doesn’t define beer any more than a shoe factory defines dancing.”
“I dance in my sneakers,” Gracie volunteered.
“Good. But it’s not about the sneakers, is it?”
“No, ’cause sometimes I dance barefooted.”
“Would you say you dance because you’re glad and dizzy?”
“I don’t know. I guess so. Uncle Moe says that when I dance I look like a blissed-out monkey.”
“You’re not alone, kiddo, you’re not alone. When civilized people dance they reconnect with their old animal nature. It reminds them that they aren’t mechanical chess pieces or rooted trees, but free-flowing meat waves of possibility.”
Gracie looked as blank as a crashed computer, an empty wading pool, a stuffed owl; leading the fairy to say, “Well, enough about dancing. Our subject is beer. If beer is more than the sum of its parts, if the truth of beer lies beyond the brewery, where do we go to find it, and why should we care?”
Immediately upon posing the question, the Beer Fairy had thrust her wand at Gracie, who automatically took hold of it. Within minutes, or maybe even seconds (poof! whoosh!), the brewery was out of sight and the pair of them were seated on a grassy hilltop, overlooking, on one side, fields of ripe grain that stretched into the distance like gulfs of whiskered honey; and on the other, a village that may or may not have been Creamed-Beef-on-Toast.
15
It was nice to be outdoors again. The day remained quite sunny, although shuffling along the horizon was a big bumpy cloud the color of the bruises that decorated Gracie’s shins whenever she played soccer.
When you look at the sky, do the shapes of particular clouds remind you of animals or furniture or various objects? You’re not alone. Gracie, for example, thought this blue-black cloud resembled a bag lady, it being ragged and droopy and slow and dirty looking, with occasional darker bulges of suspended rainwater that could be viewed perhaps as Dumpster diamonds or wads of bag-lady underwear. She imagined the sun giving the poor cloud a handout to buy itself a cup of coffee — or just go away.
Briefly, Gracie wondered if this cloud might actually be lumbering above Seattle, way off in the distance, and she felt a pang in her heart. It was a twinge, however, that could not accurately be described as “homesickness,” at least not in the usual sense.
Turning her back on the cloud, Gracie directed her gaze to that village that clung to the banks of a river in the valley down below. Some sort of festival was in progress there, and the cobblestone streets were teeming with noisy merrymakers. There were carnival games and dancing. There were flags fluttering, sausages smoking on grills. The music that drifted up the hillside was polka music, a style with which Gracie was unfamiliar and which struck her as more than a little goofy.
She saw a great many people seated at tables in tavern gardens, while waiters in long white aprons rushed from bars to tables, back and forth, bearing whole trays of mugs that overflowed with foam. Obviously, large quantities of beer were being both consumed and spilled. Vinegar eels would be having a field day.
The Beer Fairy, too, was observing this activity, and eventually, as if she felt she ought to get on with her teaching, she said, “Beer is rooted in the Four Elements. Do you know the Four Elements? They are Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Together they form the basis of what some like to call the real world.
“Barley and wheat spring from the Earth, of course. The grain is heated to make malt and the malted mash is cooked: that’s where Fire comes in. As for Water, that’s a no-brainer, since beer is essentially enhanced Water.”
The sprite paused, prompting Gracie to ask, “What about the Air elephant?” It was amazing how attentive she’d become.
“Why, the Air is in the bubbles. In the carbonation. You’ll learn at school that the Air you inhale is oxygen and the Air you breathe out is carbon dioxide. It’s carbon dioxide bubbles — carbonated Air — that causes beer to sparkle, to tease the inside of one’s cheeks with delicious prickles, and, yes, to make one belch. A degree of carbonation occurs naturally while beer is fermenting, but some brewers will later add carbon dioxide to the conditioning tanks to produce a more bubbly brew.”
Gee, I thought we were done with the brewery lessons, thought Gracie. She struggled in vain to hold back a yawn.
“Something you’ll never learn in school or in a brewery,” the Beer Fairy went on, poking Gracie between the eyes with her wand, “is that there’s also a Fifth Element. That’s right, another basic component of reality, one that’s as nourishing as Earth, as shifty as Water, as invisible as Air, and as dangerous as Fire.”
There’s nothing like the word dangerous to generate interest: it’s irresistible to young males, scary to most young females, though not necessarily those of the Gracie Perkel variety.
“What is it?” she asked.
The fairy hesitated. A breeze rustled her papery wings. “It’s not easy to say.” She paused again. “I’m only labeling it an ‘element,’ understand, because it doesn’t fall into the category of animal or vegetable or mineral. It disobeys the laws of physics and it moons the rules of logic, just as the two of us have been doing today, actually, although you seem to have taken it completely in stride. What is it? Some people call it transcendence, some used to call it magic…before that word got used up.
“It’s a mixture of pure love, unlimited freedom, and total, spontaneous, instantaneous knowledge of everything past, present, and future — all rolled up in a kind of invisible ghost-sheet enchilada that can be periodically smelled and occasionally tasted, but rarely chewed and never, never digested. Hey, you don’t need to make a face. I told you it wouldn’t be easy.
“There are those who regard it as a blast of divine energy, originating in Heaven, maybe, or in Another World. There’re also people who are content to refer to it simply as the Mystery, and that’s as good a term as any, I guess, although I’m rather fond of the jazz musician who, in a different context, once called it hi de ho.”