THERE ARE THINGS I’LL MISS about Vermont, if I ever have to leave, Danny Angel was thinking, but most of all he would miss Armando and Mary DeSimone. He admired their certainty.
As the three friends swam in the pool at Danny’s Putney property, the dog-killer German shepherd watched over them. Rooster didn’t swim, but he did drink from a large bowl of cold water that Danny had given him, while the writer made gin and tonics for Armando and Mary. Looking back, it would be Danny’s sharpest memory of Rooster-the dog was panting with apparent satisfaction near the deep end of the pool. The big shepherd loved little children but hated other male dogs; something in the animal’s history must have made this so, something neither Danny nor the DeSimones ever knew.
Rooster would one day be killed on a back road-struck by a car while he was mindlessly chasing a schoolbus. Violence begets violence, as Ketchum and the cook already knew, as one nearly forgotten hippie carpenter, with one dead dog and one momentarily alive, might one day figure out.
Danny didn’t know it, but he’d taken his last run on the back road between Putney and Westminster West. It was a world of accidents, right? Perhaps it was wise not to be too confrontational in such a world.
BOTH THEIR HUSBANDS had retired from the spruce mill in Milan. A world of small engine repair, and other tinkering, lay ahead of them. The fat sawmill workers’ wives-Dot and May, those bad old broads-took every occasion that presented itself, no matter how much driving was involved, to leave town and their tiresome husbands. Retired men made a nuisance of themselves, the two old ladies had discovered; Dot and May preferred their own company to anyone else’s. Now that May’s younger children (and her older grandchildren) were producing more children, she used the excuse of being needed when whatever mother (and whoever’s new baby) came home from the hospital. Wherever “home” was, it was a way to get out of Milan. Dot was always the driver.
They were both sixty-eight, a couple of years older than Ketchum, whom they spotted occasionally-Ketchum lived in Errol, farther up the Androscoggin. The old logger never recognized Dot or May, nor would he have paid them any attention if he did recognize them, but everyone noticed Ketchum; the woodsman’s reputation as a wild man had marked him, as surely as the scar on his forehead was a vivid advertisement of his violent history. But Dot had put on another sixty pounds, or so, and May another eighty; they were white-haired, with those weatherworn faces you see in the north country, and they ate their way through every day, the way some people in cold climates do, as if they were constantly starving.
They’d come across northern New Hampshire on the Groveton road, through Stark-much of the way, they were following the Ammonoosuc-and in Lancaster they crossed the Connecticut, into Vermont. They intersected I-91 just below St. Johnsbury, and followed the interstate south. They had a long drive ahead of them, but they were in no hurry to get there. May’s daughter or granddaughter had given birth in Springfield, Massachusetts. If Dot and May arrived in time for supper, they would necessarily get themselves involved in feeding a bunch of little kids and cleaning up after them. The two old ladies were smarter than that-they’d decided they would stop somewhere for supper en route. That way, they could have a nice big meal by themselves and arrive in Springfield well after suppertime; with any luck, someone else would have done the dishes and put the littlest kids to bed.
About the time those bad old broads were passing McIndoe Falls on I-91, the cook and his staff were finishing their midafternoon meal at Avellino. To have fed his staff a good meal, and to watch everyone cleaning up and readying themselves for the evening’s dinner service, always made Tony Angel nostalgic. He was thinking about those years in Iowa City in the seventies-that interlude from their life in Vermont, as both the cook and his son remembered it.
In Iowa City, Tony Angel had worked as a sous chef in the Cheng brothers’ Chinese restaurant out on First Avenue -what the cook called the Coralville strip. The Cheng brothers might have had more business if they’d been closer to downtown; they were too upscale for Coralville, overlooked among its fast-food joints and cheap motels, but the brothers liked their proximity to the interstate, and on those Big Ten sports weekends when an Iowa team was competing at home, the restaurant attracted lots of out-of-towners. It was too expensive for most students, anyway-unless their parents were paying-and the university faculty, whom the Chengs considered their target clientele, all had cars and weren’t limited to the bars and restaurants nearer the center of the campus, downtown.
In Tony Angel’s opinion, the name of the Chengs’ restaurant was another questionable business decision-Mao’s might have worked better with politically disenchanted students than it did with their parents, or the out-of-town sports fans-but the Cheng brothers were completely caught up in the anti-war protests of the time. Public opinion, especially in a university town, had turned against the war; from ’72 till ’75, there were many demonstrations outside the Old Capitol on the Iowa campus. Admittedly, Mao’s might have worked better in Madison or Ann Arbor. Out on the Coralville strip, a passing patriot-in a quickly disappearing car or pickup truck-would sometimes lob a brick or a rock through the restaurant’s window.
“A warrior farmer,” said Ah Gou Cheng, dismissively; he was the elder brother. Ah Gou was Shanghai dialect for “Big Brother.”
He was a terrific chef; he’d gone to cooking school at the Culinary Institute of America, and he’d grown up working in Chinese restaurants. Born in Queens, he’d moved to Long Island and then to Manhattan. A woman he’d met in a karate class had lured Ah Gou to Iowa, but she’d left him there. By then, Ah Gou was convinced that Mao’s could make it in Iowa City.
Ah Gou was just old enough to have missed the Vietnam War but not the U.S. Army; he’d been an army cook in Alaska. (“No authentic ingredients there, except the fish,” he’d told Tony Angel.) Ah Gou had a Fu Manchu mustache and a black ponytail with a dyed orange streak in it.
Ah Gou had coached his younger brother on how to stay out of the Vietnam War. In the first place, the little brother hadn’t waited to be drafted-he’d volunteered. “Just say you won’t kill other Asians,” Ah Gou had advised him. “Otherwise, sound gung ho.”
The younger brother had said he would drive any vehicle anywhere, and cook for anyone. (“Show me the combat! I’ll drive into an ambush, I’ll cook in a mortar attack! I just won’t kill other Asians.”)
It was a gamble, of course-the army still might have taken him. Good coaching aside, Tony Angel considered, the younger brother didn’t have to pretend to be crazy-he was certifiable. That he’d saved his little brother from the Vietnam War-and from killing, or being killed by, other Asians-gave Ah Gou a certain chip on his shoulder.
MAO’S DID CLASSIC French or a mix of Asian styles, but Ah Gou kept the Asian and French food separated-with some exceptions. Mao’s version of oysters Rockefeller was topped with panko, Japanese bread crumbs, and Ah Gou used grapeseed oil and shallots to make the mayonnaise for his crabcakes. (The crab was tossed in the Japanese bread crumbs with some chopped tarragon; the panko didn’t get soggy in the fridge, the way other bread crumbs did.)
The problem was, they were in Iowa. Where was Ah Gou going to get panko-not to mention oysters, grapeseed oil, and crabs? That was where the crazy younger brother came in. He was a born driver. Xiao Dee meant “Little Brother” in Shanghai dialect; the Xiao was pronounced like Shaw. Xiao Dee drove the Cheng brothers’ refrigerated truck-complete with two freezer units-to Lower Manhattan, and back, once a week. Tony Angel made the ambitious road trips with him. It was a sixteen-hour drive from Iowa City to Chinatown -to the markets on Pell and Mott streets, where the cook and Xiao Dee shopped.