Blake looked at her and quickly looked away. He felt himself losing control, tearing up, and didn’t think he could keep his composure by looking at her. In that moment it felt less like she was his wife and more like she was maternal, someone who would understand, would comfort and tell him that everything would be just fine. That’s all he wanted to hear, that everything would be hunky-dory but he knew that Angelica couldn’t make any of his troubles go away. Only he could.
He sat beside her in silence and thought for a moment. He needed to tell her the truth and then to get out of the mess he felt he was in with Nick. To walk the straight path with her at his side, just as she wanted. She was right, he needed to go to church with her and he would, this Sunday, he told himself. Turning to Angelica, Blake took her left hand, opened his mouth, and prepared to tell her everything. To confess and give himself some peace.
“Angelica, I have to talk to—”
A series of loud knocks pelted the kitchen door, interrupting Blake. Blake and Angelica turned quickly to see the door rattle and to hear the voices of two little girls cry: “Auntie Angelica, Auntie Angelica!” Blake stood and pulled his suit of armor back on. Angelica put her hand on Blake’s shoulder.
“Everything will be okay,” she said.
Blake walked to the kitchen and poured his coffee into a travel mug as Angelica walked toward the door. He turned and said, “I have to make a delivery to Nick. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
Angelica opened the door and the girls rushed in, pink ribbons in their hair streaming. They nearly knocked Angelica down as she knelt to hug them. Blake walked past and out the door, seeing Rose walking in from the car.
“Hi, Rose,” he said politely.
“Hi, Blake. Where you off to?”
“Athens,” he said. He continued walking before turning around at his truck. “Oh yeah...have a good vacation,” he added.
Rose smiled, but said nothing as she walked inside.
Chapter 17
After leaving the isolation and dense forest cover that overhung most of Warwoman, the small town of Clayton emerged as something of a rural metropolis after Blake snaked through the morning fog along Warwoman Creek. Turning south on 441, he drove past Regions Bank, Bi-Lo groceries, Chick-Fil-A, the new Super Wal-Mart and Home Depot, thinking of all the businesses Clayton now had where he could likely get a job. Places he would never have considered working before. He always thought he was far too good for them then, wanted way more out of life than they could ever offer. Now, they dangled everything that he wanted. Stability, honesty, security. More than anything they could provide a place to hide, to blend in, and be somebody by being nobody.
Blake drove under the nameless overpass that led southbound cars to Rabun County High School and recalled how he had once daydreamed that the overpass would be named after him. You’re now passing under the Blake Savage overpass, he said to himself in a mocking manner, realizing how foolish and insignificant a dream that had been.
He continued on 441 past Tiger and Wiley, surveying all the businesses run by good, honest people. Respectable people. People doing what he now felt he should have done. But no, he had sought riches and glory. Fame.
After he was forced to surrender his football dreams, he became intoxicated with the notion of becoming a celebrity farmer, a ridiculous notion that made Blake chuckle when Nick had first mentioned the idea to him. Nick had told the stories of how his own father was a famed charcuterier in Spain, as was his father before him. Both had raised the revered black-footed pigs in the mountains, fed them acorns and cured the highly prized Jamón Ibérico de Bellota hams in mountain sheds, letting them hang for two years. Even in Spain those hams can cost over one hundred dollars per pound, Nick had said. Lured in by Nick’s grand vision, Blake imagined doing in northeast Georgia what no one else was doing anywhere in America, creating what chefs across the country craved. Reproducing the mountain-cured hams from acorn-fed, black-footed pigs and selling to Nick’s line of exclusive restaurants. He knew that Nick would get the glory, but Blake figured he would still be in the game, so to speak. And richly rewarded. Nick was as fascinated by the idea as Blake was, partly because there were hordes of pigs that descended from the Iberian pigs, right here in Georgia.
“When my people, the Spaniards, came through a few centuries ago,” Nick had explained to Blake, “they brought the black-footed pigs with them and left them on an island near Savannah. That way, the next wave of Spaniards would have something to hunt, something to eat. At some point we stopped coming, and the pigs took over the island and thrived. All you have to do is get some off the island, raise them in the woods, and cure them in the cool mountain air.”
Nick had made it sound so easy. So seductive. And he was so persuasive, partly because he was willing to pay a lot to get the real thing, not the inferior industrial version that other restaurants were able to get. Once the USDA had approved the process of allowing some Spanish hams to be imported they had basically been ruined. Sure, they had the name Jamón Ibérico and were quite good compared to American hams, but comparing them to his father’s hams was like comparing drug store champagne to a bottle of vintage Louis Roederer Cristal. Both could claim to use the champagne method, but one taste of the latter would uncloak the former as mere toilet water. Nick wanted the absolute best for his restaurants and for his new 50-Forks club, and he was willing to pay for it to be made the right way. The way his father and his father before him made it, not the way the USDA would have it cooked and salted to death. But he needed an accomplice...someone to do the dirty work, Blake now realized. And Blake was only too eager once Nick did the math for him. Now, Blake began to do the math once again as he drove south, paying no attention to the SUV that had pulled into the lane behind him and now followed him.
I’ve got 200 hams hanging now, about fifteen pounds each. That’s 3,000 pounds. Nick will pay me seventy dollars a pound when they’re ready, that’s just over $200,000, not counting the other parts...the shoulders, bellies and so on. Half the hams are ready now but they won’t all be ready for another six months at least. I gotta get Nick to take everything now, or maybe take some to other chefs... Blake was immersed in his thoughts as he approached the Tallulah River. Delivering hams for the 50-Forks dinner was just the beginning. Nick wanted hams cured the way his father had done it and on a regular basis. And he wanted to make sure that no other chef had access to those hams, those rare black-footed pigs. Blake exhaled as he tried to figure a way out of having to continue working with Nick.
He glanced in his rear view mirror and saw a rack on the top of the car behind him. Blake looked more closely to see that the rack was actually the lights of the sheriff’s vehicle. Instinct forced him upright. He corrected his posture and lifted his left hand to the wheel at the 10:00 position to face his right hand in the 2:00 position. He caught his breath and didn’t exhale, his throat instantly parched. What the hell do they want?
The car stayed on Blake’s tail about one hundred yards back, keeping its distance precise. Blake slowed a little and continued south. The sheriff’s car slowed to match Blake’s speed and stayed behind him. A trail of cars now followed the sheriff’s car as no one dared pass, even though Blake was now driving five miles per hour under the speed limit. He looked at his speedometer and pushed the accelerator slightly, increasing his speed to fifty-five. The train behind him kept pace.
Blake saw the fog rising from the Tallulah gorge ahead of him indicating that he was close to crossing the bridge, where he would leave Rabun county and enter Habersham County, out of the sheriff’s jurisdiction. JUST GET OFF MY TAIL! Blake screamed to himself. His pulse was rapid and his face was flush as he tried again to calm himself.