"Why the screened door?" he asked by way of introduction. "I thought you didn't have flying insects in the Potatoes."
"It's the damned health code," said a man in crumpled whites with a baker's hat sagging over one ear like a deflated balloon. "They make us wear these stupid hats, too."
The same uniform was worn by a woman taking a tray of crusty Italian bread from an oven. Like all the equipmentgrinders, mixers, dough tables, scales and whatnotthe oven looked secondhand if not actually antique. At the front of the shop were four wooden student chairs with writing arms, as well as a coffeemaker with instructions: "Help Yourself . . . Pay at Counter . . . Cream in Fridge." Separating the bakery from the snack area was a scarred glass case displaying cookies, muffins, Danish pastries, and pecan rolls, although very little of each. What elevated this humble establishment to the sublime was the heady fragrance of baking bread.
Qwilleran helped himself to coffee and bought an apple Danish from the baker. "If you don't mind my saying so," he said as he pulled out his bill clip, "you picked a helluva name for your bakery."
"Tell you why we did it," the man said. "Everybody told us we were half-baked to open a whole-grain bakery in Potato Cove, but we're doing all right. Overhead's low, and we wholesale to a food market and a couple of restaurants in the valley, so we have a little cash flow we can count on."
"Do you supply the golf club?" Qwilleran asked slyly.
"Hell no! But you see that tray of bread? It's going to an Italian restaurant. They pick it up every day at four o'clock." He looked at Qwilleran's moustache. "Are you the fella that bought Vance's big candlestick?"
"Yes, I'm the proud possessor of fifty pounds of iron." Qwilleran looked around the shop. The unifying note in the bakery was paint; everything paintable had been painted orchid: walls, ceiling, shelving, tables, student chairs, even the floorboards. "Unusual paint job you have here," was Qwilleran's comment.
"Thrift, man! Thrift! Lumpton Hardware advertised a sale of paint, and all those fakes had was pink and blue. It was my wife's idea to mix 'em."
Qwilleran carried his purchase to an orchid student chair and bit into a six-inch square of puffy, chewy pastry heaped with large apple slices in thick and spicy juices. It was still warm.
"I'm forced to tell you," he said, "that this is absolutely the best Danish I've ever eaten in half a century of pastry connoisseurship."
The baker turned to the woman. "Hear that, sugar? Take a bow." To Qwilleran he said, "My wife does the gooey stuff. Wait till you taste the sticky buns! Everything we use is whole grain and fresh. Apples come from Tater orchardsno sprays, no chemicals. We stone-grind our flour right from the wheat berries. Bread's kneaded and shaped by hand. Crackers are rolled the same way."
"That's my job," said his wife. "I like handling dough."
"Bread untouched by human hands may be cheaper, but nobody says it's as good," the baker said. "You're new around here."
"I'm here for the summer. My name's Jim Qwilleran. What's your name?"
"Yates. Yates Penney. That's my wife, Kate. How do you like the Potatoes, Mr. . . . ?"
"Qwilleran. I'm not sure I like what's happening to Big Potato."
"You said it! The inside of Big Potato looks like a mangy cat, and the outside looks like a war zone. City people come up here because they like country living, and then they drag the city along with 'em. The Taters have the right idea; they build themselves a rustic shack and let everything grow wild, the way Nature intended. We're from Akron, but we know how to fit in. Right, sugar?"
Qwilleran said, "What is this waterfall I've heard about?"
"You mean Purgatory?"
"Is that what it's called? I'd like to see it."
The baker turned to his wife. "He wants to go to Purgatory." They communicated silently for a few moments until she nodded, and then he explained, "We don't encourage sightseers because they throw beer cans and food wrappers in the falls, but you don't look like the average tourist."
"I take that as a compliment. Is the trail well-marked? I'd like a quiet, leisurely walk without getting lost."
"It's quiet, all right," said Kate. "Nobody goes back there on a Tuesday afternoon. Only on weekends."
"You can't get lost either," Yates assured him. "Just follow the creek upstream. It's about half a mile, but all uphill."
"That's okay. I've been practicing. Where did Purgatory get its name?"
"Some old-time Taters named it, I think. It's not an Indian name, I know that. Anyway, the water drops off a high cliff and down into a bottomless pit, and the mist rises like steam. Quite a sight!"
"Good! I'll take a little ramble. I have some time to kill while Vance works on my car."
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing serious. Mountain-itis, I guess you'd call it. While I'm standing here I'd like to pay for some Danish and sticky buns. I can. pick them up when I finish with the falls."
"We close at four," Kate warned him.
"If it's only half a mile, I'll be back well before that," Qwilleran said.
"Take care!"
"Don't fall in," the baker said with a grin.
Behind the bakery Qwilleran could hear the creek before he could see it. Swollen by heavy rain, the waters were rushing tumultuously over boulders in the creek bed. An irregular path on the edge of the stream had been worn down by generations of Taters and perhaps by Indians before them, who made the pilgrimage without benefit of handrails, curbs, steps, or warning signs. This was raw nature, and the footing was muddy and treacherous. Sharp rocks and wayward roots protruded from the walkway, camouflaged by pine needles and oak leaves that were wet and slippery. Tufts of coarse wet grasses grew over the edge, dripping and ready to chute an unwary wanderer into the stream.
After a few stumbles Qwilleran realized the impossibility of ogling the rushing stream and walking at the same rime. Only by alternating a few careful steps with a few motionless moments could he appreciate the wild beauty. Brilliant green ferns abounded, thriving in the damp shadows. Every cleft rock had its trickle of water trying to find the creek and soaking the ground en route. Then there were the wild flowersclumps of them in yellow, white, pink, blue, and red, growing among the wild grasses or in the crevices of rotting logs or across the face of rock outcroppings. Hundred-foot pine trees rising like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral filtered the sun's rays through their sparse upper branches. Moose County could never produce a show like this!
The course of the creek angled sharply and sometimes plunged out of sight, only to reappear with added force. Qwilleran was following it upstream, of course, and its exuberance increasedin noise and in turbulence. When the waters were not splashing wildly over boulders, they were cascading smoothly over rock ledges in a series of naturally terraced waterfalls. And Qwilleran, when not picking his way along the precarious path, was clicking his camera. Take it easy, he told himself, or you'll run out of film.
The higher he climbed, the more dramatic the views and the louder the thunder of water, until he groped his way around the last projecting cliff and found himself in a rock-walled atrium. There it was! Purgatory! An immense column of water, four times higher than its width, poured over a lofty cliff with unimaginable force and deafening roartons of water dropping straight down into a black hole in the rock from which rose clouds of vapor.
Qwilleran caught his breath. To be alone in the woods with this mighty dynamo gave him an eerie sensation, as if he were a supplicant consulting an oracle in a rock-walled temple, somewhere in the distant past. Perhaps Native Americans had worshipped their spirits here. Perhaps, he thought for one giddy moment, this was where he would find the answers. Overwhelmed by the experience, he had forgotten the questions.
Then the hypnotic moment passed, and he was a summer vacationer with a camera. Climbing carefully over the surrounding boulders he found numerous photogenic angles and clicked the shutter recklessly until he realized he had only one picture left. For the final shot he wanted to try a profile of the cascade entering the cauldron of billowing steam.