Dirty Faces- Book 1

Chapter 8: Soup Beans

Chapter 8: Soup Beans

Another week of bologna sandwiches and another glorious Sunday meal compliments of Aunt Betty had come and gone when Kody came home from work on a rainy Monday to find the house filled with smoke and the odor of something scorched.

"Damn it, Ginny!" he roared when he found her pulling a pan of black cornbread from the smoking oven. Two pots and a skillet sat on the stove-top. He tried to wave the smoke away from his face as he approached the cookstove to see what else she had destroyed. Both pots and the skillet contained navy beans and a different putrid, scorched smell emitted from the general vicinity. He grabbed a spoon and stirred the pot on the right front burner.

"Ugh," he groaned. "You even let the beans stick!"

She shoved him out of the way and snatched the spoon from his hand.

"I'll take care of it!" she snapped.

"Like you've took care of it so far!" he snapped back.

The smoke was stifling despite all the windows being open. He stormed off and propped the back door open with a chair.

"What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking I was sick of baloney so I made supper."

"You made a mess."

"Least I tried. More than you can say!"

He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and took a deep breath.

"Why'd you make so many beans?"

"I just filled up the pot and covered 'em with water. How was I supposed to know they grow when you cook 'em?"

He couldn't even come up with a response for that.

"If you don't want it, don't eat it," she muttered.

He sighed. "I'm not touching that cornbread. But we can't waste all those beans."

He washed up out back while Ginny ladled herself out a bowl of beans and filled a mason jar with sweet tea. He dried his hands and did the same, then sat down at the table and blew on a spoonful of steaming beans to cool them. When the spoon stopped steaming, he took a bite and his entire face twisted into a hideous grimace.

"Good Lord, Ginny, that's horrible!"

"Yeah," she said quietly. She couldn't disagree. It truly was horrible.

He took a big gulp of tea. It wasn't bad; certainly good enough to wash the bean taste out of his mouth. If they weren't going to waste all those beans they were definitely going to need more tea.

They each struggled to finish their bowl. When they had, Kody resolved that the next day they would go to the store and buy things that didn't require much, if any, cooking, excluding bologna. This, Ginny thought, was the best idea he'd had, possibly ever.

While she washed up the dishes, he picked up the cornbread pan, stepped out the back door, and headed up the path through the woods to Jack's house. When he got to the yard, he crossed the property over to the hog pen and chucked the black cornbread over the fence then stood, waiting. After a while, one of the pigs finally wandered over to check out the black clump. It sniffed it, turned it over with its snout, sniffed the other side, then turned and walked away, never so much as licking it. Kody shook his head. Most people would have to try to be as bad at something as his sister was at cooking. The porch light flicked on and he looked over his shoulder to see Jack crossing the yard and heading toward the pig sty. They ended up talking about nothing of any particular importance until it was fully dark.