636
Carol Bloomquist was dead. Everyone in town agreed that this was a dreadful shame. Folks turned out from miles around to visit her funeral, to mutter their condolences on her only estranged living niece, and to leave prayer cards swiped with damp earth near her grave. In such a land of muted Christians and poor November weather and too-white churches, nobody thought to leave something more personal for Carol’s spiritual remains to savor. What Carol really wanted, as her essence enjoyed the peatiness of the surrounding soil and growing flock of crows, was a fresh beet.
Carol, in life, knew a great deal about beets. They ran in the family, as literally as that metaphor can get. If the Bloomquist family were ever to design, discover, or wear a family crest, there would doubtlessly be a large pink beet covering one full half at least, with triumphant greenery and a waxy, ringed Piglet-like body. The Bloomquist family had grown beets in the old country, some dreary Eastern-European hole that was currently overrun by mouthy communists, and they had continued to grow beets after they had immigrated to the United States. They bought the beet farm where Carol had grown up in 1842, dubbed it Rangland Farms after an obscure town near Budapest they had always wanted to visit, and commenced the family tradition. This tradition mainly involved raising beets for no particular commercial purpose. They had no idea how to market themselves. Nobody in the surrounding area was particularly fond of the vegetable (debated to be a tuber) and nobody was really quite sure what to do with it even if they were fond of them. The beets began to mount up with every lack of sale, and eventually they mounted into an obsession for future generations. The estate sale after Carol’s death was full of handiwork proving the fact: cross-stitches, whittled figurines, well-framed paintings. Carol was rumored to be the worst of her lot yet, as she was in fact a dying breed: without any heirs to take over the noble art of beet farming, and with the empty beet manor to herself, she had taken to selling beets alongside her dirt road driveway out of wheelbarrow. Cars never came that way, particularly as the roads began to worsen as autumn came in and the crops with it. No one had ever actually seen a patron buy a beet from Carol. Perhaps it was this that nagged their consciences into pressed Amish-like suits and gray dresses for her funeral. Or, perhaps it was simply due to the fact that in their miniscule town, any funeral was cause for interest, and a chance to wear your nice clothes not just on Sunday.
They might have been more interested still, in their nosy, small-town-neighbor way, if they had known that someone had in fact bought a beet from Carol one golden Halloween afternoon.
Carol had been typically American in her heyday, tow-headed with wagging braids and smeared-on freckles, but as she edged towards age and trudged straight through menopause, she had started waxing a little eccentric, like a vegetable left to rot. Her hair was still plaited into wispy, fragile braids that kinked oddly like a car making a sharp turn. Her eyes had started to go a little rheumy, and she incessantly wore a porkpie hat covered in veteran’s pins, which she refused to remove even when showering, so that it developed a rather musky, root cellar scent. And she had also mysteriously returned from an agricultural convention in Tulsa once with a wooden leg that no one could explain. When asked, she simply said, “Radishes, those fucking radishes” and since nobody could probably connect this outburst with the removal of a comfortably old, albeit wrinkly leg for a splintery, chafing false one, nobody asked again.
Carol, in life, knew a great deal about beets. They ran in the family, as literally as that metaphor can get. If the Bloomquist family were ever to design, discover, or wear a family crest, there would doubtlessly be a large pink beet covering one full half at least, with triumphant greenery and a waxy, ringed Piglet-like body. The Bloomquist family had grown beets in the old country, some dreary Eastern-European hole that was currently overrun by mouthy communists, and they had continued to grow beets after they had immigrated to the United States. They bought the beet farm where Carol had grown up in 1842, dubbed it Rangland Farms after an obscure town near Budapest they had always wanted to visit, and commenced the family tradition. This tradition mainly involved raising beets for no particular commercial purpose. They had no idea how to market themselves. Nobody in the surrounding area was particularly fond of the vegetable (debated to be a tuber) and nobody was really quite sure what to do with it even if they were fond of them. The beets began to mount up with every lack of sale, and eventually they mounted into an obsession for future generations. The estate sale after Carol’s death was full of handiwork proving the fact: cross-stitches, whittled figurines, well-framed paintings. Carol was rumored to be the worst of her lot yet, as she was in fact a dying breed: without any heirs to take over the noble art of beet farming, and with the empty beet manor to herself, she had taken to selling beets alongside her dirt road driveway out of wheelbarrow. Cars never came that way, particularly as the roads began to worsen as autumn came in and the crops with it. No one had ever actually seen a patron buy a beet from Carol. Perhaps it was this that nagged their consciences into pressed Amish-like suits and gray dresses for her funeral. Or, perhaps it was simply due to the fact that in their miniscule town, any funeral was cause for interest, and a chance to wear your nice clothes not just on Sunday.
They might have been more interested still, in their nosy, small-town-neighbor way, if they had known that someone had in fact bought a beet from Carol one golden Halloween afternoon.
Carol had been typically American in her heyday, tow-headed with wagging braids and smeared-on freckles, but as she edged towards age and trudged straight through menopause, she had started waxing a little eccentric, like a vegetable left to rot. Her hair was still plaited into wispy, fragile braids that kinked oddly like a car making a sharp turn. Her eyes had started to go a little rheumy, and she incessantly wore a porkpie hat covered in veteran’s pins, which she refused to remove even when showering, so that it developed a rather musky, root cellar scent. And she had also mysteriously returned from an agricultural convention in Tulsa once with a wooden leg that no one could explain. When asked, she simply said, “Radishes, those fucking radishes” and since nobody could probably connect this outburst with the removal of a comfortably old, albeit wrinkly leg for a splintery, chafing false one, nobody asked again.