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compendium of the talents of Carson’s Bluff. Stella cooked, my second cousin Rose Franklin wove the tablecloth, Lilly made the plates and my brother Wyatt made the beer.”
    He spread an exquisite linen tablecloth on the crabgrass, laid out gray and blue earthenware plates and matching earthenware glasses, and opened two bottles of beer. He handed one to Federica and she looked at the label.
    The hand-printed label was a copy of a sepia print of an old saloon, above it the legend, Prime Pigswill.
    “Wyatt’s finest,” Jack said, and chugged a slug from the bottle.
    Federica poured half the bottle in her glass, admiring the glaze of the earthenware glass and the solid heft of it. She took a sip and her eyes widened.
    Jack noticed and smiled. “Good, eh?”
    “It’s great,” Federica said sincerely. “As good as Korean beer.”
    “Better,” Jack said absently, as he opened Stella’s picnic basket. He pulled out a roast chicken.
    Federica was suddenly curious. “How do you know? Have you been to Korea?”
    “Couple of times,” he said curtly, and pulled the tinfoil off a bowl of potato salad.
    Something about his tone and the suddenly shuttered expression on his face told her he didn’t want to talk about it.
    That was fine with Federica. She didn’t want to pry. She didn’t want to pressure him. She didn’t want to do anything but sit in the shade of an old oak tree, sip beer and eat Stella’s delicious food.
    She crossed her legs at the ankles and took another sip.
    “Tell me about the beer. When did your brother start making it?”
    Jack leaned against the tree trunk. “When Wyatt was eighteen,” he began, in a storyteller’s singsong cadence, “and even more hormonal than he is now, he saw a rerun on TV of an old chestnut called The Vikings . Kirk Douglas as a Viking chieftain and Tony Curtis as his slave, believe it or not. You ever see it?”
    Federica shook her head and drank deeply from her glass.
    “Well, what really attracted Wyatt about the movie were these scenes where a lot of blonde bimbos walked around half-dressed, skimming beer off a big vat and pouring it into horns for the heroes to drink. I guess it really struck a chord with him. Anyway, Wyatt got a book on brewing from the library, went to the butcher and had him prepare a bull horn, poured his first effort for our dad and asked him what he thought of it.”
    “And?”
    “And Dad said it was prime pigswill. Wyatt improved on that first batch and he’s never looked back since.”
    “Does he market it?”
    “Yeah, he sells to a few bars around here, but he keeps the quantities down. He says if he made larger quantities, it would be too much like working.”
    Federica smiled, and bit down on a drumstick. It tasted of free-range chicken, rosemary and garlic.
    They munched happily in silence, moving the tablecloth when the sun rose higher in the sky. Federica tackled the potato salad and sighed with pleasure. She rolled her shoulders experimentally and felt something odd. She waggled her head.
    “Anything wrong?” Jack asked lazily.
    “I don’t know,” she said, lifting a shoulder cautiously. “I feel…funny.”
    “No tension,” Jack said, and helped himself to more potato salad. “Takes a while to get used to it.”
    Stella had packed half an apple pie. By the time she had finished her share of it and had started on her third bottle of Prime Pigswill, Federica was feeling replete and had a pleasant buzz. She stuck her legs out in the sun and leaned back in the shade.
    She had the feeling she was in the eye of the hurricane. Dark forces were gathering on the horizon and soon the storm would strike, lashing everything in its path. But right now, the day was sunny, the bees were humming and she felt an unaccustomed bone-deep contentment.
    “Why don’t you let me clear these things up and you can go have your afternoon nap,” Jack said. “You’ve had a really tiring day.”
     
    FAX FROM: Ellen Larsen, c/o Inter