Five and a Half
On the first Saturday of September in every year, for as long as Jacob could remember, the Mather sisters took the closest parking place, the prime booth, and, later in the day, the blue ribbon for the finest chili.
Of course, the Fair organizers distributed blue ribbons for many other contests. Best basket. Largest ear of corn. Fastest duck. Goshen drew competitors and visitors from six surrounding counties, and truthfully, few were willing to loosen their collars and wipe their brows after sampling a steaming bowl of ground beef, beans, and peppers. Chili aficionados, on the other hand, pay little attention to the season. It was a rare day when Jacob did not make and consume chili, studying countless variations with the same methodology of a geneticist.
Sixteen years of red ribbons had left him cold to Temperance and Forbearance Mather, whom, he had to admit, had been at this far longer than he had. When he asked Suffering exactly how long her aunts had been making chili, his wife looked up from the Styrofoam bowls of gazpacho she was planting in a bed of ice in the adjacent booth and sighed.
“They’ve been at it forever, Love, and it’s not a science to them. They do it the way my grandmother taught them, just like she learned from her mother. I’ve tried theirs and yours, and I like them both the same, in different ways.”
Chocolate flavoring was in this year; Jacob had incorporated some of those peppers into his alpha batch. He believed the four judges might go his way this year, now that the Mathers’ biggest fan, councilman Grosser, moved to Florida for health reasons, and his replacement, Sela Deveraux, was known to keep chocolate in her purse to get through long board meetings.
His beta batch was the vegetarian entry. This year it was a veritable mix of the best from Suffering’s summer garden, and some exotic extras he’d acquired from the Korean grocer in Morlatton. He enjoyed it, but admitted to himself that he found something wanting in it despite the perfectly harmonious blend of ingredients.
Two throats cleared simultaneously, synchronized as only twins can. He composed his features and rose to greet his aunts-in-law, who appeared to need a rest from pushing a pair of shopping carts with large pots, bowls, spoons and water jugs.
“Su!”
The three ladies embraced, leaving Jacob to smile awkwardly and offer a greeting they wouldn’t hear over the sound of three women talking at once. After a time, Temperance favored him with the wry grin of a competitor. “So, Jake. Do we get to try it?”
“Tempe…” Forbearance warned.
“Oh, come now, Fore, you know we won’t get a chance later on when it gets busy.”
“Maybe he wants the judges to get the first shot at it.”
Jacob assured them that it was no trouble and ladled out two bowls, advising them to let it cool a bit first. They set both bowls on Suffering’s ice bed and traded gossip about the local teenagers, predicting which boys would go to jail and which girls those boys would knock up first. Jacob continued to set up his booth, noticing as he did so that the sisters intended to use the same name they always used. “Five Alarm Chili” in fiery red script on a birch plank - it struck him as the most stereotypical and unoriginal name ever, and completely inaccurate. The sisters’ chili was spicy and hot, but it was intended to be consumed by ordinary people in one sitting, not obliterate their taste buds and close off their throats.
When the time came to make the sign for the Alpha batch, he seriously considered calling it “Five and a Half Alarm Chili” but decided that the joke would fall flat for anyone but himself, and would especially irritate his wife.
Forbearance lifted the clay bowl and waved arthritic fingers over the top in effort to waft the smell her way. “Chocolate,” She murmured, and spooned to taste. Jacob bit back a smile; he’d given her the beta batch, and none of the ingredients resembled chocolate. The sisters must have heard about his chocolate batch from their niece, and assumed that he, like they, only made one type per cook-off.
“How is it?” Temperance asked her sister, her own spoon poised to dig. Forbearance didn’t say anything, just closed her eyes and rolled the chili back on her tongue, her rapture plain to behold. They would catch another blue ribbon this year, Jacob was almost certain, but he tightened his grip on his ladle to keep himself from crowing in triumph. His second best was better than theirs, and now they knew it, too.