Chapter 4: Flour

"I can cook," Abram said. "I just can't bake."

"Those are the same thing."

"They are absolutely not."

It was the next Friday, and I was standing in the kitchen of the Hendry house for the first time since I was fifteen.

He had invited me for supper and told me not to bring anything.

I brought a pie from my mother anyway.

The kitchen was big and square, with a cracked linoleum floor and a window over the sink that looked out at the old orchard.

It was nearly bare.

A table, three chairs, one good skillet and a wall of cardboard boxes stacked along the far side.

They were all taped shut.

I looked at them once and then I didn't look again.

Dessa sat on the counter in an apron that came to her ankles, holding a whisk.

"Dad says pancakes are a dinner food," she said.

"Pancakes for supper?"

"It's the only thing he lets me help with."

"That isn't true," Abram said. "She also helps with eggs."

"I crack them wrong."

"She cracks them wonderfully, with shell."

I sat down at the table and watched them work.

Abram moved around the kitchen, even with nothing in it.

He flipped without looking, he cut butter without measuring, and he let his daughter pour the batter in crooked circles.

The kitchen smelled of brown sugar and hot butter.

It smelled like a home, and not a hospital.

He had cooked for sick people for eleven years.

I wondered what he had cooked at home during the two years his wife was ill.

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