Bread and Water

It was 6 am. The baker pulled the fresh loaves from the oven: rye, hard crust but soft on the inside. The smell filled the back room. He left it on the rack to cool, dusted his hands on the end-frayed, floury apron, and went to the front to pull open the shades facing the street.

No one there this early. Just the sun through the smudged, warped glass; the white-paved sidewalks and starter homes gleamed a reproach. He should at least clean the window; the disrepair his bakery had fallen into the past couple of years kept most of the new neighbors out, with their shiny cars and their shiny faces. But not the woman he made the rye for. Every Tuesday she came in, with her little girl holding tight to her hand, to pick up the rye, to smile and talk. She always smiled; even the creases at her eyes and mouth carried on with it when her lips were a straight line again.

The little girl didn’t like rye bread. He could see it in the winkle across the top of her nose she could never suppress, though she was obviously raised well enough not to say “yucky!” or some variation. His chocolate chip cookies, those she loved. The baker made those for her, just as he made the bread for her mother. He would lift her up and sit her down by the cash register, then reach down into the display case for her cookie, her sneakered feet making excited circles in the air. Even so, she never bit into the cookie until she had kissed him on the cheek in thanks.

But he was so tired today. His left leg ached, swollen tight against his white pants. He rested against the stool by the register, the pain knifing the air out of his lungs. It was worse today. Finally, he could breath, took in air and pushed it out. No pain, but the air was wrong. A bad smell: a whiff of ozone, a backnote of rot, lined his nose and throat as he panted. He knew that smell. The first time he smelled it was as a young man, waiting for his wife and child in New York. He came over first, left the first bakery in his wife’s care, to make a place for them, a place to live and work, and sent money back each week to bring them across. The war came before they could—and Anne and Elena were gone, except one letter. At the end, little Anne wrote, “I love you Poppa,” in big, slanty capitals, so he would know that she was learning more every day. He could imagine her in that handkerchief-sized kitchen, right hand fisted around a pencil; left hand curling and uncurling the tip of one of those long brown braids Elena plaited every morning; Anne’s thinking posture. He carried that letter with him in his wallet even now; creased and fragile as tissue paper.

That smell of rot and ozone was everywhere in New York.

He shuffled into the kitchen again. The aroma of yeast and burnt sugar filled his nostrils, calmed him as it had in those years in their tiny first apartment, in the years after they were gone. Moved here, to the Rockies, decades before his cookie-loving friend, or her mother, had been born. The air was thinner and in the morning he could smell distant pine trees, columbine, earth. He thought he’d escaped the bad smell, but over the past year it was everywhere. He’d lock up the bakery and it would follow him, down the alley through all the streets to his apartment. But he foxed it. He let the apartment go and stayed here, making his bed on the long chopping block where he kneaded the rye bread cooling now on the rack. Enveloped in the scents of baking, an old apron as his pillow, he slept deep.

7 AM. They would be here soon, and he wanted to be ready. Today was special: he made 5 loaves of bread for the woman and a dozen cookies for the little girl. He wrapped the loaves first, set them carefully in a large bag one by one, then the cookies into a box. Marked their names carefully on each.

His hand shook, dilapidated the letters. No matter; nothing quite worked as it used to. He smiled and stood up straight, happy that at least he had gotten this done.

The smells of flour and apple and cinnamon and sugar, worn into the counters and the walls, disappeared. The bad smell choked him, drove everything else out.

“Not my little girl?” A prayer, a plea.

He looked down. The left leg of his pants was red, oozing blood. A trail of it, from the front counter to the stove to the chopping block he gripped with floured hands. Then his leg buckled. He tried to hold on to the sides of the block, but it was too late. His hands clutched uselessly at the surface for purchase, knocked the flour down with him. It filled his nostrils and dusted the floor. That was better. He closed his eyes and drifted away on the pain. The smell faded, left nothing in the air but the fragrance of baking.

Far away, he heard the front door slam. The sharp click of heels and the scuffle of sneakers came closer.

He opened his eyes as much as he could. His little girl was there, above him, her face crumpled and sad.

“Don’t cry,” he said.

“Can’t not,” she said. She leaned down and kissed his cheek, as usual. She’d brought the smell of pine trees and columbine in with her and her tears on his face were cool and soothing.

He let his eyes close again and was standing on the harbor. The air, fresh and clean, filled his lungs. Anne and Elena were sailing today, coming to him, and he would wait here every day ‘til they arrived. Until the house and kitchen were warm again, with baking, with all of them.