A Sharpness On The Neck (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 9) by Fred Saberhagen (book suggestions TXT) 📕

The iced tea was weak, like most iced tea in this part of the country, but I suppose I can understand the reluctance of proprietors to spend a lot of money on tea when what their customers want is plenty of sugar. On the way out, I picked up some oversize, homemade, brown-sugary chocolate-chip cookies, three for a dollar. I was planning to keep them in the car and eat them throughout the trip, but the chocolate started dissolving in the heat. That can’t be said of Moon Pies, which are covered with an unimaginably terrible chocolate product that refuses to melt.

The luncheon portion of my first day concluded, I headed north-east to Farmville, looking for Jack Cobb’s, which is open only three days a week. This was supposed to be one of them, but the lights were out.

I was sorry to see that, because I liked the ambiance: a rusty old jack cobb & son sign, a pig painted on the front window, and railroad tracks running alongside. I drove on in search of the well-regarded B’s, in Greenfield, and found it on the edge of town, on B’s Barbecue Road.

That’s about as fine a tribute as a barbecue spot can get, having the road it’s on named after it. B’s was closed, even though it wasn’t supposed to be, according to the hours posted outside. Somebody had 2 1 8

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scribbled a note on a white paper bag and left it between the front door and the screen. It read: “Sold out of food.” I pushed on, headed for Bunn’s, the place that bragged it would put its barbecue up against anybody’s.

Bunn’s is located in Windsor, which looks like the kind of town that had parades and ice cream socials until the four-lane bypass got built and sucked the life right out of it. Bunn’s is a pleasant place, in a hoary, country-store sort of way, although a refurbished seating area in a side room, apparently modeled after hospital cafeterias, couldn’t have been more depressing. The sandwiches cost $1.50, which is fifty cents less than anybody else’s, and came on a hamburger bun that was a whole lot worse than anybody else’s. The pork was respectable enough, although I didn’t detect any hints of wood smoke, and I couldn’t figure out where or how it had been prepared. The tiny charcoal grill out back was way too small to hold a hog.

I reached the town of Ayden about noon the next day and went looking for the Skylight Inn, which, I remembered from a previous visit, was on Route 11. I drove up and down the road for a couple miles each way and was frantic with worry when I couldn’t find it, because I remembered the sandwich there as one of the most memorable eating experiences of my life. It turned out that Route 11 had changed, and I was driving on the all-new, four-lane version. The Skylight Inn was where it always had been, but the road was no longer Route 11.

Almost nothing had changed. In back was an alpine pile of split wood, so huge it reminded me of those mountains of used tires scattered throughout the Northeast. A sign read upholding a family tradition of wood cooked bar-b-que since 1830.

The funny little dome atop the one-story brick building was still in place, denoting the Skylight Inn’s claim to being the barbecue capital of the world, which it might well be. Inside I noticed a self-service soda dispenser that wasn’t there in the eighties and more gumball machines than ever—four in all. Barbecue places have a lot of gumball machines because local booster clubs are always asking if they can put one in to raise money to send kids to summer camp, and barbecue owners don’t F O R K I T O V E R

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have the heart to refuse. Behind the counter, a man with a cleaver was chopping pork, although he wasn’t the same fellow from fifteen years back.

I gradually made my way to the front of the line, where Pete Jones, the owner, was assembling sandwiches and trays. The $2.50 tray gets you coleslaw, cornbread, and more pork than can fit in a sandwich. I was tempted but ordered the usual. Working quickly, Jones scooped up a mound of chopped pork from a huge pile on the counter behind him, added a smaller serving of coleslaw, and put both on a Sunbeam hamburger bun. He wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and handed it over. My first impression was of heft. As I started into one of the side rooms to find an empty table, I noticed a fellow with a NRA belt buckle and a Pepsi-Cola cap tidying up. I asked him how much meat went into each sandwich, and he replied, “All we can cram in.” The dining area I selected didn’t have a lot going for it, as far as customer satisfaction was concerned. Every place I’d been before here had invested seriously in air-conditioning, upgraded the comfort level from sweatbox to meat locker. The air-conditioning in the Skylight Inn’s side room was barely perceptible. Wisps of a pork-scented breeze drifted about. The tables had brown Formica tops, the chairs had brown vinyl seats, and the floor had brown-speckled tile. A couple of Rubbermaid Brute garbage cans stood in one corner. All these ambiance issues became immaterial the moment I bit into the sandwich. I couldn’t stop myself. I ate it so fast I had to go back and get another one right away.

The pork was creamy and soft. The crunchy bits of skin were done just right, which meant they encompassed the yin and yang of barbecue, the crackle of carmelization and the ooze of fat. The vinegar was barely noticeable, and the presence of hot sauce was undetectable until it touched the back of my throat, leaving a tiny burn