Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: DRIZZLE (03/05/20)
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TITLE: Butterscotch or Chocolate | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
03/06/20 -
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Uncle Jerry used to brag about there being more cows in Vermont than any other state in the country with his own stock of two hundred being about average. Aunt Margie whipped up her specialties in the bakery next door and when I’d torn my eyes off the whirling waitress in the short-striped skirt, I skipped next door for a pastry. A fresh warm treat always waited and when I held it up, raising my eyebrows, the smile lit up the room. “Want a drizzle more icing on that?” she’d ask.
On the wall of the soda shop, there was reason to linger. Famous framed quotes of Vermonters lined the walls. “I have disposed of all my property to my family,” Patrick Henry said in his patriotic way. “There is one thing more I wish I could give to them, and that is the Christian religion. If they had that and I had not given them one cent, they would be rich.”
“What do you think of that,” the brunette whispered as she swept the floor near me. I noted her neatly stitched name tag, ‘Christine.’ “Seems like you’ve been doing a lot of thinking in this place.”
I nodded as if my nine years in school equipped me for mastery of the philosophers, theologians and politicians of the world. “Reckon that this religion thing seems mighty important to these men.”
Without a word, she crooked her finger and beckoned me to the one behind the counter. “Ya think this here president was a Baptist?”
A drizzle of chocolate bisected the dusty glass. “We do not need more intellectual power,” Calvin Coolidge said, “we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge; we need more character. We do not need more law; we need more religion.”
“Hard to tell,” I said, “but I got a good Baptist joke for you.”
She smiled and waited as I licked the drizzle of butterscotch from the top of my cone.
“How many Baptists does it take to change a lightbulb in the sanctuary?”
Christine shrugged as she nestled her chin into her knuckles.
“None,” I said. “They’d get a Pentecostal so no one could see them raising their hands in church.”
The bell chimed as three farmers stepped through the door and placed their orders. She kept a straight face through it all and I couldn’t tell if she was self-controlled or made of ice.
When the men left, she continued the conversation. “Don’t suppose you’re Pentecostal,” she said as she turned and wiped off the chocolate drizzle from the picture frame.
Slumping onto a stool, I stared out the window at the endless mass of jersey cows ruminating. “Don’t suppose it matters. My uncle’s family is a straight descendant of one of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys. First one over the wall into Fort Ticonderoga. Signed the anti-slavery law and helped bring in the vote for even non-landowners.”
She wiped down the windows I’d been staring out. “You seem mighty proud of this mysterious ancestor.”
The last bit of cone dissolved in my mouth. “Vermont was the first state admitted into the union after the 13 colonies had come together.”
Christine flicked her hair, abandoned the cleaning rag and rotated the stock of ice cream flavors, adjusting the cap sliding down over her bangs. “You seem determined to impress me for some reason.”
“You’re the first college girl I’ve seen in these parts and I reckon you must know everything they might teach in this town. What are you studying?”
She glanced quickly over her shoulder and then toward the door. “It’s a secret,” she whispered.
I looked around and moved closer. “I’m going to Bible School to get me a husband.”
My fantasies collapsed like a bad souffle. The drizzle of juvenile emotion dancing in my heart withered like a sun-scorched daisy. Then she saved the day.
“Don’t suppose a handsome young man like you might be going to Bible school after the summer?”
My first love taught me about Jesus and ice-cream floats. When I reach for ice-cream I still whisper, “will that be butterscotch or chocolate?”
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