Free Going to Bend by Diane Hammond Page A

Edited by Rose Bundy, with contributions by Hubbard’s finest cooks. A souperb gift choice this Christmas. A Souperior’s Production
.
    It was not inspired copy, but every other version Gordon had come up with relied on words like connoisseur, maestro, aficionado, tour de force, unparalleled cuisine, extraordinaire—words that did not seem to addressthe general orientation or vocabulary of the average Hubbard resident. So he’d settled on this, and had spent the last two hours in Sawyer and now Hubbard posting the flyers on bulletin boards in supermarkets, the senior center, bakeries, bookstores, dental offices and the library. He and Nadine hadn’t intended to do flyers at all, but business was continuing to soften, the rains were here and it would be two more weeks before Rose even completed the copy: he and Nadine were getting more nervous every day about being able to make it through the winter.
    Gordon had chosen the Hubbard post office as his last stop because it gave him a chance to check the post office box he had opened here recently. He had begun receiving copies of the
Los Angeles Times
, which he read more avidly than he ever had when he lived there. He missed L.A. He found it more and more amazing that he now lived in a place where the movie theater was really called the Bijou. And although he still found the scenery magnificent, scenery didn’t offer chamber music concerts or Thai cooking or cafes in which to read the Sunday paper. Of course, it also didn’t hit you over the head with a bat and take your shoes and billfold on a dark night, which was more or less what had happened to him several years ago. A clean-cut, well-dressed man had run at him from a doorway, eerily silent, and beaten him viciously without ever speaking above a whisper—and then only to say, “Your wallet and shoes, please.”
Please
. Gordon had thrown up his arms to protect himself; otherwise, as though in collusion, he had kept mute and done what he was told. And then, just as suddenly, he had been alone, sitting on the sidewalk bleeding and ashamed. Wasn’t it somehow worse to be beaten by a polite deviant? Muggers wore grimy clothing, had dirty hair, rough speech, and you could avoid them on the street if you paid attention, which Gordon always did. But this had been impossible, without cues; it had been like being beaten by, say, a crazed accountant. His assailant had worn neat khaki pants, leather loafers; his shirt had been tucked in.
Your wallet please
, he’d whispered, after he had already broken Gordon’s nose with a wood baton. What on earth could have happened? Cocaine addiction? Failure to pass the CPA exam? Or had he simply been shrewd enough to cross-dress as a different stereotype, knowing it would throw his victimsoff? Gordon still pondered it from time to time, though now he thought of it as an odd and somewhat humorous calamity that had happened a long time ago.
    In the post office, he squared the corners of his flyer with the notices for child care, firewood and lawn mower repair, collected his papers and mail, and climbed into his car, a well-loved Peugeot whose days were nevertheless numbered for lack of service opportunities. He turned up Wilson, crossed Third, then entered Wayne Street, where Rose lived. She had promised she’d have a batch of recipes ready for him to read, her first. She had sounded nervous about it on the phone, so now he was nervous, too. He and Nadine couldn’t afford any big mistakes—or even, it was possible, any little ones.
    The car whined into a lower gear as he passed homes of varying degrees of squalor and disintegration, until he found the driveway Rose had described for him and pulled in behind her old car. The house turned out to be an old tan double-wide, one of the earliest models (perversely, Gordon had become something of an expert on manufactured home architecture) with none of the bay windows, novelty porches and mullions that made the newer models look so