Where the Red Trees Turn Blue

Grover opened his eyes as he always did at four in the morning, peering to the left side of his bed at a now-empty pillow that he still fluffed every night. It always looked the same in the morning as it did the evening prior. He slipped out of bed and grabbed his pants from the weeks before, the thighs thick with flour and sugar and the other stains of a day’s labor. On the dresser was the shirt that was just as ill fitting and gritty.

With a jingle of his keys and a quick pull of the door behind him, Grover headed down two blocks through the winter morning to his small bakery. Red, white, and blue lights glared and danced off the many windows around the block and two police cars stood parked in front of Grover’s baker, tactfully named Grover’s.

Ignoring the police officers and the busted front window, Grover jangled through his keys until he came to the one that unlocked the front door and opened it, glass shards scraping the ground as it opened and the small bell rang at the top.

An officer ran up to him yelling, “Sir!” A young one, the officer. No bars or stripes on his collar and a polished cuff case and matching boots. 

The glass crunched beneath Grover’s boots as he trudged into store and flicked the lights on and began making his first pot of coffee. 

“Sir!” the young officer hollered again. 

With his red nose peering beneath his toboggan and just above his jacket, Grover looked at the young officer from behind the counter. “You all want a cup? First of the day,” he growled out. 

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back outside. We need to process this scene.”

“For what?” Grover growled again as he began starting his small oven and laying out his mugs and cups on the counter. “Won’t find nuthin.”

“There was a break-in last night.”

Without stopping between the counter and the fridge, Grover said, “You don’t say.”

The wintry street was quiet and the wind howled in through the front door. Coffee started pouring into the glass pot and voices creeped through the officer’s radio attached to his shoulder. Grover slid a tray of cinnamon rolls into the preheating oven as the red numbers rose from 100 to 110 to 120. He filled the creamers and the sugars and laid them on the countertop.

“We need to sweep this area for fingerprints and any evidence that might help us in determining who did this.”

Grover slid his jacket off, and then his scarf, and then his gloves, and then his hat and he grabbed a mug and filled it up with some coffee as the final drips hissed on the hot plate. He placed it on the counter in front of the officer. “You look like you’ve had a long night,” he growled. 

The officer ignored the cup and immediately asked, “Do you know of anything that was taken?”

Grover looked around, first at the front door, then to the counters, then to the small tables and booths, then to the ceiling, and finally back to the officer. “Nothing to take,” he said. His red nose pointing at the officer, he said, “‘Cept maybe recipe book.”

Neither Grover nor the officer moved or spoke for several moments, and the officer said, “Can you look?”

Without his red nose peeling away from the officer, Grover said, “Yup. It’s gone all right.”

The officer broke first and stormed out the front door over the broken glass, muttering a few curse words that Grover chose to turn his ear from. He finished setting up his tables and turning on the small radio in the corner that played smooth jazz and instrumentals into the streets through the howling hole in his front door. Grover dumped the cup of coffee down the sink and rinsed the cup.

A few minutes later another officer walked in followed by the former one, his face in a spoiled mood. “Grover,” said the new officer, grappling his legs over the leather stool at the counter. Grover didn’t respond with any greetings and instead poured another cup of coffee and sat it in front of him with a small swirl of steam streaming into the air. “Thank you,” the officer said. He picked up the glass as Grover stood across the counter wiping his hands. “Your beard’s gotten a bit bigger these days,” he said.

“I could say the same about your gut,” Grover replied.

The officer smiled and dismissed the comment, quickly getting to the business of his visit. “Did they take anything, Grove?”

“Just the recipe book. Likely put me out of business soon now,” he said as he pulled out the cinnamon rolls and started icing them.

“You kept your recipes in a book?” asked the younger officer.

Grover didn’t respond, didn’t even look up from his iced cinnamon rolls as the smell filled every corner of the small shop.

“I have the recipes,” Grover growled through his mustache. 

“Do you have any cameras or anything that could help in our investigation?” asked the young officer.

Grover looked up from his rolls and seemingly growled through his dull look, just as raspy as his aged voice. “No,” he said.

The officer grew more infuriated as Grover began boxing his rolls and placing two of them in their own bags, paired with a napkin, a plastic fork, and a plastic knife. He pulled the bags up to the counter toward the front end of the store and placed two cups of coffee next to them.

There was silence between the occupants. The older officer sipped on his coffee, gauging the temperature. The younger grew more impatient by the minute. A voice from the front door broke the silence, an older woman.

“Grover!” she hollered through the hole. “What happened?”

“Seems somebody broke in last night,” he said. She walked in, the small bell jangling above the door as she tiptoed around the glass.

“Fetch me a broom so I can clean this mess up for you!” she said. Her head was wrapped in a set of ear muffs and a toboggan, and every inch of her skin covered by several layers. “I swear it, ever since Rose passed,” she crossed her chest as she said this, “you’ve let this place go to pure shambles! How mad she’d be if she saw the dust on the shelves and the way you leave smudges on the glasses and she always did abhor the way you did the dishes.” 

She hurried behind the counter and grabbed a broom and made her way back to the glass on the floor and nearly started sweeping when she was interrupted by the younger officer that curdled in the brow like spoiled milk. “That’s evidence!” he shouted. The woman froze in her tracks and stared from the small patch of visible skin on her face at the young man. 

For a moment even the music stopped and the moaning of the fans seemed to hold quiet. “If there were evidence in this fallen glass, surely it would have been soiled by the bottom of your boots!” she hollered as she began sweeping. “Now, Grover you can call on my nephew to help you out around the store. The good Lord knows you need it,” she said. “Look atcha!” she said as she dumped a heaping amount of glass into the garbage. “Your shirt’s a mess, your pants are thick as year-old grease pans, and your eyes are heavier than ever before!” She went back to the glass, much to the discernment of the younger officer while the older one finished up his cup of coffee and laid a five dollar bill on the table. 

“I don’t need no help,” Grover said, wiping up the area in front of the officer. “Besides, what’s the point of cleaning one pair of pants just to dirty ‘em the next day?”

The woman returned the broom from where she got it and washed up her hands in the sink, drying them on the towel around Grover’s waist. “Well, I’m just saying, I’m worried about you, Grove. That’s all.” Grover smiled through his beard and she walked around and grabbed a bag and a coffee from the front counter. “What did they take?” she asked before heading out.

“Just the recipe book it seems,” Grover said.

“Well I pity the fool that tries to follow Rose’s recipes,” she laughed. “Anybody can throw some things in a bowl and mix it. Every recipe is only as good as the happiness put into it.”

“It’s not the recipes I’m worried about,” Grover said. “Just gonna miss her handwritin’ is all.”

The woman smiled and waved goodbye as the dangling bell saw her off.

Before the bell stopped clanking, a man stepped through the door, more quiet than the former guest. He laid a ten dollar bill on the counter and gathered up his cinnamon roll and coffee and was back into the cold.

“We’ll file a report for you, Grove,” said the officer as he rose from his seat. “I’ll be sure to have some extra patrol in the area.”

“Thanks, John,” Grover said.

The officers filed through the door. The sounds of the busying street clamored in through the broken glass. Grover sipped on a cup of coffee and looked around at all the lapsed cleaning the woman had pointed out. The dust was building and cobwebs were forming at the corners. The floor was in desperate need of a sweeping and the counters were two weeks short of a scrub. 

Grover closed his shop early that day. He locked the door before he departed, ignoring the entire bottom glass that had been removed. He had only a few customers that day, and certainly none would have cared for the hole in the door, blowing a cold breeze on them as they tried to get warm. 

North he drove. The trees rolled red over the hills under the evening winter sky as the horizon declared a clear, cold night. Atop a hill, where the summer sun sets just beyond the horizon and flowers bloom in spring, he stopped and stared without getting out of his car at the headstone that read her name, Rose.

He stepped from his car, but left it running, gently closing the door behind him as if not to wake the peaceful. He sipped his coffee through his beard and said to her, “I don’t need your recipes, ya know.” “We haven’t used that book in years, I’m sure, but I did read through it the other day. All two hundred recipes. I read ‘em all and if I hadn’t known any better I’d swear I could smell ‘em all too, as if you were in the kitchen bakin’ like you always used to.” Grover paused a long while, sipping on his coffee and reading over her name a dozen times. “They may have the measurements, but they’ll never have your happiness.”

Grover sat there, as he often did, until his coffee grew cold and the red trees grew blue and black in the night.