A Contest of Sorts

Jasper’s hands shook like an earthquake was rocking the ground, and the hot coffee in his hand began to spill out of his cup, the liquid scorching his hand. He dropped the cup and it splattered into the air, over his jeans and the two women standing next to me.

           “Oh my god!” shrieked the younger one, glaring through glasses that framed her face in a manner reminiscent of a raccoon. Her long pointy nose continued to point in his direction as she shook her right leg first and then her left, drips flecking onto the concrete floor.

           The older woman shook her head, the gray hair bouncing around her face like a balloon. “The nerve of some people. What is the world coming to?”

           “Sorry,” muttered Jasper. He looked for a way to meander away, but the crowd was too tightly condensed for him to wiggle through. His face was turning red, and he pulled his hood up in the early morning chill. They had said the results would be announced in five minutes twenty minutes ago. He tried to calm his hand.

He couldn’t let the women distract him, his father always gave him that advice, often right before his father told him to remove himself from the kitchen, stop trying to learn to cook food, go split some wood. He fell to daydreaming too quickly, however, once he stood with maul in hand next to the pile of unspilt wood, often eventually sitting on the splitting stump and thinking of teaspoons, tablespoons, spices, sweets. His father would emerge with throw a beer can in his direction, sometimes empty, sometimes not, accompanied with a stern cursing out.

He snuck into the kitchen, though, when he returned home from school, the backpack discarded upon the kitchen floor. His mother was still at work, and his father would not return until late most nights, having spent a few after-work hours consuming after-work beverages. He swore his mother to secrecy when she came home early one day, finding him elbows-deep in a desert recipe, a sampling of his father’s whisky mixed in for taste. She promised, but only if he could mix her a drink. She showed him how to mix a martini, allowed him a sip, and then sat on the kitchen counter and watched her son work. She said nothing most afternoons after that, somehow finding a way to return home early, usually only humming old gospel tunes, and advising her son how much Vermouth was acceptable in a dry martini.

Jasper returned home after college, his political science degree set in a bin and pushed into a dusty corner of the basement. His father had threatened to stop all college payments if he pursued his true passion of the culinary arts, so Jasper dutifully followed through on achieving a degree that meant actually nothing other than he would have to get another degree. He did not drink a beer until his junior year of college, fearful his father’s misery would visit upon him, but found he enjoyed sampling different styles of beer; this taste proved to lead him to pricier beers, and so he often spent over an hour sipping one small amount, feeling the hops, the malt, wondering how much or less might affect the taste. His father muttered he should been tougher on the boy when he was younger, maybe this wouldn’t have happened, maybe Jasper might have a real job other than these part-time positions, maybe Jasper might have a house, an apartment, rather than the sagging, water-damaged futon in the half-finished side of the basement his father had been constructing into a man cave once Jasper left home. Perhaps he could go to welding school or become a plumber. There might still be hope in the world, his father muttered as he returned home from the bar and passed Jasper reading in the living room.

His father walked down into the basement one day, as Jasper was sitting on the futon, folded into a couch, drinking coffee.

           “Sit,” the man said as he pointed at a stool on the opposite side of the basement.. Jasper sat as his father propped open the small rectangular window at the far end of room and lit a cigarette. He exhaled the smoke into the air and it drifted into the air. “What am I going to do with you, boy?”

           Jasper studied the cracks in the basement floor. His father kept the gray swept clean; the walls were lined with tools, sorted by type and size, and bins filled with screws, nails, and other fasteners stacked underneath the long work bench.

           His father took another long drag and shook his head. “Well, here you go.” He reached under the bench and pulled a large cardboard box. He set it on the work bench with a loud thud and gestured with the back of his hand. “Open it.” He tossed a boxcutter next to it and sat down on a matching stool.

           Jasper cut into the box, making thin neat slices across the top. He peeled the top from the box. He frowned and pulled from the box a large glass container, tubing, and assorted other equipment. He looked blankly at his father.

           “It’s a brewing system, boy,” said his father. “Look in the bottom of the box. You missed something.”

           Jasper reached in and pulled out a package that was labeled “recipe kit.” His father gestured again as he stood and put out the cigarette in the ashtray. “Figure it out,” and he walked back up the basement stairs, slamming the door behind him.

           Jasper stared at the diagram and instructions for several minutes, and then set to constructing the kit. His first batch was less than stellar, but by the end of a month, he spent at least an hour every day working in the basement, meticulously adjusting ingredient amounts, hop and malt styles, cleaning the equipment, reading faded books he found in the free book bin at the public library’s atrium. His father would not ask, but sometimes Jasper would hear the door creak open and know he was inspecting Jaspar’s work.

           The flyer was on the bulletin board above the free book box, half-covered by a teenaged baby-sitter’s advertisements of her services on a paper wreaking of cheap perfume, grammatical errors, and desperation. Three tabs from the perspective childcare-giver were half removed by parents in an urgency grasp for a date night they once treasured, a chance to drink out of sight of the kids. He removed the pin and took the flyer inside, making a quick copy as the librarian regarded him like an aged cop watching a kid holding a skateboard while standing on the no skateboard zone sign on the sidewalk.

           He sat in the basement and looked at the paper. The county-wide food and drink contest, an annual event, including a category for beer. He reached behind him, into the shelves where he stored his completed beers and began to drink.

           The next few weeks were full of late nights brewing batches, adjusting amounts, writing down notes in his brewer’s book, and then moving onto the next annotation. The night before his entry was due, the steps creaked, and he looked at the clock nearing two a.m. above his set-up. His father stood next to him.

           “Jasper, you might need some sleep.”

           “I will.”

           His father shuffled his feet and walked over to the work bench on the opposite wall. He ran his hands over the tools and then returned to Jasper’s side. Jasper glanced at his father, but the man was not looking at him. He was gazing at the brewing system, at the cleaning tools set behind the tubing and pots. His father licked his lips and fingered his lighter in his right hand at his side but did not light it. Jasper went to the finished set, the one he had chosen, and took an extra bottle in hand. He picked up two shot glasses and blew out the dust and poured the beer into the cups. He went back to his father and set the shot glass in front of his father. His father took it, held it to the light, sniffed it, and finally sipped it. He nodded at Jasper and then walked back upstairs.

           The women continued to chatter, and Jasper continued to wait. He stamped his feet to stay warm, no longer worried about spilling his coffee as the rest was now on the ground and the women’s leg. A man dressed in a thick coat appeared on the podium and motioned for silence. He droned through announcements about local dignitaries, benefits for neglected ice creameries, educational fundraisers for gifted cats, and so on. He cleared his throat.

           “Let’s get to this year’s winners,” the man shrieked, a higher pitch one would assume non-eunuchs might struggle to reach, and the crowd roared. The man called out categories for all manner of deserts and one by one the winners came to the stage, accepting ribbons, cash prizes, smiles and congratulations exchanged.

           “And for the beer category…” The man began, and the noise faded. Jasper heard the words the man said but as if from a distance. He looked down on himself walking to the stage, accepting the award, the man’s breath as he handed over the winner’s check an early morning mix of coffee and deathly odors, and then he was back in his own body, the cheers of the crowd filling in his ears, and in the back he saw his father, standing alone, one hand holding a cigarette, the other lifted into the air, a thumbs up ecstatic to the sky.