Uncle Bob's Pantry

           Every Thursday for the past 15 years, my sister and I have made our weekly grocery run in Salem. Starting in 1977, the routine has been the same. That first summer, the kids had finished the school year, so Thursday logistics became increasingly complicated. Thanks to the availability of my sister’s unpaneled, dark brown 1972 Ford station wagon, we could squeeze in the four children along with the groceries as we made our way to Uncle Bob’s house.

           Our mother’s brother Bob never married and lived alone near the railroad tracks. Never considered “a catch” by any stretch of the imagination, Uncle Bob lacked the most basic notions of personal hygiene. Let’s see. He was born in 1922, so that summer he turned 55 although he appeared to be 75 by today’s standards. His scraggly beard hung five inches below what we imagined would be a cleft chin. Only pictures of him in his younger days can confirm its existence. The curly mess was silver, as was the remaining sparse strands that encircled his peculiarly large head.

           Our mother, God rest her soul, had little patience for her youngest brother. “If he wants to live like a slob, that’s his problem.” My sister and I, on the other hand, held a soft spot for our favorite uncle that we considered the “runt of the litter.” Raised in the country, we recognized the struggles of the smallest, littlest creatures that struggle to survive as the most disadvantaged of the batch of kittens. Uncle Bob was our redemption project. While his siblings and most of Salem saw him as a slovenly kook, we recognized him as a person in need.

           After tucking away the perishables in our uncle’s fridge, my sister would begin scouring the kitchen. Each week she became more astonished as to the amount of filth that one single man could produce in seven days. While she degreased the cooking area, I washed his clothes, swept the piles of dust from the floor, and mopped the entirety of the modest house. Our children rarely encountered any conflicts. The boys organized their respective baseball card collections while the girls jumped rope or played with the grotesque Depression-era baby doll whose presence behind the davenport tended to creep out most curious visitors.

           When all was finished, the seven of us would congregate around the dining table for a simple meal. Pasta, canned tamales, or maybe a good old ham sandwich with Campbell’s Tomato Soup.

           “I need you girls to buy me something next week,” Uncle Bob requested between shots of dipping his sandwich into his tomato soup.

           “I had a premonition,” he interrupted his petition to provide his colorful, if not looney, backstory. “I’m gonna need some…things.” The pause between these last two words allowed him to swivel his round head on his lengthy neck long enough to produce a dramatic moment reminiscent of a ventriloquist’s doll. His odd, extremely round green eyes focused their attention on both of us simultaneously.

           Habitually, when we would ask Uncle Bob if he needed anything from the store, his answers were always vague—whatever, something to eat, nothing specific.

           “Cans of tuna,” he requested that first week, “Maybe a half dozen cans.”

           Nothing out of the ordinary. People eat tuna. It’s practical and nutritious. No big deal. Well, it took on a weird vibe when our uncle explained that he had a premonition that he’d need cans of tuna.

           “You mean you dreamt that you are going to need tuna?”

           “No. It wasn’t a dream,” he clarified, “a premonition. I was wide awake.” His strange, folksy pronunciation of the four syllables, pre-mo-NI-tion with clearly delineated spaces between each, reminded us that he had been born in West Virginia. He scratched his invisible chin with his dirty fingernails that constantly seemed in need of a trim but were always the same length.

           On our next supermarket run, we scratched off Uncle Bob’s request from our list by placing the cheapest cans of tuna we could find in the cart.

           “Oil,” he said one word, “I’m gonna need some cookin’ oil.”

           “What kind?”

           “Don’t care.”

           His second request seemed more logical. Uncle Bob’s breakfast of choice had been a fried egg so he’d need some vegetable oil.

           “I heard a voice that told me I needed cookin’ oil.”

           I searched for my sister’s eyes and furrowed my brow. Had Uncle Bob suffered some sort of cerebral hemorrhage that had affected the only bit of sanity that he seemed to have left?

           The routine continued the following week. Upon delivery of the one bottle of oil, he looked at both of us and made his weekly request—vermicelli.

           “Vermicelli?” I doubted forcefully. The specific type of pasta struck me funny. Why not spaghetti? Rigatoni? No, he wanted vermicelli.

           “Was this another premonition, Uncle Bob?” my youngest innocently asked. We all chuckled at the cuteness of those words. Everyone except for our uncle. He didn’t crack a smile. He stoically recounted his latest revelation.

           The following week, we obedient nieces quietly delivered the ninety-nine-cent, three-pound box of vermicelli without comment.

           “Thank you, girls,” he talked to us as if we were still teenagers and we didn’t correct him.

           “What do you need next week, Uncle Bob?” I asked, knowing that his quirky shopping list would continue.

           “Iodized salt.”

           “Well,” I began my mistaken joke, “nobody want’s scurvy.”

           “I think you’re confused,” my sister corrected me, “That’s vitamin C.”

           “I don’t care what it’s good for, ladies, I just need my salt.”

           By that point, we had all become numb to his bizarre petitions and nobody commented further. However, as we returned to the car, I stopped and asked my sister a few questions outside the earshot of my children and their cousins.

           “What do you think he’s really doing with all these ingredients?”

           My sister appeared to be less concerned than I was. She shrugged her shoulders and calmly reasoned, “Some type of pasta with tuna, I suppose. Don’t worry, he’s not building a bomb or anything. Take it easy.”

           “I’m just worried about him,” I answered, “I think he’s getting senile.”

           “He just turned 55. He’s not that old.”

           Convinced that my sister had gauged the situation better than I had, we drove back to her house, another shopping spree in the books.

Seven days later, the conversation became confrontational. Before we could ask, and with an extraordinary sense of urgency in his voice, Uncle Bob greeted us by flinging a name of a particular food at us.

           “Dill pickles!”

           “I thought you didn’t like pickles.”

           He remained silent for a moment. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he formed the words properly.

           “They want pickles, damn it!” Uncle Bob never swore and certainly knew better than to let go of a curse word with the kids around.

           “Bob!” I addressed him as an adult and then scolded him as if he were a child,            “Watch your mouth!”

           He apologized for his outburst, calmly repeating his request politely before shuffling off to the back porch to smoke his pipe.

           “Enough is enough,” I informed my sister, “I’m not getting him any gosh darn dill pickles.”

           “Just humor him. The poor guy. All he’s got is us and I’m not going to turn my back on him.”

           Her words touched me and I knew that she was right. She had been the level-headed one growing up and it was time for me to follow her once again. I left her behind in the kitchen and approached my uncle as he gazed emptily out into the lazy street that had not contained much traffic in recent years. The frequency of the freight trains had eased up and the neighborhood had traded in its bustling days from earlier in the century for a sad, forgotten ghost town.

           “Uncle Bob,” I returned him his proper title, “I’m sorry. We’ll get you those dill pickles next time we’re at Perskey’s.”

           “They’re not for me,” he corrected my perspective, “They’re for you.”

           “But I don’t think I need dill pickles.”

           “Oh, they think you do. You all will need them.”

           I was afraid to ask. Despite my reticence, I probed deeper into my uncle’s fantastical world.

           “Who are they?”

           “The voices,” he meekly let escape from his lips, “I don’t know who they are, but they keep giving me the ingredients. It’s all about saving…the children.”

           “Children? What children?”

           “Why, your children, my dear.”

           A tingle formed in the small of my back and shot vertically up my spine. The conversation defied logic and I felt as if I were debating with a lunatic. My best bet would be to ignore his illogical ramblings, change the subject, or merely walk away. I chose the third option. I opened the screen door and heard it slam as I abandoned the porch where my uncle continued to inhale his cherry-flavored smoke. My mother had been right when she told me to keep my distance from my uncle, that he was a raving madman. We continued with our Thursday ritual—cleaning and lunch—but in an expedited manner that saw my sister and I gather up the kids hastily after the meal to remove ourselves from a situation that felt stranger with every moment.

The following week, the kids had returned to school and my sister and I approached Uncle Bob’s place with the usual groceries and the additional item—a 24-ounce jar of dill pickles. The silence between us allowed us to appreciate the crunch of the station wagon’s tires crushing the gravel drive. In an attempt to avoid mentioning the special dietary requirements of supposed imaginary voices, I sat the glass jar on the counter without comment. Uncle Bob sauntered into the kitchen, removed his merchandise, and disappeared into his bedroom without as much as a thank you for the pickled cucumbers.

           “What a strange man,” my sister assessed while we both observed his odd behavior. I had no response. We both had grown weary of his weirdness, his bizarre grocery requests, and his crazy talk about premonitions and voices. We had had enough and we agreed not to mention as much as a word about going to the store the following Thursday. He didn’t bring it up. In fact, months passed and our previous routine returned without the slightest hint that anything had ever happened.

           The months turned into years. Our mother passed away in 1986, our children grew up, went off to college, and my oldest niece got engaged to be married. Since Uncle Bob looked 75 when he was 55, the aging process seemed to not affect him at all. His appearance remained unchanged for a decade and a half. During that time, he did not mention any premonitions. However, one time each summer, he would write down those five ingredients on a small rectangular slip of paper: cans of tuna, oil, vermicelli, iodized salt, dill pickles and hand it to my older sister. The following week, we’d quietly deliver the items on his list and he’d merely thank us without ever providing further explanation.

           “Have you ever noticed that none of those items that we buy him are ever in the pantry?”

           “It never crossed my mind.”

           For fifteen years, we had purchased those five items for our uncle and they seemed to vanish into nowhere.

           Four weeks ago, Uncle Bob suffered that cerebral hemorrhage that we predicted back in the 1970s. Although he looked 75 for 15 years, our uncle passed away three months after his seventieth birthday. He had no heirs and all his siblings had preceded him in death, so it became our duty to settle his estate, which included preparing his house to be auctioned off. While most of America had been caught up in the triangular debate between Bush, Clinton, and Perot, we were charged with a matter of increased importance—removing the filth and prepping the house for sale. Although we had thoroughly cleaned the ground floor and upper level of his home, we had never ventured into the cellar. That is, we had never gone down there until today.

           “I’m not going down there by myself,” I informed my sister who had ordered me to check out the dreary basement. She grabbed our only functioning flashlight and led me down the rickety wooden stairs with no handrail. It smelled like old. If the mummified remains of Norman Bates’ mother had been awaiting us, I would have been less shocked. We approached a door that didn’t require a key to be opened. Neither of us desired to open it, but curiosity is a seductive temptress. My sister turned the latch and shined her light directly onto a neatly arranged assortment of goods. Although Uncle Bob had been an unapologetic hoarder, the symmetry of the collection was perfect. One hundred eighty cans of tuna neatly stacked. Fifteen bottles of unopened vegetable oil stood at attention watching over the canned fish. Forty-five pounds of Mueller’s vermicelli flanked the oil on its right. Fifteen cylindrical containers of Morton’s finest iodized salt sat lined up with the same number of pickle jars paired up behind them. One mystery had been solved while a new one emerged. The whereabouts of the missing pantry items were resolved while simultaneously begging the question—what was all this for?

           Aside from the short, annual shopping lists, we had never seen Uncle Bob’s handwriting, but we immediately recognized it on the page that accompanied the ingredients.

My dear nieces,

First I have to thank you again for buying me these ingredients. I was never much of a cook, but what you can do with this is simple. I’ve included the recipe as it was dictated to me in my premonitions. I know that neither of you believed me. That’s OK. I’m not sure I believed it myself. But, that don’t matter no more cause I’m gone now but I’m still here to protect you and your families. In a few years from now, there will be a horrific time, a moment when you won’t be able to go to the grocery store every Thursday. Maybe you won’t be able to go there at all for a long time. Nobody will shake your hand. They won’t get within six feet of you. People will be wearing gloves and masks and spreading this stinky gel on everything. I don’t know what it is. They won’t tell me. It’s like some kind of apocalypse or something. Right out of the Book of Revelation if you ask me. Save this food and follow the instructions. You’ll be okay. I love you both very much. Bob

           My sister began to weep as she finished reading the note out loud. She turned the page over to reveal the recipe.

           The C.O.V.I.D. meal is easy to make. You can remember it by the initials of the five basic ingredients: can of tuna, oil, vermicelli, iodized salt, and dill pickles. Personally, if you don’t like pickles you can leave them out. Boil the water for the vermicelli, cook up tuna in the oil, season with some salt, and chop up a pickle and you’re set. It’ll get you through whatever it is that’s coming. I’ve saved up a lot of ingredients for you here and it will last you a while. Original recipe says that three cans of tuna and a pound of vermicelli will make enough for nineteen, but that sounds a little much.

           Despite the original tears, we both began laughing at the ridiculousness of this final message from beyond the grave. I’m going to hold onto the letter and the recipe as a cherished keepsake, the only physical memory of my sweet and crazy uncle. As dutiful U.S. citizens, tomorrow my sister and I will go vote for president. I know the vote is supposed to be secret, but I’m voting for Governor Clinton. He seems to be such an upstanding guy. She won’t confirm who she’s voting for, but I’ve told my sister not to waste her vote on Perot. Unfortunately, the majority of the foodstuffs in Uncle Bob’s cellar had expired long ago. We salvaged only a small portion and after we cast our vote tomorrow, we will deliver the non-perishable items to our local food pantry.