Tale #004 — The Great Gravy Garden Harvest
As told by Betsy LeAnne Broussard
There are certain things a woman ought to be able to sell a grown man without worrying he’ll bury them in a field.
Toilet paper.
Batteries.
Instant gravy mix.
I used to believe those were three safe examples.
Then Elbert Dale Hoss came into my Stop-N-Go on a Monday afternoon and bought forty-eight packets of gravy.
Now, forty-eight packets is an unusual amount of gravy for one man. But Elbert Dale Hoss is an unusual amount of man for one brain, so I didn’t immediately call the sheriff.
That was my first mistake.
My second mistake was asking him what he needed all that gravy for.
“Plantin’,” he said.
I looked up from the register.
“Plantin’ what?”
“Gravy.”
“You’re gonna eat gravy while you’re planting?”
“Well, I hope to eat some eventually.”
That sounded reasonable enough by Hoss standards.
I rang up sixteen packets of brown gravy, sixteen country gravy, eight sausage gravy, and eight mushroom gravy. He’d arranged them on my counter by variety, the way somebody might sort seed corn.
“Elbert, you know you gotta cook this stuff, right?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Add water. Heat it up. Stir it.”
“That’s what the directions say.”
He sounded so pleased with himself that I ought to have been suspicious.
Instead, I handed him his change.
“Don’t make a mess.”
“I’ll do my best, Betsy.”
He picked up his sack and walked out.
I watched him climb into Daddy’s old wooden-sided Turnip Wagon Truck, where Clyde was sitting behind the wheel in his fedora, looking like he’d just finished robbing a bank or was disappointed he hadn’t.
Paul the possum was asleep on the passenger-side floorboard.
Hoss waved.
I waved back.
And somewhere in the distance, though I didn’t know it yet, the Lord closed His eyes and decided not to interfere.
The trouble had actually started forty minutes earlier at Frank’s Farm & Feed.
I know this because Frank called me the next morning and explained it with the nervous precision of a man who suspected he’d accidentally invented a new form of agriculture.
Hoss had gone in for tomato seed.
Real tomato seed.
The kind that comes in a little paper envelope with a picture of a tomato on the front.
He’d been studying the rack when Frank came over.
“Need help, Elbert?”
“Naw. Just lookin’. Daddy always said get your seed in while the dirt’s feelin’ friendly.”
That, for once, was a perfectly respectable thing for Hoss to say.
Frank picked up a packet.
“Well, just remember, you plant what’s inside the packet. Not the picture on the outside.”
Hoss frowned.
“The what on the outside?”
“Oh, the stop eyes.”
“Stop eyes?”
“Pictures, Elbert. The pictures show you what’s supposed to grow.”
Hoss looked at the tomatoes.
“So whatever’s on the outside tells you what comes up?”
“That’s right.”
“And you plant what’s inside?”
“That’s right.”
Hoss nodded slowly.
“Well, hell. Appreciate it, Frank.”
Then he put the tomato seeds back and left without buying anything.
Frank didn’t think much of it.
He told me, “Betsy, I figured maybe he’d remembered he already had tomatoes.”
“Frank, he came straight to my store and bought forty-eight packets of gravy.”
There was a long silence.
Then Frank said, “Oh, shit.”
Which was the first sensible thing anybody said about the situation.
By Tuesday morning, Hoss had planted himself a gravy garden.
And I want you to understand something about Elbert Dale Hoss.
The boy knows how to farm.
He can judge soil moisture by squeezing a handful of dirt. He knows when to turn a field, how deep to run a plow, and what kind of weather will wash seed straight out of the ground.
Daddy taught him all that before he died.
Unfortunately, Daddy never thought to tell him that brown gravy does not reproduce.
So Hoss prepared a quarter-acre plot behind the equipment shed with the loving attention of a man raising prize cotton.
He broke the ground.
He leveled it.
He laid out straight rows.
He opened every packet of ready-mix gravy and shook the powder into the furrows.
Then he covered it with dirt, watered it, and stuck the empty envelopes upright at the head of each row.
Pictures facing outward.
So he’d know what variety was growing.
Forty-eight little paper signs fluttering in the morning breeze.
BROWN GRAVY.
COUNTRY GRAVY.
SAUSAGE GRAVY.
MUSHROOM GRAVY.
A person driving past might’ve mistaken the field for an unusually depressing cemetery.
Hoss was proud as a new daddy.
He stood at the edge with his hands on his hips, admiring his work.
Clyde stood beside him, holding his Tommy gun and chewing something he’d found.
Paul was asleep in a bucket.
“Reckon brown’ll come up first,” Hoss said.
Clyde made a noise in his throat.
“Country might take longer. White stuff always acts delicate.”
Clyde scratched his belly.
“Paul’s gonna be surprised when he wakes up and sees all this.”
Paul did not wake up.
On Wednesday, Hoss called the parish agricultural extension office.
Mrs. Lucille Guidry answered.
Lucille is a woman who can identify seventeen different soil deficiencies from a photograph and has spent twenty-three years explaining to grown men why they cannot fertilize everything with chicken manure.
She thought she’d heard it all.
“Mrs. Guidry,” Hoss said, “how long’s gravy take to germinate?”
She asked him to repeat himself.
He did.
She asked what he’d planted.
“Forty-eight packets.”
“Of what?”
“Gravy.”
Lucille drove out to the farm.
She took one look at those little envelopes standing in the rows and shut her car door very slowly.
“Mr. Hoss.”
“Morning, ma’am.”
“Is that instant gravy mix?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“In the dirt?”
“That’s where I planted it.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t figure it’d grow in the truck.”
Lucille stood still for a moment.
Then she walked down a row, pulled up one of the empty packets, and examined it.
“Mr. Hoss, this is a food product.”
“That’s the crop I’m after.”
“It doesn’t contain seeds.”
“Well, I didn’t see none in there, but I figured they was ground up real fine.”
“There’s nothing in this packet that can germinate.”
Hoss considered that.
“Reckon it needs more water?”
“No.”
“Less water?”
“No.”
“Different dirt?”
“Mr. Hoss, gravy cannot grow.”
He looked out over the field.
Then he looked at Lucille.
“Well, you ain’t seen it try yet.”
She took off her glasses.
I know Lucille.
When that woman takes off her glasses, somebody’s about to receive an education.
“Listen carefully. You need to stop watering this. You’re putting food into the soil, and that’s going to attract animals. Don’t dig any more into it, don’t add anything else, and certainly don’t let anybody eat what’s in that field.”
Hoss nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She put her glasses back on.
“And don’t try to cook it out here.”
Hoss looked surprised.
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
Lucille looked even more worried.
By Thursday, he’d thought of it.
He’d gone back to the Stop-N-Go for another packet, not to plant, but to read.
He sat at my little counter with a pencil and copied the directions onto the back of a feed receipt.
ADD WATER.
He put a check beside that.
BRING TO A BOIL.
He circled it.
STIR UNTIL THICKENED.
He underlined that twice.
I came out of the stockroom carrying a case of motor oil.
“Elbert, what’re you doing?”
“Research.”
“On gravy?”
“Crop ain’t comin’ up.”
I set the oil down.
“What crop?”
“My gravy.”
Something cold and unpleasant settled into my stomach.
“Elbert Dale Hoss.”
He looked up.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Tell me you did not plant that gravy I sold you.”
“Well, what else would I do with it?”
“COOK IT!”
He held up the receipt.
“That’s what I’m workin’ on.”
I took the paper from him.
Read it.
Read it again.
“Elbert. Where is this gravy?”
“Back of the shed.”
“How much?”
“Quarter acre.”
I put my hand on the counter.
“You planted a quarter acre of powdered gravy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And you think you’re supposed to boil it.”
“That’s what the packet says.”
“IN A PAN!”
He frowned.
“Well, Betsy, you never said what size.”
I have dealt with drunks, shoplifters, runaway livestock, and a man who once tried to return a frozen chicken because it wasn’t dead enough.
None of those people had ever made me want to sit down on the floor and stay there.
Hoss had.
“Elbert, promise me you’re not gonna set fire to your field.”
“I ain’t settin’ fire to nothin’.”
“Promise.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t use the crawfish boiler.”
He paused.
I stared at him.
“ELBERT.”
“All right, Betsy.”
I called Lucille as soon as he left.
She said, “I already told him not to cook it.”
“Well, apparently he’s found a loophole.”
Lucille said a word I don’t believe she’d ever used at an extension office meeting.
Then she got in her car.
By the time Lucille reached the farm, Hoss had rolled Daddy’s old crawfish boiler out of storage and parked it beside the gravy plot.
He had a propane bottle, an irrigation hose, and a diagram drawn in the dirt.
To his credit, he hadn’t lit anything.
He was standing over the diagram with Clyde, explaining that if they could heat the water before it reached the rows, they could “bring the whole crop to a simmer.”
Lucille confiscated the propane regulator.
Not officially.
She simply picked it up and put it in her car.
Hoss watched her do it.
“Ma’am, I was gonna need that.”
“No, Mr. Hoss. You absolutely were not.”
“But the instructions—”
“The instructions are for a saucepan.”
“That’s an awful small field.”
Lucille shut her eyes.
“Promise me you will not heat this dirt.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t use another burner.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And don’t get Clyde to do it.”
Clyde looked offended.
Hoss said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Lucille drove away with the regulator.
Hoss stood at the edge of his field, studying the feed receipt.
Water.
Boil.
Stir.
He’d been denied boiling.
But nobody had said a thing about stirring.
Now, this is where the crabs enter the story.
And I need to explain something about the Crab Community living in the Back 40.
They’re not ordinary crabs.
They’re intelligent.
They have their own arrangements, their own disputes, and a very complicated understanding of who has the right to cross which patch of mud.
They also have a healthy fear of Elbert Dale Hoss.
Not because he’s particularly threatening.
He’s not.
Hoss has no idea anybody’s afraid of him.
But there was an incident involving a duck, a wind machine, and a misunderstanding that resulted in the crabs knowing him by a title they speak only in hushed voices.
THE DUCK DANGLIN WIND COMMANDER.
I wasn’t there when Hoss acquired that title.
I have heard three versions of the story, and all three end with a duck somewhere it had no business being.
The crabs remember.
Hoss doesn’t.
So Thursday evening, Hoss wandered into the Back 40 with his feed receipt and a bucket of cornmeal.
“Evenin’, fellers!”
Every crab within earshot stopped moving.
A large blue crab emerged from behind a cypress root.
Hoss crouched down.
“Got me a little agricultural situation.”
The crab raised one claw.
“Need some stirrin’ done. See, I planted gravy, and the directions say stir until thickened.”
The crab stared at him.
“Now, I got to thinkin’. Y’all got claws. Claws is shaped a whole lot like little hoes.”
The crab slowly lowered its claw.
“Reckon y’all could come up tonight and work them rows?”
Behind the cypress root, several smaller crabs began whispering.
The big crab looked at Hoss.
Then at the bucket.
Then back at Hoss.
Hoss smiled.
“I brought cornmeal.”
That settled it.
Not because the cornmeal was particularly appealing.
But because when the Duck Danglin Wind Commander offers you a bucket of cornmeal and asks you to hoe his gravy, you don’t ask him what gravy is.
You hoe.
At approximately eleven that night, the Crab Community arrived.
I know the time because Clyde later showed me the pocket watch he’d stolen from somewhere and was very proud of having correctly identified eleven o’clock.
The crabs came out of the Back 40 in a long, low procession.
Big crabs.
Little crabs.
Mud-colored crabs.
Blue crabs.
One crab missing a claw, who apparently supervised.
They crossed the farmyard, passed the equipment shed, and entered the gravy field.
Hoss had hung a lantern from a fence post.
He stood beside the rows with his hands clasped behind his back.
“All right, fellers. Gentle stirrin’. Don’t wanna bruise the gravy.”
The crabs went to work.
Hundreds of claws scratched and combed and turned the soil.
They moved down the rows in tight little lines, dragging dirt backward, breaking clumps, and mixing the powdery remnants into the damp earth.
They were efficient.
They were organized.
They were terrified of disappointing the Duck Danglin Wind Commander.
Hoss watched in admiration.
“Look at them purdy pinchers.”
Clyde sat on an overturned bucket, smoking a cigar he had no business possessing.
Paul slept through the entire operation in a feed sack.
At one point, a crab approached Hoss and tapped his boot.
Hoss looked down.
“Need somethin’, partner?”
The crab pointed toward the bucket.
“Oh! Refreshments!”
He tipped cornmeal into a shallow pan.
“Y’all take a break whenever you need one.”
The crab scuttled away.
Hoss nodded approvingly.
“Good crew. Real professional.”
By three in the morning, the field had been worked from one end to the other.
The crabs had left tiny, precise furrows running through every row.
Some of the empty gravy packets had fallen over, so the crabs propped them back up.
One sausage gravy packet was upside down.
Hoss fixed it.
“Can’t have the sausage growin’ backward.”
Just before sunrise, the crabs returned to the Back 40.
The big blue crab paused at the tree line and looked back.
Hoss raised his hand.
“Much obliged, fellers!”
The crab disappeared so fast you’d have thought somebody fired a shotgun.
Hoss stood alone beside his field, grinning.
Then he looked at the freshly worked dirt.
“Now that’s what I call hoein’.”
Friday was supposed to be harvest day.
That was news to everybody except Hoss.
He’d invited the church volunteers who were fixing up the fellowship hall, promised them fresh biscuits and gravy, and told them to arrive hungry.
He’d also asked Clyde to haul two folding tables and a stack of paper plates out to the field.
By eight that morning, there were fourteen people standing beside a quarter-acre of wet dirt.
Sheriff Bert Grant was among them.
Not because he believed in the gravy.
He’d come to help the church volunteers and had been told there was breakfast.
Biggun looked at the field.
Looked at the little gravy packets.
Looked at Hoss.
“Elbert.”
“Morning, Biggun.”
“What the hell is this?”
“Gravy garden.”
Biggun took a long breath through his nose.
“Where’s breakfast?”
“Right there.”
Hoss pointed at the field.
Biggun looked down.
A small brown beetle crawled across the dirt.
“Elbert, I’m gonna ask you one more time.”
Before Hoss could answer, I pulled up in my truck.
Lucille had called me at seven-thirty.
Her exact words were, “He’s invited people to eat the dirt.”
I got out carrying two empty catering trays and a temper that could’ve stripped paint.
“ELBERT DALE HOSS!”
He turned around.
“Morning, Betsy!”
“WHY ARE THERE PEOPLE IN YOUR FIELD?”
“Harvest.”
“THERE IS NO HARVEST!”
“Well, I ain’t dug it up yet.”
Biggun took one step toward me.
“Betsy, please tell me there’s actual food somewhere.”
“Not yet, Bert.”
“Lord have mercy.”
I walked past him and stopped at the edge of the rows.
The dirt had been worked into hundreds of tiny furrows.
Every gravy packet stood at attention.
The whole thing looked like somebody had planted a grocery aisle and hired mice to landscape it.
“Elbert,” I said, very carefully, “who did all this?”
“Crabs.”
I turned toward him.
“What?”
“Crabs. Came up last night.”
“Crabs?”
“Yes, ma’am. Good workers, too.”
He spread his arms toward the field.
“I LOVE HOEIN’ WITH PURDY PINCHERS!“
Nobody said anything.
Fourteen church volunteers stood in absolute silence.
Biggun rubbed his forehead.
Lucille pulled up behind my truck, got out, saw the field, and immediately stopped walking.
“Mr. Hoss,” she called, “please tell me nobody’s eaten anything.”
“No, ma’am. Ain’t harvested yet.”
“Good. Nobody is going to eat anything out of that ground.”
Hoss looked disappointed.
“But they stirred it.”
Lucille walked over.
“Who stirred it?”
“Crabs.”
She looked at me.
I looked at her.
We both decided there wasn’t enough daylight left in the year to discuss that particular detail.
Biggun stepped forward.
“All right. Everybody listen. There ain’t gonna be any gravy out of this field. Nobody touch the dirt. Nobody taste the dirt. Nobody ask Elbert whether the dirt’s ready.”
One of the church volunteers raised his hand.
“What about biscuits?”
I pointed at my truck.
“Y’all go on back to the fellowship hall. I’ll bring breakfast from the Burger Barn.”
The man lowered his hand.
“With gravy?”
“REAL gravy.”
He smiled.
“Well, praise the Lord.”
And that was the closest anybody came to a religious experience that morning.
Now, you’d think that would have been the end of it.
Fourteen hungry people sent home.
One sheriff with a headache.
One agricultural extension agent reconsidering her career.
One quarter-acre field full of instant gravy powder and the finest crab hoeing ever performed in Washitall Parish.
But Hoss had one more thing to do.
He wanted to harvest.
Lucille said no.
Biggun said no.
I said several things that would’ve gotten me removed from a respectable church picnic.
Hoss looked at his rows.
“But how’m I gonna know if it worked?”
Lucille took a soil sample, sealed it in a bag, and told him she’d help him figure out how to clean up the plot properly.
Then she made him promise not to plant any more food products.
Hoss agreed.
Mostly because she still had his propane regulator.
We sent Clyde to haul the tables back.
Clyde complained that he’d been promised a meal.
I told him to drive to the Burger Barn and I’d feed him there, provided he didn’t bring the Tommy gun inside.
He considered that a reasonable compromise.
By ten-thirty, I’d made three enormous batches of actual sausage gravy.
Hot biscuits.
Scrambled eggs.
Coffee.
Enough to feed every church volunteer, Biggun, Lucille, and Clyde, who ate six biscuits and then tried to put two more in his coat.
Hoss arrived last.
He sat at the counter and ate with the solemn satisfaction of a man who believed his agricultural enterprise had been a partial success.
“Good gravy, Betsy.”
“Thank you, Elbert.”
“Real smooth.”
“That’s because it didn’t spend four days in the ground.”
He nodded.
“Probably helped.”
I leaned against the counter.
“Elbert, listen to me. Gravy comes from a kitchen. Not a field.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You cannot grow it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You understand that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He took another bite.
I watched him chew.
There was something about his expression I didn’t trust.
“What?”
“Nothin’.”
“Elbert.”
He looked down at his plate.
“Just reckon you harvested yours a little earlier than I did.”
I put both hands flat on the counter.
“Betsy,” Lucille said quietly from the next stool, “don’t.”
I looked at her.
She shook her head.
“Save your strength.”
So I did.
Because sometimes loving your neighbors means feeding them, and sometimes it means not beating them to death with a gravy ladle.
And in Katy Bill, Loosyaner, you never know which one the morning’s gonna require.
That evening, Hoss went back to the farm.
He put away the tools.
He checked the water troughs.
He made sure Clyde hadn’t parked the Turnip Wagon Truck in the ditch again.
Then he sat down at Daddy’s old desk in the equipment shed and opened the farm ledger.
The ledger was full of sensible things.
Rainfall records.
Planting dates.
Fertilizer costs.
Notes about soil conditions.
Daddy’s handwriting was neat and small, the handwriting of a man who believed that if you kept proper records, the land would eventually tell you what it needed.
Hoss sharpened his pencil.
Then he wrote:
GRAVY — DID NOT SPROUT.
WATER — GOOD.
SOIL — GOOD.
STIRRIN’ — EXCELLENT.
TEMPERATURE — QUESTIONABLE.
He studied his notes.
Something was missing.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the last empty gravy packet.
The corners were dirty. The front showed a beautiful bowl of brown gravy, thick and steaming, with a spoon resting beside it.
Hoss turned it over.
Read the directions.
Add water.
Bring to a boil.
Stir until thickened.
He nodded.
He’d done what he could.
Then his eyes fell on the bottom of the packet.
Two little words.
SERVES FOUR.
Hoss went very still.
He looked at the packet.
Then at the ledger.
Then back at the packet.
“Oh, hell.”
He stood up so fast his chair tipped backward.
Paul was sleeping in a pile of old feed sacks beside the wall.
Hoss hurried over and crouched beside him.
“Paul.”
Paul didn’t move.
“Paul, I figured out what went wrong.”
The possum opened one eye halfway.
Hoss held up the packet.
“Right there. Plain as day.”
Paul’s eye closed again.
“Serves four.”
Hoss shook his head in wonder.
“I only planted enough gravy for four people.”
He looked toward the window, where the last orange light of evening lay across the empty rows.
Then he smiled.
“Next season, Paul, we plant enough for the whole damn town.”
Paul rolled over in the feed sack.
He was simply too stoned to care.
And somewhere out in the Back 40, an entire community of crabs enjoyed the first peaceful evening they’d had in days.
They didn’t know about next season.
Not yet.
But I reckon when the Duck Danglin Wind Commander comes calling again, those purdy pinchers are gonna have their work cut out for them.
THE END