As he crested the last hill of Tallulah Falls, Blake accelerated out of the fog as 441 straightened. He drove the speed limit straight to Athens.

***

Vans and other vehicles crowded the parking lot of The Federal when Blake arrived at 11:02 a.m. Far more than usual, but then again this wasn’t a normal Friday morning for Nick Vegas. This was the day before his opening series of the 50-Forks dinners that would be held simultaneously the following day in ten cities. Nick would be the host chef in Athens at a private residence, since that was where the Food Channel camera crew would be. The dinner would be the first installment of a new Food Channel series called Underground Chefs and would air weeks later.

Blake backed his truck up to the kitchen entrance and walked inside. He knew his way around The Federal’s kitchen but always felt uncomfortable there. He passed the pastry prep area where dough was being rolled out and bread was being made, and continued walking into a sea of stainless steel. An orchestra of cooks...chefs! Chefs, sous chefs, assistants, line cooks, servers, and others without titles each attended to a task under the occasional direction of the conductor, the head chef. Pork bellies were being cured, fresh picked arugula was being sampled and inspected.

A local cheese maker had just come in with her assortment of cheeses for the Saturday dinner and the ensemble gathered for a team tasting. Yellow paste oozed from the white mold, raw-milk Camembert when the sous chef sliced into them, each cast member oohing and ahhing at the flavor, using descriptive phrases like “I can really taste the farm” and “it has the slightest essence of chocolate and lemongrass.” The cheese maker, chasing fame in her own right, Blake reckoned, explained it was due to her farm’s unique terroir. The chefs all nodded knowingly, as did the servers who would no doubt pass on that vague expression to diners so that they could feel better about parting with so much of their hard-earned money. Or inherited money, perhaps. Blake snorted to himself and continued walking. He saw two young busboys that weren’t too busy and asked them for help. He watched them hoist several large coolers from the back of his truck and pack the contents into the walk-in coolers before returning the collection of coolers to Blake’s truck. With the delivery unloaded, Blake strolled through the kitchen he knew so well to look for Nick.

“Can you tell me where Nick is?” Blake asked one of the sous chefs.

“Last I saw he was sitting at the bar.”

Blake walked through the double doors and into the rear of the dining room. Past the plastic palm tree, he could see someone sitting at the bar talking on his phone. It was Nick. Blake walked around the perimeter of the room to approach. Nick saw Blake approaching. He buried his smile and ended the call.

“Blake,” Nick said, looking at his Rolex. “What’s up?”

Clearly, Nick had either no time or no interest for small talk, for an unscheduled visit.

“I need to talk to you for a minute,” Blake said.

“Look, it’s a bad time—”

“It won’t take long,” Blake interrupted.

Nick stood and crossed his arms in front of him.

“What is it?”

Blake drew a deep breath and prepared to go down the list he had practiced on the ride down the way a pilot might check items off a pre-flight checklist.

“I just dropped off your centerpiece for tomorrow night’s dinner,” Blake began. “I delivered the cured hams you needed on Wednesday and FedExed the others to the other nine restaurants on the same day.”

“Yes, I know,” Nick said. “I’ve spoken to the chefs.”

Blake took another breath. “Nick...” Blake paused. What do I want to say? What am I trying to say?

“Blake, let’s talk some other time. I have a ton to do before tomorrow.”

“No!” Blake said, surprising both himself and Nick with his assertion of authority. “I mean...Nick, I’m done. Finished. I need to deliver everything to you as soon as I can. Everything. I’m done with all this.”

Nick surveyed Blake, trying to detect what might be the problem so that he could choose the best response from his arsenal. He cast a line into the water. “What’s wrong, Blake?”

“I’m just done, Nick. I can’t do it anymore. My own wife doesn’t even know what I’m doing!”

Nick saw his opportunity to take control and began to assert himself. “And why is that, Blake?”

“BECAUSE, Nick,” Blake began and then quieted his voice. “You know why. It’s illegal. Everything I’m doing up there. The animals weren’t taken legally and the meat you had me cure for you hasn’t been inspected. And, it’s not even my land! You know that! I didn’t want Angelica to have anything to do with that!”

As he stopped talking Blake realized he had blurted all of that naïvely, as if talking to himself alone in the car, something that had become habit. Nick said nothing. He kept his arms crossed and stared Blake down. Blake dropped his eyes and continued.

“It’s over. Half of the hams are ready. I’m sure the others are good to go too,” Blake said, “since they’ve been curing for a little over a year now.”

“That’s no good, Blake. They have to go through that second cool autumn and winter to fully develop, that’s crucial. I’ll take the hams when they are two years old, just as we agreed,” Nick said. “And not a moment before.”

Blake stood tall and prepared to call Nick’s bluff. “Fine. Like I said Nick, I’m done. Take them now or...I’ll offer them to someone else.”

Blake hadn’t meant for the demand to sound as threatening as it did, but it was too late now. Nick grinned slightly, slyly. He sat down on a barstool and appeared so relaxed, so completely at ease. He reached his arms forward, interlocked his fingers and cracked his knuckles as they pushed out toward Blake.

“You know, Blake,” Nick began, “now that I listen to you describe what you’ve been doing, wouldn’t that be considered a violation of the Federal Meat Inspection Act? It’s just like that farmer in New York that got caught selling meat last year that wasn’t inspected, isn’t it?”

“Nick, you know what we agreed to! I’m selling you live animals, not processed meat. You don’t need a permit or inspection to sell live animals. We agreed that I would cure the meat for you as a friendly service, but you bought the live animal and that’s not a violation,” Blake said, but not as confidently as he would have liked. The truth was he didn’t know how the laws would be interpreted, and didn’t want to find out.

“Hmm...maybe you’re right, Blake. Except...I’m not sure the USDA would agree with you on that if they were to come in and ask us who we got the meat from. Oh sure, we’d probably tell them what you just said, but then again we as the restaurant wouldn’t have any culpability. The responsibility for knowing and following the law is on the one who sells the meat. That’s you, Blake. And that’s what happened to that farmer in New York who sold meat that wasn’t inspected. Let’s see he’s doing, what is it...eight years behind bars now, on top of the quarter million dollar fine they laid on him. Lost his house and his wife.”

Blake listened and thought of how to respond to Nick’s thinly veiled threat, but Nick continued.

“All I do is just write the check to you, Blake. Never checks larger than $5,000 at a time, just as you requested.”

Blake clenched his jaw.

“Of course, the authorities don’t come in and ask questions too often,” Nick said, “but you never know when someone may make an anonymous call and a health inspector will show up here or a USDA investigator will show up at your place. By the way, if the inspectors ever do visit you, where’d you get those pigs from anyway? I suspect they’d want to know about that too.”

Nick knew full well where he got those pigs, but, as if it had never dawned on him before, Blake realized that Nick had nothing to do with it other than planting the seed to germinate in the fertile soil of Blake’s greedy mind. It was Blake who had found Savannah locals to trap the descendants of Spanish pigs for him for next to nothing. They were all too happy to make some money doing it.