On Butternut Days

Declan shuffled into the pub after a long morning of work, his socks damp with sweat and light rain, his lower back humming like an electric wire. This was his “normal,” his “daily.” His feet ached. His shifts ended at noon—too early for a pint, his wife would say. But he had a few anyway, alongside a “soup of the jour,” as Eileen called it.

Eileen slid him a bowl, a pint Guinness, a saucer with two squares of wheat, and a pat of butter. She hobbled away on thick legs, but not far. There was always something to wash or wipe or organize, which had her brushing by the bar on both sides at regular intervals. Declan cracked two twists of black pepper over the dark brown-orange, then took a slurp, full and noisy. 

“Yum,” he said. “Delicious, Eileen.”

She sparkled, young eyes in an older, plump face. “Thank ye. Same as last week’s, sure you can tell. But I never shied away from a compliment.” She was well past her wild days, but never lost it in the glances, in the timbre of her voice. She got back to scrubbing. 

Maybe it was something about her cheery note against the empty pub walls that reminded Declan that he was a fraud. Or maybe it was the long hours, the terrible pay. Maybe he just lacked energy. But, whatever the case, he was made of tin. A sour, crisp darkness washed through his cheeks and heart. He set the spoon to one side, cleared his throat, and stared blankly at the pat of butter.

“Everything alright, hun?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered. “Well, I mean. No.”

Eileen set her platter of empty lager glasses on the back counter, then turned her whole width to face him. Declan had been coming around her place for years. He was a good man, simple and quiet like most in these parts, including her husband and oldest son. Most of the men in her life—at least past the age of 30 or so—didn’t hold a conversation longer than a minute. So she could tell when the clouds parted, a psycho-meteorological event, in the mind of a quiet man. If he has a thing to say, she thought, he says it now, or never again until he dies. Curious, and in want of a bit of chatter, she faced him with a soft interest in the curl of her eyebrows and lips, an expression she metered out intuitively, as easy as pouring two fingers of whiskey—years of practiced feminine friendliness that invited weepy masculinity through her conversational front door. And sure enough, Declan’s clouds parted.

“I don’t like anything,” he said, shoulders tight, not looking her in the eye. 

“That so?”

“Well, what I mean is, I don’t feel emotions, I think, the way that normal people ought. I’m a scarecrow.”

“I don’t follow,” she said. “We all have our down days, but surely you like something!”

“Afraid not.” He adjusted the spoon on his plate, then nudged the bread and butter around with his fingers as if inspecting a child for lice. “The soup, for example. I didn’t feel joy, but I said I liked it anyway. It was a performance, you get me? A manipulation. A calculation... of sorts.”

“You didn’t mean the ‘yum’?”

“I didn’t mean the ‘yum.’”

She thought about this a moment. This was his favorite soup—or at least, she had thought so. She made it every week: roasted butternut squash, onions, red peppers, pureed in a chicken broth with salt, sage, and heavy cream. Some days during autumn, she toasted pumpkin seeds and sprinkled them on top. It wasn’t her only soup, or even her best, but she knew Declan only “yum”-ed on the butternut days.

Declan sipped his Guinness. “I hope I didn’t offend.”

“It’s alright, hun. Just making sure I got you right. You don’t like soup?”

“Well... no, no. I don’t like anything, is the problem. I only say it, and act it. I wasn’t sincere earlier, when I said ‘yum,’ is all.”

“Then why’d you say it?” 

He took another drink.

On a slow afternoon like this, it wasn’t uncommon to have a conversation between tasks and obligations. While Declan fidgeted with a response in his mind, Eileen busied herself with restocking the back shelf. There were no other patrons. Soft tinks of pint glasses blended with the patter of rain.

“As I figure it, I said it for the obvious reason: to make you think I liked it.”

“And I s’pose it worked.”

“See how I mean? It’s like a manipulation. It’s not real feelings.”

“Sure, Dec, I see what you mean. But why in the world do you care if I think you like the soup? You been coming on ta me all these years?” She winked.

“Oh, your ego,” he chuckled. But the chuckle was false. He was in no mood to laugh. Inside, he was cold, bolted together and wired like a robot. Each reaction, no matter how quick, was a series of biological zeroes and ones that he could math out on paper if he only had the energy, which he never did. Work sucked the energy out of him. Life did, too. If he had ever had real emotions, he couldn’t remember what they were like, and when they left. “I suppose... I suppose I want you thinking I mean what I say so you don’t surprise us all one day with a new recipe.” He motioned towards the soup with his chin.

“You figure I might?”

“You haven’t so far. And I expect to keep it that way. That’s the heartless calculation, I figure. The farce. Acting this way to keep you doing things the way you do ‘em.”

“I didn’t realize you were behind all this,” she said, airing a pudgy hand around the pub. “Here, I thought I was my own woman!”

“Well, sure, look.”

Eileen frowned. Her joking was, perhaps, too far. He’d clam up quick if she didn’t find a gentle way to press him.

“So tell me this, Dec. What’s so important about this manipulation?”

“About the soup, you mean? I have other examples.”

“This is the only one that affects me, so far as I know.”

“Oh, it’s part of the routine, I figure.”

“Of coming here every day?”

“Of coming here every day,” he agreed. “Of every day, in general. A day of work, a few pints, and a bit of food before I make my way back home to watch the news.”

“So you say ‘yum’ so that I don’t mess up this routine of yours with a new soup?”

“New soup I don’t mind, from time to time. Hell, a new routine might even be good for me. It’s the butternut itself I aim to preserve. And I execute that goal—all goals, all of life’s tiny bits—like a computer program, without emotion.”

“So, you mean to say you don’t feel feelings like everyone else.”

“I fear that’s the case.”

“And instead of saying ‘yum’ because you like my butternut soup, you say it as an act?”

“Controlling my environment,” he agreed. “Pretending, is all.”

“And why’s that?”

Declan finished his pint, tapped the top indicating another, and scratched his beard as he waited for Eileen to fill the Guinness to its exact moment of rest, the perfect spot between empty and full, where the coffee-white foam retreated like a tide in wait for the final top-off. “Why’s what?” he finally asked.

“Why do you go through all this performance,” she said, leaning deep over the bar counter, “saying ‘yum’ when you don't mean it, and doing all this logical ‘manipulation’”—here, she used finger quotes—“to convince me to keep working the same as I was always planning to, just to keep the butternut the same as it already was? What’s the point of that?”

“Does it need a point?”

“It does if you're a heartless, calculating machine hell-bent on executing goals.”

“Ah, well, that’s true enough.” He swallowed another large spoonful, careful not to dribble anything down his work shirt. His fingers trembled. An agitation had crept into him, one he only felt when at his weakest moments. Eileen was like a child, poking and pressing at the unimportant parts of the topic. He took a breath. “I can’t have this soup change on me, now can I? After a long day—a long week, really—I need to be sure that, on butternut days, I get the butternut soup I expect. That’s the goal, as plain as I can tell it.”

“The goal is to make sure you get this exact soup?”

“It’s a good enough goal, isn’t it?”

“Why’s that?”

At this, his cheeks turned red. “Well, damn, Eileen, isn't it obvious? It's because I like this soup!” He took the final sip. “Yum, dammit!”

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Sources:

• Image: Lannie "Merlandese" Neely III