I set my chisel down real slow on the lip of the firebox in Spencer, because the false back of brick had come away in my hand, and behind it, in the dark, a dry chamber sat sealed like a pantry. I am Boyd Sutter, fifty nine years old, and for twenty three years I have built and rebuilt brick smokers across the hills of Roane County. The big smoker at Cobb Pit Barbecue had fed that town since 1971. Its owner, Lyle Cobb, had passed in the summer, and his twin sons stood behind me, side by side and not speaking, as they had not spoken in six years.
I reached into the chamber and drew out a heavy tin box, painted red, the kind that holds biscuits at Christmas. Under it lay an old cast iron skillet wrapped in a flour sack, and under that, a coffee can with the lid taped down. Randy Cobb, the elder twin, took the can from me without a word. Wade, the younger, stared at the skillet. They had run the pit together for twenty years, until a quarrel over money had split the family, and they had sold nothing and shared nothing since. Now they were fighting over the smoker.
It was Randy who pried the lid off the tin. Inside lay a folded paper, the deed to the pit and the acre it stood on, free and clear, and a recipe card in the hand of their father. Wade picked up the coffee can and shook it, and the sound was soft, the sound of paper. He peeled back the tape. The two brothers looked down, and then at each other, for the first time in six years. The can held three hundred and ten thousand dollars in cash, in rolls, each bound with a rubber band and a slip of paper marked with a year.
A false brick wall pulled from a firebox gave one mason the day to bring two brothers back to their father in Spencer.
I gave my terms with my hands up, the way you stop a fight between brothers. “Boys, nobody touches that money until you read what is on the recipe card. I built this smoker. I will not rebuild it for men who are not speaking. I will wait. Sit down on those stools, the two of you, and read the handwriting of your father. Then you may tell me whether to put the false back on or leave the chamber open. It is your call, and it is the only call that matters in this yard.”
Randy read it aloud, in a voice that broke at the second line. Lyle had written it the year of the quarrel, in pencil, on the back of a recipe for burnt ends. He said that he had hidden the money in the smoker because he trusted only fire to keep it, that every roll was a year of profit he had set aside for the two of them, and that he could not stand to see his boys split. “The smoker is the family,” it read. “It only works when both doors are open. Open them together, or sell it, and be happy.” Wade put his head in his hands.
None of us noticed the pickup that had pulled in behind the pit. Vernon Pugh, who ran the rival stand down the road and had been trying to buy the Cobb property for years, had heard from a clerk about the deed. He walked into the yard in his work boots, plucked the deed out of the open tin before anyone could speak, and ran toward his truck, waving it over his head. He did not get far. The regulars of the Friday lunch, eleven farmers and linemen in caps who had come for brisket and found a family quarrel, had been standing along the fence with their paper plates. They moved as one, and put themselves between Vernon and his truck.
Vernon Pugh looked at the eleven men with paper plates and sauce on their fingers. One of them, a lineman named Dutch, held out a hand and said gently, “Vernon, you know better.” The deed fluttered down onto the gravel. Randy picked it up. Then he turned and crossed the yard to his brother, who was standing by the firebox with tears running down his face, and the two of them, who had not touched in six years, held each other in the smoke, with their foreheads together. “I am sorry I said what I said,” Randy whispered.
The money consequences were quiet. The deed was filed at the courthouse, and the property was found to be clear. The three hundred and ten thousand dollars was divided in half, between the twins, with a share set aside to repair the roof of the pit and to fix the old walk in cooler. Vernon Pugh was charged with larceny and fined, and, to the surprise of the town, Wade brought him a plate of brisket the day he got out. Vernon ate it on the tailgate of his truck and cried.
In the name of Lyle, who passed in the summer, the brothers started the Lyle Cobb Fund, and I sit on its board. It pays for culinary training, pit builder apprenticeships and start up costs for small barbecue stands, in Roane, Jackson and Calhoun counties. In the first year we trained twenty three young cooks and helped nine families open stands. One was a former welder in Walton who built his first brick smoker with my crew, and who fed the whole street on opening day for free.
Friday at noon, the line at Cobb Pit Barbecue stretches down the road to the old feed store. Randy works the front, Wade the back, and the doors of the smoker stand open on both sides, so the heat rolls out evenly. I stopped by with a brick trowel and a paper plate. Wade handed me a rib without being asked, and Randy poured the tea. On the wall above the register hangs a recipe card, in a frame, in pencil. I read it again while I ate, and I did not say a word.
