The Icing Wars

The select board of Burdock Falls, Vermont, normally met on the second Tuesday of the month in the back room of the town office, under a calendar from the feed store, and normally the audience was two people and a dog.

On the third Tuesday of June it met in the Grange Hall, because a hundred and forty people had turned up, and some of them had brought folding chairs, and some had brought snacks, and Merle Tibbetts of the Burdock Falls Bugle had brought his camera and was standing on a bench at the back to get the angle.

There was one item on the agenda. Item One: Bicentennial Cake (Award of Contract).

Elias sat in the third row, still in flour from the afternoon, with his arms folded. Across the aisle, in the third row on the other side, in a white jacket that was somehow still pressed at seven o'clock at night, sat Lucien Thibodeau, also with his arms folded, looking at the ceiling as if it had been badly glazed.

The town of Burdock Falls had been chartered on the twentieth of June, 1826. On Saturday it would be two hundred years old. The rest of the country was getting ready for its two hundred and fiftieth on the Fourth of July, and Burdock Falls had decided, as a matter of principle, not to be upstaged by the nation. There would be a parade. There would be the fire department's chicken barbecue. And at noon, in this hall, the Lieutenant Governor of Vermont would cut the Bicentennial Cake: two hundred servings, one for every year.

Two bakeries had bid to make it. They faced each other across Main Street. One was the Burdock Bakeshop, which had been there for thirty-one years, the last six of them Elias's. The other was Pâtisserie Thibodeau, which had been there for three, and had a window that tourists photographed.

Odell Gage, chair of the select board and owner of Gage Hardware, cleared his throat. He had lost the gavel in 2019, and since then he had used a wooden spoon.

"The board," said Odell, "has voted. It's two to two."

The hall made a noise like a large animal turning over.

"I abstained," said Odell, "because I sell to both of them, and I would like to keep selling to both of them, and I would like to keep living here." He looked down at his notes, and then at the ceiling, where Lucien was still looking. "So the board has decided that the Bicentennial Cake will be co-catered."

Silence.

"Jointly," said Odell. "By both."

Lucien Thibodeau stood up.

"Non," he said. And sat down.

Elias stood up.

"For once," Elias said, "I agree with him."

The hall applauded, for a long time, as though this was the most exciting thing that had happened in Burdock Falls since the covered bridge flooded in 2011. Merle's camera went off three times. Somebody at the back shouted, "Bake-off!" and was shushed by somebody else, who shouted, "Duel!"

Odell banged the spoon.

"It's decided," he said. "I'm handing over to the Bicentennial coordinator."

Bunny Szymanski rose from the front row. She was seventy, and five foot one, and had spent thirty-four years as an air-traffic controller at Burlington, and she held a clipboard the way other people held a fire extinguisher.

"Listen up," said Bunny. "You'll both work out of this kitchen. Wednesday to Saturday. Six a.m. start." She pointed at the swing doors behind the stage. "Two hundred servings. On the table at noon Saturday. The committee will select the recipe by Friday from your submissions. It has to have something from 1826 in it. I don't care what. Questions?"

Elias turned, and found that Lucien had turned too, and was looking at him across the aisle with an expression of profound, almost scientific, suspicion.