Mormon Pickles

The day he was born it rained so hard the sky almost vanished. The sky was so blue and deep that you couldn’t see to the bottom. That day his grandmother made Mormon pickles with cloves and dill weed, canning them in Mason jars with flimsy rubber stoppers and screw-tops that never quiet screwed tight. The brine-water was so murky that it reminded the shamble leg man of bull’s semen or curdled milk, a tart sweetness that made your eyes water. She used a double-boiler with a tinfoil lid and an oversized wooden spoon that had teeth-marks in it. The pong of salted cloves and his grandmother’s fingers pitching the spoon up against the side of the double-boiler. The day he was born the house smelled like Mormon pickles and the washing solution his grandmother used to sterilize the pickling jars.