Page 15 of The Corruption of Hollis Brown

Annie: :////

Hollis: We can talk about it when you’re ready. I don’t mind having to wait.

Russet

Mr. Brown was in the backyard harvesting onions before the next frost.

Hollis’s ma was in the kitchen washing the dishes and watching him. She looked happy.

Things were always lighter on the weekends, warmer when his father was home.

Hollis sliced a thick piece of sweet potato bread for himself and spread it with fresh rosemary butter. He settled in at the kitchen table and rested his head on his elbow as he chewed.

“I’m going to roast a few onions when he’s finished,” Mrs. Brown said. “Mr. Allen gave us a chicken. Two of his got out and froze in the night.”

Hollis hummed. The weather got like this when fall was almost over—warm one day, freezing the next.

“I’ve gotta make some cheese before this milk sours,” she continued, scrubbing hard at the pan in the sink.

“I’ll do it,” Hollis murmured. He tried to pick up more chores when Mr. Brown was home so that his parents could spend time together. Forty-eight hours a week didn’t seem long enough to him.

Hollis’s ma wiped her hands on a dish towel, then crossed the kitchen to give Hollis a kiss on the top of his head.

“Sweet boy.”

Ghost

Hollis prepared the rennet and citric acid, then set the milk up to boil. Cheesemaking wasn’t his favorite, it was more of his ma’s thing. But he could make mozzarella, cream cheese, and ricotta if they wanted to have lasagna.

Mrs. Brown could stretch milk and cream out into yogurt and sour cream, buttermilk, farmer’s wheel cheese, and that bitter white cheddar his father liked to open on New Year’s Eve every year. There was even an experimental Parmesan moldering away in the root cellar.

But mozzarella was easy; anyone could make it.

They had onion soup with firm white slices of it for dinner, and he shredded a bit of it to make a cheese pizza with store-bought sauce the next day. Mr. Brown packed some of it to take with him wherever he went during the week. He pressed his big hand onto Hollis’s shoulder as he passed through the room.

Hollis went to bed Sunday night warm and full.

Mozzarella

Ingredients

1¼ cup water

1½ teaspoon citric acid

¼ rennet tablet or ¼ teaspoon liquid rennet (not Junket rennet*)

1 gallon milk, whole or 2 percent, not ultrapasteurized**

1 teaspoon kosher salt

Equipment

5-quart or larger nonreactive pot

Cooking thermometer

8-inch knife, offset spatula, or similar slim instrument for cutting the curds