Chapter 2

Kevin checked what was on the floor, making notes on a clipboard of what he needed to bake off that day. The first was the "breakfast stuff" – croissants, turnovers, and cinnamon "swirls" that people liked to buy in the morning and eat with their coffee. A lot of people came in on the way to work, and it irked Kevin that with him coming in at 7 AM he couldn't have the breakfast stuff fresh for them. But he did the baking, and others made the schedules, and so he baked during the day instead of at night as he had when he'd started.

He'd need plenty of swirls, he saw, though eating them as a kid he'd always called them cinnamon rolls. But Wal-Mart's cinnamon rolls were another thing entirely. Sometimes big companies just don't make sense, he thought as he made his notation. But surely it wasn't this silly when Sam Walton was alive.

Back in the bakery itself, he said hello to the donut crew, who had come in at 4, and opened the freezer. He grabbed a case of cinnamon swirls first. He'd need several trays, and since the open case was nearly empty – as he could tell from the lightness of it – he picked up a full case as well. At his station he grabbed a fistful of trays from their rack and laid them on his table, and then walked back beside the oven and selected a 10-slot rack – one that would hold up to 10 trays. He pulled it to his table and set it in place, where he could reach it easily. A sheet of parchment paper in the top tray, and a good spray of pan release to keep the finished product from sticking, and he was off. He'd decided to do five trays, so he set the trays, as he filled them, in alternate slots, keeping an empty slot between them. When he'd panned out all five trays, he closed the second case, sliced the tape on the bottom of the empty case so he could fold it flat under the table, and rolled the rack to the oven. The oven and the proofer had already been on when he came in, since the donut crew used them too, and now he pushed the rack inside the oven, making sure its top flanges caught on the elevator which would lift the rack and spin it to get even heat distribution. Closing the door, he set the time for 10 minutes and the temperature to 400 degrees, and hit the start button.

He carried the case of swirls back into the freezer, grabbing a couple of cases of turnovers – one cherry, one mini apple. That would need a 10-slot rack, for the cherry turnovers would need four trays and the case of mini apple would run to six. He found the rack, put it in place, and panned out the turnovers. By the time that was done the buzzer on the oven was going off, and he pushed the turnovers that way and looked in the window. The swirls were ready to come out, so he opened the door – which silenced the buzzer – and used a pair of potholders to pull the hot rack out. He slid the turnovers in, set the timer for 20 minutes, and set the swirls aside to cool for a few minutes.

While they were cooling, he got the rack of croissants from the cooler. Croissants, unlike swirls and turnovers, needed to thaw and rise before baking, so the previous day's baker – Charlie Gutierrez, his name was – had broken them out before the end of his shift. Kevin pulled the cover off the rack, quickly rolling it up and stuffing it into the old cardboard box that sat on a shelf beside his table. There were just a few trays of croissants, he saw, and remembered noticing that the modular display was moderately full. Pulling a tray of small croissants off the rack, he deftly bent each one and twisted its ends together, producing the shape that had, when he was a kid, led everyone he know to call them crescent rolls. They were croissants now, the yuppies having gotten their mitts into them, but Kevin figured they'd always be crescent rolls in his mind. He was too old to change his vocabulary every time a new fad hit. And besides, bikers don't change for nobody, he thought with a grin. The grin grew wider as he imagined the reaction customers had when they found out he had baked their bread. Ain't used to seein' a biker in a hairnet, I guess. And probably he wouldn't have believed it either, if he'd heard about it.

He twisted the small croissants, and then the large ones, and opened the proofer. This appliance sat next to the oven, and as he opened the door a wave of warm humidity rolled over him. If I wore glasses this'd fog 'em up good, he thought, and smiled as he realized that he'd had the same thought before. Every day it came to him, with the regularity and dependability of a fog in San Francisco. He pushed the croissants in and closed the door, setting the timer for 30 minutes. In the warmth and moisture the yeast would work at high speed, causing the croissants to rise much faster than they would just sitting out, and would keep them from drying out while they rose.

By now the swirls were cool enough to work with, though still warm, and he grabbed a bucket of donut glaze from under the table and pried the lid off. There was a bucket opener hanging beside his station, but Kevin never used it. Hands that had twisted bolts and tightened fastenings on a hundred motorcycles, and that had punched faces and twisted arms, didn't need the opener. Kevin was already wearing plastic gloves, and now he slipped a second one over his left hand. He pulled a tray of swirls from the rack, using a potholder since the metal was just too hot to touch, and dipped his double-gloved left hand into the glaze. He dripped it, in large gobs, onto the cinnamon swirls, and then spread the glaze over them. People liked glazed cinnamon swirls – or rolls, if they called them that – and while perfect coverage wasn't necessary or even possible, he liked to do it right.

When he'd glazed the whole bunch, he pulled the second glove from his left hand, and dropped it in the trash barrel. He pushed the rack over to the packager's station, where it would finish cooling, and walked back to the oven. The turnovers were coming along nicely, and the indicator on the proofer showed that the croissants were about halfway through rising. Just to be sure he opened the door and checked – yep, about halfway ready. Kevin checked his watch, and found he was on schedule. That quick glance didn't actually tell him the time – for that he would have had to look again – but without noticing how many minutes it was after 7 or before 8 he could see where he was compared to where he ought to be.

Back in the cooler, he pulled out racks of bolillos, kaisers, French bread, Italian bread, and hard rolls. Some he needed to season with various toppings – garlic parmesan; rosemary herb, sundried tomato basil; sesame or poppy seeds; a mixture the store called "everything" and included salt, poppy seeds, and dried onions and garlic – and some he needed to cut in various ways to provide esthetic appeal and allow the baking bread to rise without splitting apart. He absently wished the donut crew had picked a different radio station to listen to. I just can't get into this Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera stuff. Give me some good old Steppenwolf or Deep Purple or Alice Cooper or something, he thought. And as he went to wash the knife he'd been using, he smiled to himself. I guess you can't teach an old biker new tricks.

Kevin went to lunch about 20 minutes after 11. When you're baking you can't just take off when the clock says it's time – dough is rising, bread is baking, and you've got to be there to pull it out of the proofer or the oven. But he'd come to a stopping place, and went to clock out. The time clock was right beside the door to the break room, and after it had accepted his badge he stuck some change in the soda machine and punched the button for a bottle of Mountain Dew. He got his lunch out of the cooler and sat down, pulling out the contents of the plastic bag – an apple, a couple of ham and Swiss sandwiches with mustard and a slice of tomato each, a big ziploc bag of plain Ruffles, and a pocket-sized red book. The cover, in the lower right-hand corner, had a circle with a two-handled pitcher in it, and the lettering said New TestamentPsalmsProverbs. He'd picked it up somewhere over the past three months, he wasn't sure just where – on the road from California, he thought. He'd taken to bringing it to work, and reading from it while he ate.

It was laborious work. He followed the words with his finger, trying to make sense of the old fashioned English. The Bible the pastor in Chowchilla had given him was a modern translation, the New American Standard – the pastor had said it was one of the most accurate translations – but this little Testament was the Authorized or King James Version. Kevin wondered if some king named James had authorized it. It clearly was older than the New American Standard, and harder to understand, though Kevin's education wasn't always up to the modern version either. Droppin' out wasn't all they said it was, he thought as he puzzled out a verse. Probably coulda used a little more o' that readin' stuff.