Page 1 of Smoked

CHAPTER 1

WADE

The sun isn’t even up yet and I'm already sweating through my shirt.

The rig's been lit for nearly a half an hour and the firebox is just getting started, that first slow bloom of oak catching and settling into a burn that'll hold for hours.

But it’s hauling all the stuff that has me drenched. I made three trips from the truck to the cook site with coolers full of pork butts and racks of ribs, plus the Cambros, the sauces, the dry rubs, the foil, the butcher paper, the spritz bottles, and two folding tables I should've set up last night. The only reason I didn't was because I got home from a job at almost midnight and fell asleep on the couch.

Riley found me there this morning. She took a picture and said she was saving it for my obituary.

Ah, the joys of teenagers. She's fifteen and my everything. But she’s a goddamn menace.

"Dad." She's standing at the end of the prep table now, holding up two squeeze bottles. "Vinegar spritz or apple juice spritz?"

"Both. Vinegar first hour, apple juice after the bark sets."

"That's what you did last time and you said the bark was too dark."

I glance up from the firebox. She's got her dark hair pulled back in a braid with a Deepwood Mountain High Caribou ball cap, wearing the T-shirt I picked up for her from Love’s truck stop. Her face tells me she knows she's right and is just waiting for me to catch up.

"So what do you suggest?" I ask.

"Apple juice from the start. It has less sugar than the cider, but it still keeps things moist without⁠—"

"—competing with the rub. Yeah." I scratch my chin. "When'd you get smarter than me?"

"Shark week. Fifth grade. I did a presentation on apex predators and you spelled 'predator' wrong on my poster board."

"That was a stylistic choice."

“Whatever you say, Dad.”

I grunt and wave her off toward the coolers. She goes, grinning, and I turn back to the fire.

The charity cookout doesn't start until eleven. Deepwood Mountain's fire department has been throwing this thing every August for as long as I've been around, and I've been the one running the pit for the last six years. I don't get paid. Don't need to. Ike's crew does good work, and feeding this town is the closest thing I have to church.

But feeding hundreds of people means the cook starts before dawn. Pork butts need eight or nine hours at 225. Ribs are faster, but pickier. Too much heat and they go to leather. I've got three racks of St. Louis cuts and six bone-in butts, and every one of them needs to go on in the next thirty minutes if I'm going to hit the window.

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I wipe my hands on my apron and check it.

It’s from Dispatch.

3-day run, Billings to Bismarck, ND, pickup Monday AM. Good rate. You want it?

I stare at the screen. Good rate means twelve hundred bucks, maybe thirteen. Three days means I'm home by Wednesday night, which gives me Thursday and Friday to recover before the weekend.

The weekend I was planning to do a practice cook.

I close my eyes for a second and do the math. The Labor Day competition is about three weeks out. Entry fee's already paid—that came out of the last Billings run. Meat will run me four, maybe five hundred from my ethically sourced supplier. Gas to get the rig down there, another two. And every weekend I spend in the backyard dialing in my rub and rehearsing my timing is a weekend I'm not earning.

The guys who beat me last year? A team of four. They had a guy whose only job was fire management. Another one on sauce. A third prepping the turn-in boxes while the pitmaster rested. They rolled in with matching shirts and a canopy with their name on it and enough manpower to actually sleep during an overnight cook.

I showed up with a stick burner, a camp chair, and a dangerous amount of caffeine.

I came in fifth…which is pretty darn good considering. Would've placed if I hadn't been running on thirty-six hours without sleep and accidentally overwrapped my brisket by forty minutes during the stall.

But this year's different. I've been tweaking the rub since January. I know the rig better than I know my own pickup (and that's saying something since I've put three hundred thousand miles on it). The cook is solid. The technique is there.