The Carter family has long made its livelihood on Chili. From the earliest days of the chili queens of San Antonio onwards, it was practically a religion. Sundays were for the Lord but the multiple times a week the sons, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Alma Reyes-Carter worshiped at the altar of the chili pot and stove. Their family recipe was famous statewide. The restaurant the Carters ran, the Chili Cloud, sold chili, tex-mex, barbecue, and let's be honest mostly chili, and was sought after enough they made a premium from deliveries. Customers from as far afield as Amarillo on one end, Brownsville on the other- from as far east as Houston and as far west as Los Angeles, received orders for food delivered to them by one of the Carters family themselves.

Those far-off places came with special orders and demands but the Carters welcome all to wish to sup upon their chili. For the Carters the most important things in the world were family, chili, and tradition. While they ran a thriving restaurant, it was still out of the singular location and the reasons they ran it in this way were to support those endeavors.

Aside from the great martial arts tournament equivalent of chili, the chili cook-off, the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons of Mama Alma were working for the restaurant. Most worked in the kitchen, that sacred sanctum which the most worthy were granted entry, but others went to school to further knowledge of business aspects.

However, not all of them were blessed by the confidence of the family and allowed in the inner sanctum that was the kitchen of the Chili Cloud. It is in this land that our story begins.

***

“Oi! Wake up, you layabout!” came a call from the other side of his bedroom door. When he didn’t answer, the singular voice transformed into a chorus that called the same thing, and his door handle shook.

Alfonso “Alfie” Carter grumbled sleepily, rolling in his blankets and wishing for all of his life that he was just sick.

As he stared blearily up from his nest of blankets, his mind warred. The disciple and conscience he grew up building demanded that he not even consider claiming he was sick. He wasn’t, after all. Alfonso was just exhausted after having spent much of the night before working on his own chili recipe.

“I don’t need a personal shoulder angel telling me how greedy and selfish it is to call off. Believe me,” he grumbled to himself as the chorus continued, accompanied by his door knob being jingled. “I know it’ll make someone else have to carry my workload..”

Legs moved, and he got up, but it wasn’t because of guilt. He realized today was the weekly farmer’s market. After work he could find more ingredients and prove that Mama Alma’s venerable recipe was not the only way to make Chili and that it was not immune to improvement.

The dark brown-haired young man got up, croaking to his siblings at the door. “I’m up, I’m up. I’ll meet y’all at the Chili Cloud.”

He trudged to gather his things and get ready for the day.

***

His preparations were not fast because they did not need to be. The others needed to be at the restaurant earlier. His brothers and cousins that worked there would be in the backhouse, unloading bulk goods or doing the beginning of work. His sisters and other cousins who worked at the Chili Cloud would make sure that the front of the restaurant was ready or help his aunt with the accounting and orders that were in.

Alfie was just the glorified errand and delivery boy. Aside from visiting Mama Alma with lunch and the freedom of the road, he hated it. So he took his time, as he didn’t have to be there at six am to prepare everything. He didn’t have to arrive before ten in the morning.

So when the others were gone and he completed his daily hygiene rituals, he began another. He needed to check the workshop and see if his brew was ready for the next step. He wanted to bring some of his new recipe of Chili to Mama Alma when he visited her, because, unlike all of her descendants and disciples in the kitchen, she knew immortality was a myth. Recipes were meant to grow and change.

He smiled at the mere thought of her and the way she always encouraged him when he tried to give her a new dish or recipe.

As he entered the frigid cold of the winter and walked to the cook shed in the back of his parent’s home it was with a contemplative walk. Each breath was deep and the warm breath meeting the air created enough fog that he could not help but feel joy from it. Granddad played pretend with Alfie and his siblings in temperatures like this, instead of mundane people they became a clutch of dragons for a winter’s day, breathing the hot breath in the confines of winter!

He still felt those mornings’ joy by the time he crossed the yard and entered the converted shed which was an external secondary kitchen. With that joy in his heart he began to work on his passion, creating a chili recipe worthy of his family’s enjoyment.

As he worked, he watched one of his grandfather's old martial arts movies on the DVD player in the shed. His grandfather's love of martial arts movies and wuxia was so wide that it influenced the name of the Carter family restaurant. It was named the Chili Cloud to reference a flying nimbus, and the numerous cultivation sects in films and novels that featured cloud or cloudy in their names. Shown clearly with the restaurant's signage and menu featuring a sleeping serpentine dragon like chili pepper, laying on a bed which was a bowl of chili with beans.

To calls of “You Dare?" and “This young Master will give you pointers" he worked. Sometimes his family reminded him of these movies.

Uncle Eddie certainly fit the bill, as Alfie remembered the Sous Chef of the Chili Cloud’s voice and words even now.

As he stirred the cauldron like a pot of chili he remembered his uncle's arms crossed and the call of “You dare dishonor our recipe and customer like that? Beans must be packed separately from the chili, or it is not proper chili.”

He remembered the glare he got when he retorted "Well, Mama Alma always played it with the beans inside and the cornbread on the side."

He did not however choose to think of how his uncle almost blew up on him when Alfi tried to create a vegetarian chili for the menu. Uncle Eddie was terrifying.

Alfie did dare, he showed it time and time again. He cooked.

***

When eleven am hit, he was on time at the Chili Cloud to check in. Like the dutiful son he was, he immediately began to sweep the porch, as he waited.

Stolen story; please report.

Uncle Eddie didn't like him going past a certain point in the front of the restaurant, and actual packaging of the orders for delivery wasn't allowed for him either. Like an excessively hot pepper he was kept far away and controlled.

So Alfonso stood there, making glances behind the counter as he waited for his itinerary.

Rather than get it, his Uncle Eddie popped out of the back and called out to him.

“Don’t you try to trick your cousins into letting you in the back, Hijo. Or try to get your Aunt to grant you leave. Short of Mama Alma herself showing up in the kitchen is my domain." The olive skinned man punctuated every word with a pinch of a pair of tongs in his hand as if to be extra dramatic.

Alfonso did not even grimace, he did not grumble. He tried to keep his face stoic, his emotions controlled. Anger was present though, plainly visible to any who knew him with his nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge.

"Don't go for it, toro. He might as well have said ‘ole’.” Spouted the perpetually deadpan voice of his cousin Amalia. “Tio Eddie wants to get you out of the Chili Cloud wholesale. He won't stop trying to tell Auntie Edith anyone who thinks a vegetarian chili has a place on the menu doesn't have a place in the cloud. Luckily she just laughed at him and said to leave you alone. ”

Alfonso’s eyes widened at that, Auntie Edith was one of Mama Alma’s only living granddaughters and she effectively was the manager of the Chili Cloud. “Thanks for telling me, Amalia."

She gave him a gentle nod, before stepping away to answer the tablet ping that meant there was another order put in digitally.

“Just chill out while we get everything ready, and don't fight with Uncle Eddie."

Alfonso went to do what he always did while waiting for the delivery rush these days. He booted up a match of Street Fighter on the arcade machine older than himself.

Twenty minutes later he was standing in front of a mountain of to go orders and trying to withstand the pinching of his left dimple by his great aunt Edith.

“Alfie, such a good boy. I know Eddie is trying to goad you but don't let it get you down. You will get there some time soon, I promise."

Alfonso nodded silently, this was a ritual between them by this point. Alfonso worked for the restaurant in some capacity or another since before he was even sixteen, and he had always heard those words about the kitchen.

“So you have twenty orders to be delivered here, along with the order of delivery mapped out. Each is marked and the one with the heart is for Mama, you, and Odiseo. Tell her I will be there by this evening."

Alfonso nodded. “Yes, Auntie Edith.” And he began to take the orders out to his delivery vehicle, the illustrious celestial chili cloud. In no time at all the orders were secured in the custom built dirt bike and trailer he inherited from his grandfather shortly after taking the job of delivery boy.

"Drive safe and good luck, Alfie. Give Mama a kiss for me and everyone here.”

The young man got on his dirtbike, adjusted his jacket, and his boots. Happy with them all he put his helmet on and drove out of the Chili Cloud's parking lot.

***

“Every creator masters their craft by living. worthwhile begins by its Creator living."

As he reheated cornbread in Mama Alma’s half century old oven, Alfonso remembered those words. They were his Mama Alma's words and he heard them as a child when he declared he would make a dish so delicious that it would make her smile as much as she made he and everyone else smile with her food. He asked her for advice then and those words were the answer she gave. He still didn’t understand them.

That dad was the spark of it all. His obsession with chili. As he reheated the food for his great-grandmother, himself, and her beloved Chihuahua, he thought on those days.

How long did he have left to make his Mama Alma proud like he declared he would? The dark brown-haired young man focused on the craft to distract himself from that thought.

When it was done, he sat it all up on the kitchen table at which his family sat at for generations and put Barry’s offering in the chihuahua's bowls.

“C'mon Mama Alma." Alfonso remarked as he gingerly helped the ninety-year-old woman to her chair. “I made you some new chili today. Auntie Edith sent some too, but mine is in the marigold colored bowl."

When they were seated and said grace, he watched the matriarch of his family with the same expression he displayed thousands of times before.

“I will choose the marigold bowl first, I think. Alfinito, what did you make for me today?”

"I started with getting some diced poblanos, sweet onions, and some ground bison. Kidney beans and pintos beans in a two to three ratio.” He began, before describing to her the entire list of ingredients and steps he took. As she listened and took her first bites, she made the gentle smile she gave him thousands of times before.

So their lunch went on, with the boy spending time with the woman he most wanted to make proud and not realizing he already had.

She has always been proud of her little Alfie.

***

Alfonso and Mama Alma finished their lunch. After a hug that lifted his great-grandmother up, he was off. He could spare forty-five minutes to visit the farmer’s market. After that, it would be near the time for the dinner rush and he would have more deliveries to make.

The matriarch of the Carter family planted a kiss on his cheek and sent him off. “Don’t forget to come back to get Odiseo and take him for some exercise, Alfinito! See you soon and remember, I love you.”

He gave her a smile and a nod. “Love you too Mama Alma." Then he took off on the Celestial Chili Cloud.

He would have spent all day with her if he could, but being shirking his duties might give Uncle Eddie the ammunition to actually get Alfonso fired from the Chili Cloud. The mere thought made him sympathize with protagonists in cultivation novels who feared their cores sealed and chi being forever out of their reach. It wasn't too different, because while Alfonso was sure any of the Chili Cloud’s rival restaurants would hire him in a heartbeat, it would not be the same.

He wanted to make food at the Chili Cloud and to have everyone tell him how delicious his recipe was.

So he drove as fast as he legally and safely could to make the time for his farmer’s market trip and get back in time for the dinner rush. Lunch and dinner were the only times the restaurant needed him for deliveries.

***

The farmer’s market was fun, and it excited Alfonso to use the ingredients he picked up from it. All he needed to do was finish his shift up, making deliveries for the dinner rush, and he would be free to begin his planning for the new ingredients and their recipe. It was lucky that his mighty steed, the dirt bike and trailer known as the Celestial Chili Cloud, with its temperature control bags inside the trailer.

The dinner rush flew by in the same way its name implied. Alfonso delivered no less than fifty orders across the county by the time he was done, and after checking back in at his family’s restaurant and being sent off with some random dishes for dinner - and he drove back to Mama Alma’s getting Odiseo for his nightly walk.

After giving her a hug and hooking Odiseo’s leash to the far too lively chihuahua, Alfonso began his walk around Mama Alma’s neighborhood.

“Odie, do you think Mama Alma liked my Chili? Did you?” Alfonso asked the dog, as he so often did. The young man did not have many friends, and Odiseo never judged him when he said what some might think were odd things. “I kind of wonder how adding some kimchi or ghost pepper jam near the end of cooking my next batch of chili with that recipe would change the taste.”

The big-eared dog looked at the young man with the same expression it often did, dumbfounded, before going back to its business. So this continued for nearly forty-five minutes, with the youth continuing his plans and odd ideas being expressed to the dog. He stopped to pet Odiseo several times during their walk, but there was no greater communication between the large chihuahua and the boy. Alfie was just happy to have someone to listen to his worries and concerns. Odie was just happy to be given pets, snacks, and praise during the walk through the wooded area near Mama Alma’s home.

When they were done, they returned to Mama Alma’s home. There were the telltale flashing red and blue lights of emergency services about a block away, but when the boy and the dog got there, the mere sight brought up the pace of Alfonso’s breathing. The lights were on in Mama Alma’s home. Her ancient landship of a Cadillac was still there, but there was none of the music she played as she went. The feeling of the old woman’s immense presence was not there. In fact, there were tread marks in the dirt and gravel of her driveway, as if a stretcher carried someone from her home and there was a note on the Celestial Chili Cloud.

Steeling himself and controlling his breathing, Alfonso moved to the taped note and tore it open to read.

“Alfie,

Mama Alma had an accident just before I got here. I think she is okay, but I am heading after the ambulance to meet her at the hospital. I will let everyone know what’s going on, but for now do me a favor and take care of Odiseo. I will talk to you soon.”

Auntie Edith wrote it, and he knew that. She was the only one in his family who would leave a note like that as opposed to sending a text message to his phone. So he sighed and looked at Odiseo, who was nervously trouncing around the yard. Odie was not an old dog, but he was used to a fairly specific routine and not seeing Mama Alma made the chihuahua whine.

“Let’s go get you some safety gear.” Alfonso said, before grabbing some pillows and blankets from the house and making a nest for the dog in the trailer. “We’ve got a hospital to visit.”

***

Alfonso was not driving safely through the rural roads from his great-grandmother’s home towards the hospital. He was driving with worry and grief and he would have been driving far too fast if it was not for the chihuahua’s own wellbeing he needed to consider. So it was easy for him to miss the strange thing across the road.

He drove so quickly he couldn’t even slow down when he drove through the silvery moonlight that dominated the dirt road and made the vision of a wooden bridge look like it was part of the same landscape.

By the time the dirt bike and trailer were upon it, Alfonso and Odiseo were far, far away.

The duo did not slow as Alfonso continued to gun the celestial chili cloud’s engine and speed down the suddenly slightly more bumpy road.