What’s it like being raised in a candy shop?

There’s fire in the kettle. Made up of a thousand little mirrors of you, one in each hand-beaten dimple of the copper. There is wood. Carved by hand, axe-head heft, palm-stained by years of use. There is ash on the furnace. There is sugar and blood. And sweat. Always sweat. And a burner quietly screaming amongst the howls and shakes and thuds of propane pipes.

There is soot. It lines the walls, makes a heat-map of every joint and joist beneath the drywall. How do you build a home? Dad said. One board at a time. You wonder if it makes a map in you, too, in your lungs, your veins. There is stone. Two tons of it. Marble quarried from the north. Polished by a stone mason you’ve never seen sober. In winter it feels colder than the headstones your family rests under.

Candy making is a give and take, a balancing act between extremes. Bitter and sweet. Hot and cold. And you are the bridge. The transitory. Like the wrack line of a beach. Like where the horizon meets the sky. Can’t you hear the peanuts talking? Once, you did. Even now, they whisper.

There is metal. Bronze plows and steel tables. Aluminum pans. And iron—so much iron!—enough to ward off demons and trap ghosts. They cast everything with it back then, when industry was a thing being born instead of recovered. The machines growl and shriek and turn and beat, combining air with syrup, sky with sea, love with sugar. Love can look like a furrowed brow, a sweat-stained shirt, a discerning eye. Even on the darkest days, there is love.

Imagine looking down in a faraway city’s dark night and seeing a pair of eyes and upturned palm. Imagine putting money in that palm, and five seconds later seeing three, four. Imagine a mother who ate stolen cacao pods and spat out the bitter seeds. Imagine her leaving everything she knows for a life that can keep so many more hands and mouths full.

Imagine a world where no one watches the balance. Something like a batch without a stirrer. Or maybe like a batch started and wooden ladle handed to you. It tastes bitter, like purpose. You must make it sweet. You must make it make sense. You must find the sugar, crush the cane.

Imagine a father. Just a man. One who has started over more times than he has left in him. Imagine a flame, carefully tended, dutifully guarded. An Olympic flame. Now imagine the torch stolen, wrenched out from unsuspecting hands. Darkness threatens. But somehow—there, the flame has remained. It sits in no torch. He holds it in himself, even though it burns. He lights the furnace with it. The fire in the copper. He dies without it.

And the flame is passed to you. Still no torch. No Olympic procession. As versatile and fragile as a child. As you. You can give it away if you want—no one will stop you. But it won’t burn for anyone else. It will only burn for you. This is your task, your inheritance. Use the fire to transform the purpose. Make it sweet. Roll it out. Cut it. Shape it. Dip it. Share it. Don’t let the children taste the bitterness. Fail. Try harder.

There are taxes. Hounding dread-piles of everything you owe. Numbers that reveal truth in terrible, austere offices. There is a ledger. It begs for balance, too. Demands it. There is no flame there, but still it burns if left unattended too long. Threatens to burn the whole house down.

There is your brother. He, too, was raised in this house. Apprenticed in the ways of balance. He lifts the kettles like you used to. He deals with his own debts. He also balances you. But there is more of him than you. This is by design. You do not want the kitchen to take pieces of him like it took from you. You want to shield him from bitterness as well. You fail. You try harder.

And there is chocolate. A thing which could not be without both hemispheres, much like you. And even though the family you knew is dead and buried, there are new people here. Some stay a long time. Some feel just like family. Some like family you never had. They help you fight the bitterness. Often, they do better than you. And sometimes, they leave with a fullness they didn’t have when they came. And their fullness becomes yours, too. It breaks the balance. It doesn’t make sense. It’s give and give, no take. It’s a precious flame in your heart. Maybe even an answer. You never stop marveling at this.

There is business. Sometimes it is stern, unwieldy. Sometimes you just fail. Try harder. Try... smarter. The recipe can be improved. The method changed. There is no change without sacrifice, your mother would say. Sometimes things just can’t go together. Sometimes they can. You can’t know without trying. There is inflation. There is war. There is plague. There is fire and cancer and corruption. You do your best to keep these things out, but they change what is brought in. And so, you must change, too. Sometimes you feel like this isn’t a store, but a ship on perilous seas. You are constantly watching the looking glass for storm. Sometimes you think you spend too much time doing so. Sometimes you are right.

Sometimes it feels like all you’re really doing is taking the cacao pod, the sweetness, the fullness of the fruit your mother once ate, and reuniting it with the bitter seeds harvested and shipped away. To you, from them, from then. Combining hemispheres. Balancing ledgers. Transitory. Atlas. Sometimes you wonder what it’s all for. Sometimes you think every ship at sea is just trying to stay balanced, and you ask yourself what’s the difference between that and staying level on the ocean floor?

And then the answer elbows you in the back. Laughs and apologizes. Keeps swabbing the deck. Stays afloat. And keeps you afloat, too. They won’t stay forever. They, too, are transitory. They have their own batches to cook, flames to tend. But the flame they engender here keeps you every bit as warm. And a bit of the flame passed to you goes with them. Sends them on their way. The point is that it moves people. Like the engine of a machine. Like the route of trade. Like the taste of cooked candy instead of burnt ingredients. To the future, the past, and everything in between. What’s it like to be the Candyman?

Bittersweet.