A young Christian couple selling pie slices. As you approached their table, the woman swept away a little cardboard tent, one that you were pretty sure said $3, tucked it behind her back, stood up straight next to the young man alongside her. Welcome, bless you today, brother, bless you. We have pecan and sweet potato. You held a box of already-purchased produce, and when you asked how much, the woman said, yes, seven a slice.
They had already sent their blessings in your direction, you the non-believer, one who is rather certain that in the end nothing will rescue us all from everlasting silence. You wanted to ask if they could spot this because sometimes you think it’s obvious, that touch of gloom some can never hide and have even learned to rely on no matter how glorious at times it all seems. In the next moment you wanted to appeal to their beliefs, say if heaven exists, couldn’t that slice be on the house, this one time? Following that came a wave of empathy; you felt there was an earnestness, a luster to the couple, and you’d bet what they truly held was hope not faith and, well, hope can never change the facts. They hoped preachers knew and that love would always drown despair and that while they were here, here was somewhere they belonged and when they were at last returned to the earth their bones would rest and the lord could then determine the shape of their goodness and in this shape they would exist forever.
Because of what will eventually befall us all and because those pies did look good, and were made with tenderness, you asked for a slice of sweet potato. The young Christian man accepted your $7, and so deep were you into all that was happening with this transaction, you noticed too late that the woman drizzling something onto the slice from the snout of a plastic bottle. A serpentine pattern. Caramel sauce, she said. Yums. Held out the Styrofoam plate. Your protest, had you spoken it: I didn’t ask for extra sweetness. However, at this point, things had gone too far, and you had to accept. Despite what you sense and all you know, you don’t like to be difficult. Sometimes it feels that all there is to life is to not appear bitter about it. And there was something about them you didn’t want to disturb. (All right. Youth.) They had blessed you, which, momentarily, seemed so kind.
So now, you’ll pause here to go back to something that happened a few minutes prior to the pie table. Even before this, you need to relate your circumstances, that you’d left the Silver Strike Casino in Tunica with next to nothing and the decision to head for Memphis had been an impetuous one. You, again, longed for the company of your ex, Olivia. On the way to surprise her, you’d spotted a sign:
Cormorant
Farmers Market
Currency Only
Along with the abused credit cards in your wallet, you had a $20 bill in your shirt pocket. A point of pride: never let a casino take the last of your cash. You made your way over the chunky gravel road to that prefab building. Prior to the pies, you visited a table manned by a senior gent, Black, who stood behind his produce with his head bowed. The offerings were in thick cardboard boxes, sweet potatoes, ears of corn, collard greens and when you asked about the prices, he’d spoken so quietly you could barely hear. Forty cents a pound, sweet potatoes, that’s right, suh.
Olivia likes to make family recipes and even though she has post-graduate degrees and has published two books on Italian Futurism, she yearns to feel the spirit of her mother, a lifelong Southerner who’d suffered through physical and mental abuse, traitorous behavior from husbands, sweethearts, relatives, and friends, yet loved to make wonderful food for her child and when the two of them were in the kitchen alone, they felt secure and happy.
Another man, from a table offering jars of honey and molasses, wandered over. He stood at the corner of the sweet potato man’s table, said something in his direction. The sweet potato man grimaced, that or buried a smile, brought out an empty box and began filling it with the things you asked for. His labor-modified hands moved stiffly. The final tab, $12. You held over the $20 and he extracted a roll from his pocket. The tips of his fingers were quite nimble when it came to making change.
Northern Mississippi, elderly Black man. You couldn’t speak specifically of his hardships, only imagined they were endless, inhuman, dispiriting, vicious, crushing. Once you were in a creative writing class and had written a story with a Black character and along with the many failings of the story, the professor said that maybe the Black characters should be left to the Black writers and at the time you felt pretty smug hearing that because you thought well a good writer can imagine anything and the professor’s idea was a reflection of his own limitations. At the sweet potato table, you recalled that moment in the class, and understood the professor might not have been talking about limitations at all, but the world you were about to wade into, and how approximation of anything from an artist was a truly unnecessary accomplishment.
Save something for me—is that what the honey and molasses man said to the sweet potato man? It seemed to be a pleasantry between them. Regardless, you felt that the sweet potato man had figured out enough, was adept at surviving, and wasn’t obsessed with scheming or scamming for more like true American patriots and thusly hadachieved a place in life you could only wish for yourself.
To him, you said, I would’ve paid twice as much. A second too late, you guessed he would’ve had the right to take that the wrong way. Sheepishly, you stepped in the direction of the pie table—and perhaps having heard you, the young Christian woman whisked away the little cardboard tent that, yes, definitely had said $3. The next part of this has already been described, though you submit that given the events at the sweet potato table, the pie situation might now be viewed in a different light. The Christians weren’t trying to wring dry a heathen; what they had noticed was your gratitude—and your change—and most importantly you might be someone unaware of the cost of things.
You balanced the paper plate with the slice of pie on atop a batch of greens, lifted the box. The single dollar you had remaining wouldn’t get anything at the honey and molasses table and it was right then you got the joke that man had made. Now, he glanced in the direction of the pie table with a look of explicable exasperation. Outside, you sat on the hood of your Honda, started in on the pie with a little plastic fork the Christians had included and considered the flow of traffic. After one bite, you scraped away the caramel sauce, and considered what had brought you here, specifically the events of the morning, starting with the drive from Pine Bluff to Tunica. Of course, you had your own belief system, one that had you occasionally thinking that today could be the day. And there was only one way to find that out.
Again? Olivia’s expression would say, or she might even speak it after opening the door. The image of this made life feel impossible, which hadn’t been the case when you’d been just starting out with her. Back in Hattiesburg in that cottage on 38th Street where all you did was make love and chase palmetto bugs across the kitchen floor. You thought about how faithfully she worked on her books, knowing they would never sell, and in this way her work was what she had. You had that box of produce.
You finished the pie, folded the Styrofoam plate in half, and slid down from the hood. Aimed north. You made it to Memphis, to her apartment complex. Without knocking, you left the box at her doorstep. Jogging to your car, you spotted her parked 200,000-mile aqua-colored Honda Fit. Feeling only a little sorrowful and almost free, you blew a kiss in that direction.
At the first gas station, you stood at the pump, drew a breath, swiped your Visa.
Approved.
Damn straight.
~
Andy Plattner has work forthcoming in Free State Review and The Palisades Review. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Diana.