Pie Town (24 page)
Authors: Lynne Hinton
L
ook, Lady,” he said, using the name he still gave his great-grandmother, even though she had given him other ways to call her. “It landed right where she sat, right beside her.” The boy smiled and flipped, tumbling across the breeze. “I knew this would work out,” he said as the woman drifted behind him. “I knew he could make them come together and that she should be here. I knew the two of them were meant to be married and that she would have a daughter. I knew this town could pull it off, even if you did have to nudge a little.”
“Only a little,” she said and smiled. “You are a very smart boy.” The lady paused. “And what about the other one?” she asked. “What about your mother?”
The boy considered the question. “Not all angels come when they’re called,” he answered. “But we can always hope they hear their name and know that they are loved.” And he flew high and flipped while the lady watched, still smiling.
“I like it here,” he replied, dropping down, spreading his arms, and sailing gracefully. “It’s a good place.”
“Yes,” she answered. “It is a very good place.” And she threw out her arms as well, letting the wind catch her as she joined him at his side. “This is my home. This is the land, the people, the gathering I love.”
The boy grinned.
“This is Pie Town.”
From Barb Hively, owner of Cravin’ Cookies and More Bakery, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Finding Pie Town
By Lynne Hinton
About fifteen years ago, when we were dreaming of moving to New Mexico from North Carolina, my husband and I were traveling through the southwestern part of the United States. On the trip from Albuquerque to Phoenix, we stopped in a little settlement known as Pie Town. I remember thinking what a quaint and funny name for a town. As we drove through Pie Town, we noticed a small restaurant and decided to stop and, with a name like Pie Town, have some pie. Imagine our surprise when we were told there was no pie. “No pie in Pie Town?” I thought, and that notion stayed with me.
People have often asked how I get an idea for a story, what interests me, how do I start. And the answer is something like the situation of finding no pie in Pie Town. I began to think about how often names of places or ascribed roles tempt us to make assumptions. We assume a small town will be welcoming and easy for newcomers to integrate themselves into. We assume a church will be a safe place, a loving and warm place. We assume mothers will be present for their children, and we assume children won’t die. Once we think about it, however, we realize that life is rarely what we expect. People behave in ways we never could have guessed, and life is certainly full of surprises.
Having served as a pastor of several churches, I am often intrigued by what church members think about themselves. Most church people will proudly announce about themselves to any visitor that they are a “loving” place, a “welcoming and hospitable” place. And yet, in my experience, this is not always the case. Yes, churches can be quite welcoming and hospitable to the longtime members, the families who are connected to the area, the children who grew up in the church. But for newcomers, churches can often feel alienating and cold. As communities, as churches, as towns, as people, we are often not what we appear, and we are not always as good as we think we are. It was this irony that interested me when I began this story.
Now, many years after my first visit to Pie Town, I have discovered that there is a place that serves pie. The Pie-O-Neer Café, open now for more than ten years, has become quite successful. The owner, Kathy Knapp, has found a great place for herself in Pie Town, and I’m happy to include a recipe from the Pie-O-Neer below. I hope you enjoy it! And if you’re in the neighborhood of Pie Town, New Mexico, please stop by and have a slice. Tell them I sent you!
Everybody in Pie Town knew exactly where they were and what they were doing when the bolt of lightning struck the transformer at a substation near the edge of town, cutting off power for half of Catron County for more than two hours. It was late, about nine o’clock in the evening, and most everyone was in some stage of preparing for bed.
Oris Whitsett was standing at the bathroom sink. He was shaving, something he liked to do at night after his shower. He found that the hot water, the steam, the clean way he felt, the freshness of a newly shaved face, relaxed him and made it easier for him to fall asleep.
A person who enjoyed a morning shower and shave for most of his life, Oris had begun this nightly ritual when Alice, his wife, got sick and came home from the hospital. He found that he had so much to do in the mornings getting her up and ready that he never had time until evening to think about himself and his own needs. She also seemed to appreciate his smooth face and warm body when he snuggled in bed next to her at night before falling asleep. It became a part of his pattern of caregiving and intimacy, but even years after she had died, he found he still liked a late night shower. He enjoyed an evening shave.
He had a towel wrapped around his waist and another around his shoulders, and his face was covered in a white, thick foamy cream. He was getting ready to place the razor just at the top of his cheek when the power went out. He waited. Oris was used to the flickering of lights that often happened in Catron County, New Mexico, in the spring and summer. High winds sometimes made for power surges in the area. Usually, there were only flickers, no real outages.
He had noticed the signs of an evening storm earlier when he went over to visit his neighbor, Millie Watson, who had taken a serious fall a few weeks earlier and had just returned from the long-term care facility in town. Her daughter had come home with her, planning to stay a couple of weeks until Millie was able to take care of herself. Oris had stopped over with two takeout enchilada dinners prepared especially for them by Fred and Bea. He had stayed for only a short time, maybe twenty minutes, and he was walking home about seven in the evening when he noticed the stirring of the wind and the tight clouds bunching overhead. He considered then that he should take his shower and shave before it got dark, but then he had gotten home and turned on the television and become interested in some show about ghosts and haunted houses. Before he knew it, he had sat through two hours of programming, and when he finally got up to take his shower, he thought the storm had come and gone.
Oris stood at the sink in darkness and wondered if he could shave himself without watching. With one hand he touched his face, and with the other he slowly pulled the razor down. It was harder than he expected, and after the second cut, his chin burning, he stopped, wiped his face clean with the wet cloth he found in the sink, and dried his face off with the towel from around his shoulders. He then tried to make his way from the bathroom to the den. He felt around for his favorite chair, sat down, and waited.
He knew he had candles and a couple of lanterns, but for a few minutes, an hour even, he sat in darkness. He was a bit chilled, wearing only a towel, but except for the burning from the cuts on his face, he was not uncomfortable. He actually seemed to enjoy the darkness. He closed his eyes and leaned back.
He thought about the television show he had just watched. He thought about ghosts and haunted houses, and he thought about Alice and wondered if the darkness and the storm might bring her back to him, wondered if this might be the thing she needed to return. He wondered if a cover of darkness could bring her to him, if she had been waiting for just this occasion to visit.
Oris knew that it had been almost an entire year since his dead wife had visited him. He remembered how it had felt when her presence was suddenly and completely gone after Alex, his great-grandson, passed away. And since that death, that horrible and grievous death, there had been no sign, no communication, no vision of his beloved, but he didn’t care. Every night he waited and he hoped. And even though he sat that night in complete darkness, his face burning from the blind shave, his body wrapped in a towel, he could not give up believing that the light, his light, would one day, once again, come.
