The Pie War That Saved Our Fair

I taught Junie how to work a lattice one Thursday afternoon in my kitchen while Vernon sat on my back steps drinking sweet tea and pretending not to listen through the screen door. “Your grandpa’s crust,” I told her, “is too thick on the edges, which is why the judges keep marking him down a point on texture, not that I would ever tell him that to his face.” Junie laughed so hard she got flour on the ceiling, and from the porch Vernon hollered, “I heard that, Ozella,” and I hollered back, “Good,” and that was the first time in twelve years I heard that man laugh the kind of laugh that comes up from the chest instead of the kind that comes out through the nose like he’s granting you a favor.

We had our share of disasters getting to fifteen entries, don’t let me make it sound easy. Somebody’s granddaughter dumped a whole bag of salt into a sugar canister at the Grange kitchen and nobody caught it until three ladies had ruined perfectly good peach fillings, and there was a raccoon that got into my toolshed where I’d been storing practice pies to cool, and ate a full sour cream raisin pie clean through the screen, crust and all, and left one single perfect raccoon print in the middle of a second pie like it was signing a receipt. Vernon laughed at that one until he had to sit down. I did not find it as funny at the time, though I find it plenty funny now.