The Kolaches That Sold Out Before Hers

He stood at the bottom of the stairs looking at the bakery boxes stacked to the ceiling. Then he took off his collar, washed his hands, and rolled dough until ten.

Friday night we did it again. By midnight we had forty dozen. Apricot and poppy seed, half and half, because those were what the town wanted. Agnes said prune was for funerals.

Saturday morning Adam set up the table for me, a long folding table from the parish hall under the second white tent, about forty feet down from Rose’s.

He laid down a white tablecloth that Pat lent me, and taped a little hand-lettered sign to the front that said St. Wenceslaus Altar Society, Roof Fund, Kolaches, $12 a dozen, $1.50 each.

I had asked him to keep my name off it. I did not want a sign with my name on it forty feet from Rose.

I knew she saw the table being set up. She was at hers by seven thirty, in her cardigan and kerchief, unwrapping her trays.

She looked at the sign, and at me in my apron, and then went back to her trays. She did not come over. I did not go over.

Pat came by at eight with a thermos of coffee and stood next to me for a minute.

“Did you tell her?” I asked.

“Not a word,” Pat said. “But she knows something’s up. She asked me this morning why Adam’s truck was in the church lot every Saturday all year.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I guess he’s getting religion,” Pat said, and poured me a cup.

The festival opened at nine. The polka band started up under the big tent, a little rusty on the first song. The smell of kolache and kraut and grilled sausage hung over Main Street.

Kids ran between the tents with snow cones. It was a perfect fall day, blue and cool, the kind of morning where everybody in the county comes to town.

At nine, a line formed at my table. Just a few people at first. Kathy’s son-in-law. A couple from Clarkson who had heard about it at Mass.

Then the Svoboda boys, who are both on the volunteer fire department and who bought four dozen for the station.

Then it got longer.

By ten, the line ran down past the second tent, past the face painting, and out to the edge of the beer garden. Agnes stood beside me with a cigar box, making change, counting out ones with her stiff fingers and telling every single person, “The apricot’s better.”

People bought them by the dozen and stood right there eating them out of the box. An old farmer in a seed cap took one bite, stopped chewing, and looked at Agnes. “Agnes,” he said, “these taste like your mother’s.”

“They should,” Agnes said. “She’s the one that taught me.” And she pointed her chin at me. “And I taught her.”

The farmer looked at me. Then he looked down the row at Rose’s tent, and then back at me, and he did not say anything. He just bought another dozen.

I tried not to look down the row myself. But I could not help it. Rose had a line, too, the way she always did.

But it was shorter than mine, and it was not moving very fast, and twice I watched people walk up to her table, look at the trays, and then walk down to mine.